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 Stratagem – Hot Blooded 2CP: A VIOR’LA INFANTRY unit can shoot twice as long as it targets the nearest enemy unit.

With the Ethereals firmly in charge, the T’au became truly united and their technological progress leapt forward, propelling them into the heavens. Protected by their army – known as the Fire Caste– settlers began to take over systems and assimilate other species under the banner of the Empire, in successive ‘spheres of expansion’.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Uplinked Markerlight – 1CP: Use after hitting with a markerlight fired by a model from your army. Add an extra d3 markerlight counters. This is the army’s go-to Stratagem, and you’re going to find yourself using it almost every turn to help get key targets to 5+ Markerlights. Use a Cadre Fireblade or Marksman to drop the first Markerlight or two, then used Uplinked Markerlights to make it an additional D3. A+ The Sun Shark has a similar role to the Drukhari Voidraven, which is to fly over something and bomb the hell out of it and hope to cause mortal wounds. It’s not quite as good here as it is there, since it gets no bonus against VEHICLE or MONSTER units and only wounds things on a 5+ (4+ against INFANTRY). It also has a missile pod, two seeker missiles, a couple of drones with ion rifles, and also totes a markerlight. Sun Sharks have a definite application zooming over stuff and hoping to drop a ton of mortal wounds on it, and Devin Swann’s list below which uses these plus a pile of Sky Rays for a horrific alpha strike is at least something to think about. Crisis Suit Commanders are one of the T’au army’s strongest units, capable of carrying four weapons and dishing out a massive amount of firepower as a deep strike threat. The only reason XV8 Crisis Commanders don’t show up more often is because there’s little to recommend them over the Enforcer and Coldstar variants. Their primary differentiator is the ability to upgrade to an XV8-02 Iridium battlesuit for a 2+ Save but with the ability to take Shield Drones, this isn’t nearly as important as having an extra wound or being able to dart across the table.

If you are charging a Tau unit that is already in close combat, other units can still fire From the Greater Good at you even if your direct target can’t. The Fire Warriors - a weak Troop choice, they might be good for securing objectives, or being properly equipped for tank busting, but they're better inside their Devilfishes, held in Reserve for increased protection. Only buy the Shas'ui model if you have the money to spare. Once per battle, as long as a COMMANDER is alive, that commander can declare either Kauyon or Mont’ka. Either of these are declared at the beginning on your turn, and provide certain benefits to units near them. These will typically used at the beginning of the game to maximize firepower when the first chance to strike a decisive blow becomes available. Kauyon The Start Collecting box that gets our vote for “the next one to be discontinued,” there’s not a ton this particular box has to offer. Tactical Marines just don’t have much value when you’d rather run Scouts or Intercessors, the Terminator Captain doesn’t bring much to the table when you have other, more mobile, better-equipped, cheaper options, and the Venerable Dreadnought is only OK. You’re better off skipping this one for the Marine half of the Dark Imperium Starter.Supernova Launcher: Relic airbursting frag projector. Assault d6, 18″ range, S6, AP-2, D2, and doesn’t need LOS. An interesting relic weapon. Potentially funny on a Coldstar Commander running this and 3 Airbursting Frag Projectors, where the ability to spit out 4D6 shots per shooting round at a target out of LOS is potentially a very scary threat. B+ If you combine this collection with the battleforce, you’ll have choices for your HQ, (An ethereal or a battlesuit commander), an assortment of the Medium sized suits for the Tau, (no stormsurges or Riptides, but those are always options), and a mix of Tau infantry. You’ve also got a Devilfish Transport to give you enhanced mobility on the tabletop. It’s a neat mix of options and choices for a budding commander, so take a look and see if it’s what you’re looking for to get started. Sept Tenet – Strike Fast: When a unit advances, Rapid Fire weapons become Assault till the end of the turn. Also ignore the penalty for advancing and firing assault weapons. What’s more, while their clean aesthetic and apparently progressive ‘ Greater Good’ philosophy can sometimes seem like something beamed in from a different universe, lore hounds can still find a healthy dose of grimdark lurking beneath the T’au’s shiny, armoured shells.

XV8 Crisis Bodyguards: They’re Crisis Suits which can also act like shield drones. Just take shield drones. Exemplar of the Kau’yon: Your warlord can re-roll failed hits as long as they haven’t moved for any reason this turn. This is OK but typically if you have a Crisis Commander Warlord, you’re likely to be dropping in from a Manta and moving, and if you’re a Cadre Fireblade Warlord, the only weapon you’re going to be operating is a Markerlight. This is OK for that, but not worth using a Warlord Trait on. C Point Defence Targeting Relay – 1CP: A VEHICLE firing Overwatch can hit on 5s. Helpful for Hammerheads, but really made with the Stormsurge in mind. Neat in a pinch, but if your Stormsurge is getting charged we suspect that hings have gone horribly, terribly wrong. B- Soon you'll see how limited the Tau Troop choices are. There's a Chapter Approved article from the White Dwarf magazine describing the Tau Human Auxiliaries, the Tau Gue'Vesa (great for Tank Busting). These are interesting options, and could be modeled from Imperial Guard units, like the Cadians or Catachans, which could be cheap if bought as push-fit models. Repulsor Impact Field – 1CP: Use after a BATTLESUIT unit is charged. Roll a d6 for each model from the charging unit within 3″ of your unit and deal a MW on a 6. This doesn’t deal nearly enough wounds to be worth it and you’re going to get more damage shooting in Overwatch most of the time. CTech-priest Dominuses have fallen out of favor recently, which is a shame because Ad Mech still field Vanguard and Rangers on a regular basis to fill out Battalions and the Dunecrawler is a legitimately good unit that sees lots of competitive play. It’s still a great boxed set to start building off of, but some of the savings are mitigated by the fact that you probably won’t want a Tech-Priest Dominus in your army. Breach and Clear – 1CP: A Breacher Team re-rolls failed wounds against an enemy unit in cover until the end of the phase. This would theoretically be more useful now that so many space marine armies are bringing the Stealthy trait to get the benefit of cover, but that only applies when you’re more than 12″ away and Breacher Teams want to be well within 12″ when they start shooting, so as-is its primary uses are when you’re rushing enemies, which just won’t happen in most competitive games. C Stratagem – Experimental Weaponry 1CP: Use when you fire a random shot weapon. You can re-roll one of the dice used to determine shot number. Note you have to use this before you roll. Hidden Hunters – 1CP: Use at the start of your opponent’s shooting phase. A KROOT unit from your army gets an extra +1 to their saves in cover for the phase, and your opponent gets -1 to hit them. This doesn’t do nearly enough most of the time, and it’s hard to get the benefit on a full squad. This is a hefty boost, but it won’t get there a lot of the time. C

Contents: 1 Watch Captain Artemis (HQ), 10 Deathwatch Veterans (Troops), 1 Venerable Dreadnought (Elites), 1 Deathwatch upgrade sprue 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+ Easily the best original Sept. The tenet, Coordinated Fire Arcs, dovetails very nicely with For the Greater Good to provide even more charge protection and keep your gunline intact, Focused Fire is incredible on units with high rate of fire (wound something with incidental fire and then give +1 to wound against that target with 20 medium strength shots per riptide), and the warlord trait and relic are no slouches, either. As a bonus, the T’au sept has all of the good special characters. Never a mistake choice — almost every competitive T’au Empire list runs at least one T’au Sept detachment, and many run only T’au Sept. Vior’la This Tau set also fits in perfectly with any pre-existing army. The Ethereal works great as a commander and the Fire Warriors and Drones will always be useful. In a pinch, you could even use the XV8 Crisis Battlesuits as an unofficial commander!Instead of taking a normal relic (including those added with Emergency DIspensation), Tau can instead choose to take a Prototype Weapon System. These are essentially “unit” relics with a much broader set of places they can be assigned than just characters. We’ll cover these in their own section later on. Warriors of the Greater Good Of course, no army is without downsides and the T’au are no exception. While they have been buffed somewhat in melee they still can struggle, relying on auxiliaries like Kroot or Vespids to fill in the gaps. These can both be excellent close range combatants but, as they are not truly T’au, they do miss out on some of the keyword-reliant buffs the rest of your force benefits from. The old version of this with the Kabals stuff in felt a lot better than this one does. That said, you can at least get somewhere with this – all of Succubi, Wyches, and Venoms are good units you’ll want for a budding Drukhari army, and Reavers are OK I guess. What would have been really nice is if instead of replacing the old box, we got something like the Daemons of X boxes for Kabals, Covens, and Wych Cults, but alas.