I really hope not. Sisters of Battle are pretty close to space marines.. Sister tactical: bolter, (flamer), meltagun, storm bolter Retribution/ Sister Heavy: heavy bolter, multi-melta and.. heavy flamer?? Assault/ Jump sister: dual pistols instead of chainsword.. Sister support: a priest? Tau could mean a bigger difference in playstyle, more variety in new weaponry etc. I could see an "Imperial Faction", with some stormtroopers ("tactical"), servitors ("heavy"), and then jump pack sister, or something...
Is it a printed book? don't read e-books. Very recently I was reading Damocles, was a nice book and after that I whished White Scars would be present in EC. They need some presence in a good video game too ^^ For game design purpose you are right, but my comment was purely based on personal priority. I really don't like the concept of a bad copied Anime-like faction in the grimdark unvierse which was obviously invented to grab money from the Mech affine playerbase. They feel crudely patched into the universe. Don't get me wrong, I'm super japan affine myself, read a lot of Mangas with Neon Genesis Evangelion being my favorite (Manga and Anime). I like Mechwarrior even though its a long time ago I was playing any kind of game related to that universe....but the 40k universe doesn't really need them. But I can not change the fictional universe based on my selfish viewpoint on the very same. So I will have to live with them and I will just stick to the lore and as a Space Marine player will put my effort into purging the xenos from Arkhona (well and when I play Ultwhé, I will complain about the Planet being tainted by all the other lesser races )
is a campaign/lore book, is basically white scar /raven guard codex. you find it both phisical and digital. http://www.games-workshop.com/it-IT/War-Zone-Damocles-Kauyon-EN
Ah ok it's a rule book, I understand. I'm sticking to Black Library novels at the moment I hoard already enough rulebooks I will most likely not be able to use the next decades (I hope I am wrong). That's why I was always hoping for something like Tabletop Simulator being officially supported by GW, if you buy a pack of e.g. ten Space Marine you could get a unique code to unlock a digital asset of them. If you buy them digitally you could get a physical box in a GW store. You would still need the physical (or digital) copies of rulebooks from GW as the game is just providing you a table, terrain and models and the physics to handle them like tossing figures around on a table (BTW check out X-COM the board game on TTS or real life, it's an awesome combination of an App based game master on Tablet or Smartphone and a real board game, super hard but fun...the app doesn't run on the virtual ingame tablet so you need a real one or smartphone). So you could play locally and all around the world...Vassal is nice but not that nice to keep me playing TT with my friends scattered all around the world.
Spoiler basically shadowsun kill the raven guard chapter master because shadowsun used a decoy (another tau in her armor, and shrike become the new chapter master
