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 Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Kind of to get the most from the codex you would need to mix and match septs based upon what unit are in a detatchment. Unfortunately most of the name charictors are tau sept.
I'm currently planning tau borkan and farsight as my detachment septs

I was thinking about keeping everything with one Sept just for the unified look, but actually Tau usually paint their armor in the appropriate camouflage for the environment and then have their Sept, Unit and other various markings in their Sept colors, right?

Yeah though technically farsight enclaves are usually depicted in red and gray, but as long as its clear to the other player.

My current plan is painting a unified paint scheme and then different colour base edges for septs. Allowd me to paint my models how I want but makes it clear to my opponents who is what sept.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Personally I wouldn't build an army around darkstrider but if you have a tau sept formation hes a BS2+ markerlight and allows a tau infantry unit to shoot after falling back and gives them plus one to wound for 6 points and no volley fire. Not an auto include but he could allow a unit of firewarriors to wound evertything under t10 on 4+ not game breaking but could just be the last couple of wounds you need to neutralise the big nasty

I think I’ll probably go with Tau sept for everyone. That said if I did want to vary septs there are a few options. You could keep the same palette but reverse it, for example. Or have a different colour for tertiary symbols like those little lines on suits that apparently mean something or other.

I’m not too sure about the special characters. Longstrike is probably good in a tank list, though he’s also kind of a target. I like Darkstrider most I think - more for his ability to let people fall back and shoot than for the +1 to wound thing. That isn’t bad though - I can imagine just using it on some fire warriors if I can get my warlord with the devastation warlord trait nearby.

Ion pathfinders clock in at 12 ppm. That makes them a prime target for basic anti chaff firepower, but if they live to their turn darkstrider will really help their damage output. The overload profile has a lot of application against high invulnerable save targets.

Railfinders are a little expensive for my tastes. Putting ion rifles on them, on the other hand, is pretty nice. I can handle dumping 52pts into a small unit that can pump out 6 S7 shots, even if it's really squishy.

6 S8, assuming you are rerolling 1's.

True! If I ever got the motivation to construct enough Pathfinders, wide-open ionfinder spam would be grand. Then you'd have to figure out something to do with your other 1000pts once you had your 18 units outfitted.

That sounds fine, but it's the 60 Fire Warriors next to them that are pumping out 3 shots a piece out to 21". Are the Pathfinders still high priority? IDK. Tau can force opponents to make a lot of choices about infantry targeting. That said, the cost of the PF unit does impact its place on the priority list, so maybe not pimping them all the way out will keep them on the board longer. Cost-wise I like the Ion Rifle a lot more.

Regarding the 21" triple tap, what do you guys think of starting a bunch of FW in Devilfish for what amounts to a 9" first turn move? That'd likely put you in range of many enemy units, and you'd have some armor for running around blocking movement. Immedaite triple tap range is pretty appealing, even at the cost of a Fish.

I'm planning on playing a league game tomorrow at my local GW store. Haven't played Tau since 7th and just picked up my nice shiny codex this morning. One reason I stayed away during 8th was because the only competitive build looked to be the hoard o' commander list and I wasn't going to spend the money on another 7 or 8 commanders. So here's the restrictions: 750pts and patrol only. I'm looking the following to start which will leave me with 324 points to play with:

HQ: Cadre Fireblade
HQ: Coldstar 4xfb
Troops: 10x FW
Troops: 10x FW
Troops: 10x FW

After that I'm sort of at a loss in 8E as to where to go. I guess I need some drones to run with coldstar, right? Still need to read up on how those work now.

An amusing use of the Dal'yth strategem I was thinking of is deep striking a unit of 12 shield drones and using the strategem strike and fade to move an extra 6 and charge something / movement block. For 120pts and one CP that is pretty annoying.

@ Milk

I think the Devilfish will be useful for cutting down deployment drops, later game screening / objectives and adding some range. I definitely think it is worth consideration at the least!

@ Necron

You'll want some marker-lights. Pathfinders are an obvious pick. I would recommend some screening in the form of either kroot or stealth suits. Drones can deep strike now. They work much the same as before.

Sadly you only get three troop units in a patrol and I need the firepower So I may have to dust off the stealth suits. And yeah, lots of path finders...I've got a gack ton of those

And for drones what's the new black for hanging with coldstar? Shield, gun or can you have a mix?

Unfortunately none of the drones can keep up with a coldstar suit. Deepstriking drones seams to be the initial choice.
The cold star is your ownly source of anti tank but I can't imagine you'll be seeing much armour but some marker or shield drones will up his survivability a lot.

Played a game with the new codex today. Cyclic Ions are very powerful, both the crisis suit and ghostkeel variants. Now that they're a fixed number of shots on overcharge they put out a lot of S8 shots.

Can the missile/tactical drones in the broadside unit take seeker misiles now?!

 davou wrote:
Can the missile/tactical drones in the broadside unit take seeker misiles now?!

No. There's been a style change to the codex, and where our index previously referred to our suits as "Broadside Shas'ui or Shas'vre" or "Riptide Shas'vre," the codex has uniformly switched to using "any model" or "this model" to refer to the battlesuits.

Ice_can wrote:
Unfortunately none of the drones can keep up with a coldstar suit. Deepstriking drones seams to be the initial choice.
The cold star is your ownly source of anti tank but I can't imagine you'll be seeing much armour but some marker or shield drones will up his survivability a lot.

Yeah we're playing on a 4x4 table so you don't have to go far. Figure after the initial DS he'll be dead in a turn or two anyway Although my other list is IG which has Pask and two russes so you never know what you'll run into...

How would y'all recommend running crisis suits? I've been wanting to get a Tau army and the start collecting seems (of course) a good place to start. I already got three broadsides cause they were for a good price so I think I've got anti-armor already covered.

 GreatGranpapy wrote:
How would y'all recommend running crisis suits? I've been wanting to get a Tau army and the start collecting seems (of course) a good place to start. I already got three broadsides cause they were for a good price so I think I've got anti-armor already covered.

Magnetize them so you can switch out the weapons at will. Crisis suits are overcosted for what they do, but hopefully that will change at some point. I don't think there is one particular loadout that is way ahead of the others, hence why I think magnets are a good idea. Plus they are really easy to magnetize.

Mandragola wrote:
I think I’ll probably go with Tau sept for everyone. That said if I did want to vary septs there are a few options. You could keep the same palette but reverse it, for example. Or have a different colour for tertiary symbols like those little lines on suits that apparently mean something or other.

Those lines are actually the Sept markings. The colours of those stripes and symbols denote the Sept, not the armour colour. Tau are very practical - their armour is almost always painted in camouflage based on their location.

 Bryan01 wrote:


You'll want some marker-lights. Pathfinders are an obvious pick. I would recommend some screening in the form of either kroot or stealth suits. Drones can deep strike now. They work much the same as before.

Why stealth suits as a screen?

I'm looking through the codex now...

Am I missing something or is the limitation on XV86s taking CIBs now removed?

If that's the case, 4xCIBs on an XV86 are

willow wrote:
I'm looking through the codex now...

Am I missing something or is the limitation on XV86s taking CIBs now removed?

If that's the case, 4xCIBs on an XV86 are

You’re missing something. In the wargear list at the start of the army list there’s a * by the CIB. It says at the bottom that coldstars aren’t allowed CIBs.

Also, riptides aren’t allowed shield generators - though the note saying that is in the shield generator’s rules - not in the wargear list or the riptide’s datasheet.

So they make you work to find the rules, but they are in there!

My enhanced edition book says that the cost of wargear isn’t included in the cost of named characters or drones - which I’m pretty sure is a mistake.

I think crisis are in a good spot now.
People always just take the dmg/per Point into consideration, but you also have to think about wounds, mobility, tactics and general use in a game.
A unit of 3 CIB crisis suits with drones is great to grab a backfield objective and can deal a suprising amount of firepower. (even more so with 5 ML). They are highly mobile with their 8'' move and can be accompanied by 6 drones of your choice. I still prefer 6 gun drones for the additional dmg output against infantry.

In my previous games (pre codex) I used this exact same setup to harrass backfield units of my enemies (devastators, light vehicles etc.) and they always got their job done. The setup also allowed me to hunt down monstrous creatures or terminators, depending on the situation. They are highly adaptable and therfore invaluable for me.
36 S8 shots is NOTHING to laugh about, no matter what you shoot at.

The ONLY issue I have is, D D3 instead of flat D2.

I might even consider Plasma Crisis now when playing Bork'an. The additional range is specially good on those.


PS: am i the only one that things that this is the best codex we had for a long time?
- There are very few "auto take" units as well as very few "shelf units".
- All the septs are great and offer so many different tactics. It's often very hard to decide which sept to take, they all have their spot.
- The point reductions gave many units a new spot in our armies (or they gained their old spot back :-P)! Talkign about riptides, Devilfish and Stormsurges as well as Firewarriors and Kroot.
- No more spamming commanders. This is very healthy for the game in my oppinion, because we all know "that guy" even in friendly games. And be honest: 3 or more Fusionstars in a competitive list is VERY evil.
- The fluff is great (I know many of you dont care about this, I do )

Mandragola wrote:

willow wrote:
I'm looking through the codex now...

Am I missing something or is the limitation on XV86s taking CIBs now removed?

If that's the case, 4xCIBs on an XV86 are

You’re missing something. In the wargear list at the start of the army list there’s a * by the CIB. It says at the bottom that coldstars aren’t allowed CIBs.

Also, riptides aren’t allowed shield generators - though the note saying that is in the shield generator’s rules - not in the wargear list or the riptide’s datasheet.

So they make you work to find the rules, but they are in there!

My enhanced edition book says that the cost of wargear isn’t included in the cost of named characters or drones - which I’m pretty sure is a mistake.

OH. Drat. I was looking at the ranged weapons/support systems reference list in the back. oh well. 4xCIBs on an XV85 it is.... haha.

Surprised not to see more discussion on how valuable Kroot are now. Troop choice at 5/PPM that gets a scout move. Cannot leave home with out at least 2 units to push back alpha strike armies.

Aeri wrote:
I think crisis are in a good spot now.
People always just take the dmg/per Point into consideration, but you also have to think about wounds, mobility, tactics and general use in a game.
A unit of 3 CIB crisis suits with drones is great to grab a backfield objective and can deal a suprising amount of firepower. (even more so with 5 ML). They are highly mobile with their 8'' move and can be accompanied by 6 drones of your choice. I still prefer 6 gun drones for the additional dmg output against infantry.

In my previous games (pre codex) I used this exact same setup to harrass backfield units of my enemies (devastators, light vehicles etc.) and they always got their job done. The setup also allowed me to hunt down monstrous creatures or terminators, depending on the situation. They are highly adaptable and therfore invaluable for me.
36 S8 shots is NOTHING to laugh about, no matter what you shoot at.

The ONLY issue I have is, D D3 instead of flat D2.

I might even consider Plasma Crisis now when playing Bork'an. The additional range is specially good on those.


PS: am i the only one that things that this is the best codex we had for a long time?
- There are very few "auto take" units as well as very few "shelf units".
- All the septs are great and offer so many different tactics. It's often very hard to decide which sept to take, they all have their spot.
- The point reductions gave many units a new spot in our armies (or they gained their old spot back :-P)! Talkign about riptides, Devilfish and Stormsurges as well as Firewarriors and Kroot.
- No more spamming commanders. This is very healthy for the game in my oppinion, because we all know "that guy" even in friendly games. And be honest: 3 or more Fusionstars in a competitive list is VERY evil.
- The fluff is great (I know many of you dont care about this, I do )

I think you ARE the only person I have heard say that lol.

-There are definitely many units that are not good enough to take (Hammerhead, devilfish, vespid, crisis with anything but CIB)
-Several of the septs are worthless (Vior'la, Dal'yth, Farsight) and the buffs are much worse than what other armies got.
-There was only a need for a points reduction in the first place because they jacked the price of specific units out of control in the index (riptide). They did not decrease the cost of crisis suits at all even though they are in desperate need and they even increased cost of gun drones by 50%.
-Yeah healthy for the game if EVERY army had to abide by this rule. But as of now we are the only one.

 buddha wrote:
Surprised not to see more discussion on how valuable Kroot are now. Troop choice at 5/PPM that gets a scout move. Cannot leave home with out at least 2 units to push back alpha strike armies.

Kroot are really awesome... except you can't take units over 10 unless you want to be ready to blow 2 CP to keep them from melting to morale. Even a single casualty puts them at risk of losing more to morale, and with only a 20 body unit limit, it's unrealistic to run big units that are daisy chained to an ethereal.

I tend to agree that this is one of our most decent books. Usually Tau internal balance is hot garbage so the lists tend to span things (Riptides, Commanders, Crisis suits waaaay back in the day) and that to me is a bad book. We may struggle a bit at tournaments with this one but it's got better balance than the last 2-3 books. Overall the army is not as strong as it was in 7th but the only reason for that was the borderline criminal Riptide.

Yeah Dalyth and Farsight tenets are a bit difficult to make work, but not impossible. I don't tend to see a lot of variety with different traits from other books at tournaments so we're not really worse off there. I'd rather see some variety than everyone taking the -1 to hit trait.

BAN wrote:

 Bryan01 wrote:


You'll want some marker-lights. Pathfinders are an obvious pick. I would recommend some screening in the form of either kroot or stealth suits. Drones can deep strike now. They work much the same as before.

Why stealth suits as a screen?

Stealth suits have proper infiltration rule and a -1 to hit, plus the fly rule. More expensive screen but they can’t be easily surrounded and locked up by charging units denying you a turn of shooting.

I tend to agree that the book has good internal balance. The right units were buffed and/or needed, more or less - with some exceptions. Crisis suits and railheads are still off, though ionheads are great. I’ve experimented with quite a lot of approaches without yet fixing on anything that’s obviously best - which is good.

I also think plasma suits could be ok - if not all that awesome. Crisis suits are a good place to put drone controllers and I think gun and marker drones wil still be useful. There’s obviously a very strong case for running suits as Farsight enclave, though many of the enclaves have merit. Sacea doesn’t get mentioned much but is pretty solid for big suits, ionheads etc.