Hey all, with the release of Zone Mortalis by Forgeworld, no doubt 40K players are excited to see how they can incorporate their Tau into this interesting new rules set. So let's use this thread to discuss the details.

Forgeworld Rules found here.

My first thoughts after a quick scan of the rules:

HQ choice is inevitably going to be a Shas'O or Shas'El, Ethereals are even worse than normal due to the fact barely anything will ever be able to see them for the Morale buff. (This more than makes up for the fact the enemy will struggle to kill them for the same reason). With the increased emphasis on morale, Shadowsun's Ld 10 bubble would be awesome... if you can agree to house rule away the 1500 point minimum.

Elites are compulsory 1-3 in some FOCs but restricted to 0-2 in others. Stealth suits don't really benefit from fighting at close ranges, so it looks like Crisis suits are the way forward... disappointingly, as I don't have any as I don't like the models. I realise I'm unusual for a Tau player in that, though! Note also that JSJ is risky so even our Crisis suits may struggle.

Troops aren't always compulsory (though the usual 1+ FW tax still applies, so I guess for us they are) but are always limited to less than six units. Furthermore squads max out at ten. So I see us suffering even more than normal with troops; FWs don't get the benefit of their 30" range (they can "reaction fire" when assaulted... if they pass an Initiative test...!) and Kroot aren't needed as a bubble, can't be used as a Krootbomb and will sorely feel the lack of an armour save. I guess Sentry turrets would be useful (and fluffy) for a defending force though, especially at their new reduced points cost; assuming they are less than 4" across (I've not got any of the models yet).

For Fast Attack, Piranhas and TX-42s are a smidge over 4" wide so can't be taken. Tetras (recently made awesome by the rules update) given Sensor Spines can fill the role of move blockers, though will struggle to make use of their speed as they can only fit down wider corridors, and who will ever be in position to benefit from their Markerlights? Hazards with Fusion Cascades could be really, really awesome... though again their bases are too wide for the narrow corridors, so investing that many points in a unit that may not be able to reach the target is a risk! That leaves Vespid... who I think become slightly more useful than normal actually. Jump infantry moving 12-18" with minimal risk thanks to Skilled Flyers and firing their AP3 guns might take a few foes by surprise. That said, they remain BS3 and still suck in combat.

In Heavy Support, all our tanks are out - too wide. SDTs don't get any better when the enemy is 6" away. Broadsides are of course our go-to Heavy Support choice... and SMS could actually be really useful. That said, the points aren't being paid for SMS but for Railguns, which will hardly ever get to shoot.

In conclusion, it seems to me that Zone Mortalis could be a really exciting new way to play, but will put even more emphasis than usual on Crisis teams, which I don't have, and even Crisis teams will find it risky to JSJ. It seems to me that Tau will inevitably struggle in the confines of close-quarter battle... but you smart people out there may be able to prove me wrong...?

I've always been a fan of Space Hulk seeing as it came out just after i got into the hobby as well as being a fan of the Aliens franchise, it's a no brainer. Depending on the lay out of the terrain would be the most vital ingredient to whether Tau would excel or suffer catastrophe during a game. It could be unbalanced when coming up against SM Terminators but if you can field Crisis suits as some people has already mentioned on other thread, then JSJ is going to be KING!

Imaging a Crisis with twin linked Plasma rifles being able to turn a corner, rapid fire into the enemy, then duck back around said corner, how cool would that be.

If Over watch is coming back into the rules would possibly make this harder for a Crisis suit, but equip them with Flamers and they will Roast their way through most enemies with ease. Also remembering that Flamers act differently in Space Hulk than they do on normal tabletop.

Looking forward to seeing more on this thread of peoples ideas and tactics.

Zone Mortalis video

Tau'va

Making a quick note here, reaction fire which is based on majority initiative, can be boosted to I4 with the addition of drones to a squad. The problem is trying to ensure that the drones live long enough to grant the benefit if a unit is charging it.

If you're going to take a 3 man squad, you're almost always going to tag the drones on for protection, so paying the extra 5 points to upgrade the leader to the better stat profile actually becomes worthwhile here. With 2 drones, and the leader's initiative being different from the 2 team mates, the squad becomes majority initiative 4, a massive boost in likeliness of counter fire.

Considering these maps are going to be extremely compact, I predict that a lot of the actual terrain combined with JSJ will make Tau ridiculously powerful. The map is specifically dangerous to jump infantry (or anything that moves more than 6" in the movement phase including teleporting models like grey knights units) Jet Packs are explicitly excluded from this rule via the definitions wording, so we're golden. Adding that to our range and plasma, means the prevalent tactic will be making our stands at the choke points and doors, where the enemy can't get a solid bead on us in shooting (and therefore, preserve our drones), and retreating once an enemy gets within 7" of the corner.

SMS will become an invaluable tool for constantly harassing models, since the twists and turns can easilly add 2-4 more shooting phases depending on setup. Tetras will still be incredible. because they're not much wider than a terminator base and than therefore fit through most gaps. the markerlight it carries will be the only cheap and reliable source you'll likely get, so with sensor spines, it should be able to keep your army firing at bs5 quite a long time.

Just checked the rules, and I'm slightly surprised that Tau actually are exempt from the Dangerous Terrain tests in both phases. Bad news for everyone else. On a different note, the high Initiative of Vespid means that they may actually become very effective move blockers. Only thing they have to worry about compared to the rest of our troops is flamers.

Don't forget that in space, all weapons S5 and higher get rending (and weapons with rending now trigger on a 5+) so that's going to have a few things shift about in effectiveness. Gives Firewarriors a couple of extra MEq kills at the very least. Anything S5 with a blast (like the submunition rifle) is now very scary, having both rending and reroll to wound whilst being far more accurate.

Which would make stealth suits a fairly decent choice for space battles.

Hey Bitterman, where are you seeing the 1500 minimum?
I'm seeing on pg.4 it allows for 1000 or fewer points on a smaller area.

Kajn
I suspect Bitterman is referring to the 1500 point minimum required to field Shadowsun.

Yeah, that makes sense.
I was trying to figure out why the house rule though.
In respect to 4'x4' area, you would need the house rule to play Shadowsun due to the point limitations for the area size.
However, areas greater than 4'x4' should pose no problem.
I don't see a maximum points listed so 1500 should not be an issue in larger areas.

While there's obviously nothing to say you can't play games of 1500 points and up, it seems not to be the emphasis/intent; 1000 points on a 4x4 table seems to be what's expected (much as normal 40K games are intended for 1500-2000 points). But yeah, if you do play 1500 or more in a ZM game, there's no need for a houserule - and I reckon Shadowsun becomes very useful.



Good spot, I got that wrong, I thought it was over 6" in a turn, but it's not, it's only in one phase! That makes JSJ pretty awesome actually, even more so than normal.



Also true... I think Vespid may just have found their use, who'd have thought it!?

It's S4 and higher not S5, so bolters and the like get this benefit as well. It also doesn't benefit us against the targets we would want it the most on (guys with 2+ saves), except in the case of a mixed units, where we still benefit from the rending rule and the opponent must apply the rending wounds to the weaker targets first.

Still, suit configurations like flamer/plasma or the slightly cheaper flamer/burst cannon may actually be very useful here because of these rules. The flamer becomes twin-linked for free, and if we look a little closer at the rule:



We can see that the flamer (and airburst fragmentation projector) also benefit from the rending rule, and we all know re-rolling to-wounds plus rending is good fun!

I definitely think chaos terminators will also be the winners in this area and will be very hard to remove.

As for the Tau, I think both the XV8 and XV88 will be one of our greatest aid here.

The Vespid I feel will be a brilliant unit for this. Nice ap2 weapons and been rather quick with getting to and from the enemy.

Kroot won't be as good this time around. I think the only reason to take them is because they are a nice cheap unit and can be taken in large numbers.

Fire Warriors and pathfinders maybe more useful with pulse carbine and been able to pin units which will let our other units (XV8 suits for example) can finish them off.

Stealth Teams armed only with burst cannons targeting arrays will be brilliant with 18 shots and jump shoot jump. However high points cost will be a draw back. Maybe pathfinder marker lights might help.

Gun drones should make a good blocking unit and been able to pin might come in handy.

I for one am really looking forward to the official rules. Can't wait.

Vespids only have AP3 (shows how popular they are, I had to double check the codex as well for that one) but think they've got a couple of advantages here - they are one of the cheapest minimum sized units, so provide extra blips and a very fast moving unit on a battlefield where those things are rare, there's few open fields of fire and objectives are effectively slightly further apart than they would be normally since you can't go directly towards them.

Stealth suits look like an obvious choice, but they are paying for a stealth field they aren't going to use, and with rending will only score an additional 1 MEq kill for each unit of 3 (+ 2 drones to get majority initiative to 4). With rending, each stealthsuit is expected to kill 0.5 marines whilst a battlesuit leader with twin linked burstcannons and flamer will expect to kill 1.5 marine assuming it is only in range of one with it's flamer. Flamers are absolutely lethal in the Zone Mortalis, with each hit having expecting to kill 0.75 of a marine.

Crisis suit is scores a minimum of 3x as many kills as the stealth suit and costs 1.7x as much (or 2x as much if you want to add drones to boost the majority I). If you're on a budget, dropping the burstcannon back down to being a single gun and adding a hard point multi-tracker gets you 2.5x as many kills as a stealthsuit, for only 41 points (1.4x the price). For that you get a better Toughness and an extra wound as well. Each 'square' on the boards is 2", so a standard crisis suit isn't going to find it hard to go down corridors either.

Course on top of that, I think you'd find a 'vre with a AFP and a flamer is going to rack up a fairly obscene number of kills.

Depending on the amount of cover, I could see Pathfinders being fairly useful - partly because they are the cheapest 'blip' we can get, and also because focusing firepower is going to be pretty important, yet difficult to do in confined conditions.

I was under the impression we can't take Pathfinders, as ZM does not allow you to take Dedicated Transports, but Pathfinders must take a Dedicated Transport?

Or are they excused from taking it for the purposes of ZM?

That could easily be implemented as a house rule.

One of those irresistible forces vs unmoveable object situations. Tau codex says 'must select a Devilfish' whilst the zone rules say "may not select dedicated transport options".
The way I'd argue it would be that the two cancel each other out and you have a choice, which is then ruled out by the 4" or over rule for vehicles.

Alternatively, you get marker drones which aren't that far off in price from pathfinders with a devilfish tax, as a commander and bodyguard unit with TA/PR/FB with two marker drones and 2 shield drones has majority initiative 4. They'd be expected to kill 4.1 terminators a turn (probably one of the more common units in Zone Mortalis) and then have a 67% chance of causing another 4.1 wounds if they get charged (6.25 MEqs each time, even with FNP). Shield drones are there because the battlesuits are likely to kill an extra terminator in close combat (0.75 expected kills, combined with the 0.22 left over from shooting), who will then waste his attacks not killing your drones - your unit comes out completely unscathed despite taking on 50pts more of terminators (assuming a full squad of 10).

A suit of Iridium/XV89 armour on each of the Shas'els means those shield drones can soak up the Terminator's shooting too since they'll have 2+ saves.
They are also able to take on things like Dreadnaughts (since a defensive fire action means that the Dread has to be within 6"), who I can see making up the other part of standard ZM force alongside the TEqs.

Though you are looking at 351 points for this (371/376 for IA/XV89), so fitting two squads into a 1000 pts force is a fairly hefty chunk of your army. However there is still just enough room to fit a minimum unit of Firewarriors, minimum Vespid units for objective grabbing and two pairs of burstcannon/flamer suits (with either multitracker to shoot both, or a gundrone sentry to boost initiative up to 4 so you can flame assaulting orks and tyranids).

Nice to know that the Tau should be able to stand up fairly well against the other races in a space hulk, but I think there's definitely a very narrow selection of useful builds and units. This force also fits within all the force-org charts, which can be a quite harsh, even without spending all those points on the big HQ units you'd be hard pressed to get more battlesuits in.

Only other unit I'd be curious about would be Broadsides - you're paying a hell of a lot for that Railgun which you're barely going to use, but the SMS might really take over since it's not a barrage and can pick off members of small squads from pretty much anywhere on the board if you deploy them centrally.

The SMS tagging things out of LOS is the key benefit of the broadside. The close quarters set up implied in the scenario, and shown in the example field setups, means you're hitting them with S5 shots multiple turns in advance before they can even draw a bead to your position, more so if you have BASS configurations. how many corners do you think you can get away with the enemy having to go through before they can even see you? this is a huge contrast to fire warriors, who have to be facing the enemy coming down the corridor. the railgun is just there to take out the particularly tough termys that make it to the corridor you're in.

Broadside configs will likely be vastly different than in a usual game because of this. Vehicles will be a rarity, so target locks will mean little. The focus will be on multitrackers, targeting arrays, or Advanced stabilization systems, since you already know you're going to want to focus fire on squads in range.

In big games, I'm sure they definitely have their place, but 1000pts is always going to be a list of hard choices, especially when a potential all-comers list has to be willing to deal with just terminators or IG vets.

Though then again, we're not using our heavy support slots and 70+pts is around the same price as the Vespids. Targeting array would probably be one of initial options as 70 pts for 2 S5 hits a turn is a lot whilst 3 is closer to being able to get a 25% losses morale check on a unit each turn, potentially panicking additional units.

Still don't think I'd take them against all comers largely because of the threat of mega-armoured nobs and terminators. You're limited to 10 men per squad, so against Orks choppa boyz, if your broadside can kill two then they can't take you out in one turn and if you can take out four before they get to you then they take two turns to kill you (in both cases, assuming no drones). This is a single broadside, so it puts the other more effective 2+ save units into perspective - unless you know the match up ahead of time and we're talking a handful of possible match-ups, then battles in the Zone Mortalis are almost always going to be about killing Terminators and the like.

You could possible replace the second plasma/melta commander with a unit of 3 broadsides (splitting them up into two if you know you're a defender, or just going with target locks on the leader) and another 'el and 'vre armed with a AFP/Flamer and BC/Flamer - which would certainly increase your ability against non-Meqs and get you more units. Depends how confident you are that your plasma/melta unit can handle all the terminators you might face (afterall, they can be reasonably expected to kill a squad of 5-9 without taking casualties), because not much else will. Plus concentrating fire is a big thing here where it's not easy to bring multiple units to deal with a target - given the max squad size is 10, if that HQ squad can deal with a full squad of terminators, then it can pretty much kill any other unit it'll ever encounter - there's no risk of getting bogged down by a cheap unit of 30 orks or termagants, because they just won't fit (1" away, two a breast makes the unit of ten 5" long).

Actually whilst writing this I've become a little more convinced - that unit of 3 can take out most non-MEq units in two turns anywhere on the board (assuming they don't flee), which works well with the Vespids being able to travel quickly but not really able to challenge a squad of 10 IG/Orks/Guardians/Genestealers when it actually comes to taking the objective.

I am not sure I am comfortable using the SMS to engage targets in other rooms and hallways.

I know rules wise it's completely legal, but considering your are supposed to be in rooms and corridors... how are the missiles circumventing the walls? Out in the open we assume they fly up and over intervening terrain... but in these corridors?

Sounds like something that will be house ruled quick and in a hurry.