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Also, commanders can have 3 bodyguards

Ahh, that is good news, so you could run 8 Crisis Suits out of the HQ, which keeps the Elites open for Riptide / Stealth options. It will be interesting to see if Target Lock / Split Fire will still be an option in order to maximize shooting options. Thanks!

Some more info on the pathfinders would be nice though.

^^^ I'm just hoping they get Stealth... Since the whole justification for having less armor was so they could make less noise.

 HoverBoy wrote:
Some more info on the pathfinders would be nice though.

+1

A lot of competitive Tau players might switch over from Tetras to Pathfinders depending on Pathfinders' point cost, markerlight effectiveness, survivability, and existence of Targeting Array and Target Lock (or split fire option) for vehicles.

Hmm, forgeworld speculation time - what do you think we'll see rules change wise there?

The TX-42 with Rail Rifles just got far more deadly. So did the Hammerhead with Twin Linked Heavy Burst cannons.

On the flip side the Hammerhead with Twin Linked Heavy Missile Pods probably took a downward turn.

Changes to the Ion Cannon on the Baracuda and the other Flyers would be nasty.

Heavy Gun Drones are pretty mean now too.

Just got told by my local store (independent retailer, not a GW store) that GW oversold the new Tau stuff and does not have enough plastics to fill orders. He will have the Codex and Finecast, but wasn't even given an ETA on the plastics. I saw the post from the EU yesterday and had a bad feeling it might happen here as well. There goes my weekend of assembly/painting I had planned.

Missile broadsides are okay AA, but railgun ones are awful in every aspect. With AA, railgun broadsides take about 7 broadsides to kill a helldrake (at 85 points/each that's almost 500 points of AA to kill a single flyer...), and that's regardless of exploding or hull point-ing av12, it's the same either way. Missile broadsides take about 5 broadsides to do the same thing, which again at 85 points each is over 400 points to kill one flyer. So I mean sure, Tau AA is better than other armies' AA; that's like saying a 3 year old is a better kickboxer than a newborn. When you have to throw more than 400 specialized points and two whole HS slots at a 100-odd point flyer just to kill it, there's something very wrong about that. I mean heck, a hammerhead with Jackie Chan Superstar DJ actually stands a fairly even chance of killing a helldrake, compared to skyfire broadsides. By the way, nobody noticed, but broadside missiles are NOT twin linked. They hit on BS3, with only snapfired markerlights being able to increase that versus a flyer outside of squad commanders buying TA's (if they exist and if it's a legal option). Aegis w/ quadgun and cadre fireblade + FW behind it, with the fireblade splitfiring, manning the quad at bs5 with 24(maybe even 36) snapfired s5 shots seems like similar AA capability to 3 broadsides, honestly.

The new tau codex is good, but I feel like we're still shoehorned into being a very predictable army with our HQ, elite, troops, FA, and Heavy slots each having very obvious choices that surpass the rest fairly solidly, with their alternatives being quite gimmicky and unreliable.

HQ - cadre fireblade, then ethereal or farsight

Elite - Crisis suits; riptide is about 50 points too expensive, and will die horribly to just a little bit of plasma unless it gives up its only real source of considerable firepower.

Troops - Fire warriors got better! Which is not saying much. Kroot got a total re-doing, and are fairly good at their new role, though not entirely stellar. Still not bad, but FW would do the job better.

FA - Vespids got much better, but Pathfinders certainly got buffs (though losing a point of armor stinks) as well. Piranhas got better due to fusion blaster range, so they may make or break some lists, though we havent seen if their cost went down or anything. The flyers are underwhelming especially at their points costs, so the choice is really down to pathfinders, vespids, and piranhas, in that order of preference.

Heavy - Hammerheads got minor buff in the form of points decrease and burst cannon buff, but overall they stay the same old "shoot railgun, probably roll a 1 to hit, if you hit, probably roll a 1 to pen, if you pen, probably roll a 1 on damage chart." I've already stated my opinion on broadsides, and skyrays/sniper drones are still total gack, so there goes that slot choice.


The new codex is really not as doom&gloom as I'm making it out to be, but seriously people, stop drinking each other's kool aid. Nerfs are nerfs, even if you want to call it a "repurposing". Kroot, broadsides, and sniper drones are all very much worse this edition, and two of those used to be very important parts of our army that we now have no solid replacement for outside of allies. Yes I'm already doing math - part of why I buy models is so I can actually use them to game with. If a model is bad, I won't buy it.

uberjoras wrote:

Heavy - Hammerheads got minor buff in the form of points decrease and burst cannon buff, but overall they stay the same old "shoot railgun, probably roll a 1 to hit, if you hit, probably roll a 1 to pen, if you pen, probably roll a 1 on damage chart."

Actually, Hammerheads will be more like "shoot Ion Cannon in overcharged mode at MEQ, use Markerlight to ignore cover, kill MEQ with S8 AP3 large blast". I think the Railhead will become obsolete with the dawn of Helios and Sunforge suits.

20 Snipers for 140pts is sweet. Kroot are, if anything, even better than the previous edition if not on par. And that's without seeing the specifics on them.

Broadsides are going to drop flyer's like it's hot and drop anything AV12 or less like it's going out of style. They also get more fire support in form of missile drones which is even nicers.

I'll give you that Sniper drones got worse against marines but honestly, who used them anyway?

You're doing your math before you have the solid point values of the entire book and specifics on the special rules. Seems a little hard to draw the correct conclusions on that.

tidalwake wrote:
Just got told by my local store (independent retailer, not a GW store) that GW oversold the new Tau stuff and does not have enough plastics to fill orders. He will have the Codex and Finecast, but wasn't even given an ETA on the plastics. I saw the post from the EU yesterday and had a bad feeling it might happen here as well. There goes my weekend of assembly/painting I had planned.

I better stop by my flgs to see if they are also affected... I just talked to him yesterday and the manager was telling me he already had his order approved by his supplier and the supplier was already asking about what the store wanted for the next shipment....

If only select retailers will get their orders filled, I'm not sure my flgs is big enough to be of any priority... I happen to know they ordered about $1200 in new tau units/codex, but I'm not sure how that compares to the average flgs.

Errrrm... that fighter is scary broken imo. Seriously.

Dunno if it's a spammable flyer like Heldrake, but definitely autotake one of.

The flyer looks cool, going to enjoy Seeker missiles to the rear of a helldrake, with my XV84 taking a targetting array if the rumors are true.

uberjoras wrote:

Heavy - Hammerheads got minor buff in the form of points decrease and burst cannon buff, but overall they stay the same old "shoot railgun, probably roll a 1 to hit, if you hit, probably roll a 1 to pen, if you pen, probably roll a 1 on damage chart."


Actually, Hammerheads will be more like "shoot Ion Cannon in overcharged mode at MEQ, use Markerlight to ignore cover, kill MEQ with S8 AP3 large blast". I think the Railhead will become obsolete with the dawn of Helios and Sunforge suits.

An interesting new option. The ten million dollar question is this: Can the Hammerheads still fire as fast vehicles? Can anyone with a copy of the codex answer this question?

As an IG player, Im happy for the T'au as they are actually going to be the army they are supposed to be - the shootiest. I started them about 2 years ago only to be really disappointed and got rid of them. Im excited to pickup this codex and bring em back.

uberjoras wrote:
Missile broadsides are okay AA, but railgun ones are awful in every aspect. With AA, railgun broadsides take about 7 broadsides to kill a helldrake (at 85 points/each that's almost 500 points of AA to kill a single flyer...), and that's regardless of exploding or hull point-ing av12

In this example though, rolling a 2+ on the Damage Chart is more or less the same as destroying it outright. A weapon destroyed eats the Baleflamer, a Locked Velocity is crippling and a 4+ is it dying straight away. Not to mention the fact that Railguns aren't shoddy against light or medium armour, unlike Flak Missiles.

 Kasrkin52 wrote:
As an IG player, Im happy for the T'au as they are actually going to be the army they are supposed to be - the shootiest. I started them about 2 years ago only to be really disappointed and got rid of them. Im excited to pickup this codex and bring em back.

The shootiest codex is the IG, the Tau won't change that. Yeah, they can bring firepower to the table, but the IG can bring even more and usually even better. The new Tau is more of a "tricky" army IMHO and even though it is very shooty, it is far from the "shootiest".

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

uberjoras wrote:
Missile broadsides are okay AA, but railgun ones are awful in every aspect. With AA, railgun broadsides take about 7 broadsides to kill a helldrake (at 85 points/each that's almost 500 points of AA to kill a single flyer...), and that's regardless of exploding or hull point-ing av12

In this example though, rolling a 2+ on the Damage Chart is more or less the same as destroying it outright. A weapon destroyed eats the Baleflamer, a Locked Velocity is crippling and a 4+ is it dying straight away. Not to mention the fact that Railguns aren't shoddy against light or medium armour, unlike Flak Missiles.

You are right, but a helldrake without baleflamer can still vector strike, which is still scary for my vehicles, and a velocity locked helldrake doesn't really care all that much, because it can still turn, zoom around, and torrent its flamer. I would actually rather get a 1 than a 2 or 3 if I had penned - making it continue its flight and disabling its baleflamer for another turn could actually destroy it if I jetpack move crisis suits 18" in front of it lol.


A lot of this does rely on wargear options and their costs, but from everything I've seen, there's not much that can change Codex: TAUtocannons into a serious threat versus something that's been becoming extremely scarily common and potent in my meta; force field DA mech. Triple vindi, 6 rhino/razorbacks, and I believe a LR or two with force field libbies/techmarines, with swarming ravenwing around the outside playing keep-away. New Tau would have a very hard time dealing with 10+ vehicles with 4++ saves from even craftily deep-struck meltaguns...

uberjoras wrote:
The new codex is really not as doom&gloom as I'm making it out to be, but seriously people, stop drinking each other's kool aid. Nerfs are nerfs, even if you want to call it a "repurposing". Kroot, broadsides, and sniper drones are all very much worse this edition

Kroot and Sniper drones worse? That's debatable. Kroot went from mediocre and underperforming melee units to potentially awesome MC killers. Broadsides? Sure they're gun was nerfed. But nerfing a weapon or model may be bad for that individual model, but it can be good overall. So one of our star players was nerfed. Good. It was broken. I don't want to be part of a team known for cheese units.

edited to avoid potential ugliness.

Anyone got the Tau codex early?

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Kasrkin52 wrote:
As an IG player, Im happy for the T'au as they are actually going to be the army they are supposed to be - the shootiest. I started them about 2 years ago only to be really disappointed and got rid of them. Im excited to pickup this codex and bring em back.

The shootiest codex is the IG, the Tau won't change that. Yeah, they can bring firepower to the table, but the IG can bring even more and usually even better. The new Tau is more of a "tricky" army IMHO and even though it is very shooty, it is far from the "shootiest".

Agreed. The guard seriously laugh at Tau shooting in comparison to their own. What they don't get is battlesuits

That's why I'll be re-forging a Tau army. I like battlesuits

Well, I have been looking through the codex quiet a bit lately.

Yup, I am going to once again fall to many many lists that are played locally. Double landraiders and IG parking lots are going to run us over....

We now have the one single shot rail gun on the HH
One strength 9 shot AP2 from overcharging.
And still our one melta....

I have been having a really hard time with 4 broadsides against many people going to a IG parking lot and having a dark angel compliment to give the russes a 4+ invuln and a 40 man blob squad fearless already. Only having 1-2 strength 10 shots and 1-2 strength 9 shots in a 2k list is really going to do a lot of harm to me. Going from a tourney winning to a tourney showing player....

jazzpaintball wrote:
Well, I have been looking through the codex quiet a bit lately.

Yup, I am going to once again fall to many many lists that are played locally. Double landraiders and IG parking lots are going to run us over....

We now have the one single shot rail gun on the HH
One strength 9 shot AP2 from overcharging.
And still our one melta....

I have been having a really hard time with 4 broadsides against many people going to a IG parking lot and having a dark angel compliment to give the russes a 4+ invuln and a 40 man blob squad fearless already. Only having 1-2 strength 10 shots and 1-2 strength 9 shots in a 2k list is really going to do a lot of harm to me. Going from a tourney winning to a tourney showing player....

You're hyperfocusing on individual tools. Think about it this way, the missiles being spread out across more units means you're freeing up crisis hardpoints for more fusion than you had before. The fusion range is also getting increased.

With roles switching around, you should be looking at crisis suits to handle a bit of your melta.

The thing that hugely annoys me is Darkstrider's name: El'Myamoto. Seems a little too overt of a asian reference to have an actual Japanese name. Just me who feels like this?

 Grey Templar wrote:
To be fair, I always had an issue with the Broadside and the Hammerhead Railguns having the same statline. The Hammerhead's railgun is significantly larger than the Broadside's railgun. Getting 40% larger just to gain submunitions seemed a little odd.

Yeah, but it's same thing with many other weapons: Burst cannons, Autocannons, Lascannons...crew served ones are much smaller. Tank Burst cannon is like 4 times bigger than Stealth suit BC.

One thing which is true that popping transports with S10AP1 fire is not as important with new codex, because of new ways to dealing with units they carry. For example, big problem old Codex had was lack of massed S8 fire or blasts. Particularly with 5th edition wound allocation, it was sometimes nightmarish to deal with things like Ork Nob mobs, as you typically had very little which would insta-kill them (unless you had huge number of, y'know, Broadsides....), and whittling them down with Pulse or Missile fire was often nightmarish. I actually bought Forgeworld Fusionhead turret just for this, it was only way to get S8 blast.

Wow, recent posts have shown a lot of doubters about the new codex. I'm quite suprised, I like what I'm seeing, and I think that for the most art we're getting more killy. The main argument I'm hearing is how less competative it is? I dunno, I guess that's why I'm digging it? I don't play competative games, and I only play units with the flavor I like. So maybe I'm seeing things through a completely different lense compared to Jazzpaintball and uberjoras.

All I can say is I disagree with what's been said. I regularly fight/fought IG and I've never had a problem with them, and my opponant often fields a Demolisher Leman Russ. Heck, the hardest thing to kill was always his 3 Vendettas he flys around, and I really think skyfire is going to fix that.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

You're hyperfocusing on individual tools. Think about it this way, the missiles being spread out across more units means you're freeing up crisis hardpoints for more fusion than you had before. The fusion range is also getting increased.

With roles switching around, you should be looking at crisis suits to handle a bit of your melta.

I'm not sure I buy this "well just use melta" argument. Sure Fusion blasters got more range, but it only means 3" increase to Melta range. It's better than nothing, but hardly ground-breaking. Land Speeders carry Multi-meltas with even longer Melta range, and you don't see too many people advocating Space Marine armies to rely on Land speeders for Anti-armour work. I've never had much success with either Fusion suits or Piranhas - they have to get too close, and they are very fragile. Only successful use of Fusion for me has been as "home base defence" against big deep striking meanies. Attempts to go hunting Land Raiders or Battlewagons (much less Predators etc) never end well.

/sigh

I don't understand why people are not using any synergy with the codex when considering the AA of the broadsides. if you take the missiles you get 12 shots. You are right, if you just fire them at bs 3, you get 6 hits and 1 pen/1 glance against the Dragon per turn, which it will save 1/3 of.

Now stop, go attach it to the Aegis defense line, and have it also shoot the quad cannon because they come standard with multitrackers. Good. Now also shoot the twin linked plasma at it. So now you are throwing out 18 shots (16 str 7, 2 str 6).

Option 1 - Attach Eldar Farseer with presence, twin link all guns. If you are really lucky, pull malediction. Now you have 14 hits 2 pens and 2 glances. Can kill one every turn.

Option 2 - Attach crisis suit HQ, Purchase the upgrade where when he doesn't shoot, all guns are twin-linked. Also, you could purcahse the Puretide Engram Chip and have tank-hunter here. See result of Option 1.

Option 3 - Fire Skyray at it, hit with markerlights, and increase BS to 5, see result of option 1.

The Riptide will probably hurt or kill one a turn if you purcahse the skyfire option. No armor 12 vehicle wants to get shot by meltaguns.

Really don't like flyers? Take melta/plasma suits, put them in deepstrike, then land behind the thing and take the support weapon.

Why is paying 500 pts to destroy a armor 12 flyer so bad? (the lists I just gave are all about 400 pts b.t.w.). How many points of hammerheads does it take to kill a landraider?

 SabrX wrote:

 HoverBoy wrote:
Some more info on the pathfinders would be nice though.

+1

A lot of competitive Tau players might switch over from Tetras to Pathfinders depending on Pathfinders' point cost, markerlight effectiveness, survivability, and existence of Targeting Array and Target Lock (or split fire option) for vehicles.

Pathfinders are interesting.
They start with 4 and go up to 10. They may include a Recon Drone, Grav-inhibitor Drone or Pulse Accelerator Drone.
Up to 3 models may exchange their pulse carbine and markerlight for one of the following: Ion Rifle, Rail Rifle.
The unit may take EMP grenades.
One pathfinder can be upgraded to Pathfinder Shas'ui and this one may take a blacksun filter, may take up to 2 drones from the Drones List
The entire unit may take the Bonding Knife special rule and may take a Devilfish as a Dedicated Transport.

They are Scouts and have Supporting fire.

Now the funny bits, the drones:
Recon Drone: Burst cannon, homing beacon, positional relay
Beacon: Friendly units arriving by Deep Strike do not scatter as long as the first model is placed within 6'' of a model with homing beacon
Position relay: Whilst the bearer is within 6'' of a board edge, any friendly unit from Codex: Tau Empire that arrives from reserve using the Outflank special rule, can choose to move on from that board edge (even if it your, or your opponent's board edge). Outflanking units that do not choose to arrive from that board edge arrive using the Outflank special rule.
Grav drone: gravity wave projector - At the start of the enemy assault phase, nominate an enemy unit within 12'' and then roll a D3. If during that Assault phase, the nominated unit attempts to assault the Grav-inhibitor drone, or its unit, reduce that unit's assault move by the result of the D3 (minimum of 0)
Pulse: pulse accelerator - All pulse weapons in a unit that contains at least one pulse accelerator increase their maximum range by 6''.

See that minus D3 ''? Now add Darkstrider to the unit. With his Fighting Retreat rule, Darkstrider, and his unit, can consolidate D6'' in any direction immediately after firing Overwatch (before rolls for charge range are made). So in a best case scenario, that unit that was about to charge your pathfinders, is "pushed" 9'' and is overwatched.

(not writting stats and points as I don't know if it would be pyushing my luck or breaking rules)

Edit: Oh yes, markerlights. Here's how they work:
Each hit on a target adds a markerlight "token". Immediately before a unit from Codex: Tau Empire shoots that at a target that has one or more markerligt counters, it can declare it is using one or more of the markerlight counters. A unit may combine any number of markerlight abilities providing that there are enough counters:
- Pinpoint (1+ markerlights) - All models firing at the target as part of this shooting attack gain a bonus to their BS for the duration of the shooting attack.. The size of this bonus is equal to the number of markerlight counters expended on this ability. Pinpoint can increase the BS of Snap Shots and overwatch.
- Scour: (2 markerlights) all weapons fired at the target as part of this shooting attack gain the ignore cover special rule.
- Seeker (1+ markerlight) - For each markerlight spent on this ability, the unit immediately fires a single seeker missile (if it has one) in addition to any other weapons it is permitted to fire. A seeker missile fired in this way:
- Does not need line of sight
- Must be fire at the same target as the vehicle's other weapons
- IS resolved at BS 5
- Has the Ignore Cover special rule
- Does not reduce the number of weapons a vehicle can fire at it's full BS
- Does count towards the limit of 2 missiles that a flyer can fire each turn.

 Materia_Master wrote:
Wow, recent posts have shown a lot of doubters about the new codex. I'm quite suprised, I like what I'm seeing, and I think that for the most art we're getting more killy. The main argument I'm hearing is how less competative it is? I dunno, I guess that's why I'm digging it? I don't play competative games, and I only play units with the flavor I like. So maybe I'm seeing things through a completely different lense compared to Jazzpaintball and uberjoras.

I see some very powerful units in this book. Certainly a lot more than the last 6th ed books. Time will tell if it is competitive. As it stands though, this looks very very powerful. It is a finesse army though.

 Materia_Master wrote:

uberjoras wrote:
The new codex is really not as doom&gloom as I'm making it out to be, but seriously people, stop drinking each other's kool aid. Nerfs are nerfs, even if you want to call it a "repurposing". Kroot, broadsides, and sniper drones are all very much worse this edition

Kroot and Sniper drones worse? That's debatable. Kroot went from mediocre and underperforming melee units to potentially awesome MC killers. Broadsides? Sure they're gun was nerfed. But nerfing a weapon or model may be bad for that individual model, but it can be good overall. So one of our star players was nerfed. Good. It was broken. I don't want to be part of a team known for cheese units.

I don't mean to make this personal, but how many broadsides do you own, and how many do you often field? Because it sounds like this nerf personally affects you quite heavily. For me, I own a bit of everything, so this is less impactful for me.

I own a grand total of 0 broadsides; I often just proxy my crisis suits, because I don't really model wysiwyg (6 burst cannons is my HQ suit) and I play in a semi-competitive group of friends/powergamers. I usually field 4 + hammerhead, or 3 + 2 HH, and that's all the AT I usually needed until recently.

If all Fire warriors suddenly had lasguns instead of their regular guns, but cost 8 points, would they be better or worse? That's what happened to broadsides. They lost S and range, to be made a whopping 5 points cheaper. Regardless of what you want to call it, "repurposing" or what have you, a nerf is a nerf. S9 broadsides would have been perfectly reasonable, as would giving hammerhead's a buff. Now, It would be better to slingshot devastators with lascannons from the heavy rail rifle. Like someone said before, broadsides now are overcosted longfangs with a little better AP which will destroy a rhino more often, 2 broadsides or 5 longfangs? The fangs put 2.2 HP damage on a rhino on AVERAGE, which is more hullpoints than the broadsides could ever do, as well as having about a 28% chance for an explodes. The broadsides have a 37% chance for an explodes result, but only statistically put 1 HP per turn on the rhino (slightly more if the SMS is used, about 0.3 HP ish), and are far less reliable. Longfangs are superior now, especially when you consider they can get an effective BS7 if they get a divination rune priest with them, much like tau markerlights, for basically the same cost even. Purifiers are better AT than missilesides, for about the same cost and much greater flexibility.

I sincerely think people are drinking gallons of koolaid on the new broadside, and many cities will see an influx of grape-scented sewers (and secondhand broadsides) as people realize what it actually is - a huge nerf. Imagine if bolters were s2, and all melta was s4 - all marine players would cry many many tears, but it's fair because bolters kill a lot of ork boyz and melta kills a lot of vehicles and that's mean :( Nerfing iconic weapons that form the lynchpin of an army's ability to function is what I like to call a "bad idea".


@ prodigalson, 500 points to kill 150 points , needing multiple units all specialized for this sole task, is pretty poor efficiency - because that flyer is more than likely a vendetta or a doom scythe that kills 2 of your broadsides turn 1 and laughs in your face because there's nothing you can do about it - and those are 150 point flyers that kill 150 points of models in one turn.

As to your hammerhead question, hammerheads can't even kill rhinos. Ask any tau player, hammerheads have a magnetic field that manipulates the plastic dice as they roll, causing any "to-hit" roll made by them to come up as a 1. It's been proven by years of science; the Earth Caste is still developing new ways to counteract this inability to point big gun at big thing to make go boom.