The T’au are masters of technology. While the other empires of the 41st Millennium have long stagnated, using millennia-old designs and fearing innovation, the T’au Empire make up for the youthfulness of their dominion by constantly innovating and developing. The forces of Dal’yth, for instance, have all but mastered stealth field technology, outfitting anything from their Fire Warriors to their tanks with the latest patterns.
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On the tabletop, this is represented by Adaptive Camouflage, a Sept Tenet that considerably improves the durability of your units:
While you’ll have to plan your deployment and movement carefully with this army, it’s without a doubt the most durable of the T’au Septs, bringing your Fire Warriors up to a 3+ save and your Crisis Battlesuits to an impressive 2+. Some units, however, are particularly powerful…
The Ghostkeel Battlesuit is perhaps the most unusual of its kin, attacking at short range and weathering devastating amounts of incoming fire with an advanced array of sensors and disruptors to misdirect the enemy. In the new codex, Dal’yth Ghostkeels are incredibly difficult to put down, boasting impressive, cover-boosted armour saves as well as their inherent evasiveness. Regardless of whether or not you play Dal’yth, you’ll also be able to take advantage of the improved Ghostkeel Electrowarfare Suite, which now has a better effective range.
What’s more, the XV95 Ghostkeel can be used to rapidly redeploy units of XV25 Stealth Battlesuits, even pulling them out of close combat, thanks to the Wall of Mirrors Stratagem:
With these units, you’ll be able to harass your enemy’s front line with ease, pulling out of combat and taking new positions with impunity.
The T’au Empire employs a range of alien auxiliaries you can add to your army, helping fill a range of battlefield roles – Kroot, for example, are highly cost-effective infantry that are great for filling slots in a Brigade Detachment, while the Vespids make for excellent harassment units, well-suited to taking on heavy infantry. While these units don’t directly benefit from a Sept Tenet, several have received a discount in points in the new codex, and in a Dal’yth army, they’re even more threatening thanks to the Gunship Diplomat Warlord Trait.
In this way, you’ll be able to support your forward teams of Stealth Suits and Ghostkeel Battlesuits and provide a mobile wall of Overwatch fire. Vespids, with the Fly keyword, are particularly suited to this role, able to fall back and shoot.
Dal’yth is the ideal T’au Sept for those players looking to make the maximum use of alien auxiliaries – or just those who want to render their units even more durable than before.
Make sure to come back tomorrow, when we’ll be checking out the most mobile of the T’au Septs – the forces of Vior’la. If you’re itching to kick off your Dal’yth army, the Ghostkeel Battlesuit is a great place to start.
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Im starting to get this a bit.
There is synergy here
Assume we fo second
Thes guys deploy and get cover then drop the beacon because of wall of mirrors. They get their trait passivly because they have not moved. They survive because thats what stealth suits do.
Our turn
Farsight comes in. With the help of stealths you squeeze just a few suits in close enough to use what you need to. Load up on something thats capable of GRAZING anything mathhammer stylr. You choose a buffmander or farsight. With markerlights you hit on 2s and reropp eounds.
Blam your primary targets are lit.
Next line tau sept. Focuse fire with gunlines both heavy and small arms. Onto the target that you damaged.
Next sept (rumored) sacea pathfinders or rail weapons
Interchange bork or viorla for the back two ranks dependinf on how u wanna play.
Three commanders.
Three detachments
Three waves that interact and play off eachother.
Unfortunately some playstyles are dead because they aim for an extreme “all X” type list
The more we use one sept the more our weaknesses come out.
But if we ballance ourselves we just might be a better all takers army and less a really good ar tayloring to kill just my opponent.
Which aside from jsj and such. Upset people “tau where not top army”. Thats right because tournies requires take all commers.
Tau exelled at friendly games where i have a decent idea of what im fighting.
People tell me im wrong a lot tho. But thats what im hearinf some positive people say and i think it rings true.
Hopefully we become funner to lose afainst :).
Just a heads up that you do not get a cover save from the sept bonus on your opponents first turn if you go second. It is very clear on you needing to not move on your turn and then recieving the benefit on the subsequent turn.
Thats lame you dont get the ability turn one.
I think it’s arguable. You most certainly did not move, Manta Strike, etc, during your own turn because there was no turn for you to do those things during.
Dal’yth is definitely the top runner for being my chosen sept for my army. Stealthsuits with -1 to hit and 2+ armor in the open is pretty good.
Stealth suits are infantry, so it’s really easy to get them cover as is.
I’m actually really pumped for cheaper kroot. They make great screening units 🙂
As I said, GW seems to be taking the Septs and forming them into Chapters like they do with Space Marines. This is a good thing. It means you’re no longer playing either T’au or Farsight Enclaves. You can take any flavor Sept you want and go from there (or mix and match). More options is NEVER a bad thing in a game like this.
They did this with Tyranids, and Chaos as well as others. I hope they do the same for the rest of the factions. Then, once they are solidified, I hope they continue to expand and work on the different subfactions in a codex.
I’ve seen plenty of people say that they want alien auxiliaries to be more competitive or have more of a focus. While this may not have gone far enough for some players, this is a step towards that direction. Gunship Diplomat will certainly help players who enjoy fielding kroot and vespid.
Overall it’s difficult to really understand what players want it seems. I’ve been looking at T’au focused forums for years and have been especially active these last couple of days. I find it odd that most T’au players generally agree that spamming Commanders is no fun and not how they want to play the game, but then they got extremely upset at the Commander limitation, ridged though it may be.
I’ve seen forum posts on reddit and other sites where they complain about the Commander limitation, then set about theorycrafting lists that allows one to bring as many as they can fit (which is realistically, three).
Perhaps any limitation where there was none previously will always be met with resistance.
People dislike the commander limitation because the other rumors that are floating about do not appear to give the tau enough buffs to compensate. Crisis suits especially did not recieve a relevant buff to make them worthwhile beyond carrying mass flamers.
Commanders were spammed because the rest of the units in the index(gun drones aside, but they got a 50% points increase in the codex) didnt hit hard enough to keep up with competitive lists, so they were the only option. Without corresponding major buffs to the rest of the army, the commander restriction only serves to shove the tau further from viability.
Basically, GW treated the symptom (commander spam), but not the sickness (the rest of the army isnt strong enough) and people are upset because it looks like the tau may actually be worse competitively after their codex.
That’s kind of hard for people to make that kind of assessment on little to no information. From the leaks (grain of salt) I’ve seen, some of the “Commander” weapons look pretty good. Certainly better than other armies. Honestly, most of the melee weapons that Commanders can get rival or are better than other factions that are melee focused. Farsight’s weapon, for example, is on par or even better than many Grey Knight weapons and Grey Knights are supposed to be one of the best in combat.
Ultimately, the thing that always makes me laugh out loud is the fact that people are *so certain* that it’s the end of the world when they’ve only been given a fraction of a glance at what is in the codex. I’ll never understand that part of the human mind.
Yeah, to be fair everyone freaks out at this stage, though. Each dex has had a pretty wild reaction until everyone gets their book and plays a few games. At that point, folks can start to formulate opinions based on facts.
Is it just me or don’t stealth suits have fly keyword therefore can leave combat and still shoot even if they fall back? Why do they need a ghostkeel nearby to pluck them out of combat and move a little further away? Be a waste of a CP i reckon…
They can leave combat on their own, but still suffer some of the consequences (can’t advance, can’t charge.) The stratagem allows you to reposition them by 12″, allowing you to move much, much faster than you otherwise would. And note that it is not “entirely within 12″, so you can daisy-chain models out to easily get 20” or more of total distance from the stratagem.
It doesn’t look like much, but good players know that the game is won in the movement phase. It definitely has the possibility to see a lot of useage.
So, silly question:
I still run the old XV15 stealth suits – I like the models better. Does that mean I can’t use “wall of mirrors” on them, since that only applies to XV25s? =P lol
There is no such unit as the XV15 Stealth Suit, there is only Zuul.
So here is my main problem with this Tau codex and it has nothing to do with power level or competitiveness.
Tau have lost EVERYTHING that has made it unique and interesting since I started playing it back in 5th edition.
-Markerlights are completely useless/unplayable. This was one of the most interesting aspects of Tau.
-JSJ is completely gone
-Crisis suits (the most iconic unit that used to be a mainstay in all armies) are still not worth using
-Railguns used to be the single strongest 1 shot gun in the game and was essentially Tau’s only antitank other than fusion and was iconic for Tau. Railguns are even worse in this edition and don’t seem to have been buffed in this codex.
-Tau used to be a mobile, rapid deployment and reposition army and now appears GW wants them to be a stationary gun line.
1. No they aren’t. They’re actually extremely powerful and accessible. If you aren’t making good use of Markerlights in your Tau army, that may be why you struggle with them. Paul McKelvey’s army from the index had quite a few Markerlights in it, even, and it was mostly Commanders.
2. There is a stratagem for it and the Riptide can still do it. Only one other army in the game still has access to a double-move like that, it’s still very much a unique thing for Tau, just not a universal one.
3. Remains to be seen, but you may be correct here. The more we learn, the more it seems like GW did absolutely nothing to address the issue of Crisis being underpowered, which is unfortunate.
4. The Railgun is arguably one of the best single-shot antitank weapons around. Hammerheads got a significant discount, as did Broadsides and their rail weapons.
5. You are judging the entire faction by a single sept trait. There are plenty of other abilities, sept traits, and stratagems that encourage mobility. Hell, how many other factions get an upgrade that lets them just completely ignore the penalty for moving with their units? None. Tau are still a mobile army.
1. Extremely powerful is probably an exaggeration. Markerlights are ok. The 1st ability is useful…but there are other ways to get reroll 1 to hit. 2nd is something that should just exist without the need for lights tbh. 3 is good. 4 is situational. 5 is great…but probably too hard to achieve.
2. The strat is sept specific and HQ only. With the range that the Riptide has its probably the least useful nova charge.
1. The Tau stratagem makes 5 relatively easy to achieve, especially in light of lots of 8-10pt Markerlight sources and abundant characters with Markerlights. Markerlights are and always have been a major feature of the Tau army as a whole and they remain that way in 8E.
2. You might think it’s the least useful one, but I certainly wouldn’t agree. It’s great for getting that extra bit of distance to put you onto an objective or out of enemy charge range.
1.) They are SIGNIFICANTLY worse than they were in the past, which is why you rarely if ever see them in competitive armies. And the example you mentioned being on commander, well even that can’t happen anymore due to the limit of 1 commander.
2) so instead of suits being able to use it every turn, your example is using a stratagem on 1 specific unit…
4) Single shot weapons are horrible this edition. For Railgun to be king of antitank again it needed a buff and got none.
5) I was referring to Tau being primarily rapid deployment with devilfish, JSJ, and homing beacons, all of which are removed, nerfed, or not viable anymore.
“Tau have lost EVERYTHING that has made it unique and interesting since I started playing it back in 5th edition.”
Dunno. Riptides are rumored to be as broken as in 7th from the so-far of what I´we heard.
If true then at least that part of the tau codex tradition will be upheld.
54:ish. LW dont usually get things to wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8vxoK-K2IU
“fun”!
Riptides are not going to be game-breakers. They’re good, but they’re still 250+ pts in an edition where big targets go down pretty easy.
Overall, I’m happy with the Tau book. Do I wish the JSJ stratagem didn’t only apply to the sept that doesn’t want to move? Yes, but that’s minor lol.
The one thing that I’m very concerned about is a lack of defense against psykers. No denies, no stratagem (even though all the other pysker-less books have one) and no allies to help with the issue. I’ll give it some playtesting, but this seems like a big problem.
The Tau solution to psykers is what it’s always been: you can’t cast spells if you’re dead. I’ll admit, though, I was expecting a Farsight stratagem or relic to give some kind of anti-psyker ability.
Exactly. The problem is, powers like quicken are game winning, and tau are literally the only faction that has no defense against psychic powers.
Which would be fine if we were above average in other areas or more resistant
Which would be fine if we were above average in other areas or more resistant