Tau Codex Rules Preview

[Wormwoods]

Been a real rollercoaster for the guy planning to convert his own firesight and vespids this month, lol. 

[Tokugawa]

6 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Comparing a dual-plasma Fireknife team to a squad of Plasma Inceptors is not particularly flattering:

• The Fireknives get +1W but -1T
• The Fireknives have 3D but the Inceptors can also get 3D and +1S if they risk overcharging.
• The Fireknives reroll 1s to Hit (full rerolls vs full strength units) but Inceptors are twin-linked.

The Plasma Fireknives are also 35 points more per squad than Inceptors but are not significantly better. Maybe dual Missile Pods hoping around on the flanks are the way to go.

Difference is +2W, not +1. Shield drone is no-brainer choice.

[Indy Techwisp]

5 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

Difference is +2W, not +1. Shield drone is no-brainer choice.

 

It used to be that 2 shield drones was the way to go.
Now tho, you're limited to 1 Shield drone per Crisis Suit, so assumedly you'll take 1 Shield and then something else.
I've seen some people suggest that you go 3 Shields and 3 Gun Drones so you can Spot and be Spotted for after you advance.

[Tokugawa]

6 hours ago, Emperor Ming said:

Why o why do they even print the points in the book anymore

Agree. Why they print absolutely outdated content which would be obsoleted at day0? 245pts XV104 is beyond joke. It's 165pts now and not very broken or staple popular.

[Alternis]

17 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

It used to be that 2 shield drones was the way to go.
Now tho, you're limited to 1 Shield drone per Crisis Suit, so assumedly you'll take 1 Shield and then something else.
I've seen some people suggest that you go 3 Shields and 3 Gun Drones so you can Spot and be Spotted for after you advance.

You’ll have to explain to me how gun drones work like that? 

[sitnam]

6 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

I will use this discovery of the Firesight Marksman's survival to remind everyone that they got a redesign in Tacticus

 

I hope they get a resculpt which is more like this design soon.

I hope so, I love the concept. I don't really do T'au, but a redone Foresight and some Pathfinder would fit in well with my Kroot

[Indy Techwisp]

50 minutes ago, Alternis said:

You’ll have to explain to me how gun drones work like that? 

 

Gun Drone's Twin Pulse Carbines have [Assault], meaning that you're eligible to shoot after advancing and thus can both guide and be guided.

If you were thinking that's the job of the Markerlight Drone, I've only seen that used to grant the "Ignores Cover" effect when spotting with a unit that natively doesn't have Markerlights or, in conjunction to that, further buff the guiding ability of Stealth Suits.

Edited March 15 by Indy Techwisp
Edit: Added missing text.

[MithrilForge]

Those Crisis team loadouts aren't as sever as I thought, you can have doubles of a weapon I see from the sheets, twin missile pods isn't so bad or twin plasma (the shorter range is a bit )  same with the burst cannon or flamer suits... would anyone (not ultra competitive mind you) take doubles of those ?... 

I feel like others have said that Vespid may be getting a suprise glow up perhaps, since those data sheets were absent... well we can hope at least   

 

really looking forward to getting this Codex now I've seen the leaks!

 

M. 

[jaxom]

23 minutes ago, MithrilForge said:

with the burst cannon or flamer suits... would anyone (not ultra competitive mind you) take doubles of those ?... 

24 burst cannon shots with lethal hits in Mont'ka against a chaff unit on an objective is nothing to sneeze at. Or 21 auto-hits at Str 5 AP-2 ignores cover with the flamers in a Retaliation Cadre.

[AutumnEffect]

2 hours ago, jaxom said:

24 burst cannon shots with lethal hits in Mont'ka against a chaff unit on an objective is nothing to sneeze at. Or 21 auto-hits at Str 5 AP-2 ignores cover with the flamers in a Retaliation Cadre.

The flamers also make for some solid use of Overwatch.

[Tokugawa]

3 hours ago, jaxom said:

24 burst cannon shots with lethal hits in Mont'ka against a chaff unit on an objective is nothing to sneeze at. Or 21 auto-hits at Str 5 AP-2 ignores cover with the flamers in a Retaliation Cadre.

In 10th very few lists and players would invest ~150pts on a dedicated chaff killing unit. If they do so, that unit must be very very good at killing cannon fodder targets.

[AutumnEffect]

5 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

In 10th very few lists and players would invest ~150pts on a dedicated chaff killing unit. If they do so, that unit must be very very good at killing cannon fodder targets.

This is true.

I'm hoping that the Ork codex changes some arithmetic on this when it comes out. There are some skew lists you see every once in awhile doing well with hordes of boys. At strength 5 the burst cannons and flamers are at a pretty good sweet spot to deal with them.

[MithrilForge]

6 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

In 10th very few lists and players would invest ~150pts on a dedicated chaff killing unit. If they do so, that unit must be very very good at killing cannon fodder targets.

That's very Subjective... I guess that all depends on who you play and where your from (the way people list build etc). 

 

 

[TheArtilleryman]

8 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

It used to be that 2 shield drones was the way to go.
Now tho, you're limited to 1 Shield drone per Crisis Suit, so assumedly you'll take 1 Shield and then something else.
I've seen some people suggest that you go 3 Shields and 3 Gun Drones so you can Spot and be Spotted for after you advance.

Dang, missed this. Just built all my crisis drones as shields, too. Now I have too many shields for the number of models in my army that can take them

[Wormwoods]

13 minutes ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Dang, missed this. Just built all my crisis drones as shields, too. Now I have too many shields for the number of models in my army that can take them

You can probably pop those off.

[L30n1d4s]

I'm not a Tau player, but I can already see real potential synergies in some of the Crises Suit builds:

 

1 - Farsight with Sunforge Battlesuits in Retaliation Cadre -- Deep strike 3" away and Guide them with a Tetra... against Vehicles/Monsters, you now have a unit that rerolls to hit (hits on a 3+), rerolls to Wound (S10 AP-5 Dmg D6 +2), and also has +1 to wound from Farsight... almost guaranteed destruction against most Monsters/Vehicles in the game... and when the enemy strikes back, you can use Stimm Injectors and their 5W (Shield Drone), T5, and 4++ Invuls to tank a ton of firepower.

 

2 - Coldstar Commander and Starscythe Battlesuits in Montka (all maximum Gun Drones and Burst Cannons) -- This gives you 54 x S5 AP-1 shots... use Tetras to Guide and the Focused Fire strat and now you have +1 to hit, full rerolls to hit, Lethal Hits, and AP-2 for all these attacks. Fishing for Lethal Hits, you should get an average of 16-18, so with AP-2 that can be Lethal to almost any unit in the game (pun intended), not counting any of the "normal" hits that end up wounding.

 

3 - Enforcer Commander (Exemplar of Kauyon Enhancement) and Fireknife Battlesuits in Kauyon (max Plasma Rifles on all) -- Guide this unit and use the Coordinate to Engage strat to improve Ballistic Skill by +1... at 18", this gives you 10 × S8 AP-3 Dmg3 shots that hit on rerollable 2+s (which can't be negatively modified) and get Ignores Cover well. Starting turn 2, this unit also gets Sustained Hits (2) when targeting its Spotted unit, so fishing for critical hits, that's an average of 15-16 S8 AP-3 Dmg3 (Ignores Cover) hits, which ought to delete pretty close to any Heavy Infantry unit it shoots at.

Edited March 15 by L30n1d4s

[Tokugawa]

If tetras isn't kicked out of competitive events stage after new codex release I will be very surprised. 

[Alternis]

13 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

Gun Drone's Twin Pulse Carbines have [Assault], meaning that you're eligible to shoot after advancing and thus can both guide and be guided.

If you were thinking that's the job of the Markerlight Drone, I've only seen that used to grant the "Ignores Cover" effect when spotting with a unit that natively doesn't have Markerlights or, in conjunction to that, further buff the guiding ability of Stealth Suits.

Nice, thank you, I only recently started Tau so still getting my head around it

[TheArtilleryman]

6 hours ago, Wormwoods said:

You can probably pop those off.

Sure they are convertible but it means breaking the flying stand, and once you’ve done that they’re really annoying to glue back together. I’ll probably just hang on to them and redistribute them. The Fireblade and Ethereal can have some maybe …

Edited March 15 by TheArtilleryman

[irlLordy]

FYI, you don't need to glue the drone top to the bottom, they friction fit just fine. So you can mix about your drones as needed.

[LSM]

22 hours ago, TheMawr said:

Your post was in response to me, and I was ( and always have been ) suggesting  that IF the vespids/swooping hawks/flying kill team rules are true it wont be a regular seasonal release anyway and could be released at any time, before, after or close to the next seasonal box.

 

Wich could mean it has an equal change to show up next preview, especially as it is not uncommon leakers dont leak new model shots ( it happened with 9th eldar too.) just a theory, and I dont hold my own theories as gospel. Ofcourse this is easily diproven if the image does leak.

 

Besides they are all rumors anyway, its "just as likely" next week we get a Freebooterz vs Catachans kill team.

But using rumors as evidence against speculation on other rumors ( from the same source of all things), I will always say, is madness.

 

Sorry, by "my post" I meant my initial post (responding to Indy Techwisp).

 

I was unaware that a leaker of the 9th edition Eldar book purposefully hid images of unrevealed models - that certainly adds precedent to such a thing, and raises my opinion of its likelihood. Do we know if it's the same leaker? (That would skyrocket the likelihood.)

 

As to "using a source's rumours against the same source's rumours is madness"... while I don't follow Valrak overly closely (so may have missed something said in discord, on a stream, etc.), my understanding was that the Vespid rumour was along the lines of:

• "I've heard that there are new Vespid coming sometime, as well as new Swooping Hawks and new Jump-Scions, and it seems for Kill Team, so maybe there will be a 'Kill Team Takes to the Skies' type of thing coming up."

Whereas the Votann vs GSC rumours is more of:

• "I told you before Salvation to take it to the bank that the next Kill Team release would be Scouts v Scorpions, I told you before Nightmare to take it to the bank that the next Kill Team release would be Night Lords v Mandrakes, now I am telling you to take it to the bank that the next Kill Team release is going to be Hernkyn v Brood Brothers."

To me, while those are both rumours from the same source, they have different weight (which - I think reasonably - effects my judgment on the likeliness of Vespids being shown off at Adepticon). If I'm mistaken about how bullish he's being on the latter, and how unsure he is on the former, I apologise.

 

And, like, I'm not suggesting you (or others) are crazy or anything for speculating that new Vespids will be shown off on Wednesday, or that the T'au leaker is purposefully hiding images of the new Vespids. I just don't find it as likely (though again, the new-to-me information that an Eldar leaker did such thing last edition does change my opinion) as the Hernkyn and/or Brood Brothers being shown off soon, with Vespids (at least) a bit of a ways away.

Edited March 15 by LSM

[Malakithe]

120pts for Pathfinders, up from 90pts? lol really

[TheArtilleryman]

18 hours ago, irlLordy said:

FYI, you don't need to glue the drone top to the bottom, they friction fit just fine. So you can mix about your drones as needed.

Arrgh that’s me being so dumb!!! Can’t believe I didn’t think of this before 

[Redcomet]

22 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

120pts for Pathfinders, up from 90pts? lol really

The points hikes are difficult to understand 

[Indy Techwisp]

1 hour ago, Malakithe said:

120pts for Pathfinders, up from 90pts? lol really

43 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

The points hikes are difficult to understand 

 

Reminder that the points shown in the codex were written before the balance dataslates which lowered T'au point costs.

As always, these are already out of date, so we'll need to wait until the MFM updates to get the actual points for T'au.

This is the same as every codex so far and likely will be the same for every codex/supplement in thr edition.