Changes To Tau: 1. The nerf bat

Getting the codex in hands yesterday, I heard a lot of talk on major Forums, and one thought that kind of stuck with me was how their was a sentiment that the new codex was resurrecting old fluff from the original codex.  So I would like to bring up my favorite pieces of fluff from the original codex that wasn't featured and show how it would have appeared if it were in this codex. Original excerpt from Codex: Tau pg. 3, 2001

"Shas'O Vior'la Kais. Fire Warrior Commander, watched dispassionately as the Gue'la began the long trek up the hillside.  Their crude armored vehicles lumbered forward on clanking metal tracks...  He turned to one of his bodyguards, a smooth helmeted warrior in a pale coloured battelsuit.

"Do you see the armoured beasts, Shas'vre? asked Kais formally."

"Yes Commander. This should present no significant problem.  This presents a serious problem.  The Shas'la have marked them clearly for the Broadside battlesuit squad's railguns  Heavy Rail Rifles."

The commander of the Fire Warriors nodded.

"Then you may begin, Shas'vre," he intoned softly.  The Warrior nodded reverently and spoke quietly into his helmet mike.  Almost as soon as he did so, three Gue'la vehicles eploded and lurched sideways, black smoke pouring from neat holes in their front and rear armour.  three Gue'la vehicles were struck, but shook off the rounds like they were nothing...

The Gue'la scattered, stunned at the death of the iron machines. cheered, inspired by the resilience of the iron machines, praising the Emperor that the pitiful Heavy Rail Rifle could never penetrate the front armour of their vehicle with a single shot.  It was unfortunate that they would have to die, but to stand in the way of the Tau's destiny was to invite death, but certainly not by the hands of a Heavy Rail-rifle if you were a Leman Russ, Monolith, or Land Raider.  It could not be helped...

Then from out of the smoke inside a piece of terrain came fired the Kroot.  Tall and lithe with powerful mediocre muscles corded around their arms, they charged fired into the mass of Gue'la.  Blasts from their vicious sniper rifles pitched several to the ground. Kais knew that they were the lucky ones.  They attacked with a high, ululating battle cry, spinning their rifles and slamming the thick blades on the butts of their guns into Gue'la flesh.  Their Shaper beheaded a Gue'la with one sweep of his blade and howled, shaking the long quills on the back of his head free in triumph as the rest of the enemy fled before him.  The Kroot continued to fire from behind cover as The the Battlesuit teams now moved down the hillside, firing into the disordered Gue'la troops... The Kroot were useful and Kais valued their strength numbers, but he had hoped was glad that the continued contact they were having with the Tau would have had purged them of some of their baser instincts by now.

Of course this was done for humor.  There were plenty of positives but I just wanted to point out some of the nerfing with humor.

6th edition Tau tactica: dominating your opponents assault phase

One of the first new rules that one might encounter if reviewing the codex from beginning to end, would be "Supporting Fire".  Where one might think that having a couple BS 1 shots is next to useless, you need to remember the main Tau principal, "synergy".  There are no stand alone death star units in the Tau army, but there are devastating combinations.  These combinations can make a good unit even better.

Maximizing the number of shots
1.  Use an Ethereal, with the Etheral new power invocation of fire you can grant all units within 12" of the Ethereal an additional shot while shooting at an enemy within rapid fire range.

2.  By taking four squads of fire warriors and inter locking them into two separate sets you can increase the number of squads that can benefit from each other's supporting fire.  For a diagram of how to interlock squads click HERE.

3.  Upgrade all of your vehicles to have "Point Defense Targeting Array", allowing your vehicles to overwatch as well

4.  Realize that you may use supporting fire on all tau units and vehicles as well as Battlebrother units and Battle brother vehicles.

Maximizing the number of hits
1. Use markerlights.  Markerlights can now affect snap shots, meaning that you can enhance the BS of firing models.  Make sure that when selecting which order to fire your units in you use units with markerlights fire.  Although the firing unit will not benefit from their own markerlights, any units following may use the markerlights to enhance their own shooting (including their own markerlight shots)

Synergizing to increase the effectiveness of Markerlights.
One of the popular ways people are building their army lists is to include drone squadrons with nothing but Marker Drones granting a pretty decent 12 marker lights.  By including a commander with a drone controller and two marker drones you can have a unit that is pumping 14 BS 5 marker light shots each turn.  By including a command and control node and drone controller, you can have the equivalent of 14 BS10 markerlights during the Tau shooting phase.  If you include a commander with a drone controller and a counterfire defense system you can fire 14 BS 2 markerlights as supporting fire.

*Notes for Taudar players

-by including a farseer to cast foreboding on this unit that includes a commander with a drone controller you can pump out 14 BS5 markerlight shots during overwatch.

-by including a farseer to cast prescience on a commander with a drone controller and a counter fire defense system you can pump out 14 BS 2 re-rollable markerlight shots during overwatch

-by having your farseer cast both prescience and foreboding on a commander with a drone controller you can pump out 14 BS 10 markerlight shots during overwatch. 

Vehicles are more resistant to assaults and ramming
Flechette Dischargers- strike in the Initiative 10 phase, the enemy unit suffers a number of auto hits that equals the number of models that made it into base contact with the vehicle

Dpods- increase the cover save of all vehicle by 1, meaning that if you moved vehicles fail to ram on a 4+, or if you turbo boosted vehicles fail to ram on a 3+.

Walls of flame and fire
with the enhancements to supporting fire you can use the flamer to inflict D3 auto hits, and because the Wall of flame has no minimum, use your flamer equipped suits after all other units have fired because they don't require marker lights, you can be hitting the very back of a group of boyz.

Punching AV 14 to death
With the new rules you can put a gauntlet on a commander for 5 pts, allowing him to make a single S10 AP 1 attack during an assault phase.  Couple this with the new Puretide chip and you can grant him either tank hunter or monster hunter allowing him to re-roll armor penetration rolls.  Or you can re-roll the to wound on a monstrous creature.

Thought for the day.
Someone was prophetic when they made the prediction that Tau would dominate the assault phase. click this link here and skip to 3:30. WARNING! this video may contain harsh language or images that might be considered offensive to some.