Well, it's been a long seven years of
waiting, but after having had my brand spanking new Codex: Tau Empire
for a week now, I'm ready to put some thoughts down for posterity.
First off, man is it good to have some
real fluff! The previous codex was basically just a cut-and-paste
job from the first one, actually managing to lose more than it
gained, so to see fully a third of this 104-page hardcover devoted to
nothing more or less than the background of the Tau Empire in
general, and the Fire caste in particular, was lovely. We have
individual unit entries again, like a real army book!
The quality of the fluff is likewise
pleasantly high. It really feels like Jeremy Vetock sat down and
thought about just what it would mean for a race in 40K to try and
run a unified polity without meaningful warp travel. The
introduction of cryo chambers as being fairly standard issue for
long-range spacecraft, and the Tau's tendency to freeze particularly
promising commanders so they can be called on in times of greatest
need, also goes a long way towards dealing with some of the weird
chronology issues that cropped up in the second book. No longer do
we need to try and figure out how Shadowsun could've been a
contemporary of Farsight before the Damocles Gulf Crusade, and still
be around to lead the Third Sphere Expansion! Or how Aun'Va could
live long enough to go from battlefield to battlefield given the
Tau's slow starcraft! It's a nice little way out of the problem, and
a unique one in the setting, giving the Tau yet another little detail
to set them apart from the other races of the forty-first millennium.
The background stuff also gives those little tantalizing hints of
the wider world that 40K is so good at; there's reference to a host
of other alien species subsumed by the Tau, including their first
contact, a race that was dead just a few generations after joining
up. The book doesn't say the Tau wiped them out, either purposefully
or accidentally, but it's ambiguous enough that, well, you can't
quite help but wonder...
The one thing I didn't like, though,
was the slight de-Tau-ification of the actual writing in the codex.
For instance, it's not Shas'El or Shas'O anymore, it's Commander.
Also, what the heck happened to the Shas'Els? Are they piloting the
tanks now, is that why they have BS4? The rank just sort of
disappeared. It's a little thing, I fully admit, but what is life
but a cluster of little things?
As for the codex as an army book for a
tabletop wargame, while I have some misgivings they in no way
overshadow how genuinely happy I am with what Vetock did with the
army. Yes, it sucks that we lost vehicle multitrackers and targeting
arrays and the advanced stabilization system, but you can't say he
didn't try and balance that out with a combination of changes to
existing units and giving us new toys to play with. The basic XV8
got cheaper and more versatile, with built-in multitracker and
blacksun filter; Fire Warriors got slightly cheaper; Pathfinders got
slightly cheaper and no longer need to pay the Devilfish tax; the
railgun-armed Hammerhead got way cheaper (though the IonHead is
basically a wash); the SDT is actually worth thinking about; plasma
rifles got cheaper, and fusion blasters got longer ranged, and the
burst cannon and pulse carbine picked up an extra shot, and then
there's the Commander... good heavens, the Commander. Tau finally
have an HQ unit that's worthy of standing up alongside those of other
codexes! Which is amusing, because at the same time the book
introduced a bunch of new HQ units to go along with it; it never
rains but it pours.
I'm working on a more in-depth review
of the units and wargear, but in the meantime I just wanted to say
that the new book is excellent. As a fluffbunny, it offers me
exactly what I've been waiting for, and what I manifestly did not get
last time around. And as a tournament player, it offers me a solid
army that I can kit out in a wide variety of equally playable ways.
It's not perfect, but since nothing in life is, that's a silly
standard to hold it to. It is, however, about as good as could
reasonably have been hoped, without being made so good that other
players are likely to resent it as being broken. Vetock delivers the
best the fanbase, both Tau players and non-Tau players, could have
asked for with this book.
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