Of these, we’ve already mentioned the Onager Gauntlet, which is now hilarious– it’s basically a free melee weapon for a BATTLESUIT model, granting a mighty S12 AP4 profile with damage 3. That is a profile that is genuinely dangerous, especially combined with Precision of the Hunter. An excellent upgrade. All missile weapons gain a point of AP, essentially baking Hardened Warheads into their basic profiles. Seeker missiles also hit at S9 for 2d3 damage now, and no longer need Markerlights to function – hefty stuff. They don’t change the unit’s toughness, are completely ignored for the purposes of the Look Out Sir rule (so do note that units that only add up to three models because of Drones can’t protect Characters), don’t count for morale when they die and don’t gain the unit’s keywords. You might be wondering why the last one matters, and it’s because Drones aren’t CORE, and a lot of rules in this book are worded to account for that, providing bonuses to “CORE models in a unit” rather than a “CORE unit”. While that also means they aren’t INFANTRY when attached to squads, they have a special rule to allow them to count as such “for the purposes of interacting with terrain features”, which definitely lets them traverse them where relevant, and we assume also allows them to gain Light Cover (which is very nice). It also means that Drones in units with a character are not CHARACTER themselves meaning they don’t count for secondaries such as assassinate. There are some circumstances where Drones can become separated from their units, and if a unit is only Drones then they cannot perform any Actions other than firing Markerlights, and lose Objective Secured if they somehow have it. Prototype wargear rules, allowing you to hand out powerful upgraded weaponry and equipment to favoured models.

The Fireblades and loaded Devilfish should allow me to move up to the flanks and use the Fireblades to set up some Aerial Targeting Relays, requiring both a unit of Devilfish and its Fire Warriors to be killed before they can shoot at the Fireblade nestled behind them from completing the action. This is a fine theory but I’ve still been struggling with the execution slightly. Wings The result was the X-series Battlesuits, the most successful of which has been, and remains, the XV8 Crisis Battlesuit. At present, T'au Battlesuits have never been more successful, and continual upgrades, different marks and variants, as well as new prototypes are continually being developed to advance the Greater Good. All burst cannons are better, with INFANTRY ones getting more shots, and the ones on bigger tanks getting uplifted to be accelerator burst cannons, which have an extremely spicy 8 shots at S6 AP-1. Overall a very strong section – Skyrays kind of stand out for how much they do, but there’s a lot to like in all four datasheets, so big guns are very much on the menu. Dedicated Transport

Faction Rule

First off, I wanna talk about Examplar of the Kauyon. As any aspiring Farseer will tell you, being able to redeploy 3 units after you know who is going first can be very game changing. When Wings was talking about Kauyon above and was making it clear that survival is the key to a good Kauyon strategy, minimising the damage you take from Alpha strikes is paramount. If you end up going first, setting up good firing lanes for your Broadsides or moving a Crisis team from a defensive deployment spot to an offense one, can be game changing. Rounding out the section here are the Solid Image Projection Unit, a neat combination of a 4+ invulnerable save and a once per turn “reduce Damage to 0” effect, Ohr’tu’s Lantern which buffs your markerlight rolls, and The Kindled Blade, which seems to exist just to give Fireblades something unique to take and which you will probably not ever want. Last up, Tactical Drones. If you want lots of gun, marker or shield drones you can take these in a separate unit of 4-12 models, and it seems plausible you sometimes might. Four marker drones is your easiest and cheapest way to put down some easy-to-use Markerlights, while in Farsight Enclaves dropping in some big Gun Drone units feels like it might have some play in Mont’ka – twelve of them is a whole lot of shots at only 96pts. Without Saviour Protocols Shield Drones aren’t that useful in their own right now, but if you’re on either of these other plans adding a few Shield Drones can provide some substantial extra tankiness. Definitely feels like there will be some uses for this datasheet overall. Heavy Support Below are the secondary numerical codes and the tactical function assigned to them that have been identified by the Imperium. Note that these numbers should be read as "XVx1" where the "XV" designates the unit as a T'au Battlesuit, the small "x" represents the number from 1 to 9 (10 in the case of the XV104 and XV107) indicating the mass class of the battlesuit, and the second numeral indicates the battlesuit's operational role.

Sa’cea ends up pretty middle of the road overall – you’re going to feel like it’s doing good stuff for you, and if it’s your favourite Sept you’re going to have a great time in narrative play, but it’s probably not quite where the top competitive builds will come from. Dal’yth Twelve relics here, a mix of returning favourites and new kit. These are now “Relics” too, rather than Signature Systems, in line with the drive to standardisation (which is good). Any time spent on a complicated system to update 8th edition points costs to 9th edition would take away from time spent on rules and points costs in the new codex books. Why would the designers spend a significant amount of time assessing new points costs when a whole new codex might be just around the corner? If they succeed in that demanding role, they will go on to be assigned to a T'au Commander's Battlesuit Bodyguard Team, and eventually will become a T'au Commander themselves once they attains the rank of shas'el. By the time a Fire Caste warrior has reached this stage, they are a veteran of many battles, extremely experienced in the way of mobile warfare and equipped with a set of wargear perfectly suited to support their style of combat. Further service and success in the role of shas'el will then lead to a promotion to the highest Fire Caste rank of shas'o. Just as impactful, if not more so, is a keyword change – Crisis and Broadside Battlesuits plus all Commanders are now INFANTRY. For Crisis and Commanders that means they can claim Light Cover, a big survivability boost (especially on Enforcer Commanders, who can get pretty eye-wateringly tough now), while for Broadsides it provides the key ability to lurk just behind a wall till it’s time to strike, then burst through and hopefully keep one foot on the terrain’s base to augment their already juicy 2+ save (or alternatively, stand on some battlements blasting away). One other key impact this has on broadsides is that they are no longer limited to the ground floor of ruins or other terrain pieces, now being able to climb to firing positions that befit their heavy support status.They’re obviously outclassed in that respect by Breachers, who are perfect for hurling out of a Devilfish right into the opponent’s face. The Pulse Blaster now only has two profiles, but they’re the good ones from the old loadout and mean that you start hitting hard at 14”, and can go full shotgun mode at 8”, easy to set up with Devilfish nonsense. With access to Breach and Clear they can do quite considerable damage to a wide range of targets, and just kind of rule all-round. The greatest development, however, was the nanocrystalline alloy fio'tak that was dense, durable and incredibly light. Comparable in protection to Space Marine power armour, it enabled the Earth Caste to build more resilient battlesuits without hampering manoeuvrability, an important consideration when taking into account the Fire Caste's desire for fast, mobile warfare. How to train your Riptide use a Riptide in 9th ed. Some of y'all liked my Ghostkeel post, so here's one for the Riptide, which will be flying off the shelves with the whole 1pt drop in CA21. Early Warning Override indicates wall of text ahead, Shas'O. The tenet, stratagem and access to Longstrike are all good enough that this Sept has a very high chance of seeing play – it’s just very effective for building an all-rounder list. Vior’la The other thing you attach to battlesuits is support systems, providing various buffs and special abilities. Many of these have been overhauled, and the majority are now free. In some cases you pay an opportunity cost of using up a weapon slot but that’s honestly not that common – basic Crisis Teams now get a freebie support system slot on top of their weapon hardpoints, and bigger suits get free slots for these, meaning it’s only really Commanders and Crisis Bodyguards who have to drop guns for them. There are some restrictions on who can take some of these, with the most notable being that Broadsides can’t take Shield Generators any more, so watch out for that.

Tau weaponry has seen pretty significant boosts, with plenty of weapons gaining range, shots AP or some other bonus, and a few getting more fundamental re-imaginings. The key ones are: XV25 Stealthsuit - The XV25 Stealthsuit is a relatively recent development of the T'au Earth Caste and shares many of the same features of its predecessor in the T'au armoury, the XV15 Stealthsuit. The XV15 Stealthsuit is currently being phased out of use by the Fire Caste and is being replaced by the XV25, which will serve as the new standard for all T'au stealth forces in the years to come.

Datasheets

Finally, Sector D has a couple of generically useful traits in Reliable Weaponry (one Wound re-roll) and Reinforced Armour (the Borkan strength modification defence), both of which could pair up well with the good ones from Sector A if you have the right units in your list. Unfortunately Sector E doesn’t really offer any additional goodness to combine with them, containing one OK trait, two mediocre ones, and then Enriched Reactors, which might be the single worst faction trait that has been published in a codex all edition – it provides a “buff” that only applies to plasma rifles, and makes them worse into almost all targets. Not massively if we’re honest. There are some cool abilities on this list, some named after returning favourites from the Greater Good, but the best main Septs are very strong and a lot of the upgrades you used to pull from Custom Septs have been baked into weaponry now. Most notably on that front, all missile weapons in this book are just flat 1AP better than they used to be, and Hardened Warheads is now just Ignore Cover, which is much less exciting and you get part of one smart missile systems for free. None of those critiques stop me from calling this a success, and I think Tau players are going to be very happy with this book – it looks very fun to use, and like it plays in a way that properly aligns with the Tau’s fluff – always a winning combination. Army Lists Gunum: