| Description: Tau |
Many thanks to Cubbster for this article.
"FOR THE GREATER GOOD.... OR ELSE!"
I thought it was time to take a step to the left and look at the young enigmatic race known as the Tau. An interesting race who’s whole ethic is peace and cooperation (with a bit of shooting stuff with stupidly high powered weaponry) in order to enhance “the greater good”. To understand the Tau you have to understand the greater good- in one word… hopeless! They basically think that every race is altruistic and wants to get along, so they make their merry way through the universe converting planets! This is all fine and dandy until they stumble across the large and angry imperium of man, who could crush them with a decent sized sneeze! This brings us neatly up to the present point in time, there is an uneasy alliance between the two races, which occasionally erupts as one side pushes it too far!
Forward to the nitty gritty of the army - what are the Tau all about on the battlefield? Tau are simply all about the gun, and it's not a lasgun, not even a weedy bolter, no it’s an enormous gun that fires huge metal slugs at hypervelocity speeds…yes ladies and gentlemen I give you the railgun! I mean seriously why be Tau without as many of these babies as you can fit in the army! Not only can you get them as heavy support (the tank mounted one also fires an ordnance one which doesn’t even scatter as per ordnance rules), but you can also get them in your scout unit!
There are few troop types that make up the Tau army: For your troops choice you get the humble firewarrior- possessing less combat ability than a gretchin with one leg, these grunts have the best basic gun in the game. The gun is ST 5, and has a range longer than any other basic gun in the game! The trick with these guys is to keep them away from anything harder than a grot, and shoot the living hell out of everything that moves! The other troop type is the vanilla kroot- far inferior to the kroot as a stand alone army, and yet a necessary part of the army (see kroot description for meatshield/speed bump combat unit). Underrated and frankly underused, but hey, people like guns!
Onto the very cool battlesuits- available as mobile units in elites or a heavy unit in heavy support. In essence these beauties are the reason to collect the armies, they look so d**n cool! The broadsides (heavy support) are a must; I mean really- who can resist twin-linked railguns with another weapons system as standard! Along the same lines the crisis and stealth suits (elite section) are also a must as they can have tons of guns not to mention the fact they get to move after shooting to hide! Truly the Tau army is the only army that can compete with the cheesy Eldar in the move-shoot-move stakes!
The other highly regarded unit is the hammerhead gunship, basically a predator that flies with a gun that is a mixture of a lascannon and a demolisher cannon-ish! The ultimate true skimmer in the game (not counting the highly irritating flying brick known as the monolith), it is quick, deadly and can weather a large amount of firepower! Get one, get two, go forth and get them all……just leave space for broadsides!
To touch on the other troops, we have pathfinders - scouts who have to buy a tank and get the hand held railguns, fun to use but very pricey. And who can forget the drones! These are nifty little floating droids (see Terminator 3D for comparison) with either twin-linked pulse carbines or providing an invulnerable save! HQ wise you get an ethereal who is rubbish at everything but allows rerolls for things involving Tau units (but if he dies a panic test for every Tau unit- great for a weakling with no armour…), and a battlesuit commander who is hard as nails and has access to all the nice weaponry you could ever require!
The hardcore battlesuit is a common way to go, and surprisingly he is reasonable in combat, what can I say but….’oh for a power weapon’!
This article is copyrighted to Cubbster and Realm of Runes.
