Tau Rumor Roundup Mk-2

[Dominic]

Some more little bits...

"Well, more as I go: The Riptide. Apparently it's highly posable, "featuring joints at ankles, knees, hips, waist, shoulders and neck". So this is good news at least modeling-wise. Also, Riptide comes with five support systems - I'm not sure if this means the kit contains five of these or does it indeed have five hardpoints reserved for the various support systems. I suspect the previous. There's a mention of a "velocity tracker" as a some kind of a new support system."

Nothing on troops choices that I've seen yet...

You're all welcome! Happy to help, BOLS is definitely my forum of choice so if I see anything else out there I'll make sure to let you know; more soon hopefully

[Dominic]

Okay, some more:

Missile drones as such apparently only come with the Broadside kit (not the shielded ones that come with Riptide). Not a difficult stretch to covert, though. The heavy rail rifles on Broadsides are twinlinked, and apparently either version, the heavy railrifle as well as the one packed with missiles can take a single seeker missile as an additional weapon.

Not much to say about the new commander with the Enforcer armour, apparently not too much compatible with existing XV8 models, since the pose is rather rigid. And yes, Finecast. The weapons portrayed are indeed the AFP and the CIB. The last picture on the page and especially the caption indicates the Crisis squad size has gone up from the previous 3, since there's 4 in the picture in addition to the commander and it's described as a squad.

Farsight, it's the Dawn Blade that we see there. Not much else to add, except perhaps the mention about there not being any question about where Farsight's loyalties lie since the "symbol of the Fire Caste proudly worn on his chest."

The Pathfinders' ion rifle is a new experimental weapon apprently exclusive to the Pathfinders. Six different drones can be built from the kit. Nothing to add about Darkstrider that we don't already know. Except that it's a "he", not "she" : ).

Squinting at the codex imagery, I can make out that the Cadre Fireblade has the following statistics:

WS4, BS5, S3, T3, W3, I3, A3, Ld9 and a 4+ save. He's Infantry(Character), and carries Combat armour (probably just the regular FW armor since it's listed on the FW entry too), pulse rifle, photon grenades and a markerlight.

He also has following Special Rules: Independent Character, Split Fire and Supporting Fire. Volley Fire: (paraphrased) not moving in the Movement phase, he and every model in his unit fire an additional shot (limited to pulse rifles and carbines).

Firewarrior stats:

WS2, BS3, S3, T3, W1, I2, A1, Ld7, 4+. Shas'uis are the same as these days. They carry combat armour, pulse rifles and photon grenades. Also have the Special Rule: Supporting Fire.


I went to my local GW on the way home. They'd just received their new WD issues (to go on sale on Saturday). Now, as they are incredibly nice guys, they had 2 "open copies" for the regulars to flick through. Obviously I wasn't allowed to take pics, or buy it, but notes/opinions:

Pathfinders look nice - very good scuplt. New feet, lots of options by the look of it.
Enforcer armour is bigger than a normal XV8 (it's called the XV8-05), and with new, better looking special weapons. The new CIC looks sweet. Finecast. It has real hands.
A much heavier Japanese influence, beyond the mecha suits - sashes, blades, icons... even a character called Mayamoto (the Darkblade from the rumours)
Broadsides are BIG. There's a design-studio image near the back showing all the suits to scale against each other. Broadside sits between the XV9 and the Riptide. Missile suit has a crazy number of missiles.
Fireblade and Darkblade models look "meh" to me.
The flyers don't look too bad. The "struts" seem to be part of the exhaust system.
The Tank Commander looks like a Boss
Farsight Enclave shoulder pads available to order direct
BatRep is Tau vs 'Nids, with some Deathwatch thrown in.
Other stuff - Sept-World Paint guide, several Hobbit releases, the issue is really thick...

[lattd]

so no more broadsides with missiles and railguns?

[Kirsten]

those are absolutely amazing, love them. come oooooon lottery win.

[magickbk]

This here blog, which is not mine, seems to have some more pics of the Tau that I haven't seen on the thread yet: [url]http://tykensrift.wordpress.com/[/url]

[lattd]

his legs look too small for his body having looked at it so big

[Kawauso]

his legs look too small for his body having looked at it so big

It's just his silhouette from this angle. It's made bulkier by the flowing ribbon on his sword and the Firewarrior shoulder pad/cape. I'm 99% positive he'll look a lot better when you can view a 360 of him.

I will admit though that I find the amount of 'bling' on the model a little odd, for Tau. Well, for a member of the Fire Caste, at least. Also, the fact that he's barefoot. Or...barehoof?

[Dominic]

I will admit though that I find the amount of 'bling' on the model a little odd, for Tau. Well, for a member of the Fire Caste, -at least. Also, the fact that he's barefoot. Or...barehoof?

Tau have always been 'barehoof'; just never painted as hooves before...

Alright, some more then. In random order, what I could deduce from the battlereport and decipher from the images.

All ion weapons are apparently overchargeable. This leads us to the two Interceptor Drones on the Sunshark. They're detachable, and armed with ionrifles that can be overcharged to produce a S8 Blast each. Fairly neat, I'd say. So the Sunshark's weaponry is twin-linked missile pod, 2 Interceptor Drones with twin-linked ionrifles, 2 seeker missiles and of course the main bombing armament. And the Sunshark is a Fast Attack choice in the FOC.

Speaking of FOC, looks like it's confirmed that the Riptide is indeed an Elite slot - no indication to the amount you can field, though. Curiously enough, in the 'rep lists the entry says "One XV104 Riptide..." which could be interpreted that there might be a way to field more in a single Elite slot. Don't know how far-fetched that is, but still...

Velocity Tracker is the Skyfire upgrade. Riptides and Broadsides at least can field these.

The ionrifle that the Pathfinders field contraticts a little with it being said being exclusive to the Pathfinders, but still the drones can field it too. But it seems to be the same weapon. Probably with severe restrictions (like 1 per team or 1 per 5 Pathfinders) but it does compete with the existing rail rifle. Pathfinders are still in Fast Attack.

Supporting Fire is an army special rule, so if not all, then at least a vast majority of the army possesses this. At least Broadsides did, according to the 'rep. And well, it is an army special rule. And yes, this is the one enabling nearby units to overwatch in addition to the just one that's being assaulted.

Stealth teams are still in Elite-slot. And the upgrade for BS2 overwatch is called "Counterfire defence systems". Hard to say if this is a support system or a team upgrade.

Broadsides still in Heavy Support.

For some odd reason all Crisis-suits seemed to be carrying the bonding knife. Not just the team leader anymore, apprently. And deducing from the hardpoint choices, multitracker indeed seems to be built in to the suits now. Still no idea what the elusive Puretide engram neurochip actually does, but it is carried by the XV8-05 commander in the 'rep. CIB and AFP are still experimental, it seems.

There's a codex size-comparison chart for the battlesuits, where it can be seen how the new Enforcer suit and the Broadside suit is 1,5 times as tall as the regular XV8. Not sure how well this translates to the models, but with what we've seen, that may be the case pretty accurately.

Deducing from the markerlight usage in the 'rep, the Crisis and the Broadsides still remain as BS3 units.

That's about it, I'll come back with more if I notice anything worthwhile.

[edit: Oh, and the Riptide's Ion Accelerator is S8 Large Blast when overcharged. Not S9, remembering that it's been speculated.]

[edit II: The Stealth suits' 'Vre is equipped with a homing beacon, which is later upon in the battlereport used to call in the HQ Crisis-squad. Most likely either ignoring the scatter - there was no mention of them scattering at all - or at least giving a reroll. I suspect the former again.

Crisis squads are wielded in teams of three plus the 'Vre, so at least 4 is valid size.]

[Panxer]

Why do I have no love for this? The commander suit looks pretty cool, I'll give you that, but I guess I'm just bitter about the broadsides being a bigger model now. I have 9 broadsides, and a lot of love went into them...I'll be damned if I'm going to eschew my lovingly mod'ed 88's for these at 50-60 bucks a pop.

And since GW is going to monopolize their bits market and dictate terms to hobbyists, I have serious reservations to supporting this kind of market totalitarianism. I'm sure it'll be great for the GW bean counters, but not so hot for someone who's been in the game for at least 7 years or more.

I might be wrong. I'm prepared to be wrong, but everything I've learned about the free market is screaming in my ear right now...

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

well nice to have a list right? (from faet whats it called).

So tau have 5 "new" plastic kits (including the plastic clamshell character so a bit more than CSM, DA and Daemons got so I think that's probably everything most likely), 2 repackaged kits (crisis suits and Hammerhead/skyray), 4 new characters (including the generic crisis commander) and even a bitz pack for the farsight enclave which is interesting. Pretty substantial release IMO. Hopefully Eldar get this much too.