This week we are looking at the relics from the Tau codex. Click to read on, or check out the Tactics Corner for more reviews and strategies.
Overview
As with the warlord traits, we will look at each of the relics individually but not the sept-specific ones, as those were discussed in the Septs article previously. Like all other modern books, Tau get one “free” relic and can purchase others at 1CP each, maxing out at three in a 2000pt game, so it behooves the general to choose them carefully.
We start off with the Puretide Engram Neurochip, which lets you refund each CP spend on a Battle Tactic or Epic Deed stratagem from the codex on a 3+ (with the usual caveat of no more than one per battle round, as normal.) Tau have a lot of powerful strats that you will be popping off and many of them fall under these two categories, so if you have a character who can take a relic this will be a strong consideration in a lot of armies.
The Onager Gauntlet is significantly upgraded from its previous version and has already proved to be a mainstay in most lists- it gives one battlesuit a S12 AP-4 Dmg3 melee weapon to use, which is a statline any faction would be jealous of and extra scary combined with the many upgrades we can put on our Commanders. You’ll be very hard-pressed not to take this one, especially on an Enforcer where it will be hard to get rid of or a Coldstar that can bring it where it’s needed.
Multi-Sensory Discouragement Array, aside from being a real mouthful, lets you pick one enemy unit within 12″ at the end of your movement phase and roll 3d6; if you beat their Leadership, you can choose one of three effects: they lose ObSec, or halve their movement and charge distances, or they can only shoot at the closest legal target. The abilities are quite powerful, but the dice roll and short range make it a rather risky play a lot of times, so I think this one ends up sitting out more often than not.
Solid-Image Projection Unit is one of several defensive options available; it gives the bearer a 4+ invulnerable save and reduces the damage of the first save they fail each turn to zero. This can make a character absurdly tough if you go all-out, but needs to be weighed against the other choices depending on what types of firepower you are expecting. It goes up a bit overall due to most Tau characters lacking a native invuln save, however.
Advanced EM Scrambler prevents all enemy reserves from being set up within 12″ of the bearer (effectively turning off almost all charges) and allows you to choose an enemy unit within 6″ during the command phase to turn off all auras affecting them. I think both of these effects are simply too niche and not long-enough ranged to really be worth it, especially since you are locked into them between games.
Bothrod Gland, an option exclusively for Kroot Shapers, gives the character a once-per-game aura of +1Str and +1A for all Kroot within 6″ of the bearer; this is actually a pretty nice bonus and will significantly tilt the math on attacking, but Kroot aren’t really a very good melee unit to start with so I don’t think this is actually a very attractive choice unless you are building some kind of theme army. Still, nice flavor, at least.\
Or’tu’s Lantern is an upgrade for a Markerlight, letting you roll six dice instead of one when performing the Fire Markerlight action. This will largely guarantee that you get enough tokens for all of your army to target that unit if needed and all from a single character model that can’t easily be targeted by the enemy, but I am somewhat unsure of whether it can compete with the other options. Still, it is a very nice upgrade and one with a lot of uses outside of Farsight lists.
The Humble Stave lets you turn any basic Ethereal into essentially a named-character version- they can perform one extra invocation per turn and add +1 to rolls for invocations (and so succeed on a 2+ in most cases.) This is a huge powerup for an Ethereal, not only letting you fire off your two important speeches most turns (5+ FNP and gain a CP) but also ensuring that they fail far less often. If you’re taking an Ethereal at all and aren’t Tau sept, you are probably taking this.
The Kindled Blade is one of those relics that exist… basically just to make people shut up. It can only be put on a Cadre Fireblade and once per battle can activate an aura that lets all your Fire Warriors pass morale checks automatically. Yep. You’re not ever going to take it and if you do it’s not ever going to be active on the right turn and if it is all of the relevant units will probably be wiped out entirely, so even for the most narrative of narrativists this is a hard pass.
The Neuro-Empathic Nullifier is, interestingly, restricted to Ethereals as well. Once per battle you pick a visible enemy within 18″ and on a 2+ they fail all actions automatically until your next command phase. Being a single-use thing is definitely an impediment, but if you can turn off your opponent scoring an objective even once you are probably feeling pretty good about this- but sadly, it competes with the Humble Stave and thus is probably never going to see much play.
The Be’gel Hunter’s Plate is the other major candidate for durability on a character. It gives +1 to all armor saves and grants a 5+ ability to ignore wounds for the bearer, which looks especially spicy on an Enforcer Commander where you can potentially get down to a 0+ armor save. It pairs extremely well with the Thermoneutronic Projector for a solid combination of offense and defense, and even on other Commander types it can be extremely useful in keeping you alive.
Finally we have the Ka’Chak’Tarr in case you were taking two Kroot Shapers and wanted them both to get a toy. It’s an upgrade to a Kroot Rifle and brings it up to S5 AP-2 Dmg2 Rapid Fire 2 and ignores Look Out Sir as well as causing a mortal wound on 6s. This is actually a fairly nice gun and has a reasonable chance of plinking down some low-tier characters, especially if you can get within 12″ of them to really unload. However, it suffers from the usual problem of both needing a Shaper and also competing with much more relevant relics, though I do think if you are adamant about putting a relic on a Shaper this is the one to go with.
General Thoughts
Tau have an excellent combination of utility relics as well as both offensive and defensive options, allowing you to kit your characters in a number of different ways depending on what you are feeling. Although a lot of the best ranged weapons are unsurprisingly in the Prototype Systems section, the ability to combine the two gives you an incredible amount of flexibility- we’ll talk about those more in our next article.
I think the Tau relics are good enough that you’re going to be hard-pressed not to take the full allotment pretty much every time; I personally lean towards Onager, Humble Stave, and Be’gel Plate, but there are some very legit other choices that you could swap out for in many cases, depending on build. It’s also very worth remembering your Sept relics here as well- Tau, Dalyth, and Sacea all get very solid relic options that you may want to consider.
I think the biggest game-changer out of all of these is pretty easily the Onager Gauntlet; Tau normally lack any real melee capability at all, especially against heavy targets, and so having something that turns one of your characters into a legitimate melee threat can really shape your opponent’s options in terms of how they interact with you- having the Onager nearby to intervene into a fight means they can’t really try to stay tied up with you and it also means that they can’t just crash a random transport into you in order to keep you occupied. Even stuff like Knights will need to respect the Gauntlet when you have Precision of the Hunter on that character, as it will threaten a pretty consistent six or nine wounds, and you absolutely have the ability to charge into something in order to finish it off after shooting- otherwise not really a choice for Tau.
In short, the Tau relics are pretty great overall and there’s not really much to complain about here. Tau made out like bandits with this book (on several levels) and I think you’ll be pretty happy picking off this list of relics in both competitive and narrative games, as there’s a lot of good stuff here either way.
As always, remember that you can get your wargaming supplies at great discounts every day from the Frontline Gaming store, whether you’re looking to start a new army or expand an existing one.
