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Having only played tau in my lifetime as a 40k player I have been really trying to bend my head around a way to be successful in 5th edition without just bowing to the accepted doctrine of what is best for tau players to field. Now this idea has been marinating in my brain for the past couple months and now I'm looking for some criticism on how viable it will actually be so here goes.

Troops

12 x Firewarriors, Shas'ui, Bonding Knife, Marker Light, Drone Controller, 2 x Marker Drones (205)
12 x Firewarriors, Shas'ui, Bonding Knife, Marker Light, Drone Controller, 2 x Marker Drones (205)
12 x Firewarriors, Shas'ui, Bonding Knife, Marker Light, Drone Controller, 2 x Marker Drones (205)
12 x Firewarriors, Shas'ui, Bonding Knife, Marker Light, Drone Controller, 2 x Marker Drones (205)

HQ

Shas'el, Fusion Blaster, Plasma Rifle, Multitracker, (87)

Elites
2 x Crisis Suit, TL Fusion blaster, Shield generator (126)

Fast Attack

8 x Pathfinder (96)
Devilfish, Disruption Pod (85)
8 x Pathfinder (96)
Devilfish, Disruption Pod (85)

Heavy Support

Skyray Missile Defense Gunship, 2 x Gun Drone, Disruption Pod (150)
Skyray Missile Defense Gunship, 2 x Gun Drone, Disruption Pod (150)
Skyray Missile Defense Gunship, 2 x Gun Drone, Disruption Pod (150)
Total: 1845 points

34 Markerlights

28 fired at bs 3
6 fired at bs 4

Avg 17.96 markerlight hits per turn





The idea here is quite obviously markerlight overload, completely deny your opponent cover saves and inundate his tough stuff with seeker missiles. Without a cover save and with a salvo of str 8 missiles in flight nob bikers don't as scary anymore do they. Now i realize this is a tad alpha strikey but with so many marker lights floating around and problem unit can have the gundrones from the skyrays and the devilfish set upon it and forced to autofail pinning test. Even if something makes it to cc without being able to consolidate into a new cc that means you now get another turn to light it up and force it to fail pinning checks from drones/pathfinder fire. The crisis suits are obviously tank hunters not much to be said there. Been pondering dropping the Crisis tem in favor of two piranha and trying to find room to put seekers on the piranha/devilfish but not really sure how.

My biggest problems with this list are first and foremost low survivability, secondly low fire power once all the seekers are gone, and lastly low mobility for my scoring units.

What do y'all think?

12 firewarriors costing 205pts? and not really protected? I'd rather see 12 firewarriors naked with a devilfish, and you really only need 2 more devilfish to add to the list.

To take advantage of 5th edition, you need to maximize your abilty to take covers saves, minimize that in your opponent, have hordes of guys or make them unkillable in transports.

Personally, I like hammerheads with railguns... pathfinders + template = no cover saves = lots of dead stuff.

I dont see where or why you need so many markerlights.

And for HQ I have liked, and probably will always like running plasma rifle, fusion blaster and.. yeap and missle pods. BTW have you seen the stimulent injector.. wow. I find a way to get that inthere, and atttach him to a large unit of crisis suits, and you get him to take their hits and abuse his feel no pain thing. its a fun thing in 1500pts orless, larger games.. meh.

The army is based around seeker missile salvos, you need that many markerlights to ensure you can get the seekers there all at once. this army would be capable of gibbing an entire nob biker squad in one turn or even two full tactical squads and that isn't even counting pulse rifle fire. The point of this list would be to break your opponents nose turn 1 then force pinning checks all over the place at huge negative modifiers to keep him from hitting you back. Now as far as the crisis configs go they are there for one reason and one reason only, heavy tank hunting they are kitted thus to keep points down and to provide the only real way of dealing with AR 13 and 14 that this army has to offer.

It's an interesting concept. What about ditching one of your fire warrior squads and the crisis suit team.

Replace that with 4-5 pirahna's with fusion blasters. That would help the survivability of the sky ray's and give you some better mobility. It would also better utilize your markerlights since you are using a larger squad.

If you went with 4 you could then use the extra points to mount more seekers on your pirahna's for use in getting side or rear shots on armor.

I was under the impression that the skyray had rules that said something like 2 missles may be launched per turn. Even so... 2 well placed railgun templates make short work of a bike squad and then a railgun to the leader ends his carear. And... you always have a threat to armor 14 without needing to get too close and too personal, and... you never run out of ammo.

You know you can just put seeker missles on vehicles. Then use the pathfinders to launch them. It works just as well as a skyray if you want them to be.

While the hammerhead is around, the skyray is a 3rd string choice... hammerhead, broadside, skyray, then the other heavy options. I could see wanting it at 1850 when you are running a farsight list and can't take multiple hammerheads. just my thoughts.

Sazzlefrats wrote:I was under the impression that the skyray had rules that said something like 2 missles may be launched per turn. Even so... 2 well placed railgun templates make short work of a bike squad and then a railgun to the leader ends his carear. And... you always have a threat to armor 14 without needing to get too close and too personal, and... you never run out of ammo.

You know you can just put seeker missles on vehicles. Then use the pathfinders to launch them. It works just as well as a skyray if you want them to be.

While the hammerhead is around, the skyray is a 3rd string choice... hammerhead, broadside, skyray, then the other heavy options. I could see wanting it at 1850 when you are running a farsight list and can't take multiple hammerheads. just my thoughts.

There is no such rule, the skyrays can dump every seeker they have on turn 1 should you so choose. The reason why you take skyrays in this case over loading seekers onto other vehicles is they are the cheapest way to get seekers onto the table. With 6 seekers included (seekers on other vehicles are 10 points each) that means minus the seekers a stripped down skyray comes in at 75 points. In order to get the same number of seekers on the table the cheapest way you could go would be piranhas at 60 points each plus 20 for two seekers you would have to spend 240 points in piranhas vs 150 points in skyrays with a disruption pod and gun drones/SMS to field the same number of seekers.

Lastly I fully admit this list suffers against av 13 and 14 lack of railguns hurts, however those submunition rounds don't deal with nob bikers as well as you think, they get a 4+ cover save against it and then feel no pain from the obligatory doc. This list denies them both via market lights, and seekers being str 8 inflicting instant death

this list makes me wonder, have we ever definitively determined if seeker missiles count as having been fired by the vehicle carrying them? Makes a lot of difference for using markerlights to reduce cover saves vs. seekers. Anyway, on to the list itself...

my main concern is this: you have 18 seekers in your army. Let's assume that every single one of those seekers both hits and wounds a marine you've denied cover with seekers (they won't. in reality, it would kill 12.5 without cover saves), that's 2 dead/gutted tactical squads. The problem there is, I don't know any marine armies at 1850 who can't easily afford to lose 2 10-man squads. This is before the missiles required to knock out the rhinos their in, or any other priority vehicle kills.

Oh, and the nob bikers. I usually see 2 groups of 10 and 2 warbosses. that means 10 or so will live through the seeker salvo, more than enough to smash through 36 fire warriors unfortunately quickly. Also, someone mentioned the viability of hammerhead submunitions vs. nob bikers? Even with all 10 hits (not unreasonable with biker bases) and no cover saves allowed, you're still only looking at 3.33 wounds which will mean 0 dead bikers due to wound allocation. Just to clear up any misconceptions. Don't mean to be the party pooper or anything, but them nobz iz 'ard!

I'm also concerned about the plan to make people auto-fail pin tests. I think this will be much harder than you think.

-Eldar will be the most susceptible to this, though most are mech and have enough tanks to potentially weather the seeker storm.
-IG don't care if 3 squads get pinned, better that than off the table.
-Orks are always fearless. a non-fearless ork unit is usually doomed anyway.
-space marines don't care about pulse fire. Even at BS5, 2 gun drones only have ~40% chance of killing a marine, and you'd need 10 of your 18 marker light hits for that auto-failed pin test.
-Other Tau will give you a hard time, as their railguns will shoot down your skyrays and you'll be particularly vulnerable to broadsides (ap3 seekers, so silly.) Though obviously a lucky failed save means an ID kill.

you get my meaning. I've actually tried this method myself using sniper drones and it does work, though it's far from reliable. The other problem is, you expend an inappropriate amount of resources to get it accomplished. I'd rather just knock the squad off the table entirely, it's often easier.


Now, don't get me wrong. I love that you're thinking, and the balance between markerlights and the units that utilize them has always been a tricky decision for all Tau commanders. In all honesty, I've never tried going beyond my comfort zone for markerlights (I tend to trend towards not enough, personally, as a gun with no markerlight is more useful to me than a markerlight with no gun. YMMV.), so please, I request battle reports!! Overall cool concept, let's keep the ole mental gears churning. I love exploratory list-writing.

The Defenestrator wrote:this list makes me wonder, have we ever definitively determined if seeker missiles count as having been fired by the vehicle carrying them? Makes a lot of difference for using markerlights to reduce cover saves vs. seekers. Anyway, on to the list itself...

Good point I hadn't thought about that, I know as far as which armor the seeker would hit you draw LOS from the vehicle and that is where the missile hits (front, side, back) but as to wether or not you can use marker hits from the squad calling for the seeker to reduce cover I have no clue.

The Defenestrator wrote:my main concern is this: you have 18 seekers in your army. Let's assume that every single one of those seekers both hits and wounds a marine you've denied cover with seekers (they won't. in reality, it would kill 12.5 without cover saves), that's 2 dead/gutted tactical squads. The problem there is, I don't know any marine armies at 1850 who can't easily afford to lose 2 10-man squads. This is before the missiles required to knock out the rhinos their in, or any other priority vehicle kills.

hmm my math comes up a little differently than yours, maybe there is something I have missed but seekers are fired at an assumed bs5 (Page 29 tau codex) meaning 18 seekers fired at bs5 would yield 15 hits the marines don't get a toughness (t4 vs str 8) and no armor save (ap3) would not the same go for nob bikers leaving a more manageable 5 bikers and not the ten you mentioned? and those wounds aren't even counting the pulsefire from the 48 FW (5 dead marines, 3 wounds on bikers all at bs3)

The Defenestrator wrote:-Orks are always fearless. a non-fearless ork unit is usually doomed anyway.

Not entirely true actually, nobz come in squads of 3-10 with a warboss attached they have 11. Now orks only get the fearless special rule if they have 11 or more models in the unit, pop one with a seeker inflict 1 wound with a pulse carbine and you are free to auto-fail their pinning test all day long. I've actually been playing with the idea of putting rail rifles on the pathfinders to really reach out and put the pinning checks on.

18 shots at BS5 = 15 hits
15 hits at S8 vs T4 = 12.5 wounds (you still must wound them, even on a roll of 2+)

also, I didn't notice you had 4 squads, true. Assault one off the board, get rapid fired by the other 3. Such is the life of gunline assaulting troops these days.

Let's look at the markerlight hits required for this seeker salvo. Let's assume, for argument's sake, that all 6 seekers count as having been fired by the skyray carrying them for the purpose of negating cover. For all 3 skyrays to ignore the 3+ cover save of turboboosting bikers (they'll turboboost turn 1, assault turn 2. every game, I promise.), you'd need 4x3=12 markerlight hits. You'd then need a further 18 markerlight hits to fire all 18 seeker missiles. Even your list can't muster 30 markerlight hits in 1 turn, sadly. And those boyz'll be on you in turn 2, they always are. Let's not even talk about the biker council, either

yeah I had to go and re-read the rules, when i was formulating the list i didn't realize that like boosting bs the cover save remover was only for 1 squad at a time at inception i thought you just removed the save once and all units shooting at it gained the advantage.

The rules for Instant Death by double strength still include a 'to wound' roll, with a roll of 1 being AUTOFAILzorz. You have to roll to hit, roll to wound, and weather any applicable saves before Instant Death takes effect. The bonus for AP1, AP2, and Double Strength weapons, besides Instant Death, is there is no Feel No Pain roll allowed. (Unless Orks have a special rule to the contrary).

FYI, I just played against a Dual Seer Council army, each with 4 destructors, 1 Embolden, 1 Enhance, 1 Farseer (Fortune, Doom). Also, he had 2 groups of 10 bikes with 3x Shuriken Cannons and 7 Catapults. Also he had 2 Prisms.

It was painful, I put 26 Burst Cannon/Carbine Shots into one squad in 1 turn, using BS4. I got 14 Wounds. Not a single model died. Seriously, there's bad luck, and then there's tough to kill squads, then there's these guys. I seriously doubt any amount of Markerlights is going to = a solution to this type of scenario. It seems like it takes a ton of hits to overcome even their rerollable Invulnerable Save, let alone their 3+ regular save. And they are so damn fast and shooty, 4 Destructor templates made a joke out of any infantry squad / stealth squad they lit up.

So I ask this question, how does a list like this deal with 2 (or even just 1) Seer Council with Witchblades on Jetbikes, in a reliable manner?