Tau Tactica - 6th Edition!

[myrdinn]

By my understanding they add +1 to BS, so can they fire at BS2 at flyers?

I'd check the brb to be sure but I think in both cases you always fire at BS1 so disregard any bonuses from wargear. So your BS3 Crisis suit is BS4 with a targeting array, but he any anyone else, regardless of BS, are BS1 against flyers and when snap firing.

A few notes from my first 6th Ed game last night (only my 5th game overall with Tau so far, so take with a pinch of salt if you wish):

- New vehicle damage seems a pretty positive change. Blew up my (CSM) opponents rhino on turn one with concentrated fire: no more spending four turns rolling 1s on the damage table before you finally blow up enemy tanks.
- Overwatch did basically nothing in the game. Combination of 6s to hit, plus rolling to wound/most stuff in the game still getting armour saves against most of our guns means that I didn't kill a single marine. One to watch for when you're up against vast hordes of IG and Ork Boyz, but I pretty much never charge anything anyway ...
- Didn't think the extra 3" of 2-shot rapid fire were that much of a boost to FWs, since the new variable charge means that you don't want to get too close (6" move + d6" run move + 2d6" assault is a scary potential threat range when your infantry are that squishy). Being able to move and fire 30" is nice though.
- The variable assault-phase move for jetpacks is interesting. I spent most of my time last night just hopping out of cover, shotting and hopping back in as per usual, but there was a moment where a high dice roll meant that I could hop one of my crisis teams pretty much across the board into a second set of cover on the other side (we were playing short-end to short-end, so 6" movement plus 11" jump in assault phase got me most of the way across the battle line). I'm still gonna live in fear of rolling snake eyes and being stranded in the open, but it's got its plus sides as well.
- Hammerhead got charged by a daemon prince. The smash rule (think that's what its called) means monstrous creatures are all basically going to be hitting at S10, but it survived 3 turns and probably would have blown his head clean off with the railgun if I hadn't a) rolled a 1 to hit on the first turn and 2) clean forgot to shoot with it on the second

[Zabousta]

Target lock is only available for Piranhas, if you go by RAW. Clearly a mistake on GW part, but hey at least Piranhas are still a viable choice. If you can rally at 25%, then I don't see much use of bonding knives.

I would think that snap shooting is always at BS1, even with targeting arrays since it ups your base BS. Unless you can find where it states that targeting arrays add BS after any other modifier than I don't think it will change anything.

As for Hammerheads, Snipers, Skyrays and Broadsides. They all compete for the same slot. The problem with Tau is a lack of good units spread across the FoC. Its basically Crisis Suits, Fire Warriors, and Hammerheads or Broadsides.

You look at an army like Necrons and literally the entire codex (minus flayed ones) is great. Each unit is useful. So many builds are viable with great choices in each slot. Tau have 1 good HQ, 1 good Elite (still not convinced stealth suits are worth the points.) 1 good troop (kroot....not sure, might be good now...less cover, but move and shoot) Fast attack is a toss up. Piranhas can be good, but 2 glances and they die. Gun drones...actually may be great, snap fire is a good thing for them. (I don't want fish, so pathfinders are out....and vespids...) The rest is all stuck in heavy and compete with other heavy choices.

Add to that a lot of useless wargear and poor FAQ, and you are left with a codex that is full of holes and has trouble keeping up.

I love my Tau and still play them. I even win sometimes, but I think I just know the game better than my opponents. Let's just say that I am eagerly awaiting the new codex. (I don't care if they become the best army in the game, I just want a rule book where half the rules haven't been removed.)

[MiyamatoMusashi]

(I don't care if they become the best army in the game, I just want a rule book where half the rules haven't been removed.)

Amen, brother.

[Zabousta]

Has anyone been thinking about taking an allied force, and if so which one?

I myself have been thinking of Ultramarines. They have some history of fighting side by side. (against nids) So fluff wise, they should do the trick. I see IG as an option, but why take more gun line.

I like Tau, so don't want to go crazy on the allied force. I was thinking a Librarian (for obvious reasons) a tactical squad in a drop pod and possibly an assault squad.

That would get me 2 more deep striking units, with one being very reliable. I would take a base of fire warriors and hammerheads (I don't own broadsides) and deep strike pretty much everything else. (suits, drones)

I would be fielding great long ranged units, arguably the best of their type in the game, and deep striking with the fire power of crisis suits mixed with tough marines to assault and drones to suppress.

I like the whole mobile feel and I think with the right gear choices could be a really great list.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Myrdinn...just a couple corrections. Fleet changed, so what you said about assault moves is wrong. It's a 6inch move, and 2d6 assault move only. All fleet does now is lets you reroll one or both of the assault move dice. So it's still pretty scary for us non assaulty types (I don't play tau anymore, but I play guard a lot).

Also, with the smash thing, it's double strength (so yeah, almost always 10) but at half (round up I believe) attacks. I got to play my chaos the other night, and the ammount of times I only hit with one of three smash attacks was very very frustrating.

In general, I think one of the key skill sets to playing tau, specifically crisis suit heavy tau, will be seeing multiple areas to go to in the assault phase. As in, before you roll the 2d6, being able to see three spots you want to be in. One close for when you roll crap, one average for when you roll average, and one far for when you roll high. Then getting good at seeing those options when you're in the movement phase and getting the suits into a spot where the three options are all good.

What's that forgeworld tau thingy, the bigass drone with the foldy wings...would that be considered a flier? I would be surprised to find out it was listed in the faq...but what are people's thoughts on that?

[Noserenda]

Played a couple of 1000pt games trying out lots of Fire Warriors and the Ethereal backed by commander, pathfinders and Railheads and they all proved pretty useful. I used a Bastion too and it was a godsend! Admittedly bigger armies means more AT but it stod up pretty well, though grenade attacks slaughtered the Pathfinders inside horribly!

Commanders jumps went well bar one where he got stranded and eaten by a bike captain.

Oh and Hammerheads moving behind units and capping enemy characters/sergeants was pretty effective too, admittedly only if theres no armour/hordes to shoot!

[IAMNOTHERE]

Not quite finished up grading my 1750 list from 5th to 6th but I'm adding in aegis lines and some air defence to be in the safe side. This way I can hunker my etherals honour guard in guaranteed cover.

Other things that I've noticed should work are Stealth Suits and outflank, being able to reroll the dice made it a no brainer for me

[Mandragola]

Just to be clear, there's no doubt on the snap fire and markerlight thing.

Check right at the beginning of the rules section of the brb. Page 2. Multiple modifiers. Anything that sets a characteristic to a set number, like snap fire setting your BS at 1, is done after any other modifiers. So you can be BS 4, add +1 with a markerlight, but then the fact that you are snapfiring sets you back to 1.

Also, why are people saying that railguns are better than before? They are not. The actual results on a vehicle damage table now are basically the same for AP1 vehicles as they were in the last edition. AP3 weapons got worse. AP1 did not get better, except that now it also takes a hull point. But then, an AP1 glancing hit could do some real damage before and now it just takes a hull point.

Anyway, for me Tau have seriously benefited from the new rules but have a few glaring weaknesses as well. Unfortunately I think this leaves them as a non-rounded army. The main problem is that they have no means to deal with flyers, apart from buying a single quad gun, which doesn't really cut it if 6 night scythes appear over the horizon. Apart from that though, here are some positives:

Transports nerfed. You can't assault as you disembark even if the transport hasn't moved yet (unless it's open topped or an assault vehicle). You lose the 2" plus base width that disembarking troops got before, as they have to be entirely within 6" of the door. The enemy will have to get out of their transports to claim objectives (and so will we, sadly...). Smoke is nerfed and multiple glancing hits will tend to kill transports sooner. The new glancing hits are bad news for transports, which never used to care if they were shaken or had guns shot off, but do care about being worn down and wrecked. They are probably good news for hammerheads, which hate to be shaken and have their railguns shot off by glancing hits. So your hammerhead will probably keep firing for longer but you shouldn't expect to have it at the end of the game any more.

Night fighting is now good news. We can ignore it for trivial amounts of points and it's available to most of our units. You can even have an IC join a kroot unit and give it to them.

Random assault range. I see these as a nerf to assaulting units and so do most people who play assaulting armies. Sometimes, they will try to charge you from a position where it would previously have been guaranteed, you will overwatch them, and they will roll crap. Next turn they are in a terrible position, potentially bunched up after getting out of a raider or something. This will make you win games. There is a danger as well that the occasional "hail Mary" assault will come off and charge you at 10" or more, but not everyone will be prepared to risk the overwatch fire for this.

People cannot charge on the turn they arrive from reserve. You don't have to worry about outflanking people any more. You don't have to worry about Snikrot or wolf scouts.

Overall it's got harder to assault stuff. Assaulting units are slower. Cover is less good. Overwatch exists. Transports are nerfed. They can fail their charge. These are all good things for us.

I'm not sure how we are supposed to go about claiming objectives though. Fire warriors and kroot are just horribly vulnerable when standing outside their transports. Random game length means not knowing if the game actually will end when you get out on the objective.

Personally, I'm quite seriously looking at getting some Tau allies for something like a marine army. The codex feels old though, and there are serious gaps where things like flyers, or the means to defend yourself against them, ought to be.

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Guard allies would be awesome objective holders, especially with the aegis line (2+cover save and still able to shoot).

One thing I think is funny is everyone seems to feel their army has problems with fliers. Other than guard, necrons, and to some extent dark eldar, I think EVERY army has problems dealing with fliers.

[diggerydoom]

Target lock is only available for Piranhas, if you go by RAW. Clearly a mistake on GW part, but hey at least Piranhas are still a viable choice. If you can rally at 25%, then I don't see much use of bonding knives.

Why is target lock piranhas only? The faq only has the target lock in the suit armoury stopping working. It does not mention the others. However when correcting the wording under bonding knives it corrects both suit and infantry armoury seperatly.

[Noserenda]

Oh and Overwatch has awesome potential, I had fire warriors mow down 3 Assault marines and strand them out of assault range, good times!

Flyer wise im just waiting for the FW update for my 2 Barracudas, that said in my gaming group theres a paucity of Aircraft (For now...).

[O'Mont'au]

I played a game on Tuesday with some Space Marine allies, Master of the Forge and two scout squads. I botched my deployment pretty bad, realized half way through the game that I should have used more area terrain in my deployment zone. The alternating terrain rules are a fun little pre-game where both sides jockey for table position, hoping to rig it in their favor. Use it to your advantage by putting more area terrain in your own deployment zone for your guys to hide in. Also realized halfway through my first turn that Black Sun Filter on Pathfinders was redundant, as night fighting only grants cover saves now and you don't save vs markerlights.
Vehicles go down incredibly fast, but I suspect the amount of anti-tank weaponry found in most lists will diminish as time goes by. Stealth suits don't really need fusion blasters, as the weight of numbers from their burst cannons should take out most AV10 vehicles in a turn. If you can outflank to behind the enemy's tanks you can probably hit rear armor, which for most vehicles is 10.
Learning when to accept, issue, and refuse challenges will be an important skill for this edition.

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but I think it bears stating. You'll want to take the Strategic Warlord Power chart. The others are rather awful for Tau, but Strategic has some nice options. Get yourself a couple Black Sun Filters so that if you roll the Night Fighter option you can use that to your advantege. Also remember that markerlight hits can be used to remove the penalties for night fighting.

[myrdinn]

what you said about assault moves is wrong. It's a 6inch move, and 2d6 assault move only. All fleet does now is lets you reroll one or both of the assault move dice.

Let me recheck the BRB. We were playing that you could move in the movement phase, run d6" in the shooting phase and assault. Is that wrong e.g. either run in shooting phase or assault? Certainly hope you're right, as I quite frequently find myself up against large units of Khorne Beserkers and a Howling Banshee-heavy Eldar list, so anything that slows those guys down is a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

it's double strength (so yeah, almost always 10) but at half (round up I believe) attacks.

Yes sorry that's right, wasn't very clear in my post. The issue in this particular instance was that a Daemon prince with 4 attacks was basically getting 2 S10 armour pen rolls against my hammerhead every turn, given that there's no roll to hit against vehicles. Units of monstrous creatures are now going to be pretty good at taking out light and even medium armour, I suspect.

I think one of the key skill sets to playing tau, specifically crisis suit heavy tau, will be seeing multiple areas to go to in the assault phase. As in, before you roll the 2d6, being able to see three spots you want to be in. One close for when you roll crap, one average for when you roll average, and one far for when you roll high. Then getting good at seeing those options when you're in the movement phase and getting the suits into a spot where the three options are all good.

+1 this, about a hundred times. It's the thing we couldn't do before that we can do now, and it allows your suits to be a lot less predictable than 6 turns of jump out, shoot, jump back.

[Zabousta]

Why is target lock piranhas only? The faq only has the target lock in the suit armoury stopping working. It does not mention the others. However when correcting the wording under bonding knives it corrects both suit and infantry armoury seperatly.

There is the overall Armory, and then there are sub-sections within it.

It is written as "armory" without mentioning any sub-section. That puts it in the overall category, removing it from the entire codex. Piranhas are exempt because it specifically lists it as an option for them in the FAQ.

I like how GW decided that Tau were just way to good and needed more nerfing.

My 6th ed book is late arriving. I am curious....do we have any skyfire guns?

Edit: I see what you mean. It looks like where it says "armoury, it should be saying "battlesuit armoury". Clearly the WORST FAQ EVER. Do the writers even play as Tau?

[Sholto]

The armies complaining about Flyers are the armies without codexes that include Flyers. Tells me that GW wants players to take Flyers vs Flyers, and not just hand out Skyfire to everything.

The Remora could be in an interesting position, since it has Markerlights. As a Flyer it will hit with these on normal BS (4+) and can then launch a Seeker Missile, which should hit on a 2+.

Tau at the moment are probably in the role of useful allies for other, better armies. Sad, but I suspect that is where we find ourselves. Pure Tau can still shoot their way out of a lot of situations, but are lacking in the same areas they always were. Better FWs are not good FWs. Not yet.

Tau + Allies is going to be a lot of fun to explore. Farsight and max bodyguard and Eldrad with 4 rolls on the Divination Psychic Power discipline. Oh, yes "We all have plasma, MP and fusion blasters, and we Overwatch at our normal BS thanks to this friendly Eldar dude. Come at me, bro!"

[Deadnight]

any talk about tau with allies? Im thinking a farseer with doom! is a possible alternative to pathfinders. also how about dire avengers in a wave serpent as allies? Or else a full on seer council. or jetbikes for some speeds.

Are transports still non-dedicated like they were in fifth? would allied veteran IG (ie guevesa) mounted in said fishes be an interesting strike team to take out vehicles?

Other alternatives are grey hunters, or plague marines as allied troops, to hold objectives.

I think allies are the greatest change to the tau. we have more opportunity to use them than any one else. Main reason? Well, our codex sucks. the way i see it, tau dont scale well. their best points limit is 1000pts, as all their best stuff (2x2 broadsides, 2 hammerheads, crisis suits, min fire warriors and a few kroot) fits into the first 1000pts. after that, you're relying on mediocre, and sub-optimal choices to make up the points. other armies get better as the points level increases. thing is, Space Wolves for example have little need for allies as their codex is so strong as is, and fully capable of standing on its own two feet. Ours? Not so much. So while i can see limited use of allies in other such armies, i dont see why tau players should have any such inhibitiions. filling out with allied troops is our one way of bringing the tau up to par with the other factions.

[Mandragola]

Clearly the WORST FAQ EVER.

There's quite a lot of competition for that position. The mess they have made of these FAQs is pretty impressive. There hasn't been any attempt to make rules consistent so you get things like blood angel storm ravens having updated rules but GK ones getting nothing (and valyries getting something in between that makes no sense at all). You could argue that, even though removing target locks makes no earthly sense at all, it does at least work as a rule. We know what the rules are for Tau, just not why they are what they are.

[REGERIK]

There is the overall Armory, and then there are sub-sections within it.

It is written as "armory" without mentioning any sub-section. That puts it in the overall category, removing it from the entire codex. Piranhas are exempt because it specifically lists it as an option for them in the FAQ.

I like how GW decided that Tau were just way to good and needed more nerfing.

My 6th ed book is late arriving. I am curious....do we have any skyfire guns?

Edit: I see what you mean. It looks like where it says "armoury, it should be saying "battlesuit armoury". Clearly the WORST FAQ EVER. Do the writers even play as Tau?

Its specifies the page number, page 28, which has the infantry armoury on, doesnt list any other page numbers or types of armoury so my guess is those are uneffected.

Didnt notice the description for target lock is also on page 28, i guess the splitfire special rule will replace this now. Still think target locks for vehicles are acceptable as they have a different ability description and in the faq they leave the option on pirahnas.

[Zabousta]

The armies complaining about Flyers are the armies without codexes that include Flyers. Tells me that GW wants players to take Flyers vs Flyers, and not just hand out Skyfire to everything.

The Remora could be in an interesting position, since it has Markerlights. As a Flyer it will hit with these on normal BS (4+) and can then launch a Seeker Missile, which should hit on a 2+.

Tau at the moment are probably in the role of useful allies for other, better armies. Sad, but I suspect that is where we find ourselves. Pure Tau can still shoot their way out of a lot of situations, but are lacking in the same areas they always were. Better FWs are not good FWs. Not yet.

Tau + Allies is going to be a lot of fun to explore. Farsight and max bodyguard and Eldrad with 4 rolls on the Divination Psychic Power discipline. Oh, yes "We all have plasma, MP and fusion blasters, and we Overwatch at our normal BS thanks to this friendly Eldar dude. Come at me, bro!"

I actually plan on taking Ultramarines. I figure a Librarian for some psy power and a drop pod full of marines. Tau don't need to replace their shooting with inferior shooting. They just need a few units that have more meat on their bones. Eldar HQ are great, but Guardians and Dire Avengers took a bit of a hit with rapid fire getting a boost. (rangers though...will be great)

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Myrdinn...yep, if I'm understanding things right even with fleet you can't run and assault. Also, if I have it right you still have to roll to hit vehicles that moved. Stationary is an auto hit, if the vehicle moved at all it's on a 3+.