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You can't realistically use more than 1? I think that restriction is stupid and is a byproduct of lazy rules writing, but I don't plan on ever taking fewer than 3 Commanders in a 2000 pt game. We're now great at detachment spam, and one of our extremely cheap HQs happens to significantly buff the troops you'd need as "tax" for a Battalion. Alternatively, you could take an outrider to take advantage of our amazing fast attack choices.

I'm not saying the Commander thing is a non-issue, but it does promote more diverse lists, regardless of whether it's a hatchet job or not. There are some very easy, essentially tax-free work-arounds for taking up to 3 Commanders in a normal-sized army.

Adaptability with a new codex is key. Every edition some particular build or another gets the shaft. The limit on Commanders does sting a little, but to me it doesn't feel any different that when the Rhino Rush died - all of a sudden I had a ton of transports that went from being awesome to being death traps. Unless you were spamming Commanders really hard there are a lot of ways to use the detachments to get more or less the same army on the table - 4 commanders in 5K is easily doable. 4 Commanders in 2K? Not so much, but them's the breaks.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Thank the people who spammed Commanders as buffbots.

People didn't spam Commanders as buffbots. Our commanders had two buffs, which were mutually exclusive and could only be used once per game.

People spammed Commanders because GW was really dumb and overcosted Crisis (not to mention removing the possibility of lone crisis suits outside of commanders) to the point that the Commander was better in every single metric on a point for point basis.

GW appears to have solved that issue by leaving Crisis as they are and limiting Commanders, meaning that they haven't actually fixed the issue that made people spam commanders in the first place. Which is obviously not going to have the effect of getting rid of spam as instead people will just spam the next best thing, which is not going to be crisis suits, sadly. At the moment it is looking like Fire Warrior gunlines. Yay, so fun to play.

I don't mind the commander limit, so long as we get more secondary HQs (The rumored XV8 commander might help if it's not limited as well). I actually would prefer if every faction had this limit: 1 marine captain, 1 warboss, 1 necron overlord etc... then give them cool build options like tau commanders have. You could really make them unique.

P.S. IG would be in a rough spot with this change, so platoon commanders would need to move to HQ at the very least.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Thank the people who spammed Commanders as buffbots.

People didn't spam Commanders as buffbots. Our commanders had two buffs, which were mutually exclusive and could only be used once per game.

You do realize that "Drone Controllers" are a thing, yeah?

It doesn't matter why they were nerfed, or how much we hate it, what matters is what we can do with it. MilkmanAI is right, we have access to -very- cheap detachments, that are actually useful. Fire warriors are actually in a good place for cost efficiency with damage output and durability. Even without changes, Kroot are still useful.

You can take a brigade with 60 strike/breachers, 1 commander, fireblade and whatever third hq you want. Then a battalion with a commander, ethereal and 30 kroot. 1350 pts or so, gives you almost 100 models on the board, all of which are solid and useful. Can throw around 650 pts of addtional AT (Assuming both commanders are fusion). Can easily swap out some of the brigade units (Sniper drones for broadsides, etc.) and get more firepower and trim the brigade fat.

You could also just do a battalion and specialized detachments, if you want to maximize commanders and our FA/E/H slots.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Thank the people who spammed Commanders as buffbots.

People didn't spam Commanders as buffbots. Our commanders had two buffs, which were mutually exclusive and could only be used once per game.

People spammed Commanders because GW was really dumb and overcosted Crisis (not to mention removing the possibility of lone crisis suits outside of commanders) to the point that the Commander was better in every single metric on a point for point basis.

GW appears to have solved that issue by leaving Crisis as they are and limiting Commanders, meaning that they haven't actually fixed the issue that made people spam commanders in the first place. Which is obviously not going to have the effect of getting rid of spam as instead people will just spam the next best thing, which is not going to be crisis suits, sadly. At the moment it is looking like Fire Warrior gunlines. Yay, so fun to play.

There's not really a good way to balance Commanders and regular Crisis Suits with points alone, short of redesigning Commanders to be buffbots. Commanders are I think the only non-targetable Characters with shooting comparable to what you can get from targetable units. That's intentional -- GW tends to want HQs to be impressive combatants, and it's not like you can make typical Commanders into CC powerhouses, but the base type of thing they are (crisis suits) is pretty expensive so that the small buffs that they provide aren't worth a huge fraction of their total points. If Commanders are desirable for their shooting ability, then there's basically always going to be a degenerate list where you take a bunch of Commanders and then trash units to sit between them and the enemy to render them untargetable. GW has responded to this sort of thing before. Malefic Lords were conceptually similar -- they hid behind trash units and threw out tons of Smites. They got put in the ground because they really weren't intended to be useful anyway. But Commanders are basically working as intended, GW just wants to make sure that you're bringing targetable heavy weapons too, or at least that you're paying for drones to protect your big guns as intended.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
It doesn't matter why they were nerfed, or how much we hate it, what matters is what we can do with it. MilkmanAI is right, we have access to -very- cheap detachments, that are actually useful. Fire warriors are actually in a good place for cost efficiency with damage output and durability. Even without changes, Kroot are still useful.

You can take a brigade with 60 strike/breachers, 1 commander, fireblade and whatever third hq you want. Then a battalion with a commander, ethereal and 30 kroot. 1350 pts or so, gives you almost 100 models on the board, all of which are solid and useful. Can throw around 650 pts of addtional AT (Assuming both commanders are fusion). Can easily swap out some of the brigade units (Sniper drones for broadsides, etc.) and get more firepower and trim the brigade fat.

You could also just do a battalion and specialized detachments, if you want to maximize commanders and our FA/E/H slots.

One of, IMO, the biggest disappointments from this book so far is that we didn't see "lieutenant" styled characters with non-Crisis Suits(Broadsides, Ghostkeels, Stealths--hell, even Piranhas!) would have been an interesting or unique thing to make it so that the "1 Commander per Detachment in Matched Play" rule didn't feel so onerous.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Thank the people who spammed Commanders as buffbots.

People didn't spam Commanders as buffbots. Our commanders had two buffs, which were mutually exclusive and could only be used once per game.

People spammed Commanders because GW was really dumb and overcosted Crisis (not to mention removing the possibility of lone crisis suits outside of commanders) to the point that the Commander was better in every single metric on a point for point basis.

GW appears to have solved that issue by leaving Crisis as they are and limiting Commanders, meaning that they haven't actually fixed the issue that made people spam commanders in the first place. Which is obviously not going to have the effect of getting rid of spam as instead people will just spam the next best thing, which is not going to be crisis suits, sadly. At the moment it is looking like Fire Warrior gunlines. Yay, so fun to play.

There's not really a good way to balance Commanders and regular Crisis Suits with points alone, short of redesigning Commanders to be buffbots. Commanders are I think the only non-targetable Characters with shooting comparable to what you can get from targetable units. That's intentional -- GW tends to want HQs to be impressive combatants, and it's not like you can make typical Commanders into CC powerhouses, but the base type of thing they are (crisis suits) is pretty expensive so that the small buffs that they provide aren't worth a huge fraction of their total points. If Commanders are desirable for their shooting ability, then there's basically always going to be a degenerate list where you take a bunch of Commanders and then trash units to sit between them and the enemy to render them untargetable. GW has responded to this sort of thing before. Malefic Lords were conceptually similar -- they hid behind trash units and threw out tons of Smites. They got put in the ground because they really weren't intended to be useful anyway. But Commanders are basically working as intended, GW just wants to make sure that you're bringing targetable heavy weapons too, or at least that you're paying for drones to protect your big guns as intended.

Here's how you balance commanders and XV8s: you charge different points for guns on a commander, compared to an XV8, to represent the fact that they are far more powerful on a guy who hits on a 2+.

They already do this all the time in other books, by the way. It's not some revolutionary idea.

Anyway I have to say I'm quite looking forward to the new book. I can see myself fielding a brigade - or even two of them (though that looks less likely). I'm really interested to see what can be done with a fish-based list, maybe backed up by some of the bigger suits. I've never been much of a fan of static lists though, so I don't see myself fielding hundreds of fire warriors.

the should just give us more generic/non-tau sept HQ choices, if we had that I wouldn't care at all about limiting commanders

Mandragola wrote:

Here's how you balance commanders and XV8s: you charge different points for guns on a commander, compared to an XV8, to represent the fact that they are far more powerful on a guy who hits on a 2+.

They already do this all the time in other books, by the way. It's not some revolutionary idea.

You're not thinking this through. As I explained, the fact that Commanders are Characters and so can hide behind other units makes this infeasible. It wouldn't matter if Commanders were also BS4+. If Commanders shoot more efficiently than regular suits, you just take Commanders. If regular suits are sufficiently more efficient than Commanders that you want to take some, then you'll tend to want to bring as few Commanders as possible since people would prefer to go after the more fragile and shootier regular suits anyway. Plus then Commanders feel like they're not pulling their weight when you actually put together a balanced list using both. Either character protection is valuable because your opponent can't shoot the things they really want to shoot, or it isn't because the things your opponent really wants to shoot aren't characters. Because Commanders are really only good for their shooting, their character protection is only valuable insofar as they are your best shooters. That's very different from a Captain or a Farseer, where you'd love to shoot them but only because of how they interact with the other units around them.

I'm excited for the book, too, even if it doesn't end up being mightily competitive. Also, FW spam doesn't have to be static. I plan on running my units all over the place. They may be concentrated near a Fireblade because duh, but they'll be on the move.

The Fish points cut makes me happy. For the first time since 4th, they might actually be worth having around. I enjoyed a lot of success last edition abusing a combo of d-pods and the stealth from a Ghostkeel Wing to get Breacher-filled Fish with a 2+ jink save. I'd love to field a dedicated mech Tau force. That would be so cool! Given the fact that Hammerheads may actually become useful, it seems very possible to go basically vehicle-only.

That's just one of the many possibilities I hope to explore.

calisk wrote:
the should just give us more generic/non-tau sept HQ choices, if we had that I wouldn't care at all about limiting commanders

'Just want to add that many special characters are COMMANDER keyword units, and are impacted by the rule.

Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

Wulfey wrote:
Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

Forge World Y'varahs were already broken. I play Tau and i will gladly say so. Le sigh.

Wulfey wrote:
Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

This is why the Y'vahra is going to get the nerfhammer sooner or later, lol.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So, when are Space Marine Captains going to be limited to one per detachment?

I have yet to actually see a SM-list with more than 1 Captain, and I would never consider fielding more than one myself.

If it makes you feel any better we can only have 1 Chapter Master.

 MinscS2 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So, when are Space Marine Captains going to be limited to one per detachment?

I have yet to actually see a SM-list with more than 1 Captain, and I would never consider fielding more than one myself.

If it makes you feel any better we can only have 1 Chapter Master.

This is incredibly off-topic so I won't make a second post about Space Marines, but running multiple Blood Angel Captain Smashf*ckers (jump pack, thunder hammer, probably storm shield) is common. You see it less often among non-BA lists, but it's still there.

While the damage output of y'varhas is amazing 2 of them plus a commander is half of a normal list. In 3 models. And those models are still very susceptible to lascannons. I don't think skewing a list that hard will be good.

 FirePainter wrote:
While the damage output of y'varhas is amazing 2 of them plus a commander is half of a normal list. In 3 models. And those models are still very susceptible to lascannons. I don't think skewing a list that hard will be good.

Not to fluff the Y'vahra too hard, but with a 14" Flamer it can simply opt to Nova it's 3++ every turn. Makes lascannons a little less spooky.

 Cephalobeard wrote:

 FirePainter wrote:
While the damage output of y'varhas is amazing 2 of them plus a commander is half of a normal list. In 3 models. And those models are still very susceptible to lascannons. I don't think skewing a list that hard will be good.

Not to fluff the Y'vahra too hard, but with a 14" Flamer it can simply opt to Nova it's 3++ every turn. Makes lascannons a little less spooky.

All true and at this point I agree that 1 y'varha is pretty much autoinclude. But I like boys before toys and I for one will be riding high in fish of fury 2.0

 FirePainter wrote:
While the damage output of y'varhas is amazing 2 of them plus a commander is half of a normal list. In 3 models. And those models are still very susceptible to lascannons. I don't think skewing a list that hard will be good.

And yet...

I'm starting to see tau being a 2 battalion plus army 1 as your wrapping layer probably tau for 5-6 overwatch or the one that allows kroot to for the greater good. With some stealth suits to give deep stike denial.
Borkan battalion for backfield long range firewarriors and big suits
Something to give you a farsight counter assualt option.

 meleti wrote:

Wulfey wrote:
Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

This is why the Y'vahra is going to get the nerfhammer sooner or later, lol.

I'd rather have the Bor'kan tenet nerfed or removed for flamers than that the Y'Vahra gets balanced around having 14" flamers with a specific sept tenet but is useless in every other circumstance.

Pandabeer wrote:

 meleti wrote:

Wulfey wrote:
Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

This is why the Y'vahra is going to get the nerfhammer sooner or later, lol.

I'd rather have the Bor'kan tenet nerfed or removed for flamers than that the Y'Vahra gets balanced around having 14" flamers with a specific sept tenet but is useless in every other circumstance.

They haven't even released the codex and your already calling for nerfs
Just so y'vhara's a non codex entry aren't what? points hicked in December.

Ice_can wrote:

Pandabeer wrote:

 meleti wrote:

Wulfey wrote:
Marking this down now:

All super competitive Tau lists will eventually gravitate towards have 2x Borkan Y'VHara in their lists. 14" 3 damage flamers solve all tau problems. And for 1CP you can give 1 of the Y'Vharas reroll wounds from a buffmander. Everything else in the codex will do less damage.

This is why the Y'vahra is going to get the nerfhammer sooner or later, lol.

I'd rather have the Bor'kan tenet nerfed or removed for flamers than that the Y'Vahra gets balanced around having 14" flamers with a specific sept tenet but is useless in every other circumstance.

They haven't even released the codex and your already calling for nerfs
Just so y'vhara's a non codex entry aren't what? points hicked in December.

It's less that I want the Y'vahra nerfed, I just know how this is going to go:

1. It's a FW unit, a lot of people hate those.
2. It's almost certainly the best Tau unit in the game.
3. People will take Y'vahras, even moreso than they are now.
4. People are going to charge it. They just are.
5. GW will look at everyone playing with a FW unit in non-ETC competitive play, and they'll give it a casual 100 point increase next December like we saw with some FW stuff last Chapter Approved, and that will be it.

YVara was really good pre codex. Now it has a 14" flamer and access to rerolling wounds and access to double nova abilities. Those are big buffs. The reason why I say run 2 is that if one of them gets killed by lascannons on turn 1, the other one is still a great thing to turn CP into damage. Yeah they cost like a lord of war, but their damage potential is madness. 3d6 str6, -2, 3dam at 14" and auto hitting to ignore all of the modifier nonsense. The rerolling wounds gets you 55% to wound against all tough targets in the game. And drones can tank lascannon wounds. Unless they are nerfed in march, Borkan YVara will be standard.

Ice_can wrote:
I'm starting to see tau being a 2 battalion plus army 1 as your wrapping layer probably tau for 5-6 overwatch or the one that allows kroot to for the greater good. With some stealth suits to give deep stike denial.
Borkan battalion for backfield long range firewarriors and big suits
Something to give you a farsight counter assualt option.

I agree. I will probably start with 2 bork'an battalions and then a farsight vanguard and see what point line up with that.

Wulfey wrote:
YVara was really good pre codex. Now it has a 14" flamer and access to rerolling wounds and access to double nova abilities. Those are big buffs. The reason why I say run 2 is that if one of them gets killed by lascannons on turn 1, the other one is still a great thing to turn CP into damage. Yeah they cost like a lord of war, but their damage potential is madness. 3d6 str6, -2, 3dam at 14" and auto hitting to ignore all of the modifier nonsense. The rerolling wounds gets you 55% to wound against all tough targets in the game. And drones can tank lascannon wounds. Unless they are nerfed in march, Borkan YVara will be standard.

I've yet to see any indication that Y'vahras can double nova reactor. The Riptide stratagem works on an XV104 RIPTIDE BATTLESUIT, which the Y'vahra is not.

 meleti wrote:

Wulfey wrote:
YVara was really good pre codex. Now it has a 14" flamer and access to rerolling wounds and access to double nova abilities. Those are big buffs. The reason why I say run 2 is that if one of them gets killed by lascannons on turn 1, the other one is still a great thing to turn CP into damage. Yeah they cost like a lord of war, but their damage potential is madness. 3d6 str6, -2, 3dam at 14" and auto hitting to ignore all of the modifier nonsense. The rerolling wounds gets you 55% to wound against all tough targets in the game. And drones can tank lascannon wounds. Unless they are nerfed in march, Borkan YVara will be standard.

I've yet to see any indication that Y'vahras can double nova reactor. The Riptide stratagem works on an XV104 RIPTIDE BATTLESUIT, which the Y'vahra is not.

I would say the bolding of XV104 Riptide battlesuit means no double nova for any forgeworld suits as they clearly wont have this keyword