Authored by :: Sblafren
April 25, 2002

Before you go on, note that the following rules have not been playtested and is a 'living' article as such. Additions and editing will be done at a later stage and these rules are not acknowledged by GW so use at your own discretion. -Webmaster

Ok, I must admit... I don't like the Kroot. I want to field an all Tau army. But the Tau lack CC choices. So, I had an idea....

Background
In the old days of the Tau kingdom there were 5 castes... the Earth Caste, the Water Caste, the Air Caste, the Fire Caste, and the Blood Caste. The kingdoms were at war often, with the Fire Caste and Blood Caste doing most of the killing.

The Blood Caste were the close combat hellions and the Fire Caste the ballistic gunmen. The Blood Caste also tended to dominate the ranks of the military leaders.

After countless millennia of slaying the last great battle was fought and the empire was formed. In this great climatic battle all of the Blood Caste were slain. So too, a great many civilians died. The Ethereals were born from this blood shed and came to rule the empire.

The rumors now run, silently, that the Ethereals are in fact, Blood Caste, that they simply changed their names, clothes, and demeanor in an attempt to avoid the stigma that the great bloodshed cast on their caste.

When the Tau took the Kroot and the Damocles humans into the Empire some of the ethereals recoiled at the thought of diluting the Empire with foreign blood. A group of these ethereals have formed a secret cabal, they call themselves the Blood Caste. They excel in CQB and HtH. Although they openly assert that they are simply ethereals of an old school of thought, nothing more or less, rumors abound that they are in fact, the REAL blood caste reborn.

Rules
Armies that include Blood Caste models must be pure of alien allies and from the home Tau planet.

Stats

Blood Caste come in a unit of 4-8, at 50pts per model.

For modeling purposes, keep the Ethereal models (perhaps paint the skin with red tattoos, or even dyed entirely red). But for gaming purposes, they lose their Inspiring presence and the leadership re-roll ability. These guys turned their backs on their role as Ethereals and they espouse an extremist fundamentalist ideology. Thus they are "outcasts", of a sort, and have lost their clout and standing within the Empire (they are working on regaining this in their new incarnation, check back in a few centuries).

They also lose a wound due to the initiation ceremony (which includes a blood rite that severely depletes them).

But they come with a +1 upgrade to WS due to their intense hth training (included).

And they get a Blood Blade at no extra costs. This is not technically either an Honor Blade or a Bonding Knife, **nor is it a power weapon** thus it does NOT come with a +2 to strength or automatically wound on a roll of 6. The Blood Blade is a weapon blessed in the cabal initiation ceremony (involving ritual bloodletting of the initiate, see above). It is double bladed and they are quite good at using it, thus it gives them a +1 to attacks. They also share a deep emotional bond to this weapon via the initiation rite, so while they hold it they gain a +1 to initiative.

They are also gifted with a Blood Hood, which is made of a heavy metallic fiber of unknown origin (one can use cloth or Green Stuff to model the cloak, maybe dye or paint it red?), it is given to them at the end of the initiation ceremony and is their final badge of membership in the cabal. The cloak confers a 5+ save (NOT invulnerable).

They may also be Bonded, at +10 pts for the entire cabal (one might paint matching markings on their Blood Blades and Hoods to mark this).

However, they will not use technology of any kind. That means no grenades, no drones, and no ranged weapons (for them, not the army with them).

This may seem rather strange for the shooty Tau, but you might be confusing the Fire Caste with the entire race, just because the one caste is heavy into fire arms doesn't mean the entire race thinks that way (however, I would suggest that with the loss of the Blood Caste to Tau history over the millennium the net effect WOULD be to drive them towards ballistics over hand to hand. But the old Blood Caste would not have been so limited). However, a reminder, this is a tiny break away cabal among the vast Empire, thus they will never appear in large numbers, nor often, in any army.

Another handicap is that you may not take Koot of any kind in your army. The Blood Caste was a direct response to the entrance of aliens to the Empire, thus they shun any army that includes these allies. Again, this means that an army with Blood Caste is actually MORE shooty, more focused on pure Tau tactics, and more reliant on the Rourke's Rift method of fighting (guns and discipline).

The Blood Caste count as an Elite troop choice.

Now... on to play testing... I will get back t'yall on that, if you use these guys, please let me know how that goes as well.

Thanks for all the feed back, yer great!

_S_

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