New Tau Codex - April 6'th [Pics, Video and Prices in OP]

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**SickSix**

I will make my final decision after I can flip through the WD, but as it looks now I will be selling my Tau.

The Riptide looks awful, way too busy.

The flyers look like badly converted pirhanas.

Suits got no makeover.

No new Kroot spotted.

**Brother Captain Alexander**

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
Someone REALLY needs to update the first post with all the pics and rumors...

Updated.
Many thanks to both Kroot and pretre for rumors, keep up the good work

**RandyMcStab**

The front page pics are broken for me...be worth changing title to mention WD pics too

Still no Kroot?

**Kroothawk**

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

So here are my made up Tau rumors...

1-In keeping with the proud tradition of the Storm Talon and Chibi Hawk well-known and beloved Tau models from Forge World will NOT be remade in plastic nor included in the codex. Instead the codex will include some ill-concieved poorly shoe-horned new models that were churned out over the weekend by an intern (oops, that one might be true).

Damn, Kid Kyoto was right!

Another GW release with not a single bit of inspiration, just bad copy-pasts from old designs.

Crisis Suits? Same outdated ugly design, just without the option to buy them as singles. Good thing I have FW models.

Pathfinders? Same design just plastic. At least not worse and cheaper.

Broadsides? Slightly varied outdated blocky design. For exactly the same price you get the superior FW model:

Riptide? Slightly varied outdated blocky design with odd legs. At least now I have rules for my 13cm Gundam models:

Flyer? Are you serious? Just filling the open Piranha cockpit with greenstuff and adding plasticard to the wings is not a new design! And not worth more than double the Piranha price! It is really like an intern getting 5 minutes for the design AND the prototype model: "Where do I put the rocket launcher?" "Anywhere, doesn't matter."
BTW here the model the intern copied without understanding the design:

Guess it's time to get a second Remora set for Fast Attack (£33.00 for two instead of £40.00 for one) and Barracuda for Heavy Weapon.

TR;DR: Another release botched by lack of inspiration and lazyness.

**MeanGreenStompa**

http://blog.bitzbox.co.uk/sneak-peek-first-leaked-images-of-new-tau/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sneak-peek-first-leaked-images-of-new-tau

I actually get what they were going for with the flyers, a predator drone aesthetic.

Giant suit was expected, I think it was a tad lazy and just played safe.

We should not have expected new crisis suits, GW is not redoing any old kits atm. I think perhaps they are recounting the beans from the expenditures from the Dark Eldar and Necron redesigns.

As someone who was considering Tau or Imperial Guard for my Ork allies, seems Imperial Guard win atm.

**Coyote81**

Wow, even the well known Kroothawk has given up on Tau. The End is Neigh indeed.

I for one have no problems with the new models, I think with a slight adjustment the flyers will look awesome. The new Riptide Suit should work out well. (Come and tell me you didn't expect it either, every single army released comes with some new monster or craziness, Tau of course get a suit.)

I'm glad with the direction thy went, I for one don't want my large Tau collection to be unusable because a bunch of people don't like the current look to crisis suits.

All in all, happy so far. Now the important part (Yes the model changes are at the very bottom of my list) What are the rules for these new units and all the old ones. I hope there are some great changes. #1 Want, Fusion Cannon (aka Multi-melta), not even Eldar have those.

**thenoobbomb**

Those WD pictures of Tau... IT BUUUUURNS.

**Jefffar**

Givn the Riptide is going into Elites and the Crisis Suits just got multi-boxed, I think that's the hint that the days of the lone elite Crisis suit are over and units of Crisis Troops may be coming.

Of course we may see a Crisis Suit nerf as a part of the process.

**Lt.Soundwave**

I think the flyers have conversion possibilities and I like the larger Xv88's.

Personally I am a die hard fan of 80s era mecha so I am very pleased the Crisis suits remain largely untouched.

I have no way of knowing if I am correct but from the looks of things, it appears to me at least, that the suits have retained their design aesthetic but may be new sculpts themselves. Something about the ankles on those Xv8s looks different to me and the posing seems different as well.

Granted, it may just be a result of the poor resolution of the images in question.

The riptide suit I have mixed feelings on. I will need to see better photos of this model in particular before I form an opinion. That being said, it does appear a tad "busy".

The flyer in particular does evoke the piranna design aesthetic, which I am not generally a fan of.
Assuming the rules make it worth picking up however I can see all manner of alteration and conversion possibilities .

Ultimately I must echo the sentiment of many other posters in this thread.
Judging from these photos alone it does seem like the only clear cut winner of this batch consists of cheaper pathfinders.

Kinda sad really.

**lord_blackfang**

Come on, it's a waaay better release than what WoC and CSM got.

**Fezman**

The way people on rumour sites are reacting, you'd think the old Tau book was entitled "Codex: Broadsides." Just because their railguns were nerfed doesn't mean we should act as if that's the whole army ruined. I don't think Broadsides are useless now anyway, but I won't deny that their role is changed. It sounds like they're better against flyers and light vehicles now rather than just being tank killers. All I'm saying is, wait to see the book.

I only really have two problems with this new stuff: the eye-watering prices on the Riptide and Broadside and the fact I don't like the design of the flyer (if Tau vehicles are named after fish, that one's definitely a flounder

).

**Mentlegen324**

It seems like to me that GW no longer understand or cares about how things were before they update armies.

Flyers that don't fit in at all with the previous Tau flyers.

The XV88 is now bigger and heavier than the XV9, when it is meant to be the other way around.

A giant crisis suit that doesn't fit in at all with the Tau, in terms of both fluff and design

**taudau**

The fact that neither of those flyers has 3 tl railguns and av 13/13/10 breaks it for me.

IG will still beat tau at everything, including ally selection.

P.S.: I'm joking, the hyperbole and feeling of entitlement of some people is amazing! Personally I'll wait until I have seen the codex and models in person - although I do wonder how that Riptide suit is supposed to fit into a manta? :(

**Kroothawk**

Neko over at Waseer wrote:I'm glad someone's posted those - I feel I can speak a little more freely now

Looking at the double spread:
- The flyer on the left is a gunship. The chin-mounted burst cannon you can see, but the main weapon is actually mounted on the underside of the tail, and is some sort of turreted array of ion weapons. My first thought is that this should make the flyer easier to use, as you don't need to be pointing at the target. It also has 2 pop-up seeker missiles.
- The flyer on the right is the bomber. It doesn't actually carry any bombs, but instead has a generator for forming bombs out of plasma as they're needed. It also has a detachable drone fighter in each wing for defense.
- Below the bomber, you should be able to make out a lot of white missile tips. These all belong to a Broadside model. The uppermost bundle of missiles is a shoulder-mounted pod, whilst a bit lower you can see 2 more bundles of missiles in arm mounted pods. Also, to the right of the shoulder pod you may be able to make out a seeker missile pointing straight up - this is the suit mounted seeker I mentioned.
- To the right of that you have the XV104 Riptide. You should be able to make out an ion cannon of some sort on its right arm, and a shield on its left.

2nd Attachment:
- Here we can see the box art for the XV104, this time armed with some sort of uber-burst cannon. On this shot you might be able to make out the twin support weapons mounted under the main gun. It also comes with 2 shielded missile drones.
- And another picture of the bomber.

3rd Attachment:
- Pathfinders. You can't really make out the new experimental weapons I'm afraid, but you can certainly see that one of the drones is beefier than the rest. If I understand right, this drone can sit in place of the cupola on the devilfish, and grant some sort of C3 bonuses.
- Broadside suit. In this shot you can see it built with the twin heavy rail rifle (the rifle you can see is actually 2 heavy rail rifles side by side).
- Crisis team. It's just the current suits repacked into boxes of 3.

Another tidbit not shown:
- The XV8 varient is a finecast commander's varient. It looks similar to the XV8 (maybe with longer limbs?), and may well have the same rules, but is posed with the hand units deployed.

Also, isn't the resin commander Neko was talking about is in the page fold of the first pic? This XV8 suit seems weird.

It is! Good eyesight there

**tetrisphreak**

What's a "C3 bonus"?

**hotsauceman1**

C3 bonuses?

**ClassicCarraway**

Mentlegen324 wrote:

A giant crisis suit that doesn't fit in at all with the Tau, in terms of both fluff and design

I am confused by this comment. How does a giant crisis suite not fit in with the Tau design when it's A) a crisis suit (only bigger) and B) largely matches the same aesthetics as the other suits? I mean, crisis suits are basically mini gundam suits to begin with, so a bigger version is a natural evolution.

And since we don't know the fluff behind this unit, how do you know it doesn't fit the Tau fluff?

**gr1m_dan**

Maybe he meant D3 bonus somehow?

The way some of you are reacting to the models is great though. You must be really hard to please ;-) Or maybe I am just easy to please? No new XV8 suits? Thank christ that I don't have to buy another 12 again!!

As long as we get a good solid rule set that is varied and balanced I for one cannot wait to get my hands on some of the new units.

Riptide looks great - Some folks question why is it just a blown up suit - well guess what, the Tau must enjoy their suit design so much why would they NOT make a "big" version. A four-legged crawler version would be stupid and very un-Tau IMO. Far too slow and clumsy.

Flyers - I'm 50/50 on these. I am sure they will look good in the flesh and c'mon let's face it - better than the box-talon.

**Lovepug13**

I for one am quite looking forward to this.......

On my morning dogwalk Local gw in Canterbury seem on the ball with plenty of tau now in the display cabinet.......

I can see me buying a couple of rip tides........I really like the look of this lot......

**lord_blackfang**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
C3 bonuses?

Seriously?

Command, Control & Communication

**tetrisphreak**

faeit 212 wrote:
via an anonymous source from the Faeit 212 inbox
To answer some questions for your readers:
*The suit starts with rail cannons and can upgrade them to the Ion Weapon.

*The profiles you have listed are wrong, but it does indeed have blast and shot options. (from yesterday)

*It does divert power from it's reactor to different systems at the start of each Tau turn, lasting until the next turn and starts with one system active.

*One includes the gun, which is how you change it from shots to a blast.

*For those of you wondering; yes the blast is better than the multi-shots.

*It isn't like submunitions, or dispersed firing. Think of it more like megaman's buster. It gets powers up and fires a big shot instead of rapidly firing smaller shots (granted it's from a big gun).

**spectreoneone**

hotsauceman1 wrote:
C3 bonuses?

Command, Control, and Communications, aka C3. Probably will provide effects similar to the markerlights, or something like that. C3 usually involves things like data links and radio communications to coordinate a fighting force, so it seems to me that the Tau are being heavily influenced by the current cutting-edge technology used by modern militaries; expect to see net-centric warfare type stuff and heavy reliance on drones.

**Kanluwen**

The "Sun Shark" looks awful. It seriously looks like they melded the hull of a Devilfish with an Imperial Navy "Avenger", added the support struts from a Valkyrie and called it a day.

The "Riptide" is just bad.
The lack of new Crisis Suits is bad and should feel bad.

But hey, the plastic Pathfinders and Broadsides look nice!

**balsak_da_mighty**

TBD wrote:
UltraPrime wrote:
Whenn you say 'typical release', you mean:

Step 1 - rumours. My army is broken. Waaaah
Step 2 - leaked pics. They look awful. Waaaah
Step 3 - proper pics. Not as bad as I first thought. Meh
Step 4 - release. These are pretty good after all. Yay

Yes, I've noticed this 'typical' trend

No, I know perfectly well what I mean and that is not it.

GW's typical release for quite a while:

Step 1: don't resculpt any old fugly miniatures that people really really want resculpted.
Step 2: push the latest flavour of flashy looking big/monstrous mini upon us.
Step 3: push the latest flavour of flyer upon us.
Step 4: make stuff look even more ott blinged out/cartoony/action figure than last release.
Step 5: all of the above at pulled-out-of-corporate-butt increased pricing that no way is worth the product in the box.

But the scary part is its working for the most part. How many people went out and bought that ugly looking throe of khorne? Just my point. Maybe we stop buy the ugly models even though they might be the best rules wise for GW to take a hint and learn.

**jonolikespie**

ClassicCarraway wrote:
Mentlegen324 wrote:

A giant crisis suit that doesn't fit in at all with the Tau, in terms of both fluff and design

I am confused by this comment. How does a giant crisis suite not fit in with the Tau design when it's A) a crisis suit (only bigger) and B) largely matches the same aesthetics as the other suits? I mean, crisis suits are basically mini gundam suits to begin with, so a bigger version is a natural evolution.

And since we don't know the fluff behind this unit, how do you know it doesn't fit the Tau fluff?

Tau are all about rapid response/redeployment. They are a mobile force that relies heavily on air support, more akin to modern military tactics than the WWII ones used by Imperial Guard. When they were first introduced not making use of titans was part of their design, instead of big robots they only made use of man sized ones, not because they couldn't make them but because they didn't want to. Unless that big thing is a form of jump infantry just as fast as a crisis suit then they would seem to have completely ignored their original concept for the army simply because every release needs something big these days. If it can keep up then it still doesn't fit since they have never had bigger mechs but at least it doesn't entirely crap all over the fluff.

**Kroothawk**

From 22nd November last year:

75hastings69 wrote:Anybody who might be interested in what tau models (or at least one of them) you can really expect next year might want to type "Fil Dunn tau" into a google image search

E.g. this one:

BTW Warseer already deleted the new pics.

**UNCLEBADTOUCH**

And if the riptide had looked like fil Dunns version I would have bought it in a heartbeat, sadly it was not to be.

**WarOne**

It looks exactly as I pictured it; nothing radical nor game changing.

Unlike the updates to Dark Eldar which desperately needed new resculpts, Tau really don't need it. Their niche model design and concept remain the same so unless we're talking allies, there is nothing that they really needed to change.

**Palindrome**

Kroothawk wrote:

BTW Warseer already deleted the new pics.

Good old Warseer.

**Jayden63**

During one of the rumor posted the Riptide is Jump Infantry. Which pretty much gives it Crisis suit level of movement minus 1". (since 2d6 averages 7" for the most part)

Crisis Suit - 6" + shooting phase + 2D6 assault move.
Riptide. 12" movement + Shooting phase + no assault move.

Unless you want to get into assault in which case the Riptide can actually assault further. I don't think that there is any reason to think of it as the slow and pondering robot.