Tau Empire: Part 1, Melee Weapons

I'm seriously doing this.

There are 3(!) melee weapons in the codex that can be taken by a total of 2(!!!) units. For some reason you have to spend points to take two of them even though neither of them are power weapons or good. Honestly why would you spend points on them?



Honor Blade
Doesn't allow your attacks characteristic to get a bonus if you have a second CC weapon (which you don't anyways.). Gives you a fantastic* (* - read as pointless) S5 attack that allows everyone to take armor saves. Why isn't this free? Honestly, 5 points for this? The same cost as a flamer? Or a Space Wolves meltagun? Why? If you take this and your bloodthirsty Ethreal manages to kill anyone let me know. I'll call James Randi and let him know a miracle has occurred.

Two Equalizers (can't have just 1 fool!)
Super-amazing weapons that give you AP4(!) and a bonus attack. You now have 4 attacks at S3 and it only cost you 10 points! What a steal! Let's see what you get for this:

Against MEQ: 4+ to hit, 5+ to wound, and 3+ to save gives you a whopping 1/18 wounds which translates to .22 wounds total versus MEQ. I'd let your Ethereal hide and get no attacks. It's better this way.

Against FX 3+ to hit, 4+ to wound and no save gives you a, admittedly nice, 1.3 wounds average with 1 round of attacks. That's actually not bad, but is it worth 10 points? Maybe, but, why is your Ethreal in CC in the first place?

Kroot Rifle
No longer gives you a bonus attack. Which is good because Kroot in CC used to be devastating *eye roll*. They do, however, now give you AP5 which is pretty awesome versus FX. In the previous codex Kroot had S4 in addition to the bonus attack so you're likely to find these changes make your Kroot much less viable in CC now. Though now for a point extra you can make all your Kroot snipers. This is pretty sweet against high toughness models but usually those models have a good enough save that they can ignore the 1/4 of shots that actually manage to wound. E for effort though.

Conclusion
Don't even bother. If you're playing Tau you already knew you would have no CC. No surprises here. Why did they make these options cost points though? Silliness.