A Taste of Things to Come?

Hey guys, just as a quick preface to this article, I wrote this sometime ago, as in before any of the 6th Edition Leak business, so it's written with out any thought given towards that. The reason we're getting this instead of a 6th Ed unit inspection is because I had a fairly major hard drive hiccup that wiped out a ton of my in-progress files. Their back-ups, the whole thing just got plucked off my hard drive and replaced with empty files. Needless to say it was a fairly major set-back, and because these 6th Ed articles are so damn huge, it's going to take a little while to get back to where I was. So I hope you enjoy this for now, and we'll be talking again soon.

I'd like to think that I steep myself in the rumors, the facts, and the community enough to have a good idea of what could happen, so with that in mind I want to share with you my vision of the future. Be warned, this isn't a rumor I've heard from a “reliable source close to the development team” or any such non-sense. It's a logical construct of long circulated rumors, opinion, and good old fashioned wish-listing. Please treat it as such.

Shas'O Kais as he appeared in the Dawn
of War Franchise. Let's hope he bought
a multi-tracker.

It starts with our HQ's, as all good armies should, and in this potential future, the rumor of HQ Dependant Troops has more or less come true. But there's a twist; the rumor as it is now, states, that if you take a Crisis Commander it will unlock Crisis Suits as a Troop Choice. Now if you're like me, that's something that's never sat right, Crisis Suits just feel too Elite to ever be a Troop Choice. No, in my future, Tau Commanders will come in two flavors, XV8's being the norm, unlocking nothing if chosen, and XV2's, which would unlock as troops, well, XV2's.

My justification? Well first, the XV8 Commander doesn't need to unlock anything – the XV8 platform is already strong enough on it's own, simply getting another squad of them is reason enough to take them. Bell of Lost Souls recently put out a poor batch of rumors which included the tidbit that an XV8 Commander would make a single unit of XV8's scoring, and while that's more reasonable, their recent rumors have been as wishlisty as this article is in my opinion. Getting back on topic, the Tau are a stylish army, and GW has been releasing absolutely gorgeous sculpts this past year, so an army that encourages mono unit spamming just seems backwards to me. It's not to say that taking the XV8 Commander won't or shouldn't convey some sort of bonus to the rest of the army – I just don't feel like any of the possibilities discussed so far fit the bill, and this is perhaps a topic we could explore better on another occasion. In the end this will make the XV8 Commander our base-line HQ, the Space Marine Captain equivalent, the standard by which the other HQ's of the codex are judged and balanced by – it will give us our vanilla.

Note that in the original concept art,
the XV25 had Twin Burst Cannons.

Secondly, this all hinges on the XV2 being a unit in the next codex at all, so with that in mind, lets build the frame work for what we could expect something like that to behave like. What we shouldn't expect, is to see the XV22 as it appears in the current codex show up as a line suit. Frankly the XV22's current role is so niche it boarders on overkill, and including a squad of multiple XV22's would just be ludicrous. No, the XV2 would have to be streamlined, and I think we can use the XV25 as a solid basis for it. We don't want to give them stealth systems, because we're obviously not looking to edge the XV25 out, but we will take their stat line, FOC position, and min/max squad size. Lets limit them to a handful of weapons from the XV8 arsenal, as well as a single optional wargear support system, but nothing experimental, save those for the XV8's. Finish them off with a Jet Pack for JSJ manoeuvres, and we have the recipe for a unit that does for the Fire Warrior, what the Terminator has done for the Space Marine.

Dawn of War concept art showing different
load-outs. I think a Rail-Rifle would be the
perfect fit.

As an alternative armament, lets consider Twin-Linked Rail-Rifles. We've all read the Sniper Suit rumors by now, and this would be a handy way to deliver on that. The addition of the Jet Pack would let them fire those heavy Rail-Rifles on the move, and the specialized armament would ensure it steals none of the XV8's thunder. We'd be left with something I'd be comfortable dubbing the XV28, and something that would make for a very nice addition to the team – Troop choice or not. With the future of both other Rail-Rifle carrying units in question, this could well be the de-facto Rail-Rifle unit of the next codex.

Then again, so did the concept art for
the original XV22, and it ended up with
two Fusion Blaster's capable of firing at
completely different targets.

The XV22 prototype as piloted by Shadowsun is an awesome unit, and deserves to survive into the next codex in some form or another. It's also a logical step for an empire looking to escalate it's ability to wage war while protecting it's soldiers, and unless the lore takes a dramatic an unexpected turn, this is the natural evolution for the XV2, from prototype, to line production. The XV2 as I've laid it out here plays well with many of the circulating rumors, especially those revolving around new potential transports. It adds a balanced, versatile, and mobile unit to our roster, that bridges the gap between the standard Fire-Warrior and our iconic Crisis Suit, and not just tactically, but visually on the table-top as well.

So what do you think? Could you see yourself using a unit like this? Do we want the same things? Do you think Games Workshop is riding a similar train of thought? Let me know, and as always, thanks for reading!