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I must confess to having a problem with the new tau codex.

The first is a matter of models. What happened to the bony ridge Ethereals have on their foreheads? It's disappeared on the new models. I thought it was some kind of pheremone gland that allowed them to influence the other castes. It's on the rather tasty Aun'va illustration, but it's gone on all the models. How strange...

The second is a fluffy question. Why is a bonding knife a piece of wargear that only works while the bearer is still alive? The bonding ritual is an oath sworn between all members of a team, so it shouldn't matter if they can see a knife or not. As it is, it seems to be more like an IG commissar... they'll not run while it's there for fear of being reprimanded, but as soon as it's gone, they're outta there first chance they get! Of course it's likely the model with the knife will be the last to be killed anyway in most circumstances, but still... it seems to be a case of the rules not matching the fluff. Anyone else agree?

I don't like the new Ethereals and will not be using them. If you do want the bony ridge it should be easy enough to put on with a bit of green stuff. I agree it's an anomaly with the fluff.

Bonding Knife. Yes, obviously it should work for the whole team whether the actual bearer is alive or not. But as you say, it is unlikely the bearer would be killed early on as he will be the team leader.

Yeah I have a few problems with the new Tau units as well, and it was all debated in another thread...

Got quite heated and long...

From what I understand from the Store Manager at a Local GW, the symbol bared a very, very close resemblance to Slaanesh's symbol. I don't have any models to back this up but you can give it a look.

Maybe they wished to distance themselfs from that?

As for the knife......maybe an oversight. Normal rules>fluff.