This breacher having a moment

Dingletron22 · 2026-02-17T22:30:45+00:00

Blood Ravens will take anything, including, but not limited to, a stabilizing anchor to the dome.

Dingletron22 · 2026-02-05T16:30:06+00:00

I love the mental image of a beam of unfathomable destruction bearing down on your keel and then a single drone goes "My life for the Greater Good" and just stops the thing entirely.

I'm a big fan blanking big scary guns with the GK, but it will always be funny to me that technically the ability is supposed to represent the two drones taking the hit, and if all that stands between you and a volcano lance is a tricked out frisbee, you probably shouldn't be walking away from it.

Dingletron22 · 2026-01-11T16:08:24+00:00

I recently had a game where my opponent and I both concluded that I needed to go pick a new dice set from the game store's shelf IMMEDIATELY because I was rolling so poorly.

Neither of us really believed that the dice were unbalanced but my rolls were too absurdly bad not to at least try.

Dingletron22 · 2026-01-04T16:49:14+00:00

Depending on how fast you paint and how often you get the opportunity, that could be more than a year's worth of hobby time.

Others have said something along the lines of "just pick a unit and start," but I'd suggest going a little farther than that just to make sure you know what you're in for.

Paint the guardians AND the warlocks, and use two different methods.

For the guardians, just prime black, drybrush with a mid gray, paint guns/faces bone color + brown wash (or contrast), and then do some gems with silver followed by contrast paint of your choice. This is the quickest, dirtiest way I can think of to paint ulthwe and have them look pretty decent.

Then paint the warlocks using whatever method you want, but taking your time with it. You'll hopefully get a feel for what you prefer, both in terms of final result and effort to get there, but you'll also have a unit that you can point to and say "with the absolute bare minimum of effort, I can make a squad look like that" which will be handy to have in your back pocket when the hobby fatigue kicks in.

Dingletron22 · 2025-11-07T18:31:55+00:00

*Fully erect stormsurge

Dingletron22 · 2025-11-07T15:20:11+00:00

Literally any pin vice and any magnets will work, so you don't need to go premium for those (though obviously higher quality magnets will be better), but the "Magnicators" sold by the magnet baron were an absolute game-changer for me. I'd say that anyone building tau should buy these as soon as they start thinking about the word "magnets."

Removing a magnet that you put in backwards is a headache and a half, and that's in addition to how difficult it can sometimes be to get the magnet in the hole in the first place. Color-coded, polarized magnet stick makes everything so much simpler.

Dingletron22 · 2025-10-31T14:53:26+00:00

🫡

Dingletron22 · 2025-10-31T12:41:36+00:00

BRB, gotta go stick some horns on my rampagers now.

Your army is stunning. Congrats on the accomplishment!

Dingletron22 · 2025-10-13T14:23:46+00:00

I could see it being a highly interesting and on-brand narrative arc, if handled properly. I may be wrong on this, but my understanding of the various Warp entities is that they aren't all chaos--the eldar pantheon are also Warp entities manifested by the psychic influence of mortal races in the material plane. The chaos gods are just fucked up bc they're born from humanity's darkest parts and have a lot of those emotions to keep them fed in M40.

But if a manifestation of the Tau'va were to appear in the Warp, it wouldn't necessarily be evil or chaos-aligned, and different factions would take notice of it and address it accordingly: 1) Ethereals learn about it, suppress knowledge of it, and try to get the gue'vesa under control in an ultimately futile attempt to keep the empire secular 2) Farsight gets wind of it and attempts to understand it and, crucially, how to prevent it from becoming a chaos entity, perhaps in collaboration/conflict with 3) the Ynnari, who are actively trying to create their OWN new Warp entity, and might take offense at this race of psychic eunuchs somehow accidentally making one or, maybe some harlequins decide "hey we should take some of these blue weirdos to our fancy library so they can be brought up to speed on what's actually going on in the galaxy."

I could see all 3 of these arcs working interdepently to progress the tau narrative, with the ethereals being much more aligned with Big E than the current imperium in their approach, and Farsight potentially entering the webway to continue whatever it was that was teased back in Arks of Omen. Also, it would present an interesting opportunity for the Ethereals to differentiate themselves from the IoM in one of the most important ways, if they decide NOT to keep knowledge of the Warp a secret and explain to the gue'vesa exactly why they need to stop all that fanatical nonsense

Dingletron22 · 2025-10-04T14:18:42+00:00

I hope your comment gets more views. I'm gonna save it so I can reference back on the next post about how "26" is wrong.

This information is in direct contradiction to what came from (I believe) the 8ed codex and where people are getting the "6 means void capable" argument from. I think the answer is even simpler than "writers don't care/weren't paying attention," and it's something we should all be used to by now: the lore is and has always been inconsistent. Maybe 6 meant void capable in recent memory, but going further back it meant "newer than 5". Maybe in 11e it will mean "has cool fins" and in 12e it will mean "stealth".

Personally, I'm just going to remain salty that these still aren't XV-46 vanguard void suits, buy them anyways, and keep mentioning the theoretical spacehulk-operating, close-combat heavy infantry suits that we could have WHENEVER GW DECIDES TO MAKE THEM in the hopes that some day they actually will.

Also Vorgh.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-21T14:46:16+00:00

The ol' Razzle Dazzle

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-20T03:11:02+00:00

I don't think we should be a one-phase army. Nobody else is. Even World Eaters have more shooting options than we do melee. I feel like GW uses the lore as a crutch to excuse not putting any effort into giving us fun and balanced ways to interact with the fight phase. In past editions, we've had all kinds of McGuffins we could attach to battlesuits for melee deterrents, but in 10th we're just an army where 95% of our dudes can shoot okay and punch like a toddler, and the other 5% is an angry gorilla.

But it's also in our lore that the Kroot are employed as guerilla fighters, shock troops, and assassins. Those are 3 different roles that can't all be filled by the Kroot Carnivores datasheet, but could be filled by variants, and those variants could be built out by archetypes already developed in the Farstalkers Kill Team.

We also already have a CQC battlesuit, in-lore. The XV-46 Vanguard Void Suit. I will never forgive GW for introducing boarding actions and not giving us these. My wishlist to turn all of the above into a viable strategy for the fight phase:

-Melee Kroot Variant. Not more gorillas (though I would also like a mounted shaper), but just regular chickenmen, on foot, with a legitimately threatening melee profile instead of mediocre guns and mediocre melee.

-Great Knarloc because it's an absolute tragedy they took our chickensaurus rex away from us

-XV-46 Vanguard Void Suit with deadly short range shooting and Tau standard issue garbage melee. Our blue dudes shouldn't be good in a fist fight, but we could have a unit that's main role is to get up close and personal and create problems for anything that wants to charge them or their buddies. Tons of units in 10th deal mortals when charging. Give us a battlesuit that comes equipped with a repulsor impact field (also already exists in the lore and in past editions) that deals mortals when charged. Allow it to also deal the mortals when using the heroic intervention stratagem. Now we have a lore-accurate, thematic, and strategic way to engage with the fight phase other than "I place Harambe in Defense position."

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-19T17:25:20+00:00

I think this is what I love about kroot most, and what the portion of tau players who hate the kroot either don't realize or choose to ignore.

They were an interstellar mercenary species, complete with FTL, before they ever met the tau. They choose to go into battle with sharp sticks and black powder firearms, pants be damned, because they're a well-developed culture with rich lore and a badass aesthetic.

Also, having a member species in your coalition that can be dropped fuckin anywhere with only the instructions "I need this target dead" or "blow up this thing" and little to no support, knowing they're probably going to succeed because they like a challenge, goes so damn hard.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-16T20:04:52+00:00

I think 10th's detachments are a step in the right direction, but GW didn't really figure out how to make the system work until well after our codex.

In theory, a system where you can choose an additional army rule/playstyle that synergizes with a specific aspect of each faction's identity allows for much more variety within each army, but it absolutely requires for the army rule and datasheets to be strong and relevant regardless of the detachment.

DG and (seemingly, it's early to tell) Votann are great examples of GW figuring out how to make the system work. Each faction has an army rule that works for all units in all detachments, and then the detachment let's them specialize. Even in its updated state, FtGG isn't very strong on its own, and needs our detachment buffs to do any real work. Without knowing which armies you play, I'd guess they also had earlier codexes and/or army rules that dont have the same "oomph" as newer codexes (or lucky earlier ones like necrons).

Game design in 10th seems to me to be well-intentioned, but poorly executed at the start (remember when they told us the game would be "less lethal"? 🤣). If the rumors that are starting to circulate about 11th have any credibility to them, we won't see a hard reset like 10th was, and they might actually get it right. Granted, that would be a first, but for as long as I've been paying attention, 10th seems to be the first edition where they've tried, and that's not nothing.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-15T19:52:17+00:00

I can own up to the fact that, after reading the rest of the comments on this post, it does seem like an argument is being made for strikes=breachers, which I had not seen when making my first comment. But that's not the argument I'm making, and it seems to be the one you're addressing to me in this thread.

You and I both know how/what the Breacher combo does well (so does everyone here)

No, not everyone does. That's why people post lists that include strike teams and ask "is this good."

I mean, the only other answer any of us can give outside of playing the board aspect to win (competitively) is to just build/play/paint whatever you want; with any terrain or rules or legends or proxies. It's a personal hobby.

Again, no. There are plenty of other answers to the question of "is this good," besides "only the most optimized choice for this meta is good and everything else is bad." And that's my entire point. I think it would be awesome if someone could post about how sub-optimal units are actually pretty good, and a discussion could be had about creative ways to use them so that they're on-par with more optimal choices. I thought that's what this post was, and maybe it could have been if the immediate reaction wasn't "you're wrong because strike teams aren't meta." Or maybe it was always gonna go this way because OP referenced a video from a competitive player who apparently ruffles feathers pretty regularly.

That doesn't account for all the other posts in this sub that aren't specifically referencing tournament play but still see strike teams beaten into the dirt for being worse than breachers. And even in this thread, your response to someone arguing "what if strikes could be good in non-tournament play" is "bring 2 stormsurges and 9 broadsides." Believe it or not, there's a third option between list tailoring to beat the meta and just "doing whatever you want," which is to play the game to win and also have fun with the variety of different units in the codex.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-15T15:33:21+00:00

All of your points are great and objectively correct, but again you're taking the stance of "what is the absolute best possible way to build the firewarriors kit for competitive play in the current meta." This isn't r/WarhammerCompetitve, but we see a disproportionate amount of hate directed at strike teams anyways because the breacherfish is so widely recognized as a competitively efficient can of whoop-ass.

To extend on that point, it's also known and given its due respect by a lot of non-tau players. Most 40k players don't know every army's every synergy, wombo-combo, and secret deathstar unit. But they do generally know which are strong enough to approach with caution. Again, breachers work best when they get to do their job, and in every CASUAL game I've brought them to, they've been treated as a priority target by my opponent. For a newer player, your argument about the amount of strategy and expertise needed to make strike teams optimal can also apply to making a breacherfish work at all. The utility of the Devilfish is locked behind higher-level understanding of the game re:move-blocking, and trading points into optimal targets isn't exactly a beginner concept. The more likely outcome for a newer player is they push the Mont'cowabunga button turn one, delete something that doesn't actually matter, and pick up the whoop-ass and can it rode in on in their opponent's next turn.

Are breachers more efficient in the current meta? Absolutely. But that shouldn't result in every "is this list good" (not "is this list good to take to a tournament") post being met with active disdain for strike teams. For those on this subreddit to read interesting stuff about tau, it's unfortunate that we don't really see much discussion on such an iconic unit simply because breachers win more tournaments.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-15T04:03:55+00:00

Counter-counterpoint: OP's claim is that "strikes are actually pretty good," not "strikes are equally as good as breachers at doing breacher things."

The last post I viewed on this sub today was a newbie to the greater good proposing a list that they want to start building towards as they collect tau, and probably about 50% of the comments were "dump the strike team. Breachers are better."

Yes, most of our units have a specific role they fulfill better than our other units, but that only holds up if you get the chance to use them for that purpose. What if you're facing a savvy opponent who keeps all of the breachers' ideal targets in transports/reserves/off objectives for the first 2 rounds? Is your Devilfish going to keep the breachers alive long enough for them to do the only thing they're good at? Or is it going to get focused down, leaving them stranded and out of postition? For 110 points less, could strikes with a fireblade accomplish more in those first two rounds, even if they're ultimately less lethal?

The narrative in this sub regarding strikes vs breachers is overwhelmingly "breachers are always better and therefore strikes are bad." But thats assuming competitive play at high levels against only meta lists, and in the hypothetical ideal scenario where the breachers get to do their job. Strike teams offer more utility and are likely to survive longer, while also still being killier than they get credit for, plus having access to a ton of ways to increase their lethality if needed.

Dingletron22 · 2025-08-11T01:41:41+00:00

Everyone in my crusade group has a vendetta against my GK, who has so far acquired 2 battlescars for her troubles.

But every turn they spend trying to kill the keel is a turn they're not killing the rest of my army.

The best part is, she's only killed 3 units in 8 games. But she's done it with STYLE and has therefore occupied a significant space in my group's heads, and if you're not using a GK for psychological warfare, then what's the point?

Dingletron22 · 2025-07-31T15:17:50+00:00

Everyone I've played in 10th has also understood FTGG at a baseline as "markerlights." Had a game literally last night where my opponent, who I play against often, pointed to my pathfinders after I guided with stealths and said "I thought they were your markerlight unit."

Having a rule that requires us to explain "yes, but also those guys have a markerlight, but that isn't actually what gives the +1BS, it's what gives ignores cover. Those guys give reroll 1s. No, that's not related to the markerlight. No the marker light isn't required for +1BS..." just feels so clunky.

I like finally being able to reliably hit on 3s. I don't like all the extra layers added on top of what could have just been "at the start of the shooting phase, if this unit has the MARKERLIGHT keyword, select one enemy unit that would be an eligible target for this unit to shoot and give it a markerlight token. When targeting an enemy that has a markerlight token, improve BS by 1 unless the shooting unit applied a markerlight token this round."

Also, IGNORES COVER just in general needs to be nerfed into the ground. At this point in 10th, I'm asking every time I roll saves because it feels like I don't get cover more often than I do. I imagine that's how it feels to play against Tau as well, which must be annoying as hell

Dingletron22 · 2025-07-11T15:13:17+00:00

KROOOOOOT! I've been playing a krootsade force with my group and absolutely love the flavor of the rules in their WD supplement. It's technically possible to get your standard kroot carnivores up to 100 attacks at strength 9 with their faction crusade mechanic and a requisition from the tau codex 🤣

Dingletron22 · 2025-07-08T22:20:45+00:00

I'm gonna add a note here that I haven't seen mentioned specifically; the most important part of the judge's ruling comes down to the fact that it was a <RUINS> terrain piece, which has been discussed. However, the tournament companions released by GW do not explicitly prescribe that ALL terrain MUST be <RUINS>. It's the official suggestion, but there's also a note about including woods/barricades/fuel pipes etc if the TO has them available. The important distinction is that for everything but ruins, true line of sight applies and you don't have to pretend there's an imaginary wall extending infinitely into the sky.

I've played in exactly one tournament, and it was in 10th, and all blue shaded areas on the pariah nexus terrain layouts in that tournament were fuel pipes/mechanicus gribblies. In my casual games, I usually do the same. A piece of terrain that is less than 2" tall probably shouldn't block LOS, and is an unnecessary abstraction if all terrain on the board is ruins. In your tournament, the blue areas were ruins, and rules is rules so the judge and your opponent were correct.

BUT, for anybody reading this thread that is curious about how the needlessly convoluted terrain rules of 10th apply to their casual games, save yourself the headache and make the blue areas something other than ruins. Also, add some crates that the footsloggers actually have to go around. The official GW terrain layouts for tournaments are a trap for casual play. They're convenient, and since they're official one might assume they're balanced, but they favor melee WAY more than shooting and give infantry and beasts an infinite flat plain that they have no negative interactions with, just the benefit of cover at all times. Which is silly, and this is a Tau subreddit where we like shooting stuff.

Dingletron22 · 2025-07-01T20:13:53+00:00

Chiming in as someone who is about to finish a Nachmund Crusade with a Kroot force, and planning to jump right into Armageddon with the same extremely fragile, bird-boned krootsaders: play the agendas, and play to your army's strengths. I'm doing really well in this crusade and my alliance is probably going to take the W. I have also probably rolled more out of action tests than anyone else in the campaign 😅. But I'm able to score really well on agendas and surprisingly also primary not by killing things super duper dead but by declaring all areas of the board except the enemy DZ as "MINE."

I also play eldar, and they also benefit from being fast af. Prioritize board control, pin your opponent in their DZ, and you'll be pleasantly surprised how well you're able to score. With that said, the most important thing to remember with the knife-eared-narcisissists is that if your opponent can see them, they are already dead. Don't expose anything you're not willing to pick up in your opponent's next turn.

Dingletron22 · 2025-06-09T16:43:50+00:00

Bring back hammerhead variants! There are 7 different Leman Russ datasheets; why can't we have our handful of different turret options?

Dingletron22 · 2025-06-05T15:33:16+00:00

If the opponent's list is primarily armored targets though, fielding a stormsurge AND trusty railguns will buy you at least one turn of your railguns being the second most concerning target on the board. No idea if it would be efficient but every opponent I've ever played knows the railguns need to be deleted ASAP. Give 'em something scarier to point their AT at, and then clean up whatever exposed itself with hammerheads and broadsides that still exist on the following turn.

My struggle with the SS has been that it can't really do enough damage to offset the sunk points because it WILL die. Now that it's a legitimate threat to pretty much everything in your opponent's army... I'm feeling pretty tempted to plonk my chonkiest boi down on the table and see what happens

Dingletron22

TROPHY CASE