Games Workshop has previewed a handful of the new subfaction-specific ‘Sept’ rules coming in the new Warhammer 40k T’au Empire codex – including a Sept Tenet that gives Kroot and Vespid units access to the Mont’ka and Kauyon faction buffs; a Warlord Trait to give one nearby unit Objective Secured; a Relic that lets you jetpack a character to safety from an incoming charge; and a 2CP Stratagem that makes a single weapon attack ignore the target’s Invulnerable save.
Shown off in a Warhammer Community codex preview article on Tuesday, the new subfaction rules – viewed in more detail below – are a handful of the various specific in-game rules a T’au Empire army can benefit from by adopting one of the six major ‘Septs’ covered in the new book: T’au, Vior’la, Sa’cea, Dal’yth, Bork’an, and (presumably) Farsight Enclaves.
The new Sept Tenet for the often overlooked Dalyth Sept is Trading Partners, which not only gives all your units the benefit of Light Cover all the time (unless they’re in melee) – but also grants your Kroot and Vespid units the benefits of the Mont’ka and Kauyon Tactical Philosophies (army-wide buffs only accessible to main-line T’au units for all other Septs).
Sa’cea, a traditionally more competitive T’au subfaction, gains the Warlord trait Strategic Conqueror, allowing your Warlord to pick a unit within 9″ and grant it Objective Secured for a turn, the better to take and hold a key objective.
The default T’au subfaction (shockingly titled the T’au Sept) gets the Vectored Manoeuvring Thrusters Relic, a particularly potent-looking upgrade that’ll let a battlesuit character make a full move (plus two inches extra) the very moment it’s chosen as the target of a charge – either jetting backwards out of trouble, or, if the timing is right, zipping forward into a commanding position, ready to lay into the enemy on your next turn. The possibilities are endless.
And, says Tuesday’s article, Bork’an (the Sept most associated with advanced engineering) gets the 2CP stratagem Experimental Weaponry, which’ll let one of your weapons ignore all Invulnerable saves for the length of the phase. It’s a benefit that’s built into the fearsome new T’au Railgun rules – but using this Stratagem to apply it to guns with larger numbers of shots (like, say, the utterly bonkers Pulse Blastcannon) could have some brutal damage potential.
The previews come alongside a look at the new T’au codex’s system for building your own custom Sept subfaction rules, which draws on the faction’s lore by having you choose individual Sept Tenets from five lists, associated with the five ‘sectors’ of T’au-controlled space in the galaxy.
The twist is that you have to choose your two Tenets from the lists for neighbouring regions on ‘Ye Olde Mappe of the T’au Empyre’ – though it still offers a good bit of choice; GW says there are “almost 100 different combinations on offer”.
GW first announced the forthcoming 9th Edition Warhammer 40k T’au codex back in October, before previewing the cover art alongside a brand new plastic model for the Darkstrider character in December.
The firm is still coyly saying the book is “coming soon” – but , if previous preview schedules are anything to go by, we should expect a release date in late February or early March.
You can look back at the 9th Edition codexes released so far (and which have still to emerge) in our Warhammer 40k codex release dates guide.