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There is one flaw in the T’au’s armour, however: they have no psykers among their ranks. This means they’re not only unable to manipulate the Warp on the battlefield, but also have no astropaths – severely limiting their ability to move using faster than light travel. You also used to see really bare-bones Crisis Commanders used as a platform for Command and Control Node, but now that Shadowsun is ridiculously cheap people just use her for that instead. Commander in XV85 Enforcer Battlesuit Seismic Fibrillator Node: Do not gaze to long at this less madness take you. OK, the FAQ made it a bit less mad but it’s still extremely weird. Once per battle, at the start of your opponent’s turn, you activate this and then for the duration of that turn you roll a d6 each time a model starts or ends a move (other than a consolidate or pile-in) within 6″ of the bearer, dealing a MW to the model’s unit on a 6. This is clearly intended as a charge deterrent, but it’s very clunky and quite easy to work around, and no longer has the comedy upside of occasionally allowing you to roll 5 or 6 times per enemy model. D+
The Craftworlds box is extremely weird. It’s an incredible saving over buying the kits individually – if you want any two of them, you might as well buy this instead and get the others essentially free – but as a place to do what it says on the tin and start collecting Craftworld Eldar it’s woeful, since there’s no actual Troops in here. There’s only two elves, even, and one of them is piloting a War Walker. Still, most of the units are at least passable to good, and it’s quite a hefty chunk of points, too. Lots of Good Units. Although T’au tournament lists aren’t incredibly diverse, the T’au army has a lot of solid units that can make their way into competitive builds and multiple Sept options that are competitively viable. These also benefit a lot from being run as Farsight post-TGG – the new Sept ability is great with them, and the Firestorm stratagem is sometimes worth going in on. With their four Ion Rifles (when the drones are attached) they’re also one of the best users of the Modulated Weaponry stratagem, guaranteeing them 12 shots (though there’s a big risk of obliterating your drones when doing it unless you’ve maxed out on markerlights). Aerial Targeting – 1CP: Use this in your shooting phase. Select one enemy unit. Until the end of the phase, count the unit as having one more markerlight on it. This, on the other hand, totally whips. One of the absolute disasters that can befall a Tau army is trying to put five markers on something and whiffing and only getting four, and this just lets you say “nah, I totally did it” for 1CP. The fact that this works for your whole army in that scenario is fantastic. It’s also got several other users – if you need a single markerlight on something just for the re-rolls then this lets you just do it with no risk (and it probably means fewer people will bring Sa’cea detachments for their strat), and it also lets you put a markerlight on something out of sight that you’re planning to blow away with smart missiles. Just a fantastic stratagem all around. AGiven that many T’au units have BS4+ and (though tanks have BS3+ at their highest profiles), your army will live and die by its ability to put markerlights on key targets to ensure that your best shooting will get through. Because markerlights themselves have to be fired using the Ballistic Skill of a model, you’ll typically want to bring several very accurate characters who can easily put 1-2 markerlights on a target (Firesight Marksmen fir this bill perfectly), then use the Uplinked Markerlights stratagem to get you the rest of the way there. Having at least 1 markerlight is a big increase, but 5 is the sweet spot, and you will want to do whatever it takes to get 5 markerlights on a target that you’re planning to focus fire down. For the Greater Good
The Orks box has the dubious honour of being the only Start Collecting without a legal HQ choice in it, thanks to force organisational changes in 8th edition. The contents aren’t terrible however and if you’re building an Ork horde you’re going to need savings wherever you can get them. Nobz may not be an especially optimal unit for Orks right now, but it’s an extraordinarily characterful kit full of useful bitz. Fireblades are another cheap HQ choice for filling out Battalions that doesn’t eat up a COMMANDER keyword slot. They’ve got two main uses. The first is being a BS2+ Markerlight. Given that you need Markerlights to make the army function, this makes Cadre Fireblades easy to include in most armies as your most reliable way to put the first ML on a unit. This ability alone is enough to make Fireblades worth bringing, but the other ability they bring to the table is also very good. The Volley Fire ability gives friendly SEPT units within 6″ an additional shot when firing with pulse pistols, pulse carbines, and pulse rifles when shooting at a target within half the weapon’s range. This is very good on Pulse Rifles, where half range is 15″, and a Cadre Fireblade can ensure that charging into a line of T’au Sept Fire Warriors is a lethal affair. You don’t need Fire Warriors, Pathfinders, or Gun Drones to make Fireblades worth having, but if you’re bringing both, they make a wonderful team. Darkstrider
Summary
Defence in Numbers 2CP: A Crisis team gets a 5+++ for a phase. Not cheap, and the cost of what you want to do with your Crisis team on the turn they come in really adds up, but this is such a big boost to the survivability, especially when used on a big squad, that it’s worth making sure you have the CP to blow it. Because of the weird way wound reduction maths works, this essentially increases the number of wounds your team has by 50% when your opponent is trying to burst them down, and is also especially good when used against fixed damage weapons such as the dreaded Pulse Laser (about the worst thing for Crisis teams to face). It would be nice if this scaled in cost like Veteran Cadre, but ultimately a big defensive boost to what’s likely one of your key units is a great tool to have B+
Kroot Hounds: These guys just sort of exist. They do have one role, which is being cheap slot fodder for a Brigade, but their actual in-game use mostly comes down to “stand on objective” and “hope not to die.” They’re basically the cheapest screening unit you can take in the T’au army, but you should probably be buying drones to do the same thing, only better. The Y’vahra is a bit like a Riptide, but with a bloody great flamer attached to it. It has a slightly different Nova Reactor table, which lets you pull it off the table and re-deploy, or throw a 3+ invulnerable on against melee only. It has two guns, an ionic discharge cannon which is (standard/nova charged) Heavy 3/3d3, S8/10, AP-3, D1/3, and does 1/d3 mortal wounds to vehicles for each wound roll of a 6+, and then also a phased plasma-flamer which is Heavy 2d6/3d6, S6, AP-2, D3. That’s a lot of firepower. The main strike against Y’vahras is that they cost 395pts and they need to get close to offer their maximum output, and at base they can’t redeploy and shoot the flamer. As mentioned previously, there was a fashion for taking these in a Bork’an detachment so that the flamer was 14″ instead of 8″– which makes it a lot better! – but that didn’t really work out competitively since they’re just so expensive and Riptides offer just as much. The RestThe Enclaves now get four traits to choose from. Sadly, they’re at best OK, with some useful choices but nothing with proper wow factor. Her other useful abilities are mostly tied to the drones that come with her. Annoyingly, these set up as a unit of their own which can be targeted, so you ideally want them behind a wall or something. The Advanced Guardian Drone gives a 6+++ to Tau Empire units within 3″, while the Command-link Drone lets her give one unit within 12″ re-roll 1s to hit each turn. Both of these abilities are fine but are also trivially replicated by a single ethereal (who you probably have), making the mandatory inclusion of the drones (who are a straight up liability in ITC) a major downside of her new datasheet. Farsight Enclave detachments can instead take two COMMANDERs per detachment. While the rule of three obviously means you can’t just take six of the same type, a mix of Enforcer, Coldstar and Crisis suited one lets you fill this up. Sept Tenets
Sense of Stone and Storm of Fire are the clear winners here, and which one you want will depend on your strategy – although as of TGG you can just spend 1CP on Wisdom of the Many and have both. Because re-rolling To Hit rolls of 1 is the easiest ability to get for T’au (since it comes off a single markerlight), you’ll often find that it only benefits you when your plan is to go wide and shoot at targets without markerlights. Instead, the ability to give multiple units the 6+ feel no pain save can dramatically extend the longevity of units and make your Riptides that much more of a pain in the ass to take down. These get a boost with the advent of Hardened Warheads which boosts up their seeker missile alpha strike potential and Gifted Pilots, which also helps. XV109 Y’vahra Battlesuit (Forge World) Soldiers in Arms: Greater Good range increases to 9″. You don’t want this over Tau Sept and it doesn’t synergise well with any of the others. C Contents: 1 Tech-priest Dominus (HQ), 10 Skitarii Vanguard/Rangers (Troops), 1 Onager Dunecrawler (Heavy Support) Overall, while they’re not crazy or anything, there is enough going on here to push these into some builds. XV8 Crisis SuitsFail Safe Detonator – 1CP: When a BATTLESUIT unit is destroyed in the fight phase, inflict a MW on each unit within 3″ on a 4+ (rolled per unit). A neat little spiteful ability that can be helpful for punishing Berserkers and other low-wound elite melee units, but incredibly situational. C Tau Warlords typically fall into two categories: Crisis Suit Commanders and Cadre Fireblades. Which Warlord Trait you’ll want will depend mostly on which you’re making your warlord and what will benefit them and your army the most. At her peak Shadowsun was potentially in competition for one of the very best units in the game, but she’s come down in power a bit (while still being good) thanks to an updated datasheet and a shift in the metagame away from Tau Sept.
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