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How do you arm your Battle suit?

Personally I give my BSuits twin-linked plasma.
Why: good at killing Heavy troops, light veh., and with Bs: 3 the twin link comes in handy
3 BSuits, at close range shoot 6 shots, and able to re-roll misses.
Is their any better all purpose combo.
And what third wargear do you give them.
for me its a sheild generator.

I only run 3 suits.

Shas'o Commander with fusion, plasma, multtracker (or target lock, whichever gives the fire two weapons), vectored jump thrusters.

Then two seperate single suits

Shas'ui with plasma, missile pod, multtracker (or target lock, whichever gives the fire two weapons), and target lock.

BS 4 is really useful to get full effect out of all the weapons. No need to twin link.

Darth Balls, I only wish all Tau players armed their suits as you do. They would be so much less annoying then.

TL-ing plasma is too expensive. You're better off getting plasma and MP and boosting their BS with markerlights. You also need the MP to have a decent chance at killing vehicles that aren't AV10. Alternatively, cheapie TL MP suits are good too.

Shield generators are, in general, terrible. Those things make up over a quarter of your total points (and that's given the bloated TL PR config you propose) but, given that most of the Suits' survivability comes from JSJ, sure doesn't make them 36% more survivable or useful. Maybe if you wanted to give them fusion blasters for some reason, but otherwise I don't see it.

I don't play Tau, but I did encounter a player running with 3 strong battlesuit squad with twin linked fusion blasters or whatever those Tau meltaguns are called. Did a real number to my Armoured Company before the Exterminator got them.

My preference is a squad of Plasma/Fusion/Multitrack supported by two squads of TL-Missilepod/Targetting array, and markerlight support. Command suits are always plasma/fusion/multi for me. I find it much more useful to cram the missilepods onto other units, and have the individual units focus on what they are good at.

With 2 markerlights the Plas/Fus unit can earn it's weight in a single turn of shooting.

I play against alot of Marines, so I have to get something that can do AP 2 (both marines and terms).
I do like MP, however, they just dont have the punching power that I need. To many times have my suits moved in and distroyed marine units (small) with my TL plasmas.
I'm suprised that I seem to be the only one who loves shield generaters, with out them my suits fall to quickly to lascannon, missles, and power fist attacks.
expensive yes, but when their is no cover around its all you got. But I will heed your advice and try a few games without to see the diff.

I've heard good things about a Commander with Fusion Blaster, Missile Pods, Shield Unit, 2 Shield Drones, a Multi-tracker, and the Iridium Armor. Deepstrike him behind enemy tanks.

Also, the Cyclic Ion Blaster is REALLY painful against anyone who doesn't have Power Armor or an equivalent, and is still useful against those that do.

I have three Fireknife (plasma rifle and missile pod)
and three Blinding Spear (plasma rifle and burst cannon).

I also have one Soul Cleanse (flamer, fusion blaster and shield generator).

I do this becauise:

1. Its the formal outfitting for the Tau sept and I use Tau sept colours.
2. Fireknife has long been seen as the best option.
3. Soul Cleanse rounds off the weaponry so that between my suits I have all the options. I only need one variant suit, and Soul Cleanse is for monat anyway.

My Commander Sghas'O has plasma rifle, missile pod and C&C node. Its the best loadout for a Shas'O. With a Shas'el I would prefer plasma rifle missile pod and targeting array.
As I scratchbuilt my C&C node I can alternate between games and take both options.

I always run plasma and missile pod.

No idea what soul cleanse is. lol

"Soul Cleanse" is the "flamer/FB suit" of cat piss men (think "Bazakhain" vs "mech Eldar").

Darth Balls, do you use markerlights? With markerlights, the loss of TLing is not too great, and you'll be glad for the MPs when you face Eldar or other Tau instead of the usual Marines. Of course, if you know you'll be fighting Marines and nothing but Marines, I guess the TL PR makes sense.

I have played against Tau more than with them (I don't actually have a Tau army of my own), but I find it is not a trivial task bringing lascannons and missile launchers to bear on Suits. If you find your Suits dying to them so easily, perhaps you need more terrain and/or to play more cautiously (not going for the double-tap, for instance). As for PFs, all the shield gens in the world won't save your Suits once they're in combat.

I run two setup's. The first is very powerfull, and durable setup. The second is less powerful but has better modility and able to pick more targets.

First Setup
Team 1 & 2
3xCrisis with...
(1)Team Leader, Multi tracker, plasma rifle, missile pod, 2xshield drones, bonded.
(2)Multi tracker, burst cannon, missile pod.
(3)Multi tracker, fusion blaster, missile pod.
(both teams are the same

Second Setup
Team 1
2xCrisis with...
(1)multi tracker, burst cannon, missile pod
(2)multi tracker, fusion blaster, missile pod

Team 2
2xCrisis with...
(1)multi tracker, burst cannon, missile pod
(2)multi tracker, fusion blaster, missile pod

Team 3
2xCrisis with...
(1)multi tracker, plasma rifle, missile pod
(2)multi tracker, plasma rifle, missile pod

These are the setups i use, the second is my current fave but I'm still testing it, I sometimes use one of the teams as a bodyguard for the Shas'o/el instead.


"Darth Balls" Yes I was once a shield lover, used to use shields on every unit i could which pretty much cost me every game I played.

The only team I religously use shields with is the broadside teams, they can be very hard to kill but thats for another thread(which has been done to death already)

I started to use Markerlights recently, only about 3 in my army. I put them into two fire warrior teams and used one from the sniper drone teams.

They are very useful for assisting your crisis suits or even for assisting the other fire warrior teams in your army.

(They also have many other benefits you can use such as -1 Ld for pinning check etc as per in Tau codex) But would recommend not going over board with markers, just like the shields as you'll sink to many points.

I love TL plasma. For ten points I up grade the to-hit ability of what counts. Marker lights are more expensive and have to have LOS and hit what I want the suits to hit. No thank you. I run suits similar to yours, but I normally run two man units, one a Team Lead with TL Plasma, Missle Pod, HW multi-tracker, the other TL plasma, targetting array. This unit can still damage AV12 and less, plus it does what I reall do not have in my army, killing 3+ and 2+ saves reliably. I usually have two units of these and one unit of two suits with TL Missle pods and targeting array.

The Wraith

I use suits as the main kill power in my army, so they get all tricked out to fight.

3 man Fireknife (Plasma/Missile/Multi), Team Leader w/ Targetting Array and 2 Shield Drones

3 man Deathrain (TL-Missile/Targetting)


2 Fireknife teams and 1 Deathrain team along w/ heavy Markerlight support is my usual play build. Occasionally I'll swap in a Burst/Missile/Multi, but by and large I've been pretty happy with the above builds. My Command suit is either a Shas'O w/ Plasma/Fusion/C&C or Shadowsun.

For any JSJ suit, terrain is critical, but in low terrain environments, I'll land a Devilfish and use it to shoot from.

I'm suprised that some of you run 2-man teams.

I'm not a fan, do to the fact that if you lose one, then your taking those damn "Last man standing" test. Which can cause you to lose your other suit, which sucks.

P.S. where are you guys finding these crasy names for your suit set-ups. "fireknife", "deathrain"
did I just not read the fluff about suits in the codex or what...

@"Darth Balls"
Can't speak for the other players as their crisis setups differ from mine and also will play them differently during a game, but my reason to switching from five to two unit teams is as thus.

Setup 1, is a 5man team(drones inc) whilst setup 2, is only 2man. My suits are always hidden behind structures and are never left out in the open unit for the enemy shooting, meaning that losing models is rarely an issue unless assualted. It also makes the team easier to hide due to less models.

Also, having smaller teams may mean less firepower in the squad, but does mean that you aren't wasting large amounts of firepower against a smaller enemy unit and if you did need extra shooting at the same unit, you can drag in another crisis team(I keep them nearby to each other) or another unit of something to assist.

My advice, use bluetack, try different configurations that yourself and we have suggested and see what you like.
Some of my early setups for crisis teams were terrible lol. Though the ones I now use compliment my army and play style extremely well.

Darth Balls wrote:

P.S. where are you guys finding these crasy names for your suit set-ups. "fireknife", "deathrain"
did I just not read the fluff about suits in the codex or what...

They were in a White Dwarf once. Each sept has three favoured loadouts. Two for Ta'ro'cha, three suit teams, and one Monat - a single suit.
Though it could be argued that as most sept configs suck apart from the Tau sept they all use Tau sept plus their own sdept config.

Fireknife is by far the most common crisis config, though Deathrain does have its adherents.

hellsguardian316 nailed the main reason for the two man sqad, hiding them. Also, I like the two man squad because it is fairly cheap (142 points the way I run them) and you have to kill it to a man to stop it from scoring or being able to regroup.

The Wraith

You can always make one a team leader with knife, can't you? That mitigates the problem somewhat.

My boy friend runs mostly plasma and missle pods with multracker or without. It allows for more versatility then twin linking plasma being able to shoot at more targets if multi tracker and having another shot opportunity where twinlinking you only hit one thing. Fusion is not bad but then you need a multi tracker as you want to shoot that at a vehicle most likely. The 12 inch range is a detriment though and its probably better to put fusion on fast skimmer or drop the fusion guns off ala Eldar and Fire Dragons.

tegeus-Cromis wrote:You can always make one a team leader with knife, can't you? That mitigates the problem somewhat.

You don't need a knife with only a two man set up. You will never be below half, so there is no reason to pay 10 points to allow you to regroup.

With the new rules, flamers seem to be a way to go against hordes. Those pesky infiltrator/scouts that comes in from the sides and such can burn very fast from 3 flamer suits that costs roughly 100 pts.

Hellsguardian316 - Great point

Tegeus-Cromis - Good point, but...

Jayden63 - Jayden is right (pg. 49 RB), with two suits, if one dies then your not below 50%. However, you still have to take "last man standing test" (pg. 49), which could get annoying. Plus, falling back might make you lose your cover.

You-all make great points.....very smart.

Balls out.......

Of course, how silly of me.

@"Darth Balls"
Two remedies for the last man standing problem.
1. Use your commander to join a crisis team suffering from LMS
2. Have an Ethereal in LOS to allow re-rolls.

Think for most players they would say that an Ethereal would be by far the easiest, cheapest and most practical solution. You can't really afford to have your commander jumping over the battlefield to join up with a crisis team just to stop it rolling a LMS test, thats just stupid.
Also, if your commander had a bodyguard then you wouldn't be able to join another team anyway.


@"Kallbrand"
3 Flamer suits? thats sounds like a very nice upclose and personal anti troop killing team.
What is the rest of the equipment with those suits? Do you find they get chewed up by shooting or closecombat? I fancy giving them a go in my next army list to give me some additional CC support.


@tegeus-Cromis
"On second thoughts lets not go to Camilot, it is a silly place"
Couldn't resist, love the Monty Python .gif on your avatar

If you included a drone or two into the team then taking the knife would be well worth it. The question would be if it was beneficial to include drones into your two-man team. eg, no point spending points on shield drones if you keep then hidden from fire all the time, whereas "Kallbrand" flamer suits would greatly benefit from them and a knife.
In my Setup1(as detailed above) not having the knife would be foolish as the squad is sometimes too large to be kept hidden from all angles, so the shield drones help take off some off the instant kill.

I'm suprised that some of the replies advocate mixed weapons within a squad - ex:

1)Team Leader, Multi tracker, plasma rifle, missile pod, 2xshield drones, bonded.
(2)Multi tracker, burst cannon, missile pod.
(3)Multi tracker, fusion blaster, missile pod.

This seems to me to be a huge waste of shooting on a per turn basis. The weapons are varied so that the unit can shoot at anything and have a chance of killing it, but it's no optimized at all. you have anti-infantry, anti-heavy infantry, anti-light vehicle and anti-heavy vehicle weapons here. If you're running two squads, why not focus one of them on anti-light vehicle/anti-infantry (so plasma/BC or MP/BC set ups) and run the other as anti-hvy infantry hvy tank (plasma/fusion)? The you are getting focused concentrated fire at the right targets.

Generally in 2K points I ran 2 Shas'Os with plasma, fusion, sheild gen and HW MT. Granted the shield generators are over priced, but for a while I was facing a lot of oblits/ordnance and by late game my gun drones that I run interference with were dead, so the IC's were sometimes targetable.

The suits were usually as follows:

team 1: fireknife x3 TLeader bonded (plasma,MP, MT, bonding knife)

Team2: plasma/BC x3 team leader bonded

Team 3: deathrain x2 (twinlinked MP, Targetting arrays - if I had the points one of them was upgraded to a team leader and had a HW target lock). I ran two here because that's usually plenty to kill whatever they shoot at. Since they operate at 36", with J-S-J they rarely if ever died, so I never worried about one dieing and having to take LMS tests. They were nigh invincible due to the range and JSJ.

The commanders focused on hvy infantry and any tanks that got to close, the fireknives focused on MEQ and or light vehicles that were at long range, team 2 hit infantry, and team 3 concentrated on light vehicles and things like nid warriors.

Every unit has focused fire with complementing weapons.

Never take a drone or bodyguard with an IC. Their IC status is what keeps them alive and keeps there points on the table. Tau is as much about VP denial as they are about killing the enemy IMO.

Using flamethrowers seems like a precision job, although flamers paired with fusion guns seems like it would make Ork players grind their tusks. The flamethrower template is 8" long so you'd need to move to get the 2" tip of it in range, unload burning death, and then scoot 6" back to leave the Orks out of 12" assault range. Or just head in whole hog and use a unit of Kroot to cover your back.

why pair it with fusion if you're fighting orks? Stick a burst cannon on it instead. Volume of shots matters here, not Strength or AP.

Just hope that they have already used their waaagh otherwise you aren't going to get out of charge range most likely.

I use:

Shas'el with fireknife config and BS5
Shas'el with plasma, CIB, BS5 and HWMT.
Two squads of two fireknives, one suit BS4 and the other BS3 in each squad.

Remedies to LMS are to join the shas'els to the squads (though that usually means taking a Ld8 test twice before you get to join them). Alternatively don't get them shot - works for me!

Fireknife is the best config for the suits IMO for millions of reasons. Mainly beacuse it gives you good strength AT and ap2 all in one, and you can't really get either in many other places in the list easily without losing something else.

The CIB is a very surprising weapon. I never really rated it til my mate convinced me to try it (by doing well with it) and it works really well for me. Favourite target is fire dragons dropping out of a falcon. Splat.

budro wrote:Generally in 2K points I ran 2 Shas'Os with plasma, fusion, sheild gen and HW MT. Granted the shield generators are over priced, but for a while I was facing a lot of oblits/ordnance and by late game my gun drones that I run interference with were dead, so the IC's were sometimes targetable.

That's exactly how I run my Shas'O. I play him quite aggressively though, usually getting right in the face of my opponents heavy hitting units(such as terminators) and taking them down. I don't know how many times that SG has saved him too, well worth the 20 points.

As for people running differently configurated suits in the same squad, that's just ridiculously stupid. In order to optimize shooting you have to have squads with the same config. Say you were trying to shoot down some terminators and you had one fireknife suit and the other a MP and BC suit. You'll have one weapon ignoring the armor of the terminators and the others will most likely be saved. Same goes if you're tank hunting with your suits, a BC isn't going to do much good. Whereas if you had your suits configured the same on a squad by squad basis, you could send one squad after one target that it would specialize agaisnt, and the other against something it else that it would be well suited for. It's simple logic.

As for the flamer suits, I had thought about running some myself in higher pointed games. I'd intented to run a squad of 2 configured as so:

x2 Crisis(50)
x2 TL Flamer(12)
x2 Blacksun Filter(6)
-68 total(34 each)

Obviously the BF is there just to fill up the last hardpoint on the suit, as there was nothing else that would keep their cost relatively cheap while being actually useful. I hadn't thought about drones, I'm gonna have to try them out to see how they do.

And as for my suits, I usually just run Helios suits and leave the light vehicle killing to my Broadsides, and sometimes my Stealths.

And in case anyone was wondering the names of suit configs here's a list of most of them that I 'borrowed' from another site.

Common Crisis Configurations:
(courtesy of T0nkaTruckDriver)

These suit names were developed from the following rough pattern:

Plasma Rifle: "Knife/Blade"
Missile Pod: "Fire"
Fusion Blaster: "Forge"
Burst Cannon: "Storm"
Airbursting Fragmentation Projector: "Thunder"
Cyclic Ion Blaster: "Ion"

One Weapon Suits: These consist of one twinlinked weapon and a support system (or Flamer) in the third hardpoint.

Sunforge (SF): Twinlinked Fusion Blaster
Deathrain (DR): Twinlinked Missile Pod
Burning Eye (BE): Twinlinked Plasma Rifle
Heatwave (HW): Twinlinked Flamer

Two Weapon Suits: These consist of two weapons and a Multitracker. If one of the weapons is twinlinked, the configuration name will be followed by a number which is the strength of the twinlinked weapon. The Multitracker will then therefore be Hardwired.

Fireknife (FK): Plasma Rifle + Missile Pod
Helios: Plasma Rifle + Fusion Blaster
Bladestorm / Blinding Spear / Aurora: Plasma Rifle + Burst Cannon
Fireforge: Missile Pod + Fusion Blaster
Firestorm: Missile Pod + Burst Cannon
Stormforge: Burst Cannon + Fusion Blaster
Hailstorm: Shas'Vre Twin Linked Burst Cannon + Airbursting Fragmentation Launcher.
Ion Knife: Cyclic Ion Blaster + Plasma Rifle
Ion Storm: Cyclic Ion Blaster + Burst Cannon

Three Weapon Suits: Consists of three weapons and a Hardwired Multitracker

Sunfire: Plasma Rifle + Missile Pod + Fusion Blaster