Markerlight

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Laser pointers with attitude, and a key component of Tau strategies. Not to be confused with the angry flashlight.

Markerlights are dropped on enemy units by Tau units that have a weapon of the same name. It's functionally a laser designator and it puts a Markerlight counter on the target. Markerlight counters can be removed to do one of the following:

• Improve one of your units (which is firing at the markerlighted unit)' BS by one (up to five with multiple markers.)
• Lower the cover save of the markerlighted unit by one (down to none with multiple markers.)
• Fire a Seeker Missile from a Skyray Missile Gunship (or any other vehicle with optional Seeker Missiles) at the markerlighted unit (one per marker.)
• Lower the leadership of the markerlighted unit on a pinning test (down to automatic failure with multiple markers.)

And that's not even the full extent of it!

Suffice to say, this is Awesome and a component of what makes the Tau fun to play, since the markerlight support is so versatile and useful. Hell, entire combat styles can be built around the strategy of mass-markerlights and using Skyrays as artillery pieces, which frankly, is sweet. There's also a lot of ways to get Markerlights on the tabletop, from the heavily-armored Skyray, to the mobile Pirahna skimmer, to the lowly Pathfinder. Markerlights of any stripe act as a force-multiplier for the Tau, so if you play Tau you want to keep them close enough to target the enemy but with enough breathing room to pull back when targeted in turn. Contrarily, if you are playing against Tau, you want to kill those those damn little target painting blue commies as quickly as possible and make the entire Tau strategy fall apart, just make sure it is not another damn lure.