9E Tau Codex Review: HQs- Ethereal

Today we look at the leaders of the Tau race and enforcers of the Greater Good, the Ethereals. Click to read on, or check out the Tactics Corner for more reviews and strategies.

Overview

Ethereals come with a fairly underwhelming statline overall, although as support HQs this should be little surprise. Movement 6″ is standard, though there is an option to improve it. Weapon skill 3+ is actually surprisingly good… though it is in turn hamstrung by the Ethereal’s own gear. Ballistic skill 4+ is irrelevant, oddly for a Tau model. Strength and toughness three both are standard, and four wounds is on the low side but given the price one can hardly complain. Leadership ten and a 5+ save round out the unit. At 60pts they aren’t the cheapest Tau HQ, but they are extremely efficient for what they do and you’ll be hard-pressed to leave home without one.

Special Rules and Wargear

What the Ethereal lacks in stats, they more than make up for in abilities, having a whole host of special rules that they get to buff other Tau units. The most basic is Failure Is Not an Option, which lets nearby units use their leadership value; it’s not huge but can be handy, since Tau morale broadly got worse. More relevant is Inspired to Greatness, which lets one unit shoot while performing an action- since actions are a critical part of scoring with the current mission pack, and Tau generally struggle with scoring, it is important that you continue to both apply firepower and gain points during the game, and an Ethereal goes a long way towards helping you do that.

Last but certainly not least are the invocations, significantly upgraded from previous versions. Like most other similar abilities they are now activated in the command phase and work on a 3+ or better; each Ethereal knows two invocations and can activate one per turn.

The two you will most commonly see are Wisdom of Guides (gain 1CP) and Sense of Stone (give one Core unit 5+ ability to ignore wounds); these two are almost universal in their application and pretty much never get left off a list. Zephyr’s Grace (-1 to hit with shooting if you move) is also pretty handy and is seen reasonably often. Storm of Fire (shoot and perform an action) gives you the ability to double up on action-doers if you really need to, although this is a fairly niche ability and so it isn’t generally taken as one of your two picks- though it is worth remembering it exists. Power of Tides (+1 to wound with aux units) is weird, but has some potential if you can manage to get an Ethereal to the right place or are building a wacky army. Finally, Unifying Mantra (reroll morale, +1 on attrition) is vaguely fine but not something you will spend a slot on.

The Ethereal comes equipped with an Honor Stave (Str+2 AP-1 Dmg2, -1 to hit) as their only weapon, giving them a very basic close combat functionality. They can have up to two drones, in the usual fashion, and may also ride a Hover Drone (+5pts), which boosts their movement to 8″ and gives them the Fly keyword- well worth it in most cases.

Uses

Ethereals are the quintessential support characters- they do basically nothing on their own, but by buffing other units around them they can contribute massively to a battle and completely change its outcome, and in that respect they are very, very good at their jobs. Virtually all Tau armies these days are seen running Ethereals, even when it means giving up some of the Farsight abilities to do so (as Farsight Enclaves cannot take or benefit from Ethereals) because they really are just that powerful.

This largely comes down to the two invocations mentioned earlier, Wisdom of Guides and Sense of Stone, and the fact that a single Ethereal can pop off both every turn with pretty good regularity. The Humble Stave lets an Ethereal use an extra invocation, and adds +1 on rolls to activate them, so you’re getting two of them on 2+s each turn, which is about as close to a sure thing as you’ll get in this game. For the trivial investment of 1CP, you really can’t ask anything more.

This is especially true because that 1CP will pay itself back very quickly- Wisdom of Guides giving you a bonus CP every turn helps fuel the Tau war machine and its many excellent stratagems. Although it might be a bit much to say that Tau are reliant on stratagems, they certainly benefit a lot from them, as they have a variety of powerful and flexible ones to choose from and they can apply them wherever the firepower is needed most, allowing them a huge degree of customizability in how their army functions. Need some extra AP? A few more hits? Shoot out of LOS? Rerolls to hit and wound? All of these things are available multiple different ways if you have the CP for them, and with an Ethereal sitting in the back and chanting you’re essentially going up 4CP compared to every other army in the game (+1 per turn, -1 for the relic) and that means much freer use of strategems.

The other half of the Ethereal equation is Sense of Stone, which is arguably even more clutch. 5+ FNP may not seem like a lot, especially because it only applies to Core models in the unit, but the trick is that it is something you can get in addition to everything else- and with both Crisis and Broadsides being Core units, that can make for some disgustingly-hard difficult to remove squads. Having to chew through five Shield Drones and then deal with a unit of T5 models with 3+ or 2+ armor, and 4+ invulnerables, sitting in cover, with the ability to negate AP-1/2, and 5+ FNP, is just incredibly frustrating to deal with. It’s so many different kinds of protection, and each of them covers for the others’ weaknesses. Single, high-damage weapons? They go on the drones. Mid-strength shots with medium AP/damage? Oops, Iridium eats them and ignores the AP penalty. A spray of low-quality shots? There’s plenty of 2+ save models to go around. And any weapon with less than damage 6 is probably going to fail to kill a Crisis in one blow, resulting in even more inefficiency. There is no single profile that can be used to easily deal with Crisis, all the more so because they are also very mobile and able to stay out of line of sight. And this is even more true for Broadsides, with their superior statline.

In short, Sense of Stone takes a pair of units that are very shooty and fairly tough and makes them an order of magnitude tougher, allowing them to stay alive to shoot longer and put themselves in more risky positions without worry of just getting completely annihilated. Although the Ethereal is not the problem unit in these situations, is most certainly is an enabler for two of the biggest problem units in the codex, and that’s trouble.

With that said, I don’t think it is particularly likely that the Ethereal will see a nerf if and when Tau come under scrutiny. Certainly they make some of the problems worse, but even if Ethereals were deleted from the book wholesale it wouldn’t solve the problems that we are seeing right now, so I don’t think they are going to become a target. There are plenty of other changes that are more likely to fix the issues and that won’t catch other, weaker units in the crossfire.

Final Thoughts

Although there are some minor problems with the execution overall (such as the poor balancing of some of the invocations against each other), I think broadly the Ethereal is in a much better place than they have been in the past. They are simultaneously both a valuable part of a Tau army, one that you want to bring to most fights, while also being quite fragile and important to protect, all of which is very reflective of the fluff. I’m glad to see that GW is starting to understand how such characters should function on the battlefield.

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.