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Tau Commander is an Independant Character and thus can not be shot at unless he is the closest target. The rules for drones say they form a unit with the guy they're with. Does that mean he no longer benefits from the Indepandant Character rules?

My understanding is that that's the way it goes. It sucks I know. (I would very much like it if drones didn't form a unit with ICs .... so my commander could have the protection of sheild drones without loosing the protection of being an IC)

The hard thing with drones is that they are wargear (for some units) and follow most of the wargear rules, yet they function as individual models and follow all the rules for casualty removal, moral etc like models in a regular unit. The other thing that makes Drones even more confusing is that an IC with drones can join & leave a unit like he's a regular IC.

You are correct, Aduro.

Don't bring drones with crisis suits!

Stelek wrote:You are correct, Aduro.

Don't bring drones with crisis suits!

that depends on how you use them.
i have a tank hunting shas'o that depstrikes with iridium armor, stim injectors, 2 shield drones and a shield generator. i am not worried about his independant character status as he is going to be in close with the enemy anyway. i do care about him surviving the return fire he is going to take when he shows up and drops an enemy leman russ, predator etc...

and at LD 10 making a moral check for the loss of a drone or 2 isn't a big deal.

i also run shield drones with my shas'o /command team 2nd HQ. since they are already a team his IC status is also not an issue there untill the team is gone.

Yep, makes the IC for Tau suck a bit.

Drones with Crisis purely depends on you setup. I used to field a 3man crisis team with two shield drones and found that they were extremely hard to kill or pin down and could even hold their-own when forced into the open for a short period. So would be ideal to include drones for games when you need to take-and-hold an objective.

I will be honest and say that recently I changed my army setup and I cut back on the number of drones because of it. I did find that the army performed better as I could afford more units with the extra points.

I've started to give the Ethereal two drones as sometimes he needs to be slightly in the open to give the Tau units their morale reroll, and the Shas'o two bodyguards instead of drones.