8e - Tau Up, and we are next!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/15/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-tau-empire/

end of the Tau report is this:

Come back on Wednesday for some insights on the insidious Drukhari.

Gotta say, from all that i am reading, an Alpha strike is the best defence we will have. hope we can go all reserves again!

Judging from my quick read-through of the Tau article, it seems that everything scary about fighting the Tau has been made even scarier. However, the description of the 'Fly' keyword gives some hope that several of our units might get the same ability (hellions and reavers at least... scourges might be good candidates for it as well)

It also looks like stealth effects are modifiers to hit.

Tau looks impressive right now and one of my worst match-ups.
Wonder how they will feel in new edition (doubt they will became worst than now)

Can`t wait until Wednesday ^_^

Very excited to find out what they have in store for the DE on Wednesday. I think the key for many of us though will be to not let ourselves build up too much expectation for what they are going to give us. We will still probably only see three units, not the whole army, and many of the rules for us will still be under wraps until release day.

You guys are missing the forest for the trees. The Tau lost their biggest advantage: the ability to bypass cover saves. Tau don't have the rend to get through heavy armor and their usually weak BS means without marker lights their shots will be half wasted. These guys are done for.

TeenageAngst wrote:

You guys are missing the forest for the trees. The Tau lost their biggest advantage: the ability to bypass cover saves. Tau don't have the rend to get through heavy armor and their usually weak BS means without marker lights their shots will be half wasted. These guys are done for.

Agreed to an extent. Dual missile pods taking off D3 wounds each hit kinda hurts though.

For Wednesday, I'm hoping for:
Wyches
Hellions
Raiders

We know what warriors/arcons/etc will be, or have more of a clue about them than the rest

We will most likely see Wracks, beast masters and razorwing jetfighters in the article on Wednesday just because those are very sparsely used units at best ... Wyches also fit that description but they don't seem to want to show standard units (except, of course, space Marines) and are showing units that are never on the table ... Just to build up hype for those closeted units or to increase sales on the units that were so bad people didn't bother buying them ... So maybe we will see hellions to, ... But I'm betting g beast masters will be on there at the very least but I can't wait to read it and see what small glimpses we get

TeenageAngst wrote:

You guys are missing the forest for the trees. The Tau lost their biggest advantage: the ability to bypass cover saves. Tau don't have the rend to get through heavy armor and their usually weak BS means without marker lights their shots will be half wasted. These guys are done for.

Well, we don't know what they can do with their markerlights. One use is for reroll 1, but nothing in here says they won't have a "negate cover malus when hitting target" choice.

I'm not really surprised about what the new T'au will be. It's seems logical and expected. But the MSU style is clearly dead in this edition.

Move and shoot, split fire everywhere and a general increase in the amount of shooting on the table is bad for a fragile, MSU army.

Im hopeful for some descent buffs for us wednesday so we can somehow survive the devastating alpha strikes.

dumpeal wrote:

But the MSU style is clearly dead in this edition.

Please explain. I don't understand why MSU would be more or less effective given what we've seen.

Frankie (FLG) seems really enthused by his favorite (DE) army.

Dalamar wrote:

Frankie (FLG) seems really enthused by his favorite (DE) army.

That gives me some hope.

Yes! Optimism! I can't wait to be happy to include Wyches in my army again and zoom Raiders across the board!

So flamers still auto-hit on overwatch - quite possibly d6 auto hits. But the caveat "in range" is applied, so maybe only models in range at the start of the charge will be eligible to die.

If so, setting up to charge from 8.5" away from the flamer guy might be a thing. Hope we still have fleet's ability to reroll charge dice! Otherwise, it might be time to start an all-warpflame Rubric army...

Tounguekutter wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

But the MSU style is clearly dead in this edition.

Please explain.  I don't understand why MSU would be more or less effective given what we've seen.

Basicly, the ability to aim at different units, the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

krayd wrote:

Judging from my quick read-through of the Tau article, it seems that everything scary about fighting the Tau has been made even scarier. However, the description of the 'Fly' keyword gives some hope that several of our units might get the same ability (hellions and reavers at least... scourges might be good candidates for it as well)

I think that might just be a jet-pack analog we may see something different for what is known today as jump units.

Back to the Tau listing-- 8" movement in the movement phase is an upgrade for jet-pack units i'm curious if that means they lose the thrust move in the assault phase-- if so i hope that doesn't bode for eldar jetbike movement in the assault movement. (Unless reaver gets its own superior turbo boost rule.)

Also, jet pack units could also fire heavy weapons without snap shooting and move in present edition-- even though the sniper drone is doesn't have a heavy weapon i note that it does not list an ability that grant it a similar benefit. It may still be there as part of the "fly" keyword, but, it might be a nerf to tau.

Lots of interesting stuff.

dumpeal wrote:

the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

I also doubt (in fact I'm kind of hoping for it) that our vehicles will be able to withstand a lot of firepower. As for the multi-wound weapons do you think they spell doom because of their ability to strip wounds off of vehicles or... because an important difference that kind of surprised me about 8th was that multi-wound weapons can never kill more than a single model, just for clarification. And while we have seen a couple of different weapons on singular models I don't know how wide access will be to that ability it strikes me as more of a T'au specialty, but that is just my guesswork. Thank you for answering my question.

Just seen the datasheet for Sniper Drones, which includes the Saviour Protocols special rule that the drones take any wounds inflicted on any Tau infantry or battlesuits within 3". So you basically cannot even attack Tau until you kill all their drones!

The one advantage of SMU is that leadership does not matter much.
3 incubi means if ld stays 8/9 you will never lose the last one because of leadership.

Yes MSU suffers from split fire and never ending overwatch is the bane of melee MSU.
But moving out of combat and shooting with everything else is a huge boost for ranged army MSU. So I think the problem is not that MSU is dead, just that it does not work well for squishies (like us) and melee oriented MSU (as we should be able to but never really were anyway). But for marines etc who even in SMU had little problems with surviving any weak guns. So no I do not think MSU is really going to be dead, just harder for us. But still great for things like the T'AU etc.

Really looking forward to the article today. I think/hope hellions will be adressed since they were a posterboy of a bad unit (and I really like them). I agree wyches would be nice to be adressed but they seem to keep away from most core troops. A vehicle might be the case, but they might also wait till they have shown a general part about light vehicle skimmers etc.

And I lost my hope at good defenses for our vehicles. With the primaris thing they mentioned : they can even start to menace lighter vehicles, wounding any vehicle smaller than a Gorkanaut on 5’s and reducing its save by 1. So most vehicles will be t7 or less: we could get t5/6.

Tounguekutter wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

As for the multi-wound weapons do you think they spell doom because of their ability to strip wounds off of vehicles or... because an important difference that kind of surprised me about 8th was that multi-wound weapons can never kill more than a single model, just for clarification.

I didn't know multi-wound weapons couldn't kill more than one model. It surely help. But what I think is that having 50 kabalites splitted in 10 units, or 50 kabalites splitted in 2-3 units won't make a significant difference. It's just a feeling I have.

dumpeal wrote:

Tounguekutter wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

As for the multi-wound weapons do you think they spell doom because of their ability to strip wounds off of vehicles or... because an important difference that kind of surprised me about 8th was that multi-wound weapons can never kill more than a single model, just for clarification.

I didn't know multi-wound weapons couldn't kill more than one model. It surely help. But what I think is that having 50 kabalites splitted in 10 units, or 50 kabalites splitted in 2-3 units won't make a significant difference. It's just a feeling I have.

Lets be honest here, the only army more vehicle heavy, and dependent, than ours is Leafblower Guard. The maximum capacity on our transports is what will determine typical squad sizes regardless of maximum squad size.

Imateria wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

Tounguekutter wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

As for the multi-wound weapons do you think they spell doom because of their ability to strip wounds off of vehicles or... because an important difference that kind of surprised me about 8th was that multi-wound weapons can never kill more than a single model, just for clarification.

I didn't know multi-wound weapons couldn't kill more than one model. It surely help. But what I think is that having 50 kabalites splitted in 10 units, or 50 kabalites splitted in 2-3 units won't make a significant difference. It's just a feeling I have.

Lets be honest here, the only army more vehicle heavy, and dependent, than ours is Leafblower Guard. The maximum capacity on our transports is what will determine typical squad sizes regardless of maximum squad size.

Wasn't non-mechanize infantry a thing for the Dark Eldar back in 3rd? It was before my time but I seem to remember people talking about having run their Kabalites in units of 20 back in the day.

CurstAlchemist wrote:

Imateria wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

Tounguekutter wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

the multi-wound weapons, the number of different weapons on a single models, allowing a single unit to target 3-4 ennemy units.

Dark eldars are definitely not dead. But the MSU style is. Maybe our vehicle will be tough enough to withstand enough fire, but I doubt it.

As for the multi-wound weapons do you think they spell doom because of their ability to strip wounds off of vehicles or... because an important difference that kind of surprised me about 8th was that multi-wound weapons can never kill more than a single model, just for clarification.

I didn't know multi-wound weapons couldn't kill more than one model. It surely help. But what I think is that having 50 kabalites splitted in 10 units, or 50 kabalites splitted in 2-3 units won't make a significant difference. It's just a feeling I have.

Lets be honest here, the only army more vehicle heavy, and dependent, than ours is Leafblower Guard. The maximum capacity on our transports is what will determine typical squad sizes regardless of maximum squad size.

Wasn't non-mechanize infantry a thing for the Dark Eldar back in 3rd? It was before my time but I seem to remember people talking about having run their Kabalites in units of 20 back in the day.

I've only played in 7th but I've seen other long timers talk about vehicle in general being mobile death traps in 4th at least so that might have something to do with it. Certianly for the last 3 editions we've been very vehicle dependent, which I think suits our army quite nicely themetically anyway.

CurstAlchemist wrote:

Wasn't non-mechanize infantry a thing for the Dark Eldar back in 3rd? It was before my time but I seem to remember people talking about having run their Kabalites in units of 20 back in the day.

Sort of.

You could get a unit of 10 kabalite warriors on foot with 2 dark lances for 100 pts. A lot of players filled out their non raider-mounted troop choices (unless they were playing a wych cult list) with these 10-man dark lance 'sniper' squads because they were cheap, provided anti-armor support, and held objectives. Sure, you *could* take a 20 man warrior squad on foot, but you couldn't get more than 2 dark lances, so 10 man squads were the preferred min-max choice.



You could also get a unit of 20 wyches on foot and have them pop out of a webway portal and attack whatever was in charge range. In 3.5th edition, wyches could reduce enemy WS by half while being attacked, remove their +1A for additional cc, had their 4+ dodge save, and agonizers ignored all armor saves.