Durante Domenico Bozzini – best known as ‘Glyn’ or ‘Glynisir’ in the Warhammer 40k fandom – is as dedicated as T’au players come. He picked up the faction in 2001 at the age of eight years old, and never let go. In 2025 he was the highest performing T’au player in the International Tournament Circuit and the World Championship of Warhammer. Who better to ask for insights about how to play the T’au Empire effectively?
I interviewed Glynisir before Warhammer 40k 11th edition had fully launched, and the focus of our discussion was on understanding the play style of the T’au and what made it distinct from the other Warhammer 40k factions; but the master commander was very accurate in his predictions for how their strengths would translate in the new edition. The T’au Empire is showing up as a serious contender in the new edition of 40k, with several GT wins in the first weeks.
“People new to the faction often find themselves confused after settling in”, Glynisir says, “because they believe we are the best in class shooting faction – that is not true”. “Our faction identity is that we go fast, and we do not play by the same rules as all of the other shooting factions”. He clarifies: the T’au are “best in class for speed” among all the shooting factions, and “if there is a rules hoop to jump through, we will not have to jump through that hoop”.
He expounds on how this lets you play: “It is the ultimate form of agency… you get to say ‘I am going to apply X damage to you, no matter what you do; it doesn’t matter where you stand, I am going to move into position with my unit next turn, and I’m going to shoot you”.
That’s even easier in 11th edition, thanks to “loosened restrictions on drawing line of sight: vehicles no longer have to be wholly within terrain to draw line of sight through it”. With more sight lines on the battlefield, “our movement focused shooting army is able to take advantage of those many lines” to delete the enemy.
The T’au have also been major beneficiaries of the changes to Deep Strike that allow models to deploy an inch closer to enemy units; and the change to unit coherency that requires units to clump up, making it harder to screen out the battlefield with bodies and easier to deploy units by Deep Strike.
The Crisis Battlesuits have everything you could want to take advantage of that: a huge weapons payload relative to the unit’s footprint, further buffs from several detachments, and a stratagem that allows them to deploy danger close. A massed Crisis suit deployment is more devastating and more feasible than ever.
Glynisir has a somewhat counterintuitive view of the T’au Empire’s weaknesses. “People often say they’re not a melee army”, he begins, “if you need to get anything done in the charge or fight phase, you’re basically shit out of luck”. But “the best T’au players find the charge and fight phases actually are still a benefit to them, even if you can’t do a lot…. you can move in the movement phase, shoot in the shooting phase, and then move again if you’re able to charge”.
Glynisir does see one added challenge when facing off against melee armies in 11th: “melee units getting into an army are much harder to extricate oneself from, because they’ve doubled the effective range of the pile in slash consolidate move”. That means “way more melee units are going to come friendly touch you, even if they’re not dealing damage to you, they’re just like, ‘Hey, let’s hang out in melee, why don’t we?'” – assuming, of course, you haven’t blasted them into oblivion.
Paradoxically, he finds that “the faction weirdly struggles with armies that are more dedicated to slow guns than the T’au are to fast ones”. He adds “it’s weird to show up to a gun line shootout with your T’au Empire and be like ‘Why is this Marine player out-shooting me?’ And the answer is because we’re not really a core shooting faction, we’re about moving around really fast and then shooting when we get there”.
The other big challenge for aspiring T’au commanders is “understanding that as precious as your units are, there will be a time for each to go to their death to do their duty”. New players have to learn the necessity of this as a general principal – then, “without getting into specific matchup knowledge, knowing which units you don’t care about being alive and which you do care about being alive”, and when in a match it’s okay to lose them, “is like 70% of the battle of playing 40k”. A useful heuristic Glynisir suggests to his coaching clients is to identify who their ‘final girl’ is, the one unit they know can’t be allowed to die.
Glynisir has been playing the T’au for 25 years, and describes his hopes for their next Warhammer 40k codex as a Christmas list – he doesn’t highlight any glaring weaknesses. He would, however, like to see options return that allow you to make “one to two battle suits pretty badass in melee”, something that has been feasible occasionally in the faction’s history; and for GW to give the drones that accompany the battlesuits full model status, instead of relegating them to mere tokens.
If you’re interested in recruiting Glynisir as a Warhammer 40k coach, you can contact him via his site, the Fire Caste Academy.
And whether you’re a master of the T’au Va or simply exploring the faction, come and join us in the Wargamer Discord community – we’d love to see your minis!
Source: Wargamer
