I have no dog in this fight, but I'd like to throw in my opinion in favor of the inclusion of the Armored Mobile Hunter Cadre. I don't have extensive knowledge of the background material, but the Tau don't strike me as the kind of folks who limit themselves to a single approach to war. If you drop the armored cadre, then you automatically force any tau player into playing mobile infantry.

How would an IG player feel if their 'basic' EA list did the same? As an Eldar player, I accept such a limitation because it fits into the Eldar background. The Tau are not like that at all, though. They like their high-tech toys, so I would expect them to be able to field an armor company style army right out of the gate.

Also, there is the real-world consideration that it is cheaper/easier to buy an all-vehicle army than it is to get an infantry-heavy force. Not to mention the fact that the vehicles are not nearly as fragile as the infantry.

Just my two cents.

I'd like to throw in my opinion in favor of the inclusion of the Armored Mobile Hunter Cadre

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How about removing skimmer from them? Make their anti-grav capability into 'walker' instead? I always view the tau tanks as more of a 'hovercraft' than something anti grav capability.

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Tau do have a vehicle upgrade in 40k that allows them to negotiate difficult terrain much easier, but Walker on a visibly skimmer tank would be... counterintuitive, to say the least.

Ok, initial reactions:

Special Rules
Supreme Commander:  I'm really starting to lean towards striking the *entire* "Tau Supreme Commander" entry.  Let the Crisis suit with a sword call a combined assault, and just put Co-ordinated fire into his notes.  It saves us almost 60 words in the rule, plus the 60-ish words in the flavortext.  This needs some playtesting, however.

Drones/Expendable:  What happened to the line "Formations composed entirely of Expendable units suffer blast markers as usual"?

Army list
Cadres:  Didn't see any issues that jump out at me that haven't already been identified (typos).

Support Groups:  
Agree that some phrasing should change on Pathfinders (to "4 Pathfinder teams and 2 Devilfish").

Do we need both a support group and a Cadre of Hammerheads?

Upgrades:
Same wording change on the Pathfinders (to "+2 Pathfinder teams and 1 Devilfish")

Networked Drones name change to Command and Control Node (with same effect)?  This would let us prevent some confusion about whether the Networked Drones are Expendable (we all know they are different things, but someone new to the list may NOT see that.)

Units:

Crisis:  What are 'Plasma Blasters'?  Should be "Twin-linked Plasma Rifles 30cm AP4+", and "Twin-linked Fusion Blasters 15cm MW4+".

(layout note:  I think we might be able to get the scorpfish datafax onto page  9)

Air support:
Tiger Sharks (both regular and AX10) were supposed to be regular aircraft, NOT War Engines.

Manta:  Still has the warlord-equivalent weapon-load.  Should be ONE shot from the heavy Railcannon, not two. 3x shots from the Ion Phalanx is OK.  Is the Planetfall note a typo, or is the Manta still dropping from orbit?

Collector's Models
I'd put a separate section for models that are in section 6 until we get the rest of the list stable (like the Moray, Sentry Turrets, Vespid, and Humans), and have a written note about those models.

Moray: If we make the Manta an "upgunned SMLC" or a "Reaver-with-Transport", then the Moray can stand by itself.  A few more DC, and downgunned a bit (1x Railcannon shot and 3x shots from the Ion Phalanx), and all of a sudden the Moray isn't stepping on any toes anymore.  Take a Manta if you need the transport, and take a Moray if you don't.

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Something like that could easily be explained in a design note... but I don't think anyone is going to go for removing skimmer from the Tau tanks!  *laugh*

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Yes, Hena that was what I was expecting.

Also I wanted to say that in order to get all the edits this time before we lock it down, I'm going to start a thread called 5.0 Technical Edits. This thread is intended to only point out what corrections need to be made. No opinions/feelings/hand holding or singing Kumbaya.

Straight and to the point. The other comments will be addressed as comments/reasons/etc. as soon as we can get the time.

I realize that this seems to be duplicative, but I want to be able get to the meat of the fix quickly. If you can all just cut and past the errors you caught into that thread it will expedite the clean up effort.

My goal is to turn this effort around quickly before FSA.

Thank you for your patience.

Cheers,

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It seems a little weird that the reviewers should mention that Morays and the AX-1-0 step on each others toes.

It seems like they just had a memory of the previous stats and didn't actually acknowledge the changes made to both units.

Moray: If we make the Manta an "upgunned SMLC" or a "Reaver-with-Transport", then the Moray can stand by itself.  A few more DC, and downgunned a bit (1x Railcannon shot and 3x shots from the Ion Phalanx), and all of a sudden the Moray isn't stepping on any toes anymore.  Take a Manta if you need the transport, and take a Moray if you don't.

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I’m very familiar with the Tau list in W40k but not up to date with the epic one. Few quick comments to make:

I see zero justification for drones stands having expendable and strongly think it needs to be removed from the entirely, it goes against the background and the feel of how they should play. Yes there are shield drones, which protect their masters, for a start these are a lot rarer than gun drones and do not form their own units – as a whole drones accompanying characters and battlesuits should be taken into count when worked into their unit profiles. There is nothing that suggests nearby Tau would not be concerned/affected by the loss of either gun or shield type drones – both in terms of loss of war equipment and also in terms of their own safety. Gun drones which form separate stands should cause blast markers just like any other unit,

Secondly, I can sort of see both sides of the argument for making Fire Warriors the core choice for the army. Personally I think the best option could perhaps be to keep the other choices in there, but make the Fire Warrior Cadre 1+ so everyone has to take at least some Fire Warriors, even if the majority of his army goes other ways.

Finally - though part of me misses the loss of units from the core tournament list - in terms of balancing the list and giving it a reasonable range of options comparable to other lists, I think taking them out is a very good idea. There are always collectors model stats and variant lists for other units and it's not like anywhere near every W40k SM/IG tank/special unit is transferred in to the core epic lists, so why should the Tau get all the possible units? The main list can then be balanced appropriately and variant lists can either add them but limit or recost standard list options to do so.

I see zero justification for drones stands having expendable and strongly think it needs to be removed from the entirely, it goes against the background and the feel of how they should play. Yes there are shield drones, which protect their masters, for a start these are a lot rarer than gun drones and do not form their own units – as a whole drones accompanying characters and battlesuits should be taken into count when worked into their unit profiles. There is nothing that suggests nearby Tau would not be concerned/affected by the loss of either gun or shield type drones – both in terms of loss of war equipment and also in terms of their own safety. Gun drones which form separate stands should cause blast markers just like any other unit,

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I'll start with the positives.

On first glance I don't mind the substitution of 2 AX1-0s for the Moray. Even if it's a typo that they're WEs.

Recon group is an interesting option now - you can get a straight out ML unit, a mixed attack/ML unit or a straight out attack unit in one list entry. Smart move in regards to slimlining the number of entries.

I like the alien auxilary changes. Helps slim the list.


And onto the negatives...

I still don't see why the AMHC is needed. A 4 tank support formation + 2 tank upgrade still gives you your armour group but your trade off is you drop a cadre slot. That is a balancing factor in my view.

I too agree about the Tau Supreme Commander rule placement and hope its a typo i.e I hope it moves into the datafax only, as a whole special rule doesn't seem totally necessary as many have said.

OK, surprise surprise - broken record here(I'm forced to be it seems), but I'm still deep in the camp of "WTF!?" on non-MW FF for crisis suits. I find it ridiculous that a weapon with MW is not MW FF.
Question - Does it all-of-a-sudden stop being a Fusion blaster when the enemy gets in close???
Crisis pilot: "Oh I must switch my fusion blaster to non-deadly when the enemy are close as it's just not sporting...."
Surely I'm not the only one who recognises sense on this...? If I have to name every other unit in the game with MW/MW-FF to prove my point I will but don't make me go through that again    

On the review panel idea of adhering to FW pack size, I think this is a bad idea given FW seem to change their pack sizes (if this is true). Keep it the way we've always done.

How about removing skimmer from them? Make their anti-grav capability into 'walker' instead?

Just a couple things:

I'm completely in favor of retaining the AMHC. That's a Tau formation, through and through. The Tau method of warfare as elaborated upon by the Tau Empire codex and the Taros Campaign book from Forgeworld indicates that they're fully capable of going vehicle-heavy when they need to, in the same way that the Imperium is. They're not as wasteful with their vehicles because they don't mass produce on the same order (and value the lives of their drivers a bit more...) but that doesn't mean that an all-tank formation is 'against the fluff' in any way, shape, or form. I have a hard time understanding where people are getting this idea that the Tau method of combat is exclusively infantry-centered.

I think the new Jet Pack rule is actually more appropriate to the Tau method of mobile warfare, as played out in 40K.

I'm not sure why the difference between Hounds and Carnivores in the Kroot section is still completely based on point cost and size. You might as well just drop the Hounds and give more variability to additional Carnivore squads.

One typo: I'm assuming that Ion Cannon Tiger Sharks cost the same as AX-1-0 Tiger Sharks (350) and not the same as Barracudas (175).

I'm sorry to see the Heavy Drones moved out, as I kind of liked them.

Otherwise, it looks pretty solid to me.