Major Takeaways I had from my first tournament

T’au are fighting an uphill battle right now. It’s sad, but true that right now we don’t have much that hits hard and we don’t have much staying power

1st turn is REALLY important for how we play. Since Kauyon doesn’t kick in till turn 3, the difference between 2 and 3 rounds of getting shot at is significant when it comes to your Kauyon Output. Plan accordingly to hide if you get 2nd turn

Strategic Reserves are your friends. Especially when fighting Space Marines, you need to keep your big targets off the table at the start of the game. My Stormsurge was Oath of Moment’d in 2 of my 3 games before it could get a single round of shooting off. If you’re playing a big crisis bomb or Stormsurge you need to keep it in reserves until you know you can shoot with it

Ghostkeel and Piranhas are our MVPs. I’m not including Tetras here because they’re Forgewold and hard to get, but these two did WORK. The durability of the Ghostkeel on my Home Objective is what made me present a challenge at all to my opponents, and the two Seeker Missiles on each Piranha plus the drone harassment are crucial to hurting enemy vehicles and knocking opponents off of objectives for secondaries

Ethereals are worth it for the CP alone. I had two Ethereals, one leading a strike team, the other alone, and the extra CP generation gave me some much needed flexibility. It allowed me to use great stratagems like Tank Shock and Grenades that I otherwise wouldn’t have the CP for. Plus if you put a gun drone on them, they act as a pretty good action monkey once you bring them in from Strategic reserves

STEALTH SUITS. Between the rerolls of 1s to wound for guided units, to Infiltrating with Stealth, to bring a cheap source Markerlights guiding, to the FREE once per game Rapid Ingress, this is a must have unit. I ran 3 minimum strength units and will likely be doing so indefinitely

Our enhancements are great! I used Exemplar of the Kauyon, Puretide Engram Neurochip (PEN for short) and Through Unity, Devastation and all of them came in clutch at different points of my games. In particular, the PEN was fantastic as it allowed me to Rapid Ingress 2 Crisis Bombs (for FREE with the Stealth suits) on my opponent’s turn two when I went second and it gave me the possibility to Overwatch a second time as well

It’s still possible to have fun in 10th. I lost 2/3 games, but my second loss went 54-56 and was one of the best 40K games I’ve ever played. Play your best, aim to have fun and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do well. We got this, Shas’os!

For my personal list, I’m likely going to revise the armament of my second crisis team to have Fusion Blasters and Missile Pods as the Burst Cannons and Flamers are just useless against anything T5 or higher and might swap out the Coldstar commander for a Crisis Commander as the reroll 1s might be worth the lost movement and assault if I’m Rapid Ingressing the unit anyways

Conflict in Literature + Necron Books

(Read more for titles and notes, watch out for spoilers)

Man vs. Nature - Devourer This is not the only necron vs. tyranid lit, but I thought the cover illustrated the conflict best. Out of all the horribad things in WH40K, the tyranids tend to be presented as the closest faction to a natural disaster; certainly in Devourer they do not logically justify their presence, nor can they be reasoned with, not by the Blood Angels or Anrakyr or the Tomb World he's trying to wake. Not mindless, but an amoral happenstance, like nature itself.

Man vs. Society - The Lords of Borsis Necron court intrigue played straight, with a sprinkle of delusion on the side. Since this story revolves entirely around the schemings and plottings of necron(tyr) society, with changes in dynastic hierarchy as the final objective, it fits best here.

Man vs. Technology - Indomitus This is an awkward placement, since Indomitus was not, well... a compelling story, with most of its tropes not being explored beyond their first introduction. But it is the most bare-bones way of describing this book's premise. Humans battling a robotic malignancy, albeit with a Bolivian Army Ending, which doesn't conclude the plot in either direction 😞

Man vs. Man - The Twice-Dead King: Ruin Ruin is an exceptionally deep novel, and fits every conflict listed here. It was the hardest one to place, because it's not so much choosing the one that goes best, rather crossing off every other conflict not central to the story. Both gods and the absence-of-gods are a problem in Ruin, as well as nature and technology, but they're not at the heart of Oltyx's problem. Society could be a big one, since Oltyx is an exile - but he’s not trying to antagonize his society throughout Ruin, he's trying to work with it, or at least save it from doom. Self and reality both count, but fit better with other stories in the Nate Crowley corpus. So man vs. man it is. His most important clashes are all with individuals ('man') - Djoseras, Unnas, Hemiun, arguably Yenekh in reserve - and by the end, his crownworld is overrun by the Imperium, who will become the antagonists for the second part of his tale. Man vs. 'Man', with a capital M.

Man vs. Self - The Twice-Dead King: Reign Again, this could have gone elsewhere. In man vs. reality, perhaps, or the god-related ones. But the self is where the conflict of Reign truly lies, since Oltyx's greatest obstacle is himself, and it is his inability to accept that which brings his dynasty close to destruction. Thank goodness he got over that one.

Man vs. Reality - Severed The emotional and philosophical core of this novella relies on it. Zahndrekh's inability to see the world as it is brings about the whole plot, and is at the centre of all of Obyron's musings. Interestingly, reality does not win at the end, at least not what necrons envision reality to be: a place of cold hard facts, with no room for emotion. Zahndrekh would rather dream the impossible dream, which might be the healthier way to deal with their situation.

Man vs. God - The Infinite and the Divine 🚨 𝔻𝕆 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝔹𝔼 𝔻𝔼ℂ𝔼𝕀𝕍𝔼𝔻 🚨

Man vs. No God - Crusade: Pariah Nexus Not a novel, not 100% about necrons, not even out yet as of now (Dec 2023). This is an inherently problematic conflict for WH40K, because gods are very real and very present in that universe... here I'm only thinking about the necron perspective, and the civil war unfolding in their lore. They banded together in a shared purpose eons ago, destroying the Old Ones who oppressed them, and sundering the star gods who subjected them to biotransference. Now they are as antigod as they could be, and they did not retain their bonds, they have once again turned on each other. So it goes.

Man vs. Author - Codex: Necrons (10th Ed.) (Collector's Ed.) James Workshop knows what they did. 😑

Can someone help me understand why we can’t see over ruins in 10th Ed?

I understand not seeing through as being able to shoot through windows is ridiculous, but not being able to see over a ruin just isn’t making sense to me. Especially since you can see over sealed buildings.

So if you have a Knight behind a sealed building it gets cover, but if it’s behind a ruin of the same size you can’t see it at all??

Please help this make sense to me

T’AU FACTION FOCUS DROPPED

A few key takeaways

Our starting special rules are VERY castle-y. To use Markerlights at all (now just our For the Greater Good ability) we have our squads working in at least groups of 2 to target enemy units, and it heavily punishes split firing. Plus with our first detachment being Kauyon based, until our codex drops we’re likely going to be bunkering down

In a major change drones don’t count as wounds or models at all, they’re just equipment to add to your squad. Which uh… makes shield drones way worse but drastically improves things like Missile Drones which last until the model falls

Pathfinders essentially double your ability to get BS improvements but will never be viable targets for them, so expect less specialized pathfinder weapons

And Big Guns is big

Overall, the rules seem well balanced and I’m eager to try them out. My concerns are that we are a bit too castle-y (especially with Rad Bombardment being a thing) and that they may have swung too hard away from drones and made them unplayable. For now we’ll just have to wait and see