Content by T0nkaTruckDriver, Written by T0nkaTruckDriver, Edited by T0nkaTruckDriver
With leadership becoming an increasingly important variable in 4th edition, it's more crucial than ever for Tau Commanders to understand how to keep their troops on the table and fighting as efficiently as possible. However, as with most everything else in the Tau Codex, the designers gave use several options to choose from when considering how to best accomplish this goal.
For reference, here is a table that shows the percentage chance of passing various leadership checks:
| Ld7 | 58.3% |
| Ld8 | 72.2% |
| Ld7 with re-roll | 82.6% |
| Ld8 with re-roll | 92.3% |
Ethereal
Inpiring Presence allows the Tau player to re-roll any morale check (failed or passed) for any Tau unit (not Kroot or Drones) on the table. Remember, that this re-roll only applies to morale checks, which do not include target priority tests, psychic mind war type tests, pinning tests, or any other test that uses the leadership characteristic. That being said, it's the morale checks that can be the most devastating and therefore there is the most to be gained by being able to re-roll them.
While many people shun the Ethereal for fear of The Price of Failure, the Ethereal really isn't that hard to keep alive in the hands of an experienced Commander. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event our Aun trips on a rock and bashes his head open, in a Mech Tau list where all of our low leadership troops are packed in transports and immune to morale, The Price of Failure really isn't that high...
Interestingly enough, if you're concerned about "getting your points worth" from the Ethereal, it's usually best to avoid the Shas'ui upgrade. The reasoning behind this is that by spending points to upgrade your Leadership, you're effectively decreasing the chance that you'll need the Ethereal's re-roll ability. If you go an entire game never failing a single Ld8 morale check, the 50 points you spent on your Ethereal (and all the mental anguish over keeping him alive) was all for naught.
Advantages:
- Benefits all Tau troops in your army.
- Allows you a greater degree of control over when your troops leave combat... a VERY useful advantage.
- Gives Ld10 and Fearless to the squad he joins to help with target priority tests, pinning tests, etc.
- The model is tres cool.
- Requires an adjustment of playstyle.
- The Price of Failure.
Shas'ui
A Shas'ui gives Leadership 8 to the squad he's brought with. The difference between Ld7 and Ld8 is a big one as the chart above shows. Sounds like a no brainer, right?
In general, this is always a good thing... the question you must ask yourself though is how many points are you spending on this upgrade and how often do you make use of it? In Mech Tau armies, every squad that can take this upgrade will have a transport, and furthermore, they usually spend 2-4 turns of the game packed inside said transport and immune to morale. If you favor an army with lots of Devilfish-equipped Firewarrior teams, the cost of upgrading them with Shas'ui can reach 30 - 50 points, at which point it usually becomes a better buy to bring the Ethereal.
But this isn't the whole story either. Shas'ui help with pinning checks and target priority checks which cannot take advantage of Inspiring Presence. Shas'ui also allow the ability to hardwire a support system... something that may be useful if you have a specific battlefield role tasked to a specific squad of Shas'la. Fourth edition has a lot of leadership-based tests that are not morale tests... and for these, the Shas'ui clearly wins out over the Ethereal.
Finally, the higher base leadership of the Shas'ui makes it harder to flee from combat if it becomes to your advantage to do so. If you have an Aun, the chance to fail an Ld7 check with re-roll is 66.0%, while the chance to fail an Ld8 check with re-roll is only 47.8%. Sometimes passing morale checks can be a bad thing, and in these instances, the Shas'ui upgrade is 10 points spent that makes your army less effective.
Advantages:
- Provides a big boost to all leadership based checks... not just morale checks.
- Allows the purchase of hardwired wargear in addition to a Leadership boost.
- Makes it more difficult to flee from combat.
- Can only be purchased for troops that spend ~half the game immune to morale anyway.
Bonding
Often shunned in popular internet circles, Bonding is the red-headed step-child of the Tau list. Bonding allows a squad of troops who have broken and are below 50% to still attempt to rally. While seemingly useful at first glance, let's take a look at the situation where this is useful.
- Squad takes 25% shooting casualties, thereby forcing a morale check
- Squad is below 50% strength... but not wiped out
- Squad fails its morale check
- Squad falls back 2d6", but not off the table
- Squad succeeds in its attempt to rally
- There is sufficient time remaining in the game for the squad to return to it's former firing position and have a meaningful impact on the rest of the game.
While the assumptions required limit the usefulness of any attempt to estimate the percent chance that all of these events might occur, I think it's safe to say that it's not terribly good.
Furthermore, recalling the ideas of front-loading vs end-loading, we can see that Bonding really is an end-loading upgrade. We're paying points to help us recover in the event that a catastrophe occurs. By spending those 10 points on front-loaded upgrades, it's possible that we could have prevented the catastrophe from having occured in the first place, thereby making Bonding unnecessary. By way of comparison, the Ethereal and Shas'ui upgrade are more front-loaded: rather than spend points to allow your troops to rally after they've fled, you're spending points to help prevent your them from running in the first place. In reality, all points spent on Morale Mishap Mitigation is a form of end-loading... but Bonding is even more end-loaded than the others.
The only minor advantage of Bonding is that, unlike the Shas'ui upgrade, it can be bought for Battlesuit Teams. If you're looking for a way to increase the durability of your expensive Elites, Bonding can help in large Crisis or Stealth Teams... but even here, the chance that events will transpire to allow you to make use of your points spent on Bonding is still very slim.
Advantages:
- Can be bought for any Tau Squad, even Battlesuits.
- Only rarely is useful.
- Even when it is useful, your troops count as having moved on the turn they rally, will be out of position, and it will be late in the game... all of which make it very unlikely they'll have a noticible impact on the remaining turns.
- Attracts large amounts of ridicule from Internet Tau Geeks (ITG's) everywhere!
Conclusion
So with all these options available to us with all their advantages and disadvantages, how are we to decide which to use? Well, that's up to you of course. If the idea of Bonding seems fluffy, and you've got 10 points left over, by all means, go ahead and Bond! However, there are a few rules of thumb that experienced players often go by.
For people new to the game, it's generally sufficient to pick 2 of the 3 available Morale Mishap Mitigation options (Ethereal, Shas'ui, Bonding). Taking all 3 is almost always overkill. A skilled player commanding a well put-together Mech Tau force that has become adept at protecting units from taking casualties using deployment, movement, and terrain, will probably find that only 1 of the 3 available options is needed.
A lot of message boards on the internet are littered with "which should I do?!?!?!" type posts. I'll refrain from commenting on that here. However, if you want to see what some Mech Tau veterans run in their lists, check out the Army Lists section. To quote Azraphael99:
There is no best. There never will be. What's best for stats may be boring to run and boring to paint for you - and if that's the case, don't! If I like Stealths and you like Crisis Suits, or if I like Krootox and you like Broadsides.. run with it.