Topic: "best" warlord trait to take?

[Manny-Kun]

title is pretty self explaintory. im thinking rolling for strategic traits would be best. of course it depends on the missions being played but from a step back the other traits dont sound too good to me. personal trailt involves close combat which tau arnt any good at. and command traits would involve your tau crisis hq to remain near your forces (assuming hes jumping around taking down units hes taking wargear to specialize against).

getting night attacker seems like the ideal things, to force night fight down for first turn makes good use of black sun filters (even thought its a +4 chance of night fight for first turn).

any opinions? i really think rolling for strategic traits table would be best. only one i see being a problem is getting master of ambush.
 

[The Unseenly Invincible]

Agreed with you here. Master of Ambush isn't actually too bad if your taking kroot, though I suppose that people really don't like them anymore...

Obviously, personal traits really don't benefit any tau commander (bar O'Shova, granted that anyone takes him), so I won't bother going through them.

Command... the two useful ones I see is the "everyone within 12" gets Move Through Cover". Basically, your battlesuits don't need to take a dangerous terrain test. The other is "everyone within 12" gets Ld of commander". Pretty nifty, considering how poor tau Ld is these days.

[Manny-Kun]

Agreed with you here. Master of Ambush isn't actually too bad if your taking kroot, though I suppose that people really don't like them anymore...

Obviously, personal traits really don't benefit any tau commander (bar O'Shova, granted that anyone takes him), so I won't bother going through them.

Command... the two useful ones I see is the "everyone within 12" gets Move Through Cover". Basically, your battlesuits don't need to take a dangerous terrain test. The other is "everyone within 12" gets Ld of commander". Pretty nifty, considering how poor tau Ld is these days.

the "everyone within 12" get move through cover" is good. but i think its easily trumpt by the strategic trait "conqueror of cities" which give move through cover for everyone. catch is its only through ruins (dont see it being too much of an issue since i put firewarriors in ruins and kroots in forest).

the "withn 12 for leadership" trait sounds good. but like i said above, your tau crisis hq is gonna be hoping all around taking down what it specialized for instead of hanging back with its buddys

[Shas'La robo]

The relocation scout move from 'Princeps of Deceit' can be kinda useful to change your battle lines about and throw  your opponent off his game a little.

robo

[Manny-Kun]

The relocation scout move from 'Princeps of Deceit' can be kinda useful to change your battle lines about and throw  your opponent off his game a little.

robo

thats actually a question i asked here: Princeps of deceit + scout
not to change the subject but im guessing from your answer you can do scout move after princeps of deceit?

this new edition gives tau more mobility, especially deep striking suits into shooting into jetpack away same turn. also another reason why to go with strategic so you get 2nd chance on reserve re roll

[Shas'La robo]

:]http://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=224663.0

Your link doesn't work.

I'm undecided either way if it works, but you can use it on a squad of crises suits, or a hammerhead or similar who normally can't scout now essentially can.

Imagine using it with a Farsight bomb, moving from the middle of the board to one of the flanks and getting out of the way of all the dangerous weapons your opponent has.

robo

[Wyddr]

Princeps of Deceit doesn't let you move outside your deployment zone, so it isn't really like scout in that regard. In general I've found it isn't reliable enough to provide a significant benefit. You can't really risk leaving a unit in a position to confuse the enemy and then guarantee you can move it to where you want to afterwards. I've found it a gimmick for the most part.

Of them all, Strategic Genius is probably the most useful. Being able to re-roll reserves, either successful or failed, is pretty key. Conqueror of Cities is pretty cool, too, but it's obviously terrain dependent.

In all cases, I've yet to find the Warlord traits to be very useful one way or the other. This is the generic list, though; I'll be very interested to see what specific warlord traits the Tau get when they (finally) get a new book. The ones Chaos got are actually fairly cool.

[Manny-Kun]

just a quick mention on that, i noticed at the summary of the rule book it says to roll for warlord traits before deploying forces. i think this gives even more light to potentially getting re-roll for your own reserves. makes first reserve roll turn a new shine for quick deep striking anti tank suits. (and with jetpack rules they can make a potential 12" get away, 6th loves tau!)

(on a side note: i was considering using princeps of deceit to move a scout unit, then make its scout move. basically an extra move along my deployment zone)

[Shas'Oink]

Okay, so I didn't want to post until I've had sufficient experience experimenting with the different warlord traits. I think that my thoughts can be concluded as follows;

Personal traits
...are a waste of time. They pretty much all boost the character in ways that are generally always useless for Tau. I cannot realistically see myself ever finding any of these abilities useful. There MAY be greater potential for a personal trait with something like Farsight in your army but even then the benefits that other traits can provide would help said armies too anyway!

Command traits
...are generally better. There are a few duff selections in there but the good ones could be used in a variety of ways depending on how you run your force. Command traits may be more useful if you use your commander in amongst your lines in a support role but is less use if you like to attach him to roving crisis teams etc.

Strategic traits
...are pound for pound the best options. Pretty much all of the traits can be useful in different ways. There are some which are REALLY good such as the ability to enforce night fight on the first turn (in an army that has multiple long range units that can themselves ignore the effects!) or the ability to re-roll your reserve rolls (in an army that often contains a number of units that benfit from starting in reserve / outflanking!)


Personally I have now settled on always using the Strategic traits and nowadays am just working out the best way to take advantage of the benefits that these traits provide.

[Blood Hawk]

Warlord traits for tau come down to whether or not you plan on putting units in reserve or will your opponent.  If so then I would agree strategic traits is probably the best.

Though if you aren't doing that the command ones are ok, all of them except Coordinated assault are decent to useful.  Personally the one command trait I really want is Inspiring Presence which is useful for a tau army IMO with so many ld 7 units.  Target Priority is rather nice in a objective based game.