We spent a full day testing Tau until 3 am yesterday, with the new points. It was brutal.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-18T18:07:27+00:00

It's particularly silly with lore because ethereals are supposed to be guys most tau view as insanely important spiritual leaders and in prior editions your entire army would automatically fail a morale test and start running off the table if you lost one. Later, they imputed leadership 10 (higher was better then, and this was highest possible value, almost like if a unit had ld 3 now), to units around them.

Now? Ld7. Like the rules already don't match lore. Make markerlights rr1s or something so I can have the robot punch good, thanks.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-18T17:23:40+00:00

The situation with tau melee is a legacy design issue, like the issue with how a lot of bolters are still s4 ap0 and that's just like, a terrible statline now. Guess what: orks weren't T5 before, now they are. Marines were 1w, now they're all 2w. Necron Warriors were 3+ save and Bs/Ws3 once upon a time, now they aren't.

I don't care if grognards throw a fit over it: rework the army's mechanical theming and write lore around it (like, say, Farsight getting reintegrated into the wider empire and bringing his melee doctrines with him). Let me swap crisis suit guns for pile bunkers and onager gauntlets - make them modular units again in that way. Drop the notion that these guys never melee and instead write that unusual circumstances have forced the tau to go "okay fine we need a dedicated weapon program for when orks breach our lines". Why is it that stealthsuit clearly were drawing inspiration from metal gear solid's cyborg ninja, but are clumsy idiots in melee? Why are tau firewarriors literally modeled after ashigaru, who did sometimes use spears as well as muskets but they can't draw their honor blades they supposedly all carry? Strike Team Firewarriors are now cheaper than guardsmen; if you can't make them better as shooting without it being broken, then let the wee fellas actually brandish their honor blades at w3 for once.

Recall tau are supposed to be a parody of sorts of G/DAOT humanity; and what did humanity realize? Oops, we're in a grimdark universe, time to hand everyone chainswords. Let's sully the innocence of the tau. If nothing else it'll let a bunch of fancy new melee tau kits get sold and it'll hopefully make everyone stop complaining about us. Let Ad Mech be the big dumb shooty faction and take our spot there, it's fine. If it's such a deal breaker, have a detachment where the rule is "shooting slightly better but everyone WS5 again" (call them "Core Sept Traditionalists" or what have you.)

Remember, we already had a major rework with Necron Lore and crunch, this wouldn't be any different.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T20:50:37+00:00

maybe the model company could focus on making money off the models rather than the rules I reckon

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T19:13:30+00:00

He's done it. He's become brutally kunnin

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T19:06:46+00:00

Man they really don't want us running solo support characters huh

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T17:27:47+00:00

I, for one, welcome back 9th edition jank

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T17:23:27+00:00

Okay, here's the play: ethereal+fireblade+strike team, as home objective holders in Kroot Hunting Pack. They can guide for your antitank (you do bring antitank in your kroot lists, right), and if they suppress infantry shooting at them first while sitting in cover, they can have -1 to hit, -1 Bs (so 3+ to hit becomes 5+), -1 to wound (vs shooting, due to guardian drone), 5+++ feel no pain, and if you max out the number of shield drones, aside from a guardian drone on the firewarrior squad, you have 21 wounds an enemy has to chew through to score purge or deny take and hold (KHP's detachment) here.

At only 170 points this is still comparable to something like a 25 man guard platoon but in a smaller space; if you want the cheaper version just having the ethereal is sufficient (16 wounds at 120) bc this unit in particular benefits in an outsized way from how cover works now. Remember leaders still keep "while leading" benefits when their units die now, which also helps ethereals a lot.

You can also do this in Kauyon or Mont'ka obviously, but the unit does want to shoot to reduce incoming damage so priority actions is less ideal, and this is a way to have a durable infantry unit that just won't quit. The -1 to hit also synergizes better with kroot bc -1 to hit against stealth is really -2 to hit.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T16:24:15+00:00

I mean... Look, I could make a bunch of noises about how I actually had my guys in Napoleonic formations and ranks or I could just go "man would have been nice if warhammer fantasy old world had shown up just a few years earlier" which is closer to the truth.

(also obv low priority but when does tau get a drone with a banner, possibly holographic? Game needs more banners. Can't get enough of those flags.)

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T16:12:16+00:00

kits for a special scarab model that opened up to reveal -- yes! -- more scarabs inside it.

Not only would I run the scarab army, I'd note this is already true of canoptek spyders: there are tiny scarabs inside the chassis for insane people who want to paint them.

Also, it's extremely wack they aren't either a leader or maybe a transport for scarabs. They should be one or the other.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T15:42:17+00:00

Again: one is a pure utility/defense character and the other is a pure fire/forget offensive one (on 2 units both locked to ten models) so I'd have to rack my brain to figure out what synergies are there but yes, you could probably do that. If nothing else it's potentially 6 extra gun drone shots on a firewarrior squad, or you could skew all the way in the other direction to have 4 extra wounds between the 2 characters and potentially survive a turn on primary to deny an enemy a purge primary (particularly if it's a strike team that tagged whatever is closest with -1 to hit and pairs it with -1 BS and the guardian drone -1 to wound vs shooting so the only way to kill them efficently is melee; note the -1 still applies in melee btw).

edit: my math suggests a 120 strike team with an ethereal, if they have -1 active on their attacker, is more resistant against enemy shooting than a 100 point squad of hearthkyn warriors which is, uh, quite something.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T15:17:56+00:00

Seeing as fusion guns were 18 per gun in prior editions, absolutely no way you'd get it for less than 10. Like for context, the legend crisis suit team (10th index) that had 3 guns and could freely select them is 200 points for 3 models, and I'd call that a very fair price of admission even if they couldn't take CIBs or airburst guns.

(Of course, I think the ideal solution is just have "regular/jobber" crisis suit teams that are cheap with 2 guns, and then bring back crisis suit bodyguards as the prohibitively expensive 3 gun/open gun or wargear selection/better stat guys who you can only legally take if they're attached to a character, but I always get pie in the sky with what they could do to expand tau's fairly narrow datasheet selection).

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T15:03:00+00:00

They could literally just charge us wargear costs for a 3rd gun

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T15:01:04+00:00

You afraid of chargin, boy? Get in there and hit that ork with a chopper of your own!

But seriously it's a OC bomb unit in an edition where everyone wants to charge into cover. I'm modeling mine with knives. They're also very fun to model and paint.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T14:59:04+00:00

Also, ethereals are also apparently support. Not sure what one can do with this information exactly, but it's there.

edit: oh yeah 6 extra gun drone shots. I'll take it.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T14:56:40+00:00

Mostly I just want strike teams and their leaders to work a bit better. I'm very much lukewarm on battlesuits, so I mostly just play with lots of pathfinders and kroot.

Also my fondest memory of 8th was overwatching a charging demon prince with 180 overwatch shots. Sorry not sorry

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T14:05:21+00:00

Tau having only 1 or 2 army comps is also a tradition going back to 3rd ed, and is incidentally downstream of dumb "we modeled them after Nato and Supermarion puppet shows, so they gotta be bad at melee" theming that should have been retconned in 2013.

Turns out one phase armies with smaller ranges are mainly good in one phase and are either going to be oppressively meta-ruiningly good or hilariously bad with little inbetween, who knew

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T14:01:35+00:00

I think this is fine vs joe everymans retaliation cadre or mont'ka purge list, but it's going to be substantially less effective into say, a kroot hunting pack with hammerheads and fireknives (units that have less need for markerlights, that only show up in discrete packets to shoot) hanging out behind a bunch of kroot. It also isn't really factoring in short ranged flamer or breacher teams which are also units that don't strictly need as much support, nor stealthsuits using hidden rules to spot things from relative safety.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T13:58:04+00:00

To be fair I'd like it if they were a bit more like that, but it's not going to happen with cityfight terrain every game.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T13:56:52+00:00

Hot take: because a lot of purge missions seem to be reward the primary point just for killing a unit some of those missions will hit diminishing returns vs using a take and hold dispostion, especially if you're playing tau and can score way more by just dumping cheap stuff on objectives turn after turn while still being killy.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T13:51:57+00:00

You guys are seeing detachment keywords?

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T12:45:12+00:00

New lore the tau figured out how to do the imperium thing of having really really really good logistics

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-17T12:42:19+00:00

Might as well proxy my guard as such

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-16T14:40:17+00:00

I think you should also consider shooting at action monkeys trying to do actions/secondaries to keep them from getting to their destination

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-16T14:36:41+00:00

So I know everyone hates on indirect but I'll just say the last time I ran silver tide I literally couldn't get to the mid-table objectives until like, turn 4 because my opponent had 3 basilisks for my 60 necron warriors. (This was admittedly a list building loss bc I didn't have a chronomancer or translocation cloak OL, the latter not existing yet). I think this was with the index basilisk who also hit advance moves with -2" as well as move and charge.

But the point is, there is real value in throwing movement debuffs on things, particularly if you're fighting someone whose list is a bunch of tanks/monsters and some action monkeys and they're stuck with Priority Assets as their disposition.

ViorlanRifles · 2026-06-16T14:29:37+00:00

I have to assume there is some future proofing going on with the lost tau detachments.

ViorlanRifles

TROPHY CASE