Like all new books, Tau get a system of point upgrades for certain units in the codex, and today we’ll look at their options on that front. Click to read on, or check out the Tactics Corner for more reviews and strategies.
The Tau have always been known for being one of the few races in Warhammer 40K that actually make efforts to improve and update their technology, which is reflected in a number of ways across their codex. In this edition, one of those ways are the Prototype Systems, a special set of upgrades that can applied to various battlesuits in your army. They mostly only exist for Commanders and Crisis, but the Ghostkeel does technically have access as well. They come in two main flavors- upgrades for an existing weapon and additional capabilities added to the suit, both of which have their uses. Offering a number of both defensive and offensive capabilities (though favoring the latter), Prototype Systems are an extremely valuable addition to the army and can really push the capabilities of your suits through the roof when used properly. So let’s go ahead and dive into the options and look at them all individually.
The Starfire Ignition System is typical of many of the various mortal wound-dealing abilities; for 20pts, once per battle you can have a Coldstar use it either before or after a move, or when it leaves the battlefield with High-Altitude Maneuvering. When you do, you roll a d6 for every unit within 3″ and on a 2+ it takes d3 mortal wounds. The restrictions on range as well as opportunity cost I think make this one of the weaker options, although it does have the potential to nail several units at once and being an out-of-phase damage ability also has some value. Still, probably a pass in most cases.
Sensory Negation Countermeasures are a lot easier to use; they can go on any Commander or Crisis, and once per battle you can trigger them to give enemies in engagement range -1 to hit. At 15pts they are reasonably cheap, and Crisis are tough enough that you can plausibly use this to survive a close combat in order to shoot back at the enemy, so it has the potential to be quite worthwhile, though you are probably just sticking it on a squad rather than on a character.
A slightly more problematic piece of gear is the Alternating Fusion Blaster, which is incidentally the first of our weapon replacements. There are one of these for each of the types of Crisis weapon options, all of them upgrading the profile of the basic gun to do some extra stuff. The Alternating Fusion has mostly the same profile as the regular version, but with a shorter range (12″) and always gaining the half-range bonus. More notably, when fired it will strike all units that are in a straight line behind its target, up to the maximum range… but the awkward part here is units, not models, which causes many of the same issues that Orbital Ion Beam does. Regardless, though, the loss of the range combined with the high price point (25pts) means that it probably won’t be a very attractive choice most of the time, doubly so because Fusion Blasters are a rather expensive weapon to start with.
On the other hand, the DW-02 Advanced Burst Cannon is a very powerful option that is already seeing significant play. For 15pts over the normal cost of a Burst Cannon, you get two additional shots as well as a point of strength and a point of AP. That would be nice but probably not enough on its own, but the real value is in the gun’s special ability- wounds from it cannot be ignored by special rules, including models with a “wound limit” ability. With Tau so reliant on the shooting phase to do work, such models can be a huge problem and the DW-02 is a great workaround for these- and even when it’s not applicable, the gun’s superior statline is a very nice consolation prize. Expect to see it on Coldstar Commanders a lot, where it pairs well with their High-Output Burst Cannon very effectively, especially on Mont’ka turns.
The Novasurge Plasma Rifle is similar to its cousin in many ways, but performs a very different role. At 20pts it is by no means cheap, although coming off a low-price weapon as its base does help. And its upgrades over the base stats of a plasma rifle are pretty weak- it gets AP-5, but no other improvements. But once again the sauce is in its special ability: it hits so hard that invuln saves cannot be taken against it, period. With so many models in the game sporting a 4+ or 5+ invuln save these days this is a pretty huge boost to damage, and even more so in terms of reliability; only the most doggedly-resilient of enemies will have any kind of save at all against it, and the three damage is enough to remove a model from most squads outright. If you’re seeing a lot of tough targets, the Novasurge is going to be your man.
While the Fusion Blades of old may be gone, the Thermoneutronic Projector is here to save the day, and boy howdy does it. A 20pt upgrade on a Flamer, the Projector is just straight incredible and you are going to want to cram it into just about every list of every kind you can manage. Let’s start with the statline- compared to the vanilla version, it comes with AP-2 (excellent) and damage 2 (huge), making it far more capable of hurting tougher targets. Bizarrely, it does not automatically hit its target, so unless we see an FAQ on the subject it ends up being worse on overwatch. However, it more than makes up for that by also being useable in melee with the same profile… except that it grants d6+2 bonus attacks to the wielder, effectively pulling double duty. Combined with Precision of the Hunter, Seeker of Perfection, or Master of the Killing Blow it will turn any Commander into an absolute killing machine and it’s a great counterpart to the high-value but more limited hits from an Onager Gauntlet. Against anything T7 or less, the Projector will absolutely clean house with a prejudice and it should virtually always be your first pick.
The Dominator Frag Projector may not be quite as absurd, but it does come with some powerful tricks of its own. At 25pts over the normal version it is one of the most expensive choices available, but its effect is very powerful indeed- it improves the base statline of the weapon to S5 and AP-2, and if any hits (not wounds) are scored on the target they have -4 leadership in the ensuing morale phase. This may not be much for your standard units of trashy little dudes like Imperial Guard or Wyches or whatever, but when you’re hitting more expensive units like Bladeguard Veterans or Custodes it suddenly starts looking like a free casualty. I think it’s going to be a lot more contingent on the meta than other choices might be, but when it pays off it’s going to pay off big-time, so keep it in mind.
Internal Grenade Racks breaks the streak of upgrade weapons here, and comes in cheap and cheerful at 15pts. Each movement phase you can pick one unit you moved across and on a 2+ it takes d3 mortal wounds; if you’re looking for some out-of-phase damage I think this is the one to go for, especially since it goes so well on a Coldstar. That said, it is a bit tricky to trigger on the units you would want to be hitting in many cases, so I don’t feel like it’s an auto-take. But in narrative games or if you’re looking to do something off-kilter it is far from a bad choice and sniping out an enemy character with a bombing run is a great feeling, so don’t sleep on this. For extra comedy, try giving it to an Ethereal on a hover drone.
Resonator Warheads is the last of the weapon upgrades as well as the most expensive of them, coming in at a cool 30pts. It tunes up a Missile Pod to be a decent bit harder-hitting, going to S8 and three shots, but the real value (as always) is in the ability- if you hit an Infantry, Beast, or Cavalry unit with it, the unit halves its movement value next turn, though this is not cumulative with other effects that reduce movement. This is an extremely powerful effect, especially because you can activate it at a distance and repeatedly. Although it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention so far, I think that is because of the proliferation of -1dmg effects as well as the utter domination of Tau firepower so far- but if we see more tough units that can survive a round of shooting come into the meta or if Tau firepower gets significantly toned down, expect to see it make a reappearance.
We finally arrive at the one option for the Ghostkeel, the E-H Disruption Suite, and it is… not good. It costs 30pts, a bad starting place, and is only useable once per battle in your command phase. When you do, the suit gains a 12″ aura that forces enemies to pay an extra 1CP for stratagems that enhance their units shooting/fighting while in range. So let’s think this through: expensive, small radius around a unit that wants to be as far from the enemy as possible, doesn’t actually stop them from doing the thing, only even affects a small subclass of strats, must be used proactively rather than reactively. Yeah, that’s a pass from me.
On the other end of the spectrum are Stim Injectors, having made their way out from the stratagems section to become a piece of wargear again. For a mere 10pts, one of your Commander or Crisis suits can have a 4+ ability to shrug wounds for one turn, activated after you lose a wound. Since this basically doubles your number of wounds, it’s fantastic on an Enforcer or other character who wants to be getting into the thick of things and if you’re not taking any other prototypes, you may as well take this one. Probably never going to be an all-star, but always going to be useful.
Last but not least we have Wide-Spectrum Scanners, which requires the unit to have an Early-Warning Override (i.e. the overwatch-boosting support system) and costs 20pts. It provides you with what is basically the old version of that system, letting the bearer make a free shot at one unit that arrived from reserves that turn as long as they are within 12″. The range limitation on this is pretty harsh, but it does let you strongly deter the enemy from arriving within a reasonably-large bubble, as eating an entire round of shooting from a Commander is not an attractive prospect in most cases.
General Thoughts
Most of the more-worthwhile Prototype Systems are replacements for weapons, although oddly there isn’t one for the Cyclic Ion Blaster for some reason. Still, most of the others are pretty good and will likely see at least some use, although there are obviously a couple of standouts. This means that a Commander’s weapon selection will be subject to even more considerations than normal, so Tau players are going to need to think not just about which guns are mechanically efficient and what range they want to engage at, but also what other options their picks open up in terms of additional upgrades.
The fact that most of the weapons only have marginally-improved statlines compared to their “basic” counterparts is actually nice to see, because it means that taking them is not just a matter of massively-improving your damage output but rather in looking to the special abilities that the weapons offer- and those special abilities are both varied and powerful, giving you a lot of tools for building against certain types of armies. Light infantry, heavy infantry, hard targets, fast targets, Tau have specific ways to handle them all in their arsenal, but you’ll need to make that choice at the army-building level, so being able to predict the meta is going to be a very important skill, moreso than it was already.
The one unfortunate thing is that the upgrades are functionally for Commanders and only for Commanders, since the weaker ballistic skill on Crisis units means the weapons don’t do much for them and the other choices are either restricted in who can take them or functionally useless on non-Commander models. It would’ve been nice to see some stuff for Ethererals, Fireblades, and other characters, especially because of the one-per-detachment limit on Commanders. However, it’s hard to complain too much given the general state of the codex, and if you really want it’s not too hard to shove a 2-4 Commanders into an army, so the possibility to really go wild with kooky gear is always there if you truly want it.
As always, remember 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. Join us next week when we’ll finish up the non-datasheet portion of the review by looking at the Tau secondary objectives.
Perhaps you could order the list from good to bad, or the other way around.