#tau 10th Ed

[taudad]

Major Takeaways I had from my first tournament

T’au are fighting an uphill battle right now. It’s sad, but true that right now we don’t have much that hits hard and we don’t have much staying power

1st turn is REALLY important for how we play. Since Kauyon doesn’t kick in till turn 3, the difference between 2 and 3 rounds of getting shot at is significant when it comes to your Kauyon Output. Plan accordingly to hide if you get 2nd turn

Strategic Reserves are your friends. Especially when fighting Space Marines, you need to keep your big targets off the table at the start of the game. My Stormsurge was Oath of Moment’d in 2 of my 3 games before it could get a single round of shooting off. If you’re playing a big crisis bomb or Stormsurge you need to keep it in reserves until you know you can shoot with it

Ghostkeel and Piranhas are our MVPs. I’m not including Tetras here because they’re Forgewold and hard to get, but these two did WORK. The durability of the Ghostkeel on my Home Objective is what made me present a challenge at all to my opponents, and the two Seeker Missiles on each Piranha plus the drone harassment are crucial to hurting enemy vehicles and knocking opponents off of objectives for secondaries

Ethereals are worth it for the CP alone. I had two Ethereals, one leading a strike team, the other alone, and the extra CP generation gave me some much needed flexibility. It allowed me to use great stratagems like Tank Shock and Grenades that I otherwise wouldn’t have the CP for. Plus if you put a gun drone on them, they act as a pretty good action monkey once you bring them in from Strategic reserves

STEALTH SUITS. Between the rerolls of 1s to wound for guided units, to Infiltrating with Stealth, to bring a cheap source Markerlights guiding, to the FREE once per game Rapid Ingress, this is a must have unit. I ran 3 minimum strength units and will likely be doing so indefinitely

Our enhancements are great! I used Exemplar of the Kauyon, Puretide Engram Neurochip (PEN for short) and Through Unity, Devastation and all of them came in clutch at different points of my games. In particular, the PEN was fantastic as it allowed me to Rapid Ingress 2 Crisis Bombs (for FREE with the Stealth suits) on my opponent’s turn two when I went second and it gave me the possibility to Overwatch a second time as well

It’s still possible to have fun in 10th. I lost 2/3 games, but my second loss went 54-56 and was one of the best 40K games I’ve ever played. Play your best, aim to have fun and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do well. We got this, Shas’os!

For my personal list, I’m likely going to revise the armament of my second crisis team to have Fusion Blasters and Missile Pods as the Burst Cannons and Flamers are just useless against anything T5 or higher and might swap out the Coldstar commander for a Crisis Commander as the reroll 1s might be worth the lost movement and assault if I’m Rapid Ingressing the unit anyways

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

So I am presently intrigued by the Leagues of Votann, and I wanted to learn more about their lore and so - since it's 10th edition now and everything - I got a copy of the 9th ed codex for a song. Nice!

How well GW did in reviving the squats and fitting them into the tone of what 40k is now, you know, thirty-odd years later is likely a subjective matter. They couldn't ever come back how they were! I do quite like some of the ways they've transposed a lot of the WFB Dwarf ideas into SPACE - they're still hoarders, still live in deep dark holds, etcetera, and I do kind of like the angle that, really, they're a survivor of humanity's past and a glimpse at what might have gone on back then.

I always enjoy imagining The Dark Age of Technology stuff from 40k, because it's basically that period of time when somewhere in the galaxy humanity was doing something that you saw once in a sci-fi film and would like to happen. Doesn't matter how ridiculous, during humanity's technological golden age it happened somewhere before everything went to shit.

So the idea that, like, you know, the squats - as imrpessive as they are now - are more-or-less, like, leftover miners? Guys who were basically, hell, maybe even just artificially grown and made to go off into space and dig rocks but, since everything went to shit, got left to their own devices and now this is where they are? Kinda neat. Kinda makes me think of orks, actually - still around way after the war they were made for is over, just carrying on.

That's not explicit, obviously, but it's how I like to think of it.

But really the main takeaway I'm getting from the codex is that it's their first codex. It's giving me a strong sense of the first tau codex where they hadn't really settled in yet. You're told they've been around and have all these pre-existing relations, but you don't feel it, because really they don't and just showed up.

That, and they're way, way too reasonable. Just like the first tau codex these guys get along, they don't squabble, they aren't especially superstitious, they get how technology works, they're motivated, united, and what obvious flaws they have aren't really given all that much weight or time.

Which isn't very 40k, you know? Everyone here is broken.

Guess they need time to breathe...

[farsight-the-char]

One wish I do hope for 10th ed 40k is bringing back “Take X Warlord, unlock Y-unit as a troop option” thing older editions of 40k had, and AOS does (sort of).

Like, Biker Marine HQs making Bikers a Troop option instead of Fast-attack, or certain Army Lists that make Wraithguard/blades or Crisis Teams troops for Craftworlds and Tau Empire respectively. 

[taudad]

[taudad]

T’AU FACTION FOCUS DROPPED

A few key takeaways

Our starting special rules are VERY castle-y. To use Markerlights at all (now just our For the Greater Good ability) we have our squads working in at least groups of 2 to target enemy units, and it heavily punishes split firing. Plus with our first detachment being Kauyon based, until our codex drops we’re likely going to be bunkering down

In a major change drones don’t count as wounds or models at all, they’re just equipment to add to your squad. Which uh… makes shield drones way worse but drastically improves things like Missile Drones which last until the model falls

Pathfinders essentially double your ability to get BS improvements but will never be viable targets for them, so expect less specialized pathfinder weapons

And Big Guns is big

Overall, the rules seem well balanced and I’m eager to try them out. My concerns are that we are a bit too castle-y (especially with Rad Bombardment being a thing) and that they may have swung too hard away from drones and made them unplayable. For now we’ll just have to wait and see