So this afternoon I re-read IA3 Taros to re-familiarize myself again with Tau way of thought. Although the book is quite painful to read at times because of the lack of any editing, it does represent one of most concise tomes on Tau warfare. If you do have it in your possession, I would consider giving it a read sometime soon.
I have read this book something on the order of 10-15 times, cover to cover, and yet, every now and then I see some nugget that I could have sworn was not there before.
As you are all aware of, there are a couple of strong opinions on how the list should go, whether the existing version works, should we just tank everything, go witht the new proposal, blah, blah, blah. We've generated a lot of energy (positive and negative), burned a lot of calories over the years, lost players, in general not made the progress that the community deserves.
I decided to look at things from the freshest perspective as I can, given all the history I have with the Epic Tau and see what I understand and more importantly, what can we do to move forward.
So I decided to start with the basics. How do the Tau fight?
1. The Tau have two approaches to warfare, Mont'ka and Kauyon
The first is referred to as the Killing Blow, the second as the Patient Hunter. The first approach seeks to strike a blow that the enemy cannot recover from, the second to cause attrition to the enemy until they cannot respond. The Tau switch back and forth between the two approaches whenever they need to. "The" Tau list will feature both styles and allow for playing both in the same game. I say that because as I was brain-storming last night I briefly considered the possibility of a Mont'ka list and a Kauyon list. But I discarded that thought as I didn't think it was really workable.
2. The Tau do not approach warfare from the same perspective as other races
To me, this means that the Tau don't do what other races do. Pure and simple. Well, what do other races do? At least in the 40K universe, casualties don't really matter. Oh, they (game designers) might try to give you the impression that they do, but in reality, the overall numbers are so big, individuals don't matter. That means attrition is an acceptable way of conducting war.
Not to the Tau. They are not that prolific yet and in fact, if the Imperium, or anyone else for that matter really wanted them gone, they could make that happen. The Tau currently do not have the resources to fight a long (i.e. decades/centuries) struggle. Resources are important to them. Seeking low hanging fruit is important to them. Standing up in the face of massive forces and hanging tough is not.
So attrition is out. Precision is in. Localized power is in.
3. The Fire Caste is fairly content with their inventory of weapons, until they run into something they really can't handle.
In the Damocles Campaign, the brute force way of fighting war in some ways, caught them by surprise. What is interesting is that instead of adopting the Imperial model, they modified their model. So, when faced with super heavy tanks and Titans, they didn't build the equivalent, they used produced an asymmetric solution. Not only that, but it wasn't the Fire Caste that came up with the solution, it was the Air Caste.
Is it possible that the Fire Caste are somewhat set in their ways? I can only postulate, but it does seem possible.
So if that assumption were true, then that would mean that newer, non-conventional types of weaponry, at least on vehicular scale, would seem to come from the Air Caste vs. the Fire Caste.
So what does that mean?
That means that from an inventory of units and formations, what we "should" see as far as weaponry, should come from the existing palette of vehicles. Some of this is obvious, but needs to be stated:
1. The main battle tank is based on the Hammerhead (regardless of the turret weaponry)
2. The infantry fighting vehicle is based on the Devilfish
3. There are no massive blast inducing weapons outside of what comes in #1 & #2 (precision)
4. GM/MLs should be an equivalently strengthed approach to conducting war (precision)
5. Extraordinary weapons are from the Air Caste (AX-1-0, Manta)
6. Drones are soldiers, not mindless automata. They should not be wasted (Attrition)
There's probably a few others that could be listed, but for the purposes of this post, that will work. We can discuss what those others are.
Now, that's a long way to get to the point where I want to discuss breaking the logjam. Yesterday, I postulated that from E&C's proposal, that we were within striking distance of working through the issues, but that there was one snag, the Scorpionfish.
After thinking through this, reading, thinking though it again, I think I have an idea on what the solution could be.
While I was reading the Tigershark entry (around page 200), there is mention of a TS variant that is armed with burst cannon and seekers. So, I let that sort of float downstream a little and realized that could be the solution.
I think that one of the reasons I think the Scorpionfish is necessary, is because of the need that it addresses. Even in 40K, GW has added "capabilities" to the Tau that allow them Scorpionfish like abilities, without adding the vehicle. E&C was correct when he stated that it was a flyer. Now I could extrapolate and build in the ability to hover, but let's just say that I don't. Also by making the Scorpionfish a ground unit, it is part of the Fire Caste. A Tigershark would be Air Caste.
So, I am first off interested in seeing if we, in general, can agree with the points on Tau warfare. Secondly, the Tigershark missile boat (for lack of a better name). What could this look like, stats-wise? We can fiddle with the cost once we know what it does.
I have also come to the opinion that drone formations should be able to deep strike/teleport based on how they are used from the standard Tigershark. That would get them operating as described in IA-3.
So, thoughts and comments?
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