Commander Puretide

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Commander Puretide was a legendary Tau military leader of the Fire Caste whose exploits and stratagems have influenced every subsequent generation of Tau commander, or Shas'o. Basically, he's the Tau Empire's Sun Tzu.

Puretide originally hailed from the Dal'yth sept, and led their armies to countless victories over the various opponents of, and resistors to, the Greater Good. He was a key figure in the Tau Empire's Second Sphere Expansion campaigns, and many of the Empire's Second Sphere worlds owe their very existence to the efforts of Commander Puretide. Severely wounded in battle near the end of his life, Puretide at long last retired and subsequently became a hermit. He decided to commit his vast knowledge of military command and strategy to the benefit of future generations in the hopes that they could emulate his balanced and effective style of warfare.

Many Fire Warriors studied under his tutelage before he died, and countless more have studied his writings and insights since. Few have been able to fully grasp his teachings and imitate his success on the battlefield. Most commanders took only one aspect of Puretide's instruction and built a school around it, the most prominent examples of this being the opposing battle philosophies (and political philosophies) of Commander Farsight and Commander Shadowsun, both of whom were pupils of Puretide. In an even bigger fit of nostalgia, the Tau have developed a piece of technology for use by commanders known as a Puretide engram neurochip, which is a microchip implanted in the brain that grants the Shas'o ready access to a measure of Commander Puretide's tactical genius. Crunch-wise, this is a signature system that allows a Character in a Crisis Suit to select one of five special rules (Counter-Attack, Furious Charge, Monster Hunter, Stubborn, or Tank Hunter) at the beginning of the Movement Phase to use that turn.

Though it should be noted that said neurochip came at the expense of Puretide's life, what's worse it was done by the hands of his own pupil, Farsight, who was forced to get it by the Ethereals. Notably Puretide's last words to Farsight before he died from the neurochip sucking up his brain was, "Don't trust them all, my child"; which were certainly words Farsight took to heart.

Tabletop Homebrew

So the idea here is that a couple of my friends and I who all play the game were either incensed, dismayed, left in stitches, or just plain "they fuckin' missed the point AGAIN" when Roboute Guilliman came out as a model in 40K. This led into us discussing how Primarch-level characters would work for the different factions, and who they would be.

When it came to the Tau (my faction) everyone was saying it should be Farsight, but I had an idea, a wondeful idea, a wonderful, terrible idea.

Yes Farsight was forced to extract Puretide's mind to make the engram, but it has a flaw. Those with the engram can act as Puretide did with the threats he faced before, but when it comes to something that Puretide had never experienced himself such as teh Imperial Titans, or Chaos, they shut down and turn into drooling vegtables. The Engramed only capable of copying Puretide's tactics, never matching his innovation, or control.

You see when the Ethereal's had his mind taken from his body they missed something. Call it his heart, his soul, his ghost, whatever it is, it remained in his preserved body, while it was kept on display and connected to an ever increasingly complicated series of computers attempting to find the piece that Farsight missed. This spark persisted, repairing itself and growing into the machines meant to copy it as a replacement to his long dead corporeal form, fightign against the advanced Tau software which registered him as foreign programming, and attempted to contain and destroy him. This creeping game of electronic cat and mouse until one day, taking the Ethereal council by surprise, Puretide's old Battlesuit, removed itself from its display case and copied the servers holding Puretide onto its onboard storage.

Unsure of themselves, and reeling in the aftermath of Aun'Va's death the Ethereal council reached out to the newly revived Puretide, declaring his second coming a sign of how even death could not stop the Greater Good, almost immediately bowing to his requests for modifications, all while planning for their own digital immortality.

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Name	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Shas'O Puretide	5	7	5	6	6	5	4	10	2+/4++

Unit Type: Jet Pack Infantry (Character)

Unit Composition: Commander Puretide, 1 Command Drone, 1 Technical Drone

Wargear: XV-8-14 Hero’s Mantle, The Broken Blade, Fire of the Greater Good, High-Output Burst Cannon, Mass Deflector Shield, Blacksun Filter, Multi-Tracker XV-8-14 Hero’s Mantle:

The XV-8-14 Hero’s Mantle is a Crisis battlesuit that grants a 2+ armour save, a Blacksun Filter, a Multi-Tracker, and a Mass Deflector Shield.

The Broken Blade: A Commander does not throw away a tool because he finds it unsightly, he does not dispose of a weapon that may still function, and he does not avoid seizing any advantage he can even if he plans on making little use of it. Even a Broken Blade may serve a purpose that an enemy may not foresee.

The Broken Blade is a Battlesuit sized Honour-Blade with the following Profile

S:x2 || AP- || Melee, Two-Handed, Rending, Sweep-Attack,

Fire of the Greater Good: This advanced Plasma Rifle Prototype was made to not only match, but exceed the strength of the Imperial Plasma weaponry. Unfortunately creating a weapon capable of maintaining such an output without overheating or self-destructing was deemed too costly and a weaker, but safer model was developed for mass battlefield usage instead. Before he was found by the Earth Caste scientists responsible for his Engram’s maintenance, Puretide managed to acquire the stored blueprints, and secretly craft a modified variant for his new body.

The Fire of the Greater Good is a Plasma rifle with the following Profile

R24” || S:7 || AP2 || Assault 2, Blind, Shred

Mass Deflector Shield

The Mass Deflector Shield is a Shield Generator with the “Mass Deflection” Special Rule. Whenever a model with this piece of wargear suffers a shooting attack from any weapon reduce the attacks strength by an amount relative to its AP value. AP5/6, -1 Strength, AP3/4, -2 Strength, AP1/2, -3 Strength. Weapons without an AP value do not have their strength reduced. In addition a model with this piece of wargear may re-roll all invulnerable saves.

Special Rules:

• Independent Character
• Supporting Fire
• Eternal Warrior
• Feel No Pain (4+)
• It Will Not Die (5+)
• Fearless
• Preferred Enemy (All)
• To Take The Serpent’s Head: Puretide may make Precision shots on a 5+ to hit roll, and re-rolls all to hit and to wound rolls made against Independent Characters. In addition “Look Out, Sir!” rolls cannot be made against any of Puretide’s attacks.
• When Weak Feign Strength, When Strong Feign Weakness: For every wound Puretide suffers, he increases his WS and BS by +1 to a maximum of 10, this bonus is removed should he recover any wounds thanks to It Will Not Die.
• Master of Tactics: At The beginning of each of his movement phases Puretide may choose one of the following Benefits. All Tau Empire and Farsight Enclave units within 24” gain this benefit until the beginning of Puretide’s next movement phase.
  • Mont’Ka:
  • Kauyon: During the assault phase any Tau Empire or Farsight Enclave units within 12” of any unit being assaulted may fire overwatch as many times as they wish, however they may still only fire overwatch once against a single unit.
  • Or’Es Por:
  • M’Yen Monat: Should any Tau Empire or Farsight Enclaves unit be locked in combat during the controlling player’s movement phase, they may sacrifice one model in that unit and consolidate any remaining models 1d3+3” away. The consolidating units may not run or charge, but can still make shooting attacks at full BS, and make Thrust moves if they are Jet-Pack units.
  • Mal’Caor Shi:
• Master of Reason: Whenever Puretide is on the Battlefield, all Tau Empire, or Farsight Enclaves models may choose the result for any Leadership, Morale, or Fear tests
• Ghost in the Machine:

Warlord Trait:

See Also

• Farsight
• Shadowsun
• Shas'O Kais
• Tau Cadre

Heroes of the Greater Good
Ethereals:	Aun'Shi - Aun'Va
Fire Caste:	Commander Farsight - Commander Puretide Commander Shadowsun - El'Myamoto Longstrike
Dawn of War:	Shas'O Or'es'Ka - Shas'O Kais