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I am just starting my second army, first being BA, now I am moving on to what I think is their opposite; Tau. What would be an effective use of the troops and starting strategy for a newbie? Also which models are more ideal then others? Any beginner basic advice for Tau would be very much appreciated. Thanks

OK.

So, Tau generally work through mutually supporting units - most significantly in the case of markerlights and other units, seeker missiles, etc. Like Blood Angels, they are quite mobile, but that mobility is generally used to keep out of the way of things, or at optimal firing distance. The weapons are quite different from most armies - you have access to lots of S5 AP4 high-fire-rate weapons, but very few weapons above 36" range, and hardly any blasts.

Their basic Troops aren't very good - Fire Warriors are generally overcosted, but you have to take them (Kroot are rubbish). They work quite well mechanised, and if you can pop them out to rapid fire against cheap infantry. Their basic transport, the Devilfish, is also overcosted, but in 6ed all their vehicles got a major boost with the new rules for Disruption Pods - a cheap upgrade that increases the vehicle's Jink save to 3+.

Good units to start with are Broadsides (amazing Heavy Support unit) and plenty of Crisis suits. Missile Pods on your suits are good staple weapons, especially twin linked. Don't be tempted into going overboard with crazy suit upgrades - they get expensive quickly, and it's generally better to have lots of suits with specific jobs to do as opposed to having a few suits with tons of equipment. They are still only T4, 3+ save models that can be Instant Deathed, though you can take Gun Drones as 'extra wounds'. Crisis Suits got a boost with the fantastic new Jet Pack rules - make sure you know them!

Also, some of the Forge World models are really beneficial - there are no flyers or flyer defences in the basic codex, but they have lots of interesting extras once you go to FW. Barracudas, Remora Drones, etc. Also, FW Tetras are the best Markerlight platform available.

Tactically, I tend to deploy as far back as possible, and wheel steadily out of range while firing, concentrating on the closest target as they come towards me. Good fire discipline and knowing what is the best (least risky) order to fire your units in is essential (especially when Markerlights come into play).

Here are some recent Tau games I played (one win, one loss)...

Tau vs Dark Eldar - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/477574.page
Tau vs Necrons - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/478017.page

Well, this is a complex question that requires a complex answer.

First thing is to realise the pros and cons on the Tau:

Pros:
-mobile with skimmers and jet packs all around.
-very hard to gun down tanks.
-powerful guns, from the basic pulse rifle to the all-mighty railgun.

Cons:
-worthless in CC (luck can always save you, but you will generally lose CC against everything)
-the tanks dont pack quite as much firepower as other armies.
-most units either die quickly or dont pack much punch.


Now, for the units themselves, ignoring FW for a moment you got:

HQ:
Crisis Commader: you gotta take one by rules (farsight and shadowsun counts though), but his versatility means you only set him up AFTER you finished building your army core, to balance whatever it is you lack.
Ethreal: high-risk-high-reward. not for begginers and works best when comboed with shadowsun (see below)
Farsight: gimmick HQ, more for fun then actual power, though he allows a MASSIVE bodyguard team if you want one (7 freaking suits!)
Shadowsun: you take her either to combo her LD bubble with ethreal's death, or in city fight to become the terror of armor.
An'va: like an etheral, just far more expensive, don't much better abilities and much less efficient bodyguards.

Elites:
Crisis suits: your "i can be anything" unit, literally can be designed for horde-slayers, tank-hunters, transport-poppers, TEQ hunters, MEQ hunters or whatever it is you want them to be-and be damn good at it. though they are EXPENSIVE, and usually very fragile compared to the amount of punishment they deliver.
Stealth suits: the flip side of crisis suits. dont pack much firepower, and only good against infantry, but insanely hard to kill for their cost and threat level.

Troops:
Fire Warriors: some say they are bad, I disagree. with the rules for rapid fire they are kind of decent. they are pretty cheap compared to the punishment they deliver, and not that fragile compared to other 10 pt units.
Kroot: now that you cant assualt from outflank they lost thier main purpose. ignore.
Devilfish: pack very little firepower for the cost, and has no fire ports, but so hard to get rid of it stops to be funny pretty quick.

Fast Attack:
Piranha: an expensive suicide bomber. usually not worth it, but you just might want it some times.
Pathfiders: your best markerlight source in the codex. worth taking, but only unless you get forgeworld where you can find better options. their main flaw is that you must take a devilfish with them.
Vespid: they just don't function as intended compared to the cost. ignore.
Gun Drones: you can buy them as upgrades to pretty much every unit for less points, why even bother then?

Heavy Support:
Broadside: nothing complex, just an AT unit, and probably the best one in the entire game.
Hammerhead: the ion cannon option ain't worth much, the railgun on the other hand...very versatile, quite powerful and on a really tough frame.
Sniper Drones: nice gimmik unit, and hard to get rid of, but packs little firepower, and only worth anything against slow MEQ spam.


A quick run done lets you learn the following:
-Heavy support got your best stuff.
-Elites can do whatever you want.
-HQ can do whatever you want.
-Troops are OK, though not amazing.
-Fast attack are a bit disappointing for an army that is supposed to be "mobile"
-Don't take Sniper teams, Gun drone teams or vespid teams, EVER.
-Don't take Ethereals, name characters, Stealth suits or Kroot unless you really know what you are doing and have a plan for them.

Other things you should pay attention to:
-The gun drone as a wargear upgrade is in fact rather nice on stealth suits/crisis suits.
-Marker drones are just way too expensive. never get one.
-Jump-Shoot-Jump, the signature Tau ability, is a lifesaver, and opens up many "get out, fire, dive to LOS blocker" tactics.
-Tau and fortifications fit together well, as many units pack far more firepower then survivability.
-Stay away from melee, always, with any unit, and against any unit. you are just better off no matter how you are set up. many times the overwatch you get being charged is better then the bonus attack for charging! there are very little exceptions there.

Required reading about Crisis suits:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Tau_Crisis_Suit_Loadouts
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360480.page

I can give you the perspective from a Chaos player. Tau are really hard to play against in the 6th edition, the tactics people tend to use are long range firing and big guns to selectively whittle down opponents.

I lost a series of battles against Tau players, where I was getting caught up trying to get in close enough to assault. I really did not know that much about them in previous editions, because they were kind of a pushover army, but I have had to learn a lot more about them under the current rules. While it has come down to a single victory point in some games, I have yet to win against Tau in about 8 games.

Here's a short list of the tactics Tau use so effectively against my armies:

- Using Rail Guns on Hammerheads.

- Using crisis suits with rail guns to shoot up my ICs.

- Using pathfinders with markerlights to target units, then using Fire Warriors to blow my guys away.

- Using drones to shroud their tanks, giving them good saving throws against most shooting.

I have learned to treat pathfinders as a first priority, but even then it's still dicey. My army is pretty mobile and assault oriented, using Rhinos and bikers to get in close. It's always that first round of Tau shooting that screws me up. My units just don't have the strength to withstand a lot of Tau shooting even with statistically average rolling.

I don't run into too many players using Kroot / Vespids / massed drones or the like, generally the shootier the better with these guys.

The Tau fire warriors have been my backbone for some time now. I've depended on them as one of my corner stones of fire power supported by tetras and often divination power eldar allies.

I generally play them kind of like chess. I identify the biggest threats and the best guns to do the job and with some experience and some luck, you can take the teeth out of just about anyone quickly. Marker lights to reduce cover and some divination powers to buff railguns or just default twin link via broadsides and you got a winning formula.

Biggest problems so far for me have been risky deep strikers as Tau are very vulnerable to stuff like screamer, daemon flamers of tzeentch, and also stuff like drop pod sternguard/jaws prists as our Initiative sucks. I've lost a bunch of broadsides and my commander to a Jaws of the world wolf on turn 1 before. Love that morale failure sometimes..... sigh...

At anything higher than 1250, I almost always take an aegis just so I can potentially take out said rune priest via icarus las cannon snipe (cause it's cheaper) Might try it with some sort of bastion in the future too.

The tau army supports itself. You must have a plan for the battle.

As you have heard, tau must stay out of melee to win, there are many ways to do that, find what works for you.

Your firepower comes from crisis suits, broadsides and hammerheads. Everything else just supports the army. Markerlights are key for most tau army builds.

Firewarriors need two markerlight hits to be crazy effective, until then they are just slightly better guardsmen. Kroot are great in large numbers or as small 10 man units. Battlesuits do well with missile/plasma/multi-tracker, while HQ suits with bodyguard work well with plasma/fusion/ta and hard wired multi-tracker (but HQ just takes multi-tracker)

Broadsides require shield drones to stay alive, and any battlesuit units benefit from them as well.

More please...this is really useful to Tau players

One other thing to throw in. Kroot are obsolete. The only thing they brought to the army can now be done better with an allied mob of Ork Boyz led by a Big Mek with a powerklaw.

240 points gets you 31 Orks, which is way better than spending 140 for 20 Kroot who are only Ld7, and the Orks don't reduce the number of squads of Fire Warriors you can field.

When the hell was the last time you filled out your troop slots with Tau under 2000 points anyway?

Once you dabble into Forgeworld it might happen with the sensor tower and drone torrents, but just firewarriors?

While talking about fire warriors, lets mention the following, the fire warrior most likely squads are the following:

6 man with no upgrades.
9 man with 'ui upgrade
12 man with 'ui upgrade and a BSF

Some other setups might show up if you got a few spare points to fill a team a bit, or if you want them for something specific-but you will most likely deploy one of these.

Dont bother with the knife unless you got farsight around (and then they are free), because it will matter in one in a million games. another gun is better.

Oh yes I totally forgot this one, black sun filters.

You basically ignore night fighting. You need a team leader with a hard-wired one in every broadside unit, and hammerheads make good use of them as well, as do battlesuits outfitted with long range firepower.

Keep in mind however, you only need one in the unit for the whole unit to benefit from it.

Hordes of fire warriors can work well if you have markerlight and anti-tank/elite/MC support. Hordes of kroot works too, and are actually cheaper since you need less markerlights. Krootox are very useful to have if you need more missile pods, and kroot hounds are simply cheaper kroot with no gun.

Also don't forget you can get in a pathfinder devilfish with firewarriors, only after the game starts.

Warning. My post is extremely biased by my awesomeness.

Want to win games?
Do not take the following:
Pathfinders
vespids
Markerlights
Ethereal
ANY SPECIAL CHARACTER
skyray gunship
Drone squads (fast attack)

Your rail guns target the LOW AV vehicles first, your fusion blasters deep strike/go after high Armor

Always shoot more things at a target than math tells you will kill it...

Drones on vehicles are great for blocking regular movement.

Always take disruption pods.

Kroot are key to victory in most games, they are not throw away/meat shields, although they can be used that way if the situation dictates so.

Missile pod crisis suits are the bees knees. twinlinked pods are awesomesauce.

Plasma Rifles are too expensive to have more than your commanders with them

I have little, to no experience in 6th with stealth teams or sniper drones

Heavy should be one hammer head unit and 2 broad side units, all team leaders should have HWBSF.

On the warlord table, roll on strategic. Hope for night attacker, laugh when your BSF ignores the night fight.

BTW, my post is very biased to how I play, and YMMV

All cockiness posted here is meant for entertainment purposes only, and is a 0 calorie snack

 juraigamer wrote:
Oh yes I totally forgot this one, black sun filters.

You basically ignore night fighting. You need a team leader with a hard-wired one in every broadside unit, and hammerheads make good use of them as well, as do battlesuits outfitted with long range firepower.

Keep in mind however, you only need one in the unit for the whole unit to benefit from it.

Hordes of fire warriors can work well if you have markerlight and anti-tank/elite/MC support. Hordes of kroot works too, and are actually cheaper since you need less markerlights. Krootox are very useful to have if you need more missile pods, and kroot hounds are simply cheaper kroot with no gun.

Also don't forget you can get in a pathfinder devilfish with firewarriors, only after the game starts.

YES. Forgot this too. Blacksun filters are also the cheapest support system, which comes in handy.

As i said before, I prefer to keep my Suits cheap and to the point - in each team of 3 TLMP Suits I'd usually have one BSF, one Drone Controller, and a single Target Lock. The whole squad gain night fighting, can split fire and can take two floating wounds, and won't cost too much.

The only other support system I make regular use of is the Multitracker when running MP/PR suits.

For the original poster: Given the vehicle upgrade for Tau that lets them shoot as a fast vehicle, I play my BA much like ghetto Tau. Except I have assault marines instead of Kroot. Fast vehicles are one of the few actual advantages the BA have left.

It can't add too much more to frgsinwinter,really. The Tau codex, like the Eldar codex suffers from having some great units and then some asstastic units. You can put together good armies, but the codex itself has too many peaks and valleys.

One other unit I have seem used to good effect in 6th is the Krootox. The changes to rapidfire lets them doubletap S7 out to 24". Epic lulz vs some armies.

I have seen missile pod/plasma rifle suits just abuse MEQ armies. They pop AV 11 very well, and then shoot up what comes out in the later rounds. They also shoot up monsters well, since railguns are inefficient at this task.

I did see a chaos demon player throw his dice across them room on turn 3 because a Tau player was allying with vanilla Spess Mahreens to get nullzone. Just to get nullzone. Because with nullzone, TH/SS terminators and the like look very mortal. It also happens to make the Tau gun down demons like chumps.

Pathfinders are ok, just not that great. They act as a force multiplier. Its also rumored they will get assualt 1 not heavy 1 next codex in a few months.
Some notable suits - take at least 6 in 2000 points
Helios- fusion blaster and plasma rifle, multitracker, good for medium range, you can fry tanks at close range. Great with MEQ w/ heavy support, because sunforges will not be able to kill tanks being guarded by infantry
Deathrain- twin linked missiles w/ flamer or blacksun
Fireblade(or something)-plasma rifle and missile pod, multitracker, good for medium and long range, high volume of fire and ok against MEQ, main drawback is cost

what you do usually is in your movement you move out, shoot and use the jetpack in assualt to got to cover again.
dont take vespid, dont take skyray, dont take the big fat ethereal on his hover couch

What type of army do you want? options w/ brief tactics are

Mech- tanks galore, all troops in devilfish. Most people dont like this, but take the seeker missiles if you have room, good to increase offensive power use some tanks to hide behind with your crisis suits, in this list you should take an average amount. Since you want to take hammerheads for mobility, you need fusion blasters in order to add some AT

Crisis suits- this list is basically footslogging troops with mobile crisis suit support, and lots of it. The max you can take in an army without the overpriced farsight is 15, 3 elites of 3, 2 commanders, and 2 bodyguards for each commanders.

Footslogging. Don't do it. EVER. EEEVVVVEEERRRRR. It requires ALOT of experience and relies on some slightly overpriced units. This tactic is not usable in 6th edition

By the way, magnetize your suits and dont take non generic stuff. I suggest only going to 1000-1500 points, there are alot of different new units that are coming out in the next year, and they sound ing awesome.

Just my two cents.

Markerlights are generally hard to come by and on fragile units. Make use of the T/L missile pods on suits to eliminate the need for Markerlights to increase BS. My favorite cheap load out is three suits with twin-linked missile pods, 2 flamers, and one BSF. It's 9 points cheaper than the team leader version, if you get 1st turn night fighting then he's the model to get sacked if you're getting shot at after turn 1 and you get to keep some flamers to make your opponent question charging.

I generally only use Marker tokens to remove cover from hidden vehicles. A bastion with three broadsides inside, and three on top makes an incredibly difficult unit to remove and can ruin any players day.

I run 1 hammerhead just because anti-armor is becoming less used in my meta and the hammerhead generally shrugs off any weapon that would instant kill a suit.

Tetras are the most annoying little skimmer on the planet. People really hate markerlights for some reason and will waste every bolter shot they have hoping to get a 6 past that 2+/3+ cover. It really spares a lot of hurt on your FW and helps them stay in the game longer.

And remember. These aren't marines. I've seen too many people try to run them like they would marines and get flattened pretty quick. Play like a coward. Leave as much as you can hidden and let them close the gap.

Bah. My BA play like cowards now too. Too many other codices are fightier.

Thank you all very much! This has given me great insight as to how to play my first game with the new army. There are a few more models it seems I must purchase still to be somewhere more effective and up to par as you gents have stated.

 frgsinwntr wrote:
Warning. My post is extremely biased by my awesomeness.

Want to win games?
Do not take the following:
Pathfinders
vespids
Markerlights
Ethereal
ANY SPECIAL CHARACTER
skyray gunship
Drone squads (fast attack)

Your rail guns target the LOW AV vehicles first, your fusion blasters deep strike/go after high Armor

Always shoot more things at a target than math tells you will kill it...

Drones on vehicles are great for blocking regular movement.

Always take disruption pods.

Kroot are key to victory in most games, they are not throw away/meat shields, although they can be used that way if the situation dictates so.

Missile pod crisis suits are the bees knees. twinlinked pods are awesomesauce.

Plasma Rifles are too expensive to have more than your commanders with them

I have little, to no experience in 6th with stealth teams or sniper drones

Heavy should be one hammer head unit and 2 broad side units, all team leaders should have HWBSF.

On the warlord table, roll on strategic. Hope for night attacker, laugh when your BSF ignores the night fight.

BTW, my post is very biased to how I play, and YMMV

All cockiness posted here is meant for entertainment purposes only, and is a 0 calorie snack

I don't think I have EVER agreed more with anyone on tau than I do with this man. You sir summed it all up just about perfectly for general tau play. you even share my opinion on plasma rifles and kroot which is rare.... have my children.... i gotta say the only thing i disagree with is that heavy should be 1 unit of 3 broadsides and 2 hammerhead.

For the record stealthsuits are pretty amazing in 6th due to the 2+cover save but still too expensive unless you are buffing them. I like to run a big blob of them with 6-11 gun drones and 1 marker drone then buff it all with divination rerolls from a farseer. The damage output becomes pretty nuts actually. Only problem there is you've sunk a tremendous amount of points into 1 unit that will most likely get run down by any fast assault unit. After a fair amount of playtesting against marines and tyrannid ive decided that its a solid option with eldar or FW towers/tetras but it sucks a lot out of your list so maybe better to just get more crisis suits.

Also Ionheads are quite good contrary to popular belief they are the most cost efficent MEQ killer in the codex and can beat up MCs pretty well too. Railheads are obviously a bit more adaptable and rear the pride and joy of the tau battleforce but still don't discredit the Ionhead because of that! They are cheap, rediculously durable, frontline tanks that fill a vital role in the army.

I don't actually agree with the rest of your post, but to avoid a big fight, I'm going to comment on the part I agree upon.

urza8188 wrote:
Also Ionheads are quite good contrary to popular belief they are the most cost efficent MEQ killer in the codex and can beat up MCs pretty well too. Railheads are obviously a bit more adaptable and rear the pride and joy of the tau battleforce but still don't discredit the Ionhead because of that! They are cheap, rediculously durable, frontline tanks that fill a vital role in the army.

I also think Ionheads are fantastic. You save 35 points over a railhead, which is another crisis suit and then some. I've found them to be able to kill just about anything. Monstrous creatures? wounding on 3's, very few get armor saves. Transports? 3 shots and can glance AV11 on 4's. MEQ doesn't get an armor save, GEQ get ID'd. And with 60" range, it outranges a lot of armies. Really the only thing it has trouble with is terminators, but you have burst cannons for that.

Really, the only reason to take a railhead is for the pie plates, but if those aren't neccesary, save the points and go with the ion cannon.

a Broadside TL with TA and HWMT in manning a quad gun will make short work of flyers.

If the people you play with allow FW units. XV9s and Tetras and Shas'o r'alai are really powerful units

the 3 most common Crisis suit builds used are the Fireknife (PR MP MT)
Helios (PR FB MT)
Deathrain (TLMP Flamer)

makesure your crisis suit team leaders with HWBSF for the fireknife and helios and just throw a BSF on a deathrain to save some points.

if your going to take an Ion cannon.. don't, take a plasma cannon on the hammer head, you trade 12inchs for twinlinked + 1 extra shot.

Some of this is really helpful!

I too am thinking about starting a small Tau force, i've been flicking through the codex but having first hand info about what works is great.

As an aside - does anyoen have any idea when/if the codex will be updated? I'm guessing around Q2/Q3 of 2013 but that is just a guess.





Sorry - one more question. i see that Forge World sell different "marks" of Crisis and Broadside suits. Do they have their own rules in one of the IA books or do they just use the same points and upgrades etc as the ones in the codex?

 frgsinwntr wrote:

Do not take the following:

vespids
ANY SPECIAL CHARACTER
skyray gunship
Drone squads (fast attack)

You forgot sniper drone teams.

However I will not agree that the following have you lose games:

Pathfinders
Markerlights
Ethereal

Instead they make you win them. Pathfinders are the cheapest allowed markerlights in the book, and the fish tax, while annoying, does give you that fancy re-roll on the deep strike.

The tau book doesn't work without markerlights, unless you're going kroot or TL spam. Even then, cover saves and tau's low BS will have you wishing for a light or two.

Finally the humble ethereal. Tau are crap leadership, the ethereal fixes this, but he's easy to kill yes? No, you simply attach to a broadside team, and every tau player has a broadside team. The broadside team sits in the back, where they always are, up high, were they always are, and with some shield drones. The ethereal can take two shield drones as well, so at the minimum, the enemy must get through 4 shield drones and 3 broadsides before they can even touch the ethereal. Finally they etheral makes the broadsides fearless and gives that fancy re-roll on moral for all tau stuff that can see him. Not running away helps tau win the day.

Markerlights make the fireknife (plasma/missile pod) suit very lethal against all kinds of opponents. With the new wound allocation rules, fireknife suits with shield drones are probably really nasty.

I mostly agree with the long post with the exception of plasma rifles. Plasma is much better in 6th edition and its even better when it doesn't overheat.

I have found a full gun drone squad to be a solid replacement for the old Kroot wrap for the 98 points. While they don't stop heavy CC units for more than a round it is still one round to get a some range with. Twin linked over watch is decent over watch.

I am also finding 'ui upgrades on FW teams useful beyond just the 8Ld with them getting Precise shot for being characters.

Been playing Tau for a while, as you can see from all the above posts there are some units that are certs and some are in contention.

Crisis suits are a must, some people have tried to say that you dont need them in your army to win but me personally wouldnt leave home without them. I like to run crisis suits with either Missle Pods and Plasmas and run other ones with TL missle pods. I would tend to fill all three elite slots with suits.

HQ standard el or O depending on whether you have the points, I wouldnt say that any of the Tau HQ choices are that great, I would say they are expensive and not worth the points.

Troops are one of these areas on contention. As above most people hate Kroot, I have to say they have never really done me wrong. Opponents tend to have the same opinion about Kroot as many of the players above and thus tend to just plain ignore the kroot. I infiltrate them into some nice ruins and use them to act as a distraction. Most opponents ignore them, if they dont ignore them and charge them or shoot them that gives me another turn of shooting and moving away from the enemy. Kroo are cheaper than firewarriors and act as a cheap distraction unit. Rapid fire and better in combat than FW's. I tend to have one unit of kroot in every army.

FW's definately got a boost in 6th. I tend to run 12 in a devilfish. Depending on whether im squeezing points. A lovely tactic with FW's and a devilfish is he fish of fury. If there is a stray unit of infantry then 24 rapid fire shots potentially hitting on 2's (markerlights) not many units are gonna handle that.

Fast attack ony one choice for me that i tetras. Pathfinders are good if you dont wanna spend forgeworld money lol but markerlights are a must to tie the army together.

Heavy Support is one of Taus areas of mass destruction. I use broadsides, ionheads and railheads. I think if you are up against marines then I reckon ionheads are a real good choice. Railguns are just awesome broadside teams of three are a great choice.

Tactics may seem simple but for a beginner its important to know its not that easy and you may struggle to begin with. I tend to split my force into two. One part of the force is not very mobile (broadsides, FWs on foot etc) the rest of the army is constantly on the move. I tend to sweep round the enemy. Focuss on one flank and break it. Then you can sweep round behind the enemy. On the way you light the enemy up with markerlights like a christmas tree. Try to focus you AP's on appropriate units. So you plasmas on the termis railguns on tanks etc, basic stuff. Tau are good fun to play, take a bit of getting used to but you will love it when you have your markerlights firing and hitting on 2's. Enjoy!

My biggest suggestion is go ahead and buy the basic stuff but wait 3 months till the codex update to see what gets changed.

Alltheones wrote:
Troops are one of these areas on contention. As above most people hate Kroot, I have to say they have never really done me wrong. Opponents tend to have the same opinion about Kroot as many of the players above and thus tend to just plain ignore the kroot. I infiltrate them into some nice ruins and use them to act as a distraction. Most opponents ignore them, if they dont ignore them and charge them or shoot them that gives me another turn of shooting and moving away from the enemy. Kroo are cheaper than firewarriors and act as a cheap distraction unit. Rapid fire and better in combat than FW's. I tend to have one unit of kroot in every army.

The problem with kroot I have found is there lack of any armor save. They are decent in combat except for the armor. They have no chance to prevent wounds in CC. Even ork boyz and Tyranid Gaunts get a 6+ and thats what they should have. Granted you can buy the shaper and get them the 6+, but then they cost 8 points each, and you might as well spend 2 more points for firewarriors.

The new codex releases in 3 months for sure?

 Greyguy13 wrote:
The new codex releases in 3 months for sure?

Sadly it's not for sure, nothing is "sure" with GW anymore these days. However current rumors say that they will be the next xenos codex released, so possibly in May or November would be my two best guesses.

I'm not sure why people hate kroot so much. They are really good.

If you deploy them out in the open they get rocked... but thats not how you are supposed to use them. They are meant to either
1) infiltrate
2) outflank
3) sit on a wooded terrain piece to claim an objective

if you are playing them as a tac squad or an ork boyz squad, you're doing it wrong.

They are, like everything else in the codex, a finesse unit that needs careful thought in the deployment phase.

as for the pathfinder comments...
I've never been sold on marker lights... they are like anti MSU in the tau codex which is meant to be MSU. They can be a force multiplier... but for the cost they don't do as much as I'd like... I'd rather have more guns... it just seems more consistent how I play.