Overwatch. Part and parcel to shooting, no one does Overwatch like the T’au. The For the Greater Good special rule can make charging Tau castles a nightmare, particularly when paired with the T’au Sept giving units the ability to hit in Overwatch on a 5+.

Stratagem – Strike and Fade 1CP: Use at the start of the Shooting phase. One of your Dal’yth units can do their shooting and then move 6″. Wisdom of the Many – 1CP: Use in the movement phase. Select one Ethereal unit from your army. Until the end of the phase you can invoke one additional elemental power. Note that you can’t double up on powers. I mean, yup – you frequently want both Storm of Fire and Strength of Stone and now you don’t have to choose. Yay. That’s it. This isn’t complicated. A Devilfish are the only transport available to Tau, and they’re another iconic part of the faction which just kind of isn’t really there. They have all the same issues as other transports in 8th, they don’t have particularly significant guns in and of themselves, and a lot of what would normally be transported in them is stuff that is better off just standing around in the Tau castle. Devilfish full of Breachers hopping out to murder things would be great if only it wasn’t objectively worse than just plinking away from miles across the battlfield, but it is. Flyer AX39 Sun Shark Bomber That’s it for the 40,000 sets, we’ll start the Age of Sigmar stuff soon. Happy Gaming, Happy Holidays Game FansA more “all-in” unit loaded up with cyclic ion blasters or missile pods, ATSes with a few models specced for defence. Point-Blank Volley – 1CP: A unit can count their pulse carbines, blasters or rilfes as pistol 2 in your shooting phase. This is probably best for Breachers – if your opponent has wrapped an outlying unit being able to blast them at point-blank to strip a few of the enemy out is pretty funny. Won’t come up super often, but remember you have it. B Aggressive Tactician: Gives Mont’ka a 12″ range rather than 6″. This can be pretty handy – it can allow you to fan your units out a bit turn 1 but still catch them all in Mont’ka for a big push on turn 2. B

The tiny powerhouse mainstays of the current competitive T’au Empire army, drones primarily serve the purpose of protecting key units in your army from taking damage while your units continue to spew out unreasonable amounts of firepower. While most competitive T’au armies want to take the add-on drones that come with unit selections, there’s also a real need to take multiple additional drone squads to protect and screen key units. Most competitive lists feature multiple squads of drones, usually either taking 6-8 shield drones per squad, or taking a mix of shield drones and marker drones to help provide Markerlight support for the army. Shield drones are ideal here because they’re hard enough to kill that opponents are loathe to shoot at them directly, while still being able to punish players for ignoring them as they tank wound after wound for Riptides. The Nurgle box is pretty good value. If you’re collecting Nurgle Daemons you want Plaguebearers and Nurglings en masse, and at least one Poxbringer too. If you’re going to buy those things, you might as well buy this box, and basically get the Plague Drones for free. A very respectable set which gives you pretty much what you want to get going with the faction – perfect. The Start Collecting box that gets our vote for “the next one to be discontinued,” there’s not a ton this particular box has to offer. Tactical Marines just don’t have much value when you’d rather run Scouts or Intercessors, the Terminator Captain doesn’t bring much to the table when you have other, more mobile, better-equipped, cheaper options, and the Venerable Dreadnought is only OK. You’re better off skipping this one for the Marine half of the Dark Imperium Starter. Raging Beasts – 1CP: A Krootox Rider unit gets +2A and +2AP on their fists for a combat phase. This does actually make Kroot riders hilariously nasty in a fight, and it’s kind of a shame the units cap out at 3 models as with 6 this could do some work. As is, it’s another nice boost for people who want to use Kroot, but not enough to make them properly competitive. C

An HQ tank choice, Longstrike comes with his own custom Hammerhead tank, which comes with BS2+ at its full profile plus the Tank Ace ability, which gives it +1 to wound rolls against VEHICLE and MONSTER targets, and Fire Caste Exemplar, which gives T’AU SEPT HAMMERHEADS within 6″ +1 to their hit rolls in the Shooting phase. This is incredibly good, making Tau Sept attractive for Hammerheads, though the advent of custom Septs has given them stiff competition. Most of the time you’ll want to replace Longstrike’s Railgun with the Ion Cannon, since the three shots are just a better deal than the single-shot Railgun, and you should consider upgrading the drones to smart missile systems, which have a range closer to that of the tank’s primary gun options and give you the ability to shoot targets out of line-of-sight. You should also strap a couple of seeker missiles to him, since those will benefit from his improved BS as well once you have multiple Markerlights on a target. Commander Farsight With the Ethereals firmly in charge, the T’au became truly united and their technological progress leapt forward, propelling them into the heavens. Protected by their army – known as the Fire Caste– settlers began to take over systems and assimilate other species under the banner of the Empire, in successive ‘spheres of expansion’. If you are charging a Tau unit that is already in close combat, other units can still fire From the Greater Good at you even if your direct target can’t.