The Rise of the XV22s

Tau Space Marines

An unlikely alliance between the Tau and Astartes. This deck is a take on a heavy-laden attachment setup for Cmdr. Shadowsun in her quest to claim her own alternate art promo-card from Spring2016.

The overall idea with this deck is to play a decent command game and swarm attachments onto fighting units enabling them to strike harder, while also protecting them from sudden Warpstorms and potentially setting them up for Tau'va.

Some notes on tactics:
- A starting hand with Wroth, two command units, one fighting unit and a Stealth Cadre/Auxiliary Armour is not bad at all, especially if you have initiative, because you can discard the stealth suit with Wroth and recur it when the Commander deploys while removing 2, 3 or 4 cards from your opponent's hand.
- Exterminatus is included as a wildcard to prevent the nearest tricon or crucial planet becoming a marshalling point for the opponents army if your own hold over the first planet seems too strong to contest. Or if the first planet is simply too insignificant for your opponent to bother with.
- Attack-boosting attachments on a unique unit can be tough for your opponent to deal with, especially against Dark Eldar because you can't be so easily scared away by Archon's Terror; Even the Odds is there to mitigate the problem of attachment-carrying non-unique units being routed as well.
- Gun Drones attached to either a Tactical Squad or an Assault Squad can be battle-decisive. Ambush Platform is a key card for such a trick.
- The Command-link Drone is an excellent card in my opinion, especially when thinking Tau'va. It is practically a permanent Even the Odds, i.e. not restricted to any single planet, so ponder its uses carefully if you get it. The Drone presents you with ample ways of directing your fighting.

Mulligan draw for these cards:
1. Ambush Platform
2. Communications Relay
3. Command-link Drone

Weaknesses:
- There's not exactly a wealth of shield cards and those that are there are typically not meant for shield-usage, so be mindful of this during deployment and when you commit. The Tau hero can help slightly here as well.
- While there's no vehicles for Gorzod to commandeer, the deck's low cost curve is slightly vulnerable to Calamity and Sowing Chaos, so at least be mindful of the blue planets when facing Orks, Chaos or Dark Eldar.
- Shadowsun's main weakness is consistency, that she is very dependent on not drawing a starting hand full of attachments (XV22 Stealth Cadres excluded here) with little or no units or vice versa. This, in my opinion, is what prevents her from rising to top tier, at least with the current cardpool available She's close though and she might reach top level yet. A few days ago I went 1-1 against a very competent Worr player with this deck: the loss was a direct result of exactly such a useless starting hand, yet the win came not from an excellent starting hand, but from one that simply wasn't completely useless on turn one.

Feel free to put forward comments, critique and suggestions.