5.0 Tactica - Tau Empire

[Ronin no Matsu]

Ladies and gentlemen! Do you know what 6th ed. is bringing for us Tau players? Better cavalry and better monstrous creatures. I've done the math and guess what : Knarloc riders and mounted great Knarlocs are now totally worth it! Hammer of Wrath make everything different. Also, monstrous creature attacks are AP2 and they have the USR Fear!!!

[Sholto]

6th edition also just took away our Target Locks, ffs

[Kloud13]

We need a 6th edition Tactica Thread.

But, "Slow and Purposefull" is now completly awesome for Broadsides. You just move normal now, only drawback is you can't Run, or Sweeping Advance. Not a big deal.

[Ronin no Matsu]

Nobody wants to start a 6th ed Tactica Thread. Everybody is too busy praying for the next codex to be at least good.

[diggerydoom]

6th edition also just took away our Target Locks, ffs

Only for suits it appears. Infantry and vehicles can still take them, so Fire Warrior Shas'ui with target lock and marker lights are still in.

However it does suck for broadsides.

[Sholto]

I think the Infantry wargear section refers to the Battlesuit wargear section, so Target Locks are gone for everything except vehicles.

Although, do Team Leaders and Shas'vres count as Characters so that they can buy Precision Fire from the Main Rulebook?

Also, if an HQ has the model type "Infantry, Jetpack, Character" and a drone has the same model type as its controller, are all Characters drones themselves Characters (and can thus Challenge and buy Precision Fire)?

[Mandragola]

It doesn't say Infantry wargear section. It says "Armoury". I'm pretty sure that means that all target locks are now gone.

Some thoughts on the changes:

You may now consider blacksun filters to be compulsory wargear for anyone who can have them. 1 per squad. Makes the whole unit ignore the darkness, which necron players may find upsetting. Night fight is going to be a lot more common now, which is nice.

Disruption pods only give a 5+ save now... which our vehicles get for free for being skimmers. So you save some points here to buy blacksun filters with =P

People can no-longer assault us on the turn they arrive from reserve or the turn they disembark from a transport. Don't shoot rhinos. Don't worry about wolf scouts or Snikrot any more - yay. In general, assaulters are going to have a harder time as they will move less quickly and sometimes fluff their rolls to get into cc. So we benefit from a meta shift towards shooting armies here.

Woods are only a 5+ cover save now, which is bad news for Kroot. Fire warriors are somewhat better now, and can eventually kill vehicles by glancing them to death. Plus, they can be bought fortifications to live in, for a bit longer. With photon grenades they randomly get stealth if people are nearby. Ok...

We have no flyers, and no counter to flyers. Twin-pod suits maybe I guess. If we meet a flying circus necron army there's very little we can do about it. The only upside to this is that the water caste seem to have done a good job for Tau with the allies table, so you can join up with some IG or something. Rather more likely, the IG will hire a fire warrior squad and some broadsides if they feel like it. Maybe they will want a crisis team too. Your shas'el can't join an IG platoon to let them see in the dark though, and in general they have all the guns they need.

We have no psykers but that's not a massive problem in my opinion. Psykers have more rules but aren't better than before. Now we have a 6+ save sometimes and the baddies might roll up useless powers.

We get to hire Draigo and a squad of paladins, or maybe a warboss and some nobz bikers. They can do the annoying job of walking across the board, fighting things and claiming objectives. We don't have to bother any more. I call that a win.

[MiyamatoMusashi]

It doesn't say Infantry wargear section. It says "Armoury". I'm pretty sure that means that all target locks are now gone.

It specifies the page number, and vehicle target locks are on a different page.

You may now consider blacksun filters to be compulsory wargear for anyone who can have them. 1 per squad.

Agreed - except where the squad is almost exclusively used for Markerlights (eg. Pathfinders, Tetras). My first list I gave BSFs to my Tetra squadron then realised that was completely pointless as you don't get cover saves against ML hits anyway! Technically it still would have helped for their Pulse Rifles (or Pathfinder Pulse Carbines), but who takes Tetras for Pulse Rifles? Not me.