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I've played a few games with my 500 points, 2 Fire Warrior Squads and one Hammerhead.

Base BS skill of 4 would be much appreciated, especially for only 2 WS... An' while the whole Greater Good compact with Kroot/Vespid is cute and all, I'd rather not have any aliens apart from Tau in my army. Disrupts that cool flow they have going on.

Hopefully they do something to boost the usefulness of the Railgun on the Hammerhead 'cause as it stands I'd always prefer to bring an Ion gun instead for the 3 shots it gives. Then get some XV88's with Target Locks so I get 3 twin linked rail guns that can each shoot at their own target. Much better for breaking tanks/vehicles than the Hammerhead with a railgun.

Tau don't need BS 4, they already have the most powerful standard issue weapon in the game! Str. 5 AP 5 and a longer range than all other standard issue weapons is not something to sneeze at.

Chances are, when the new codex arrives in 2012, they might get a BS upgrade, or cheaper troops instead, depending on the author.

Honesly, at the very least, they should up the ballistic skills of the elites if they aren't going to up the BS of the standard trooper. As I said before, the guys I play against at my local game store were surprised and confused about even my suit pilots having the same accuracy as the normal troops.

In any case, I'll still stick with the tau as the new codex comes out; hopefully that fixes some problems the Tau have now.

I remember when a markerlight allowed any model to hit on a 2 or better

I kind of agree; Warhammer in general is using many units and not as many special/unique units, so the HQ and Elites being a bit heavier point-wise and better BS would make sense, mostly for Tau. Talking about special characters, it'd be nice to have more than just three guys.

Wait, it used to hit on a two or better? Sheesh, no wonder the change on like for Marker-lights on forums altogether...

Yeah, they seem to be wanting to contend with Privateer Press, but that's another subject. I really don't think that the Tau really need special characters, though. It really doesn't go with the philosophy of the Greater Good, it's really a Space Marine/Eldar thing.

That's kind of lame. :T I'm thinking that we should put together a non-hero variant, just to change things up. It might also be a good idea to change the distance between squad members, like out to six or even eight inches, to make things much more tactical. After all, I can just talk with a raised voice to be heard over a hundred feet away...

The problem isn't that the specials can't hit, it's that the Tau are completely useless in close combat, way more so than anything else it feels like. Taking kroot wastes a huge number of points and you need a large number if you're going to be fighting things like terminators.

Right now vs marines Tau have about a 50% chance to hit, and from that, space marines have a 50% chance to armor save.

The only really solid modular thing we can use to deal with that is our Crisis suits, but once those get into melee combat they're useless too, or they get forcus fired and they don't have the saves over other units like terminators so they get popped.

The Tau need something, that can keep units away from them in close combat otherwise they lose. Kroot are too expensive to tie things up in melee especially since every other race practically has better suited units for melee.