Wednesday, April 10, 2013

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.

4 comments:

  1. The drop in S on the broadsides weaponry is lamentable, but I respectfully disagree about the Kroot. Sure, they aren't as good at assaults now, but they were never good at assaults to begin with. S4 and A2 couldn't help them greatly against guardsmen who struck simultaneously at kroot with no armor. I almost always chose to rapid fire and receive a charge then sending the kroot to their deaths in an assault.

    At least very few people take land raiders, leman russes and monoliths, I guess.

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  2. to be honest I couldn't care les about the kroot. they are not my thing, and granted they have their uses, but they don't fit in with my army/tactics/fluff. anyway the drop in S is very regrettable, but so is the drop in their toughness, allowing now a single lascannon to kill a broadside. they aren't really worht it anymore. can someone please come up with some tactics to make them still usefull other then very expensive (compared to skyray/foritfication) AA? I can see their uses a bit on targetlock and missile spam, taking down light vehicles everywhere, but I am not sure if that is their way to go.

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  3. well, kroot are one of the key points that the tau empire has expanded that much. give them some credit

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  4. for the strenght 10, just take 3 hammerheads in a 1000 point army. add sub rounds and they have a GREAT use on the battlefield. just bought my third one

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