Greater Good Today

[Panzer]

Fair enough. Realistically if T'au want to expand there's no way they could leave the Imperium alone. Mankind isn't sitting on every single planet, but eventually you always get to one with humans on.

[Bryan Blaire]

Mankind isn't sitting on every single planet, but eventually you always get to one with humans on.

Isn't that what Whack-a-mole is based on? :devil:

[Triszin]

So farsight and shadow sun,can now probably join any Sept, or detachment, with the exclusion of being unable to field with each other?

[Panzer]

I doubt that Farsight will be able to do that.

[Archaeinox]

In addition to that Tau .pdf there is also a Genestealer Cults short story they'll put up sometime

 

 (Speculation from me) :

 

so it looks like the speculation that came from the Shadowsun pic with genestealers in the background might mean its a 3 faction book 

Edited January 10, 2020 by Archaeinox

[TheMostGood]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well to be fair, you wouldn’t be shooting at drones with your anti infantry because the drones wouldn’t be in sight to shoot as it is right now.

 

If you made the drones join the unit it was bought for, then the player could dish out wounds as they see fit. So you could use anti-infantry D1 on say a crisis suit team, but if a D3 wound should pop up, the drone could take it as a mortal wound under the rules as they are now.

If you actually never get LoS to the Drones you are doing something terribly wrong or have a sick amount of LoS blocking terrain on the board that's not representative for most games other people play. The way competetive boards look and how armies move etc. to get to objectives and get LoS etc. there's no way to hide most of your Drones out of LoS for more than maybe one turn if you are lucky.

You can play how you'd like, and that certainly might be your experience.

 

But most ITC events (competitive play) offer plenty of LoS blocking terrain for two reasons. They actually fill the board out with enough terrain (which makes it so that armies don't get alpha striked as hard) and with the way they rule units inside buildings as "untargetable".

 

So you can pretty comfortably hide most of your drones out of LoS for most of the game. Most of the casualties for drones in these events comes from Savior Protocols. Opponents have to "chew" through the Savior Protocols of drones to get to the juicy insides of the Battlesuit line which has become unfun and uninspiring for everyone involved. That's actually one of the main complaints with T'au on both sides of the field.

 

Here's a video of a top T'au player who has won a couple of tournaments to explain the idea (forgot where it's at exactly). Basically, you find a piece of LoS terrain and drop your shield drones behind that. First squad is bunched. Second squad wraps around the first to form a circle etc. Then you put your riptides in sort of a triangle formation around that.

 

The drones are unlikely to ever be shot at unless your opponent has LoS negating weapons or can some how come up close enough in a turn or two to be able to shoot at the drones.

 

 

 

Also I misread your post. I thought you were suggesting that it was dumb to have a second pair of arms period not that you didn't like the idea that she had to stick her arms through real robot arms.

 

Which I don't understand the issue? The stealth suits for the stealth suit elite and shadowsun are barebones suits that are more exosuits rather than battlesuits proper. One could argue that the design and function of the suit requires it to be worn that way or else it couldn't be powered and would be too bulky (like the Ghostkeel).

I know the ITC tables and how such T'au lists get played. Of course you try to have them out of LoS. However that's definitely not possible for all of your Drones all the time against good opponents. Against opponents that know what to do having mixed units where the Drones would benefit from the Battlesuits toughness and would actually also be able to benefit from their 4++ as well it would be a huge buff and even more annoying to deal with than the way it currently works.

 

In a mixed unit instead of having a 2+ to roll to put a Lascannon wound on a Shield Drone which then has to roll a 5+++ to survive I could put the Lascannon wound on the Shield Drone without having to roll anything at all and then have to roll a 4++ followed by X(usually about 3.5 for a Lascannon) 5+++ to survive.

The usual answer to that is "shoot the Drones first", but oh wait you can't anymore because they are part of the Riptide unit now. So if you actually want to "shoot the Drones first" you'd have to aim with your anti-infantry shots at the Riptide which would simply laugh about it and shrug it off with his T7 Sv2+.

So at the end of the day the unit would become a LOT more durable than it is today.

A mixed unit is definitely not the way to go if you're seeking a nerf to the Drone issue (if it even is an issue since T'au still don't win on tournaments all the time even with their best list anyway).

 

 

It seems you are still misunderstanding the issue with Shadowsun and I don't know how to make it more clear than I already did in the above posts, so I'm just asking you to read those again.

How does a unit become more durable in this way?

 

Currently I can have one riptide and as many shield drones as I want. Let’s say 4-10 for the riptide.

 

I can hide those drones out of LOS easily and most of my casualties will come from savior protocol loses and not the drones dying to direct fire. This is SUPER easy to accomplish and your hand waving doesn’t make this fact disappear.

 

VS the proposition that the drones can only do savior protocols within the unit itself which means the Riptide gets a maximum of two drones (shielded missile drones) to absorb wounds from.

 

Explain how that is more durable than the current??

[Triszin]

In addition to that Tau .pdf there is also a Genestealer Cults short story they'll put up sometime

 

(Speculation from me) :

 

so it looks like the speculation that came from the Shadowsun pic with genestealers in the background might mean its a 3 faction book

Gsc vs Tau vs deathgaurd.

 

 

Makes me think.. catachans might be in pa6 to

[Archaeinox]

 

In addition to that Tau .pdf there is also a Genestealer Cults short story they'll put up sometime

 

(Speculation from me) :

 

so it looks like the speculation that came from the Shadowsun pic with genestealers in the background might mean its a 3 faction book

Gsc vs Tau vs deathgaurd.

 

 

Makes me think.. catachans might be in pa6 to

 

 

It sure would seem that way, bud. I will say this, though: There doesn't appear to be another faction in the Genestealer Cults short story besides human psykers that are being killed by confused cult members wondering what is going on. I would have expected some mention but its certainly the same title font as the previous short stories which is why it must be PA.

[elmo]

Nudge time...

 

Let's play nice together fellow Shas.... after all we are meant to be on the side of the Greater Good - don't make me set Farsight on you!

[Emicus]

Traitor Shortsight? Send him so he can face justice. Betrayer of the Greater Good

[chapter master 454]

Car'Freight? Where? I thought we were talking about brightmoon.

[Triszin]

one of the things I would love is if some of the suite systems that never get used get reworked.

 

A small hope.

[Panzer]

Well the Multi-tracker got barely used by anyone so GW decided to rework it so that you need to shoot with all your weapons at the same target AND the target unit has to contain at least 5 models. Oh and they made it more expensive as well iirc.

That was such a backward decision that I won't be holding my breath for any good support system change. 

[chapter master 454]

Yea, to be honest a couple of them aren't great. Multi-Tracker is the biggest offender really. Velocity Tracker is good, Counterfire is decent but really only if you go with Tau Sept (because of maths, even with CDS, Tau Sept have a better hit rate on overwatch raw), Early Warning Override just needs to affect the whole squad with just one, not model by model. Target Lock is fine, ATS is fine and shield generator is fine. I think multi-tracker could be saved purely by adding "count markerlights on target as 1 higher".

 

To be honest, I would like to see Tau gear options opened up more with more relics and maybe have the ability to give crisis suits (standard, not commanders) relics via stratagem or maybe add a sub-relic table for battlesuits (any battlesuit can take one of the options).

[Triszin]

Tau article on Mon.

 

Pa5 article next 2 mondays, then preorder?

Edited January 12, 2020 by Triszin

[Archaeinox]

They posted that Tau short story on War Comm. :] 

 

Hopefully I can get access to others and share tidbits but no promises there.

 

What do ya'll think of the story? Is it safe to say that Death Guard are significant enough in the fiction to be a big player in the PA book? I won't put a spoiler tag here because we've already discussed this aspect of the short story for many posts around B&C.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Archaeinox

[Triszin]

Wow.

 

Deathgaurd beat the 5th expansion down, beat shadowsun down, to the point of her doing delay tactics and taking extreme losses to save some time

 

So pa5, is going to be the battle for the star tide Nexus, oh boy!

 

Super excited

[INKS]

where is this story posted? and is it official? 

[Triszin]

It's on warhammer community :)

[Panzer]

It's a nice little story. Kinda surprised the DG conflict is on that side of the Startide Nexus and also that they are having a complete field day with the T'au there. Especially when Shadowsun is there. I thought the DG conflict would be on our side of the rift since that's also where they are fighting against the Ultramarines which are right beside the T'au Empire.

 

Best thing about the story though was the description of how strange and otherworldly the Death Guard are. First time the T'au are facing actual Chaos Marines and it just have to be the ones with the most off putting mutations. :D (though I'm sure a bunch of hyper aggressive melee fanatics would have resulted in nice descriptions as well)

 

Also the idea of Nur’ghel being just an ally that might have decided to betray the Death Guard. So good. Just shows how much the T'au still have to learn about the galaxy. ^^

Sidenote, when Shadowsun mentioned to do some kind of suicidal attack on the overwhelming DG fleet I immediately thought that it's dumb since T'au would rather retreat and fight another day instead of joining the meatgrinder like the Imperium does, so I was extremely happy when that got immediately addressed as going against the teachings of Puretide.

[Aothaine]

I agree this short story was very well written and helps explain what happened to the 4th fleet. Loved the descriptions of the Death Guard as well. Super hyped about this release as I love both the T'au and the Death Guard. I wonder what the unidentified ship was that they pointed out in the story. Think it will be Imperium of nature? Would be really interesting if the T'au had an encounter with a primarch that is just making his way around cleaning up the filth. As far as I know they do not know what Primarchs even are. I wonder how they would react to seeing one in battle. One thing is for certain though. The T'au have an incredibly tough fight ahead of them. I wonder how this might affect their relations with the Imperium and how Guilliman will treat the T'au. Of all the Primarchs, I could see Guilliman forming a pact with the T'au. 

[Irbis]

Deathgaurd beat the 5th expansion down

Wait, it's not 5857933785 story where mon-keigh futilely attack some pointless decoy that kills them all effortlessly despite massive strenght imbalance while Shadowsun takes 40 planets behind their backs? Did someone took a pen away from Phil Kelly?

 

Best thing about the story though was the description of how strange and otherworldly the Death Guard are. First time the T'au are facing actual Chaos Marines and it just have to be the ones with the most off putting mutations. (though I'm sure a bunch of hyper aggressive melee fanatics would have resulted in nice descriptions as well)

 

What about that one time they killed Slaanesh?

[VanDutch]

I agree this short story was very well written and helps explain what happened to the 4th fleet. Loved the descriptions of the Death Guard as well. Super hyped about this release as I love both the T'au and the Death Guard. I wonder what the unidentified ship was that they pointed out in the story. Think it will be Imperium of nature? Would be really interesting if the T'au had an encounter with a primarch that is just making his way around cleaning up the filth. As far as I know they do not know what Primarchs even are. I wonder how they would react to seeing one in battle. One thing is for certain though. The T'au have an incredibly tough fight ahead of them. I wonder how this might affect their relations with the Imperium and how Guilliman will treat the T'au. Of all the Primarchs, I could see Guilliman forming a pact with the T'au.

I think the unidentified ship is just a Death Guard vessel so messed up they can’t classify it. That’s how I read it anyway.

Edited January 14, 2020 by VanDutch

[Panzer]

Would be really interesting if the T'au had an encounter with a primarch that is just making his way around cleaning up the filth. As far as I know they do not know what Primarchs even are. I wonder how they would react to seeing one in battle. One thing is for certain though. The T'au have an incredibly tough fight ahead of them. I wonder how this might affect their relations with the Imperium and how Guilliman will treat the T'au. Of all the Primarchs, I could see Guilliman forming a pact with the T'au. 

 

A regular Primarch? They probably wouldn't react all that much to it considering one of their more common enemies are the Orks which come in different sizes and they already learned that humans apparently come in different sizes with vastly improved physical capabilities too after encountering Space Marines. Especially now that Primaris Marines are a thing as well. Simply another human variant that's mindblowingly big, strong and fast ... just a bit more than the other already mindblowingly big, strong and fast human variant.

 

They'd need to actually know the science behind their bodies to understand how special Primarchs really are (just talking to other humans won't do since they all are a somewhat superstitious bunch as we know). Or perhaps have a talk with Guilliman in private as I'm sure his down to earth personality and tactical genious would be respected a lot by the T'au. Too bad Puretide is already dead or a talk between those two would've been awesome.

 

 

A Daemon Primarch? Oh boy that would be something. The regular Death Guard, their weaponry and their ships are already borderline hard to understand for the T'au.

Wet projectiles? Mucus-ridden energy beams? Gigantic ships with tentacles and huge eyes but which don't seem to be entirely biological like the Tyranid ships? Bellymouths? Nurglings that hide inside the bodies of the Deathguard? Yeah all of that is just completely wrong and isn't supposed to exist by their knowledge. They know a sub-realm exists but they have no imagination of its nature and how it can affect things in the galaxy.

I'm not even sure they have encountered a Greater Daemon yet. If I recall correctly Farsight is the only one who had an encounter with Daemons and I'm not sure it was more than the basic daemons swarming him.

 

 

Guilliman going against the usual MO of the Imperium and forming an alliance with the T'au which are a somewhat reasonable and advanced xenos race, his neighbours and also struggling against the Death Guard would be awesome and I really hope GW is going to do that. The galaxy is going to :cuss and the T'au really could need some help instead of fighting a war at two or three (Tyranids) fronts.

[Irbis]

If I recall correctly Farsight is the only one who had an encounter with Daemons and I'm not sure it was more than the basic daemons swarming him.

 

Actually, in Phil Kelly's book, he beats a bloodthirster in a melee combat (unless Khorne has other huge, winged demons with axes the size of a battlesuit). But then again, his level of writing is such that I'd fully expect Mortarion to be dispatched with fusion shot to the face by random crisis suit pilot who would then quip that the gue'la have really gotten fat recently.