Rumor Break-Down Part: 1

Bad Movie Reference?
Check.

Dear Rumor Mongers of the 40k universe, we need to talk. I love what you do, lets be clear about that. You give me and the rest of the voracious 40k fan base hours of entertainment through debate and speculation. Without you, an entire element of the game would surely wither and die. But – the way you deliver these rumors, in half formed sentences ended in ellipsis or other grammatical quandaries, well frankly, it's frustrating. We come seeking you because we have questions about the future, and I think we'd all like it if our answers ceased to come in the form of riddles. You want to tell us what you know, and we want you to as well, so please, for all our sakes, write clearly – proof read, take advantage of spell check for heaven's sake. Your friend – Rob.

PS: We get it. Salt.

So I've been going over the latest recap over on Warseer via Tastyfish. It's actually sort of uncanny, because it covers just about all of the rumors I had been meaning to talk about before I took my break, while leaving out the majority of the stuff we've already spoken about. So over the next couple of articles, were going to tackle the whole thing, moving from the top of the page down. After that, we should pretty much be caught up entirely on the rumor front. If you just want to skip the lengthy dissection and get to whether or not I feel we can bank on these rumors, I put a header at the bottom of the article (“The Bottom Line”) that'll basically ear-mark where I begin my final thoughts.

"K...!? Something's peaking!"

The first bit comes to us originally from Stickmonkey, from last year. He details for us a Heavy Support vehicle that deep strikes into place, and is then immobile – think; Space Marine Drop Pod. He speculates on the armament, but doesn't have anything firm. Alright, so who here knows their Forge World kits? What does this sound like to you? If you said the Tau's Drone Sentry Turret from the Taros Campaign, you'd be spot on. This Heavy Support option Deep Strikes in Immobile, in independent squadrons of up to four, and comes in four flavors, Burst Cannon, Missile Pod, Fusion, or Plasma – all Twin-Linked. So the question is, did GW elaborate on the existing FW kit? Did Stick Monkey miss his mark with this one? Or is this supposed new unit similar only in concept? If you're curious about the Sentry Drone Turret, you can find out more on them in Imperial Amour Volume Three – The Taros Campaign.

Lord Dirk's Sawfish. Hello again.

Still, part of Stick Monkey's post is talk of an “Assault Skimmer”. It's described as a being larger than a Piranha, but smaller than a Devilfish, it's open-topped, and you can find it's complete description in the original post linked above. But you know what, I think I've seen this somewhere before too. Lord Dirk's Sawfish wasn't just a piece of concept art, he actually invested some time into describing how it would work, and you can find a link to that here. I for one can't help but notice how similarly the two have been worded. And for those of you keen on looking up dates, I've already done the work for you, Lord Dirk's post came out in June of 2010, Stick Monkey's came out nearly four months later, in September.

The recap of Stick Monkey's post concludes with predictions of a new Drop Ship (specified as not being the Forge World Orca, which as an aside, anyone who knows the size of will tell you, is far too large to be a standard 40k kit, and best reserved for games of Apocalypse), and new Battle Suits. Both of which are perfectly plausible, but don't include enough details to really talk about further.

The round-up then moves into Cypher871's post from the Heresy forums – which was actually in turn a rumor round-up of his own. Now I think it's important to separate the various contributors of Cypher's post from one another, because it lets us look at the rumors in their original context and gives us a more detailed picture. However there were several instances where I couldn't trace the origin of some of Cypher's rumors – now the internet is sort of a big place, and it's possible I just don't know where to look. In these cases I simply attribute the rumor to Cypher, for lack of a better option.

Yes, exactly like this.

The first of Cypher's sources to be isolated is Dante76. It's Dante that tells us the Tau have been pencilled in for a release date of August 2011, where they would never materialize. He's also the one to mention how all of the metal blisters will be plastic, though since this original post we've seen Finecast replace the Ethereal and Sniper Drones. Not included in Cypher's round-up (and therefore also not included in Tastyfish's) were some of Dante's more questionable predictions, such as a whopping seven alien allies, and special Fire Warrior teams trained for close combat. This disappointing batch of hear-say is made all the more sad for being responsible for one of the Tau rumors that's been given the most lip service by eagerly waiting fans, and that's the new mechanics for the Railgun. That's right, for those of you who have been hopeful that our Railgun slugs will continue to punch through armor in a straight line until it makes a glancing hit, know that that particular rumor originates from the same individual who said that Fire Warriors who opt out of Devilfish will be allowed to take Kroot Hounds as part of their squad – still hopeful? 

It's then Stinger989 who brings up possibly the most famous (or infamous) Tau rumor, that of HQ dependent Troops. It's something that's been confirmed or otherwise repeated several times by various parties, and I wrote an entire article on it back in april which you can find here. He mentions a few of the stat tweaks to Crisis suits which I also covered in-depth over here. But perhaps most curiously of all (and also not previously covered by this blog) are his insights into Broadsides, stating that they can now take Networked Markerlights as opposed to Smart Missile Systems or Twin-Linked Plasma Rifle's. It's a change made possible by the Broadsides dependency on the XV8 kit, which we're all thinking will be upgraded – essentially meaning that the Broadside's own box will require an update, making sprue inclusion a moot point. Still, an odd choice because if the range of Markerlights were to remain the same, given the distance that a Broadside normally engages it's opponents at, the Markerlights stand to go largely unused. But perhaps it's all part of a bigger picture we can't see yet, where Markerlights have varied uses and pop up all throughout the army.

Ghost of War is responsible for the comments regarding the new Shield Generator rules, a change as plausible as any, and also covered in my Crisis Suit rumor breakdown linked to above. Most interesting in my opinion are his proposed changes to the way Drones are purchased and distributed. Rather than being pieces of Wargear purchased alongside Drone Controllers, they'd be purchased separately from your other units and then dynamically distributed throughout your army at the beginning of each game. This would be a fantastic asset in competitive play, allowing for a strong change-up game, the kind that Space Marines enjoy with Combat Squads. Lastly, he also describes how Skyrays will replenish their missile racks (a detail that conflicts with more recent rumors), and though both he and Cypher offer two different wordings, neither concisely lay out exactly what the Skyray will be capable of. The wording really leaves it up to interpretation. 

Cypher's roundup then covers some rumors from April 1st, none of which are truly outlandish, indeed, some of which we've seen reported from other, less reproachable sources. A Kroot HQ falls very much in line with other rumors that are talking about HQ dependant Troop choices. A Kroot transport however, seems unlikely to me, just because of the thematic influence it's presence would have on the table-top – simply put, anything that big is going to look Tau themed, or risk breaking the visual flavor of the Tau. The bit about Kroot Shaper's providing a genetic trait plays well into a new interpretation on the HQ dependant Troop choice rumor – we're going to talk more about this in the next article, but the gist of it is that rather than unlocking new Troop choices, the HQ you choose is going to empower there related Troop choice, like the Kroot Shaper providing a genetic trait mentioned above, but like I said, more on that later. Vespids are also said to be getting a new coat of polish, along with a Heavy unit (remembering that the codex talks about the ruling female Vespid being larger and stronger than their male servants, capable of withstanding harsher environments).

Don't worry Shas'la, the day's
of manually chucking those
grenades might soon be behind you.

The April 1st rumors also talk a bit about Fire Warriors. A Ballistic Skill of 4 is supposedly in their cards, which I think is a blunt solution to a problem that could be handled more artfully, like with say, better Markerlights. Carbine's are said to be getting a grenade launcher, for either EMP or explosive rounds, but they don't go into detail. “Various changes to Firewarrior (and Crisis Suit) equipment” are mentioned, but go undetailed. Pathfinders are getting reworked into some kind of Commando unit, though they're not specific if that means they'll be going Troop side of the FOC or not. “All HQ's can act as a commander”, presumably means that the +1 requirement for Crisis Commanders will be a thing of the past, nothing wrong with that. The last codex's prototype equipment will now be standardized for Crisis Suits (though I suspect the Cyclic Ion Blaster, and Airbursting Fragmentation Projector would probably be brought in line as to not be overpowering), while new prototype's will be taking their place. Crisis Suits will also supposedly be getting the Hit and Run USR, which would be interesting for sure. Stealth Suits are changed to receive the Scout USR, but whether it comes at the cost of their existing Infiltrate USR isn't clear. Perhaps the bit that most closely parallels current rumors (and is hopefully not responsible for inspiring them) is the mention of a new type of Heavy Battlesuit, paralleling recent rumors of an “Uber” suit (more on that next post).

The Bottom Line

Alright, so we're going to break it off here for now, saving all the new stuff for the next post, but I'd like to leave you with some of my thoughts on what we've covered. With regards to Stick Monkey's posts, I find too much of what was said either remarkably similar to existing models and concepts, or a kind of “safe bet”. I feel that getting a new Battle Suit is expected, and would be shocked given the quality of recent releases if an element as iconic to the Tau as their Battle Suit's, wasn't a center-piece. As far as Cypher's rumors go, time has already proven Dante76 to be an unreliable source, while Ghosts of War and Stinger989's input not only remain popular, but have seemingly been elaborated on and confirmed elsewhere. The rumors from April 1^st trouble me for two reasons. April 1st is a horrible day to release information, especially information with a dubious reputation for being inaccurate and misleading. What concerns me more however, is how I can't find the original post, and therefore can't see how, if at all, it's author defended against the obvious April fools day accusations. Never the less, much of what was said has been corroborated in more recent rumors, or otherwise seems plausible, and considering rumors are the kin of educated guesses and outright fabrications on a good day, I see no reason to not entertain these ideas as well.

Alright folks, we'll have another post incoming shortly where we discuss the remainder of Tastyfish's rumor round-up. There's some juicy stuff in there for sure. Merry Christmas!