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Warhammer 40K: Big Rules Changes Revealed From T’au Faction Focus

3 Minute Read
Jun 25 2020
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The T’au Faction focus is here – but there are some big rule changes that have been showcased for shooting today. You’re going to want to read this.

Games Workshop has another Faction Focus article out for the T’au Empire. We’re not going to cover that today but if you want to read that you can do it in its entirety here. What we are going to focus on are the rules reveals and confirmations GW talked about in the article because they are game changing.

via Warhammer Community

  • Hard Cap on negative to hit modifiers: We knew about this one already, but it was restated in the article. You can no longer stack negative to hit modifiers to get to a -2 or -3 to hit. The maximum is now -1.
  • Hard Cap on positive to hit modifiers. This one was less expected, but there is now a hard cap on bonuses to hit as well. The maximum is now +1.

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  • The Fly keyword no longer grants the ability to Fall Back and Shoot. Yep. You read that right. Suddenly all those changes to tanks/vehicles/monsters shooting into combat make a LOT more sense. Fly is still a good keyword to have, but it’s not as good as it used to be.

Between the hard cap on modifiers to hit and the change to Fly, this is a BIG shift. We also get another look at the Desperate Breakout Stratagem which we’ve seen before, but with these changes, it takes on a slightly different context.

 

The sentence where it explains you can move over enemy models as if they were not there makes a lot more sense now in context.

T’au & Overwatch

Another thing that has been cleared up is how the T’au’s Overwatch will function. As we all know, the Greater Good ability provided T’au with a lot of extra firepower during Overwatch. There was some speculation on how that would work in the next edition. Well, now we can all stop guessing:

So yeah…T’au Overwatch Fire is going to be rough as they can still Overwatch “for free” with the Greater Good ability.

However you look at it, those are some big changes to the core mechanics. Hard caps on to hit modifiers and Fly getting nerfed. I don’t know if I’m excited or worried – but I’d really like to get my hands on the next edition.

 

What do you think of these changes? Are you looking forward to them or are you dreading them?

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Author: Adam Harrison
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