1/5 bloodied? Eww...

That puts a damper on things, especially for a Warlord that you want to stick around at least as long as it takes you to make your Tau strikes, huh?

He still looks dead strong to me tho, mostly because of his Sig Squad.

Incredible powerfull Warlord during the initial stages of the game (turn 1 to 4), afterwards his ability can become more of an issue for the Tau player.

Having played my fair share of games with him now, I can savely say that he does reward aggressive play to the extreme.

As such,

4/5

Well, at least he is theoretically the hardest warlord to pin down.

He is not harder than any other 2/7 Warlord, since anyone can return to HQ instead of attacking.

You rely playing aggresive with as many units as possible or having Kauyon Strikes in hand, or Aun shi will be forced to attack eventually and you lose his benefit for the later rounds of battle. So you need to win fights fast with him, and armourbane helps much in that job. The Elite Fire Cadre becomes core for this warlord, protecting those X/1 and X/2 models in combat until they strike.

His signature cards, together with a well placed Ambush Platform and Strength boosting Attachments makes a very strong Warlord assassination deck.

If you get this guy with at least 1 Stingwing Swarm with an Ion Rifle and you can do some serious damage.

Testing has me believe that this guy isn't that great. His forced retreat makes him combat weak, and the slew of Armourbane mitigates but doesn't counter this. His biggest strengths are that he can use Homing Beacon and Kauyon Strike, but even the former is no big thing, as Tau already had access to six good command winning limited cards.

Beyond that, I think I rate Shadowsun higher.

Also, early experiments suggest this guy isn't the Kith foil I'd hope he'd be.

Ah well.

Aun'Shi along with the Inquisitor coming out in the next two War Packs are the warlords that have my interest at the moment. Going to build a deck for him and test this weekend. I'll give my full opinion on him after. 

Well, lost a couple of games against Aun'shi last night, one of them with Kith. Thats statistics for you: you can't draw conclusions easily off small samples.

Some further thoughts: he certainly is terrible at Warlord vs Warlord, and when you need to win a battle with him you need units with that can carry on the fight on their own. Playing Warlord + One unit is a surefire way to get that unit routed or preferentially targeted.

He's also really hard to bloody.

Homing Beacon is less of a strength than I thought: many players seem to be opting for 3 Drones, 3 Promotions and 0-1 Beacons, just because Promotions are less likely to clog your hand, and because Drones also deny opponent economy whilst boosting your own, whilst Beacon is one way.

Kauyon Strike is even better than I thought if you use it to move multiple Ethereals, which is something I missed when playing it myself.

Finally, I think there are still a lot of questions about the right overall shape of an Aun'shi deck. Tau heavy, for certain, but is it a deck that uses attachments and Ambush Platform, or one that just plays as many units as possible? Do we carry the max amount of ranged? Do we use the previously neglected Carnivore Pack?

Lots of questions that haven't been satisfactorily answered yet. My impression so far, however, is that this Warlord is neither overpowered nor underpowered, but he's definitely meta-changing.

I really love to read that Homemade Bacon is often cut off because that confirm my initial toughts about that card. The "limited" part is a huge drawback for Tau faction because the have the best limited card in the game. 

And... well it's not realy different from prometeus mine if you think about it:

- you draw it and you play in a turn

- in the first turn you get 1 card

- in the second turn you get 1 resources

- now you are even

- from the third turn you are starting get some profits

This WL is balanced and really fun to play. I don't think it could win some tournament in a short time but I'm glad he's out.

I really love to read that Homemade Bacon ...

Yum... :-)

During a battle if Aun'Shi is your last unit and he deals his damage to the last remaining unit on your opponent's side, destroying the enemy unit, who wins the planet?

I am assuming no one wins it since the opponent is destroyed, Aun'Shi goes back to HQ because of his forced reaction leaving no units at the planet.

no one. So in case it was a 1st planet, you just discard it and no one scores it. 

A planet is assigned when a ready unit is going to attack and it has no target.

Trailblazer makes a great include for Aun'shi decks for that reason (its a great include anyway, which helps). Fact that it has 2 command on its own plus Mobile often means that if you are planning sniping with Aun'shi you can snipe adjacent the the trailblazer, win both command struggles, move the trailblazer in to support Aun'shi and then use his 2 Armourbane attack to kill the opposition, and the trailblazer to be there so you get battle win and a battle ability. 

Also, Aun'shi is blessed with a LOT of cheap command units: two 1-for-1s out of Tau cards, plus his signature squad, plus Recon Drones: thats 13 units in the deck even before we look at neutral command cappers. That in mind, its normally not that much of a hardship to make sure someone is left behind to win the battle when Aun'shi command snipes.

I also like the combo with heavy marker drone and Aun Shi's Armourbane ability.

If he has a decent unit with him such as a warlord groupie that strikes for 4, now he's an 8 armourbane unit. Could kill a lot of high-cost units like one of Chaos' demons or something.