Tau unit predictions

[adder007usa]

The tau are absolutely my favorite WH40k race, I played them on the tabletop for several years. These are just my thoughts on what might be coming. Could be totally wrong, but oh well.

Tau overview

The tau can more or less be summed up in two words; Big guns. While you do have exceptions such as the kroot auxilary units, the tau are possibly the shootiest race in 40k, able to stand up even to an astra militia artillery line. Based on this, and the patterns seen in other games, my prediction is we're going to have some extremely long ranged units, but that they only get to exercise this range if they have spotters. They die if the enemy is allowed to get too close, they win if they manage to gun down everything before that happens. If they play as traditional tau, we're probably going to see something along the lines of the following;

Early game: Kroot warriors and/or pathfinders providing close range support, giving line of sight to the fire warriors that hang back, laying down heavy fire with pulse weaponry. Piranhas or XV15/25 stealthsuits will provide fire support. Stingwings or drone squadrons could also be among the more mobile units available.

Mid game: The core of the tau army becomes available, including the XV8 crisis suits as the bread-and-butter, with XV88 broadsides and skyray gunships providing long ranged artillery. Later mid game will bring the hammerhead gunship as their main battle tank, barracuda gunships for air support. We might get access to heavier kroot units, including kroot hounds or krootox, for close ranged support.

Late/End game: The highest tau technology available includes the XV9 hazard suit, the XV104 riptide, and manta, tigershark, and sun shark aircraft. It's also possible they could include the great knarloc if the kroot are featured heavily.

Hero possibilities

Shas'el or Shas'O: Battlesuit commander, either piloting a specialized XV8 or XV22 class command suit. Will likely be highly mobile, have a variety of weapons available.

Kroot shaper; Melee oriented hero, will likely be associated with any kroot units available.

Ethereal; Hero that is physically weak, but offers massive morale and/or city based bonuses.

[Noodlesocks]

Hard to say. Technically there shouldn't be any Auxiliary forces for the T'au on Gladius considering where Gladius is located in the galaxy but the devs may choose to forgo that part of 40k fluff for the sake of balance. Otherwise I'd expect them to be entirely ranged T'au units.

[I>U]

It's seems pretty obvious to me that there would be Kroots, because of that temporal property Lictors got instead of Forest Stealth, namely attacking in melee on overwatch, if not spotted. I doubt they would allow this perk go to waste, so newer units should inherit it, definetely.

And who else, but Kroots, can make a use of it?

[adder007usa]

There's also the fact that technically, we already have kroot hounds in game, even if they're wandering neutrals at the moment. Might be cool if kroot could tame them.

[sarrowquand]

Kroot Shaper should be able to turn Kroot Warriors into Kroot hounds, Krootox, etc.

[Ehecatl]

I highly doubt we will see the Manta, that thing is massive! Pathfinders with marker lights and the option to get rail or ion rifles would be nice for sure, devil fish transport is probably going to be in. I'm looking forward to seeing their glorious cities for sure and we may get a droneport as our fortification.

[sarrowquand]

Manta, Harridan, Thunderhawk, Vampire Raider. Might make for a good DLC later on.

[Shas'O T'ros I'karra Mondruu]

regarding the units the other factions got as dlc (fortification for example) tau could have in form of a stormsurge (or in a future warmachines pack with knights) for hero choices i see diffrent commander versions (enforcer and/or coldstar) and cadre fireblades, doubt there will be an xv22 scince its an sadowsun an O'kais exclusive suit, but we'll see if psychic awakening (the current Gamesworkshop event) gives some love to Tau in form of new suit variants.XV9 Hazard suits would be a great thing to have, but they are from forgeworld, however if they come i can see other heavy units like the R'verna and the Y'vhara, for flying stuff the manta is too massive but barracudas and AX-tigersharks are definitly a thing to hope for.