Hello Everyone,
With the Tau Codex right around the corner it’s time to jump in and see how the blue bois hold up in the crusade world. As with other reviews, I have broken the rules into various chunks for assessment and comment. The Tau have a lot of interesting lore hooks and so I am curious how GW has adapted these to the tabletop.
Army Special Rules
Right off the bat we see the Tau have a similar goal as the Genestealer Cults: Infiltrate and overthrow planets. Like the GSC, you will start your campaign by building a random solar system that you are trying to win over, as part of this there is a core world (the first one generated) that you can’t take over until all others have fallen. All planets have different temperaments and types that give them varying amounts of diplomatic or military power. Once you gather enough diplomatic or military points, you can attempt to take over the planet, diplo takeovers cost more points but is very safe, while a military takeover is faster but has a 50% chance of damaging the planet. When taking over the planets gives an immediate bonus (if they aren’t blown up in the fighting) once you capture the whole system you can spend requisition points to unlock a planet’s second ability. These second abilities are really powerful and can give you lots of bonus Exp, Requisition points and other goodies. The one limiting factor appears to be that once you use the requisition you have to create a new star system. However, they threw in the word “active” before “star system” so it is a little vague if you can unlock all worlds from the old system or whether you start over (my vote would be for starting over).
Battle Traits and Relics
As with other books, the battle traits are divided into “Battlesuit”, “Fire Warrior” and “Ethereal” tables. The Battlesuit table is pretty bad except for two options (-1 to hit if being shot at more then 12″ away) and an option for a cheaper “Strike and Fade”. If you want your suits to die faster, or you play against a lot of guard armies, you can give a squad the ability to heroically intervene. The Fire Warriors get better options including the chance to get exploding 6’s but not many other noteworthy abilities. The Ethereal abilities are amazing with even the worst one (ignoring one failed out of action test per battle) being useful. If you are playing a crusade campaign you should probably take an Ethereal (something I will mention later). One big miss here is there is no table for vehicles or kroot.
The relics are okay, the seismic destabilizer gets you some easy MWs but you need to get too close to safely use it repeatedly. Serenity is “meh” as auto passing morale is nice but it’s once per battle. The Supernova Launcher is absurdly good giving you ignore LoS shooting, D2, AP -2 and if you hit any other ranged attacks against the same unit get +1 to hit and +1 to wound. I have no idea why this isn’t the legendary relic. The legendary relic makes one character a super caster, knowing all invocations, getting +1 to cast and an additional cast per turn. One odd thing about the legendary relic is that you can turn a non-ethereal into a one as it doesn’t specify that it is locked to Ethereal only. Farsight Enclaves will want to take this one as it does give you a lot of functionality.
Agendas and Requisitions:
Agendas are very important to the Tau as they are your only way of getting Diplo or Military points. If you want to do an annoying escort mission there is an option to get an ethereal to the center of the board (though some narrative missions have you start there so it’s not always a bad pick). “Protect the Leadership” is fun as you try to protect two special objectives though if you can’t control them, even if they are uncontrolled, they degrade and can die. “Hit their Supply Lines” is a good option on low objective boards as you can easily get 3 Military points if you complete the action for all objectives, though it does limit how much exp you get as well. The Outflank agenda is dumb giving you a max of three exp and only if you have more units in your opponents deployment zone then they do. Never take this unless you are really desperate. “Teachings of War” is really good giving you 1 exp for every unit killed in the first round (if Mont’ka) and/or last round (Kauyon). I say it’s good as if you focus on getting access to both you can get a lot of exp very quickly, though it is locked to the killing unit.
There are only a few Requisitions available to the Tau. One option allows you to shuffle military points into diplo points, then you have your standard relic and army specific ones (how you integrate planets for their second bonus). “The Heroes Mantle” is good if you get a lot of battlescars on a commander as it allows you to remove the unit and get a new one with the same exp, battle honors and relics but losing any scars. The last one gives an ethereal the ability to know one extra Invocation when it ranks up (oddly there is no cap here so you could easily max this out if you wanted a flexible caster).
Final Thoughts
The Tau are an odd crusade army. So long as they achieve their agendas they really don’t need to win the battle. The crusade abilities are okay, and mostly focused on providing buffs, but there aren’t many easy ways to get experience quickly. The Tau get one of the best crusade relics in the game (the Supernova Launcher) but the others will take more time to grind or aren’t really worth the cost (though the Tau are one of the only armies that don’t need any new ways to ignore invulns). As with the GSC the army mechanic where you take over planets will present some narrative challenges for the campaign GM but it’s not insurmountable. I do wish the rules weren’t so Ethereal focused, I get it’s a big part of their lore but I wish there were more options for Farsight Enclave armies.
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