40K Goatboy – First Thoughts on Tau
Goatboy here again and I had some time to take a good look at the new Tau book.
My initial once over shows me a book that looks to be well designed and balanced in the new field of 6th edition books. I think there is a lot more cool factor in the book then some of the previous 6th edition books and it makes me optimistic that the new rumored Eldar book will be the bee’s knees when it comes out.
So let’s look at what I like about the book. The biggest plus is that there are a ton of neat options in all aspects of the codex. You have neat upgrades that feel futuristic. You have some goofy named upgrades as well that helps to bring a bit of humor to the book. There are some many upgrades that this book feels very customizable to your own personal tastes. It is a big bonus and it makes me wish the CSM book had nearly as many well thought out build trees that didn’t start at 3 Heldrakes and move on from there.
I really like how each army choice seems to want to work with another choice. Each unit adds to the other and creates a very synergistic army build. The marker lights are a pretty obvious booster but even the HQ options add to the overall feeling like this book adds up to something awesome. You can see it in their motto “For the Greater Good” and this army list is a perfect example. Each piece adds together and forms a pretty solid foundation for kicking butt.
The HQ choices all are designed to benefit the army. The Etherials are very important and I feel will see more of them as people figure out the better ways to ground the enemy down in bullets and space communisim. The SC are also interesting in giving the army different benefits and still having a flair in their design. The only blunt force SC is Farsight and that fits in with his history and style. The Fireblade Cadre guy is an interesting choice as he is very cheap and gives you a way to abuse an Quadgun that isn’t an Allied Xenos.
The book seems to be designed to punish foot armies with lots of ways to throw bullets, missiles, and magnetically charged particles. This can be a bit daunting when writing a list as I feel you have the bases covered on anti infantry but will suffer when facing some serious armor values. This is an obvious design choice as it helps the army deal with some of the consistent boogie men in GK and Necrons and still leaves room for other armies to function.
I do like the Supporting fire rule as I think it makes the Tau different enough without making things completely nuts like Tesla can be when charging into Immortals. I know locally we have talked about how Interceptor works with Supporting fire. Do you get to fire Overwatch if you have intercepted an opponent in the same turn? I think you do as Interceptor implies the next turn and not the current turn you are on. What do you think?
I do have some issues with the book and it is one of the reasons why I just bought the book to read instead of investing in some $50.00 plastic robot suits. I think it is one of the most expensive armies to get into if you are just starting out and I think that is a shame. I wish they would have found a way to make Crisis Suits troops in order to allow some cheaper entry into the army. We all know it is easier to start small and then build up to it over time and with this army it is start big and watch as your wallet runs dry.
This leads to another frustration in that the book doesn’t allow you any kind of troop swap in order to build varied lists. This is a shame as I would at least think Farsight would have granted Crisis suits their due as jump happy terminators. I know his Bodyguard bomb is very deadly but losing that ability to make smaller armies is really a shame. I know that back in the day GK were a pain in the rear but the fact that the army was cheap and quick to paint made it a hot seller.
I also think this book suffers a bit from being too good in the bullet category and not having enough in the anti vehicle/armor category. These fish guys will murder any low armor, infantry army out there. I get it that they are the book full of bullets but there are too many similiar options. Yes you can cover your suit in Missiles but is that what you really need? You have so much Strength 5 shooting that most of the time the strength 7 options are not nearly as important. I guess you need all those Autocannons to make sure that Dragons falls out of the sky in droves.
This leads into what I feel is one of the weakest troop options in the game. The Firewarriors are costed correctly but they just don’t feel like they do enough. The lack of the Missile Drone might have saved us from a summer of Strength 7 shooting but I feel that they dropped the ball a bit when not giving enough options to them. I think the Kroot got a nice bump for losing a strength point and just wished we had more. A few troop swaps and this book could have had a ton of design potential. I think some Fusion blaster Drones might have helped shore up some anti vehicle defense for the codex and given modelers a chance to add some bad ass Drone units.
I know you can add allies to shore this up – but the overall lack of an assault unit is rather depressing to me. I like to assault and I think it would have been cool to have had some stubborn Crisis Suit teams designed to jump in, tie a unit up, and let the rest of the army funciton and move away. They could have had shields and entangle units so they are just there to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. When I look at an army I try to think of all ways a unit could be effective – whether it is just killing or at least holding something up for awhile. The game is based on a solid set of turns so keeping a unit stuck for a turn or two could mean the game in the end.
I was also not happy with their flyer choices. I know there won’t be another Heldrake but we could have had at least an awesome anti flyer choice. Something with a crap ton of shots that just murder other fliers out there. Maybe a 10 shot monster that only has Skyfire? That way it is only designed to hunt other fliers and is cheap enough not to eat away at your army so it is safe versus non flying options. These are just design thoughts I have as we get more and more 6th edition codexes.
I think this codex is an overall win for GW and I feel it will shake up some of this Meta we always hear about. You will see a lot of local games where amazing turns of massive firepower will reduce armies to slag. Marker lights will continue to be annoying as you chain them up to allow for massed anti flyer shooting. Assault will continue to be the pain for the army and multi charging will be the norm to try and activate all the overwatching to protect other assault elements as they get ground in.
Will we see Tau in the top 16 of any given tournament? Hell yes we will. They will punish a lot of the armies currently running around the top tables and should shake things up a bit. 6th edition has a lot of move and shoot playstyle and this book is full of that. Jumping suits, massed firepower, and crazy technology abound in this new codex.
Just be prepared to buy more dice and make a lot of armor saves when fighting against those fishheads.
-Goatboy out
