If you just want to know how to beat it start reading slightly before the youtube clip!
This tactica is written to show players why the Firstream Wing formation is good but not broken, at the same time introduce a proposal for ITC that would make the formation even less powerful but, still strong and competitive because the other option makes it competitive only in the hands of a highly skill player.
First off this is what the Firestream wing does: 4 units of piranhas one must be a single Piranha. That single piranha has the ability to nominate a unit within 36 and his line of sight and the all the piranhas from the formation gets plus 1 bs on that unit and tank hunter if its a vehicle. The formation also has a rule called Rearm and Refuel, it allows a surviving model that is within 6 of a table edge at the end of their movement phase to enter ongoing reserves, when they return they come back at full strength with new drones and seeker missiles! This creates the possibility to create what people call the Drone Factory! Basically you drop off your drones you leave come back with more and you continue this process to overwhelm your opponent with gun drones! Sounds broken but its not I will explain why later!
Secondly piranhas did not become good because of this formation, two drones cost 28 points a piranha cost 40 points, that's right Tau has a vehicle that technically only cost 12 points! Its been Tau's best kept secret for years but now its out! The reason why people think it is amazing is that players are just now finding out that the vehicle only truly cost 12 points and the Firestream formation made this 12 point vehicle even better must be broken right? Do not fall victim to the internet OMG phase just because a unit is good doesn't mean it or its new formation has to be nerfed. You should only change things to stuff that is broken such as 2+ re-roll able saves.
Thirdly let me tell you the ITC's temporary ruling and how most tournaments adjusted the rules for the piranha formation. They have made it to were you cannot leave the same turn you come in. Which basically eliminates the drone factory because In a 5 turn game you only get to create 2 bonus drone units! My proposal is that you cannot leave turn 1, which allows you to generate 3 bonus drone units! In exchange of this extra drone unit the opposing player recieves several benefits that I will explain later.
Let's address the first mistake that most players make when they think about the Drone Factory, the first batch of drones. If your opponent did not use the formation and brought 5 piranhas you would have to deal with those 10 drones regardless. The first batch of drones is not a benefit of the formation, so keep that in mind I cannot stress that enough. So when you are determining if the formation is broken or not the first wave of drones should not be included into your thought process because the formation did not create those drones.
With my proposal the firstbonus drones don't hit the field until turn 3! So turn 3 you get 140 free points worth of drones but you have to subtract 60 because if you do the math 12 ( true cost of a piranha) x 5 (number of piranhas) = 60 points so on turn 3 you are getting 80 free points on the field, next turn you have 220, if the game ends on turn five you have 360 points worth of bonus drones! Seems broken but compare that to other free points formations such as the war convocation where players are getting around 400 points of free upgrades this is not broken!
However, lets be honest is it wise to leave on turn 4 to get more drones when you can have 5 piranhas for objective grabbing? Making the best tactical move you would created 2bonus units or 220 points worth of free drones. Another thing you must factor in is that with the other free point formations such as the war convocation get to use their free points from the start of the game were as with the Drone Factory you don't get any bonus drones until turn 3 under my proposal.
By making it where you cant leave till turn 2 the drone farm clock is set back one turn. A 5 vehicle squad that cost 200 points could create 30 bonus drones if the game ended on turn 5 that's 420 points so 220 free points! However you did not get to take advantage of all those points instantly like the gladius strike force or the war convocation its gradually built up meaning you have time to deal with them its not like you have to deal with a million drones turn one. It starts with bonus drones coming in turn 3 12 inches away from your opponents board edge when you factor in time and space its not broken at all.
The next thing you have to consider is that the piranhas are coming from ongoing reserves, the drones will be deployed a maximum of 12 inches from the board edge. With careful objective placement you can make it to where they cannot shoot at things on the objective the first time they come on. You can make it to were the bonus drones don't have a meaningful impact till turn 4!
The next thing you have to factor in when determining if the formation is broken is the usefulness of a gun drone. A gun drone has a bs of 2, a twin-linked 18 inch str 5 ap 5 pinning gun that means a unit of 10 is shooting 20 strength 5 shots, these bad boys can bring the pain. On average a large squad will get 10-12 str 5 hits however, what else can they do. They are non scoring units meaning they cannot claim or contest objectives. They are t 4 with a 4+ armor save so they are tough but with a ld of 7 ws of 2 and str 3 they suck in close combat like all Tau. Also with so many drones on the field it gives you a chance to multi-charge imagine charging 10 drones and a riptide! Winning combat by 3-4 because you killed the drones and forcing that riptide to take a leadership test on a 6 than running him down!
Now lets talk about the benefits of the Firestream and how it is a really good formation. First you can create an army of drones! Under my proposal you can create 30bonus drones for 200 points. You can have drones bubble wrapping your Riptides and even your stormsurge. The main benefit of these drones is that they are disposable units that can be a pest to your opponent by forcing them to deal with them as they are not strong enough to devastate them but strong enough to matter.
Another benefit of the formation is the usage of seeker missiles. Under my proposal you will get 2 bonus volleys of seeker missiles on turns 3 and 5. A lot of players read Rearm and Refuel and think wow that's a lot of seeker missiles but its decieving because you cannot shoot your missiles and leave the table on the same turn, you have to stay for the shooting phase. Also just like the first patch of drones the first seeker missiles can not be consider a benefit of the formation as you would get those seeker missiles even if you had not taken the formation.
Lets List the Benefits of the Firestream Wing Formation under my proposal:
A 5 man squad can produce 3 bonus squads of drones that's 30bonusdrones.
You can get 20bonus seeker missile!
But wait Kenpachi your forgetting that you can take 3 of those squads meaning you can get 90bonus drones or 60bonus seeker missiles. Don't forget you can take the drone network formation to boast their bs up to three! That's 60 str 5 shots coming in each turn for three turns isn't that broken, my response is this!
Now let me expose this formation, if they take 640 points worth of piranhas and a minimum of 256 points worth of drones for the drone network they have 954 points left in a 1850 point list or 1114 if they want to have just 2 piranha farming squads. A riptide wing with all of them buying early warning override, ion accelerator, and a stimulant injector cost 675 points that leaves 279 points to spend on things to grab objectives with because your army of drones can not do it. Also the drone network formation makes it to where you are getting 15 hits a turn compared to 11-12, that's not a significant change and if they are using the marker lights to boast the drones shooting attack instead of the riptides that means that most likely the riptides are dead!
You don't need riptides with that amount of strength 5 shots but it is deceiving you! First off the bonus drones will not hit the field until turn 3 so you don't get bonus strength 5 shots till turn 3! Also what about the piranhas burst cannon, you don't have to worry about them and their 20 str 5 shots. So in exchange for not shooting 20 strength 5 shots the Tau player is gaining a unit that can shoot 20 str 5 shots!
The last sentence that is in bold is huge and something that most players most likely have not considered with this formation. The piranha squad is constantly leaving the board thus the Tau player is losing 20 strength 5 shots each turn! So with that firstbonuswave of drones, offensively speaking your Tau opponent hasn't gained anything if they leave the table to get more drones!
I will make a small chart demonstrating how it would work if a player is not allowed to leave the table turn 1 but can leave the turn he comes on, so you can see how unbroken this formation is!
First turn: Original drones are made seeker missiles are fired. No benefit from the formation is made because those missiles and drones were not created because of the formation.
Turn 2: The piranhas leave the table, the Tau player loses 20 strength 5 shots that he could have made. He has hurt himself because of the formation!
Turn 3 : Piranhas come on and create 10 drones than leave, the tau player gained 10 drones but lost 5 vehicles, in place of 2 rounds of shooting from the piranhas the player gets one round of shooting from thebonusdrones. You cannot say the Tau player gained a unit because in reality he lost one also because the piranhas left the field!
Turn 4:Tau player gets another unit of drones! The bonus drones put out 40 shots but remember the Tau player lost one round of shooting in the second turn so the formation on turn 4 has created 1 extra unit and 20 shots!
Turn 5:The tau player gets its last unit of drones and get an extra 60 shots from the formation and the piranhas remain on the field and can potentially shoot also, so these shots are allbonus shots.
Conclusion the tau player gained 3 units and 80 str 5 shots over the course of the game and not all at one point!
Now I will make a chart demonstrating the possibilities with seeker missiles even though it is the exact same as the current ITC ruling!
Turn 1: Tau player fires 10 seeker missiles and produce 10 drones, but once more no gain is made because of the formation.
Turn 2: The piranhas leave the field and the tau player loses 20 strength 5 shots and 5 piranhas, he has hurt himself.
Turn 3: The Tau player fires 10bonus seeker missiles and creates 10bonus drones, both the seeker missiles and the 20 shots are considered bonuses!
Turn 4: The tau player leaves the field losing 20 shots but the drone unit he created during the previous turn will make 20 shots so nothing is lost or gained offensively speaking. The Tau player does not have his piranhas on the field meaning the opponent can choose to attack rather it be by shooting or assault the bonus drones, the thing that is claiming or contesting objectives, or their offensive units such as a riptide.
Turn 5: The tau player comes on and fires 10 seeker missiles and creates 10 more drones so you gain 20 more strength 5 shots assuming the target of the seeker missiles is not in range of burst cannons aswell!
So you get 20 extra seeker missiles and 60 extra strength five shots over the course of a game and not all at once is that broken to you?
The list is going to be small because they are taking alot of piranhas with seeker missiles! If you take out Tau's marker lights than you make their seeker missiles not as good. They basically become rhinos with a hunter killer missile except its bs 3 ! You have 3 turns to take out their marker lights before they get to use their first bonus volley! Also because you know not to shoot at the piranhas because they are leaving and you dont want to shoot the gun drones as there going to make more taking out the marker lights is the best option as it affects the seeker missiles and their entire army! Riptides without ignore cover is not scary! They only have 1210 points if they take the max how many marker lights can they bring if they want to bring Drone Factory, with a riptides or a stormsurge or ghostkeels the answer is not alot maybe one unit 2 if they go try hard! Whats going to claim the objectives, what happens if the marker light source is targeted instead of the piranhas and drones, exposed is what happens!
Now lets talk about the main reason why its not broken! The piranhas are fragile they will either die or choose to gain durability and lose their offensive power. With my proposal where the piranhas cannot leave first turn, a player gets an opportunity to shoot at the piranhas. If he goes first he gets 2 turns to kill the piranhas. They are open top, side armor 10, with 2 hull points. Imagine a scatter laser bike squad 81 points shooting at 2 piranhas with 4 seeker missiles 116 points. That's 2-3 hull points at a minimum without jink according to averages but, lets be honest what happens to a rhino when its targeted by a scatbike squad now imagine if that rhino had 1 less hull point and could potentially die to a single penetrating hit because its open top!
Do you know that on average 5 rapid fire bolters takes away at least one hull point if you luck up and roll 2 sixes than you can kill a piranha, that is very important! The reason why its important is that when a vehicle jinks its seeker missiles become useless as they fire at bs 1 even if they are using marker lights according to the ITC faq! So whenever the piranha decides to gain durability it loses its seeker missiles usage!
So lets go back to our scatbike scenario you shoot at his 2 vehicle squad the Tau player has a choice potentially die or lose out on my seeker missiles for this turn! The crazy part is they can jink and still die! So the little squads are in serious danger of dying if they don't jink so as seeker missile carriers they are not that good, mediocre at best. Now combine that with the fact that you can not leave turn one small units are really vulnerable and cannot be good seeker sources.
What about the large squads? If the scatbike squad shot at a 280 point 5 man piranha squad with seeker missiles the Tau player still faces the same problems except he is not as concern about dying so he might not jink the first round. When he loses 1 or 2 vehicles the next scatbike squad he will most likely jink thus losing out on his seeker missiles and because of the destroyed vehicles he has less drones!
So the idea that the Firestream piranhas can run around not worrying about being damaged, creating drones, firing seeker missiles, and claiming objectives with impunity, is all a mirage and internet hype! If shot at they will die or they will jink and lose seeker missile power if they move out on to an objective their side armor of 10 is exposed. Is it good yes broken absolutely not just a bunch of hype and internet OMG!
Now lets compare a drone factory to a space marine gladius strike force, here is one that will be played at LVO.
Khan
Chaplain w/ Bike, Asupex
Command squad w/ all melta, pod
Dev squad w/ 2x grav, rhino
Dev squad w/ 2x grav, rhino
10th company
Scouts
Scouts
Scouts
That's 315 points worth of free transports but there is a difference. This list starts with 245 points worth of free points on the board turn one (drop pods are not on the field yet)! The piranha formation will not be able to get a bonus drone until turn 3 with my proposal! This player has 2 entire turns to take advantage of his free 245 points! The firestream first wave of drones gives him a bonus of 80 points on turn 3 those bonus points are restricted to what they can do because they are 12 inches from the deployment board edge. On turn 4 the Tau player has 220 vs 315 on turn 5 he has 360 vs 315!
Thats just one unit you can potentially use 3 of these units! Thats 600 points worth of piranhas to create a drone factory! You are not dealing with 600 points because they are leaving the turn they come on! The bonus drones dont hit the field until turn 3 with my proposal, turn 3 they get 420 points worth of drones but they lose 600 points worth of vehicles! They get 820 points worth of drones turn 4 but they lose 600 points so on turn 4 they have 220 free points vs 315 free objective secured transports! Turn 5 they get way more points but the game is over at that point!
Imagine a 1250 point list vs army until turn 3! Can this list kill a riptide wing by turn three? The drones start coming on turn 3 I think this list can handle that easily!
Remember what I said about rapid fire bolters imagine the tau player setting up and hiding a single piranha that has 2 seeker missiles. Now imagine this marine player using infiltrate on his scouts to get in range and shoot at that side armor of that piranha does the tau player jink or not! What if he has a large squad of piranhas will he use the riptide wing interceptor rule to kill the melta-guns and save the piranhas or save it for all that grav that is in his face!
I hope this helps people understand that if it is stays as is it is an okay formation that will be not be used in a few months. If you make it to where they cant leave on the first turn but can leave the turn they come on it becomes good and people will use it more often. It will introduce a new competitive list to the tournament scene. It will not be an auto win or broken with my proposal.
Your proposel really only maximizes Seeker usage, rather than Drone spawning. If you drop the Drones on turn 1 and leave, return turn 2 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, leave turn 3, return turn 4 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, you still have the same three waves of Drones, just one less volley of Seekers.
Ironically, the ITC "nerf" just encourages 3 volleys of Seekers over 2 extra waves of Drones, which means more damage can be done over the course of the game. One tactic not mentioned is you can dop off turn 1, half rearm turn 2 while the other half fire Seekers, repeat on turn 3, repeat on turn 4, repeat on turn 5. Nets you 96 Drones and 64 Seekers over 5 turns, to same as if you fire all seekers turns 2 and 4. Your proposel still nets 96 Drones, but also 96 Seekers.
jeffersonian000 wrote: Your proposel really only maximizes Seeker usage, rather than Drone spawning. If you drop the Drones on turn 1 and leave, return turn 2 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, leave turn 3, return turn 4 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, you still have the same three waves of Drones, just one less volley of Seekers.
But you cant leave on turn 1 that's my proposal, so you cannot get the same 3 waves!
jeffersonian000 wrote: Your proposel really only maximizes Seeker usage, rather than Drone spawning. If you drop the Drones on turn 1 and leave, return turn 2 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, leave turn 3, return turn 4 to drop Drones and fire Seekers, you still have the same three waves of Drones, just one less volley of Seekers.
But you cant leave on turn 1 that's my proposal, so you cannot get the same 3 waves!
Why not? They start on the table, Drones are dropped like passengers, and they can leave at the end of the same movement phase. ITC is only blocking thrm from leaving the same turn they arrive.
I am not sure you read the article, lol! Currently the way the rules is set up you can leave the table turn 1 you just cant leave the same turn you come on. I am proposing that you can leave the turn you come on but you cannot leave on the first game turn as in turn 1.
CKO wrote: I am not sure you read the article, lol! Currently the way the rules is set up you can leave the table turn 1 you just cant leave the same turn you come on. I am proposing that you can leave the turn you come on but you cannot leave on the first game turn as in turn 1.
Love your signature by the way.
Thanks! I read the whole article, and pointed out that your proposel does not maximize Drone spawning, it in fact maximizes Seeker volleys.
Yes you are correct the best way to use the formation is seeker missile farming but, I pointed out the flaws of that also!
CKO wrote: Do you know that on average 5 rapid fire bolters takes away at least one hull point if you luck up and roll 2 sixes than you can kill a piranha, that is very important! The reason why its important is that when a vehicle jinks its seeker missiles become useless as they fire at bs 1 even if they are using marker lights according to the ITC faq! So whenever the piranha decides to gain durability it loses its seeker missiles usage!
So lets go back to our scatbike scenario you shoot at his 2 vehicle squad the Tau player has a choice potentially die or lose out on my seeker missiles for this turn! The crazy part is they can jink and still die! So the little squads are in serious danger of dying if they don't jink so as seeker missile carriers they are not that good, mediocre at best. Now combine that with the fact that you can not leave turn one small units are really vulnerable and cannot be good seeker sources.
What about the large squads? If the scatbike squad shot at a 280 point 5 man piranha squad with seeker missiles the Tau player still faces the same problems except he is not as concern about dying so he might not jink the first round. When he loses 1 or 2 vehicles the next scatbike squad he will most likely jink thus losing out on his seeker missiles and because of the destroyed vehicles he has less drones!
Seeker Missiles are BS5 when you expend Marklights to guide them. Also, if your Piranha are 6" from the table edge, and bubble wrapped by shoals of Gun Drones, why are they jinking? Not all of them are jinking, if any. Who cares if you lose 4 out of 5 Piranha per squadron, when 1 will respawn all 5.
jeffersonian000 wrote: Seeker Missiles are BS5 when you expend Marklights to guide them. Also, if your Piranha are 6" from the table edge, and bubble wrapped by shoals of Gun Drones, why are they jinking? Not all of them are jinking, if any. Who cares if you lose 4 out of 5 Piranha per squadron, when 1 will respawn all 5.
SJ
If you are going first you get to fire your seeker missiles without risk regardless, but if you are going second there are no gun drones on the field as they haven't had a turn to get out yet. If you have marker drones from the drone network formation protecting them. than I will shoot at the drones to eliminate your marker light source thus making your entire army less effective! This theoretical game that we are playing can last all night do you think with my modifications the formation is broken?
CKO wrote: Currently you can not leave the turn you come on!
I propose that you can not leave on the 1st turn but during later turns you are allowed to leave the same turn you come on.
Do you think the formation would be broken with my proposal?
Yes. The biggest problem with the formation is that there is litereally no way to stop it since its never on the table except during the enemy movement phase when nothing can attack it. With your proposal the only way to stop it is to completely kill every piranha in a single turn
The drones cost 12 pts(pg 56 of the kauyon book), not 14 as in the OP; Thus making the piranha itself cost 16 pts, very efficient for a 2 HP, open top, base burst cannon vehicle, not to mention it is 11 10 10, making it impervious against bolter fire from the front.
I propose that in order to rearm and refit, the piranhas have to be 6" from the opposite board edge it start from at the end of the tau shooting turn. Making the piranhas run the gauntlet.
CKO wrote: Currently you can not leave the turn you come on!
I propose that you can not leave on the 1st turn but during later turns you are allowed to leave the same turn you come on.
Do you think the formation would be broken with my proposal?
Yes. The biggest problem with the formation is that there is litereally no way to stop it since its never on the table except during the enemy movement phase when nothing can attack it. With your proposal the only way to stop it is to completely kill every piranha in a single turn
You get one turn to attack them, two if you go first and yes, after that they have the option to make it to where you cant do anything to them but they are not doing anything to you but creating drones! Meaning they are not claiming objectives, firing 20 str 5 shots, or their seeker missiles! So they gain a drone squad but lose a piranha squad if they leave the table, I will show the chart that is in the article to explain!
First turn: Original drones are made seeker missiles are fired. No benefit from the formation is made because those missiles and drones were not created because of the formation.
Turn 2: The piranhas leave the table, the Tau player loses 20 strength 5 shots that he could have made. He has hurt himself because of the formation!
Turn 3 : Piranhas come on and create 10 drones than leave, the tau player gained 10 drones but lost 5 vehicles, in place of 2 rounds of shooting from the piranhas the player gets one round of shooting from the bonus drones. You cannot say the Tau player gained a unit because in reality he lost one also because the piranhas left the field!
Turn 4:Tau player gets another unit of drones! The bonus drones put out 40 shots but remember the Tau player lost one round of shooting in the second turn so the formation on turn 4 has created 1 extra unit and 20 shots!
Turn 5:The tau player gets its last unit of drones and get an extra 60 shots from the formation and the piranhas remain on the field and can potentially shoot also, so these shots are all bonus shots.
If they are leaving the field the same turn they come on than they are losing out on a lot also! Seeker missiles, burst cannons, objective grabbing are all things they lose if they leave the turn they come on, if a player where to play the formation they will realize they rather the piranhas leave than stay!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Big Mac wrote: The drones cost 12 pts(pg 56 of the kauyon book), not 14 as in the OP; Thus making the piranha itself cost 16 pts, very efficient for a 2 HP, open top, base burst cannon vehicle, not to mention it is 11 10 10, making it impervious against bolter fire from the front.
I propose that in order to rearm and refit, the piranhas have to be 6" from the opposite board edge it start from at the end of the tau shooting turn. Making the piranhas run the gauntlet.
Drones for upgrades in a Suit squads cost 12 points but drones acting by themselves as a unit cost 14 and I use the 14 point version because you are creating a unit that is not attached to a suit of some sort.
Hey these drones look tough, if only there were units that ignores S5 shooting
Point being there is always an answer in the wide variety of 40k armies to handle stuff like this, so its definetly not broken unless one start nerfing things left and right.
It's not the number of drones they produce that bothers me, it's the inability many armies have to even target them. Even making them stay out turn one wouldn't help most armies because they're going to be able to get some of them out of LOS and a single survivor would bring the whole unit back. Armies like Khorne Daemonkin couldn't threaten them at all.
Honestly, I'd rather just let them rearm/reequip but have to stay on the table within 6' of the edge. That way you don't need interceptor to stop them.
Yeah i dont understand where hes getting they cant leave turn 1 thing from. Nothing says that far as i know, and hes never listed a page number or FAQ stating it.
If youre going for a seeker farm though, yeah dont leave turn 1. The 32 seekermissiles every other turn will probably do more damage than the gun drones, they just cost an arm and a leg and wont block off anything (were talking 896pts for all 16 piranhas to have 2 seekers and no other upgrades...ouch)
At any rate, you didnt come on to the board turn one. You deployed, thats not entering the board via reserves.
CKO wrote: Currently you can not leave the turn you come on!
Where is it that you think it says the Piranha Firestream Wing cannot leave on the first turn?
SJ
They currently can leave first turn!
You know how FLG make adjustments to rules, I am making a proposal to where you can not leave on the first turn.
NOT LEAVING FIRST TURN IS MY PROPOSAL?
Vineheart01 wrote: Yeah i dont understand where hes getting they cant leave turn 1 thing from. Nothing says that far as i know, and hes never listed a page number or FAQ stating it.
If youre going for a seeker farm though, yeah dont leave turn 1. The 32 seekermissiles every other turn will probably do more damage than the gun drones, they just cost an arm and a leg and wont block off anything (were talking 896pts for all 16 piranhas to have 2 seekers and no other upgrades...ouch)
At any rate, you didnt come on to the board turn one. You deployed, thats not entering the board via reserves.
Its a proposal, not the way it currently works, I have said this several times! I do not believe you guys have read the article!
At any rate best case scenario you go first and fire your seeker missiles, than your piranhas can jink and only one have to survive and you leave and come back turn 3 with new seeker missiles you only gain 2 bonus volleys of the seeker missiles assuming game ends on turn 5. If your opponent is smart he will target the marker light sources thus eliminating the usefulness of the seeker missiles and because you have the knowledge of knowing that he is going to leave the table next turn there is no need to waste any fire power at them.
Basically your shooting phase become easier because you know what to shoot at, you take out the marker light source, riptides, or the things he will use to claim objectives with as the piranhas cant as they cant make it to the objective and shoot and the drones are non scoring units.
lessthanjeff wrote: It's not the number of drones they produce that bothers me, it's the inability many armies have to even target them. Even making them stay out turn one wouldn't help most armies because they're going to be able to get some of them out of LOS and a single survivor would bring the whole unit back. Armies like Khorne Daemonkin couldn't threaten them at all.
If a single piranha is left that piranha will produce 2 drones and fire 2 seeker missiles thats assuming his unit did not jink! Remember if you jink units fire bs 1 seeker missiles even if they use the marker light rule according to ITC FAQ. Also is it wise to shoot at the unit you know is going to leave the board? It would be better to take out the limited number of other units he has on the field such as the marker light source, you take out the marker lights than those seeker missiles are not as useful. The thing is if they take advantage of this weak not being targeted rule all they are doing is creating drones. That means no seeker missiles, no burst cannon shots, no fast skimmer grabbing objectives!
So they gain a 10 man drone squad that can shoot 20 strength 5 shots. They lose 5 piranhas that could shoot 20 strength 5 shots, seeker missiles, and a fast skimmer that can grab objectives! You cant kill them but they cant hurt you the drones they created can but lets be honest the 5 piranhas would have been alot worse to deal with!
So in conclusion not being able to kill them is a trade off that is in your advantage!
lessthanjeff wrote: Honestly, I'd rather just let them rearm/reequip but have to stay on the table within 6' of the edge. That way you don't need interceptor to stop them.
How are they hurting you if they are not there? You dont even see them I wouldnt even move the models I would just deploy 10 drones 12 inches from my board edge! The best option is to stay on the field! By forcing us to stay we use their burst cannons and the seeker missiles and we gain 20 str 5 shots from the drones! Wouldnt you rather see us decide to just create the drones?
You are considering them only in a vacuum. 640 points of Piranha Wing is just 640 points of a much larger army. You can take one and a Drone-Net for 864 points, with room lelf for a Ret Cadre or OSC. With an OSC between you and the Piranha, what's target priority? You are also making an assumption that there is a common army build that can kill 5-16 Piranha turn 1.
jeffersonian000 wrote: You are considering them only in a vacuum. 640 points of Piranha Wing is just 640 points of a much larger army. You can take one and a Drone-Net for 864 points, with room lelf for a Ret Cadre or OSC. With an OSC between you and the Piranha, what's target priority? You are also making an assumption that there is a common army build that can kill 5-16 Piranha turn 1.
SJ
SJ, I give very detail reasons why something is not as good and you often respond with post like this, that do not give any details but random statements such as you can take a Ret Cadre or OSC, you need to be more tactical than this!
So let me give another detail post that proves my point!
A bare bones Ret Cadre is 396 points combine that with your 864 points thats 1260 points. You have 590 points left to buy weapons and support systems for the 3 single suits, commander, a riptide, and a single broadside! Lets say your conservative with your upgrade and only spend 120 points, you have 470 left!
You have not even bought seeker missiles for the piranhas! Are you going to do that? Lets say you get 5 seeker missiles on each large squad squad thats another 120 points! You now have 350 points left! Lets say you get the Optimized stealth cadre formation it cost 310 points and thats for one ghostkeel! So you spend the last 40 ponts on getting fusion blasters and support systems.
Your army 1850 army consist of 1 commander, 3 one man crisis suits, 1 broadside, 1 riptide, 2 stealth suit teams, a ghostkeel, 4x 4 man marker drone units, 1 piranha, 3 5 vehicle piranha squads with seeker missiles!
Whats going to claim objectives? The commander is going to be with a marker drone squad handing out bs 5 so he cant claim objectives. The 3 crisis suits have 2 wounds at t4 with a 3+ save a round of bolters rapid firing at them will take them off an objective. The stealth suits are toughness 3, if in cover they have a 2+ but if you charge them with a tactical squad they are dead! You have one ghostkeel that is a good objective grabber! A relentless broadside and a riptide but they are going to do the killing! You have 3 4 man marker drone squads that cant claim objectives and you need them for marker lights!
This list on average if you assume all 4 marker lights hit from the commander squad will on average have 12 marker light hits, You have 15 seeker missiles and a riptide that needs ignore cove you only have 12 marker light hits, see the problem? Now factor in how easy it is to kill a 4 man drone squad your marker lights are going to be diminishing quickly! Than your seeker missiles become one use bs 3 missiles!
Your army of drones which come in gradually over time will not be able to win the game as your opponent can eliminate the important stuff before you get a chance to kill him and whats worse whats going to kill him! A single riptide cant kill an entire army, 15 seeker missiles when you only have 12 marker light hits cant do enough damage to cripple an army in the first turn. 4 str 7 shots from the broadside or a hand ful of plasma shots from crisis suits cant criple an army! A riptide becomes a large blast ap 2 shot that you get cover against! The ghostkeel is putting out 6 strength 7 bs 4 shots.
Lets be honest the formation is mediocre in the hands of a good player it can become good but nothing worthy of being made useless by the ITC! It might need to be altered because the average player will have problems with it, which is why my proposal makes it even weaker!
I dont care about all those str 5 shots if i have an objective secured drop pod on an objective! And I have already killed all the stuff that can kill it!
Objectives only matter in Maelstrom and VP missions.
You can take a full PFW with Seekers, two Markerlight Drone-Nets, and a Ghostkeel Wing for 1850, tweaked to play ITC. You win by tabling your opponent. Let the Ghostkeels camp objectives wrapped in shoals of Gun Drones while the Marker-Nets guide Seekers every odd turn. Remember, ITC prefers tall, line of sight blocking terrain, something guided Seekers are meant for.
As to general suggestions, its not my goal to think for people, its my goal to provoke people to think for themselves. I can write a detaild white paper on the subject of this thread, but that only prove I understand the subject. It in no way proves if you or others understand.
There really isn't a need to nerf the formation at all, not even the ITC nerf is required.
Sure, when it first came out, it created a massive buzz, but it didn't take long to sink in that the drone factory isn't all that great.
Just to make my point, let's look at a full drone factory of 16 piranhas, and a 6 turn game for simplicity sake.
The format took 640 points to field.
Turn one you deploy your original drones, somewhere along the table edges, 32 drones.
Turn 2, you drop additional 32 drones, however due to disembark limitations, and need to leave the table, the drones don't go far. As they cannot score, rushing to the front lines is the only use. It will take at least one more turn before they get anywhere useful, unless you got hit by drop pods.
Turns 3 and 4 are more of the same.
Turn 5 drones are unlikely to reach firing range unless you are getting swarmed.
Turn 6 might as well not exist, you didn't leave the table turn 5 as turn 6 drones won't do anything.
So overall, the number of meaningful drones is about 128. still a lot, but not quite as much.
If said drones were bought for original 14 points, that would have been amazing 1984 points when you count the piranha hulls too.
HOWEVER, nobody takes 14 points gun drone squads. Even 12 point attachment gun drones are rarely taken. They are not worth that much. After all dual BC crisis costs 42, is also a rare pick, and fires almost as good as four gun drones-while scoring. Heck, even within the amazing drone network people still have doubts about gun drones.
Given a more rational estimate of 11 points of actual Worth, and piranhas worth 40 still despite it, you actually have 1696 points worth, but many of it only comes into play or reaches actual firing ranges rather late.,after half the game has ended. So it's safe to say they are, on average, doing 50% work compared to list taken units, given that we all know just how important the first two turns are, we have 848 actual points worth.
Still a mark up compared to piranhas, but piranhas are not a common pick to begin with Sue to their gimmicky nature. They got some value but they don't "carry" a list as heavy duty units like most battlesuits do. And they can only provide help against a small subset of units - things "soft" enough to be harmed by S5Ap5 spam, and slow enough to get hammered by 18 range, while themselves having short range that makes them advance towards your field. Therefore, mostly horde type units, or dropped marines. And dropped marines hit hard enough on T1 that relying on a small initial force and constant reinforcements may very well mean your main force gets decimated,so it's not a good answer to them.
Tl;dr-the drone factory fails from the same reason summon spam fails, the payoff takes too long for it to have a big impact despite the raw numbers. And unlike summoning, it does not enjoy the flexibility of choosing your reinforcements-you are stuck with a spesific unit that might not even be relevant-and a large point pool spent towards units that does not provide any measure of assistance against the big threats out there, only horde control. Hordes are AFAIK, not the biggest concern these days.
Drones can jet move(2D6 I believe in 7th) after shooting, so they can be quite fast, with the Drone net formation, the +1 BS on a TL gun can be deadly. Not to mention overall T4 and I4 stats of the drones, do not count against VP when killed.
Big Mac wrote: Drones can jet move(2D6 I believe in 7th) after shooting, so they can be quite fast, with the Drone net formation, the +1 BS on a TL gun can be deadly. Not to mention overall T4 and I4 stats of the drones, do not count against VP when killed.
20 bs 2 twin-linked shots on average is 10-12 hits with the upgrade its 15 hits that's not a significant upgrade!
The jet pack move doesn't mean they get to target the thing you want the turn they get on the board! Turn 4 will be the first turn that they can shoot at the important stuff! Meaning you get a chance to hit them first if you are concerned about the gun drones!
They are ld 7 so they run away often!
You non-tau players are worried about the wrong stuff! We got a formation that allows riptides to fire twice for one turn! Potentially crippling your army before you even get to move! But instead of worrying about that you are worried about gun drones!
Your argument fails. How can spawn Drones not encounter enemy units until turn 4 while at the same time enemy units can target Piranha on turn 1? Based on Piranha beginning 6" from the table edge, turn 1 spawned Drones can hit enemy units at edge of the enemy deloyment zone, and then move 2d6" closer during the Assault phase. That places 32 spawned Drones in the enemy deployment zone at the start of turn 2 while 32 more Drones are spawned. That's super fast infantry, and with the Drone-Net, that's effectively Jump Pack Firewarriors.
Of course, who can't kill Firewarriors?
The Drone Factory just applies Tau Efficiency to a spawning list, with all the inherent pros and cons. What the ITC ruling does is shift 64 free Drones into 96 Seeker Missiles.
jeffersonian000 wrote: Your argument fails. How can spawn Drones not encounter enemy units until turn 4 while at the same time enemy units can target Piranha on turn 1? Based on Piranha beginning 6" from the table edge, turn 1 spawned Drones can hit enemy units at edge of the enemy deloyment zone, and then move 2d6" closer during the Assault phase. That places 32 spawned Drones in the enemy deployment zone at the start of turn 2 while 32 more Drones are spawned. That's super fast infantry, and with the Drone-Net, that's effectively Jump Pack Firewarriors.
Of course, who can't kill Firewarriors?
The Drone Factory just applies Tau Efficiency to a spawning list, with all the inherent pros and cons. What the ITC ruling does is shift 64 free Drones into 96 Seeker Missiles.
SJ
Your arguement fails because the formation did not give piranhas the ability to do the things you just said. If you bought piranhans without the formation you could do those things you presented. To determine if a formation is good you have to judge the command benefits! I dont understand why I have to tell you this, the riptide wing isnt good because it has riptides its good because it gives those riptides the ability to fire twice! The firestream formation should not be judge broken because of what the piranhas can do it should be judge based off of what piranhas can do after they have come back with new drones, seeker missiles, and possibly replinished piranhas!
Your first 4 post you did not understand my proposal, now you do not understand the difference between having a unit and benefiting from a command benefit from a formation and you say that my arguement fails when you do not understand the basics. My article is already extremely long I would hope that some things like this I would not have to say.
BoomWolf wrote: Not that the seekers are all that amazing either.
Even when respawning, its basically just krak missile.
56 points of double krak missile shooters, is nice-but not broken.
A one use Bs 3 krak missiles who is afraid of that?
TL;DR: "Here's a bunch of strategy and argument about how a formation works under my personal house rules, which have nothing at all to do with the rules published by GW".
Peregrine wrote: TL;DR: "Here's a bunch of strategy and argument about how a formation works under my personal house rules, which have nothing at all to do with the rules published by GW".
That's fair but, the article still lets you know the weakness of the formation. The only reason why its like this is because the ITC made a custom rule that I had to respond to. I am frustrated with Tau's treatment everything got nerfed before I could use it, but in reality I don't have a single model just the codex, I am really a marine player! My criticism is not based off of the fact that they made my stuff not as good I am doing this because its just not right! I want to use Tau but ITC has to leave the rules alone before I spend money! Your right its personal house rules but that's what apparently 40k has become and I want to win tournaments again and I am not going to do that if stuff like this is voted on and the public don't have a true understanding of the formation.
So in conclusion this entire article is made to impact future votes that will determine if I play Tau! That is why I put so much effort into personal house rules, quite frustrating actually!
It would be so much easier if they would let people play and after some time players want to change something that is broken we vote on it! But instead they change stuff off of theories and a few games! So I have to play this theory craft game to impact the votes!
CKD, I don't think you grasp the reason why your proposal is nonsensical. Your basis is flawed, which leads to your suggested tactica being flawed. Sorry that you can't work that out.
SJ, I understand and I will take your opinion into account when I re-write the article. I was introducing a proposal or a rule change and I was showing how things would be with the rule change not how they currently are. I did not make that clear in this article I made the assumption that the reader would be able to tell the difference so the article could be a lot better! The revision will be better understand I was rushed when I was writing the article as I wanted to complete it while Tau is the current topic of discussion.
I hope you do not have bad feelings towards me as I have always enjoyed your post we just bump heads because I did not make something clear.
I reckon if a house rule were to be made to 'fix' it then I'd say that the best fix would be this:
The formation can only use its resupply move once per game.
It would still allow the squadrons to get two uses out of their drones and seeker missiles, and I think the formation would still be strong. In its current formation I wouldn't want to take it - it just feels too gamey to me, and isn't the way I'd want to play.
It'd be more fun to play against this way, and would feel a lot more fluffy - rather than having piranhas loitering around the board edges all game repeatedly circling on and off and magically receiving tons of extra material from somewhere...
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
Sigh, you do know that it's a choice between either dumping a bunch of drones (S5, no scoring, no contest units) or staying on the table firing expensive "krak" missiles thus leaving you open to any kind of counter.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
Sigh, you do know that it's a choice between either dumping a bunch of drones (S5, no scoring, no contest units) or staying on the table firing expensive "krak" missiles thus leaving you open to any kind of counter.
Well in that case it is no choice - you spam the drones. Who cares if they can't score...1600 points of free shooting insures you table your opponent. Plus you have 2/3 of your full 1850 army of some other tau stuff that is also great at killing stuff.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.
The ITC had a knee-jerk reaction and nerfed it despite it not needing to be nerfed.
It is NOT any better than daemon summoning. in fact, its not even as good, as you can't pick and choose the units you need, and can't deploy the reinforcements anywhere but deep within your deployment, and they can't even hold objectives.
Had they given it a single test before going nerfhammer wacko on it, they would have seen just how little impact it has on the game.
Enough firepower to take down 2-3 knights against front shielded armor? yes, but it won't win the game. takes FAR too long.
I'll run an example scenario here, where everything goes out perfectly in favor of the tau player, just ot get the point across that even in wonderland, its not doing all that much.
Assume a full flock of 16 fishes (that's a not insignificant of minimum 896 points, usually more than two knights to begin with.), with the knight within the tank hunter buff range, and tau gets first turn-the best case scenario for the formation.
Each of the squads shooting at it has 10 rockets, hitting 6.66 against the marked one, generating 3.7 hull point hits and after ion shield its down to 2.47 hull points stripped.
Meaning, by the second team, you probably still didn't get it. by the third, you probably did, the buffer piranha spends its shooting going flat out for jinking better-and the formation took down a knight on T1. as they spend the shooting phase on the table, they can't leave-meaning they CAN be targeted, counterplay ensues.
Come knight turn, lets assume he did horribly, and the ONLY thing he could kill is a single piranha. guess what? the buffer one is alone. even if I gave it a free Dpod, its a 11/10/10/2 open topped skimmer. even with a 3+ jink, its still remarkably easy to kill, the knights surge forward, doing knightly things.
Turn 2, the tau player can only evacuate his piranhas now, they got no seekers, the drones departed, and the knights are immune to the burst cannons. (fusion you say? many extra points, 160 for full stacking. and requires being within 21" on your turn start to preform, knights don't have to give you that option, they are perfectly fine standing 22" away.)
Knights turn 2-you keep doing knightly things. most likely, you began crashing into enemy lines by now.
Turn 3, the piranhas come back, but this time, they number 15, hit on BS3 and has no tank hunter tricks.
So, 30 missiles. 15 hits. making a safe assumption that you got one team to a side that got shield, another to an unshielded side and a third on front we are looking at almost another dead knight (about 5.65 hull points on average.)-so its very much possible you just dropped a second one. lets assume you did. now-you stay on board, as you shot.
Knights, now with two down-are already well within your deployment zone, taking names and butchering stuff. assuming the piranhas are still left unchecked somehow-it means that turn 3 knights are doing SOMETHING in your area, safe to assume the rest of your dudes took a pounding, if not outright decimated.
Turn 4-against piranhas leave table, again knights go on a killing spree.
Turn 5, FINALLY the third knight is taken down. you got little else if anything but the firestorm left by now-it was half your army to begin with. and they can't get another rearm-the turn counter is ticking. so, you gotta hope for rear shots if you want any hope of taking down the last one.
So, yea. an expensive unit that is designed just for that managed to take down 3 knights over 5 turns, with tau getting the first action, assuming the knight player utterly failed to take out squads (or didn't even try) the turns after they shot volleys and only managed to kill a single lone piranha (and that's very, very easy.), wasn't in charge range after the turn 3 volley, etc.
It took the formation until turn 3 in order to make only how much it costed (well, technically it still didn't kill its cost, but it did drop some extra drones, so I'll give it a wash), meaning you are losing on the early game advantage here.
So, overall, you did decent enough. in fact, you even probably have the upper hand-if nothing goes wrong, you win! if anything does go wrong though (losing turn 1 or losing the lone piranha), you have a real fight in your hands, that you may not win.
AGAINST A LIST YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY BUILT TO COUNTER.
The same firestorm facing a drop pod armies? the firestorm list is screwed. you need to hide the firestorm in reserves or else they will HAMMER your piranhas, meaning you got 900ish points on board-and no reliability on when they are coming to assist.
Decurion? you will be hard pressed to hurt them.
Gladiolus? it has enough metal boxes to not care. even considering you took out 3 in your initial volly, you barely scratched their list.
Real "reinforcements" lists can take the punishment and out-spam you. (Either Tzeentch summoning flavor, or unending host.)
Renegade artillery lists will likewise bombard you to hell-at a similar cost they can filed 5 teams of 3 earthshakes with 12 ablative T7 wounds each team, before the relevant wounds start to tick (3 guns, 5 crew each). even if your initial volley takes a whole team out (and that's crazy talking-as even if you gotten the BS4, your 32 shots hit 21.33 times, wounding 14.22 times assuming no cover-that's , and given that they can fire without LOS, they WILL have cover.), the remaining 12 cannons will easily start nuking your fishes.
congratulations, you have officially entered the RPC (Rock Paper Scissors) list realm. you can beat knights with relative high probability, non-spawning hordes are easy wins, and most anything else beats you.
Compare it to the current top dogs, and you will find the very things that punish the firestorm to begin with, are the ones taking tournaments.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.
The ITC had a knee-jerk reaction and nerfed it despite it not needing to be nerfed.
It is NOT any better than daemon summoning. in fact, its not even as good, as you can't pick and choose the units you need, and can't deploy the reinforcements anywhere but deep within your deployment, and they can't even hold objectives.
Had they given it a single test before going nerfhammer wacko on it, they would have seen just how little impact it has on the game.
Enough firepower to take down 2-3 knights against front shielded armor? yes, but it won't win the game. takes FAR too long.
I'll run an example scenario here, where everything goes out perfectly in favor of the tau player, just ot get the point across that even in wonderland, its not doing all that much.
Assume a full flock of 16 fishes (that's a not insignificant of minimum 896 points, usually more than two knights to begin with.), with the knight within the tank hunter buff range, and tau gets first turn-the best case scenario for the formation.
Each of the squads shooting at it has 10 rockets, hitting 6.66 against the marked one, generating 3.7 hull point hits and after ion shield its down to 2.47 hull points stripped.
Meaning, by the second team, you probably still didn't get it. by the third, you probably did, the buffer piranha spends its shooting going flat out for jinking better-and the formation took down a knight on T1. as they spend the shooting phase on the table, they can't leave-meaning they CAN be targeted, counterplay ensues.
Come knight turn, lets assume he did horribly, and the ONLY thing he could kill is a single piranha. guess what? the buffer one is alone. even if I gave it a free Dpod, its a 11/10/10/2 open topped skimmer. even with a 3+ jink, its still remarkably easy to kill, the knights surge forward, doing knightly things.
Turn 2, the tau player can only evacuate his piranhas now, they got no seekers, the drones departed, and the knights are immune to the burst cannons. (fusion you say? many extra points, 160 for full stacking. and requires being within 21" on your turn start to preform, knights don't have to give you that option, they are perfectly fine standing 22" away.)
Knights turn 2-you keep doing knightly things. most likely, you began crashing into enemy lines by now.
Turn 3, the piranhas come back, but this time, they number 15, hit on BS3 and has no tank hunter tricks.
So, 30 missiles. 15 hits. making a safe assumption that you got one team to a side that got shield, another to an unshielded side and a third on front we are looking at almost another dead knight (about 5.65 hull points on average.)-so its very much possible you just dropped a second one. lets assume you did. now-you stay on board, as you shot.
Knights, now with two down-are already well within your deployment zone, taking names and butchering stuff. assuming the piranhas are still left unchecked somehow-it means that turn 3 knights are doing SOMETHING in your area, safe to assume the rest of your dudes took a pounding, if not outright decimated.
Turn 4-against piranhas leave table, again knights go on a killing spree.
Turn 5, FINALLY the third knight is taken down. you got little else if anything but the firestorm left by now-it was half your army to begin with. and they can't get another rearm-the turn counter is ticking. so, you gotta hope for rear shots if you want any hope of taking down the last one.
So, yea. an expensive unit that is designed just for that managed to take down 3 knights over 5 turns, with tau getting the first action, assuming the knight player utterly failed to take out squads (or didn't even try) the turns after they shot volleys and only managed to kill a single lone piranha (and that's very, very easy.), wasn't in charge range after the turn 3 volley, etc.
It took the formation until turn 3 in order to make only how much it costed (well, technically it still didn't kill its cost, but it did drop some extra drones, so I'll give it a wash), meaning you are losing on the early game advantage here.
So, overall, you did decent enough. in fact, you even probably have the upper hand-if nothing goes wrong, you win! if anything does go wrong though (losing turn 1 or losing the lone piranha), you have a real fight in your hands, that you may not win.
AGAINST A LIST YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY BUILT TO COUNTER.
The same firestorm facing a drop pod armies? the firestorm list is screwed. you need to hide the firestorm in reserves or else they will HAMMER your piranhas, meaning you got 900ish points on board-and no reliability on when they are coming to assist.
Decurion? you will be hard pressed to hurt them.
Gladiolus? it has enough metal boxes to not care. even considering you took out 3 in your initial volly, you barely scratched their list.
Real "reinforcements" lists can take the punishment and out-spam you. (Either Tzeentch summoning flavor, or unending host.)
Renegade artillery lists will likewise bombard you to hell-at a similar cost they can filed 5 teams of 3 earthshakes with 12 ablative T7 wounds each team, before the relevant wounds start to tick (3 guns, 5 crew each). even if your initial volley takes a whole team out (and that's crazy talking-as even if you gotten the BS4, your 32 shots hit 21.33 times, wounding 14.22 times assuming no cover-that's , and given that they can fire without LOS, they WILL have cover.), the remaining 12 cannons will easily start nuking your fishes.
congratulations, you have officially entered the RPC (Rock Paper Scissors) list realm. you can beat knights with relative high probability, non-spawning hordes are easy wins, and most anything else beats you.
Compare it to the current top dogs, and you will find the very things that punish the firestorm to begin with, are the ones taking tournaments.
I admit that the seekers are not what makes the formation strong. The strongest option would be just drone spam. 600 points for an uncounterable spawning of 320 points of drones every turn for 600 points. You still got 1250 points left over to do all kinds of tau stuff. Which would primarily be anti armor granted drones can kill anything else with weight of fire.
The ITC nerf kinda makes the unit unusable though - which is probably exactly what they wanted. Spamming free units without a counter is ridicules.
Its "technically correct", but irrelevant. most drones never come into play, the ones who doarrive the frontlines too late to matter.
Yes, doing it that way will generate more raw firepower, but it will gear you towards late game dominance, while your early game will be as if you are playing 600 points short-and losing 600 early to gain 1500 late just doesn't work in this game.
Trying to simply drone spam fails for the very reason summoning spam isn't dominating-the game is too short for the gains to outtake the costs.
the costs, in this case, is the fact they can't do anything on turns 1-2, who are by far the most important turns in this game if you are not playing ethernal war. (and even there, they are the most important, just not by such a big margin)
Again, all the ITC ruling does it shift the utility from Drone production to Seeker production, which comes with a pretty hefty tax in Seekers and Drone-Net (although, as we all know, the Drone-Net would have been there anyway).
I am so happy that others are telling people why the formation is not broken instead of me. That is why I wrote the article so now when people go vote on this formation for ITC events they will hopefully make the right choice.
BoomWolf wrote: Again that "free points drone spam" argument.
Its "technically correct", but irrelevant. most drones never come into play, the ones who doarrive the frontlines too late to matter.
Yes, doing it that way will generate more raw firepower, but it will gear you towards late game dominance, while your early game will be as if you are playing 600 points short-and losing 600 early to gain 1500 late just doesn't work in this game.
Trying to simply drone spam fails for the very reason summoning spam isn't dominating-the game is too short for the gains to outtake the costs.
the costs, in this case, is the fact they can't do anything on turns 1-2, who are by far the most important turns in this game if you are not playing ethernal war. (and even there, they are the most important, just not by such a big margin)
Drones are fast. Unless your opponent is sitting on the back line all game, they'll have something worthwhile to shoot at probably the turn they come on.
Piranhas move 6" on to the table, deploy drones 6", 18" range, they've got 5/8 of the board covered. If not, they get an extra 3D6" of movement after that, putting them way up the board on their second turn. A squad of 10 drones (Especially BS3 twin linked) is a decent threat against AV10/11 vehicles (rear armor for most things), and can put wounds on essentially everything in the game.
But their big advantage is that they can be a throw-away, speed-bump unit that a) can be a threat to most everything, b) requires 1-2 units of shooting to take them out, c) awards no Kill points when killed.
Those Knights? Drop 10 drones off in front of them, just encircle them 1" away, no shooting. You neutralize its combat potential, keep it away and in range of your guns for longer. ANd you do this every turn, the knight moving all of 2" per turn towards your lines. Thunderwolf cavalry? Ravenwing/White Scars bikers? Speed bump units let you engage on your terms. So when the enemy is trying hard to take out your Riptides throwing ignores cover ap2 large blasts at them, they can't get any closer to you. They don't necessarily need to be scoring: they can form a line around an objective and just prevent you from getting to it.
I agree with everything Trasvi said and would add that while you're definitely starting with a relatively minor disadvantage, you've already made up the points differential and then some by turn 2. (448 pts of drones per turn generated but 640 pts for the cost of a full Firestream Wing.) I don't know that the formation is broken, but it is definitely very, very powerful and just on the edge of broken, if not.
Trasvi wrote: Drones are fast. Unless your opponent is sitting on the back line all game, they'll have something worthwhile to shoot at probably the turn they come on.Piranhas move 6" on to the table, deploy drones 6", 18" range, they've got 5/8 of the board covered. If not, they get an extra 3D6" of movement after that, putting them way up the board on their second turn. A squad of 10 drones (Especially BS3 twin linked) is a decent threat against AV10/11 vehicles (rear armor for most things), and can put wounds on essentially everything in the game.
Does this make drones broken?
Trasvi wrote: But their big advantage is that they can be a throw-away, speed-bump unit that a) can be a threat to most everything, b) requires 1-2 units of shooting to take them out, c) awards no Kill points when killed.
Those Knights? Drop 10 drones off in front of them, just encircle them 1" away, no shooting. You neutralize its combat potential, keep it away and in range of your guns for longer. ANd you do this every turn, the knight moving all of 2" per turn towards your lines.
Yes, these are the good things that they can do but does this make them broken?
Trasvi wrote: Thunderwolf cavalry? Ravenwing/White Scars bikers? Speed bump units let you engage on your terms. So when the enemy is trying hard to take out your Riptides throwing ignores cover ap2 large blasts at them, they can't get any closer to you. They don't necessarily need to be scoring: they can form a line around an objective and just prevent you from getting to it.
The problem with taking the drone factory and the drone network is that it cost close to 900 points, after that you dont have enough to spend on serious fire power, that is why I wrote this example list to display that. So those assaulty units dont have much shooting at them! The drones can provide roadbloacks but if you shoot at them they will die and hopefully you will have room to charge them and the target you want to charge. This means you can kill 4-5 drones than force a ld 5 test on a riptide and bam both units are dead! So as roadbloacks they are not that great!
I'm liking a full Piranha Firestream Wing, two Marker Drone Nets, and a minimal Ghostkeel Wing set up to EWO and VT for an optimized ITC list. It lets the Gun Drones do the bully work while the Marker Drones guide Seekers and the Ghostkeels agro threat. Its both fluffy and competetive.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.
The problem with taking the drone factory and the drone network is that it cost close to 900 points, after that you dont have enough to spend on serious fire power, that is why I wrote this example list to display that. So those assaulty units dont have much shooting at them! The drones can provide roadbloacks but if you shoot at them they will die and hopefully you will have room to charge them and the target you want to charge. This means you can kill 4-5 drones than force a ld 5 test on a riptide and bam both units are dead! So as roadbloacks they are not that great!
I'm not saying 'broken' (well, not any more broken than 75% of what's come out in the last 18 months)... but you're underestimating the utility of drones. And the amount of shooting that Tau can pack in to the leftover points. This list isn't necessarily about killing though: its about dictating flow of play via innumerable blocking units. ANd killing, because TL BS3 S5 A2 pinning weapons aren't actually bad
But if you're so bad at roadblocking that you end up with your roadblock AND its ward being charged, yeah, this tactic isn't for you.
Trasvi wrote: I'm not saying 'broken' (well, not any more broken than 75% of what's come out in the last 18 months)... but you're underestimating the utility of drones. And the amount of shooting that Tau can pack in to the leftover points. This list isn't necessarily about killing though: its about dictating flow of play via innumerable blocking units. ANd killing, because TL BS3 S5 A2 pinning weapons aren't actually bad
But if you're so bad at roadblocking that you end up with your roadblock AND its ward being charged, yeah, this tactic isn't for you.
I am not underestimating what drones can do, yes they are above average but like you said not broken. If it is not broken why make a rule change to make the formation weaker?
We make rule changes for stuff that is an auto win not something that is good.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.
Well I think it's safe to say...for about 1/2 the investment you get about 3 times the free stuff with this piranha formation. What you get is in fact - more usable too. Jet packed str5 twin linked pinners! Just the AA this formation provides alone makes it broken. It also would wreck gladius so thanks for bringing up gladius.
Xenomancers wrote: This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.
I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.
A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.
As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.
SJ
Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.
It's an example of hyperbole.
SJ
Not really, hyperbole would be like saying that something is 100 times as good when in fact its just 10 times as good. If you say that something which is worse than something else is actually better than the same something then thats not hyperbole, its simply being wrong and/or lying. Either way, its clear by these numbers that the drone factory is in fact much more points effective than both the war convocation and the gladius. Those are formations that are already borderline broken. The drone factory, by virtue of saving more than twice as many points as the previous mentioned formations while still costing almost half as much, is clearly broken.
It has a downside that they have to enter from their own table edge each turn. So, the drones are gona be 18 + 2d6 from table edge and most likely, near the side of the board so that pranhas would be able to fly away even if something gets stunned.
Btw. If one is immobilized within 6", does it mean that 2 units of 5 return if they form separate units?
X078 wrote: Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.
With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.
X078 wrote: Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.
With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.
This is kind of the point. We have yet to see a Tau Army with the Piranha formation dominate or win any kind of tournament. Preemptively nerfing it based on theoretical scenarios is just silly.
X078 wrote: Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.
With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.
This is kind of the point. We have yet to see a Tau Army with the Piranha formation dominate or win any kind of tournament. Preemptively nerfing it based on theoretical scenarios is just silly.
It's called foresight. I didn't need to see invisibility in action before I knew it was extremely broken. Simple math tells us that.
X078 wrote: Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.
With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.
This is kind of the point. We have yet to see a Tau Army with the Piranha formation dominate or win any kind of tournament. Preemptively nerfing it based on theoretical scenarios is just silly.
It's called foresight. I didn't need to see invisibility in action before I knew it was extremely broken. Simple math tells us that.
Big difference between allowing your 1000 point death star to be only snap shot at for the entire game, to having a unit make BS2, T4 drones (which, btw, is no different than demon summoning)
Indeed, we have many units, spells and tricks to generate multiple units over time, none of them dominating any tornaments.
Being easy to field and spawning a lot of points-how about tervigons? spawning 40ish points every turn (so matching firestorm, a trio will cost close, and spawn 120ish a turn) on psykers with an MC body that are ready to go get stuff done-so they are not a "spawn tax" alone. Where did you last see these guys in a serious list? and they spawn on the front lines, not the rear, and the spawned units score. yet nobody cares for them, as their spawning just isn't good enough.
The nid endless swarm formation (something along these lines) and skyswarm also arn't seen very often. 50% to respawn gaunts or gargolyes with all attached upgrades-possibly hundrends of points in each respawn. also-scoring.
The demons summoning-not dominating anything, just taken as utility in existing demon lists. everyone acknowledge its good, nobody is overly afraid of it.
Renegades Unending host-the outright biggest auto-spawner around, not seen in any competition. that thing has a 5/6 chance to respawn any infantry unit numbering 15 or more-basically everything you take. and they come out in outflank. with all special guns and upgrades. and its still scores, and if it was stoops still ObSec.
Practically speaking, over 6 turns it has an average respawn potential of three times again your entire list (assuming you take heavy casualties), or "just" you entire list again assuming the enemy fails at killing you despite you being utterly reckless and throwing troops at his without doing anything for their survival in all out offensive-nobody even cares, its not considered a threat.
As for Gladius not generating the same points of free stuff-that's a fallacy. the fact the drones COST more than the transports means not they are WORTH more.
A razorback is worth much more than it's cost in drones even before taking into account its Obsec under the Gladius.
It may take a bit more effort to fit them in, but the units within the gladius itself are not there only to bring in the razors-its a BIG force, of ObSec units of multiple types, able to be geared up to pretty much every job-and it can generate 10 razorbacks, who are 550 points on their own right, to start on the table turn 1.
The factory only generates its first 384 batch at turn 2. and only by turn 3 it bypasses the Gladius in the costs spawned-but I will still say, not in the VALUE created. these 10 razors came earlier, acted earlier (they will probably have T1 targets, considering 36" guns), could serve as mobile bunkers for infantry, are Obsec with rhino bodies-they did MORE.
Nobody is saying the firestorm is bad, or that it isn't even pretty darn powerful.
But broken? far from it. it doesn't do anything other armies don't already do more either with more raw points efficiency, more tactical choice, or both.
And under the kneejerk nerf-not worth taking.
There are many, MANY formations out there, in tau, necron, marines, etc who are far more powerful. none got this preemptive nerf treatment.
And the worst thing in preemptive nerf-you can't really reverse it, as you will NEVER know if its actually broken or not. you got no actual experience or results on how powerful the unshackled variation is as its not allowed, and no results on how poor the shackled version is as nobody bothers taking it.
BoomWolf wrote: There are many, MANY formations out there, in tau, necron, marines, etc who are far more powerful. none got this preemptive nerf treatment.And the worst thing in preemptive nerf-you can't really reverse it, as you will NEVER know if its actually broken or not. you got no actual experience or results on how powerful the unshackled variation is as its not allowed, and no results on how poor the shackled version is as nobody bothers taking it.
Wow, can I use this statement as it is so true!
People who do not know the game aswell are scared easily. When you actually know the game you will be able to recognize that something isn't as strong as it sounds. People are taking advantage of the ones who don't know the game as well to gain a competitive advantage at tournaments! The more I research the ITC voting the more I see corruption! It is not done intentionally but it is done nonetheless so I am going to become ITC biggest critic to help voters make the right decision when it comes time to vote.
Big difference between allowing your 1000 point death star to be only snap shot at for the entire game, to having a unit make BS2, T4 drones (which, btw, is no different than demon summoning)
There's a big difference in the demon summoning comparison to the drone creation one imo. With demon summoning, you're not guaranteed created units since you can fail the cast and the opponent can roll to deny the witch. Secondly, you can kill the demon princes or other units that are summoning demons. With the drone factory, the spawns are guaranteed and you are unable to kill the piranhas if they're allowed to enter and leave in the same turn. It's not fun having something in the game that you outright cannot interact with or stop, and I say that as a player with a Tau army.
Big difference between allowing your 1000 point death star to be only snap shot at for the entire game, to having a unit make BS2, T4 drones (which, btw, is no different than demon summoning)
There's a big difference in the demon summoning comparison to the drone creation one imo. With demon summoning, you're not guaranteed created units since you can fail the cast and the opponent can roll to deny the witch. Secondly, you can kill the demon princes or other units that are summoning demons. With the drone factory, the spawns are guaranteed and you are unable to kill the piranhas if they're allowed to enter and leave in the same turn. It's not fun having something in the game that you outright cannot interact with or stop, and I say that as a player with a Tau army.
At this point I am not going to re-write something I have already said, I understand that most people are not reading the article so I will copy and paste, so tiring!
If they are leaving the field the same turn they come on than they are losing out on a lot also! Seeker missiles, burst cannons, objective grabbing are all things they lose if they leave the turn they come on, if a player where to play the formation they will realize they rather the piranhas leave than stay!
BoomWolf wrote: Indeed, we have many units, spells and tricks to generate multiple units over time, none of them dominating any tornaments.
Being easy to field and spawning a lot of points-how about tervigons? spawning 40ish points every turn (so matching firestorm, a trio will cost close, and spawn 120ish a turn) on psykers with an MC body that are ready to go get stuff done-so they are not a "spawn tax" alone. Where did you last see these guys in a serious list? and they spawn on the front lines, not the rear, and the spawned units score. yet nobody cares for them, as their spawning just isn't good enough.
The nid endless swarm formation (something along these lines) and skyswarm also arn't seen very often. 50% to respawn gaunts or gargolyes with all attached upgrades-possibly hundrends of points in each respawn. also-scoring.
The demons summoning-not dominating anything, just taken as utility in existing demon lists. everyone acknowledge its good, nobody is overly afraid of it.
Renegades Unending host-the outright biggest auto-spawner around, not seen in any competition. that thing has a 5/6 chance to respawn any infantry unit numbering 15 or more-basically everything you take. and they come out in outflank. with all special guns and upgrades. and its still scores, and if it was stoops still ObSec.
Practically speaking, over 6 turns it has an average respawn potential of three times again your entire list (assuming you take heavy casualties), or "just" you entire list again assuming the enemy fails at killing you despite you being utterly reckless and throwing troops at his without doing anything for their survival in all out offensive-nobody even cares, its not considered a threat.
As for Gladius not generating the same points of free stuff-that's a fallacy. the fact the drones COST more than the transports means not they are WORTH more.
A razorback is worth much more than it's cost in drones even before taking into account its Obsec under the Gladius.
It may take a bit more effort to fit them in, but the units within the gladius itself are not there only to bring in the razors-its a BIG force, of ObSec units of multiple types, able to be geared up to pretty much every job-and it can generate 10 razorbacks, who are 550 points on their own right, to start on the table turn 1.
The factory only generates its first 384 batch at turn 2. and only by turn 3 it bypasses the Gladius in the costs spawned-but I will still say, not in the VALUE created. these 10 razors came earlier, acted earlier (they will probably have T1 targets, considering 36" guns), could serve as mobile bunkers for infantry, are Obsec with rhino bodies-they did MORE.
Nobody is saying the firestorm is bad, or that it isn't even pretty darn powerful.
But broken? far from it. it doesn't do anything other armies don't already do more either with more raw points efficiency, more tactical choice, or both.
And under the kneejerk nerf-not worth taking.
There are many, MANY formations out there, in tau, necron, marines, etc who are far more powerful. none got this preemptive nerf treatment.
And the worst thing in preemptive nerf-you can't really reverse it, as you will NEVER know if its actually broken or not. you got no actual experience or results on how powerful the unshackled variation is as its not allowed, and no results on how poor the shackled version is as nobody bothers taking it.
Lots to reply to here....First - Tervigons are great and I've seen a great deal of them taken in 2-3 flyrant lists. They have a 4/9 chance to roll a double anytime they spawn units so in most cases only get to spawn twice with an average game averaging around 20 gaunts. Even if thats all you get you still got a big ass MC with synapse holding down your back lines. Your first roll could be triple 1's though - so it's considered a high risk/ high reward option. This is clearly not the case with drone factory. Without the nerf it is literally an automatic huge point swing on the level of almost doubling the points of your army at 1850 points (considering the fact that you pay for the first round of drones and the fish themselves - and that the drones still need to move into firing range a might not have a target on the first turn they arrive.) Drone factory is a 0 risk insane reward formation because it's not even on the table for you to counter. Still Tervigons see competitive play.
Daemon summoning and daemonkin. Summoning requires a psyhic test - it can be failed - you can perils - and summoned daemons are crap. Daemonkin can summon like 3-4 greater daemons or some bloodthirsters in a 5 turn game if all goes well. IT DOES NOT MATTER - they will never assualt - it takes then 3 turns to get into combat. Best they can do is spawn a few chariots because they actually have a gun they can use right away - though it isn't very good. Plus - stuff had to die for them to be summoned anyways - a pretty terrible condition to be competitive with.
Renegades - admittedly I don't know a lot about this - I am assuming it's some forge-world crap and it sounds incessantly boring to play. I know they bring artillery and a lot of units. Re-spawning isn't the same thing as spawning though. As you know - a re-spawn army could never have more points on the board than they started with which is exactly what makes drone factory broken - though that renegades crap sounds broken too - I did see 1 renegades army made it in the top 20 at LVO. I'll have to look up what list he was running.
Gladius gives you 480 free points of a crap unit needing to feild 12 crap 70 points units and a crap 75 point chaplain in order to get them - the selection basically fills up your entire 1850 points. It's only real strength is objective secured and that's how it wins. It doesn't overpower the enemy - in fact it's still outgunned vs every xenos army it encounters and still if you consider the amount of people that were running this formation and only 1 made it to final 16 at LVO that the formation is really not that good. With that many objective secured units and the nature of this being a dice game - it's going to be hard to lose too many objective missions with it. The fact that most the time when it wins its nearly been tabled vs an enemy that has 1000 points left. I've seen gladius tabled by wolf stars and wraithwings in 3 turns. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that gladius really isn't that good and is exceptionally easy to beat with many top tier lists.
480 points of crap vs basically another 1850 points of slightly less bad crap. It's really not a comparison.
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col_impact wrote: All of the hasty Tau nerf decisions need to be revisited.
I don't even play Tau. It's just plain wrong to nerf before a solid round of testing.
You don't need to test to tell if something is clearly broken.
If I had a formation that spawned that cost 600 that granted me 1800 points of naked Space marine bikes over the course of 5 turns I don't think we'd be having this discussion. In many ways the drones are actually better too - they can fly over dangerous terrain -have str 5 weapons as opposed to str 4 and they cause pinning and they can move in the assault phase.
If you think drones are somehow equal to bike marines in value, you have a serious lack of understanding of the game. They are nowhere close in value compared to thier costs.
Bikers are staple marine units, gun drones are practically never taken.
And had they spawned, bikers would move up field far FAR faster than drones. Rendering half the issues of the formation moot.
The fact you think it's "obviously op" and can't be dealt with is your problem, and not the people who would want to use it. I can think of many ways to deal with this formation with any functional army (so people should stop flinging BA and DE as arguments, they fail against EVERYTHING.) and most ways are already well within the tools already employed by good armies. (easiest example, drop pod wrecking your diminished army before the factory revs up)
And I'm pretty sure I can beat it without a dedicated counter.,even though I'm not LVO top table material. Drones are really not very scary, even when spawned.
And as already shown, it actually spawns far less than you claim. Most of them will not reach the front on time, or are already in the costs to begin with.
I don't even own a single piranha, I'd never field this, but it is worthy to be fielded by others.
The fact you choose to ignore all the issues, strings attached and answers to this GAMBLE of a formation (you gamble you got first turn, if you don't, the formation is screwed.) does not mean that they are not there, nor does it means it doesn't deserve the bare minimum of giving it a try. I'm willing to bet even the unnerfed version can't make LVO top tables.
BoomWolf wrote: If you think drones are somehow equal to bike marines in value, you have a serious lack of understanding of the game. They are nowhere close in value compared to thier costs.
Bikers are staple marine units, gun drones are practically never taken.
And had they spawned, bikers would move up field far FAR faster than drones. Rendering half the issues of the formation moot.
The fact you think it's "obviously op" and can't be dealt with is your problem, and not the people who would want to use it. I can think of many ways to deal with this formation with any functional army (so people should stop flinging BA and DE as arguments, they fail against EVERYTHING.) and most ways are already well within the tools already employed by good armies. (easiest example, drop pod wrecking your diminished army before the factory revs up)
And I'm pretty sure I can beat it without a dedicated counter.,even though I'm not LVO top table material. Drones are really not very scary, even when spawned.
And as already shown, it actually spawns far less than you claim. Most of them will not reach the front on time, or are already in the costs to begin with.
I don't even own a single piranha, I'd never field this, but it is worthy to be fielded by others.
The fact you choose to ignore all the issues, strings attached and answers to this GAMBLE of a formation (you gamble you got first turn, if you don't, the formation is screwed.) does not mean that they are not there, nor does it means it doesn't deserve the bare minimum of giving it a try. I'm willing to bet even the unnerfed version can't make LVO top tables.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Gravbikes? HoW?
Naked does not equal grav bikes.
Even bolter bikes are better though.
How? They cost more and have less firepower. The point I'm trying to make here is that for some reason this formation would be broken if it gave you 1800 points of naked bikes instead of gun drones for some reason...even though it wouldn't really be much better or worse. Exposing the tau bias is my aim. Consider it exposed.
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Gravbikes? HoW?
Naked does not equal grav bikes.
Even bolter bikes are better though.
How? They cost more and have less firepower. The point I'm trying to make here is that for some reason this formation would be broken if it gave you 1800 points of naked bikes instead of gun drones for some reason...even though it wouldn't really be much better or worse. Exposing the tau bias is my aim. Consider it exposed.
In theory yes, you get a ton of "free" points using this formation. But in practicality it isn't that great. The drones have to spawn within 6" of the edge of the board and can only move 6" plus a jump move. Their guns are 18", meaning it will take 2 or more turns to get in range of anything. And then you are only shooting St5/AP5 shots at BS2
The Drone disembark 6" from the Piranha, the Piranha deploys 6" from the table edge. Add in the length of the Piranha flying stand for measurement, and the Drones can shoot at targets ~36" from your table edge, which is 12" from your opponent's table edge. If they then JSJ ~7" further forward, followed by a turn to move, those Drones are shooting at the back edge of the table. Because math.
I am not going to repeat myself I am just going to copy and paste from the article!
So in exchange for not shooting 20 strength 5 shots from the piranhas the Tau player is gaining a unit that can shoot 20 str 5 shots! No true gain is made until the second batch which comes in on turn 3, which has target restraints because of how it is deployed!
You enter the board so that the front of the piranha is no more than 6" from table edge, followed by 6 disembark. With 18 gun a shot against anything beyond 30 requires cheating.
After average jump, and next turn movement you can get 43, assuming no pathing issues like terrain or units, and not getting torn apart.
43 inches is "back of the table" for some deployment types, but not all. And that's only when gunning straight forward, hardly ever a tactically solid choice. In this deployment type, most everything can shoot 42" into the table at turn 1.
And you will be shooting straight, not from optimal angles. Being able to get to end Table in suicide rush does not equal actual proper positioning.
So once more, you depend upon having a lucky break in how the table is set up. If it's set up in the short edges being your entry points? You won't get into backfield even with 3 turns of straight rush.
BoomWolf wrote: You obviously are not playing reserves right.
You enter the board so that the front of the piranha is no more than 6" from table edge, followed by 6 disembark. With 18 gun a shot against anything beyond 30 requires cheating.
After average jump, and next turn movement you can get 43, assuming no pathing issues like terrain or units, and not getting torn apart.
43 inches is "back of the table" for some deployment types, but not all. And that's only when gunning straight forward, hardly ever a tactically solid choice. In this deployment type, most everything can shoot 42" into the table at turn 1.
And you will be shooting straight, not from optimal angles. Being able to get to end Table in suicide rush does not equal actual proper positioning.
So once more, you depend upon having a lucky break in how the table is set up. If it's set up in the short edges being your entry points? You won't get into backfield even with 3 turns of straight rush.
Place objectives in the middle of the board...they are ether in range of your shooting on your first turn of deployment (turn 2 or later) or they aren't getting objectives and you win anyways. Why isn't this a problem for other units that aren't in range the first turn they deploy? I mean...you still pay for those units too - why should it be such a huge issue when the unit is literally free anyways - plus is probably going to be in range to shoot something anyways because you chose where you come on the board. Jezz - getting torn up? Isn't that the idea of taking free units? So the enemy can waste points shooting at free units?
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Gravbikes? HoW?
Naked does not equal grav bikes.
Even bolter bikes are better though.
How? They cost more and have less firepower. The point I'm trying to make here is that for some reason this formation would be broken if it gave you 1800 points of naked bikes instead of gun drones for some reason...even though it wouldn't really be much better or worse. Exposing the tau bias is my aim. Consider it exposed.
In theory yes, you get a ton of "free" points using this formation. But in practicality it isn't that great. The drones have to spawn within 6" of the edge of the board and can only move 6" plus a jump move. Their guns are 18", meaning it will take 2 or more turns to get in range of anything. And then you are only shooting St5/AP5 shots at BS2
twinlinked BS 2 is statistically bs 4 but actually its better because you are twice as likely to hit when you shoot at a flier or in over watch. Their shooting is great. Plus pinning. Keep telling me how bad drones are when in fact they are one of the best infantry shooters in the game.
BoomWolf wrote: You obviously are not playing reserves right.
You enter the board so that the front of the piranha is no more than 6" from table edge, followed by 6 disembark. With 18 gun a shot against anything beyond 30 requires cheating.
After average jump, and next turn movement you can get 43, assuming no pathing issues like terrain or units, and not getting torn apart.
43 inches is "back of the table" for some deployment types, but not all. And that's only when gunning straight forward, hardly ever a tactically solid choice. In this deployment type, most everything can shoot 42" into the table at turn 1.
And you will be shooting straight, not from optimal angles. Being able to get to end Table in suicide rush does not equal actual proper positioning.
So once more, you depend upon having a lucky break in how the table is set up. If it's set up in the short edges being your entry points? You won't get into backfield even with 3 turns of straight rush.
Place objectives in the middle of the board...they are ether in range of your shooting on your first turn of deployment (turn 2 or later) or they aren't getting objectives and you win anyways. Why isn't this a problem for other units that aren't in range the first turn they deploy? I mean...you still pay for those units too - why should it be such a huge issue when the unit is literally free anyways - plus is probably going to be in range to shoot something anyways because you chose where you come on the board. Jezz - getting torn up? Isn't that the idea of taking free units? So the enemy can waste points shooting at free units?
Naked bikes are not a staple marine unit. There is basically no reason to take a bike squad without an assault weapon. Without the assualt weapon bikes are trash compared to gun drones.
Gravbikes? HoW?
Naked does not equal grav bikes.
Even bolter bikes are better though.
How? They cost more and have less firepower. The point I'm trying to make here is that for some reason this formation would be broken if it gave you 1800 points of naked bikes instead of gun drones for some reason...even though it wouldn't really be much better or worse. Exposing the tau bias is my aim. Consider it exposed.
In theory yes, you get a ton of "free" points using this formation. But in practicality it isn't that great. The drones have to spawn within 6" of the edge of the board and can only move 6" plus a jump move. Their guns are 18", meaning it will take 2 or more turns to get in range of anything. And then you are only shooting St5/AP5 shots at BS2
twinlinked BS 2 is statistically bs 4 but actually its better because you are twice as likely to hit when you shoot at a flier or in over watch. Their shooting is great. Plus pinning. Keep telling me how bad drones are when in fact they are one of the best infantry shooters in the game.
Can you tell me your opinion about the loss of firepower, when the piranhas leave the field. The drones that they create shoot 20 shots but since the piranhas are leaving the field they are losing 20 shots so technically there is no gain.
twinlinked BS 2 is statistically bs 4 but actually its better because you are twice as likely to hit when you shoot at a flier or in over watch. Their shooting is great. Plus pinning. Keep telling me how bad drones are when in fact they are one of the best infantry shooters in the game.
Except (amongst other things) that they cannot contest, cannot score, and are practically useless in close combat, they are ok.
Big difference between allowing your 1000 point death star to be only snap shot at for the entire game, to having a unit make BS2, T4 drones (which, btw, is no different than demon summoning)
No different? Drones move faster, don't count for your opponents Kill Points, and can be subject to Deny the Witch / Perils. Not only is it different, it's extraordinarily different.
The nid endless swarm formation (something along these lines) and skyswarm also arn't seen very often. 50% to respawn gaunts or gargolyes with all attached upgrades-possibly hundrends of points in each respawn. also-scoring.
Again, this is entirely different. Tyranid formations require your opponent to interact via killing the entire squad. A squad that has pitiful defense, requires nearby leadership to even function, and has no weaponry of significance. Drones continue regardless of whether your opponent is interacting or not - and beyond that, most armies can't interact as the models are near-never on the table RAW.
There are many, MANY formations out there, in tau, necron, marines, etc who are far more powerful. none got this preemptive nerf treatment.
I didn't get to use my Wraithknight heavy D-cannon a single shot before the ITC nerfed it.
To be clear, I'm not saying your statement is wrong - only that you aren't a unique snowflake you claim to be.
jeffersonian000 wrote: The Drone disembark 6" from the Piranha, the Piranha deploys 6" from the table edge. Add in the length of the Piranha flying stand for measurement, and the Drones can shoot at targets ~36" from your table edge, which is 12" from your opponent's table edge. If they then JSJ ~7" further forward, followed by a turn to move, those Drones are shooting at the back edge of the table. Because math.
SJ
Thank you for posting. It's tiresome to see so many argue that drones will be out of range, or imply that every army they ever face will be lined up against their deployment wall like an awkward grade school dance.
Thank you for posting. It's tiresome to see so many argue that drones will be out of range, or imply that every army they ever face will be lined up against their deployment wall like an awkward grade school dance.
We are not saying that the drones will be out of range we are saying that they have a limitation to what they can shoot at. 30 inches combine with terrain means they are not guaranteed to have an impact the turn of arrival. Which greatly diminishes the power of the formation.
Even if they do 11-15 str 5 hits for 200 points is not good! Next turn you get another 11-15 hits is 22-30 str 5 hits worth 200 points on turn 3. Is 33-40 str 5 hits worth 200 points on turn 4. Remember this is assuming they are not dying.
So lets stop acting like 20 str 5 shots for 200 points each turn is broken!
If you think drones are so deadly why are they not winning tournaments? I could spend 640 points to get 45 drones turn one instead of having them slowly come in piecemeal why haven't people used that to win tournaments.
IF YOU ARE CREATING DRONES YOU CANT USE THE PIRANHAS! ITS EITHER OR NOT BOTH!
Thank you for posting. It's tiresome to see so many argue that drones will be out of range, or imply that every army they ever face will be lined up against their deployment wall like an awkward grade school dance.
We are not saying that the drones will be out of range we are saying that they have a limitation to what they can shoot at. 30 inches combine with terrain means they are not guaranteed to have an impact the turn of arrival. Which greatly diminishes the power of the formation.
Even if they do 11-15 str 5 hits for 200 points is not good! Next turn you get another 11-15 hits is 22-30 str 5 hits worth 200 points on turn 3. Is 33-40 str 5 hits worth 200 points on turn 4. Remember this is assuming they are not dying.
So lets stop acting like 20 str 5 hits for 200 points on turn 4 is broken!
If you think drones are so deadly why are they not winning tournaments? I could spend 640 points to get 45 drones turn one instead of having them slowly come in piecemeal why haven't people used that to win tournaments.
IF YOU ARE CREATING DRONES YOU CANT USE THE PIRANHAS! ITS EITHER OR NOT BOTH!
Drones you pay for are not that great compared to the rest of the tau codex. Free drones though...come on...are we really having this discussion? They are basically mobile fire warriors - fire-warriors have always been considered a good unit. They fill the troop niche for the army quite well and literally no one complains about them sucking - because they actually don't suck. Why take more troop niche units in drones? Sure they can deep strike but why not take suits for that? That's why people don't take them - not because they suck. Keep in mind I'm saying the formation would be equally broken if it gave you fire warriors...or marines...or termagants...it's too much free stuff that your opponent can't stop - whatsoever - Barring a unit with interceptor capable of dealing 10 hullpoints to jinking units on the other side of the board (can't think of anything).
What? On turn 4 for 600 points you would have put out 120 drones from 15 piranhas (not including the piranha cost) - Thats a point value of 1440 points. Putting out a whopping 240 str 5 shots. The combined firepower of 80 heavy bolters that cause pinning only with ap 5 (gosh). Statistically it kills a wraithknight in a single turn with wounds to spare and thats without marker lights. Lets not forget you got 30 more coming on turn 5 and 30 more on turn 6 if there is one. Who cares about the piranhas?
There is no defending this joke formation. It was a ploy to sell a model that even tau enthusiast don't bother with because it looks like some aquatic GI joe vehicle. Keep in mind that the 40 point piranha with 2 gun drones putting out 8 str5 shots is already a bargan...This is why you can't reason with a tau player. They are literally blinded by the power of their book.
Xenomancers wrote: What? On turn 4 for 600 points you would have put out 120 drones from 15 piranhas (not including the piranha cost) - Thats a point value of 1440 points. Putting out a whopping 240 str 5 shots. The combined firepower of 80 heavy bolters that cause pinning only with ap 5 (gosh). Statistically it kills a wraithknight in a single turn with wounds to spare and thats without marker lights. Lets not forget you got 30 more coming on turn 5 and 30 more on turn 6 if there is one. Who cares about the piranhas?
I think your math is wrong could you give me a turn by turn example to display this?
Remember we are judging the formation command benefits.
I will start it off for you:
Turn 1: No drones are created because of the formation special rules, they would be there regardless.
Turn 2:
Turn 1 - drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Turn 2 - resupply
Turn 3 - arrive, drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Turn 4 - resupply
Turn 5 - arrive, drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Piranha Wing normal use per RAW:
Turn 1 - drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 2 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 3 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 4 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 5 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
ITC (96 Drones, 96 Seekers for 896 points) vs RAW (160 Drones, 0 Seekers for 640 points)
Turn 1 - drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Turn 2 - resupply
Turn 3 - arrive, drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Turn 4 - resupply
Turn 5 - arrive, drop off Drones, fire Seekers
Piranha Wing normal use per RAW:
Turn 1 - drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 2 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 3 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 4 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
Turn 5 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply
ITC (96 Drones, 96 Seekers for 896 points) vs RAW (160 Drones, 0 Seekers for 640 points)
SJ
Thank You SJ!
Using his example I will write the benefits next to it each turn, the real benefit.
Piranha Wing normal use per RAW:
Turn 1 - drop off Drones, resupply (Did the formation give you these drones? No, so the formation had nothing to do with the original drones whats worse 600 points leave the field!)
Turn 2 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply (60 str 5 shots gained but the piranhas had sixty shots and they left so no true gain you spent 600 points to gain 60 str 5 shots that was already there technically)
Turn 3 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply (120 str 5 shots but you lost 60 so on turn 3 you are shooting 60 extra shots for 600 points)
Turn 4 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply(120 extra shots for 600 points)
Turn 5 - arrive, drop off Drones, resupply(180 extra shots for 600 points)
I bet that first turn when 600 points leave the field hurts, ouch! This is assuming that none of the drones die.
man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
twinlinked BS 2 is statistically bs 4 but actually its better because you are twice as likely to hit when you shoot at a flier or in over watch. Their shooting is great. Plus pinning. Keep telling me how bad drones are when in fact they are one of the best infantry shooters in the game.
Yeah its not statistically BS4. Check the math again. 2/6 first shots hit then (1/3 chance)*4 shots for the misses = total of 3.333/6
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coblen wrote: man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
Too bad piranhas have 18" range with their guns so that isn't an option if you ever want them to go back into reserves again for the rest of the game
i think this is one of those things that just needs to be banned from 40k altogeather competitively. and just agree not to take it in your local circles in the interests of fairness.
i mean if i saw the pirahna formation array'd against me the solution for me if i was forced to play against it would be to smash them with the hammer because nobody should be forced to play against anything.
coblen wrote: man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
Too bad piranhas have 18" range with their guns so that isn't an option if you ever want them to go back into reserves again for the rest of the game
Ya my opponents never get within 24 inches of my board edge either. I never play vanguard strike, and my opponents never deepstrike near me. I also never need to contest an objective near my board edge. Good thing you can always just make more drones instead.
I'll quote here what I said in another thread with regards to the Piranha Firestream formation. This is to share my actual in-game experiences with the Firestream pre-ITC-FAQ'd.
jy2 wrote: With regards to the Piranha Firestream formation, I don't think some of the Tau players here even realize just how powerful that formation is. They say it can't score/contest/whatever and so it isn't good. Really? It is "nerfed" and rightly so. It is an extremely powerful build and I will share with you my experiences with playing against it.
I basically wrote a Tau list and my friend ran it against me. It consisted of the Firestream formation (10 piranhas in total), the Dronenet and "other" Tau stuff. We played it the "un-nerfed" way.
Game #1 vs Daemons
This was a larger game, I believe 2500. I ran Chaos knight with 2++/3++ Invuln, Fatey, D-thirster, Be'lakor, Grimoire Prince and some troops. Chaos Knight was basically useless here and just couldn't get through the infinite drone screens. D-thirster and other FMC's eventually got taken down through Tau VoF (volume-of-fire). Result: Tau Crushing Victory
Game #2 vs Daemons
This was an 1850 game with a Daemon list that I won a tournament with. It is actually a worse list than the one I used in Game #1. It was a close game, but my experience and the game ending on Turn 5 gave me a 1-pt win. Had the game went on, it would have been another crushing Tau victory. Result: Daemon Minor Victory
Game #3 vs Tyranids
I brought my 1850 tournament-winning Pentyrant (5-flyrant) list this time, but I just couldn't deal with his Piranhas, which I couldn't even target. Of course it helped that all his riptides had Skyfire, but by Turn 3, all of my flyrants were dead. I then conceded on Turn 4 with just 1 mawloc left. Result: Tau Crushing Victory
Game #4 vs Eldar
This game was played at 2250 and we didn't use ITC list-building rules. I ran an Eldar list with 5 Wraithknights! This was going to be an uphill battle for the Tau, or so we thought. By Turn 4, he had killed all 5 WK's and only lost 2 riptides (including the Y'vahra) in the process!!! Oh, and did I mention that I had Invisibility on 1 WK almost every turn? Result: Tau Crushing Victory
Analysis:
If you're thinking that for formation is not good because the drones can't score/contest, you really don't see the true power of this formation. The job of the drones is A) firepower and B) protection for the rest of the army against assault units. The amount of firepower it puts out is just staggering. With 10 piranhas, my opponent was producing 20 drones a turn. That is 40 twin-linked S5 BS3 shots a turn. And yeah, that's right....BS3 because of the Dronenet. Against my Daemons, the drones did just as much damage as his "main" offensive units (i.e. skyfiring riptides). Against my Tyranids, they shot down 2 flyrants and a couple of Mawlocs just through sheer VoF. Against Eldar, they had a hand in wounding/helping to kill almost all of the WK's. Flying or T8, it didn't matter. Sheer volume of twin-linked shooting was just devastating.
Do I think it is broken? As a competitive tournament player, nothing to me is really broken. Not Invisibility, not re-rollable 2+'s, not even unmodified D. HOWEVER, does that mean it is ok? Not in my opinion. IMO, the majority of tournament-goers won't know how to play against it and they will not have fun against it. The formation as is, before the ITC changes, allows for very little interaction, other than for the opponent to kill freely-generated units. Unlike Daemon Summoning, Scarab-farm or Tervigon-spawning, the Drone Factory is operating at 100% WITH NO LOSS IN EFFICIENCY ALL THE TIME and there is just nothing you can do about if the Tau player doesn't let you. It is mechanisms like this (and Invisibility, re-rollable 2+'s, unmodified D, etc.) that organizations like the ITC are trying to curb in order to create a more "fun" environment to play in, at least for their tournaments.
coblen wrote: man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.
coblen wrote: But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.
jy2 wrote: Do I think it is broken? As a competitive tournament player, nothing to me is really broken. Not Invisibility, not re-rollable 2+'s, not even unmodified D. HOWEVER, does that mean it is ok? Not in my opinion. IMO, the majority of tournament-goers won't know how to play against it and they will not have fun against it. The formation as is, before the ITC changes, allows for very little interaction, other than for the opponent to kill freely-generated units. Unlike Daemon Summoning, Scarab-farm or Tervigon-spawning, the Drone Factory is operating at 100% WITH NO LOSS IN EFFICIENCY ALL THE TIME and there is just nothing you can do about if the Tau player doesn't let you. It is mechanisms like this (and Invisibility, re-rollable 2+'s, unmodified D, etc.) that organizations like the ITC are trying to curb in order to create a more "fun" environment to play in, at least for their tournaments.
Now JY you on the other hand I know the type of player you are and lets applying some in game knowledge to the mix.
So this maximum efficiency thing that you are talking about comes down to this. Lets pretend that for 640 points you get 3 drone units each turn starting at turn 2. So you start with 1210 to spend on other units and you start with 1210 points worth of other stuff plus the 3 drone units created by the piranhas.
Is 60 str 5 shots turn 2 worth 600 points? Whats worse what if they cant target the appropriate target?
600 points for 120 str 5 shots on turn 3 assuming any havent died.
600 points for 180 str 5 shots on turn 4 assuming the orginals are alive.
You get where I am going its not worth it as a drone factory, its better used as seeker missile farm in which case your not creating alot of drones, and you need marker lights which requires even more points and you quickly are running out of points to spend on riptides.
If they are doing pure drone factory all you have shooting at you is1200 points worth of other tau stuff factor in they need marker light support to make that any good that means they have around 900 points to spend on true fire power and all you have to do is kill those 900 points before you are consumed by str 5 shots assuming that your list is weak to str 5 shooting. Once you kill the riptides or marker light sources the tau list is garbage.
You of all people know this it is not broken maybe a slight revision.
coblen wrote: man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.
coblen wrote: But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.
There is nothing wrong with leaving the table. As a matter of fact, it is a very powerful tool to be able to go into Ongoing Reserves. As someone who runs flyer armies - Necron scythes in the previous edition, FMC-Daemons and Tyranids in this edition - I move my units into Ongoing Reserves all the time. Sometimes, the strategy of denial is better in certain circumstances than to stay on the table and risk getting killed. It is a defensive mechanism that allots your army a lot more flexibility.
In the case of the Firestream, sure, you can leave the piranhas on the table for their 20 shots. But do you want to take the risk of doing so and then letting your opponent blow them off the table, thus denying you future drone generation? Moreover, you are losing 1 turn of drone generation. It is a fallacy to say that you are missing 600-pts of firepower when in fact, you gain much more by trying to preserve them.
Playing with a chunk of your army out can be a viable strategy. Hence, why a lot of people are resorting to Null Deployment-style lists (or lists that have the flexibility for this style of play). Just because I deploy 1250 of my list doesn't necessarily mean that my list is inefficient. Rather, I am playing the long game, going for more survivability in the late game as opposed to exposing them to risk so early on. Maybe I want to reserve my riptide(s) instead of leaving him(them) on the table against a White Scars alpha-strike Grav-army going 1st? It's not always I-need-to-deploy-everything-on-the-table-to-maximize-my-firepower.
Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!
I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.
Some of the top table games at the LVO where recorded including the finals, and you can watch them on frontline gaming's twitch. I think if you watch them you will notice a pattern that these players often hold a lot of there army in reserve. These players didn't get to the top tables by playing poorly.
So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.
You can value you them at 12 points each since that's there cost minus the cost of drones, or you can value you them at 300 saying you are only down half your shooting it doesn't really matter how you want to value them its pretty obviously not 600.
You aren't giving up 20 shots to gain 20 shots later. You are giving up 20 shots to get 40+ shots later. If you don't need your 20 shots now you can bank them by going back and getting more drones. Your 20 shot unit comes back a 40 shot unit so you haven't lost any total shots over the two turns you have only lost having them right now. But you haven't just banked them for later. If your opponent doesn't wipe out the drone squad then you've generated even more shots. So every turn you get to think. Do I need my 20 shots now or is it fine to have them next turn if it gives me the potential of generating even more shots. The more turns there are left in the game the more potential for the drones to live. You don't have to generate drones every turn, but your likely going to do it the first 3-4 turns because the potential is going to be worth more then what you lose.
Just the ability to go into ongoing reserve would be strong. It lets you bring your units on your own terms, and guarantees that the shots come when you want it to. It gives the general the option of shoot now, but risk losing the unit in return fire or hold the shooting until I have a better target. The choice of delaying the shooting a turn, vs actually losing the shooting is a big difference and your acting like it is the latter
Now JY you on the other hand I know the type of player you are and lets applying some in game knowledge to the mix.
So this maximum efficiency thing that you are talking about comes down to this. Lets pretend that for 640 points you get 3 drone units each turn starting at turn 2. So you start with 1210 to spend on other units and you start with 1210 points worth of other stuff plus the 3 drone units created by the piranhas.
Is 60 str 5 shots turn 2 worth 600 points? Whats worse what if they cant target the appropriate target?
600 points for 120 str 5 shots on turn 3 assuming any havent died.
600 points for 180 str 5 shots on turn 4 assuming the orginals are alive.
You get where I am going its not worth it as a drone factory, its better used as seeker missile farm in which case your not creating alot of drones, and you need marker lights which requires even more points and you quickly are running out of points to spend on riptides.
If they are doing pure drone factory all you have shooting at you is1200 points worth of other tau stuff factor in they need marker light support to make that any good that means they have around 900 points to spend on true fire power and all you have to do is kill those 900 points before you are consumed by str 5 shots assuming that your list is weak to str 5 shooting. Once you kill the riptides or marker light sources the tau list is garbage.
You of all people know this it is not broken maybe a slight revision.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend running 16 drones (640pts). Rather, at most I'd run are 10 (400pts) and feel that is sufficient in most cases. Thus, I'd actually have 1450pts to spend in my Tau list for the rest of my army.
Massed S5 shooting is excellent for the majority of armies in the game. Competitively, you actually don't see very much AV12+ vehicle-spam builds anymore. What you do see is a lot of AV11-spam (Battle Company) and infantry, of which drone-spam excels against. Against heavier armor, well, the rest of your list better have the tools to deal with that. (However, even against the likes of multiple Imperial Knights, the drone factory can still excel against them as a screening agent.)
And it's not always about being in range to shoot or having a target to shoot at. None of the other unit-generating mechanisms have hardly any shooting at all (i.e. Daemon Summoning, tervigon-spawning, scarab-farm, daemonkin). Rather, drones can be useful because they can impede the mobility of the more aggressive armies that Tau normally has trouble with. But most importantly, it takes up resources from your opponent to deal with the drones. He needs to allocate resources from his army to take out these screening units, thus providing more survivability to the rest of the Tau army. Drones actually have a lot of utility besides their firepower.
When up against an alpha strike list reserve denial is a good viable tactic. To pretend that the ability to do this during the midddle of every game is a great ability is another. Mainly because when you use reserve denial you get to protect things such as a riptide or a broadside unit but the ability to protect a unit your opponent was never going to shoot at which is the case as who shoots at piranhas that can come back at full strength, what are you protecting or denying?
If anything your opponent just focuses more on your riptides as the piranhas left the table and its drones, marker light sources, or riptides? Such a hard choice.
CKO wrote: Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!
Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CKO wrote: When up against an alpha strike list reserve denial is a good viable tactic. To pretend that the ability to do this during the midddle of every game is a great ability is another. Mainly because when you use reserve denial you get to protect things such as a riptide or a broadside unit but the ability to protect a unit your opponent was never going to shoot at which is the case as who shoots at piranhas that can come back at full strength, what are you protecting or denying?
If anything your opponent just focuses more on your riptides as the piranhas left the table and its drones, marker light sources, or riptides? Such a hard choice.
Not true. If the opponent has the firepower to take out your piranhas and you leave them on the table, you take the risk of losing them. For example, with my 5 flyrant list, if you leave a unit of piranhas on the table and I have range/LOS to them, you can be sure they are going to be dead. However, I do take the risk of wasting my firepower if I can't get rid of all of them so I will only go after them if I feel confident that I can take them out. Otherwise, I will go after the other Tau targets.
CKO wrote: Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!
Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.
First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.
Because I feel 640 on the formation isn't optimal. I'm much more comfortable running 400 of the formation and feel that it is a more balanced list that way.
CKO wrote: Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!
Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.
First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.
20 drones a turn is not enough to consider it a drone factory? I'm pretty sure when most people talk about the drone factory they are just talking about the formation not maxing out the formation. It doesn't matter if he maxes out the formation or not, if taking only 10 in the formation is overpowered then the formation is still overpowered.
jy2 wrote: Because I feel 640 on the formation isn't optimal. I'm much more comfortable running 400 of the formation and feel that it is a more balanced list that way.
I agree with you, you are using the formation because it is good not broken am I right?
CKO wrote: Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!
Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.
First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.
20 drones a turn is not enough to consider it a drone factory? I'm pretty sure when most people talk about the drone factory they are just talking about the formation not maxing out the formation. It doesn't matter if he maxes out the formation or not, if taking only 10 in the formation is overpowered then the formation is still overpowered.
So, the riptide wing doing all the damage and taking out your army before you can do anything is not the key to this list? Its the drone factory, you looked at this list and were afraid of the piranhas! You understand that you will lose because you are afraid of the piranhas instead of the riptide wing, right?
My fear of the piranhas isn't going to do anything since most armies cannot interact with them at all. Triple riptide lists have existed for years. I've played against them and beat them before. They may be strong but at least you get to interact with them.
coblen wrote: My fear of the piranhas isn't going to do anything since most armies cannot interact with them at all. Triple riptide lists have existed for years. I've played against them and beat them before. They may be strong but at least you get to interact with them.
What does interacting with them has to do with anything? You see drones instead of piranhas do you get to interact with the drones that they create? Is the piranhas the problem or the drones?
You said my fear is going to make me lose. My fear would only make me lose if it made me play any different. If I cant interact with it I can't make mistakes out of fear.
The formation is the problem. That includes the drones and the piranhas. 20 drones a turn is a lot.
Interaction is important. Its the thing that keeps broken things in check. A lack of interaction is bad, its gakky to play against, and when its too strong its oppressive.
I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol
notredameguy10 wrote: I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol
And they will beat the average player because average players cannot beat spam in any form. Than they will get crushed by the great players!
notredameguy10 wrote: I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol
It isn't practical in tournament play, just like a pure Daemon Summoning army isn't as well (mainly due to time constraints). Hence why I think no more than 10 piranhas is a more practical number (as opposed to 16) in tournament play.
It is plenty strong enough to win a normal GT. However, if you are talking about a GT the size of the LVO (with almost 300 players), when you get to the Top 8, it is more about the player than it is about the list.
Your list has nothing to do with drone factory, your list mainly uses the riptide wing am I wrong?
Yes, the piranha formation has its purposes in that list but its mainly use for utility. People have been complaining about all the str 5 shots and drones that list doesnt do that!
People are afraid of the formation because its another form of spam and average players cant deal with spam! This formation is feared because of the potential to spam something and that doesnt make it broken.
CKO wrote: Your list has nothing to do with drone factory, your list mainly uses the riptide wing am I wrong?
Yes, the piranha formation has its purposes in that list but its mainly use for utility. People have been complaining about all the str 5 shots and drones that list doesnt do that!
People are afraid of the formation because its another form of spam and average players cant deal with spam! This formation is feared because of the potential to spam something and that doesnt make it broken.
The Factory many not be the offensive focus of the list (at least not initially), but you better believe it sure is an important part of it. It functions similar to that of flyrants in a Tyranid army in that it acts as a force-multiplier in a Tau army. How does it benefit the Tau army?
1. Excessive firepower. Better believe its shooting is powerful.
2. Almost unlimited screening agents.
3. Anti-air firepower. Don't under-estimate the twin-linked firepower versus air targets. I've seen - actually, I've experienced - it take down flyrants and FMC Daemons.
4. Deterrent vs armies that Tau traditionally have the most problems with - fast assault armies. You don't necessarily have to kill them when slowing them down with free units can be just as effective.
5. They drain your opponent's resources. Yes, this game is one of resource management. If you have 10 guns but have to dedicate 3 guns to shooting down drones, then you've only got 7 guns to deal with the army. This makes the "core" Tau army much more resilient.
6. Movement blockers. You can block your opponent's movements, both to your units and to objectives. In one of my games, my Tau opponent actually surrounded my Knight with drones, thus preventing him from moving at all!
7. Piranhas can still claim/contest objectives on Turn 5 and as a fast skimmer, they've got the mobility to do so.
To think that the main firepower in the list comes from just the riptides is to under-estimate it. Yes, the riptides provide the initial firepower. However, over time, as more and more drones get produced and your riptides starts dying to enemy firepower, the offense of the drones will actually surpass those of the riptides. In my games as WK-Eldar and Pentyrant Tyranids, the drones did just as much damage to those units as did the riptides.
People don't really fear the formation. As a matter of fact, most people don't even really understand how the formation works, that is, until they get owned by it. Only then will they truly see how powerful the formation actually is.
So, the riptide wing doing all the damage and taking out your army before you can do anything is not the key to this list? Its the drone factory, you looked at this list and were afraid of the piranhas! You understand that you will lose because you are afraid of the piranhas instead of the riptide wing, right?
This has nothing to do with fear of piranhas. They aren't even on the board for you to target! Your only recourse is to go after the rest of the Tau army.
But I will tell you what happens.
You start targeting the riptides and marker drones, but it will take considerable resources to take them down. Riptides are already tough enough to take down and drones will be jumping back and forth behind BLOS terrain. If you are lucky, maybe you kill 1 riptide a turn for an army with average to above-average firepower.
Meanwhile, the factory is building more and more drones, which you will use minimal firepower to deal with, preferring to focus the majority of your firepower against the "core" army itself.
By T3, perhaps if you are lucky, you could have taken down 3 riptides by now. However, by this time, the Factory has produced somewhere in the vicinity of 60 drones (for a 10-piranha factory) and their firepower is starting to hurt.
On T4+, now the drones are causing much more damage than the rest of the Tau army and you can't ignore them anymore. You have to allocate more resources to deal with them but your resources are quickly dwindling as well in this shooting war of attrition. As your firepower is going down, the Tau firepower is actually going up or staying the same.
That is how the Drone Factory in a Tau army is supposed to work. It has nothing to do with whether you fear the piranhas or not. You can only deal with the main force but you will not win that war of attrition because his firepower is going up (or staying the same) over time due to all the free units whereas your firepower is going down drastically.
Thank you for posting your tests of the Tau Piranha Firestream list. I have read it some days ago and in my view it is a very good example of unnerfed Tau being able to handle top armies such as Eldar etc. So if we would just leave Tau alone and unnerfed the diversity would probably increase in my view. As a Tyranid player (and Tau and Eldar) myself i welcome this.
However maybe i am missing something from your report but i cannot see where the drones really made that big of a difference? It seemed to be more that the complete army composition was able to cope with stuff together. They seemed to do the same thing as other spamlists or summoning lists or free stuff lists e.g. act as roadblocks, bubblewrap, firedrains etc. Once you have good amount of drones on the table sure the firepower is good but so is summoning if you let it run rampant. For me the Firestream along with maybe the Hunter Contingent (and some other formations) is just what Tau needs, proper msu.
Thank you for posting your tests of the Tau Piranha Firestream list. I have read it some days ago and in my view it is a very good example of unnerfed Tau being able to handle top armies such as Eldar etc. So if we would just leave Tau alone and unnerfed the diversity would probably increase in my view. As a Tyranid player (and Tau and Eldar) myself i welcome this.
However maybe i am missing something from your report but i cannot see where the drones really made that big of a difference? It seemed to be more that the complete army composition was able to cope with stuff together. They seemed to do the same thing as other spamlists or summoning lists or free stuff lists e.g. act as roadblocks, bubblewrap, firemagnets etc and once you have good amount on the table sure the firepower is good. For me the Firestream combined with maybe the Hunter Contingent (or other formation) is just what Tau needs, proper msu.
You're welcome.
You can't just look at the formation in a vacuum. Rather, real feedback is gained with seeing how well it synergizes with the rest of the army. For example, centurions in a Marine army are good but alone, they can be dealt with. It's when you start putting characters in there that can ignore cover or cast a million psychic powers or tank a lot of enemy firepower that centurions become much, much more effective.
In my games, the drones provided much of the offense. They bubble-wrapped his units, thus helping to minimize assault from my Daemons and wraithknights. They also wasted a lot of my firepower (from my scatterbikes) in order to try to clear a path for my wraithknights to assault. They threatened my troops with their advancing firepower, thus denying me from going after Maelstrom objectives for fear of losing my scatbikes and not being able to grab objectives at the end of the game. Firepower isn't just the yardstick with which to measure the effectiveness of the formation. Rather, they did a lot of the little stuff to help the Tau not only survive, but to win as well.
Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic! Having 6-8 gravcannons on 4 riptides because your in range turn 1 because of scout and only 1 die!
Drones are bad speed bumps if you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them you now have room to charge both the riptide and the drone unit you than force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc.
Also this illusion you are creating about not hurting the piranhas is false! If you have interceptor you can use it on the drones that the piranhas created, what happens when a burstide uses interceptor on a 6 man drone unit? So you cant hurt the piranhas but they have contributed nothing if you kill the drones and the piranhas left the field.
CKO wrote: Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!
Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.
I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.
With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.
Also this illusion you are creating about not hurting the piranhas is false! If you have interceptor you can use it on the drones that the piranhas created, what happens when a burstide uses interceptor on a 6 man drone unit? So you cant hurt the piranhas but they have contributed nothing if you kill the drones and the piranhas left the field.
Sorry, but I didn't play Tau vs Tau. I don't have Interceptor. But even if I was running Tau with Interceptor, targeting the drones means that I will lose out on my shooting next turn! I'd rather shoot on my turn and use my Markerlights than intercept on his turn without the aid of Markerlights.
CKO wrote: Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!
Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.
I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.
With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.
Would be interesting if you could run the Eldar against the Firestream list again but diversify the Eldar list with more templates and barrage weapons (warpspiders, skathach wk, hellstorm and all that).
CKO wrote: Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!
Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.
I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.
With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.
Would be interesting if you could run the Eldar against the Firestream list again but diversify the Eldar list with more templates and barrage weapons (warpspiders, skathach wk, hellstorm and all that).
Indeed it would be, and I might just do that.
But for my next game, I will be running my centstar against the Drone Factory.
CKO wrote: Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!
Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.
I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.
With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.
Also this illusion you are creating about not hurting the piranhas is false! If you have interceptor you can use it on the drones that the piranhas created, what happens when a burstide uses interceptor on a 6 man drone unit? So you cant hurt the piranhas but they have contributed nothing if you kill the drones and the piranhas left the field.
Sorry, but I didn't play Tau vs Tau. I don't have Interceptor. But even if I was running Tau with Interceptor, targeting the drones means that I will lose out on my shooting next turn! I'd rather shoot on my turn and use my Markerlights than intercept on his turn without the aid of Markerlights.
You didn't have cheap scatter lasers, death spinners, or ally venoms to kill enough drones so that you could charge? You have a 12 movement combine with your other shooting you should be able to charge, I don't know how that is possible sounds like you were out played.
The point is a lot of people say you cant even use interceptor against it but you can use interceptor against the drones and the units will most likely die.
There's a big difference in the demon summoning comparison to the drone creation one imo. With demon summoning, you're not guaranteed created units since you can fail the cast and the opponent can roll to deny the witch. Secondly, you can kill the demon princes or other units that are summoning demons. With the drone factory, the spawns are guaranteed and you are unable to kill the piranhas if they're allowed to enter and leave in the same turn. It's not fun having something in the game that you outright cannot interact with or stop, and I say that as a player with a Tau army.
At this point I am not going to re-write something I have already said, I understand that most people are not reading the article so I will copy and paste, so tiring!
If they are leaving the field the same turn they come on than they are losing out on a lot also! Seeker missiles, burst cannons, objective grabbing are all things they lose if they leave the turn they come on, if a player where to play the formation they will realize they rather the piranhas leave than stay!
You seem to think we aren't reading the article, but I seem to think you aren't reading the responses.
I know what you have proposed as a change, but people in this thread are saying that the formation was not OP and was not given adequate testing time before changes were made so why should we not respond to problems with the RAW?
I get that you think the formation is being wasted if they don't also load up on missiles so they can fire those off every other turn, but I don't think that's the big appeal of the formation or the broken part of it. I think a unit is broken if an opponent cannot interact with it in any way. Invisibility is bad enough because it makes a unit practically unkillable, but letting the piranhas enter and leave in the same turn makes them completely unkillable. Combo the formation with the drone one and now they have improved bs and interceptor as well making them even deadlier. I don't care that they lose missiles and burst cannons from the piranhas if they're unkillable.
Well jy2, in regard to the list you posted, it's obvious weakness is the drone network. It's small, fragile, and without it both the riptide wing and the firestorm lose much strength. (the retaliation does a bit too) keeping two in reserves will help, but will mean you have very little markers to work with.
So, an army with an artillery battery of sorts that can get to the marker drones even behind Los blockers will make a good start against it. TFC, heavy mortars, earthshakers, even whirlwind can do well. Don't really know non imperial/chaos artillery, but I a assume they got some.
Deepstrike elements could do it too, but multi riptide interception makes it hard without invul or counter Los avoidance. Lotd might be useful for this. Tau naturally could pull it off too, termies are technically possible. Dreadknight with flamer and shunt will do quick work here.
The list not having its own indirect limits handling any hidden artillery to the retaliation cadre, so if you can give it a decent wrap, or DS interference, it will force the wing to press towards it, giving you the chance to drop on them.
Next, high AV. The list has nearly nothing to handle high AV. 13 is rough, 14 nigh untouchable. Russes will be tough to handle though they are a bit lacking these days, land raiders might as well be immortals, so a raider containing assault unit with some power fists and/or axes could take control of positions in important passages or objectives. Imp Knights will do well, preferably ones with gun focus over melee focus, to better clear off any drone blockers.
Also, as every tau list - psykers, especially ld targeting attacks, will do wonders. Harlequins, DA, anyone that can spam telepathy - all got weapons here. The early presence is mostly the wing alone, and the wing is small enough to be broken. Even removing one HBCtide greatly reduces the benefits, as the iontide will have to come closer to keep the wing buffs running. And the HBCtide is rendered harmless without them.
And naturally, objective holding is not this list's virtue. So "tough it out" armies like decurion, renegade hordes, etc will stand a fighting chance at a "lose battle, win war" mentality of holding out objectives and enduring.
That's all I can say off the top of my head here.
Get ld targeting psykers, some indirect fire, and high AV if you can - and victory should be within grasp.
For hilarious results, monolith spam and Tvault. (said hilarious, not necessarily practical)
It's a tough, strong list. Probably even top table worthy.
But not overpowered. It can be fought and beaten.
I think part of the problem here is that some people, on both sides, see the argument as "OP or useless", some tau argue for useless not making it any better.
The firestorm is strong, very strong. But not overpowered. At least not to a level justifying a preemptive nerf.
It should have been allowed, letting the top players take a crack at, and would it indeed produce dominating results beyond the rest of the stuff running around - only then nerf it.
(as for your wraithknights dual cannons getting preemptive nerf, I said that too is a mistake in my eyes, as D isn't even relevant against most things and it only serves to discourage super units, while not effecting mook armies at all, and super units NEED to have something to discourage using them as your go to answer to everything.)
twinlinked BS 2 is statistically bs 4 but actually its better because you are twice as likely to hit when you shoot at a flier or in over watch. Their shooting is great. Plus pinning. Keep telling me how bad drones are when in fact they are one of the best infantry shooters in the game.
Yeah its not statistically BS4. Check the math again. 2/6 first shots hit then (1/3 chance)*4 shots for the misses = total of 3.333/6
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coblen wrote: man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.
Too bad piranhas have 18" range with their guns so that isn't an option if you ever want them to go back into reserves again for the rest of the game
Thanks for correcting me. It's been years since i took statistics and I made a rookie mistake. This prompted me for a good refresher for dice odds. Best way to figure chance to hit is chance of miss dice 1 4/6 x chance of miss dice 2 4/6 - 1. So 4/6 x 4/6 = 44.44% = 100% - 44.44% = 55.5%. So it's about 10% worse odds. Vs fliers and snap shooting it is much better though.
You didn't have cheap scatter lasers, death spinners, or ally venoms to kill enough drones so that you could charge? You have a 12 movement combine with your other shooting you should be able to charge, I don't know how that is possible sounds like you were out played.
The point is a lot of people say you cant even use interceptor against it but you can use interceptor against the drones and the units will most likely die.
Not enough apparently, especially when your list is centered on WK's as your primary focus for offense over a shooty Eldar build.
I was able to charge and kill 2 riptides but the Tau age-old strategy of screening, retreating and finally bubble-wrapping made it difficult to pull off more assaults, especially as I am losing 1 WK a turn (and taking wounds on the other) from all that shooting. But I don't expect you to understand that as I suspect this is all theoryhammer on your part without actual experience.
And I don't know why you keep on insisting on using Interceptor on the drones, when 9 out of 10 armies DON'T HAVE INTERCEPTOR! So excuse me if I don't want to run Tau against Tau.
You didn't have cheap scatter lasers, death spinners, or ally venoms to kill enough drones so that you could charge? You have a 12 movement combine with your other shooting you should be able to charge, I don't know how that is possible sounds like you were out played.
The point is a lot of people say you cant even use interceptor against it but you can use interceptor against the drones and the units will most likely die.
Not enough apparently, especially when your list is centered on WK's as your primary focus for offense over a shooty Eldar build.
I was able to charge and kill 2 riptides but the Tau age-old strategy of screening, retreating and finally bubble-wrapping made it difficult to pull off more assaults, especially as I am losing 1 WK a turn (and taking wounds on the other) from all that shooting. But I don't expect you to understand that as I suspect this is all theoryhammer on your part without actual experience.
And I don't know why you keep on insisting on using Interceptor on the drones, when 9 out of 10 armies DON'T HAVE INTERCEPTOR! So excuse me if I don't want to run Tau against Tau.
It's okay - you can use your quality shots to shoot his free fodder units! Great idea!
Well jy2, in regard to the list you posted, it's obvious weakness is the drone network. It's small, fragile, and without it both the riptide wing and the firestorm lose much strength. (the retaliation does a bit too) keeping two in reserves will help, but will mean you have very little markers to work with.
So, an army with an artillery battery of sorts that can get to the marker drones even behind Los blockers will make a good start against it. TFC, heavy mortars, earthshakers, even whirlwind can do well. Don't really know non imperial/chaos artillery, but I a assume they got some.
Deepstrike elements could do it too, but multi riptide interception makes it hard without invul or counter Los avoidance. Lotd might be useful for this. Tau naturally could pull it off too, termies are technically possible. Dreadknight with flamer and shunt will do quick work here.
The list not having its own indirect limits handling any hidden artillery to the retaliation cadre, so if you can give it a decent wrap, or DS interference, it will force the wing to press towards it, giving you the chance to drop on them.
Next, high AV. The list has nearly nothing to handle high AV. 13 is rough, 14 nigh untouchable. Russes will be tough to handle though they are a bit lacking these days, land raiders might as well be immortals, so a raider containing assault unit with some power fists and/or axes could take control of positions in important passages or objectives. Imp Knights will do well, preferably ones with gun focus over melee focus, to better clear off any drone blockers.
Also, as every tau list - psykers, especially ld targeting attacks, will do wonders. Harlequins, DA, anyone that can spam telepathy - all got weapons here. The early presence is mostly the wing alone, and the wing is small enough to be broken. Even removing one HBCtide greatly reduces the benefits, as the iontide will have to come closer to keep the wing buffs running. And the HBCtide is rendered harmless without them.
And naturally, objective holding is not this list's virtue. So "tough it out" armies like decurion, renegade hordes, etc will stand a fighting chance at a "lose battle, win war" mentality of holding out objectives and enduring.
That's all I can say off the top of my head here.
Get ld targeting psykers, some indirect fire, and high AV if you can - and victory should be within grasp.
For hilarious results, monolith spam and Tvault. (said hilarious, not necessarily practical)
It's a tough, strong list. Probably even top table worthy.
But not overpowered. It can be fought and beaten.
I think part of the problem here is that some people, on both sides, see the argument as "OP or useless", some tau argue for useless not making it any better.
The firestorm is strong, very strong. But not overpowered. At least not to a level justifying a preemptive nerf.
It should have been allowed, letting the top players take a crack at, and would it indeed produce dominating results beyond the rest of the stuff running around - only then nerf it.
(as for your wraithknights dual cannons getting preemptive nerf, I said that too is a mistake in my eyes, as D isn't even relevant against most things and it only serves to discourage super units, while not effecting mook armies at all, and super units NEED to have something to discourage using them as your go to answer to everything.)
Keep in mind that I am not saying a Tau army with the Firestream formation is unbeatable. However, it is very powerful and difficult to play against, especially for the less experienced players. To these players, it just isn't fun for them to play against as there is nothing they can do to halt the production of free units.
Yes, marker drones is definitely a weak spot of the list. But that problem can be mitigated somewhat with adequate terrain (i.e. the availability of some BLOS terrain) from which they can hide behind.
Against a barrage-heavy build like TFC, you would try to stack them on multiple levels of ruins. But that really depends on whether regular shooting is more deadly or barrage-shooting from the opponent. If the regular shooting is more deadly, I'd still hide them behind BLOS terrain and just spread them out instead.
BTW, in the game against my Tyranids, my Tau opponent got Stealth/Move Through Cover (Ruins) as his Warlord trait so his marker drones were going-to-ground in ruins for 2+ cover, since they are already snap-shooting at flyers anyways.
My opponent ran fusions on all his riptides, as well as 1 fusion suit. Moreover, nova-charged Ion and HBC's can be used to deal with AV14 if necessary. That is adequate against heavy armor in all but the most extreme cases. Usually, the top tournament lists do not run heavy armor, with the exception of Imperial Knight armies. But against those, movement blocking works just as well as high-powered AT.
Psychic powers can be rough against the Tau, but Tau have ways to mitigate that as well. Nova-charging for the 3++ on the tides can help against LD-based attacks like Psychic Shriek. As for other LD-based attacks, well, the Tau will just have to take their chances and hope that they succeed. Ironically, in my games against Tau, I usually don't have a lot of success with powers such as Horrify, Psychic Scream and Psychic Shriek, but that is just in my case.
Finally, with regards to objective-holding, yeah, that is an exploitable weakness of Tau. Always was. Always will be. However, my list has tools for dealing with objectives as well. 1) Deepstriking the Retaliation Cadre offers you more flexibility in going after objectives. 2) Weight-of-fire from the Drone Factory gives you the firepower to deal with "tough it out" armies. Imagine my surprise to see the VoF (volume-of-fire) take down 30 T8 Wounds w/FNP (and with 1 unit Invisible most of the time).
BTW, in the game against my Tyranids, my Tau opponent got Stealth/Move Through Cover (Ruins) as his Warlord trait so his marker drones were going-to-ground in ruins for 2+ cover, since they are already snap-shooting at flyers anyways.
Was the marker drones from a drone net? If they were, then they could have gotten a 2+ cover save in the open with the stealth warlord trait.
If all the surviving models from a unit in this Formation are within 6" of a table edge
Not RAW but it seems that the author of the rule used the word 'surviving' with the intent that the unit had to weather a round of shooting first.
I think ITC ruled correctly that they can't leave the turn they enter.
Not true. It simply means that you don't need every model still in the squad to leave the board. If they hadn't put the word "surviving" in the rule, then there would be people arguing that you need every model alive in order to leave
If all the surviving models from a unit in this Formation are within 6" of a table edge
Not RAW but it seems that the author of the rule used the word 'surviving' with the intent that the unit had to weather a round of shooting first.
I think ITC ruled correctly that they can't leave the turn they enter.
Not true. It simply means that you don't need every model still in the squad to leave the board. If they hadn't put the word "surviving" in the rule, then there would be people arguing that you need every model alive in order to leave
That's why I said it wasn't RAW - but even what you are saying about surviving models still makes it sound like they were supposed to survive a round of shooting.
BTW, in the game against my Tyranids, my Tau opponent got Stealth/Move Through Cover (Ruins) as his Warlord trait so his marker drones were going-to-ground in ruins for 2+ cover, since they are already snap-shooting at flyers anyways.
Was the marker drones from a drone net? If they were, then they could have gotten a 2+ cover save in the open with the stealth warlord trait.
Jink = 4+
Go to ground = 3+
Stealth = 2+
Yes they were. The Warlord trait only gives them Stealth if they are in or obscured by Ruins.
Well jy2, in regard to the list you posted, it's obvious weakness is the drone network. It's small, fragile, and without it both the riptide wing and the firestorm lose much strength. (the retaliation does a bit too) keeping two in reserves will help, but will mean you have very little markers to work with.
So, an army with an artillery battery of sorts that can get to the marker drones even behind Los blockers will make a good start against it. TFC, heavy mortars, earthshakers, even whirlwind can do well. Don't really know non imperial/chaos artillery, but I a assume they got some.
Deepstrike elements could do it too, but multi riptide interception makes it hard without invul or counter Los avoidance. Lotd might be useful for this. Tau naturally could pull it off too, termies are technically possible. Dreadknight with flamer and shunt will do quick work here.
The list not having its own indirect limits handling any hidden artillery to the retaliation cadre, so if you can give it a decent wrap, or DS interference, it will force the wing to press towards it, giving you the chance to drop on them.
Next, high AV. The list has nearly nothing to handle high AV. 13 is rough, 14 nigh untouchable. Russes will be tough to handle though they are a bit lacking these days, land raiders might as well be immortals, so a raider containing assault unit with some power fists and/or axes could take control of positions in important passages or objectives. Imp Knights will do well, preferably ones with gun focus over melee focus, to better clear off any drone blockers.
Also, as every tau list - psykers, especially ld targeting attacks, will do wonders. Harlequins, DA, anyone that can spam telepathy - all got weapons here. The early presence is mostly the wing alone, and the wing is small enough to be broken. Even removing one HBCtide greatly reduces the benefits, as the iontide will have to come closer to keep the wing buffs running. And the HBCtide is rendered harmless without them.
And naturally, objective holding is not this list's virtue. So "tough it out" armies like decurion, renegade hordes, etc will stand a fighting chance at a "lose battle, win war" mentality of holding out objectives and enduring.
That's all I can say off the top of my head here.
Get ld targeting psykers, some indirect fire, and high AV if you can - and victory should be within grasp.
For hilarious results, monolith spam and Tvault. (said hilarious, not necessarily practical)
It's a tough, strong list. Probably even top table worthy.
But not overpowered. It can be fought and beaten.
I think part of the problem here is that some people, on both sides, see the argument as "OP or useless", some tau argue for useless not making it any better.
The firestorm is strong, very strong. But not overpowered. At least not to a level justifying a preemptive nerf.
It should have been allowed, letting the top players take a crack at, and would it indeed produce dominating results beyond the rest of the stuff running around - only then nerf it.
(as for your wraithknights dual cannons getting preemptive nerf, I said that too is a mistake in my eyes, as D isn't even relevant against most things and it only serves to discourage super units, while not effecting mook armies at all, and super units NEED to have something to discourage using them as your go to answer to everything.)
Keep in mind that I am not saying a Tau army with the Firestream formation is unbeatable. However, it is very powerful and difficult to play against, especially for the less experienced players. To these players, it just isn't fun for them to play against as there is nothing they can do to halt the production of free units.
Yes, marker drones is definitely a weak spot of the list. But that problem can be mitigated somewhat with adequate terrain (i.e. the availability of some BLOS terrain) from which they can hide behind.
Against a barrage-heavy build like TFC, you would try to stack them on multiple levels of ruins. But that really depends on whether regular shooting is more deadly or barrage-shooting from the opponent. If the regular shooting is more deadly, I'd still hide them behind BLOS terrain and just spread them out instead.
BTW, in the game against my Tyranids, my Tau opponent got Stealth/Move Through Cover (Ruins) as his Warlord trait so his marker drones were going-to-ground in ruins for 2+ cover, since they are already snap-shooting at flyers anyways.
My opponent ran fusions on all his riptides, as well as 1 fusion suit. Moreover, nova-charged Ion and HBC's can be used to deal with AV14 if necessary. That is adequate against heavy armor in all but the most extreme cases. Usually, the top tournament lists do not run heavy armor, with the exception of Imperial Knight armies. But against those, movement blocking works just as well as high-powered AT.
Psychic powers can be rough against the Tau, but Tau have ways to mitigate that as well. Nova-charging for the 3++ on the tides can help against LD-based attacks like Psychic Shriek. As for other LD-based attacks, well, the Tau will just have to take their chances and hope that they succeed. Ironically, in my games against Tau, I usually don't have a lot of success with powers such as Horrify, Psychic Scream and Psychic Shriek, but that is just in my case.
Finally, with regards to objective-holding, yeah, that is an exploitable weakness of Tau. Always was. Always will be. However, my list has tools for dealing with objectives as well. 1) Deepstriking the Retaliation Cadre offers you more flexibility in going after objectives. 2) Weight-of-fire from the Drone Factory gives you the firepower to deal with "tough it out" armies. Imagine my surprise to see the VoF (volume-of-fire) take down 30 T8 Wounds w/FNP (and with 1 unit Invisible most of the time).
Many things are frustrating to newer players. until the 6th edition codex came out and I got access to interceptor upgrade on suits I found drop pods to be infuriating (still don't see how any non-tau army that does not pack his own pods don't find it absurd)
Frustrating =/=op. poor design, but not a justification for a nerf.
Multi level ruins are not actually providing any defense against barrage these days, you hit ALL floors, not just one. (terrifying thought, isn't it?) multi level ruins are deathtraps against blasts. spreading out behind BLOS terrain is not always easy, and might interfere with your own targeting next turn if the opponent plays well. at the very least, you enter the realm of plays and counterplays here.
Yes, NOVA riptides CAN harm AV14, but not reliably, and it requires to dedicate the NOVA charges towards it, giving chances of things to screw up (either by NOVA fails, or getting hot) and even then-they are not very apt at it. and a riptide that comes into fusion range also comes into assault ranges. plays and counterplays.
Riptides that NOVA up 3++ for defense against psychic attacks are still running the risk of failing and hurting themselves-that's when you hit them. just like invisibility fails and grimore fails. this just has more individual units pulling the test, so while a failure is less horrid, and happens less often thanks to wing, there are actually more failures bound to happen than you'd expect. (3 riptides under the wing buff trying to nova, 30% at least one of them fails-that's they one you hammer.)
And as long they charge shields-they don't charge anything else. so their firepower is negligible (at least from the HBCtides)
As for why the wraithknights fell to the wight of fire-they are honestly a very bad spam pick against anything hordes. they got super powerful shots, but a few of them-and drones really don't require any meaningful firepower. had that list pack more "spam shots" itself (or any anti-horde), it would fare much better, as drones could be cleared away when nececery. although wraithknights are OP, its a horrible matchup.
Also, invisibility is amusingly less impressive the more big targets you got, as even if you invis something-I still got another big target to gun down. virtually you limited my choices, but added zero defenses.
Sigh, you do know that it's a choice between either dumping a bunch of drones (S5, no scoring, no contest units) or staying on the table firing expensive "krak" missiles thus leaving you open to any kind of counter.
