Switch Theme:

Other Tau Detachments  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in ca
Stealthy Kroot Stalker





So, it's no secret that Tau came in pretty light with only 4 detachments, and while they are all fun, we could have had a lot more. I've got a few ideas as to what they could have been and I'd also like to know what you all think. Do you like these ideas, are there other interesting avenues that I missed? 

1. Recon Cadre: 
Detachment Rule Co-Ordinated Ambush: Units with the Recon Keyword (Darkstrider, Firesight Marksmen, Pathfinders, Sealthsuits, Ghostkeels, Piranhas) are all selected as being a guided unit to any observer unit that also has the Recon Keyword, unless they have been declared as a observer unit themselves. In addition, they do not receive -1 Ballistic Skill when shooting a non-spotted unit. 
Pathfinders gain the Battleline Keyword. 
Stratagems and Enhancements would focus on movement and ambush shenanigan's like fall back and shoot, re-deploys and the like. Some kind of sabotage ability too if you can tag a vehicle in close combat. 

2. Unity Strike Force: 
Detachment Rule Strength of the Greater Good: Kroot units gain the following ability: While this unit is within 6" of a non-Kroot unit, that unit gains the Stealth Keyword. Non-Kroot units gain the following ability: While this unit is within 6" of a Kroot unit, that unit gains the For The Greater Good Faction Ability. 
Stratagems and Enhancements: These would focus on using an auxiliary and Tau proper unit in tandem to greater effect. Bonus to Kroot melee if shot by a Tau unit, or Kroot gaining Fight First if they Heroically intervene to protect a Tau unit. Stuff like that. 

3. (Couldn't think of a good name for this one):
Detachment Rule Advanced Targeting Systems: Once per Phase for each Tau unit, you may re-roll one hit, wound, or damage roll made by a model in that unit. 
Stratagems and Enhancements: These would focus on the non-suit Tau vehicles, like the Hammerhead, Skyray, Devilfish, and aircraft. 

What are your thoughts, how would you want other Tau Detachments done up? 

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/07/17 16:16:34


Armies:  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





First of all, always cool to see detachment rule proposals, so thanks for sharing your work! Second, I haven't actually picked up the tau codex, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

1. Recon Cadre:
Detachment Rule Co-Ordinated Ambush: Units with the Recon Keyword (Darkstrider, Firesight Marksmen, Pathfinders, Sealthsuits, Ghostkeels, Piranhas) are all selected as being a guided unit to any observer unit that also has the Recon Keyword. In addition, they do not receive -1 Ballistic Skill when shooting a non-spotted unit.
Pathfinders gain the Battleline Keyword.

I'm not sure what the part about guided/observer units means. Do you mean that you can select multiple units to be guided by a single observer? Do all units with the right keyword get guided automatically when a single unit with the right keyword observes? And if so, isn't that basically the same as giving all recon units +1 BS with no drawbacks?

I'm usually iffy on handing out Battleline as a mechanic because it tends to either not actually do much or to functionally do to much, but I think it might actually work pretty well with pathfinders here.

Generally, I like the concept of a sneaky, mobile detachment. I'm just not sure what Co-ordinated Ambush is meant to do.

2. Unity Strike Force:
Detachment Rule Strength of the Greater Good: Kroot units gain the following ability: While this unit is within 6" of a non-Kroot unit, that unit gains the Stealth Keyword. Non-Kroot units gain the following ability: While this unit is within 6" of a Kroot unit, that unit gains the For The Greater Good Faction Ability.
Stratagems and Enhancements: These would focus on using an auxiliary and Tau proper unit in tandem to greater effect. Bonus to Kroot melee if shot by a Tau unit, or Kroot gaining Fight First if they Heroically intervene to protect a Tau unit. Stuff like that.

Again, I like the concept. Love me some alien auxiliaries buddying up with their tau overlords. I really like the concept of strats that focus on actively helping each other out as well.

A couple criticisms:
* I'd really like for vespid to get some love here. Ideally I'd like more alien datasheets in the tau codex in general, but that's outside of the scope of this project, so in the meantime, rules for vespid would be nice even if it's only a strat or two.
* On that note, and this might be too complicated, it might be nice to let this detachment ally in some imperial guard so the gue'la can join in on the fun?
* Something feels off about the detachment rule. A 6" aura on a unit of kroot is a massive area of effect, and kroot generally want to be moving forward to chew on stuff rather than sitting back and shooting. So I feel like this detachment rule sort of encourages you to gunline up and use your kroot blobs as cheap Observer units/Stealth generators for your assorted suits and tanks rather than encouraging the kroot to actually act like kroot.

With that in mind, maybe do something like:
Enemy units within 6" of a kroot unit suffer -1 to-hit on ranged attacks made against non-kroot units.

^ So instead of awkwardly encouraging your fire warriors to get near the front lines or encouraging your kroot to sit back and pretend they're stealth drones, this encourages you to send your kroot forward and do what they're good at, thus keeping your tau in the backfield safe. I'm not sure if you need a rule going the opposite direction (tau helping kroot) as general fire support and the fire warrior rule to debuff enemy shooting already kind of complements a kroot advance.

3. (Couldn't think of a good name for this one):
Detachment Rule Advanced Targeting Systems: Once per Phase for each Tau unit, you may re-roll one hit, wound, or damage roll made by a model in that unit.
Stratagems and Enhancements: These would focus on the non-suit Tau vehicles, like the Hammerhead, Skyray, Devilfish, and aircraft.

I'm afraid I don't really like this one. It basically just rewards you for running vehicle skew by giving you a flat kill-more-better rule. For the same reason I don't love a similar rule on my eldar, I don't love this rule here.

If you want to make a vehicle detachment, I'd encourage you to think about what it is about that army concept you find interesting and what about that army concept isn't well represented with the current rules. Where possible, write detachment rules to make an army feel *different* instead of *stronger*. Maybe this could be the armored cavalary detachment? Provide rules that focus on infantry utilizing transports rather than on just hitting harder? Maybe this detachment grants sticky objective rules to certain units so that you can lean into the mobility of your skimmers instead of standing on no-man's-land objectives all game? Just spitballing.

I'm sort of blanking on other detachments I'd like to see. Once upon a time, I'd have liked a drone detachment that let you toss out protocols (doctrines for drones), but most (all?) of the drone units are legends now. Looking at the detachment rules for Kauyon and Montka on Battlescribe, I feel like those might be kind of underwhelming. Maybe the strats and enhancements save them, but the detachment rules themselves make it seem like they just give you kill-more-better rules in either the first or second half of the game. Instead, I'd rather have Montka handing out Precision and giving Oath of Moment style bonuses to certain targets (preferably with some sort of drawback) while Kauyon grants bonuses against enemies you fell back from earlier in the turn. Actually change unit behaviors rather than just giving them Lethal and Sustained hits.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in ca
Stealthy Kroot Stalker





Thanks for the notes:

For the Recon Cadre: What normally happens in Tau is that one units spots for a single other unit that gains +1 BS as the guided unit. The way this functionally changes it, is that any other Recon units that target a spotted unit get +1 BS. So it's not a flat buff as they don't get it if they target other units (unless you spot them too, but that takes another unit as a spotter meaning they don't get the buff.)

TLDR, it allows you to get a better buff by attacking a single target with a bunch of units.

For the Unit Strike Force: I based the templating off of the Talons of The Emperor Detachment which does more-less the same thing, but I like the way you re-framed the Kroot Aura to be a debuff rather than a buff, I think that's WAY more flavourful and would play a lot better on the table.

I really wanted to work in the Vespid, but since they didn't get a Keyword for Vespid or Auxilliary, there isn't an easy way to do that as is.

I was thinking of doing a Brood Brothers style thing for guard, but then I thought it would be too easy to soup the two of the best gunline armies together.

Yeah, I do agree on the last one. I don't run that many vehicles myself, was just looking to how other armies ran their vehicle themed lists as a general guideline.

Yeah, Montka and Kauyon more just push sytles of play rather than unique lists. Not that that's always a bad thing, it's fine to have 1-2 generalist detachments, so long as you have unique ones to mess around with as well. So far all we have are Kroot and Suits.

Armies:  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





 Tawnis wrote:
Thanks for the notes:

For the Recon Cadre: What normally happens in Tau is that one units spots for a single other unit that gains +1 BS as the guided unit. The way this functionally changes it, is that any other Recon units that target a spotted unit get +1 BS. So it's not a flat buff as they don't get it if they target other units (unless you spot them too, but that takes another unit as a spotter meaning they don't get the buff.)

TLDR, it allows you to get a better buff by attacking a single target with a bunch of units.

Gotcha. So where you'd normally have a 1:1 :Observer:Guided ratio, this lets you have a relatively small number of observers guide a relatively large number of units. I.e. if you're focusing on shooting 3 enemy units this turn, you really only need 3 observers to Guide a bunch of units.

That seems strong but probably okay? Kauyon and Montka have a roughly comparable buff (get more damage through via LH and SH). They're just limited by turn number whereas this is limited by unit type.

For the Unit Strike Force: I based the templating off of the Talons of The Emperor Detachment which does more-less the same thing, but I like the way you re-framed the Kroot Aura to be a debuff rather than a buff, I think that's WAY more flavourful and would play a lot better on the table.

Glad you like the suggestion!

I really wanted to work in the Vespid, but since they didn't get a Keyword for Vespid or Auxilliary, there isn't an easy way to do that as is.

Meh. We're homebrewing here. You can add a keyword easily enough.

I was thinking of doing a Brood Brothers style thing for guard, but then I thought it would be too easy to soup the two of the best gunline armies together.
That's fair. I'm not sure if it would actually break anything, but it is a big, hard-to-balance change. The better solution is probably just to add more alien ally datasheets to the Tau faction. But that's out of scope for this thread.

Yeah, I do agree on the last one. I don't run that many vehicles myself, was just looking to how other armies ran their vehicle themed lists as a general guideline.

Yeah, Montka and Kauyon more just push sytles of play rather than unique lists. Not that that's always a bad thing, it's fine to have 1-2 generalist detachments, so long as you have unique ones to mess around with as well. So far all we have are Kroot and Suits.

I think the trick is to figure out what the flavor/style of a vehicle-centric detachment is beyond just "vehicle spam." Is this meant to be the mounted infantry deploying and redeploying at high speeds? Is it the "high-tech" detachment meant to show off the earth caste's latest projects? If the former, I'd try to give it rules that emphasize the interaction between infantry and the vehicles. If the latter, maybe emphasize drones or fortifications or defensive properties or range instead of raw offense.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in ca
Stealthy Kroot Stalker





Yeah, exactly right, the balance part of it is that it only works with Recon units, so you cant guide a bunch of Hammerheads or anything too punchy. Ghostkeels are the heaviest hitter that this works with.

I was thinking more on Unity Strike force, and while conceptually I like your idea, I don't think it would functionally work, if a Kroot unit is within 6" of an enemy, it's charging, so the debuff won't ever matter unless they are moving into you.

I don't think the original forces gunlines as much as you think, since Kroot want to be up close, it pushes you to either keep your Tau close or your Kroot back, so it's always some kind of trade off for the buff. I think some kind of middle ground might work better, we're on the right track, but I don't think either of us hit the nail on the head yet.

Yeah, I don't play enough vehicle lists to day. I just didn't want to leave them out of the discussion.

Armies:  
   
 
Forum Index » 40K Proposed Rules
Go to: