Taros Epic Army List

I'm not going to post a full copy of the list published in Imperial Armour 3 as that would open me up to the wrath of GW's attack lawyers.

Differences shown assume a base of the V4 vault list. Changes that have no impact in gaming terms (such as weapon names) are not recorded.

Special rules

Guided missiles: May not be fired unguided.

Units

Hamerheads: Weapon variant options are increased to include the options in the v4 collectors section with the following differences: Missile Pods: AT4+, Plasma cannons: AT5+

Devilfish: Armour 4+ (Matches armour of other vehicles based on the same chassis.)

Skyray: Interceptor missiles and Seeker missiles combined into one weapon with only one attack.

Drone Sentry Turret: May only take one weapon option. Burst cannons gain disrupt.

Drone Sensor Towers: New unit.

Kroot Master Shaper: Looses Gifted Mercenary Weapon.

Kroot Knarlock Riders: New unit.

Gue'vesa: Loose pulse rifles.

Barracuda: Interceptor Missiles changed to Missile Pods (45cm, AP4+/AT5+, no fire arc).

Tigershark: Looses Seeker, Tracer and Interceptor Missiles, gains Missile Pods as above.

Whiteshark: As Tigershark. Rail Cannon changed to: 90, MW3+, TK(D3).

Orca: Gains Aircraft, Bomber. Armour 5+, FF 6+.

Manta: Gains Aircraft, bomber. CC 5+, FF 3+. Railcannon as Whiteshark. Losses Tracer Missiles. Gains Missile Pods as Barracuda.

Force Organisation

Removed: Moray, Hero, Scorpionfish, Dragonfish, Lionfish, Swordfish.

Fire Warrior Cadre: 6 stands, 1 less Devilfish for same upgrade points cost.

Hammerhead Upgrade: 3 for 200 points.

Piranha Upgrade: 3 for 75 points. (Matches v4.1 points cost per model.)

Stealthsuit Contingent: 4 Stealth teams for 175 points.

Broadside Contingent: 2 Broadside teams for 150 points.

Hammerhead Contingent: 3 Hammerheads for 200 points.

Drone Sentry Turret Contingent: 3 for 75 points (option to double size).

Drone Sensor Tower Contingent: 2 for 50 points.

Kroot Kindred: Upgrades of 4 carnivore squads for 75 points, 4 Kroot Hound packs for 75 points, 4 Krootox herds for 100 points, 4 Knarlock rider squadrons for 100 points.

Barracuda: 2 for 125 points.

Tigershark: Must take two.

General (and highly subjective) Observations:

Forgeworld have received some, I feel, overly harsh flack for this list including accusations that it had nothing to do with the community developed list. Hopefully this should help to refute the wilder of these claims.

Having now had a good look at these changes I think the unit changes make much more sense from a fluff perspective than the vault list does. Similarly, other changes, such as the Kroot Master shaper and Gue'vesa teams weapon changes can be explained as representing the situation on Taros as opposed to the Third Phase Expansion which acts as the basis for the vault list. Some people will jump on this as a criticism but for those of us that find the whole tournament balancing thang produces artificial armies this is actually a nice change in approach. Subsequent to this I will also point out that this list does not claim to be a balanced tournament list but does provide stats for people to play the scenarios presented in the book and, without playing these, I cannot say if the stats presented here are better or worse for these games. Lack of playtesting is another criticism levelled at the Forgeworld list but I have yet to read a playtest report for this list from any of its critics. Untill I do (or Forgeworld publicly admit that they hadn't playtested the list) I must assume that these criticisms are merely unsupported assertions.

One final thing that had been puzzling me was the changes made to the unit sizes by Forgeworld but, whilst compiling this list, I realised that these unit sizes are a much better fit for the packs of figures they sell. Given that another common critism of Forgeworld is that building a Tau army using their superbly crafted figures costs too much this is actually quite a thoughtful concession to its customers. (Not to mention that I think they should be applauded for providing such first class miniature support and background for the Tau across all systems and their work is certainly much better than the recent 40k stuff I have seen leaked from Games Workshop.)