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After realising that 1850 pts is way to little for all the best new goodies to fit together, I'd like to hear your opinions on what do you think is better to slap on a minimal req hunter cadre and the lack of which formation would be easier to compensate (for instance, stealth cadre w 3 ghostkeels with Riptides on the side or retaliation cadre with maxed broadsides/riptides & ghostkeels on the side). Also, is running a unit of 3 riptides in the retaliation cadre unnecessary overkill or not?
Edit: First time posting, just wanted to say hello to all the glorious bastards of DakkaDakka

Shouldnt ever run more than 1 riptide in the retaliation cadre unless youre playing on a larger than usual table.
Reason being: Riptides deepstriking have a huge risk factor due to their massive base. A solo riptide can usually find a place if you play with proper terrain setup, a pair or even a trio probably never will.

The entire formation doesnt have to deepstrike yes but you can guarantee they all appear turn 2 if you do. Otherwise you have to roll for them like normal reserves (unit by unit).

Personally, i'd rather field the OSR. Its not investing half of your points to do it and its pretty dang powerful.

OSC is a better deal. RC has the Commander and Riptide tax that I really don't want when the Hunter Cadre or a CAD can give them already.

Couldn't you run both if you really wanted? I managed to fit two OSC into 1850, and that was with 3 ghostkeels in each one

Technically you can but you wouldnt have much else.

If you minimize the crisis/riptide units, its still 171pts for 3 solo crisis suits, ~200pts for the riptide depending on build, and ~140 for the commander depending on if he has any siggy gear n whatnot (shields, stims, iridium, etc). To me the main reason to use the retaliation cadre is the Relentless on broadsides perk, so thats 282pts for a fully decked out broadside squad + drones.
Give or take, thats about 800pts.

OSR with min stealths max ghosts would be 135pts per Stealth unit (fusion, some 5pt support, shas'ui w/ ML and TL, homing beacon) and 525pts for the ghosts (bursts, 5pt support, stims) for another ~800pts formation.

1600pts give or take. Can you even take more than a bare minimum CAD with that? lol

And i see no point in taking both RC and OSR unless you want the homing beacons on the stealth suits.

If you are running a minimum sized Hunter Cadre, the Retaliation Cadre might be the way to go for a Hunter Contingent as it will give you massive amounts of firepower (a maximum sized Retaliation will give you 27 Crisis Suits, 3 Broadsides, 3 Riptides, and a Commander, though you will never have enough points for that outside of Apoc). The Retaliation Cadre is extremely strong and mobile and gives you a guaranteed arrival time so you can make a battleplan around it similar to a SM Drop Pod list, but it gets very expensive very quickly and it can be difficult to DS that many units at once, though certainly not impossible. An OSC simply cannot provide the amount of firepower a kitted out Retaliation Cadre can give you.

On the flip side, what makes the OSC so amazing isn't just the special rules (which are awesome) but the fact that the points cost really isn't that high. You can have a very solid OSC (3 Ghostkeels w/ CIR and FB plus 2 3man Stealth teams with FB) for 610 points or so. That will leave you with 1200 points to build the rest of your army with. This allows you to fill out the Hunter Cadre rather nicely and give you plenty of options in addition to the OSC. However, the problem with the OCS is that the weapons it has are pretty short ranged (24" and 18" on all the weapons available to it) meaning that a smart opponent will just keep vehicles out of range or space them out in such a way that the OSC could never get to all of them in a normal length game.

Basically it's going to come down to whether or not you want to run a min Hunter Cadre (if you do go Retaliation, if not go OSC), how much you want to rely on the auxiliary choice (a Retaliation Cadre is gonna be doing most of the work in the list while the OSC is gonna be a fairly scary unit that is just one part of the larger list), and how much you are willing to gamble on the formation (if your Retaliation Cadre screws up somewhere, bad scatters or whatever, you probably are screwed. If the OSC screws up, you still have a decent sized HC to rely on. Of course the Retaliation Cadre has much more potential output than the OSC does).

You can always DS the OSC as well.

If you are deep striking crisis suits and broadsides you don't really need optimized stealth cadre shooting at rear armor, you just drop down in the rear. And to be honest I am not sure how good the optimized stealth cadre really is. I am just underwhelmed with the gun choices the ghostkneel has and the stealth suit tax is real. The only thing I really like about the ghstkneel is it makes very good anti-air with velocity trackers and early warning overrides.

 lambsandlions wrote:
If you are deep striking crisis suits and broadsides you don't really need optimized stealth cadre shooting at rear armor, you just drop down in the rear. And to be honest I am not sure how good the optimized stealth cadre really is. I am just underwhelmed with the gun choices the ghostkneel has and the stealth suit tax is real. The only thing I really like about the ghstkneel is it makes very good anti-air with velocity trackers and early warning overrides.

Watch some of the miniwargaming battle reports with the new Tau. 3 man Ghostkeel squads did amazing in the two games they played. a 2+ cover save combined with 3 turns of your opponents best unit snap firiing will have some serious staying power. Guns are a little underwhelming, but with auto BS5, ignore cover, and hitting rear armor, it more than makes up for it.

Its not always possible to deepstrike rear armor. Either because not enough space, screening units, or vehicle is hugging something to prevent it.

Took the OCS last week as was really happy with it

1 ghost with ion and fusion and bs2 overwatch and fnp

2 groups of 4 stealths 1 ungraded with targetlock + ml and fuision and all with bs2 overwatch.

going up against an all skitarii force the ignores cover was pretty amazing. ghostkeel made it to turn 7 before it died( never once made him snapfire lol)

though the bs2 overwatch was also amazing, baited his rustalkers into charging my keel, rolled lots of 5 n 6's with my suits that were backin up the keel and brought them down to a man, just to have him pummeled in CC to the keel. i was so happy.

Still lost the game due to a few HUUUUGE tactical errors on my part but you live n you learn.

Im really happy with the OSC. IM just so excited to have my BS4 stealth suits back(without ML usage), bs5 with shenanigans, but i just use the one formation for now.

Least you admitted the loss was because you flopped your tactics and not dice gods hate you like most people do.

Counterfire is pretty much the only support upgrade i ever give my stealth suits. They have 4 shots each and are consistently in charge danger. It just makes the most sense. Only other one i debate upon is Adv Targeting Systems once again because of the rate of fire for sniping special upgrades.

i used to give them the BS+1 upgrade but they took it away. Which is why ill use counterfire now.

The dice gods were actually with me this game. It was 100% bad generalship. My riptide was stuck in CC from turn 2- turn 6 dying in turn 6 when he charged me with something more killy than dragoons. Forgot to use the snapfire ability of the ghostkeel. left me stealths out of cover they could have easily been in, so they got obliterated. I still had a good game and at the end of turn 7 i still had my commnder and his entire mark o squad and a squad of 2 stealths 1 with a fusion. he had like 6 infiltrators a squad of rangers and 2 dragoons. the only reason my stealths survived is cuz they split and were basically useless for turn 6 and 7. Lost maelstrom like 27 -18. honestly i think one of my biggest mistakes was not using the single s10 shot from the riptide instead of 3 s6 hits. mightve killed more than one of the 3 dragoons in 6 turns lol

I prefer the OSC because of the Wall of Mirrors special rule. It, combined with missilesides, nearly guarantees a dead knight each turn. I did it today, three missile suits, two ghostkeels, and three missile sides put 10+ glances/ Penetrating Hits on a knight, before I rerolled for tank hunter.

Um, how are you giving the OSC rules to a missileside? its a formation specific perk, not a special rule.

DirtyDeeds wrote:
I prefer the OSC because of the Wall of Mirrors special rule. It, combined with missilesides, nearly guarantees a dead knight each turn. I did it today, three missile suits, two ghostkeels, and three missile sides put 10+ glances/ Penetrating Hits on a knight, before I rerolled for tank hunter.

Not a good judge of performance if you're cheating lol

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Um, how are you giving the OSC rules to a missileside? its a formation specific perk, not a special rule.

You misunderstood, I shot at the knight with the ghostkeels and the missilesides. Ghostkeels shot the rear and missile sides shot the front, leaving one facing unprotected.

DirtyDeeds wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Um, how are you giving the OSC rules to a missileside? its a formation specific perk, not a special rule.

You misunderstood, I shot at the knight with the ghostkeels and the missilesides. Ghostkeels shot the rear and missile sides shot the front, leaving one facing unprotected.

haha ok that makes more sense

It takes a hell of a lot of missilesides to take out a knight by shooting at its front armor.

Missilesides aren't a good idea vs knights, in my view. I'd rather fusion crisis or stormsurge (heck, even a unit of railheads)

 Vector Strike wrote:
Missilesides aren't a good idea vs knights, in my view. I'd rather fusion crisis or stormsurge (heck, even a unit of railheads)

I thought the same thing till I saw three grav centurions drop my knight one day.

In our 6th edition codex, I would agree with you. However, Coordinated Firepower and it's rule sharing (if you read it that way) can put the hurt on the front armor of a knight. In my scenario, I had two broadsides, three missilesuits (and an extra buff'vre) and two ghostkeels (utilizing Wall of Mirrors) fire at one Knight. That means 24 bs 4 twin linked str 7 tank hunter shots hitting his front arc, and 12 bs 5 twin linked str 7 tank hunter shots hitting his rear arc. He placed his shield on the rear to protect it from my Ghostkeels. The knight failed 4 invuls on his rear arc and took another 5 before I rerolled on his front. Never underestimate str 7. This was my first shooting phase

So really it's a psychological strategy we can employ. Force the opponent to put his shield on the wrong facing and exploit it with the OSC and regular missilesides. I understand that meltas, stormsurges, and rail heads are all viable methods of dropping a knight (my stormsurge dropped my opponent's second knight on turn 1), but many of these are not taken in enough numbers to drop the knight as quickly as I did, or arrive too late.

 Vector Strike wrote:
Missilesides aren't a good idea vs knights, in my view. I'd rather fusion crisis or stormsurge (heck, even a unit of railheads)

As someone who has a knight army as well as a firebase cadre, I can tell you that missilesides are dirty against knights, though I will qualify that with tankhunting missilesides are dirty against knights. Doubly so if you can make them move their shield due to fusion fire or some other threat.

12 shots, 9 hits, 2.75 glances and that's before markerlights. Both broadside teams of a firebase should remove a knight in a single round with 2 markerlight hits if his shield isn't facing them, or they'll do it with no markerlights at all if not against front armour. With the new trash version of the firebase, if they all fire and you've got a full complement of broadsides, they'll drop it without markerlight support because +1BS is a thing.

With Tank Hunters, yes. By themselves, though, I wouldn't use them against Knights.

 Vector Strike wrote:
With Buffmander and his PEN, yes. By themselves, though, I wouldn't use them against Knights.

Corrected that for you

In my current build I'm playing around with using both the Infiltration Cadre and the Retaliation Cadre in 1850, it's actually not that bad point wise. Honestly though, the Infiltration Cadre is probably wrong and I'll be cutting it, which means I'll probably pick up an OSC, as I want a Ghostkeel as is. The only problem is that I don't like the OSC for the same reason I don't like the Infiltration Cadre, which is the Stealth Suit tax, despite loving the model.

I've NEVER understood the stealth suit hate, NEVER. I take them in every game, have since 3rd edition. They have never let me down.

They either tank a bunch of fire that would otherwise hurt things like my broadsides or my marker lights. OR they get ignored because they are underestimated/ignored( also 2+ cover is no joke) and then they kill a bunch of stuff before then tanking a bunch of fire as my opponent focuses them down.

I have infiltrated basically every game( bad infiltration because im a dumbass sometimes has made them worthless but thats my fault not theirs) except for this last game because i took the OSC. I wanted to be near my ghostkeel, and it worked out really well. ghostkeel did really well even though i forgot to use his one time only ability. he out paced the suits in kills due to AP4 raker, but my stealths outdid my broadsides (he focused 4 of them down pretty quick, 2 rail and 2 missle)....... and my riptide... That was for sure my fault though, bad deployment + lack of rule remembering = super useless riptide. It was also the first time I ever took a riptide, so, i dont honestly know what to expect out of a riptide.

TLDR: Don't underestimate Stealth Suits, especially in the OSC.

The problem with Stealth Suits isn't that they're terrible, it's that they have really restrictive builds, and compete with units that have a lot more options. Just compare them to the obvious Crisis Suit with one burst Cannon, for 2 more points you lose the nice cover save, but gain a toughness and a wound, which in my opinion is better. On top of that you gain more weapon options, more survivability, and an extra system slot.

Basically, all they really need to do to make Stealth Suits very viable, is give them weapon options across the squad, so they're more comparable to Crisis Suits.

Stealth Suits in a OSC aren't compeating with anything, unless you are implying that the OSC itself is compeating for points better spent elsewhere. Wall of Mirrors, however, makes you want to get the most out of your Stealth Suits though.

SJ

Stealth suits have targeting homer thingies. They're there to prepare a highway in the desert for your crisis suits.

DirtyDeeds wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Um, how are you giving the OSC rules to a missileside? its a formation specific perk, not a special rule.

You misunderstood, I shot at the knight with the ghostkeels and the missilesides. Ghostkeels shot the rear and missile sides shot the front, leaving one facing unprotected.

That'll work the first time against someone who doesn't know how OSC works.

You likely will not get to use that trick again.