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So the Tau took a beating with 7th IMO....

We lost:

Allies
No joining monstrous creatures and ICs.
MCs only get 1 smash attack.
Sniper Kroot no longer pin or rend.
Intercept + Skyfire no longer grants full BS to ground targets.
Nightfighting is only shrouded now. Black sun filters not as useful.
No more area terrain to hide pathfinders and our fragile troops in.
ICs lost precision shots.

Things that help Tau:

Everything scores.
Tougher vehicles. (Pirahnas useable?)
Defensive grenades now cause blind (is this a gain?)


So what do we now? Riptide spam is still possible even though unpopular to play against. Farsight enclaves still provides some battle brothers options and I think the Farsight bomb will still be viable. Devilfish with firewarriors are now super scoring (return of Fish of Fury?). What am I missing?

Scratching my head on what to do vs. psyker spam and super scoring drop pod armies except to talk them into playing kill points....

It seems as if the Tau cheese has been turned down a notch or two, not being able to BB with Eldar, cause grounding tests with markerlights or do the Buffmander/O'vesa thing.

I expect Tau will stay top tier because they still have wicked long range shooting and can readily access Ignores Cover. It's still a very shooty edition and the Tau are very shooty.

Farsight's special goodies are restricted per Detatchment now, so you can definitely have all of them and your Tau Signature Systems in the same army with allies.

Using Allies you can also add Shadowsun to your Farsight Bomb.

Couple of those arent really a problem though.

Intercept + Skyfire - our Skyfire isnt Skyfire, its a turn on/off wargear. We ignore this hit since we can just turn Skyfire off.

Sniper kroot - Pinning loss sucks yea but Rending really didnt do jack to them. they still wound on a 4+ and a 6 is ap2, just not rending. All this means is your kroot cant kill vehicles for squat...big deal my missilepods deal with that anyway lol.

Im kinda confused how the new Nightfighting rule hurts our BSFilter. BSFilter ignores the effects of nightfighting, which is now a bonus of Shrouded - so we ignore shrouded granted via nightfight. Sitting in class waiting for my next one to start or i'd double check the wording, but afaik everything that alters how you fight with nightfighting just ignores the effects of nightfighting.

I think the terrain was a buff personally. Ruins grant a 4+ by default now, whether youre covered or not. Now i can sit on top of those buildings my FLGS has and not worry about funky angles removing my cover because that way i wasnt 25% obscured. Yea, loss of area terrain, unless its rubble. i didnt like putting them in a 5+ cover anyway since they usually take so much firepower it isnt even funny, that 4+ helps a LOT.

Night fighting grants stealth

Area terrain isn't gone. It just got renamed to difficult terrain.

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Area terrain isn't gone. It just got renamed to difficult terrain.

the difference being that difficult terrain must block you 25% in order to gain the cover save, so you cannot dip the toe of a wraithknight onto the base of difficult terrain and gain a 5+ like you could in sixth.

Do the drones that come with a vehicle able to score? Seems like piranhas would great for grabbing objectives and dropping off drones around the map. Shooting at base value piranhas would be incredibly inefficient so they would make decent bullet magnets.

On that note would devilfish drones get objective secure rule due to dedicated transports getting the rule?

 Gangrel767 wrote:

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Area terrain isn't gone. It just got renamed to difficult terrain.

the difference being that difficult terrain must block you 25% in order to gain the cover save, so you cannot dip the toe of a wraithknight onto the base of difficult terrain and gain a 5+ like you could in sixth.

Honestly this is the best rule change they could of made because dipping your toe in was pathetic, your either behind cover or you are not.

Vankraken wrote:
Do the drones that come with a vehicle able to score? Seems like piranhas would great for grabbing objectives and dropping off drones around the map. Shooting at base value piranhas would be incredibly inefficient so they would make decent bullet magnets.

On that note would devilfish drones get objective secure rule due to dedicated transports getting the rule?

Units composed entirely of drones cannot score, this is in the Tau codex under the drone descriptions. If theres a commander attached, or theyre purchased and the unit they were bought for is still alive, they can score. Vehicle detached drones and straight up drone squadrons never can score or deny (though vehicle drones arent worth a VP either)

Back from classes now so i was able to read the nightfighting stuff.

Nightfighting new rule - all units have Stealth. No restrictions on range anymore, even if youre 1" away i get +1 cover from Stealth. Kinda odd....but ok...least it wasnt Shrouded like i thought for some reason.
Night Vision in the BRB says it ignores the effects of Nightfighting - no stealth bonus unless its from another rule.

BS Filter says grants the bearer Nightvision and immunity to Blind.
New night fighting rule doesnt affect Tau at all. If anything, it helps since our firewarriors fire at +1cover rather than +2cover at the start lol.

This kinda...now that i think about it they basically removed nightfighting without removing it. Everything can fire regardless now since theres no maximum range and its only a +1, rather than the usual +2 at more than right-in-yo-face distances. In all fairness though i hated nightfighting. Severe hindrance if you werent ignoring it since the only time it ever came up was at turn 1, when everything is out of range or +2 cover distance. Ive had many a game as Tau where i was basically given a free turn to shoot because of this, as well as as Orks where i coudnt do jack squat because my lootas couldnt hit more than a couple models before hitting the 36" limit, and my opponents always fire ignores cover weapons which were only limited to 36" if they didnt have night vision, so he got +2 from me and i got zilch in return.

Shingen wrote:

 Gangrel767 wrote:

DaddyWarcrimes wrote:
Area terrain isn't gone. It just got renamed to difficult terrain.

the difference being that difficult terrain must block you 25% in order to gain the cover save, so you cannot dip the toe of a wraithknight onto the base of difficult terrain and gain a 5+ like you could in sixth.

Honestly this is the best rule change they could of made because dipping your toe in was pathetic, your either behind cover or you are not.

I completely agree... and I'm the guy who would do it all the time with my wraithknights. Now it makes sense.

 D6Damager wrote:
So the Tau took a beating with 7th IMO....

We lost:

Allies
No joining monstrous creatures and ICs.
No more area terrain to hide pathfinders and our fragile troops in.
ICs lost precision shots.

Scratching my head on what to do vs. psyker spam and super scoring drop pod armies except to talk them into playing kill points....

We can pick CADs of more Tau or other armies. We lost the BB buffs, but some of them are replicable. Markerlights became even more important; now we can have dozens of Fast Attack slots to fill with them! Just need +1 HQ and +2 Troops per CAD.

Riptides will need to expend Markerlights. That's what was intended with the codex anyway

Ruins now give +4 cover for just being there (except for vehicles, still 25%). It's the best alternative to area terrain, fortifications aside (now you can have more than 1, just get another CAD)

ICs can get their Precision Shot back with a 3p upgrade, and at 5+!. I think only Eldar can have something similar.

To help against psyker spam, ally with some Psykers (Inquisition/Tyranids/Eldar have the best cost-effective ones) and/or bring a Riptide with Talisman of Arthas Moloch (4+ to DtW to friendly UNITS within 12" of the bearer)
Drop Pods... FWs with haywires can take care of those (at least near your battle lines), while missiles pick off the ones far away

IN the end, the 7th changes will force a change in tactics for a more variable army, instead of spamming just the most damaging stuff.

 D6Damager wrote:
So the Tau took a beating with 7th IMO....

We lost:

Allies
No joining monstrous creatures and ICs.
MCs only get 1 smash attack.
Sniper Kroot no longer pin or rend.
Intercept + Skyfire no longer grants full BS to ground targets.
Nightfighting is only shrouded now. Black sun filters not as useful.
No more area terrain to hide pathfinders and our fragile troops in.
ICs lost precision shots.

Things that help Tau:

Everything scores.
Tougher vehicles. (Pirahnas useable?)
Defensive grenades now cause blind (is this a gain?)


So what do we now? Riptide spam is still possible even though unpopular to play against. Farsight enclaves still provides some battle brothers options and I think the Farsight bomb will still be viable. Devilfish with firewarriors are now super scoring (return of Fish of Fury?). What am I missing?

Scratching my head on what to do vs. psyker spam and super scoring drop pod armies except to talk them into playing kill points....

I never used allies. I still win.
Never joined an IC to a Monstrous creature but twice. No loss.
MC's smash was a hit. I agree there.
Kroot Sniper rounds: never used them but once. Again, no loss to me.
Intercept + Skyfire: Im not sure why this matters...Maybe im missing it.
Blacksun filters are free. So again, who cares?
area terrain is gone but terrain still has sdaves so the concept of Area isn't necessary.
IC's lost precision shots...as did everyone elses. So...net no loss or gain. it just made life a little simpler.

So really, I'm not seeing it. Theres nothing here listing the really good stuff we got. Why?

What really good stuff did we get?

The major things we lost were Allies. And not even really then. We can still take useful allied units, we just can't join squads or gain their buffs. True, Prescience/Misfortune/Etc were the shiny parts, but we can still get a Wraithknight or Guardian Jetbikes if we need to.
Riptide can't smash.

The Interceptor/Skyfire thing doesn't affect us because we have turn on/off skyfire - except for interceptor drones, who now can't use the alternate fire of their weapons :(

@Jancoran: But we didn't gain anything. What do you think we gained?

I think having and easy access to multiple CAD and extremely mobile scoring options helps us out. Think of the tar pit 15 piranha and 3x10 of free drones can cause. Hard to kill but dangerous enough not to ignore.

DFish get much better since there's not much reason to not Jink and protect the inside crew and it's harder to explode as well. Also we don't have to solely rely on protecting our troops to win objectives. I think Dfish/EMP crews could be more common now.

Yeah I was going to say, do you think Tau tanks are more viable this edition?

I have a couple of hammerheads and two skyrays, and two devilfish who would love to see some action. Do you think Devilfishes would help us with scoring since they have Objective secured too?

Hmm, yea actually that might be a good use for my Devilfish finally. i have two of them collecting dust, MechaBeast commented bringing EMP FW with a devilfish. Not a bad idea, two scoring units (one of which is reasonably durable with a 3+ jink...counting dpods here) that can absolutely wreck vehicles. Wont work that well against walkers since the WS comes into play.

Ive wanted to run an armor list tau for awhile, but devilfish were always so poor for the cost it made it pointless to bring them. Popped crazy easy, not many guns, and aside from keeping my FW away from fast assaulty units on bikes not much help to the firewarriors in 9/10 situations. Now i gotta rethink my tactics.

EDIT: Plus, if its still alive, devilfish can score like a beast towards the end. They count as Troops if bought by firewarriors - so they have objective secured. 12" with a 12" Flat Out since theyre a skimmer = 24" zoom across the board to steal an objective, not even needing to clear the enemy off it (unless they also have super score)

Yeah, with objective secured (if bought by firewarriors and really, no reason not to) I think they can be a lot of help for maelstorm missions since we don't have fast troops. I shall dust them off for some play

I have a rule of thumb that you need so many scoring units per game and I really need to consider a troop in a transport as 2 sets of troops this edition.

 ashikenshin wrote:
Yeah I was going to say, do you think Tau tanks are more viable this edition?

As being the only army able to mitigate BS 1 Jink forces on vehicles (others have Twin-link, at most), I believe our vehicles are in a good spot (railgun not so much, needing a 5+ pen/5+ table to explode a Land Raider, from 5+/4+ in 6th)

 Vector Strike wrote:

 ashikenshin wrote:
Yeah I was going to say, do you think Tau tanks are more viable this edition?

As being the only army able to mitigate BS 1 Jink forces on vehicles (others have Twin-link, at most), I believe our vehicles are in a good spot (railgun not so much, needing a 5+ pen/5+ table to explode a Land Raider, from 5+/4+ in 6th)

If you take a hammerhead railgun loadout then always take Longstrike. He makes that one shot count among other things.

 Jancoran wrote:

.
Intercept + Skyfire: Im not sure why this matters...Maybe im missing it.

So really, I'm not seeing it. Theres nothing here listing the really good stuff we got. Why?

Totally borked Interceptor drones and as a nerf on the Sunshark becuase of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 D6Damager wrote:

 Vector Strike wrote:

 ashikenshin wrote:
Yeah I was going to say, do you think Tau tanks are more viable this edition?

As being the only army able to mitigate BS 1 Jink forces on vehicles (others have Twin-link, at most), I believe our vehicles are in a good spot (railgun not so much, needing a 5+ pen/5+ table to explode a Land Raider, from 5+/4+ in 6th)

If you take a hammerhead railgun loadout then always take Longstrike. He makes that one shot count among other things.

Only against IG tanks if your Jinking. Wish he had Tank hunter (all) instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And we really did not loose Rend on the kroot sniper rifles. Sniper still wounds on a 6 (4+) and is still AP2 on a 6. Just not as nice against vehicles.

barnowl wrote:
Only against IG tanks if your Jinking. Wish he had Tank hunter (all) instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And we really did not loose Rend on the kroot sniper rifles. Sniper still wounds on a 6 (4+) and is still AP2 on a 6. Just not as nice against vehicles.

Longstrike's Tank Hunters is a general rule; it's not specific versus IG. His Preferred Enemy is, however.

 Vector Strike wrote:

barnowl wrote:
Only against IG tanks if your Jinking. Wish he had Tank hunter (all) instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And we really did not loose Rend on the kroot sniper rifles. Sniper still wounds on a 6 (4+) and is still AP2 on a 6. Just not as nice against vehicles.

Longstrike's Tank Hunters is a general rule; it's not specific versus IG. His Preferred Enemy is, however.

Dang it, I been miss playing him.

I really don't see how the Smash change affects Tau. If the Riptide is in a situation where it actually needs it then its probably already dead.

 Truth118 wrote:
It seems as if the Tau cheese has been turned down a notch or two, not being able to BB with Eldar, cause grounding tests with markerlights or do the Buffmander/O'vesa thing.

I expect Tau will stay top tier because they still have wicked long range shooting and can readily access Ignores Cover. It's still a very shooty edition and the Tau are very shooty.

Tau don't have much long range shooting, this is a misconception. They specialise in 24" to 30" shooting. This is why they counter 'crons so well, because they've got a lot of multi-wound T4 (worst target for S7) and they outperform necrons at their own game.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I really don't see how the Smash change affects Tau. If the Riptide is in a situation where it actually needs it then its probably already dead.

It is really a boost for Tau. Simply because it makes it harder for the faster MC's to double out suits. Fex are still going do it but are slow enough to out run.

Behold the TRUE british gunline army in 7th:

fireblade
fireblade
X12 fire warrior
X12 fire warrior
x6 pathfinder
x6 pathfinder
x6 pathfinder

Repeat until you fill all the points

Wont get much done, but would be funny to see on the table.

barnowl wrote:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I really don't see how the Smash change affects Tau. If the Riptide is in a situation where it actually needs it then its probably already dead.

It is really a boost for Tau. Simply because it makes it harder for the faster MC's to double out suits. Fex are still going do it but are slow enough to out run.

This. Its something i totally spaced out when dealing with non-vehicles, until i ran bikernobz against a nidzilla list. Normally i'd lose 2-3 nobs per big bug, but he couldnt risk smashing me and my 5++ taking his ONE wound (if it even connected, since im WS5) to paste a nob. They cleaned out 5 big bigs before losing the ablative wound nobz and my pklaws/painboy/waagh banner was exposed. Thats only 2 dudes, btw lol 5 big bugs for 2 nobbikers.

Only way the Smash actually hurts the riptide is when hes charging into a tankline, usually against IG. I attempt it all the time. Worst he can do is tarpit my riptide, but its pretty easy to stay away from a big blob of guardsmen. In general it sucks because if im punching a rear 11, odds are my Str6 probably wont pen it (damn russes...). However i think ive actually DONE this twice in many many games agianst IG - the other methods i have of removing high armor usually wins before my riptide gets there.

Smash was always a last ditch effort, however due to the durabilty of the riptide you could usually get some attacks in.