The version 0.6 of the Codex is here!

After a long waiting period I am happy to publish another update :)
The main changes include a general re-balancing of some rules (especially the strategic support) and the introduction of the Tau special characters! I also added the dedicated XV9 weapons (with little modifications) already seen in the last Imperial Armour books. Have fun :)

January update

Greetings =) Let's start this new year with some new stuff for the Experimental Tau Codex. I did some talking and playtesting, and decided to modify the Codex in the following ways: to grant more room for army-tailoring I modified one of the Strategic Support Effects (the one that modified the behavior of seeker missiles) to be more broad and allow for modifications on many of the weapons of the army; each time you choose it you can select up to 2 "modifications" (paying for each od them, of course) that allow you to, for instance, consider all your flamers as twin-linked or that make all your plasma rifles Assault 2. Take a look at it, it's versatile (and probably broken at the moment :D ). The other change involves all jump infantry in the army. It's just that with the increased mobility every army is getting with the new codices, the Tau don't feel fast anymore. To try and fix this I introduced a rule that allows all Tau jump infantry to run in the shooting phase while retaining the ability to shoot normally. This will need extensive testing.

Christmas update

Another small update to the Codex, mostly typos and improved typesetting for the Forces of the Tau chapter.

I hope everyone has passed a merry Christmas, and wish a happy new year to all :)

Quick update

I quickly fixed the Point-blank shooting system that was overpowered: now allows only a single weapon system to be shot. It is now also possible to equip your suits with it, as I forgot to add it to the list of purchasable systems in the codex entries :D

Codex version 0.4 now available

It's a bit overdue, but the new version of the codex is now available!
The most of the work went on the typesetting, now the whole document should be easier to read. It also takes quite a bit less space, I could cut down almost ten pages while still adding stuff to it.
The rules have undergone some changes, from little point tweaks to brand new units (it is now possible to field Piranha TX-42 variants, as well as a new drone designed to tamper with enemy assaults) and pieces of wargear (the point-blank shooting system, which is probably overpowered and in need of tuning :p ). There are a lot of little changes here and there, the best thing to do would be to read the whole codex again to get them all =D

There surely are typos scattered all over the text (I didn't capitalize most names, I still need to come up with a standard way to do that to have a coherent text, will fix that in one of the next editions), if you find some feel free to post here and let me know =)

The new face of the Fire Warriors

The previous post was about the basic weapons of the Tau army, so I decided to continue by writing about their users, the Fire Warriors, and what differences there are about them. Fire Warriors are percieved as a bit underwhelming as a unit in 5th edition, it is true that they wield the strongest basic ranged infantry weapon of the game, but they lack the numbers of guardsmen, the thoughness of tactical marines or the ability to at leaast hold their ground in hand to hand of most basic infantry units. Their fraility makes them poor choices to hold objectives and their only true use as of now is to mount them on a devilfish to storm some unfortunate unit with short range fire (and, if this does not succeed in breaking the target, you are in trouble) or using their superior range to pick on enemies from a distance, but this literally halves their firepower and exposes them to enemy fire and charges (yay, everyone can run now, and the poor footslogging FWs are more endangered than ever). I really didn't want to relegate the FWs to a mounted role only. They are the mainstay of the Tau army, you should want to field them both mounted and on foot.
The first step in bringing the FWs to the 5th edition was to give them free Shas'ui and grenades of both types. Secondly, I gave them the ability to equip a limited number of rail rifles (at BS3); this has to do with a bigger scheme in the army aimed at allowing for more anti-MEq firepower, of which I'll speak in another post. Lastly and most importantly, I wanted to solve their "we suck at holding objectives" problem. They cannot depend on toughness, numbers or hand to hand capability like other armies, so I needed to find a way to exploit their firepower to deter assaults.
Fluffwise the Tau are mostly known as a really mobile force, so the whole objective holding stuff looks counter-intuitive, but we should remember that Tau also employ the Kauyon, using juicy targets as a lure to get the enemy close enough to deliver the blow, while waiting patiently. That's what I tried to picture there: Fire Warriors that wait for the enemy to move close enough to be obliterated by their fire, by resurrecting an old 2nd edition rule: Overwatch. If a FW unit doesn't move or shoot for a turn, it may shoot in the opponent's turn instead, after the opponent ended his movement phase. The interesting thing about this rule is that it increases the threat level of closing in to Fire Warriors (if you move close to a Overwatching FW unit it's quite likely that you'll be selected as a target and fired upon, and maybe get pinned or break, before you can charge) without increasing their firepower in any way, which is good for general game balance.

Rifle Vs. Carbine

I would like to discuss the thoughts behind the profiles I gave to the pulse rifle and pulse carbine in the codex.
The main difference between rifle and carbine is that the first should be the basic weapon of the Fire Warriors, suited for semi-static units that can hit from a distance but still defend themselves while moving, while the carbine is a variant modified to retain its firepower even on the move, at the expense of range. Technically, the rifle should be the choice for gunlines whereas carbine is for embarked FW units that roam around in a devilfish.
Reality is different, because the rifle tends to be far more effective than the carbine in the hands of moving Tau, since the rapid fire weapon rules allow it to fire twice at short range even on the move, making the rifle outperform the carbine in its own field. It is true that the carbine has more range than a moving rifle, but that is widely repaid by the double firepower of the rifle, even if counting in the fact that carbines can pin units down.
Restoring the balance between rifle and carbine is the main impulse behind the new profiles of those weapons: they retained their Strength and AP value, but now the rifle is either H2/30" or A1/18", making it a gorgeous choice for FW gun lines defending an objective while retaining a minimum of defensive capability on the move, an carbines are A2/18" + Pinning, making them the obvious choice for embarked FW teams.
The buff to the rifles is also one of the two measures I took to make the FWs better objective holders, because as of now they suck at that.
Really, they do =) It may be advocated that statically holding an objective through the game is not very tau-ish and that we should just rush to them at the later turns, but that is surely debatable.