Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Here's the list

HQ
Shashel- airbursting fragmentation projector plasma rifle positional relay multi tracker iridium armor shield generator 167

Troops
6 fire warriors 60
devilfish- distruption pod 85

16 kroot- shaper 126
10 hounds 60

16 kroot- shaper 126
10 hounds 60

16 kroot- shaper 126
10 hounds 60

16 kroot- shaper 126
10 hounds 60

16 kroot- shaper 126
10 hounds 60

Fast Attack
Piranha- fusion blaster distruption pod 70

Piranha- fusion blaster distruption pod 70

Piranha- fusion blaster distruption pod 70

Heavy Support
Hammerhead- railgun burst cannon distruption pod 155

Hammerhead- railgun burst cannon distruption pod 155

Hammerhead- railgun burst cannon distruption pod 155

"It's just a really bad tau army how the **** is this piece of **** unbeatable"
I go second my opponent will probably want first turn so he can supposedly kill my fire warriors and hammerheads before the kroot come on. That's what I would think anyway. And if I win i'll take second turn. I deploy my commander behind some LOS blocking terrain so he can't be shot.

It's imperitive that most of the OBJ's are deployed along the edges of the table here's why.

This is what agame would look like.
My opponent deploys his army probably all castled up in the center.

I deploy my commander

His Turn 1
sit there maybe move a little to get cover or to stay further from the edges.

My Turn 1
...

His Turn 2
repeat turn 1

My Turn 2
rolling for reserves i'll use my positional relay to bring in 1 piranha and deploy it behind terrain.

His Turn 3
...

My Turn 3
Repeat Turn 2

His Turn 4
...

My Turn 4
Repeat

His Turn 5
grab objectives.

My Turn 5
Army automatically comes in kill everything piranhas contest whatever he's holding and fire warriors move to capture 1.

If it goes to turn 6
what is he going to do his army in engaged with 130 kroot.

Good Game.

Few issues:

1) Your kroot will come on from reserve via outflank im guessing. If you do this, you won't be able to control what board edge, etc, your opponent likely won't deploy the objectives near the board edges so your kroot won't be able to get to them.

2) Your army will all come on turn 5 and...kill a few things? Maybe? After the first turn or two of stalling your reserves, your opponent will realize whats going on and just move away from the board edges, meaning your kroot will walk on and do a lot of nothing.

I see this army being really apt at forcing draw's in KP missions and probably losing objective based missions, unless somehow you and your opponent both place the objectives on the sides to give your kroot a win.

That would be true but that's why you scatter the OBJ's accrossthe edges of the table as much as possible so that your opponent has to come to the edge on turn 5 or face an auto loss on a roll of a 1-2.

Remember the kroot don't have to charge to do something they have bolters and 80 bolters rapidfiring will kill A LOT.

This looks like a bad idea to me too.

I'm not sure how you plan to keep your army off the board until turn 5, but I see a bunch of throw-away kroot and a few vehicles getting eaten peicemeal as they come onto the board little by little over 3 turns.

Also, the entire strategy hinges on your being able to set up more objectives than your opponent AND roll outflank on the same side of the board you put your objectives. If he chooses the same number or more, he can put them in the middle. If your army or even most of your army goes to the wrong side on outflank you will be able to do nothing.

Kroot cannot even kill themselves very well.

You are underestimating your opponents if you really think they will do ... every turn.

Think they will do the worst thing possible to your army and then build your army around that.

He's using the positional relay, when you use it you get one unit on on a 2+, but then you can't bring on any other reserves.

Essentially, its a stall tactic to make your entire army come on on turn 5, as on turn 5 you automatically come on.

Kroot Rifles: Assuming you get all 80 near a target (within 12 inches).

160 shots, 80 hits, 40 wounds, 13 dead marines.

This won't kill much of anything I'm afraid, as each of these units will likely be shooting at different targets, at best two units will double up a single squad, but even with that you'll kill maybe half a squad.

yermom wrote:Blablabla...I deploy my commander behind some LOS blocking terrain so he can't be shot.

It's imperitive that most of the OBJ's are deployed along the edges of the table here's why.

This is what agame would look like.
My opponent deploys his army probably all castled up in the center.

I deploy my commander

His Turn 1
sit there maybe move a little to get cover or to stay further from the edges.

My Turn 1
...

His Turn 2
repeat turn 1

My Turn 2
rolling for reserves i'll use my positional relay to bring in 1 piranha and deploy it behind terrain.

His Turn 3
...

Ok, so, lemme get this straight, the army is almost unbeatable, but that depends on the mission, on your luck and on your opponent stupidity?

What do you do in Annihilation? Or C&C? What happens when there's not a lot of LOS blocking terrain? What happens when the objectives aren't in the edges? More importantly, what happens when he can shoot your Commander in the 2nd turn? What happens when your army comes piecemeal after that? What happens when everything goes as intended and you can't dislodge 2000 points of units with Kroot?

Mike Leon wrote:
Kroot cannot even kill themselves very well.

aww.. mean. And lol. many lols.

Yeah, brillaint if you could wait till turn5 to come on but then alot of armies could do this quite well with either thier own outflankers or turboboosting/fast moving units.

Ive played against people whom have tried to come in reserves and generally they come in drips & draps allowing me to turn upon turn focous my entire army upon one or two units. Even things I normally wouldnt do, i.e lascannon a 5man combat tactical squad, ive got nothing else to fire at.

If you had a way to improve reserve rolls that groovy or if you built this list via infiltrating everything then also groovy.. Possibly even keep this list exactly as, infiltrate 3, outflank 2. Reserve the rest.

Yes, okay - This army is almost unbeatable.

Guys, positional relay, tau EQ.

It lets him bring on one unit per turn on a 2+, after he does this, he is not allowed to bring in ANY other units from reserve that turn.

He's using this + his pirahna's to stall.

1) Deploy commander.
2) Turn 2, use relay, bring on one of the pirahna's, nothing else is allowed to come on.
3) Turn 3, Repeat turn 2, second pirahna in.
4) Turn 4, Repeat tun 3, third pirahna in
5) Now its turn 5, stop using the positional relay, everything now just comes on automatically.

Wallah. Turn 5 appearance of everything, no drips and draps.

He's assuming he can control what comes in from reserve because his commander won't get killed until turn 5. Yeah.

Okay as far as OBJ's hows about this 5 OBJ's my opponent gets to place 3. He puts 1 in the middle. I put 1 near a board edge. He puts 1 in the middle I put 1 on the opposite edge. With 5 outflanking units at least 1 will get to 1 side. And the piranhas can contests the 3 in the middle.

Kroot killing things you and I both know since you play eldar seer council which relies on forcing saves and guard that 160 dice rolled WILL add up to more than 13 dead marines. Not to mention the idea that armies in 5th are either mech or horde no competitive in between like a shooty marine horde anymore. So railheads pop transports and kroot kill everything inside since the norm is now T3 4+ sv as most xenos are it makes it much easier.

My friend fielded a Kroot list that outflanked like that.

Got slaughtered by Tac Marines. Both by shooting and CC. And my friend had decent rolls too (did I mention he is very good at games like these?).

This army would be an interesting sight against Daemons.

yermom wrote:Okay as far as OBJ's hows about this 5 OBJ's my opponent gets to place 3. He puts 1 in the middle. I put 1 near a board edge. He puts 1 in the middle I put 1 on the opposite edge. With 5 outflanking units at least 1 will get to 1 side. And the piranhas can contests the 3 in the middle.

Kroot killing things you and I both know since you play eldar seer council which relies on forcing saves and guard that 160 dice rolled WILL add up to more than 13 dead marines. Not to mention the idea that armies in 5th are either mech or horde no competitive in between like a shooty marine horde anymore. So railheads pop transports and kroot kill everything inside since the norm is now T3 4+ sv as most xenos are it makes it much easier.

Right right, so, you put godmode on the HQ, I dunno, he gets in a tardis, ducks and covers. The other guy, who could only bring Slow and Purposeful units, decides to picnic. You bring up Piranhas every subsequent turn, but the other guy is too busy playing Twister with his army to shoot them. Now at turn 5, his army is taking a nap cuz they're so exhausted and you JUMP out of the tall grass like a CAT! POUNCE on them! Rawr! He struggles, but you already bit the JUGULAR! He falls on his side, takes a deep breath and dies... And the hunter takes his bloody price!

Okay if the commander getskilled then it's probably turn 3 or 4. And your probably on the edges of the table with your long range stuff to shoot him. Or your in my deployment zone with your mobile stuff. Either way on my turn your in for a beating. If the commander gets killed it turns an autowin into a game.

What do I do in Kill points? Hmm come on turn 5 railgun a few transports shoot up/chrge what's inside it's not lie thaat would leave the score 5-0 on bottom of turn 5 or anything.

What would I do in capture and controll? It's not possible for me to take 1 of my piranhas and turboto contest your objective up to turn 7 if need be and I can just place my OBJ in the edge of my deployment zone so turn 5 you controlling it with 10 guys and a rhino and I have 3 railguns a crapload of burst cannons and 130 kroot looking att you.

yermom wrote:Okay as far as OBJ's hows about this 5 OBJ's my opponent gets to place 3. He puts 1 in the middle. I put 1 near a board edge. He puts 1 in the middle I put 1 on the opposite edge. With 5 outflanking units at least 1 will get to 1 side. And the piranhas can contests the 3 in the middle.

Kroot killing things you and I both know since you play eldar seer council which relies on forcing saves and guard that 160 dice rolled WILL add up to more than 13 dead marines. Not to mention the idea that armies in 5th are either mech or horde no competitive in between like a shooty marine horde anymore. So railheads pop transports and kroot kill everything inside since the norm is now T3 4+ sv as most xenos are it makes it much easier.

All I'll say is, just try it. A lot of things look good on paper, but in reality they don't work at all. This is one of those things.

You have 5 units, each with 16 bolters, half of them won't be able to come in in a good spot to shoot at your opponent (you've only got 12 inch range).
At best you'll get 2-3 units on any one enemy unit.

32 - 48 bolters on a unit, lets assume you get 3 squads, all able to get EVERY bolter member within 12 inches, and that there isnt terrain/LOS issues constraining your fire, which there will be. Lets assume you're shooting at orks just for the sake of their wet paper bag armor saves.

96 shots. 48 hits. 24 wounds.

At best, thats 24 dead orks, not a big deal for a horde ork player. Given that they'll either be in cover, or have a KFF mek, its more like 10-15.

Railheads have a total of 3 shots. 2 will hit, lets assume you're shooting at weak transports, you've got a 30% chance or so to blow one. One transport.

As some of the other posters have said, you're making a lot of assumptions:

1) There will be terrain to allow your hq to live the whole game and hide
2) there will be terrain able to hide the pirahnas needed to contest the objectives
3) Your opponent wont after 5 turns of manuvering be able to get shots on any of the 3 pirahnas or the commander
4) You'll be playing an objective mission
5) The game will end on turn 5, so that your opponent won't just retaliate and kill your whole army, which is quite weak defensively.
6) Your opponent doesn't utilize deepstrike himself, ending your commander quick and easy.

yermom wrote:Okay if the commander getskilled then it's probably turn 3 or 4.

There's a rule on page 26 of the main rulebook that you should look at. It's kind of a problem for T4 tau commanders that don't have retinues and are the only thing on the board.

Not unbeatable. Especially if you face an all drop pod SM list. Or an Ork speedfreak list. Or a SM all bike army. The list goes on.

Bottomline: No list is unbeatable. I think most people will agree on that point.

Any dedicated Assault army would laugh in the face of a bunch of Kroot. Play an Ork, Black Templar, Khornate (CSM or Demon) or BA army and you'll see who the heavy hitters in the Assault Phase are.

Tau do shooting really well. Assault...not so much. I would recommend utilizing the disgusting firepower of a Tau Mech list instead of taking a bunch of T3 Sv- wannabe CC specialists.

CK

Your commander will get ganked; land speeder with multimelta, outflanking sentinels/warwalkers, turn 2 charge from bikes, the list goes on. Once that happens, the rest of the list will come on to the board in handfuls, easily cut down. Remember, when those Kroot start falling back (and they will), they're removed when the game ends.

This isn't a new style for Tau, in fact the Eldar have been doing it for a long time as well. It's an interesting paradigm, but ultimately not an earth-shattering game plan.

The Defenestrator wrote:Your commander will get ganked; land speeder with multimelta, outflanking sentinels/warwalkers, turn 2 charge from bikes, the list goes on. Once that happens, the rest of the list will come on to the board in handfuls, easily cut down. Remember, when those Kroot start falling back (and they will), they're removed when the game ends.

This isn't a new style for Tau, in fact the Eldar have been doing it for a long time as well. It's an interesting paradigm, but ultimately not an earth-shattering game plan.

Well we all know that what the Tau do best is copy the Eldar.

Its reminiscent of the yo-yo swooping hawk strategy hitting on the last turn to contest. However with the random game length it has the same issues, and is fickle at best.

Nofasse 'Eadhunta wrote:
This army would be an interesting sight against Daemons.

I was thinking the same. What does this army do when the deamons deep strike and play football with the Commander's head for 3 turns?

yermom wrote:Okay as far as OBJ's hows about this 5 OBJ's my opponent gets to place 3. He puts 1 in the middle. I put 1 near a board edge. He puts 1 in the middle I put 1 on the opposite edge. With 5 outflanking units at least 1 will get to 1 side. And the piranhas can contests the 3 in the middle.

Kroot killing things you and I both know since you play eldar seer council which relies on forcing saves and guard that 160 dice rolled WILL add up to more than 13 dead marines. Not to mention the idea that armies in 5th are either mech or horde no competitive in between like a shooty marine horde anymore. So railheads pop transports and kroot kill everything inside since the norm is now T3 4+ sv as most xenos are it makes it much easier.

160 dice, 80 hits, ~56 wounds on T3. lets assume you by-pass the armour. half an army is destroyed if you're lucky at best. 28 are dead if 4+ save, 16-18 or so if 3+ save 8 if a 2+ save.

160 dice, 80 hits, 40 wounds if T4. 1/3-halff an army gone if you're lucky. 20 wounds on 4+ save. 14 wounds at best on 3+ save. 6-7 if 2+.

You may well be in range to charge also, though any smart opponent will be outside your charge range so now you have issues.

Your army at this point consists of 144 models in total assuming none are killed by this point.

Stuff it, look you are gambling too much on the fact your HQ is immune to incoming fire and that your Piranah's are not going to be blasted dead. You have 2-3 things on the board initially your opponent has an entire army. You've just pissed him off enough that he is going to frack those babies over and even if the HQ survives it all the piranaha's are NOT getting the run on objectives in the late game no matter what youw ant. Kill point wise yes you have crap loads of troops but in KP missions you're losing the tasty targets first, with most melta weapons in half range now to make sure of it.

But you know what is the most amusinga rmy to throw this way?

The pure Khorne Terminator army - Khornate Terminator Champions with twin Lightning Claws and an Icon of Khorne. Just charge that unit of 10 you didn't even scratch as you were messing with the other unit there. You're looking at 50 attacks at I4, strength 4, re-rolling to wound ignoring saves. Charge multiple units and bam you've lost objective awesome. Or Marine terminators with Thunder Hammers and Stormshields, oh man, no shooting at them till the last turn fantastic!

Your strategy relies upon grabbing the objectives in overwhelming force but an opponent will have 5 turns to park his entire army on each of the objectives uncontested in so doing. What are you doing to the entire army? At best you've got a draw. In KP missions you are fracked because the opponent gets his pick of what to slaughter and lets face it your hammerheads are your only long range firepower there, 3 shots hey? heck no, not gonna get KP's back for their losses, meanwhile long range and even medium range anti-infantry firepower screws your kroot over. You know those Guard armies that have suddenly realised that the Heavy Bolter and the Auto cannon actually have been as good as they've always been but are great against hoard armies like Orks who can take more punishment then kroota nd their pitiful T3? Yeah, facing down 20 of those babies is gonna screw you royally...



Nice concept, it could work, but you really need to work on the list. You need serious punch when you get in. Bring along another HQ, maybe Farsight and a full bodyguard to get in and flame and melt the crap our of an enemy. You need a stronger attacking force as you enter, I'd say to throw in some cheap and powerful crisis suits, and maybe a broadside instead of a Hammerhead with the move and fire upgrady thingey. The list could work but it needs to be seriously balanced if it is to survive. Even if your reserve force is only 800 or so points of concentrated awesome, your commander needs serious protection, so 2 bodyguards with shield gennies and shield drones will go a long way to helping here. Otherwise play some games and get back to us with it. the theory-hammer has been done, so go try the force out and then come back and we'll all work to help fix it.

Auretious Taak.

Farsight disallows the use of Kroot with his Breakaway Faction special rule.