# Tau Forgeworld reinforcements



## SavageConvoy (Sep 21, 2011)

Hello Heretics,

Most know now that ForgeWorld released an errata to several of their units and I thought I would start a thread to get your opinions and help on deciding on what's worth bringing or what can help change the game for our favorite commie xenos.

First off: What's legal now? 
Added: (3) HQ suits, tetras, sensor towers, hammerhead turrets, drone turrets, heavy gun drones, gnarlocs big and small.

Out of these I only see two, maybe three, viable options.

Tetras.)
Pros: Reasonably priced, fast skimmers, scouts, free disruption pods, heavy 4 markerlight, and able to be in squadrons and take target locks and targeting arrays on the cheap side.
Cons: armor 10 all around.

In my opinion, these are what we needed in a Fast Attack option. These are what Pathfinders were supposed to be. Mobile and able to lay down an insane amount of markerlights on multiple targets. Moderately priced and better defended than the pathfinders, I would recommend swapping these out for pathfinders.

Drone turrets.)
Pros: troop choice, armor 12, moderately priced, squadrons of 1-4, multiple weapon options, and a few good upgrades.
Cons: Immobile and expensive to purchase.

I know these are fairly expensive, but should be easy to build from scratch or proxy. Big enough to hide suits behind and able to lay down some impressive firepower. The weapons are all twin-linked, but I suggest the missile pod due to it's range and volume of fire. The wording for the upgrades let's you purchase (1) Shield Generator at 20 points that works for the whole squadron. The turrets can also be deployed via deepstrike, making the plasma rifle extremely valuable for laying out a crippling amount of fire while blocking an advancing unit. 
The usefulness of these are somewhat disputable, but I think they are a good addition. Adding extra firepower into a slot we never fill up. I recommend proxying some up and trying them out.

Hammerhead turrets.)
Pros: generally cheap and more templates.
Cons: nothing special compared to the Railgun.

A multi-melta, a twin-linked ion cannon with +1 shots at a shorter range, missile pods with blast, and burs.... Hahaha... No, just no. The burst cannon is still crap, but the others are somewhat useful. All weapons are twinlinked and decently priced. I don't think these will replace the Railgun, but atleast it gives us some options to consider. Personally the versatility of the Railgun beats all these choices in every way except price.


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## SavageConvoy (Sep 21, 2011)

Almost forgot another one.

Sensor Towers.)
Pros: cheap, extra source of markerlights, troop choice, makes one unit twinlinked per turn, and comes with a positional relay.
Cons: moderate effectiveness and immobile.

Since most suit builds use twin linked weapons and there are better sources of markerlights, the use of these towers is kind of dubious. The only real advantage I would see to these would be making Firewarrior gunlines more effective while using it's markerlights to remove cover saves. Because it's immobile and it's range for re-rolling misses is so short, I don't see it being used for much else. Fireknife teams would make good use of this, but they would generally be moving too much to make this work effectively. 

Any comments and criticism is encouraged. I want to see which new units are worth getting and running. Who knows, maybe they will change the game for us. Thanks for taking the time to read through my ramblings. I hope we can make some progress and give the Tau some more bite.


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## SavageConvoy (Sep 21, 2011)

A final one, cause these make me mad.

Heavy Gun Drone.)
Pros: T4 and I think that covers it.
Cons: Only weapons are burst cannons and markerlights, unable to take multi-trackers, markerlights are not networked, Heavy Support slot, 4+save and 1W on small squads.

I can't tell if this is a joke or an insult. I was never fond of the burst cannon, and would never imagine trading broadsides or hammerheads for a few extra. The squads are small, have no reliable firepower, are not well defended, and use up a very valuable slot. If you swap the twin-linked burst cannon for a markerlight and burst cannon then it becomes even more useless. Since you can't bring multi-trackers you have to choose between the two on which to fire. If you are using a heavy support for markerlight support then you are doing something wrong. 

I see where they were going with this. Able to move and shot while laying down a massive amount of S5 shots sounds nice on... Well even on paper it doesn't look to good. I even tried turning the paper into an origami swan, but that didn't help either. These would be useful if you could choose which weapons you wanted to run, but with burst cannons they are worthless. I could see getting hyped up over a fast attack Marker drone teams, but these just stink on ice. Only useful if you plan on spamming them to use against a horde list, but that would be catering your list and that would make you a jerk. Maybe if you had an entire list to spamming burst cannons; including suits, piranhas, turrets, and the new hammerhead turret to bring as many shots to the table as possible.


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## SavageConvoy (Sep 21, 2011)

I have been looking over the HQ suits and had some questions/observations about their usefulness. 

First, the XV-81
Pros: Line of sight not required for the SMS and still able to take two hard point systems.
Cons: The SMS is a questionable upgrade and not at a reasonable price. 

For such a high point value upgrade, it comes off as lacking. Since the only benefit to the SMS is that it can fire without a line of sight, it's rather pointless on a unit that can JSJ from cover. And since it's on an already expensive unit (the commander) then it's just compounding an old problem. I can't see this replacing Fireknives and Deathrains or the few other more viable varients.

XV-84.)
Pros: basically the standard suit with a markerlight thrown on top.
Cons: non-networked markerlight, markerlight is more expensive than the standard markerlight.

I have no idea why you would feel the need to bring one extra markerlight to the team. The update has better sources for markerlights at more reasonable prices, just stick to them. It's absurd that they would include this as a non-networked markerlight.

XV-89.)
Pro: 2+ save.
Cons: reduced mobility and questionable cost.

The only benefit of this is that you can give both HQs and one other suit a 2+ save. But in an already point heavy codex this seems to be a bit excessive. The resilience of the crisis suits lies in their agility and their firepower, not the armor save.

Thats it for me. I'm not going to comment on the Knarlocs. I don't ever plan on using them and won't try to judge them. They do give Kroot heavy theme lists a bit more punch (go to hell you pun loving bastards who were hoping I'd say bite).

Thanks again for reading and comment if you see something I missed or want other opinions. These are approved for standard games and with no codex update in sight we have to work with what we have. I'm looking forward to everyone giving this update some more light and adding your experience to help give the Tau a much needed hand.
And I did this all without mentioning the "Greater Good" so yay for me.


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## SavageConvoy (Sep 21, 2011)

Ok, I lied. I'm going to do a quick overview of the Knarlocs because they've been bothering me so much. Also I'm bored. That has a minor... Nah, I'm just bored.

Goaded Knarloc.)
Pro: Allocating wounds to expendable Kroot Goads, fleet, Monstrous Creature, and fieldcraft.
Con: Only able to take one beast, I3, useless upgrades, Heavy Support slot, no real armor.

Knarloc Herd.)
Pro: Able to take weapon upgrades, Monstrous Creature, same stats as the Goaded Knarloc, able to take 1-3 knarlocs, fleet, and fieldcraft.
Con: Heavy support slot, I3, no armor.

These two actually made me re-read the update over and over again. First off, there is never a reason to take the Goaded Knarloc. The mounted Knarlocs are the same base cost, but at least come with a weapon, even if it sucks. For 15 points extra you get a S5 Blast marker. The Goaded Knarloc can spend 20 points to upgrade (1) Goad into a Shaper. And because the unit already has the 6+ armor save, the only real benefit is having 3 wounds to prevent the Knarloc from running off. Adding to that the rule that if you roll more 1's than 6's to-hit you instantly lose the closest Goad, making a bad roll even worse.

So Mounted Knarlocs. I don't see the point of the twin-linked Kroot Gun. It's 20 points for (1) S7 rapid fire weapon. Since the Tau aren't really shorthanded on S7 weaponry this kinda seems too expensive to really consider. For 15 points you get the explosive tipped arrow launcher, the only real viable shooting option. Though at I3 I'm sure they'll get a lot of damage slammed into them before they get a chance to deal their own.

Personally I wouldn't mind taking this unit fully loaded. Running an entire squad of giant chickens riding dinosaurs while lobbing explosive arrows down on the enemy might just be a big enough distraction to keep a majority of the fighting on my opponents side of the field. Also it doesn't hurt that this would be the only real unit able to deal some CC damage.

Knarloc Riders.)
Pros: Cavalry, 3W, and fieldcraft.
Cons: 30pts/model, no upgrades, almost no armor, I3, Fast Attack, and can't make a Sweeping Advance.

I hate these things. Expensive to field a unit of them and only really have a slightly higher S than regular Kroot. The Fast Attack already has better options in it with the Piranha and Tetras. The only weapon they have is the Kroot Rifle, which would give each beast 4 attacks on the charge. I wouldn't bring these units unless I was trying to field an all Kroot list and needed to fill some points in. Units like these just annoy me because you have a chance to give some flavor and variety to the Kroot and what weapon do they give them? Kroot rifles. Yeah.

Anyways. So overall what are the must haves and the must avoids?
Great unit: 
Tetra.) an amazing support unit that I expect to see a lot of in the future. It's what we've been wanting from pathfinders in a turbo-boosting sleek sexy import.

Good unit: 
Drone Turret.) I've argued with others on another forum for days on this issue. Overall we have an Armor 12 vehicle with suit weapons in the Troop slot. Good enough for me.
Hammerhead Turrets.) Fusion Cannon, Missile Pod, and Plasma cannon beat out the Ion Cannon but don't really offer the same as the Railgun in my opinion. But they may just prove me wrong.

Meh: 
Sensor Tower.) In an army now full of ways to boost BS or ways to take Twin-linked weapons, this is kinda misplaced. I want to like it, but can't think of a single way to run it. Maybe as a 40 point upgrade to each Sniper Drone team to make their weapon twin-linked and give them +1 markerlights. Maybe just taking one to make a Hammerhead twinlinked, provided it's in range.
Mounted Knarloc.) In another slot, they might be better. But pulling away from the valuable Railgun slots without providing a decent anti-armor in return is questionable. I may be wrong, because I don't think past the Shooting phase. I hope I'm wrong.

Dear God, why?:
Heavy Gun drones.) F**K YOU! I'm sorry, but these are just insulting. I can't fathom these. It's like someone realized nobody used Gun Drone squads, so they have to make them cost more to get us to use them.
Goaded Knarloc.) Cause I really want an entire Heavy Support slot immediately leaving the board on a failed leadership check after eating it's 20 point Shaper.
Knarloc Riders.) After looking over the other crap, I don't hate these so much. They lack a lot in firepower, but may be a bit more resilient with 3W and able to deal out an incredible number of hits. Though at I3, I wonder how many will get to strike back.


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