If this is actually something which comes about, expect a lot of complaining. Tau are already a very solid army with Crisis Suits a very good unit which makes up the Elite slot so obviously moving it to the Troops slot makes the army even better and we’re never going to see normal Tau ever again!?!? Ya, right. Crisis Suits as Troops are, without a doubt, a good option if it does come about but it’s not just a case of “awesome unit = awesome Troop to spam.”

Take a list where you’ve got six units of Fire Warriors or Kroot Carnivores and some Crisis Suits and/or Riptides in Elites. Let’s remove the Fire Warriors/Carnivores completely and replace them with Crisis Suits. We’ve probably lost points elsewhere if we want to have the maximum number of Crisis Suits in Troops with weapons (and really if you’re going to do this, you need the maximum as even then, it’s only 18 bodies) so something else is being dropped. Your firepower has obviously gone up significantly but has your scoring or list actually improved? Probably not.

Tau generally have weak Troops – they aren’t bad but they’re weak with T3/4+ or T3/6+ and Ld7. Not great, easy to drop even if they are cheap and can be taken in numbers and whilst cover can help, this is the main issue you come across when putting Tau armies together. Add in the compounded effect of Tau preferring to stay away from the enemy and it can be hard to deny an opponent their own objectives and/or grab Linebreaker/deny the opponent this option. There are lots of options to mitigate this, Crisis Suits themselves for example, Riptides, allies, Devilfish, etc. all provide more movement capacity to Tau and the ability to operate in more phases effectively but the crux is again those weak defensive Troops. Yes, they aren’t bad – they are good at what they do but you need to make sure you have a plan on how to take and deny objectives.

Crisis Suits as Troops seems to be a great answer to this, until you realise your opponent can shoot at a target which not only is scoring but has lots of very effective firepower. Kroot and Fire Warriors are good offensively but not great. Crisis Suits are and by putting them in as your Troops, this target priority disappears for your opponent. Not only that but if you’re running all Crisis Suits you only have 18 models/36 MEQ wounds as your scoring. That’s still not durable enough, particularly given their vulnerability to S8+ weapons.

So is this actually a good move? Hells yes. A normal army is generally taking one or two Crisis units already, if this can be done with them as scoring that’s fantastic – you’re just moving them from one FoC to another and gaining something. You still have the issues above but you’ve got the other scoring options to support this and your Crisis Suits pushing a flank can actually score, not just grab Linebreaker and deny. This also opens up the Elites slot for more Riptides and Crisis Suits (i.e. 2+2) and if this works as Allies, Crisis Suits + Riptide for allies. Now that would be great. However, this still doesn’t mean Farsight would be the only book used. Farsight as an HQ is okay – not great and you’re certainly not taking advantage of all the cool stuff Commanders can take (assuming you have to take him). Even if you don’t have to take him, guess what you’re losing? All those great options. PENchip, Iridium Armor, M3S, CnC, etc. all stay with normal Tau and whilst Farsight Enclaves are bound to have some of their own good items, don’t expect anything near the pure awesome of PENchip. This is before we even identify if there’s any other restrictions (hopefully Games Workshop has realised this is not a good idea…) but it’s not a clear cut and dry Farsight Enclaves > Tau Empire.

And we don’t even have any actual rules information yet, so stop dooming and glooming.