CORRECTIONS: - Missed that the Breachers had gone to BS3+ on the pulse blaster for some reason. Not sure why they get that, but seems solid with their re-roll wounds - The Droneport shoots EVERY unit within 20", not just one. Still only averaging around 2-3 hits base, but could do some useful chip damage to an infantry army with mediocre saves?
@@Kepora1 Its true, but elite pilots are still being translated through the battlesuit, even being super agile for their size, that's a jet packing, walking light tank, its heft is going affect precision in at least some way, I'd imagine. Still, I'd also sure agree with BS3+ on battlesuits, considering the other side of the argument about suit-tech, etc being advanced enough to make them worthy.
I can’t get over how the accelerator burst cannon and missile pod profiles have varying AP values depending on the data sheet. There are some weird continuity errors in this index that bug the shit out of me.
@@fabr1cat0rgeneral94 yes, but didn't those at least have different names? Havoc, reaper, etc? This is nominally the same gun. Longstrike has a weaker burst cannon than the generic hammerhead for Pete's sake!
@@petermccall1185 they said they made the new datasheet this way for that purpose! longstrike has always had a better BS than the generic hammerhead.. idk what the problem is?
My guess is we're getting a mont'ka and/or farsight detachment in the codex that will address this and fusion blades. Our codex comes out relatively sooner than most so I'll take it
I played The Eight almost exclusively when the rules came out in 8e. Built special models for them, took my time painting them, and even 3d printed some bits. By the time I was done the team the rules were removed. If we don't get rules for them I'm making custom ones for friendly games.
Not as bad as some of the other armies but holy hell how do you give an army that can only really shoot so few long range anti-armor choices? I feel like 3 Hellhounds and a single other tank from the Guard list could run roughshod over an entire Tau army before you can even get your detachment rule to work.
It's looking like a squad of broadsides or two is going to need to happen, even then vs. guard they're just gonna get picked off one by one with all of that indirect fire.
The hammerhead put in some work for me over the weekend. 10 wounds to a landraider hitting on 3s with the railgun. Didn't get to fire the missile pods though.
my sentiments precisely. fortunately we dont have to wait too long for the t'au codex. they're my second army i'm building, so i'll be playing astra militarum in the meanwhile. overall t'au datasheets look fairly nice, i'm just really waiting for that Mont'ka sauce.
aside from that kauyon is just more niche, majority of people would rather just get their stuff done early rather than wait 3 whole turns just to get your detachment rules
I thought this edition was supposed to be simpler? All the slightly different stats on Burst Cannons and Missiles have got to be mistakes, right? Because having slightly different profiles for the same weapon needlessly complicates something that is supposed to be simple. I also feel that overall army rule is bad for complicating the shooting phase.
hey if you want simpler, remember that gun drones are wargear tokens if they attach to a unit, but models if you (for whatever reason) run them as an independent squad.
Something to consider, Marker drones don't actually do anything on the tau infantry squads. They all already have Markerlights, so all the squads really need to be able to Advance and Observe is eligibility to shoot. Breachers already have Assault weapons so can do that by default. Strike Teams and Pathfinders can just use the Gun Drone to get an Assault weapon. Consequently, there's also no reason to equip the Ethereals with Marker Drones (any unit they attach to has access to Gun Drones and they lack the Faction Ability so can't Observe solo), and only run them on the Fireblade if you're trying to run one solo for some reason.
@Auspex Tactics seems to be the play. Gun drones for everyone! At least until this gets addressed in an Errata or other points formats down the road make marker drones significantly cheaper than gun drones to take.
putting marker drones on stealth suits is big though. provides them with the markerlight keyword which combined with their boost to reroll wounds rolls of 1 to their guided unit is lit. plus, when you use the coordinated strat with them, they benefit from that ignore cover. For FW and Breachers I would run the gun drone plus guardian drone
@The Herpetologist absolutely. Our battlesuit units can still make use of markers, so they aren't useless for the entire Index. Stealthsuits are a great candidate for them.
Im confused, I keep seeing everyone say infantry have the markerlight keyword as a default, but I can't find any reference to it? Like if they do, I'm not complaining, but my friends are gonna think I'm full of shit if I can't point to where it's listed to prove it :/
The complete lack of any keywords on most weapons feels like a huge oversight. And short of Hammerheads/broadsides, how exactly are we supposed to deal with vehicles? Hitting on 4(3 if youre guided) and wounding on 5 with our supposedly anti-tank weapons feels really bad
a stormsurge is a must this edition. 405 points, all guns are heavy, so it stays still hits on 3+, has titanic a 4+ invul, and a str24 gun that shots twice. Guide it and take shadowsun for re-roll 1's and use stealth teams to spot for re-roll wounds. 2 stormsurges and shadowsun are 950 points, and will cost you friends lol
I think piranhas are gonna be decent in some list combos. Decent AP damage output, 2 OC, 7 wounds, forces battle-shock tests. And only 55 points! Cultists for World Eaters are 75 points 😮(which I also play) so that's pretty darn good value. Put your infantry in devilfish, lead targeted strikes to objectives and let your broadside(s) and stormsurge hold and also destroy enemy advancements. I havent finished buying my T'au army yet but essentially I already have a feeling we are gonna have to be carried by our transports and more expensive mechs. However, even in a 2,000 point army you really have to pick which mech is best for your specific list set-up. Commanders in Cold-Star giving those bonuses to Crisis battlsuits looks like it's also kind of a must if you want some more use out of them.
Coldstar Commander + Crisis and Breachers + Devilfish will make the backbone of my initial couple of lists. Shadowsun and Broadsides look good for holding a backline. I want Hammerheads to be good, but on paper they look expensive. A couple of token Strike Teams for holding objectives. It's hard to know just looking at numbers, but I'm excited to test things out.
Worth noting: for the Strat Coordinate to Engage the selected unit doesn't benefit from the secondary Kauyon effect [Sustained Hits 2] since it still doesn't count as a Guided unit (despite the Strat nominally making it work as such) Edit: also Shadowsun being Infantry means she HAS to make use of her Fall Back & Shoot ability since she can't fire in melee like before
Shooting in melee is not that good anyway. You get a -1 to hit, unless you have the Weapon Support System wargear(which also means you could have picked the wargear that allowed you to fall back and shoot instead). In general, being a Vehicle means a lot of downsides that Crisis Suits did not have before.
@@fendelphi sure by all means, but at least you can try shooting in melee with Crisis suits while Shadowsun can't. Also, as a sidenote, as bad as flamers are now they still aren't impacted by the -1, a unit packed with those may be an expensive but workable way to screen from battleline infantry)
@@shinkiro403 That Shadowsun cant shoot in melee has minimal impact, as there is no penalty to Fall Back during movement(unless surrounded) and then shoot into the enemy in the shooting phase. If anything, it allows other units to also shoot at her target. And she really should not be caught in melee in the first place. As for Flamers, that would be overall a horrible use of Crisis Suits. Flamers gain no benefits from Kauyon or For the Greater Good bonuses(and so has very low impact overall compared to other weaponry). The greatest benefit to Flamers right now(on Crisis Suits) is the Fire Overwatch Stratagem, and even then, it is mostly effective against low tier infantry at very close range, and only that. Crisis Suits are simply too expensive to be used as a "screen" for your far less expensive infantry. If you want to screen your infantry, use a Devilfish or Tidewall.
At first I was somewhat happy with the T'au rules and index, but after playing a friend's Imperial Guard on the weekend, I'm not so sure. "For The Greater Good" wasn't the problem though, that feels thematic and works well. The lack of reliable anti-tank weapons in an army that is supposed to have really advanced guns and only plays the shooting phase is a bit of a headscratcher. Crisis Suits for example have three supposedly high powered guns they can equip, two of them are quite low ranged and none of them is good against tanks. If I have to get right into people's faces with my fusion blasters, at least put Anti-Vehicle 4 or something like that on it. It feels wrong that my formerly stabby Drukhari are now a way better shooting faction than T'au. Also, considering indirect fire was nerfed in 9th because of T'au, it's baffling how overpowered they made it for every faction that has it except T'au. So, my battle against Guard went like this: Everything that didn't have the Lone Operative keyword (Longstrike, Skyray, my 3 Broadsides, my infantry) was basically dead or massively crippled by the end of battleround 2. My deepstriking Crisis Suits+Coldstar with plasma, cyclics and battleround 2 Kau'yon did basically nothing against his 4 tanks and there was no possibility of getting to his artillery because of the amount of screening units Guard still has despite 4 tanks, 2 Basilisks and 2 Manticores. The game was over by battleround 3. Additionally, the fact that the only counterplay against something like this seems to be fielding 3 Ghostkeels smells a bit like they are desperately trying to sell a model that was essentially shit for most of 9th. Edit: Oh, did I mention that I made a misstake during list building and fielded a Riptide that wouldn't even fit? I mean, it basically did nothing except survive until turn 3, but even with 235 points over the point limit I was essentially tabled by turn 3 due to stupid amounts of artillery and sturdy tanks with a volume of antitank killing power T'au can only dream of.
I think there should be set in stone design philosophies for each faction, like it should be impossible, or at the very least difficult for most factions to outshoot Tau, outside of the Tau player rolling hilariously badly or something. A really shooty Eldar or Space Marine list could be on par, but never better at it, just as it should be very difficult for most factions to take on Orks in melee. The 'it was good last edition' mindset needs to be completely removed, to the extent that I would absolutely be firing anyone involved in the writing of rules for allowing such pettiness to influence them - balance things properly within a design philosophy, or go do something else. The hobby is far too expensive for this much flip flopping on what is good, and it's just asking people to get sceptical thinking "is this a marketing strategy? they sold a lot of Crisis suits last edition and now they want to sell more Ghostkeels" which only puts people off - it's bad enough in video games when the meta changes, it's infuriating in a tabletop game where it's difficult to adjust to it.
@@Boonoojootoo I did bring Longstrike as he shoots way more reliably than a normal Hammerhead, and one Sky Ray because of the higher volume of antitank-shots. Between the two of them, they managed to destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and almost kill a Tank Commander. The Sky Ray was shot off the board in battleround 2 and the already at his bottom profile Longstrike missed his shot despite re-roll in battleround 2 and then died in battleround 3. My 3 Broadsides did exactly nothing because my friend got first turn and instantly obliterated two of them with artillery, the third then missed his shots and was finished off in battleround 2. I'm not saying that some bad rolling wasn't involved and that we don't have any antitank. I'm just saying that due to its mostly low volume of shots, it's relatively unreliable and a T'au tank out in the open is usually dead by the next turn. That being said, the biggest problem here weren't the Leman Russ tanks, but the indirect fire. T'au literally have no way to interact with it apart from bringing all the Lone Operatives, which means bringing 3 Ghostkeels if you want to be able to maybe kill a couple of tanks. Due to T'au tanks only being t10 and Broadsides clocking in at a meager t6, Guard artillery can be devastating.
It used to be that tau's weakness was close combat and durability, now it's close combat, durability, mechanized lists and elite infantry lists. Fusion blasters lacking [anti] after getting a range nerf feels bad, the hammerhead and riptide ion cannons being the same strength and ap as the crisis suit variant doesn't seem right, being forced into kauyon and even having a strat you can't even use until turn 3 doesn't sit well with me, nor does the general direction of this codex, which seems to be a return to static gunline tau. It's a boring playstyle for both players. It's gonna be a long wait until we get our codex. I hope we can regain access to aggressive tau by then.
I'm surely gonna agree the weapon nerfs are weird, tau has always had better gear than most other factions, now it's either the same, sorta so or worse than SMs (flamers are now standard ones, not even the extra attack, and fusion blasters went from melta rifles to melta guns). I get it that they did because they derestricted wargear in general and battlesuit still don't have duplicate restrictions on any of their weapons barring the frag projector (so one could pack their suit units with up to 18 of whatever at no extra cost, so much for the "what's in the box" rule), but as *usual* lately from GW, I invite anyone to prove me otherwise, this is a symptom of lazy game design, doesn't matter if it had a scope (namely streamlining to drag in as many new fans as possible) or if it did other things better, there always seem to be good steps taken back...
Well its nothing too new. Executioner plasma destroyer is the same strength as a plasma gun, and heavy flamers have the same range as standard. Weapon profiles are crappy atm, as in relative to the lore of what they should be. Lore should dictate rules more imo, not entirely ofc otherwise a doomsday barge would be tabling you before the turn even started
Tau have some weaknesses, but anti elite infantry is absolutely not one of them; Tau are basically now the apex predator of anti elite infantry armies. If you don't believe me, try block of 6 suits led by a coldstar, all decked out with shield drones and plasma with Kauyon enhancements... puts out 30+ plasma shots a turn which is absolute murder and half the cost of the previous edition. Feel like that will absolutely get nerfed.
@@Celestial38 Nah, more like, if you want the high mobility + shooting(close range weaponry/scenario dependent), then you bring the Coldstar Commander. If super fast mobility and close range is less of an issue, you can pick a different commander or even skip it(to save points for something else).
I know GW went hard on the whole "having each models rules on their datasheet" selling point, but there are some frankly confusing inconsistencies between identical weapon profiles (ie.accelerator burst cannons for Tau, Exterminator Cannons from Astra Militarum etc.)
Love how Necron and many other armies have abilities that allow them to move shoot and move, but Tau get a 2 CP strat that allows one unit to? Tau invented move shoot move and they get shafted AF. We have no OC, no LD, crap CP generation and we only become viable turn 3. So stupid
tau invented move shoot move? M8, eldar were doing move shoot move for 60 million years before the tau had even crawled of the dirt they spawned from. I think some of your complaint is valid, but tau have some crazy good weapons, good mobility, battlesuits that can now tank shock, huge amounts of versatility in weapon loadouts, markerlights, synergies, etc. It's really easy to get sad when there's a rules change, as a blood angels player im certainly not happy with how vanguard veterans had their weapons consolidated to one profile, but we must adapt and thrive, not fume at minor things. Challenge your own skill in the new meta, learn kauyon for now, and become a patient hunter, then try the other detachments as they come out.
I actually like the army rule a lot, and the detachment rule is okay, idc that it’s Kauyon but I just hate that it’s just exploding 6’s but only halfway through the game when most armies have a way to just have exploding 6’s throughout. But sure sure “toning down the lethality” so they smack all our guns with with low strength, surely that’s good enough right, “no let’s make them also have no AP, oh and while we’re at it no anti because too strong! Wait SMS was 4 shots ignoring cover not in this house, and now you’ve pissed me off so every single model in your army has terrible leadership. How do you like that Fish fans!?” Tau literally have like 5 good data sheets and that’s it, you can argue for others but when you have to try to convince why farsight is good then something is wrong.
Its sucks being a Tau main at the moment. We have one list that keeps us out of bottom 3 armies in the game and even then we are still bottom 5. Half our index doesnt get our army rule; etherals, kroot, drones, fortifications. Most of our characters dont actually buff that well or buff units that dont matter; Non-Coldstar commanders, Darkstrider, all Etherals, Kroot shapers. Our chaff units cost more than 5 marines and do less damage on average. The real chaff units are worse than ripper/scarab swarms and way overcosted for what they do. Like why are 4 drones so expensive. Tau durability is abysmal. A crisis suit is T5 3+ wirh 4/6 wounds 4+ invulnerable save. It costs 390 point which is the same cost as 10 terminators and 80 points more than 10 wraithguard, which both have arguably more damage and much higher durability. Extropolate that to all battlesuits and thats how Tau die to a rough breeze. Battlsuits definitely need one more point of toughness with Riptides being T11. Finally, our main units are intersting but fall flat in the end compared to mid -tier armies. Cool, crisis squad can pack a pucnh but are costed more than desolators. Neat, our skyrays are actually good but not as good as a Fire prism. Stormsurge is looking good but its not T12 and anything kitted out to kill knights super kills it. Just feels bad to play Tau, hopefully it wont be like the start if 9th but its looking like it.
Hopefully we'll get a fix. I really enjoyed the last edition's rules and I think it nailed the feel of the army perfectly lore-wise, but now I feel like they're just a tedious and uninteresting army. The drones were a huge niche thing that only we had, but now that's a thing of the past. I hope they revert to old rules.
I am sorry, but what kind of bullshit are you on? Yes, Space marines are more powerful, welcome to how most armies have been since edition 3. Having Tau complaining about this edition, just show how spoiled you have been.
The worst part is that the design team only looks at tournament results for balancing now so if your army is complete trash and unfun, but there's one way of playing them that wins 50/50, then you have to wait for the next edition to hope for any significant changes.
I really hope they mitigate the tau weakness in melee by giving them some pistol weilding gunslinger units. A crisis suit dual weilding scaled up pistols sounds rad. Maybe make one of its support hard points a close range targeting system so when it's charged, it can shoot in response.
Tau looks pretty bad to me overall. Their shooting isn't insane and requires good set up with spotting/marker to do good damage. All while having no melee.
I feel ya regarding the Tactical Drones & the Kroot Hounds. GW have definitely nerfed them/ radically changed how you're meant to use them now. I've played 3 games with them in the new mission deck from the Leviathan box, i.e. the thing GW wants everyone to use in Matched play now. Apologies in advance for the wall of text but I hope you'll find my ideas useful :) All of those missions have secondary objectives that basically say "Throw a cheap ineffective squad onto a random part of the battlefield, force that squad to do nothing this turn except set up a Teleport Homer/ Investigate a Signal/ etc, etc. Do this over and over again because you keep drawing mission cards that tell you to do something like this, but each time you do it you'll get 5 victory Points" If you're using Crisis Suits and Fire Warriors to complete these Secondary Objectives, then you're giving up a whole lot of Shooting, since units can't shoot while they do these objectives. In 9th Edition there were rules that said "you have to use INFANTRY units like Fire Warriors and Crisis Suits to do these objectives - you can't use Hounds and Drones to complete them ... ... ... but in 10th those rules are gone. Probably because GW realised how limiting that was/ how badly it effected all TAU armies - i.e. the only Army in the game that only wins by shooting. :)P So for example, the 'Area Denial' mission should basically say "Throw 4 Kroot Hounds into the centre of the board, make sure your opponent doesn't have anything left in the centre of the board by the end of your turn, get 5 Victory Points." The Hounds having an OC of Zero and them being beasts doesn't prevent them from completing a Secondary Objective like it would have in 9th Edition. Having OC 0 only stops them from scoring 'Primary' points/ Holding 'Primary' Objectives. They can still score all secondary objectives. The Hounds also get a pre-game 'scout' move of 9 inches, so they can reach the centre of the board very quickly. You can also hide them behind walls easily due to their low profile/ their models being low to the ground. You can Hide them behind a building in your deployment zone so your opponent can't see them, wait until you draw this Secondary Mission Card, then send 'em out. Same thing with the 'Investigate Signals' Secondary Mission - it should basically say "Throw Units of Kroot Hounds &/or Tactical Drones into as many corners of the battlefield as you can, make them give up on shooting and fighting for the turn - score 2 Victory Points for each corner you control". Again, the Drones and Hounds being OC Zero doesn't prevent them from doing Secondary Missions, it only stops them doing Primary. Hide these units behind buildings until you draw this Mission card, keep them out of line of sight of the enemy until you draw this card, and keep moving them every turn from building to building toward the corners until you draw this card. The best use for Drones? Wait until you draw the 'Deploy Teleport Homers' card. That Mission Card should basically say = "wait until turn 3/ turn 4 when your opponent's army has moved out of their deployment zone/ has been shot off the board by all of your guns, deepstrike 2 Units of Tactical Drones into your opponent's Deployment Zone, make those drones do nothing except deploy Teleport Homers for a turn, get 5 Victory Points." The Tactical Drones have the Deepstrike Keyword for a reason. The Drones cost as much as they do 'because' they can Deep Strike/ because they have it built in. So use it :)P At this point we practically need them to score other Secondaries as well like 'Engage on All Fronts''/ do anything that doesn't rely on them Holding Primary Objectives but needs a unit that can pop onto the battlefield to score more Victory Points at any time. At this point I've stopped seeing the Drones and Hounds as units that fight/ engage in battle. I see them as plucky little under-dogs running around a scary battlefield doing story related missions while guns and explosions go off all around them. I like to imagine the hounds as well trained police dogs with Go-Pro Cameras strapped to their heads and sensory equipment strapped to their backs. They're actually on a mission to look for wounded soldiers and sniff out bomb sites (just like real world earthquake rescue dogs and bomb disposal sniffer dogs). The Drones aren't actually Gun Drones at all - they're basically bomb disposal units, or maybe they're HAZOP radiation and chemical spill detectors. Or maybe they're, well, just mobile Teleport Homers. (Again, just like how drones are used in the real world today... except for the teleport homing thing of course... we haven't got there as a species yet :)P Thank you for reading my TED talk - hope you found it useful :)P
Tau just feels incredibly bland. For the shooting army our guns are some of the least interesting in the game. We're not even close to the best shooting army in the game. I don't understand why GW shafted us so hard. I don't mind being a lower tier faction but I at least wanna have flavourful rules... Instead of what just feels like random ones. Like take long strike for instance. Lethal hits???? On a one shot weapon??? One that has devestating wounds????? Just.... Why? Or broadsides who get a 4+ fnp against mortals. Just like why. I don't understand.
Looking at the rules it more feels like a rush job / after thought. Rather than Malicious nerf. They had to make rules for large number factions so the just got lazy. Or they know the codex will be one of the earlier ones so can leave bad rules for a bit. As they say never attribute malice when it can be explained by laziness or stupidity.
I can make the rules for one faction in about 2 weeks and it will be both interesting and enough balance, but what can I know, I'm a game designer from Ukraine who was trained to do everything with high quality, and not to release the codeх so that they bought another box for 60 pounds
Lethal Hits on the Hammerhead makes sense, if you pick the Ion Cannon option. Makes it punch up a bit against high toughness models(vehicles and monsters), while being overall more effective against infantry and elites than the Railgun. Longstrike can keep his Railgun to focus mostly on vehicles/monsters.
The EMP grenade being the only weapon i could see with "anti-x" is a bit of a joke imo. You can plink off a single mortal against a vehicle... great...
Hey I just wanted to pop into your comment and let you know, not all is lost, I've been playing Tau recently and downing Imperial Knight lists Turn 3 using Stormsurges and Tetra teams, Ghostkeels have been a work horse for me and seeing Knights take 36 dmg from only 1 Stormsurge is hilarious when Sustained hits kicks in Turn 3
Hey Auspex, a whole video about the new flier rules would be very useful and appreciated, if there's any chance you can slot it in among the other 40,001 videos you have lined up. It seems there's been a lot of changes if they've lost the +1 to be hit, coming on turn 2, no limit per points, just 3 of the same unit. Otherwise, keep up the excellent work, thanks a lot!
Apart from some Lone Operative abuse, Tau are pretty basic now. Their shooting isn't great, their mobility got neutered, they don't have broken stuff like Oath or fate dice. Any side that can't reliably churn out mortals right now is basically C tier. Power aside, they're also now bland as F. Almost all our "cool shit" (tm) got stripped down or straight up removed. I like how every faction's complaints are now met with "at least you're not the DG or Admech!". That's not a counterargument, kids.
Yeah, in an edition where armies got their one broken thing, Tau feel really out of place. It's like we *finally* got a safe and balanced faction at the worst possible time.
You mentioned Aun'shi joining Farsight, but don't forget Farsight can't take Ethereals. I dont think you'd be able to take them together unfortunately. However it would be pretty sweet and kinda thematic to have them join up. Also, Breachers get BS3! I was waiting for you to mention it XD
@@HenryC04 That's like saying there's no such thing as Craftworld Iyanden or Carcharodons anymore. Calm down, the index stripped nearly everyone's options down to the bedrock; just because it's not in the index doesn't mean it no longer exists or won't be brought back in the codex.
@@HenryC04 beyond what the others have pointed out, there still ARE farsight enclaves- you can only take Farsight in them, and can’t take Ethereals. It’s lacklustre, don’t get me wrong, but they do technically exist as a restriction to units.
@@HenryC04 There is very specifically a rule that states if you take an ethereal, you cant take farsight and if you take farsight, you cant take an ethereal.
I find it worse that they did Farsight so dirty. And right after he got a huge role in the lore and a new model with a small paragraph of just how awesome it is.
Yeah whoever wrote these rules up I feel had no understanding of Tau fluff. Faction rules could have run in all sorts of directions; focus on auxiliaries, combined arms, stealth units, things that play off of the two tactical doctrines that Tau warfare is built around. Heck, we've got nearly a dozen septs that each have their own little quirks on how they blend, modify and in some cases outright ignore one of the two. This feels like taking a real world military and calling the air force and the army as different factions when they're supposed to be part of the same force.
@@BlueEyesWhiteViera They should have at least bumped him up to reasonably usable status. He only has two unique rules and only one actually helps your team. And the unique rule he gets isn't even vaguely as good as any of the three other commanders despite them being no-names and him being a 3 century old legendary war hero leading an entire renegade faction and wielding a magic sword. It's absolutely baffling, I'd rather they bump his cost up and push him to a mini primarch status since that'd at least be unique and far better lore wise.
I'm new to playing 40k, came from Kill team. So 10th is my first edition. I played a test game to learn the rules against my buddy who ran Necrons. I like to play aggressive, so the detachment rule didn't come into play much. Wasn't one of the whole things in this edition that "Vehicles are much tougher to take down" Battlesuits are now Vehicles, but at T5??? I understand Tau are "the shooting faction" yet somehow I felt very underpowered in comparison to my opponent. I like the simplified rules a lot, but I immediately felt the burn of drones don't count as models Sorta means that I am less inclined to paint them too, because I could just as easily write down what each unit is carrying. I like the "work together" aspect of the faction rule, but in my game, it was negated completely by my opponent having a character that gave his "big blob of necron warriors" Stealth -1 to hit. I feel like there is a way you HAVE to play tau, based off these rules. as a wrong way to play and a right way. less flexible. Like I feel punished for not having the right models that synergise e.g. I got a Commander on Sale at a local store, but I am poor and don't have crisis suits. Tactical drones are very poor. Again, I'm new, I bought and painted models cus I think they are cool, First time playing 40k, a homebrew combat patrol type thing to get to grips with it. so literal first impressions. I know we are the shooty faction everyone harps on, but I just wanna make my army feel like they are actually "a technologically advanced species" that is adaptive through tech. I had fun, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was put off by how poor it felt to fire everything I had into necron warriors and only kill 8 models.
Weird as it may be, I was mostly looking forward to the Firesight Marksmen/Team. With the new For the Greater Good army rule, setting them up in a high spot gives makes them incredible as an Observer Unit. But they strangely gave the Guided Unit bonus to it, instead of it providing a bonus to Guided Unit. I don't understand that choice at all. I would've been better to have it receive a bonus against the enemy unit they previously Spotted as an Observer Unit.
Overall, pretty decent, but a serious lack of reliable anti-tank outside of spamming Seeker missiles. Also, quite a few of their units either need a points drop (the infantry) or a datasheet rewrite (Riptide)
I think shield drones are still terrific for small characters as it helps against precision. Suddenly you need another 1-2 sniper shots to land in order to kill that crucial fireblade or ethereal.
I really like the baseline changes for 10th, but not particularly pleased with the army I spent all this money on :/ oh well, maybe I can print something else to play until we get patched. Not buying another set of GW plastic just to have it get bad rules randomly
Tau are in a really weird spot in 10th, I feel. On the whole they're not really *bad*...especially not compared to the Votann, AdMech or DG. But even though they've got some stuff going for them they feel very...bland. Yes Tau kind of were always a one-trick pony (i.e. shoot better and try not to die in melee), but this edition so far that feels dialed up to 11; our weapons have very few keywords, our army rule doesn't trigger until the game is half over, and it feels like we're going to have a repeat of the Triptide Trashcan Lid list of 8th, where we have one or two builds that are very competitive...but also very oppressive and uninteractive (someone correct me otherwise, but I think we've got more Lone Operatives than any other army and our meta list is probably going to be a Ghostkeel castle with Shadowsun). Don't even get me started on how FSE lists got shafted because Kauyon is *apparently* a faction...yeah that makes no sense fluffwise.
I have been saying the same thing. It doesn't feel genuinely _bad_ it just feels incredibly lacking in flavor or fun mechanics. That said, it is an index, so it may improve with the codex. And my second army is TSons, so I really can't complain.
@@sirbaconbuster Lucky My other armies are AdMech and DG...so Tau are literally my only real option until the codices drop if I want any chance of winning at all.
Haters will say it’s exaggerating because “hurrrrrrrr, xenos scum complaining about not being broken, boohoo” but this index genuinely set Tau back to the stone age of 8th edition.
@@vinnythewebsurfer We Tau players are used to it. We always get dumped on because we pendulum hard between being completely broken with one or two viable builds, or being bottom of the barrel, then other players claim we deserve it because we try to work with the tools given to us same as everyone else. I never see Eldar or Necron players get bullied the same way Tau players do.
@@fabr1cat0rgeneral94 A part of that is probably because Tau got labelled as "weeaboo space communists" (despite having a socio-economic system that's not at all communist because of the way caste systems work, and being more like a hybrid of Chinese Taoism and Confucianism in philosophy and culture than Japanese). This makes them a hate sink because, at least where I'm located in the states, about half of the fans of anything GW makes absolutely DESPISE anyone who likes "weeb" things.
So, not seeing this in the comments, and I don't know if this has been FAQ'd already, but a question about the Weapon Support System for Battlesuits: That "ignore any or all modifiers to the hit roll": would that include the -1 to hit from the vehicle rule when in melee? Because, if so, that may make the fusion blasters that much easier to use. Deep Strike Farsight with a full squad of Crisis Suits, and just go balls deep.
- Nerf to split fire on a faction that introduced it is ridiculous. - With free wargear the internal balance of crisis suit weapons is non existent. There's zero reason to take burst cannons for example. - Tau indirect was effectively removed (airburst and SMS profiles are just awful). Indirect does need a rework, it's cancer, it's uninteractive, but nerfing tau while buffing marines and guard indirect to be just as if not more broken than Tau on release of their codex in 9th doesn't make sense. - Lone operative needs to be 18". It's another non interactive mechanic and making faction rely on it to be viable is not fun for either player.
I can actually see a very specific use of Burst Cannons. If the unit acting as the Observer has the "Through Unity, Devastation" enhancement, the guided Crisis unit gets Lethal on their weaponry. Combine that with Sustained Hits2 from Kauyon, and the massive amounts of shots(Crisis Commander to reroll 1's on hit), the Burst Cannons can score wounds on targets that normally would be difficult to wound, and against low toughness, low SV units, it would completely destroy them. A lot of it will still be absorbed by saves and FNP, but still. Something like 20 burst cannons(80 shots!), would mean automatic wounds on an average of 13 due to Lethal(which would generate an extra 26 hits due to Sustained2), and even if you had a lot of misses, you would still have about 60 to-wound rolls to make. Even only wounding on 6's, that would be roughly another 10 wounds, so a total of 23 wounds that your opponent has to save against.
There are a few things I like, such as part of FTGG making Tau mostly hitting on 3s - the penalty to split firing is unnecessary though. Breachers being able to hit on 2s when guided is nice, as is their re-roll wounds mechanic - Fireblade leading them brings the squad up to 30 S6 shots; that's gonna hurt something. I also like Stealth team observer rule granting wound re-rolls. Overall however I'm quite disappointed and don't see myself playing much, if at all if things stay like this. So much of the faction's identity is just gone, and functionally they just seem to be lacking lethality.
I think the "For the Greater Good" mechanic is actually somewhat fluffy and works quite well, too. Yes, the -1 penalty for not shooting at the spotted target is absolutely unnecessary, but wasn't really an issue in my test game. It feels kinda dumb though not being able to splitfire with our former multipurpose unit (Crisis Suits) while also not being able to equip them with guns that are reliably able to deal with this edition's fiend: tanks! Regarding the loss of identity, I somewhat agree with you but think that some factions have it worse. Votann basically have completely lost the little flavour they had AND their army rules on top of that. Their army rule now is basically that they can shoot as well as they could in 9th edition without any additional rules, but they have to sacrifice units for it to work. In an army where the lore says they try to keep losses to a minimum. Death Guard are supposed to be slow, tanky and deadly if you get close to them. Well...they are slow, so there's that.
@@ElGrompho666 - it's the multi-purpose units I'm thinking of regarding the FTGG penalty, Stormsurge to be specific because of how many different weapons it has; the rule is in conflict with how that thing works. I can see the loss of identity and flavour in a few factions, it's just Tau that I play most so naturally most bothered by - I'm critical of simplification in this regard in a lot of games, I've never seen it go well; the more experienced don't like the dumbing down of things and the new aren't retained. The tanks being strong is an odd wee pet peeve of mine - not for Imp Guard for example, tanks are part of their identity, but Tau vehicles; the battlesuit equivalents just seem inferior, which is thematically wrong.
@@MGShadow1989 Agreed, the Broadsides and the Stormsurge feel way too flimsy for their price tag and the Riptide is just garbage now. I believe at least the Stormsurge and the Riptide are supposed to be quite chonky.
@@ElGrompho666 - the general idea I've always gotten from Tau's arsenal is the battlesuits are meant to be tougher and more versatile alternatives to what the vehicles do, with the vehicles either being more accurate or higher damage. This doesn't seem to be the case in 10th, which begs the question what's the point in Broadsides and Riptides?
@@MGShadow1989 Well, the Broadsides at least have workable anti-tank guns that are also quite a bit cheaper than Hammerheads. The Riptides though, I have no idea. Yes, they are slightly more survivable than many of the other things we have due to a 2+ save and their 4+ invuln. But they also cost 235 points, are rather slow with the new terrain rules and basically do nothing because they don't have anti-tank and for anti-infantry we have many options that are a lot cheaper. Ghostkeels are a way better alternative now. Honestly, for what they do, Riptides need to be at least 30-40 points cheaper and even then I would still take to Ghostkeel. I think the new fly-over-terrain-rules also hurt us quite a bit. Our suits and tanks basically have to move around terrain like normal vehicles but are less durable for a similar pricetag. Yes, Crisis Suits are still somewhat fast, but not being able to move through terrain anymore hampers their zippyness quite a bit.
Longstrike is only a buff to hammerheads when shooting things without an invulnerable save. Lethal hits bypass devistating wounds and don't count as a specific roll. When you factor in your free reroll, and that a stationary & guided hammerhead hits on a 2+ Longstrike is a nerf if anything when your opponent has an invulnerable save.
You could use the Ion Cannon on the Hammerhead. 4-9 Shots(+Sustained Hits2 from Guided Kauyon) with Lethal hits, Overcharged. That is on average 6 hits, with 1 of them being Lethal, but can potentially be much more(9 attacks have a good chance of rolling two 6's, which on average would mean 2 lethal and 9 regular hits). Also, every other weapon system on the Hammerhead gets Lethal(and Sustained hits if Guided), including Seekers. Critting with Seekers is quite good.
Losing AP on kroot rifles, ritual blades, kroot guns, AND kroot hound fangs as well as yet another wound on shapers is a fine exchange for the built in feel no pains that were previously attainable through a stratagem, and the new aura buffs. My thanks GW.
Yeah, I dont see the point of Kroot stuff right now. I mean it is cheap fodder for tackling things that tries to move around, but they cant use most of your factions special abilities. From "For the Greater Good" to Transports, and Kauyon only benefits ranged weapons, not melee(honestly, that alone would help a lot). If/when we get a Mont'ka detachment rules, they might be better.
Tau commanders gone to 3+ bs ffs.. Fusion blasters gone to 12 inch range ffs.. From all the stratagems we lost, we gained one for a 6+ fnp, which is absolutely garbage. As a Tau player myself, they are looking shocking. We've lost so much and gaianed very little. They haven't even bothered giving us both mont'ka and kauyon. They just gave us one....wtf
One more thing. Apparently the Tau has quite small choices of anti tank weaponry, but it should be very efficient... all those guys hits on 2+ - Broadsides with railguns (BS4+, but from heavy while stationary +1 to hit and guided gives them +1BS sooo its stacks :D), Stormsurge - same, and Hammerhead too.
3 Piranhas for 165 points, each with 2 Seeker Missiles, can probably help pop things. Also, as long as we are talking Toughness 9 or less, Pathfinder Rail Rifles can also be quite handy. Or you can just mass fire with that Enhancement that gives Lethal to a guided unit. Combined with Sustained Hits2, even a regular Strike Team with a Fireblade attached can generate something like 10 wounds on big stuff if within rapid fire range.
lets see what happens when septs are released for 10th. if there's something like bork'an in 9th giving ekstra range some units could(potentially) become devastating like the piranha with burst canon if that can be given ekstra range
Drone Squad stats are a joke. My theory(coming from someone who played original Tau), the first box sets all came with Drones, so you essentially built up free Gun Drone squads as you collected your army. I don't know the contents of the later sets, but it seems GW wants to severely penalize you for having units in your army that you didn't shell out money for a box of.
smart missile systems also lost ignore cover and are even missing one shot from where they should be if they were a single system and Aun'shi lost 2 wounds lost his 4+ inulvnerable for a 5+ gained an attack but lost WS2+. As for the Puretide Neurochip since it doesn't reduce the cost of the second stratagem use you still need to pay twice for it to be worthwhile. Why don't ethereals have For the Greater Good?
Ah see now having a review helps. I couldn't understand why our Commanders went down to BS3+ instead of 2, but given how easy it is to bump up the BS with observer units, that kind of adds up. Also means there's a few units where that makes a huge difference, like Breachers suddenly hitting on 2s, possibly rerolling wound rolls if the target is on an objective. Make sure the observer has markerlights (Pathfinders) to ignore cover and should be a nice way to roll up and push units off objectives. Shove them in a Devilfish, shoot the unit, if they survive and try and charge ? Combat Embarcation.
What is the utility of Commander Shadowsun’s “Flechette Launcher”. Five S3 AP 0 shots at 18” range? I’m just curious on how often that weapon is ever used in gameplay?
The detachment ability and the lack of meaningful damage output really does force this index into the turtle and then pray for a big comeback faction that honestly cannot play objectives well due to lack of cheap throw away trading units for keeping your scoring from falling too far behind. Also why does the shooting faction completely lack reliable anti tank outside of the Surge, railsides or skyray? wounding on a 5 at best means suits just don't cut it when your commiting to trade a 400 point unit for 200 point tanks or the insane 125 fireprism
54:10 I'll say it again, Breachers and Shieldlines go together like peanut butter and chocolate. The thing can advance freely with them inside, shooting 10-20 of them through Firing Deck, and they can even play silly games with disembarking to eke out another 3" of range or grab and objective, while escaping melee retribution with the embarkation strat. You can stuff them with strikes or even pathfinders, but the biggest punch will still be breachers and they benefit the most from being able to measure range from any point on that big, goofy footprint it has. Having 20 Breachers effectively standing on the head of a pin and that pin stuck anywhere you like in shieldline each time you fore is a huge help with their short range. Also note that Firing Deck 20 means you can affect twice as many shots with the ambush strat if having more AP makes sense. A shieldline is 85 points base with transport 11, 105 with the added platform that takes it to 22 and W15 instead of 10. One of the most efficient pure firing decks in the entire game when upgraded. 55:30 Oh hell, no. AT didn't read the droneport rules. Those 8 twin-linked pulse carbine shots are resolved against every single valid target every time it shoots. Much like the sporocyst and hammerfall bunker it sandpapers damage off everything it can legally shoot, which is a 20" bubble - and unlike them it can move. Even with just BS5+ that can become a fair bit of chip of damage, and with the Kauyon bonuses it could become downright dangerous. On top of that those guns have Aassault, so it can advance freely for 1d6+4" movement every turn - and to harp on a point, Breachers work great with these. This is the less-defensive option for a Breacher slow-ride, trading the ++ save, higher transport efficiency and extra wounds the upgraded shieldline offer for a smaller footprint (sometimes an edge, sometimes not) one unit and supporting guns. And again, this is can be an efficient place to use the ambush strat if you've jammed yourself in close enough that the drone guns are within 9" of at least some targets. 56:20 The gunrig hasn't actually been available from GW in over a year and was still absent last I looked. For 90 points it's actually middling durable thanks to the big 14W. The Hammerhead massively outshines it for reliability (effectively hitting on rerollable 2+ with Guidance, and able to reroll the wound instead if the hit roll didn't whiff) but it's also 55 points more expensive (albeit much more mobile and tougher to boot). OTOH, the gunrig is going to be carrying infantry models as well, so it's a reasonable choice for Guidance too. 90 points for a 4+ twin-linked railgun shot plus the Firing Deck seems okay. Most likely you use a Strike team here, the Pathfinders just have too much to offer from their unit card abilities to waste on a few heavy weapon firing deck shots. If you have 70 points to spare you can also somewhat hilariously shove a Firesight sniping team in as well. The gunrig doesn't mind staying stationary to let the snipers use heavy, but if it has to move they'd still hit on 3+ with guidance. In fact, if you really wanted to splurge on irritating character sniping, leaving the Strike team home and stuffing three firesight teams in a gunrig would be a solid way to Guide all of them at once, although none would benefit from the reroll ability when using their guns through firing deck. Almost certainly not worth it, but unless the enemy kills the gunrig from quite short range the surviving snipers would be immediately able to exploit lone operative and stealth, making them pretty hard to finish off.
I played a game two weeks ago, using a stormsurge, did not use the riptide, since the game was 1000 points but I fought knights, its pulse blast cannon is amazing when things get within that 24 inch range and it can still be guided by the other tau to get a +1 to hit. which is sinuational but good depending if or when you move to shoot things within 24 inchs. I think taking one in a army with either the pulse blast cannon or the pulse drive cannon will be good, or you can add two pluse a riptide, and fill in the other 955 points with a leader and some other models. broadsides will be great to have as well.
23:20 With Kauyon as the only detachment, you're encouraged to preserve relatively hard-hitting but fragile stuff till round 3. Forget rushing with the Breachers in a Devilfish, that's for expendable Kroot. Stuff them in a Tidewall (the shieldline with platform upgrade is absurdly cheap and sturdy transport) that can advance every turn with impacting the Breachers shooting from Firing Deck 22 at all. By turn 3 you'll be an average of 22" off your start line and can start playing disembark-hose-objective-clear-combat-embark-if-threatened games. On earlier turns you can probably still get some shots on anyone advancing to midfield objectives, and if you need it these guys are made for the ambush strat. The shieldline was okay last edition even if most people ignored it, and while it's different in 10th it's still good, just in different ways. Just don't expect good results against Tyranids, who will absolutely screw your advances and movement between spores and barbgants. On the plus side, their army is likely to come to you.
Haha! The Droneport shooting at EVERY ELIGIBLE enemy unit and not just one target, ie. constitues a 40" bubble where any enemy unit will have some pot shots taken against them, is hilarious to me and I might just bring one just for the funs someday :P
To be honest - I have very, very, very mixed feelings about Tau in 10th edition... I quite like: 1) For the Greater Good - I like it, it is easy to remember, easy to apply, somehow is incorporating the markerlights, also some units have special rules to boost it. But... no split shooting? 1.5) Special rules for Pathfinders and Stealth suits that boost the FtGG. 2) Drones - hmmm i like this, it is easy to remember and aplly too... Also, because of this there should be a bigger variety of them on the table :D And guardian drone - oooh boi... But also... PS. does it means that they could be placed as a swarm on one base or put them together with Battlesuit? 3) Breachers in Devilfish and with stratagems? Ouch! And quite thematic and climatic. PS. Does they can benefit from being guided while inside the Devilfish? 4) Easy access to Stormsurge, even if his model is not the best one :D 5) Piranhias and their special ability. 6) Devilfish - Rapid deployment is wonderful. 7) Firesight Team. I very dislike what happened around: 1) No special overwatch/retalation shooting - if I correctly understand the Overwatch can be called only once per turn, right? I miss the free overwatch and that there is no possibility to add another unit in combined overwatch (that could be a special stratagem for Tau...). It is nice that Tau firewarriors have overwatch on 4+, but... 2) The Tau weaponry - I have feeling that in this edition Tau suffered technological regress... I know this is the matter of 10th edition, but so many weapons were cut down. Plasma rifles, SMSs (well most of the missiles), Fusion Blasters, Ion weaponry, Nova Charge.. How the Tau could fight against heavy armor? 3) The Battlesuits, the supports systems are so cut down, the suits have vehicle keyword... No Iridium armor. I see this more as a nerf... 4) The auxilliary troops - wish there wolud be some synergy between Tau and Auxies, they fight for a quite moment of time arm by arm... 5) The drones - why gun/missile drones exist? Why should I deploy the Tactical Drones?! 6) Broadsides - I really do not understand why those suits benefits from advanced armor? 7) Aircrafts - so the fighter equipped in theory to fight other aircrafts will wound them on 5+? 8) Heavy and FtGG with markerlights - I feel a little bit of Skornergy here... 9) I prefer the Kayoun, but... what about Montka?
About the Dislikes, I do think Overwatch can be more than 2 times, but require special rules to allow it. Like that of "Puretide Engram Neurochip"-Enhancement. Special rules beat general rules. We know this is true from other factions that have units with abilities that allow Overwatch to be used more than once per turn. If Overwatch was supposed to still be restricted even with the Neurochip, it would have stated "Excluding Fire Overwatch" or something like that. As for weaponry, I think they simply have to rely a lot on synergies between units and various effects, and focus on the objectives(they are very mobile). When a large part of your army can get Sustained Hits2 on all their ranged weaponry, even the Pulse Rifle starts to punch through tougher stuff, especially when you also have the option of lethal. A crit on a Railgun or Seeker missile, and it might be all you need. But yeah, some of the things feels like an early draft.
Does this mean that Tau can now take more than 1 Commander in Battlesuit "X"? It just needs to be limited to 3 of each type and 1 of them must be nominated as your warlord. Per the 10th edition rules it seems so and I see nothing in the Tau rules to countermand it.
Excellent overview. Coordinated Engagement is a way to get round the -1 BS for split firing with a guided unit. Take a large crisis suit with a commander and gun drones and 1 marker drone. If the firepower would be overkill a target they can be the observer and then have the stratagem played on them, for the weapons that don't go on the spotted target will hit on 4+ rather than 5+. In a niche case but worth considering where a max crisis suit with gun drones and a commander would be ridiculous overkill. The 0 OC value of hounds is really turning me off. They were great to throw onto a mid table objective forcing the enemy to move out and kill them. With them and detached drones disappearing Tau have lost their cheap units for early trading. As they're effectively paying for their wargear even fire warriors have gone up 25% to 100 points. The cheapest unit that can claim on objective is Aun'Va at 65 points following my many units at 75 points and none of them are anything but very fragile. I think this is something Tau players will have to give some thought to when it comes to list building.
11:55 If you're using Breachers at all one of them will be spamming Ambush every turn or they're probably just deadweight playing Guide for other stuff, they only have a 10" range in the first place. Similarly, if Breachers are riding a Tidewall for a firing platform they'll often have times where they want to disembark to eke out that little extra bit of range, then use Combat Embarkation to escape retribution. The Tidewalls' silly model sizes (particularly the long, thin shieldline) mean a lot more for the short-ranged Breachers than anything else in the army - being able to fire the whole unit from any point on those big models makes a real difference to their target choices, and the disembark option can earn you a shot a whole turn earlier than otherwise sometime with the strat still leaving you quite safe.
Something to Clarify here on Drones and how they interact with units, check to see what specifically applies for each sheet. For example Crisis Suits will be running 2 shield drones on all units as it states "Each Model can take up to 2 of the following, and can have duplicates" meaning crisis suits by default are 6 wounds not 4. Generally speaking it means any commander that is not an Epic Hero will be running 1 shield and 1 marker for the crisis suits they attach to, resulting in a 3 or 6 man squad of 6 wound crisis suits with markerlights on the commander. Others like Breachers specify that they can take 1 Guardian and no more than 2 drones in total for the Shas'ui, with Duplicates allowed for Shield, Gun, and Marker Drones.
I agree with you on that. I am thinking about editing the Crisis Suit index so that the wounds are six. I plan not to place a single drone model on the table.
I have a 3-suit Crisis team with one carrying a shield generator to tank shots; now that they're free, I think plunking a pair of shield drones on him might extend how much tanking he can do under the new rules. (Thanks to the new "free drone" rules, I went from having too many in my collection to perhaps too few. Oh well, at least they're quick to assemble & paint.)
I think the Gun-Drone having assault, makes the Marker-Drone obsolete (unless you want the markerlight keyword), given: It gives the unit an assault weapon, which makes it elligible for shooting, thus being able to advance and act as an observer. Am I right, or am I missing something here?
@@markhohenbrink5230 I am not referring to the Tac Drones, but the drones in the squad as an add on, e.g. the strike team can be observer if it advances with a gun drone, given it is "elligible"
Marker drones are redundant for Strike and Breacher Teams since they've already got markerlights. The wording of FtGG means that Breacher Teams can mark since they have assault weapons. Technically a Strike team with a gun drone can advance and still be an observer, though that feels like a weird rules interaction that was unintended (After all, why does the fireteam suddenly get better at marking targets on the fly just because it has a trashcan lid?) and a waste of the rest of their firepower anyway. Infantry will always want to take a Guardian Drone and a Gun Drone; the other drones don't really do much for them.
@@TrueSilverBastion oops, read that wrong. To answer your actual question, yes you can advance with a strike team with a gun drone and use it as a spotter unit. For other infantry squads, they have assault weapons already or the unit wants to take different drones, like pathfinders.
Gundrones could work, as long as the intended target is within 20"(and you already have the Markerlight Keyword). Otherwise you would need the Marker Drone to Advance and act as an Observer.
They're just gone. Use em as regular missile drones that just look slightly better (I always thought the ones that just have the missile pod hanging off the bottom looked silly)
Thanks for the quick response guys. I talked to my friends about it and we decided to just use them as a combination of the two variations for a slight point increase :)
Breachers are the most efficient points unit in the entire index now, they are... amazing. They out do Crisis suits, fire warriors, ghhostkeels, hammerheads against most things... they out kill Wraithknights vs a Hammer head lol
I'm new to 40k but if i understand the rules right, im really excited to make tau my first team because I love vehicles and I love infantry but I'm not big on imp army. But I'd love to get a droneport or a tidewall and stuff them full of strike teams with ethereals to scout the fortifications up the field and give them the chip to allow for using of the same stratagem again if it was already used before, and overwatch the oncoming hordes as piranhas charge up the board with a devilfish to siege further points with breachers that have the kayon on turn 2 instead of 3, so they can reliably disrupt objective control and hopefully obtain it myself then maybe if allowed have stealth battlesuits homing beacon a sunshark bomber in early, if allowed by rules idk if it is but it seems like it and I like the idea and look of the bombers a lot
The main reason to take a Darkstrider is to give your Pathfinders Through Unity, Devastation -> Lethal Hits on guided units. Combine that with Sustained Hits 2 and you can dish out a lot of damage.
That was my plan initially, but on page 56 they hid a rule that ses Epic Heroes can’t have Enhancements. Sure the 12” anti alpha-strike is nice, and adding one to wound rolls. But for 75 points that is a bit steao for me.
As others have said, he's an Epic Hero and can't take enhancements. The Firesight Team on the other hand is a Character with Lone Operative and Precision weapons.
Can the vehicles like riptides that have the damaged status just ignore the -1 to hit with their weapon support system? i mean its built in to just not have to care if they are damaged.
Puretide engram chip is pure garbage. Everything single other army that has a 'use a strategem twice' ability makes it cost it 0 cp. Except the tau one, ok. Where the hell do they expect you to get the CP from to even be able to use that thing? fyi longstrike is pretty shit as well, lethal hits overrides devastating wounds, so its nice to autowound (like a hammerhead needs that lol) but then you don't get your MW from your railgun. I guess it could work on an ionhead though.
Same as with the detachment rule. You save up CP until Turn 3, hope to survive that long, and spend it all in one go hoping for the best, yay! Why do I always pick the worst times to return to 40k.
Was wanting to play tau as my third army. I was thinking about scooping up the combat patrol sometime next month as a starter set until i can get Farsight himself. Im sad they stopped selling the boarding patrol :(
Just realised this is 2 months ago but the combat patrol actually has some really good units for these rules. Don't know if you've made up your mind though considering the time that's passed.
I really feel like Kauyon is a huge flavor miss the way it is implemented in 10th (and was in 9th). The Patient Hunter is supposed to be about ambushes and fighting at long range, how the hell is this rule representing it well ? You don't ambush an ennemy when you're already halfway through the battle, and probably already engaged in melee if the enemy is inclined to try. There where far better way to carry the idea of the Kauyon, like Infiltration, Stealth, or the ability to redeploy unit at the start of the battle (seriously, the 'Exemplar of the Kauyon' warlord trait was the only good implementation of the Kauyon philosophy I've seen in 9th and 10th).
Kauyon is about springing traps, herding your foe into killzones, encirclement and other such tactics. If you want the "turn 1 big splat", that is Mont'ka. I do agree that they could do more in terms of mobility, since they are supposed to avoid direct and full confrontation until properly positioned.
@@fendelphi I agree that big turn 1 alpha strikes are Mont'ka's thing, but both philosophies want to strike first, either by taking the initiative (Mont'ka), or, like you said, by avoiding confrontation (Kauyon). This implementation feels like I'm just supposed to endure a beatdown until I'm getting a boost out of nowhere to strike back, and that doesn't feel neither like Kauyon, nor like the T'au way of war in general. I think that, if the idea is to patiently avoid confrontation until the time has come to spring the trap, Kauyon indeed lacks mobility/defensive tricks (moving in the ennemy turn maybe ?) to make it feel right.
@@Lleldorellin Yeah the last part is what I think as well. Because the damage potential is clearly there(once Kauyon is active), but the issue is you only have 3 battle rounds to turn things around in terms of victory points(as it is now). Basically you have to have a strategy for the first half, and another for the second half, while still being aware of shifting objectives. And they do not get a lot of good tools to do it with. Lack of "generic" characters to put into certain squads(nothing for Stealth Suits and very limited options for Pathfinders) and the noodle like strength of the various Kroot units and Tactical Drones.
You made an error with the Tidewall Droneport. You get 8 drone defender shots against EVERY enemy unit that is an eligible target, not the closest one. So that means each enemy unit in LoS within 20" is targetted with 8 bonus shots. Its chip damage but its potentially a lot of chip damage across the enemy units.
My Tau are really bad, sad face. I keep seeing people saying “oh no, with lone operative and blah blah) their good. I watched 5 battle reports with Tau. 3 of the games they were tabled by turn 3, the other turn 4 and the last they actually survived ( barely against Voltan) and still lost the game by 50 points. Enough said I think.
I'd note that for Through Unity, Devastation, Pathfinders can spot for 2 units per turn. So bringing Darkstrider (no longer Sept locked) with that Enhancement will let his Pathfinders grand the normal boosts, plus lethal hits, for 2 units per turn if they can stay on the board.
Coordinate to Engage issue is that the unit does not count as "Guided"(it simply gets similar buffs), meaning it wont benefit from Kauyon's "Sustained Hits2", only the lesser version. Generally speaking, there are better uses for your CP, but in the right situation, sure it will be an ok stratagem.
As a T'au player this seems 😮💨👎 either gonna change armies or just play Kill Team and skip 10th. Now that i've seen it I don't like it, plus all the work that went into drone models and battlesuit equipment that basically means nothing now...not cool.
Why do Adeptus Custodes get 2,3,5,6 or 4,5,9,10 unit sizes to account for the shied captain, but crisis suits are limited to 3 or 6 so if you want to build a crisis suit commander you have to put 2 models into the bits box?
The more I look at the data sheets and the weapon profiles for all these different armies, the more I am convinced that the design philosophy for this edition was to make it more like 7th edition. Armies like tau and dark eldar seem to have had their play styles reverted back to what it was in that era and many of the units that were really good in that era are good once again
I am not really a fan that the Accelerator burst cannon and Twin smart missile systems are different on Longstrike to the normal Hammerhead in a seemingly random way. One has one more shot, the other an extra AP, while the Twin pulse carbine simply stays the same. Will get really hard to memorize everything.
My first 10th ed game was 1000k my death guard against tau from son and dark angels from another son. Tau took it handily with double observation from pathfinder squads and guided third round extra shots with cadre fireblade. Wasnt even close. Would have been scary even if DG werent on the struggle bus. Edit: darkstrider is a bit pricey but the +1 to wound is nothing to sneeze at. It's far stronger than the DG -1 toughness aura. Kinda wish DG aura was +1 to wound instead.😔
Seems like they got a big backstock of Ghostkeels (or Combat Patrol for them) and Piranhas that they need to get out of the warehouse. They'll be nerfed back down when the Codex drops.
So GW is a miniature company that just made an army list that doesn't require a huge chunk of models it used to require... ... when did their marketing department get that incompetent?
@@d-rex7043 Or if you've been around long enough, you just have all the models. I'm excited to whip out my trip-keel from 7th edition when they had 2 fantastic detachments.
![[DRIP] ‘Woke Up In Tokyo (RUKA & ASA)’ PREVIEW](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QN44lcR_VkI/mqdefault.jpg)
CORRECTIONS:
- Missed that the Breachers had gone to BS3+ on the pulse blaster for some reason. Not sure why they get that, but seems solid with their re-roll wounds
- The Droneport shoots EVERY unit within 20", not just one. Still only averaging around 2-3 hits base, but could do some useful chip damage to an infantry army with mediocre saves?
They're very well trained soldiers at close range with space shotguns, BS3+ makes sense to me!
@@KaboukiJoe Certainly beat those jokers in the strike teams for marksmanship :)
@@auspextactics Talk to thier spotting team ;)
@@KaboukiJoe Now if only Battlesuit pilots were elite soldiers with lots of experience.
@@Kepora1 Its true, but elite pilots are still being translated through the battlesuit, even being super agile for their size, that's a jet packing, walking light tank, its heft is going affect precision in at least some way, I'd imagine.
Still, I'd also sure agree with BS3+ on battlesuits, considering the other side of the argument about suit-tech, etc being advanced enough to make them worthy.
I find it funny that we have to wait for the philosophy that isn't about waiting, and we don't have to wait for the philosophy about waiting.
Incroyable.
I can’t get over how the accelerator burst cannon and missile pod profiles have varying AP values depending on the data sheet. There are some weird continuity errors in this index that bug the shit out of me.
9th edition CSM had a similar problem having like 5 different autocannon profiles.
I feel like that HAS to be a mistake. I thought this edition was supposed to be simpler.
@@fabr1cat0rgeneral94 yes, but didn't those at least have different names? Havoc, reaper, etc? This is nominally the same gun. Longstrike has a weaker burst cannon than the generic hammerhead for Pete's sake!
@@petermccall1185 they said they made the new datasheet this way for that purpose! longstrike has always had a better BS than the generic hammerhead.. idk what the problem is?
@@TauEnjoyer that doesn't explain why longstrike has a straight up inferior burst cannon. It's AP 0 whereas the generic hammerhead has one with AP -1.
I’m going to write James workshop a very strongly worded letter if they don’t put back the Eight back into the Codex.
And fusion blades.
Ah, yes...James Workshop, founder and CEO.
"HORUS! NOW I HAVE BECOME THE WARHAMMER 40000!"
© James Workshop
My guess is we're getting a mont'ka and/or farsight detachment in the codex that will address this and fusion blades.
Our codex comes out relatively sooner than most so I'll take it
I played The Eight almost exclusively when the rules came out in 8e. Built special models for them, took my time painting them, and even 3d printed some bits. By the time I was done the team the rules were removed.
If we don't get rules for them I'm making custom ones for friendly games.
Not as bad as some of the other armies but holy hell how do you give an army that can only really shoot so few long range anti-armor choices? I feel like 3 Hellhounds and a single other tank from the Guard list could run roughshod over an entire Tau army before you can even get your detachment rule to work.
It's looking like a squad of broadsides or two is going to need to happen, even then vs. guard they're just gonna get picked off one by one with all of that indirect fire.
@@PlasticAddict301 moving a vehicle with 5” move to get line of sight of what you want is going to be a challenge.
The hammerhead put in some work for me over the weekend. 10 wounds to a landraider hitting on 3s with the railgun. Didn't get to fire the missile pods though.
A hammerhead can 1 shot a hellhound and 72in range covers the whole board
@@eragon12496but if you fight any armies that have invulns, good luck. You'll kill 1 thing the whole game if you're lucky.
Mont’ka not being in at launch is a huge blunder. They release a brand new Farsight model just to omit his style on launch?!
my sentiments precisely. fortunately we dont have to wait too long for the t'au codex. they're my second army i'm building, so i'll be playing astra militarum in the meanwhile. overall t'au datasheets look fairly nice, i'm just really waiting for that Mont'ka sauce.
Nor does he feature any unique rules for his fancy new model 😂😂
Farsight solo model is probably going to be part of the solo launch. That's my hunch at least
aside from that kauyon is just more niche, majority of people would rather just get their stuff done early rather than wait 3 whole turns just to get your detachment rules
@@Mechanical_mind94 - Yea, he has to be right up there with Snikrot for underwhelming rules on a great model.
I thought this edition was supposed to be simpler? All the slightly different stats on Burst Cannons and Missiles have got to be mistakes, right? Because having slightly different profiles for the same weapon needlessly complicates something that is supposed to be simple.
I also feel that overall army rule is bad for complicating the shooting phase.
hey if you want simpler, remember that gun drones are wargear tokens if they attach to a unit, but models if you (for whatever reason) run them as an independent squad.
Something to consider, Marker drones don't actually do anything on the tau infantry squads. They all already have Markerlights, so all the squads really need to be able to Advance and Observe is eligibility to shoot. Breachers already have Assault weapons so can do that by default. Strike Teams and Pathfinders can just use the Gun Drone to get an Assault weapon.
Consequently, there's also no reason to equip the Ethereals with Marker Drones (any unit they attach to has access to Gun Drones and they lack the Faction Ability so can't Observe solo), and only run them on the Fireblade if you're trying to run one solo for some reason.
Good point, I guess gun drones and guardians for the FW squads perhaps then?
@Auspex Tactics seems to be the play. Gun drones for everyone! At least until this gets addressed in an Errata or other points formats down the road make marker drones significantly cheaper than gun drones to take.
putting marker drones on stealth suits is big though. provides them with the markerlight keyword which combined with their boost to reroll wounds rolls of 1 to their guided unit is lit. plus, when you use the coordinated strat with them, they benefit from that ignore cover.
For FW and Breachers I would run the gun drone plus guardian drone
@The Herpetologist absolutely. Our battlesuit units can still make use of markers, so they aren't useless for the entire Index. Stealthsuits are a great candidate for them.
Im confused, I keep seeing everyone say infantry have the markerlight keyword as a default, but I can't find any reference to it? Like if they do, I'm not complaining, but my friends are gonna think I'm full of shit if I can't point to where it's listed to prove it :/
The complete lack of any keywords on most weapons feels like a huge oversight.
And short of Hammerheads/broadsides, how exactly are we supposed to deal with vehicles? Hitting on 4(3 if youre guided) and wounding on 5 with our supposedly anti-tank weapons feels really bad
a stormsurge is a must this edition. 405 points, all guns are heavy, so it stays still hits on 3+, has titanic a 4+ invul, and a str24 gun that shots twice. Guide it and take shadowsun for re-roll 1's and use stealth teams to spot for re-roll wounds. 2 stormsurges and shadowsun are 950 points, and will cost you friends lol
@@andregreenidge937have you seen the taunar statline and points cost?
@loganmoyes1320 yeah it looks decent with the railgun. I guess it's time to finally build mine.
@@TMS_leo have you seen the price tag and availability on that model?
I think piranhas are gonna be decent in some list combos.
Decent AP damage output, 2 OC, 7 wounds, forces battle-shock tests. And only 55 points! Cultists for World Eaters are 75 points 😮(which I also play) so that's pretty darn good value.
Put your infantry in devilfish, lead targeted strikes to objectives and let your broadside(s) and stormsurge hold and also destroy enemy advancements.
I havent finished buying my T'au army yet but essentially I already have a feeling we are gonna have to be carried by our transports and more expensive mechs. However, even in a 2,000 point army you really have to pick which mech is best for your specific list set-up.
Commanders in Cold-Star giving those bonuses to Crisis battlsuits looks like it's also kind of a must if you want some more use out of them.
RIP tau see ya in the spring when the codex drops
I'm at least happy that we're not getting neglected till the end of the edition.
The codex drops this fall
@@thedandy6765 spring actually
@@jaydeeg3240 a hobby store worker told me it would drop this year in the fall so a few months from now
Thank you for your hard effort and commitment to the community!
Worth noting Breachers at BS 3+ standard
Coldstar Commander + Crisis and Breachers + Devilfish will make the backbone of my initial couple of lists. Shadowsun and Broadsides look good for holding a backline. I want Hammerheads to be good, but on paper they look expensive. A couple of token Strike Teams for holding objectives. It's hard to know just looking at numbers, but I'm excited to test things out.
Worth noting: for the Strat Coordinate to Engage the selected unit doesn't benefit from the secondary Kauyon effect [Sustained Hits 2] since it still doesn't count as a Guided unit (despite the Strat nominally making it work as such)
Edit: also Shadowsun being Infantry means she HAS to make use of her Fall Back & Shoot ability since she can't fire in melee like before
Shooting in melee is not that good anyway. You get a -1 to hit, unless you have the Weapon Support System wargear(which also means you could have picked the wargear that allowed you to fall back and shoot instead).
In general, being a Vehicle means a lot of downsides that Crisis Suits did not have before.
@@fendelphi sure by all means, but at least you can try shooting in melee with Crisis suits while Shadowsun can't. Also, as a sidenote, as bad as flamers are now they still aren't impacted by the -1, a unit packed with those may be an expensive but workable way to screen from battleline infantry)
@@shinkiro403 That Shadowsun cant shoot in melee has minimal impact, as there is no penalty to Fall Back during movement(unless surrounded) and then shoot into the enemy in the shooting phase. If anything, it allows other units to also shoot at her target. And she really should not be caught in melee in the first place.
As for Flamers, that would be overall a horrible use of Crisis Suits. Flamers gain no benefits from Kauyon or For the Greater Good bonuses(and so has very low impact overall compared to other weaponry).
The greatest benefit to Flamers right now(on Crisis Suits) is the Fire Overwatch Stratagem, and even then, it is mostly effective against low tier infantry at very close range, and only that.
Crisis Suits are simply too expensive to be used as a "screen" for your far less expensive infantry.
If you want to screen your infantry, use a Devilfish or Tidewall.
At first I was somewhat happy with the T'au rules and index, but after playing a friend's Imperial Guard on the weekend, I'm not so sure. "For The Greater Good" wasn't the problem though, that feels thematic and works well. The lack of reliable anti-tank weapons in an army that is supposed to have really advanced guns and only plays the shooting phase is a bit of a headscratcher. Crisis Suits for example have three supposedly high powered guns they can equip, two of them are quite low ranged and none of them is good against tanks. If I have to get right into people's faces with my fusion blasters, at least put Anti-Vehicle 4 or something like that on it. It feels wrong that my formerly stabby Drukhari are now a way better shooting faction than T'au.
Also, considering indirect fire was nerfed in 9th because of T'au, it's baffling how overpowered they made it for every faction that has it except T'au. So, my battle against Guard went like this: Everything that didn't have the Lone Operative keyword (Longstrike, Skyray, my 3 Broadsides, my infantry) was basically dead or massively crippled by the end of battleround 2. My deepstriking Crisis Suits+Coldstar with plasma, cyclics and battleround 2 Kau'yon did basically nothing against his 4 tanks and there was no possibility of getting to his artillery because of the amount of screening units Guard still has despite 4 tanks, 2 Basilisks and 2 Manticores. The game was over by battleround 3. Additionally, the fact that the only counterplay against something like this seems to be fielding 3 Ghostkeels smells a bit like they are desperately trying to sell a model that was essentially shit for most of 9th.
Edit: Oh, did I mention that I made a misstake during list building and fielded a Riptide that wouldn't even fit? I mean, it basically did nothing except survive until turn 3, but even with 235 points over the point limit I was essentially tabled by turn 3 due to stupid amounts of artillery and sturdy tanks with a volume of antitank killing power T'au can only dream of.
the 10th edition designers literally did not speak to eachother
I have no idea how else to explain why some factions just can't harm tanks
You didn't mention your hammerheads. You did bring the one actual decent antitank against guard, right?
I think there should be set in stone design philosophies for each faction, like it should be impossible, or at the very least difficult for most factions to outshoot Tau, outside of the Tau player rolling hilariously badly or something.
A really shooty Eldar or Space Marine list could be on par, but never better at it, just as it should be very difficult for most factions to take on Orks in melee.
The 'it was good last edition' mindset needs to be completely removed, to the extent that I would absolutely be firing anyone involved in the writing of rules for allowing such pettiness to influence them - balance things properly within a design philosophy, or go do something else.
The hobby is far too expensive for this much flip flopping on what is good, and it's just asking people to get sceptical thinking "is this a marketing strategy? they sold a lot of Crisis suits last edition and now they want to sell more Ghostkeels" which only puts people off - it's bad enough in video games when the meta changes, it's infuriating in a tabletop game where it's difficult to adjust to it.
@@Boonoojootoo I did bring Longstrike as he shoots way more reliably than a normal Hammerhead, and one Sky Ray because of the higher volume of antitank-shots. Between the two of them, they managed to destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and almost kill a Tank Commander. The Sky Ray was shot off the board in battleround 2 and the already at his bottom profile Longstrike missed his shot despite re-roll in battleround 2 and then died in battleround 3. My 3 Broadsides did exactly nothing because my friend got first turn and instantly obliterated two of them with artillery, the third then missed his shots and was finished off in battleround 2. I'm not saying that some bad rolling wasn't involved and that we don't have any antitank. I'm just saying that due to its mostly low volume of shots, it's relatively unreliable and a T'au tank out in the open is usually dead by the next turn.
That being said, the biggest problem here weren't the Leman Russ tanks, but the indirect fire. T'au literally have no way to interact with it apart from bringing all the Lone Operatives, which means bringing 3 Ghostkeels if you want to be able to maybe kill a couple of tanks. Due to T'au tanks only being t10 and Broadsides clocking in at a meager t6, Guard artillery can be devastating.
Good. Screw the fishies hiding in deployment, going Pew Pew, and nothing else. Soooo boring to play against.
It used to be that tau's weakness was close combat and durability, now it's close combat, durability, mechanized lists and elite infantry lists. Fusion blasters lacking [anti] after getting a range nerf feels bad, the hammerhead and riptide ion cannons being the same strength and ap as the crisis suit variant doesn't seem right, being forced into kauyon and even having a strat you can't even use until turn 3 doesn't sit well with me, nor does the general direction of this codex, which seems to be a return to static gunline tau. It's a boring playstyle for both players. It's gonna be a long wait until we get our codex. I hope we can regain access to aggressive tau by then.
I'm surely gonna agree the weapon nerfs are weird, tau has always had better gear than most other factions, now it's either the same, sorta so or worse than SMs (flamers are now standard ones, not even the extra attack, and fusion blasters went from melta rifles to melta guns). I get it that they did because they derestricted wargear in general and battlesuit still don't have duplicate restrictions on any of their weapons barring the frag projector (so one could pack their suit units with up to 18 of whatever at no extra cost, so much for the "what's in the box" rule), but as *usual* lately from GW, I invite anyone to prove me otherwise, this is a symptom of lazy game design, doesn't matter if it had a scope (namely streamlining to drag in as many new fans as possible) or if it did other things better, there always seem to be good steps taken back...
@@shinkiro403 If you treat this as an open beta and us as freelance testers that GW doesn't have to pay, the slipshod design makes a lot more sense.
@@fabr1cat0rgeneral94 for sure, although each edition feels like the open beta for the *next* edition xD
Well its nothing too new. Executioner plasma destroyer is the same strength as a plasma gun, and heavy flamers have the same range as standard. Weapon profiles are crappy atm, as in relative to the lore of what they should be. Lore should dictate rules more imo, not entirely ofc otherwise a doomsday barge would be tabling you before the turn even started
Tau have some weaknesses, but anti elite infantry is absolutely not one of them; Tau are basically now the apex predator of anti elite infantry armies.
If you don't believe me, try block of 6 suits led by a coldstar, all decked out with shield drones and plasma with Kauyon enhancements... puts out 30+ plasma shots a turn which is absolute murder and half the cost of the previous edition. Feel like that will absolutely get nerfed.
Really disappointed that the crisis suit team's special ability deals with advancing when they lost Assault by default on their weapons
Also, Strike and Fade feels more Mont’ka to me than Kau'yon, bit of a flavor loss, especially if the future Mont’ka detatchment loses it
@@mightyspartan4924 Not like you are going to use Strike and Fade with that 2CP cost ;)
@@SibTauran this is true
Either you run them with a Coldstar Commander or you...well, just don't bother running them.
@@Celestial38 Nah, more like, if you want the high mobility + shooting(close range weaponry/scenario dependent), then you bring the Coldstar Commander. If super fast mobility and close range is less of an issue, you can pick a different commander or even skip it(to save points for something else).
I know GW went hard on the whole "having each models rules on their datasheet" selling point, but there are some frankly confusing inconsistencies between identical weapon profiles (ie.accelerator burst cannons for Tau, Exterminator Cannons from Astra Militarum etc.)
Love how Necron and many other armies have abilities that allow them to move shoot and move, but Tau get a 2 CP strat that allows one unit to? Tau invented move shoot move and they get shafted AF. We have no OC, no LD, crap CP generation and we only become viable turn 3. So stupid
Also those hammerhead railguns hitting my knights on a 2+ at that point cost are about all I'm scared of this edition
want to trade for my Death Guard? :)
Shafted for that time we were actually good. GW loves to punish previously good codex armies
@@Thor8151990 a hammerhead only averages 5 wounds on a knight, they're not that scary
tau invented move shoot move? M8, eldar were doing move shoot move for 60 million years before the tau had even crawled of the dirt they spawned from. I think some of your complaint is valid, but tau have some crazy good weapons, good mobility, battlesuits that can now tank shock, huge amounts of versatility in weapon loadouts, markerlights, synergies, etc. It's really easy to get sad when there's a rules change, as a blood angels player im certainly not happy with how vanguard veterans had their weapons consolidated to one profile, but we must adapt and thrive, not fume at minor things. Challenge your own skill in the new meta, learn kauyon for now, and become a patient hunter, then try the other detachments as they come out.
I actually like the army rule a lot, and the detachment rule is okay, idc that it’s Kauyon but I just hate that it’s just exploding 6’s but only halfway through the game when most armies have a way to just have exploding 6’s throughout. But sure sure “toning down the lethality” so they smack all our guns with with low strength, surely that’s good enough right, “no let’s make them also have no AP, oh and while we’re at it no anti because too strong! Wait SMS was 4 shots ignoring cover not in this house, and now you’ve pissed me off so every single model in your army has terrible leadership. How do you like that Fish fans!?”
Tau literally have like 5 good data sheets and that’s it, you can argue for others but when you have to try to convince why farsight is good then something is wrong.
Its sucks being a Tau main at the moment. We have one list that keeps us out of bottom 3 armies in the game and even then we are still bottom 5. Half our index doesnt get our army rule; etherals, kroot, drones, fortifications.
Most of our characters dont actually buff that well or buff units that dont matter; Non-Coldstar commanders, Darkstrider, all Etherals, Kroot shapers.
Our chaff units cost more than 5 marines and do less damage on average. The real chaff units are worse than ripper/scarab swarms and way overcosted for what they do. Like why are 4 drones so expensive.
Tau durability is abysmal. A crisis suit is T5 3+ wirh 4/6 wounds 4+ invulnerable save. It costs 390 point which is the same cost as 10 terminators and 80 points more than 10 wraithguard, which both have arguably more damage and much higher durability. Extropolate that to all battlesuits and thats how Tau die to a rough breeze. Battlsuits definitely need one more point of toughness with Riptides being T11.
Finally, our main units are intersting but fall flat in the end compared to mid -tier armies. Cool, crisis squad can pack a pucnh but are costed more than desolators. Neat, our skyrays are actually good but not as good as a Fire prism. Stormsurge is looking good but its not T12 and anything kitted out to kill knights super kills it. Just feels bad to play Tau, hopefully it wont be like the start if 9th but its looking like it.
Hopefully we'll get a fix. I really enjoyed the last edition's rules and I think it nailed the feel of the army perfectly lore-wise, but now I feel like they're just a tedious and uninteresting army. The drones were a huge niche thing that only we had, but now that's a thing of the past. I hope they revert to old rules.
I am sorry, but what kind of bullshit are you on? Yes, Space marines are more powerful, welcome to how most armies have been since edition 3. Having Tau complaining about this edition, just show how spoiled you have been.
Y'all at least get one of the coolest still living characters who isn't an elf, though. That's gotta count for something
The worst part is that the design team only looks at tournament results for balancing now so if your army is complete trash and unfun, but there's one way of playing them that wins 50/50, then you have to wait for the next edition to hope for any significant changes.
Good. Silly fishies.
I really hope they mitigate the tau weakness in melee by giving them some pistol weilding gunslinger units. A crisis suit dual weilding scaled up pistols sounds rad. Maybe make one of its support hard points a close range targeting system so when it's charged, it can shoot in response.
Or more kroot units like a krootox
Give us the greater knarloc finally
@@Wabajck that too please
Suits can just shoot in melee.
I think there are more important faction weaknesses to fix.
Thank you so much this video really helped! As a newer player this was the perfect tool
Tau looks pretty bad to me overall. Their shooting isn't insane and requires good set up with spotting/marker to do good damage. All while having no melee.
I feel ya regarding the Tactical Drones & the Kroot Hounds. GW have definitely nerfed them/ radically changed how you're meant to use them now. I've played 3 games with them in the new mission deck from the Leviathan box, i.e. the thing GW wants everyone to use in Matched play now. Apologies in advance for the wall of text but I hope you'll find my ideas useful :)
All of those missions have secondary objectives that basically say "Throw a cheap ineffective squad onto a random part of the battlefield, force that squad to do nothing this turn except set up a Teleport Homer/ Investigate a Signal/ etc, etc. Do this over and over again because you keep drawing mission cards that tell you to do something like this, but each time you do it you'll get 5 victory Points"
If you're using Crisis Suits and Fire Warriors to complete these Secondary Objectives, then you're giving up a whole lot of Shooting, since units can't shoot while they do these objectives. In 9th Edition there were rules that said "you have to use INFANTRY units like Fire Warriors and Crisis Suits to do these objectives - you can't use Hounds and Drones to complete them ... ... ... but in 10th those rules are gone. Probably because GW realised how limiting that was/ how badly it effected all TAU armies - i.e. the only Army in the game that only wins by shooting. :)P
So for example, the 'Area Denial' mission should basically say "Throw 4 Kroot Hounds into the centre of the board, make sure your opponent doesn't have anything left in the centre of the board by the end of your turn, get 5 Victory Points." The Hounds having an OC of Zero and them being beasts doesn't prevent them from completing a Secondary Objective like it would have in 9th Edition. Having OC 0 only stops them from scoring 'Primary' points/ Holding 'Primary' Objectives. They can still score all secondary objectives.
The Hounds also get a pre-game 'scout' move of 9 inches, so they can reach the centre of the board very quickly. You can also hide them behind walls easily due to their low profile/ their models being low to the ground. You can Hide them behind a building in your deployment zone so your opponent can't see them, wait until you draw this Secondary Mission Card, then send 'em out.
Same thing with the 'Investigate Signals' Secondary Mission - it should basically say "Throw Units of Kroot Hounds &/or Tactical Drones into as many corners of the battlefield as you can, make them give up on shooting and fighting for the turn - score 2 Victory Points for each corner you control". Again, the Drones and Hounds being OC Zero doesn't prevent them from doing Secondary Missions, it only stops them doing Primary. Hide these units behind buildings until you draw this Mission card, keep them out of line of sight of the enemy until you draw this card, and keep moving them every turn from building to building toward the corners until you draw this card.
The best use for Drones? Wait until you draw the 'Deploy Teleport Homers' card. That Mission Card should basically say = "wait until turn 3/ turn 4 when your opponent's army has moved out of their deployment zone/ has been shot off the board by all of your guns, deepstrike 2 Units of Tactical Drones into your opponent's Deployment Zone, make those drones do nothing except deploy Teleport Homers for a turn, get 5 Victory Points."
The Tactical Drones have the Deepstrike Keyword for a reason. The Drones cost as much as they do 'because' they can Deep Strike/ because they have it built in. So use it :)P At this point we practically need them to score other Secondaries as well like 'Engage on All Fronts''/ do anything that doesn't rely on them Holding Primary Objectives but needs a unit that can pop onto the battlefield to score more Victory Points at any time.
At this point I've stopped seeing the Drones and Hounds as units that fight/ engage in battle. I see them as plucky little under-dogs running around a scary battlefield doing story related missions while guns and explosions go off all around them. I like to imagine the hounds as well trained police dogs with Go-Pro Cameras strapped to their heads and sensory equipment strapped to their backs. They're actually on a mission to look for wounded soldiers and sniff out bomb sites (just like real world earthquake rescue dogs and bomb disposal sniffer dogs). The Drones aren't actually Gun Drones at all - they're basically bomb disposal units, or maybe they're HAZOP radiation and chemical spill detectors. Or maybe they're, well, just mobile Teleport Homers. (Again, just like how drones are used in the real world today... except for the teleport homing thing of course... we haven't got there as a species yet :)P
Thank you for reading my TED talk - hope you found it useful :)P
Tau just feels incredibly bland. For the shooting army our guns are some of the least interesting in the game. We're not even close to the best shooting army in the game. I don't understand why GW shafted us so hard. I don't mind being a lower tier faction but I at least wanna have flavourful rules... Instead of what just feels like random ones. Like take long strike for instance. Lethal hits???? On a one shot weapon??? One that has devestating wounds????? Just.... Why? Or broadsides who get a 4+ fnp against mortals. Just like why. I don't understand.
Looking at the rules it more feels like a rush job / after thought. Rather than Malicious nerf. They had to make rules for large number factions so the just got lazy. Or they know the codex will be one of the earlier ones so can leave bad rules for a bit. As they say never attribute malice when it can be explained by laziness or stupidity.
@@murphy7801 except the codex is a year away unless the schedule changes. but you are right they got really super lazy.
I can make the rules for one faction in about 2 weeks and it will be both interesting and enough balance, but what can I know, I'm a game designer from Ukraine who was trained to do everything with high quality, and not to release the codeх so that they bought another box for 60 pounds
@@andregreenidge937I would ask how many codex's are in-between that? I haven't looked but suspect there focusing on those.
Lethal Hits on the Hammerhead makes sense, if you pick the Ion Cannon option. Makes it punch up a bit against high toughness models(vehicles and monsters), while being overall more effective against infantry and elites than the Railgun.
Longstrike can keep his Railgun to focus mostly on vehicles/monsters.
The EMP grenade being the only weapon i could see with "anti-x" is a bit of a joke imo. You can plink off a single mortal against a vehicle... great...
NUH UH! The Kroot Farstalker band also has a terrible anti-vehicle weapon!
@@ransomburgess8566 oh right, how could I forget.
Hey I just wanted to pop into your comment and let you know, not all is lost, I've been playing Tau recently and downing Imperial Knight lists Turn 3 using Stormsurges and Tetra teams, Ghostkeels have been a work horse for me and seeing Knights take 36 dmg from only 1 Stormsurge is hilarious when Sustained hits kicks in Turn 3
@@Tinytraveler that's great news, it's still disappointing that we didn't get any of the new fun rules to play with though
Hey Auspex, a whole video about the new flier rules would be very useful and appreciated, if there's any chance you can slot it in among the other 40,001 videos you have lined up.
It seems there's been a lot of changes if they've lost the +1 to be hit, coming on turn 2, no limit per points, just 3 of the same unit.
Otherwise, keep up the excellent work, thanks a lot!
Apart from some Lone Operative abuse, Tau are pretty basic now. Their shooting isn't great, their mobility got neutered, they don't have broken stuff like Oath or fate dice. Any side that can't reliably churn out mortals right now is basically C tier. Power aside, they're also now bland as F. Almost all our "cool shit" (tm) got stripped down or straight up removed. I like how every faction's complaints are now met with "at least you're not the DG or Admech!". That's not a counterargument, kids.
Yeah, in an edition where armies got their one broken thing, Tau feel really out of place. It's like we *finally* got a safe and balanced faction at the worst possible time.
You mentioned Aun'shi joining Farsight, but don't forget Farsight can't take Ethereals. I dont think you'd be able to take them together unfortunately. However it would be pretty sweet and kinda thematic to have them join up.
Also, Breachers get BS3! I was waiting for you to mention it XD
there is no such thing as farsight enclaves anymore in the game
@@HenryC04 but there is a rule forbidding ethereal units and farsight in the same army
@@HenryC04 That's like saying there's no such thing as Craftworld Iyanden or Carcharodons anymore.
Calm down, the index stripped nearly everyone's options down to the bedrock; just because it's not in the index doesn't mean it no longer exists or won't be brought back in the codex.
@@HenryC04 beyond what the others have pointed out, there still ARE farsight enclaves- you can only take Farsight in them, and can’t take Ethereals. It’s lacklustre, don’t get me wrong, but they do technically exist as a restriction to units.
@@HenryC04 There is very specifically a rule that states if you take an ethereal, you cant take farsight and if you take farsight, you cant take an ethereal.
Not sure how I feel. Annoyed I don't get Mont'ka at launch.
I find it worse that they did Farsight so dirty. And right after he got a huge role in the lore and a new model with a small paragraph of just how awesome it is.
Yeah whoever wrote these rules up I feel had no understanding of Tau fluff.
Faction rules could have run in all sorts of directions; focus on auxiliaries, combined arms, stealth units, things that play off of the two tactical doctrines that Tau warfare is built around. Heck, we've got nearly a dozen septs that each have their own little quirks on how they blend, modify and in some cases outright ignore one of the two.
This feels like taking a real world military and calling the air force and the army as different factions when they're supposed to be part of the same force.
@@tyr7876 They could have at least bumped him up to Coldstar movement.
@@BlueEyesWhiteViera They should have at least bumped him up to reasonably usable status. He only has two unique rules and only one actually helps your team. And the unique rule he gets isn't even vaguely as good as any of the three other commanders despite them being no-names and him being a 3 century old legendary war hero leading an entire renegade faction and wielding a magic sword. It's absolutely baffling, I'd rather they bump his cost up and push him to a mini primarch status since that'd at least be unique and far better lore wise.
"You can exemplify Kauyon and be patient"
You missed that the tidewall drone port gets to shoot it's drones at all valid targets at once.
I'm new to playing 40k, came from Kill team. So 10th is my first edition.
I played a test game to learn the rules against my buddy who ran Necrons.
I like to play aggressive, so the detachment rule didn't come into play much.
Wasn't one of the whole things in this edition that "Vehicles are much tougher to take down"
Battlesuits are now Vehicles, but at T5???
I understand Tau are "the shooting faction" yet somehow I felt very underpowered in comparison to my opponent.
I like the simplified rules a lot, but I immediately felt the burn of drones don't count as models
Sorta means that I am less inclined to paint them too, because I could just as easily write down what each unit is carrying.
I like the "work together" aspect of the faction rule, but in my game, it was negated completely by my opponent having a character that gave his "big blob of necron warriors" Stealth -1 to hit.
I feel like there is a way you HAVE to play tau, based off these rules. as a wrong way to play and a right way. less flexible.
Like I feel punished for not having the right models that synergise
e.g. I got a Commander on Sale at a local store, but I am poor and don't have crisis suits.
Tactical drones are very poor.
Again, I'm new, I bought and painted models cus I think they are cool, First time playing 40k, a homebrew combat patrol type thing to get to grips with it. so literal first impressions.
I know we are the shooty faction everyone harps on, but I just wanna make my army feel like they are actually "a technologically advanced species" that is adaptive through tech.
I had fun, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was put off by how poor it felt to fire everything I had into necron warriors and only kill 8 models.
FOR THE GREATER GOOD
Hmm, for a gun line faction many of the Tau guns are underwhelming in these data sheets. Not a Tau player though, so maybe I'm missing something.
Sadly your not
"You can exemplify Kauyon and be patient" 🤣
Weird as it may be, I was mostly looking forward to the Firesight Marksmen/Team. With the new For the Greater Good army rule, setting them up in a high spot gives makes them incredible as an Observer Unit.
But they strangely gave the Guided Unit bonus to it, instead of it providing a bonus to Guided Unit. I don't understand that choice at all. I would've been better to have it receive a bonus against the enemy unit they previously Spotted as an Observer Unit.
Firesight seems more like a character sniper, while Stealth Battlesuits(with Marker Drone) and Pathfinders are your typical spotters.
Overall, pretty decent, but a serious lack of reliable anti-tank outside of spamming Seeker missiles. Also, quite a few of their units either need a points drop (the infantry) or a datasheet rewrite (Riptide)
I think shield drones are still terrific for small characters as it helps against precision. Suddenly you need another 1-2 sniper shots to land in order to kill that crucial fireblade or ethereal.
I really like the baseline changes for 10th, but not particularly pleased with the army I spent all this money on :/ oh well, maybe I can print something else to play until we get patched. Not buying another set of GW plastic just to have it get bad rules randomly
This is the way
The change to fly is the biggest nerf to tau in my opinion.
Tau are in a really weird spot in 10th, I feel.
On the whole they're not really *bad*...especially not compared to the Votann, AdMech or DG.
But even though they've got some stuff going for them they feel very...bland. Yes Tau kind of were always a one-trick pony (i.e. shoot better and try not to die in melee), but this edition so far that feels dialed up to 11; our weapons have very few keywords, our army rule doesn't trigger until the game is half over, and it feels like we're going to have a repeat of the Triptide Trashcan Lid list of 8th, where we have one or two builds that are very competitive...but also very oppressive and uninteractive (someone correct me otherwise, but I think we've got more Lone Operatives than any other army and our meta list is probably going to be a Ghostkeel castle with Shadowsun).
Don't even get me started on how FSE lists got shafted because Kauyon is *apparently* a faction...yeah that makes no sense fluffwise.
I have been saying the same thing. It doesn't feel genuinely _bad_ it just feels incredibly lacking in flavor or fun mechanics. That said, it is an index, so it may improve with the codex. And my second army is TSons, so I really can't complain.
@@sirbaconbuster Lucky
My other armies are AdMech and DG...so Tau are literally my only real option until the codices drop if I want any chance of winning at all.
Haters will say it’s exaggerating because “hurrrrrrrr, xenos scum complaining about not being broken, boohoo” but this index genuinely set Tau back to the stone age of 8th edition.
@@vinnythewebsurfer We Tau players are used to it. We always get dumped on because we pendulum hard between being completely broken with one or two viable builds, or being bottom of the barrel, then other players claim we deserve it because we try to work with the tools given to us same as everyone else.
I never see Eldar or Necron players get bullied the same way Tau players do.
@@fabr1cat0rgeneral94 A part of that is probably because Tau got labelled as "weeaboo space communists" (despite having a socio-economic system that's not at all communist because of the way caste systems work, and being more like a hybrid of Chinese Taoism and Confucianism in philosophy and culture than Japanese). This makes them a hate sink because, at least where I'm located in the states, about half of the fans of anything GW makes absolutely DESPISE anyone who likes "weeb" things.
So, not seeing this in the comments, and I don't know if this has been FAQ'd already, but a question about the Weapon Support System for Battlesuits:
That "ignore any or all modifiers to the hit roll": would that include the -1 to hit from the vehicle rule when in melee?
Because, if so, that may make the fusion blasters that much easier to use. Deep Strike Farsight with a full squad of Crisis Suits, and just go balls deep.
- Nerf to split fire on a faction that introduced it is ridiculous.
- With free wargear the internal balance of crisis suit weapons is non existent. There's zero reason to take burst cannons for example.
- Tau indirect was effectively removed (airburst and SMS profiles are just awful). Indirect does need a rework, it's cancer, it's uninteractive, but nerfing tau while buffing marines and guard indirect to be just as if not more broken than Tau on release of their codex in 9th doesn't make sense.
- Lone operative needs to be 18". It's another non interactive mechanic and making faction rely on it to be viable is not fun for either player.
I can actually see a very specific use of Burst Cannons. If the unit acting as the Observer has the "Through Unity, Devastation" enhancement, the guided Crisis unit gets Lethal on their weaponry. Combine that with Sustained Hits2 from Kauyon, and the massive amounts of shots(Crisis Commander to reroll 1's on hit), the Burst Cannons can score wounds on targets that normally would be difficult to wound, and against low toughness, low SV units, it would completely destroy them.
A lot of it will still be absorbed by saves and FNP, but still. Something like 20 burst cannons(80 shots!), would mean automatic wounds on an average of 13 due to Lethal(which would generate an extra 26 hits due to Sustained2), and even if you had a lot of misses, you would still have about 60 to-wound rolls to make. Even only wounding on 6's, that would be roughly another 10 wounds, so a total of 23 wounds that your opponent has to save against.
There are a few things I like, such as part of FTGG making Tau mostly hitting on 3s - the penalty to split firing is unnecessary though.
Breachers being able to hit on 2s when guided is nice, as is their re-roll wounds mechanic - Fireblade leading them brings the squad up to 30 S6 shots; that's gonna hurt something.
I also like Stealth team observer rule granting wound re-rolls.
Overall however I'm quite disappointed and don't see myself playing much, if at all if things stay like this.
So much of the faction's identity is just gone, and functionally they just seem to be lacking lethality.
I think the "For the Greater Good" mechanic is actually somewhat fluffy and works quite well, too. Yes, the -1 penalty for not shooting at the spotted target is absolutely unnecessary, but wasn't really an issue in my test game. It feels kinda dumb though not being able to splitfire with our former multipurpose unit (Crisis Suits) while also not being able to equip them with guns that are reliably able to deal with this edition's fiend: tanks!
Regarding the loss of identity, I somewhat agree with you but think that some factions have it worse. Votann basically have completely lost the little flavour they had AND their army rules on top of that. Their army rule now is basically that they can shoot as well as they could in 9th edition without any additional rules, but they have to sacrifice units for it to work. In an army where the lore says they try to keep losses to a minimum.
Death Guard are supposed to be slow, tanky and deadly if you get close to them. Well...they are slow, so there's that.
@@ElGrompho666 - it's the multi-purpose units I'm thinking of regarding the FTGG penalty, Stormsurge to be specific because of how many different weapons it has; the rule is in conflict with how that thing works.
I can see the loss of identity and flavour in a few factions, it's just Tau that I play most so naturally most bothered by - I'm critical of simplification in this regard in a lot of games, I've never seen it go well; the more experienced don't like the dumbing down of things and the new aren't retained.
The tanks being strong is an odd wee pet peeve of mine - not for Imp Guard for example, tanks are part of their identity, but Tau vehicles; the battlesuit equivalents just seem inferior, which is thematically wrong.
@@MGShadow1989 Agreed, the Broadsides and the Stormsurge feel way too flimsy for their price tag and the Riptide is just garbage now. I believe at least the Stormsurge and the Riptide are supposed to be quite chonky.
@@ElGrompho666 - the general idea I've always gotten from Tau's arsenal is the battlesuits are meant to be tougher and more versatile alternatives to what the vehicles do, with the vehicles either being more accurate or higher damage.
This doesn't seem to be the case in 10th, which begs the question what's the point in Broadsides and Riptides?
@@MGShadow1989 Well, the Broadsides at least have workable anti-tank guns that are also quite a bit cheaper than Hammerheads. The Riptides though, I have no idea. Yes, they are slightly more survivable than many of the other things we have due to a 2+ save and their 4+ invuln. But they also cost 235 points, are rather slow with the new terrain rules and basically do nothing because they don't have anti-tank and for anti-infantry we have many options that are a lot cheaper. Ghostkeels are a way better alternative now. Honestly, for what they do, Riptides need to be at least 30-40 points cheaper and even then I would still take to Ghostkeel.
I think the new fly-over-terrain-rules also hurt us quite a bit. Our suits and tanks basically have to move around terrain like normal vehicles but are less durable for a similar pricetag. Yes, Crisis Suits are still somewhat fast, but not being able to move through terrain anymore hampers their zippyness quite a bit.
Longstrike is only a buff to hammerheads when shooting things without an invulnerable save.
Lethal hits bypass devistating wounds and don't count as a specific roll. When you factor in your free reroll, and that a stationary & guided hammerhead hits on a 2+ Longstrike is a nerf if anything when your opponent has an invulnerable save.
You could use the Ion Cannon on the Hammerhead. 4-9 Shots(+Sustained Hits2 from Guided Kauyon) with Lethal hits, Overcharged. That is on average 6 hits, with 1 of them being Lethal, but can potentially be much more(9 attacks have a good chance of rolling two 6's, which on average would mean 2 lethal and 9 regular hits). Also, every other weapon system on the Hammerhead gets Lethal(and Sustained hits if Guided), including Seekers. Critting with Seekers is quite good.
Losing AP on kroot rifles, ritual blades, kroot guns, AND kroot hound fangs as well as yet another wound on shapers is a fine exchange for the built in feel no pains that were previously attainable through a stratagem, and the new aura buffs. My thanks GW.
Yeah, I dont see the point of Kroot stuff right now. I mean it is cheap fodder for tackling things that tries to move around, but they cant use most of your factions special abilities. From "For the Greater Good" to Transports, and Kauyon only benefits ranged weapons, not melee(honestly, that alone would help a lot).
If/when we get a Mont'ka detachment rules, they might be better.
Tau commanders gone to 3+ bs ffs..
Fusion blasters gone to 12 inch range ffs..
From all the stratagems we lost, we gained one for a 6+ fnp, which is absolutely garbage.
As a Tau player myself, they are looking shocking. We've lost so much and gaianed very little.
They haven't even bothered giving us both mont'ka and kauyon. They just gave us one....wtf
Never stop making these
One more thing. Apparently the Tau has quite small choices of anti tank weaponry, but it should be very efficient... all those guys hits on 2+ - Broadsides with railguns (BS4+, but from heavy while stationary +1 to hit and guided gives them +1BS sooo its stacks :D), Stormsurge - same, and Hammerhead too.
3 Piranhas for 165 points, each with 2 Seeker Missiles, can probably help pop things.
Also, as long as we are talking Toughness 9 or less, Pathfinder Rail Rifles can also be quite handy.
Or you can just mass fire with that Enhancement that gives Lethal to a guided unit. Combined with Sustained Hits2, even a regular Strike Team with a Fireblade attached can generate something like 10 wounds on big stuff if within rapid fire range.
lets see what happens when septs are released for 10th. if there's something like bork'an in 9th giving ekstra range some units could(potentially) become devastating like the piranha with burst canon if that can be given ekstra range
Drone Squad stats are a joke. My theory(coming from someone who played original Tau), the first box sets all came with Drones, so you essentially built up free Gun Drone squads as you collected your army. I don't know the contents of the later sets, but it seems GW wants to severely penalize you for having units in your army that you didn't shell out money for a box of.
Bro when you said embrace Kauyon and be patient (waiting for Mont'ka and others in the codex) I literally died.
smart missile systems also lost ignore cover and are even missing one shot from where they should be if they were a single system and Aun'shi lost 2 wounds lost his 4+ inulvnerable for a 5+ gained an attack but lost WS2+. As for the Puretide Neurochip since it doesn't reduce the cost of the second stratagem use you still need to pay twice for it to be worthwhile. Why don't ethereals have For the Greater Good?
They got nerfed hard. Points are just ridicules.
there points overall went down or stayed the same, the problem is lackluster rules if anything.
@@555tork maybe, but i was able to feild more stuff in 9th.
Their probably waiting till the codex to realse the good rules.
Ah see now having a review helps. I couldn't understand why our Commanders went down to BS3+ instead of 2, but given how easy it is to bump up the BS with observer units, that kind of adds up. Also means there's a few units where that makes a huge difference, like Breachers suddenly hitting on 2s, possibly rerolling wound rolls if the target is on an objective. Make sure the observer has markerlights (Pathfinders) to ignore cover and should be a nice way to roll up and push units off objectives.
Shove them in a Devilfish, shoot the unit, if they survive and try and charge ? Combat Embarcation.
What is the utility of Commander Shadowsun’s “Flechette Launcher”. Five S3 AP 0 shots at 18” range? I’m just curious on how often that weapon is ever used in gameplay?
it's just extra attempts at chip damage, the only thing it might do okay into is guard, eldar and gaunts from tyranids.
The detachment ability and the lack of meaningful damage output really does force this index into the turtle and then pray for a big comeback faction that honestly cannot play objectives well due to lack of cheap throw away trading units for keeping your scoring from falling too far behind.
Also why does the shooting faction completely lack reliable anti tank outside of the Surge, railsides or skyray? wounding on a 5 at best means suits just don't cut it when your commiting to trade a 400 point unit for 200 point tanks or the insane 125 fireprism
54:10 I'll say it again, Breachers and Shieldlines go together like peanut butter and chocolate. The thing can advance freely with them inside, shooting 10-20 of them through Firing Deck, and they can even play silly games with disembarking to eke out another 3" of range or grab and objective, while escaping melee retribution with the embarkation strat. You can stuff them with strikes or even pathfinders, but the biggest punch will still be breachers and they benefit the most from being able to measure range from any point on that big, goofy footprint it has. Having 20 Breachers effectively standing on the head of a pin and that pin stuck anywhere you like in shieldline each time you fore is a huge help with their short range. Also note that Firing Deck 20 means you can affect twice as many shots with the ambush strat if having more AP makes sense.
A shieldline is 85 points base with transport 11, 105 with the added platform that takes it to 22 and W15 instead of 10. One of the most efficient pure firing decks in the entire game when upgraded.
55:30 Oh hell, no. AT didn't read the droneport rules. Those 8 twin-linked pulse carbine shots are resolved against every single valid target every time it shoots. Much like the sporocyst and hammerfall bunker it sandpapers damage off everything it can legally shoot, which is a 20" bubble - and unlike them it can move. Even with just BS5+ that can become a fair bit of chip of damage, and with the Kauyon bonuses it could become downright dangerous. On top of that those guns have Aassault, so it can advance freely for 1d6+4" movement every turn - and to harp on a point, Breachers work great with these. This is the less-defensive option for a Breacher slow-ride, trading the ++ save, higher transport efficiency and extra wounds the upgraded shieldline offer for a smaller footprint (sometimes an edge, sometimes not) one unit and supporting guns. And again, this is can be an efficient place to use the ambush strat if you've jammed yourself in close enough that the drone guns are within 9" of at least some targets.
56:20 The gunrig hasn't actually been available from GW in over a year and was still absent last I looked. For 90 points it's actually middling durable thanks to the big 14W. The Hammerhead massively outshines it for reliability (effectively hitting on rerollable 2+ with Guidance, and able to reroll the wound instead if the hit roll didn't whiff) but it's also 55 points more expensive (albeit much more mobile and tougher to boot). OTOH, the gunrig is going to be carrying infantry models as well, so it's a reasonable choice for Guidance too. 90 points for a 4+ twin-linked railgun shot plus the Firing Deck seems okay. Most likely you use a Strike team here, the Pathfinders just have too much to offer from their unit card abilities to waste on a few heavy weapon firing deck shots.
If you have 70 points to spare you can also somewhat hilariously shove a Firesight sniping team in as well. The gunrig doesn't mind staying stationary to let the snipers use heavy, but if it has to move they'd still hit on 3+ with guidance. In fact, if you really wanted to splurge on irritating character sniping, leaving the Strike team home and stuffing three firesight teams in a gunrig would be a solid way to Guide all of them at once, although none would benefit from the reroll ability when using their guns through firing deck. Almost certainly not worth it, but unless the enemy kills the gunrig from quite short range the surviving snipers would be immediately able to exploit lone operative and stealth, making them pretty hard to finish off.
I played a game two weeks ago, using a stormsurge, did not use the riptide, since the game was 1000 points but I fought knights, its pulse blast cannon is amazing when things get within that 24 inch range and it can still be guided by the other tau to get a +1 to hit. which is sinuational but good depending if or when you move to shoot things within 24 inchs. I think taking one in a army with either the pulse blast cannon or the pulse drive cannon will be good, or you can add two pluse a riptide, and fill in the other 955 points with a leader and some other models. broadsides will be great to have as well.
23:20 With Kauyon as the only detachment, you're encouraged to preserve relatively hard-hitting but fragile stuff till round 3. Forget rushing with the Breachers in a Devilfish, that's for expendable Kroot. Stuff them in a Tidewall (the shieldline with platform upgrade is absurdly cheap and sturdy transport) that can advance every turn with impacting the Breachers shooting from Firing Deck 22 at all. By turn 3 you'll be an average of 22" off your start line and can start playing disembark-hose-objective-clear-combat-embark-if-threatened games. On earlier turns you can probably still get some shots on anyone advancing to midfield objectives, and if you need it these guys are made for the ambush strat.
The shieldline was okay last edition even if most people ignored it, and while it's different in 10th it's still good, just in different ways. Just don't expect good results against Tyranids, who will absolutely screw your advances and movement between spores and barbgants. On the plus side, their army is likely to come to you.
Haha! The Droneport shooting at EVERY ELIGIBLE enemy unit and not just one target, ie. constitues a 40" bubble where any enemy unit will have some pot shots taken against them, is hilarious to me and I might just bring one just for the funs someday :P
To be honest - I have very, very, very mixed feelings about Tau in 10th edition...
I quite like:
1) For the Greater Good - I like it, it is easy to remember, easy to apply, somehow is incorporating the markerlights, also some units have special rules to boost it. But... no split shooting?
1.5) Special rules for Pathfinders and Stealth suits that boost the FtGG.
2) Drones - hmmm i like this, it is easy to remember and aplly too... Also, because of this there should be a bigger variety of them on the table :D And guardian drone - oooh boi... But also...
PS. does it means that they could be placed as a swarm on one base or put them together with Battlesuit?
3) Breachers in Devilfish and with stratagems? Ouch! And quite thematic and climatic. PS. Does they can benefit from being guided while inside the Devilfish?
4) Easy access to Stormsurge, even if his model is not the best one :D
5) Piranhias and their special ability.
6) Devilfish - Rapid deployment is wonderful.
7) Firesight Team.
I very dislike what happened around:
1) No special overwatch/retalation shooting - if I correctly understand the Overwatch can be called only once per turn, right? I miss the free overwatch and that there is no possibility to add another unit in combined overwatch (that could be a special stratagem for Tau...). It is nice that Tau firewarriors have overwatch on 4+, but...
2) The Tau weaponry - I have feeling that in this edition Tau suffered technological regress... I know this is the matter of 10th edition, but so many weapons were cut down. Plasma rifles, SMSs (well most of the missiles), Fusion Blasters, Ion weaponry, Nova Charge.. How the Tau could fight against heavy armor?
3) The Battlesuits, the supports systems are so cut down, the suits have vehicle keyword... No Iridium armor. I see this more as a nerf...
4) The auxilliary troops - wish there wolud be some synergy between Tau and Auxies, they fight for a quite moment of time arm by arm...
5) The drones - why gun/missile drones exist? Why should I deploy the Tactical Drones?!
6) Broadsides - I really do not understand why those suits benefits from advanced armor?
7) Aircrafts - so the fighter equipped in theory to fight other aircrafts will wound them on 5+?
8) Heavy and FtGG with markerlights - I feel a little bit of Skornergy here...
9) I prefer the Kayoun, but... what about Montka?
About the Dislikes, I do think Overwatch can be more than 2 times, but require special rules to allow it. Like that of "Puretide Engram Neurochip"-Enhancement. Special rules beat general rules. We know this is true from other factions that have units with abilities that allow Overwatch to be used more than once per turn.
If Overwatch was supposed to still be restricted even with the Neurochip, it would have stated "Excluding Fire Overwatch" or something like that.
As for weaponry, I think they simply have to rely a lot on synergies between units and various effects, and focus on the objectives(they are very mobile). When a large part of your army can get Sustained Hits2 on all their ranged weaponry, even the Pulse Rifle starts to punch through tougher stuff, especially when you also have the option of lethal. A crit on a Railgun or Seeker missile, and it might be all you need.
But yeah, some of the things feels like an early draft.
Auspex for the love of the dark powers please my Maw is absolutely ravenous for your take on Chaos knights.
It used to cost a full action to even set up the turret for strike and breacher teams. I'm glad it's just remaining stationary now
Does this mean that Tau can now take more than 1 Commander in Battlesuit "X"? It just needs to be limited to 3 of each type and 1 of them must be nominated as your warlord. Per the 10th edition rules it seems so and I see nothing in the Tau rules to countermand it.
Excellent overview.
Coordinated Engagement is a way to get round the -1 BS for split firing with a guided unit. Take a large crisis suit with a commander and gun drones and 1 marker drone. If the firepower would be overkill a target they can be the observer and then have the stratagem played on them, for the weapons that don't go on the spotted target will hit on 4+ rather than 5+. In a niche case but worth considering where a max crisis suit with gun drones and a commander would be ridiculous overkill.
The 0 OC value of hounds is really turning me off. They were great to throw onto a mid table objective forcing the enemy to move out and kill them. With them and detached drones disappearing Tau have lost their cheap units for early trading. As they're effectively paying for their wargear even fire warriors have gone up 25% to 100 points. The cheapest unit that can claim on objective is Aun'Va at 65 points following my many units at 75 points and none of them are anything but very fragile. I think this is something Tau players will have to give some thought to when it comes to list building.
11:55 If you're using Breachers at all one of them will be spamming Ambush every turn or they're probably just deadweight playing Guide for other stuff, they only have a 10" range in the first place. Similarly, if Breachers are riding a Tidewall for a firing platform they'll often have times where they want to disembark to eke out that little extra bit of range, then use Combat Embarkation to escape retribution. The Tidewalls' silly model sizes (particularly the long, thin shieldline) mean a lot more for the short-ranged Breachers than anything else in the army - being able to fire the whole unit from any point on those big models makes a real difference to their target choices, and the disembark option can earn you a shot a whole turn earlier than otherwise sometime with the strat still leaving you quite safe.
Something to Clarify here on Drones and how they interact with units, check to see what specifically applies for each sheet. For example Crisis Suits will be running 2 shield drones on all units as it states "Each Model can take up to 2 of the following, and can have duplicates" meaning crisis suits by default are 6 wounds not 4. Generally speaking it means any commander that is not an Epic Hero will be running 1 shield and 1 marker for the crisis suits they attach to, resulting in a 3 or 6 man squad of 6 wound crisis suits with markerlights on the commander. Others like Breachers specify that they can take 1 Guardian and no more than 2 drones in total for the Shas'ui, with Duplicates allowed for Shield, Gun, and Marker Drones.
I agree with you on that. I am thinking about editing the Crisis Suit index so that the wounds are six.
I plan not to place a single drone model on the table.
But what about the missile drones? With the potential of Sustained Hits2 and even Lethal being applied, is it not worth something?
Is it worth playing taus now? I don't really get it. (I'm totally new to the game) but I like the style and play style.
I have a 3-suit Crisis team with one carrying a shield generator to tank shots; now that they're free, I think plunking a pair of shield drones on him might extend how much tanking he can do under the new rules. (Thanks to the new "free drone" rules, I went from having too many in my collection to perhaps too few. Oh well, at least they're quick to assemble & paint.)
I think the Gun-Drone having assault, makes the Marker-Drone obsolete (unless you want the markerlight keyword), given:
It gives the unit an assault weapon, which makes it elligible for shooting, thus being able to advance and act as an observer.
Am I right, or am I missing something here?
Tac drones squads don't have the FTGG keyword so they can't use the army rule.
@@markhohenbrink5230 I am not referring to the Tac Drones, but the drones in the squad as an add on, e.g. the strike team can be observer if it advances with a gun drone, given it is "elligible"
Marker drones are redundant for Strike and Breacher Teams since they've already got markerlights. The wording of FtGG means that Breacher Teams can mark since they have assault weapons. Technically a Strike team with a gun drone can advance and still be an observer, though that feels like a weird rules interaction that was unintended (After all, why does the fireteam suddenly get better at marking targets on the fly just because it has a trashcan lid?) and a waste of the rest of their firepower anyway.
Infantry will always want to take a Guardian Drone and a Gun Drone; the other drones don't really do much for them.
@@TrueSilverBastion oops, read that wrong. To answer your actual question, yes you can advance with a strike team with a gun drone and use it as a spotter unit. For other infantry squads, they have assault weapons already or the unit wants to take different drones, like pathfinders.
Gundrones could work, as long as the intended target is within 20"(and you already have the Markerlight Keyword). Otherwise you would need the Marker Drone to Advance and act as an Observer.
Maybe I missed it but what happened to shielded missle drones ?
Do they give the advantage of +1 wound and the missle pod or are they just gone ?
Gone :'(
They're just gone.
Use em as regular missile drones that just look slightly better (I always thought the ones that just have the missile pod hanging off the bottom looked silly)
Thanks for the quick response guys.
I talked to my friends about it and we decided to just use them as a combination of the two variations for a slight point increase :)
Breachers are the most efficient points unit in the entire index now, they are... amazing. They out do Crisis suits, fire warriors, ghhostkeels, hammerheads against most things... they out kill Wraithknights vs a Hammer head lol
I'm new to 40k but if i understand the rules right, im really excited to make tau my first team because I love vehicles and I love infantry but I'm not big on imp army.
But I'd love to get a droneport or a tidewall and stuff them full of strike teams with ethereals to scout the fortifications up the field and give them the chip to allow for using of the same stratagem again if it was already used before, and overwatch the oncoming hordes as piranhas charge up the board with a devilfish to siege further points with breachers that have the kayon on turn 2 instead of 3, so they can reliably disrupt objective control and hopefully obtain it myself
then maybe if allowed have stealth battlesuits homing beacon a sunshark bomber in early, if allowed by rules idk if it is but it seems like it and I like the idea and look of the bombers a lot
God they gutted my kroot, and no knarloc data sheet?
“I guess you’re going to have to exemplify Kauyon and be patient” 🗣️haaaaa!
The main reason to take a Darkstrider is to give your Pathfinders Through Unity, Devastation -> Lethal Hits on guided units. Combine that with Sustained Hits 2 and you can dish out a lot of damage.
That was my plan initially, but on page 56 they hid a rule that ses Epic Heroes can’t have Enhancements.
Sure the 12” anti alpha-strike is nice, and adding one to wound rolls. But for 75 points that is a bit steao for me.
Isn't Darkstrider an Epic Hero and can't take enhancements?
As others have said, he's an Epic Hero and can't take enhancements. The Firesight Team on the other hand is a Character with Lone Operative and Precision weapons.
Godammit, that just ruined my plan for my first game
i thought "Darkstrider" was just a random Character....😄
@@ncurley999 you cant use it on the firesight, its not leading a unit wich is required in the enhancement, yay it sucks, like the rest of the index
Can the vehicles like riptides that have the damaged status just ignore the -1 to hit with their weapon support system? i mean its built in to just not have to care if they are damaged.
Puretide engram chip is pure garbage. Everything single other army that has a 'use a strategem twice' ability makes it cost it 0 cp. Except the tau one, ok. Where the hell do they expect you to get the CP from to even be able to use that thing?
fyi longstrike is pretty shit as well, lethal hits overrides devastating wounds, so its nice to autowound (like a hammerhead needs that lol) but then you don't get your MW from your railgun. I guess it could work on an ionhead though.
Same as with the detachment rule. You save up CP until Turn 3, hope to survive that long, and spend it all in one go hoping for the best, yay!
Why do I always pick the worst times to return to 40k.
Was wanting to play tau as my third army. I was thinking about scooping up the combat patrol sometime next month as a starter set until i can get Farsight himself. Im sad they stopped selling the boarding patrol :(
Just realised this is 2 months ago but the combat patrol actually has some really good units for these rules. Don't know if you've made up your mind though considering the time that's passed.
How much of this can change with the release of the new codex comming spring?
Or are these previews for the rules that will be present in the codex?
I really feel like Kauyon is a huge flavor miss the way it is implemented in 10th (and was in 9th). The Patient Hunter is supposed to be about ambushes and fighting at long range, how the hell is this rule representing it well ? You don't ambush an ennemy when you're already halfway through the battle, and probably already engaged in melee if the enemy is inclined to try.
There where far better way to carry the idea of the Kauyon, like Infiltration, Stealth, or the ability to redeploy unit at the start of the battle (seriously, the 'Exemplar of the Kauyon' warlord trait was the only good implementation of the Kauyon philosophy I've seen in 9th and 10th).
Kauyon is about springing traps, herding your foe into killzones, encirclement and other such tactics.
If you want the "turn 1 big splat", that is Mont'ka.
I do agree that they could do more in terms of mobility, since they are supposed to avoid direct and full confrontation until properly positioned.
@@fendelphi I agree that big turn 1 alpha strikes are Mont'ka's thing, but both philosophies want to strike first, either by taking the initiative (Mont'ka), or, like you said, by avoiding confrontation (Kauyon). This implementation feels like I'm just supposed to endure a beatdown until I'm getting a boost out of nowhere to strike back, and that doesn't feel neither like Kauyon, nor like the T'au way of war in general.
I think that, if the idea is to patiently avoid confrontation until the time has come to spring the trap, Kauyon indeed lacks mobility/defensive tricks (moving in the ennemy turn maybe ?) to make it feel right.
@@Lleldorellin Yeah the last part is what I think as well. Because the damage potential is clearly there(once Kauyon is active), but the issue is you only have 3 battle rounds to turn things around in terms of victory points(as it is now).
Basically you have to have a strategy for the first half, and another for the second half, while still being aware of shifting objectives.
And they do not get a lot of good tools to do it with.
Lack of "generic" characters to put into certain squads(nothing for Stealth Suits and very limited options for Pathfinders) and the noodle like strength of the various Kroot units and Tactical Drones.
You made an error with the Tidewall Droneport. You get 8 drone defender shots against EVERY enemy unit that is an eligible target, not the closest one.
So that means each enemy unit in LoS within 20" is targetted with 8 bonus shots. Its chip damage but its potentially a lot of chip damage across the enemy units.
Glad points dropped since this video
Can aircraft get Rapid Ingress'd with a Homing Beacon from an infiltrated Stealth Battlesuit for an earlier sunshark bomber?
My Tau are really bad, sad face. I keep seeing people saying “oh no, with lone operative and blah blah) their good. I watched 5 battle reports with Tau. 3 of the games they were tabled by turn 3, the other turn 4 and the last they actually survived ( barely against Voltan) and still lost the game by 50 points. Enough said I think.
I'd note that for Through Unity, Devastation, Pathfinders can spot for 2 units per turn. So bringing Darkstrider (no longer Sept locked) with that Enhancement will let his Pathfinders grand the normal boosts, plus lethal hits, for 2 units per turn if they can stay on the board.
Darkstrider is an epic hero and so can't be given an enhancement.
@@555tork I always forget he's a named character. Thanks for clarifying that for me.
Cordinate to Engage could be good on Pathfinders with lot rail rifles etc...
Coordinate to Engage issue is that the unit does not count as "Guided"(it simply gets similar buffs), meaning it wont benefit from Kauyon's "Sustained Hits2", only the lesser version. Generally speaking, there are better uses for your CP, but in the right situation, sure it will be an ok stratagem.
Shield drone question, if you add a shield drone to a Strike Team does each model get +1 wound or just one model in the unit?
one model
As a T'au player this seems 😮💨👎 either gonna change armies or just play Kill Team and skip 10th. Now that i've seen it I don't like it, plus all the work that went into drone models and battlesuit equipment that basically means nothing now...not cool.
May I suggest onepagerules. A lot faster games, and in my opinion a lot more fun to play.
Why do Adeptus Custodes get 2,3,5,6 or 4,5,9,10 unit sizes to account for the shied captain, but crisis suits are limited to 3 or 6 so if you want to build a crisis suit commander you have to put 2 models into the bits box?
The more I look at the data sheets and the weapon profiles for all these different armies, the more I am convinced that the design philosophy for this edition was to make it more like 7th edition. Armies like tau and dark eldar seem to have had their play styles reverted back to what it was in that era and many of the units that were really good in that era are good once again
So if the coldstar has the rule to make all weapons assault but not the auto advance rule so can you use it if you have a coldstar attached?
No Onager gauntlet, I will expire 💀 Tank shock will have to suffice.
Also was hoping Krootox riders would be better, but I was greatly disappointed.
I am not really a fan that the Accelerator burst cannon and Twin smart missile systems are different on Longstrike to the normal Hammerhead in a seemingly random way. One has one more shot, the other an extra AP, while the Twin pulse carbine simply stays the same. Will get really hard to memorize everything.
My first 10th ed game was 1000k my death guard against tau from son and dark angels from another son. Tau took it handily with double observation from pathfinder squads and guided third round extra shots with cadre fireblade. Wasnt even close. Would have been scary even if DG werent on the struggle bus.
Edit: darkstrider is a bit pricey but the +1 to wound is nothing to sneeze at. It's far stronger than the DG -1 toughness aura. Kinda wish DG aura was +1 to wound instead.😔
So what unit do they want us to buy this time?
Surely right before the codex releases they'll tease a suit with the coveted anti-vehicle keyword on all its weapons 😂
Seems like they got a big backstock of Ghostkeels (or Combat Patrol for them) and Piranhas that they need to get out of the warehouse. They'll be nerfed back down when the Codex drops.
So GW is a miniature company that just made an army list that doesn't require a huge chunk of models it used to require...
... when did their marketing department get that incompetent?
'Your previous purchases will do nothing and you will be happy'... once you've 'shopped' the range refresh.
@@d-rex7043 Or if you've been around long enough, you just have all the models. I'm excited to whip out my trip-keel from 7th edition when they had 2 fantastic detachments.
once again the kroot a left in the dirt :(
Maybe it is to deprive the Tau of melee, but i just want pure kroot!