Warhammer 40K: The T’au Can Play Ball in 9th
After a long, long 9th edition, T’au Empire players have our hands on the new codex. And it looks pretty good!
There is a lot to say about this new book. The faction has changed quite significantly. The T’au remains a faction that, of course, does its business in the shooting phase. That fact wasn’t going to change, but elements of the game that were previously important to T’au players are now much less important.
Goodbye Overwatch
Take, for example, Overwatch. The ability to shoot at one’s opponent for free, and with multiple units, was a key aspect of the T’au way of war in 8th edition and 9th edition. In the new codex, we must use Overwatch in the same way as every other faction. There are ways for a handful of units to reduce the cost of the Overwatch stratagem and to hit on 5s, but I can’t imagine that we’ll see this ability too often. The opportunity cost is too great.
Is this a good thing? I think so. Change is inevitable. Most things need a shake-up every now and then to keep things fresh. Plus, rolling all those dice to usually little effect wasn’t particularly fun for the T’au player or for his opponent.
Goodbye Drone Spam
What else has changed? Drone spam is certainly a thing of the past. It was certainly on its way out, but this codex has made sure of it. Drones must now be taken as part of a unit and must stay with that unit for the game. There is a stratagem that allows Drones to break off from their parent unit, but I can’t imagine it’ll see much play. Every now and then it’ll be useful.
Essentially, Drones have become ablative wounds for the parent unit. Again, I think that this is a strong change. Many players didn’t like the way that Saviour Protocols used to work, and it’s easy to understand why.
While that rule is gone from the codex, there is now a stratagem of the same name. For the cost of a Drone, the T’au player may reduce the Damage of a single attack to 0 after a failed save. As it’s a stratagem, this may only be used once per turn, which I think is a pretty sensible limitation.
Hello More Power
Everyone was expecting one change in particular: the faction is now much more powerful. Throughout 9th, I’ve leaned on a choice few units to get my work done — Commanders and Riptides mainly — but that’s not a problem I’m going to have anymore. There is a lot of power to be found across the pages of this book.
Take, for example, Stealth Suits. I used to run a couple of three-man units to take advantage of actions and to get points for Engage. I never really considered their offensive abilities to be worth thinking about. But now there’s a lot to like. I’m going to up the unit size from three to five, which, because of the changes to the Burst Cannon, gives me 30 shots for one unit. As soon as we start to add a pip or two of AP — easily done with a variety of abilities in the codex — we’re starting to get some solid firepower.
Of course, the new Markerlight system makes hitting on 3s an absolute breeze, and, seeing as Stealth Suits take the Core keyword, it’s going to be simple to add some rerolls of 1s into the mix.
Hello Coldstars
Let’s also take a look at the new Coldstar Commander. I really like the look of this chap. Those Stealths that I mention just above get 30 shots from five models. A single Coldstar Battlesuit can get 28 shots. The new High-output Burst Cannon puts out 10 shots at AP-1. Add three more regular Burst Cannons into the mix — at six shots apiece — and we have 28 ranged attacks from one Battlesuit.
And it gets better. Let’s make this Coldstar our Warlord and give him the Precision of the Hunter Warlord Trait. We can now reroll all hit rolls and all wound rolls.
Let’s make it better still by taking a look at a very useful stratagem, Coordinated Engagement. Pick two T’au units within 18” inches of an enemy unit. Provided both units attack the enemy unit, each unit gains -1 AP. Not bad for one Command Point. Now we have 10 shots at AP-2 and 18 shots at AP-1, all of which take rerolls to hit and rerolls to wound. And just to add cherry on top, the Coldstar ignores cover.
I think I’ll take two.
It Only Gets Better
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more where that came from. There are powerful, point-efficient units throughout this codex.
This codex, then, already looks like a success. It’s brought the faction up to where it needs to be in terms of power. I think that skilled players are going to be able to do a lot with this book. Indeed, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see T’au armies on the top tables at a whole host of upcoming tournaments.
Too Good?
Is it going to be too good? Only time will tell, but I don’t predict that it will. Some of the more powerful aspects of the book — the Bork’an Stormsurge that can ignore invulnerable saves with a Damage 12 weapon, for example — will certainly shake up the meta. There’s no doubt about that.
But we’re still T’au. We’re still vulnerable, to one extent or another, in the Fight phase, and while we do have methods of making charges more difficult, we still can’t really dance in the Fight phase. Okay, that’s not entirely true. A Commander can take the Onager Gauntlet, a Strength 12, AP-3, Damage 4 melee weapon.
That’s going to be a good laugh every once in a while.
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