Games Workshop Tau Piranha

Product Information

I really would like to see how Tau would do in the ITC if they did not have to constantly struggle with the constant pre-nerfs before letting the best players in the country dice it out. Let’s imagine the rules for the Tau formations were never nerfed, if the majority of the top 16 of LVO or adepticon or BAO are tau there is probably a problem. Although if the number of Tau players went from 1 in the top 16 to maybe 2 or 3 that would be totally acceptable. Not only that you would see more variations of the Tau, not just riptide wing on every table. Variation is good and keeps tournaments and codexes fresh. Its problems exist in a multitude of layers that prevent it from being good in any role, or compared to most any other unit from the book. First off, While it is more durable, it isn’t twice as durable as a basic Piranha- and given its cost, this is a problem. While it can’t be downed by a single Lascannon, it still is pretty easy to drop overall and won’t stand up to any significant amount of enemy attention. 3+ armor definitely helps, but the many, many autocannon-style weapons out there will make short work of it, as will heavier fare. Drone Controllers are now for Ghostkeels, Stealth Suits and Stormsurges only, and allow you to buff up Drones in your command phase. Kroot Shaper • Kroot Carnivore Squad • Kroot Hound • Krootox • Knarloc • Great Knarloc • Vespid Stingwings • Gue'vesa Automated Repair System - Automated Repair Systems consist of dispensers which release tiny maintenance Drones which swarm over damaged weapon and drive systems, repairing them in the midst of battle.

I think what bothers Tau players, myself included, is not that some of the votes went against them- that’s just life. It’s that those votes were _not even about ambiguous wordings_, they were about things people WANTED to work a different way. Nothing in the rules prevents a unit from leaving the table the turn it arrives- flyers and FMCs can’t do it, sure, and as soon as soon as my skimmers are allowed to make Zoom movements I’ll gladly accept that restriction on them. But until that time, skimmers are not flyers and the flyer rules do not apply to them- and deciding that one specific clause of the flyer rules should do so is completely unfair. We do feel that the rules here feel a bit overwhelming on a first readthrough, but once you’ve got a handle on what’s up this should make Drones a much more seamless part of Tau lists going forward, and definitely one that’s worth having. Manta Strike The final use for Piranhas is the simplest- as a fairly efficient and reasonably-resilient source of S5 firepower, the Piranha can serve as part of the main body of a Tau army when putting damage on the enemy forces. There is little subtlety to this use, but raw numbers can make up for that fairly easily and despite nominally being a scout vehicle the Piranha easily outshoots Fire Warriors, Burst Crisis, and many other sources of S5 firepower in the army.The positive spin on this is, of course, that as long as you’re willing to take three different guns you get spicier Crisis suits way cheaper than you did before – a battlesuit with a CIB, missile pod and plasma rifle only runs you 55pts compared to 66pts in the old book, and is massively better in every way! They’re also helped here by two things – the fact that Farsight is in this faction (surprise) and the stratagem. Farsight we’ll cover in Datasheets, but he’s definitely worth having in lists, and the stratagem is a super-powerful buff for Crisis Suits or Commanders arriving from either Manta Strike or a Homing Beacon – just flat full hit and wound re-rolls. It ain’t cheap (2 or 3CP depending on unit size) but it’s a direct upgrade of a vanilla Stratagem (which only provides hit re-rolls) and looks like it can be used in combination with cunningly crafted 3-model Crisis teams to throw out an atrocious amount of pain for a modest investment. If you’re looking for a flexible and effective unit to add to a Tau army, the Piranha can be a great addition. It can excel against both infantry and tanks when properly equipped and supported and it gives an otherwise-slow faction a great tool to halt enemy advances, reach distant objectives or threats, and generally fulfills the promises its fluff makes with surprising accuracy. It won’t be making a place in any tournament lists, as virtually no Tau units will, but it’s more than acceptable for more casual play and can serve in good stead for many a list. All burst cannons are better, with INFANTRY ones getting more shots, and the ones on bigger tanks getting uplifted to be accelerator burst cannons, which have an extremely spicy 8 shots at S6 AP-1. Viorla is the first of two Septs that wants to go very fast, and sadly probably comes out behind Farsight for that role. Their Sept Tenet allows re-rolling of Advances and Charges and has a very unusual second part that gives all their units +2” movement on the first turn, letting them launch rapid strikes early game. This is certainly OK, but honestly suffers from the fact that the general level of support for aggressive movement in this book is really good – you don’t need these buffs.

Each Piranha in a squadron can also be upgraded to carry up to two Seeker Missiles (S8 AP-2 DmgD6 Heavy 1), though as usual these require Markerlights to fire. Dal’yth are also The Sneaky Ones, but with a slightly different flavour based on their integration of highly advanced Auxiliary tech. Their trait provides INFANTRY units with Light Cover against anything except shooting in combat, and also allows Auxiliaries to benefit from Kau’yon or Mont’ka. Jumping ahead to their Warlord trait, this also allows Auxiliaries to benefit from Markerlights, and the combination of Markers and Mont’ka looks like it could be extremely potent applied to Vespid in particular. While a VEHICLE or DRONE unit is performing the Fire Markerlights action, that unit can move without that action failing. If it does, until the end of the turn, models in that unit without the VEHICLE or DRONE keyword that are equipped with any markerlights are treated as not being equipped with any markerlights for the purpose of the Fire Markerlights action. Cheap and versatile, able to offer both force multiplication, a free use of Rapid Ingress, or just solid early objective play. Aun’Va The volume of drones created are excellent for roaming out and destroying smaller squads or remnants of squads you’d rather not waste your firepower on.

Piranhas don’t have a lot of rules- they can Explode (dealing one mortal wound to each unit within 3″) when they die; awkwardly, this means they will damage any other members of their squad when they do so. They also follow the usual rules for embarked drones, namely that they must start the game onboard the Piranha and the vehicle can use their weapons as long as they remain so, but once they disembark they can never re-enter it. Note that unlike in previous editions, the drones from each Piranha disembark as a separate unit and are not automatically removed as casualties when it is destroyed (instead rolling as one would for passengers in the usual fashion.) Piranhas also do not have any sort of special “hover vehicle” rule or any such, which means that distances will always be measured to the model’s base and never to the model itself; as the base is significantly smaller than the Piranha, this is often a bit weird. The tenet, stratagem and access to Longstrike are all good enough that this Sept has a very high chance of seeing play – it’s just very effective for building an all-rounder list. Vior’la As an aside- if you are using Piranhas, you are likely using them in squadrons. Since most people don’t often use vehicle squadrons, it pays to familiarize yourself with the oddities of their rules, including how to handle coherency, armor penetration and allocating hits, and abandoning squadron members. We said immediately that it was the most powerful codex the game has seen and everyone told us we were overreacting