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Hello all, I had my first chance to play my Farsight Enclave last night against SM (not exactly like I had posted it before, but its a good list)...

There are a few things I am still kind of confused on, including how Fish of Fury works. Not only that, but I am not sure I understand exactly how to use a fish to keep my fire warriors out of range effectively. How many chances do you have to embark and disembark in a turn?

The Farsight unit is MASSIVE. I wasn't thinking to well and put my main HQ well out range to do much of anything for two turns, not only that, I ran out of Drones by the end of the second turn. I went with 7 shield, 6 gun, and a markerlight drone. (I lost 2 drones by jumping onto that bunker, forgot that even when your in dangerous terrain... if you jump you still gotta roll wounds =/)

Do you have to roll scatter dice on Hammerhead Railgun Submunitions?


The game ended with his termies getting in close. It was a draw, but I was kind of upset with myself that I allowed him to get into melee range with almost no resistance on my part. I guess I don't have the process down to the fullest extent.

Fish of Fury is where you roll up in your devilfish, park it in front of a unit and unload your firewarriors behind the fish (so the entire tank is in front of the firewarrior unit). You then rapidfire the fire warriors into the opposing unit from behind the tank (skimmers don't block los) and unload with all the guns the tank can fire. whatever is left has to find its way around your big devilfish to assault your firewarriors (unlikely since the fish is such a big footprint).

FoF is a little nerfed now because vehicles, even skimmers, are easier to deal with in CC, and, even though the Fish doesn't block LOS, it grants a cover save to the enemy unit when you fire under it at them.

It's still a great tactic though, done right, it does deny the assault (thanks to the footprint and the 1" movement buffer around the hull), and frankly, a Str 5 24 shot Pulse Rifle Shock is bad news all on it's own. Hopefully your target will be down before they have a chance to strike back.

GeneralRetreat wrote:It's still a great tactic though, done right, it does deny the assault (thanks to the footprint and the 1" movement buffer around the hull), and frankly, a Str 5 24 shot Pulse Rifle Shock is bad news all on it's own. Hopefully your target will be down before they have a chance to strike back.

Unfortunately, the 1" buffer around the 'Fish has no effect in the Assault phase anymore (5th ed). The FoF is a little more difficult to pull off now a days due to cover saves and Assault phase positioning, but is still lethal when supported by Markerlights I have found.

@cleverghost: Yes, you do have to roll scatter on a HH submuniton shot, minus its BS. Don't forget that this shot can still confer cover saves to the enemy (it is only barrage blasts that cover saves are taken from the center of the blast). Don't give up! The Tau have a steep learning curve, but when you learn the ways of the Mont'ka and Kauyon you will have an endless supply of incredulous and flustered looks from your opponents

Imo, Fish of Fury should be use sparingly instead of a regular attack. If you're bringing your firewarriors that close to the enemy, you make darn sure there's no enemy by the next turn.

orchewer has it right.


Unless the opponent was really slow, FoF with one devilfish was never perfect...things that fleet, or move or charge 12 inches would be hard to avoid. You had to use two devilfish at once to create a pocket for your guys to fire behind, and maybe break off some drones to create an even larger barrier.

In 5e this got a lot worse partly because now your Fish and drones end up giving your targets cover saves. Also, since your opponents can just declare a charge on your devilfish and your FWs, you need to have them and the drones in a postition where the opponent literally can't get between them to touch a fire warrior.

Flechettes help a lot, and I'm pretty sure you had them. Markerlights obviously help too.

Finally, in 5e with the rules for scoring units, FoF is now more dangerous. Before, if you screwed up and they died, or your opponent was able to shoot them instead of charge them, whatever, you lost a unit. Now you're losing a scoring unit and you probably only have two or three. So you really need to take care of them.

I have a battle report I did for a farsight game here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/232640.page

Turn 3 I do two seperate FoF on some warriors. Unfortunately the opponent has hormagaunts and well, FoF doesn't really save you from fleeting beasts. Luckily he decided some other targets were jucier and my firewarriors lived.

I would agree that Fish of Fury and Farsight have a steap learning curve (but once you get it down its brilient).

However most generals realize that fish are AV 10 rear and will assult them instead of your FW knowing that your FW will be a tasty treat next shooting or assult phase.

Skimmers do indeed block LoS... so unless you have your devilfish mounted on super-tall flying bases pathfinders cannot see under them.

I played a Tau player who had his fish mounted on tall bases, but my wave serpents have come on bases with much shorter stems... making me think that maybe he was intentionally using the wrong bases (cheating).

I don't know about cheating, but my Tau playing friend used this a lot in 4th, he hasn't played any 5th yet. I didn't know you could move within 1" of a unit you weren't charging (aka, moving through the "bubble" of the fish to charge the Firewarriors). You can charge the Fish, but if you've FOF'ed correctly, you use two fish, drawn up into a V, deploy 24 Firewarriors in the pocket, and concentrate fire on one unit. Now, even though moving 12" means the fish can't shoot, it still takes 6's to hit it in assault. An enemy on foot will have to spend a turn running around the transports if he wants to assault the firewarriors. I don't think the legal bases block LOS, my buddies firewarriors are pretty short, and he used the regular bases. They can see just under the hull. I just checked pg 71 of the BRB, and I can't see anything about blocking LOS or not, so I'd play TLOS, and iirc, they're less than half blocked, so we've always played yes LOS, but cover save.

I would recommend Carbines for this, too, 18" is better than 12" on the disembarking round, and if you're out of range, you should be loading up and moving on, not sitting and taking potshots out at 30" anyway. Take the time to measure it out on the table when you're not playing, see what your good range is, I think you'll end up needing to park the noses of the fish together and about 13-14" from the enemy, so you're just out of regular assault range, just outside of 12" so your displacement fields work against entrenched heavy weapons in that squad, and just close enough that your deployed FWs can reach the enemy with 18". Now, all you really have to worry about is jump-packers.

I didn't mean that skimmers always block LoS, but they do block LoS like other units: if you can't draw LoS from the "eyes" of the firing unit then they can't fire... however if you can then they can.

I think there are about 3 different sets of flying stands. The Sniper Drone Teams come with the tallest set. The other two sizes each come with two stands, one slightly taller than the other. When I bought my first Tau Battleforce, it came with all sizes of stands, so I was modeling it on the stands it came with when I picked the tallest one (the medium "Gun Drone" clear stand sprue).

That would make sense. i'd put my wave serpents on taller bases... but it would feel like cheating.

You still have to maintain the 1" bubble. Covered it in a game last night.

What has really reduced the FoF is the drone KP issue. You used to throw them out and they added a couple of inches to the movement to go around the tank. Now they give up a KP so people are hesitant to do so in some of the games.

Now realize that real FoF was where you ran 2 loaded fish up and unloaded on a single squad,

The longer flight stand stems were included in the Tau kits because shooting under the vehicle WAS a part of the army design. But that doesn't even really matter just as long as I use GW flight bases.

Problem is that GW doesn't sell replacements and I'm currently forced to use the small bases on my Eldar jetbikes. I personally like the small bases on them but they are nowdays clearly shown as to having large flight bases.

focusedfire wrote:The longer flight stand stems were included in the Tau kits because shooting under the vehicle WAS a part of the army design. But that doesn't even really matter just as long as I use GW flight bases.

Problem is that GW doesn't sell replacements and I'm currently forced to use the small bases on my Eldar jetbikes. I personally like the small bases on them but they are nowdays clearly shown as to having large flight bases.

Um...what is your source? In 4th, Skimmers didn't block line of sight, and in 3rd, tau tanks had "landing gear" and landed at the end of every turn. So...in 3rd you weren't ever shooting under them, and in 4th, it didn't matter what size base they were on, you could always shoot under.

So...what does the size of the flight stand have to do with GW's army design? They've always included a sprue with both a large and small stick in every kit I've ever gotten that has flight stands.

There is a third longer stand that they started to include in the devilfish kits (At least the ones that I bought) in 4th ed.

Don't have a source other than what the GW salesperson told me at the time I bought them. That they were included because of the tactic and it allowed you to represent the look of the tactic.

If I were to venture a guess it would be because even though you could shoot under there were people that would still argue the point. Or they would argue whether they got saves. GW might have start including the second set of longer stems just to stop getting the calls for all I know

focusedfire wrote:There is a third longer stand that they started to include in the devilfish kits (At least the ones that I bought) in 4th ed.

Don't have a source other than what the GW salesperson told me at the time I bought them. That they were included because of the tactic and it allowed you to represent the look of the tactic.

If I were to venture a guess it would be because even though you could shoot under there were people that would still argue the point. Or they would argue whether they got saves. GW might have start including the second set of longer stems just to stop getting the calls for all I know

Everything you just said is not true. There have always been several different "heights" of flying stands, and eldar jetbikes made use of them long before tau vehicles were even a twinkle in Jervis Johnson's eye. The GW salesperson (red shirt) you talked to had no idea what he was talking about.

The devil fish kits came originally with two sets of flight stems from what I gather. I could be wrong because I'm working with a composite of other peoples statements and my own personal experience.

The stems were two drone stems and two shorter vehicle stems. At some point all the kits I bought started coming with a third set of stems that that were the vehicle type.

Please choose your words a little more carefully. If everything were untrue in my statement then I wouldn't have bought kits with three flight stems in them. Nor would the red shirt have answered as he did. I also wouldn't have said "venture a guess" and "I don't know" in the last sentence. Or more simply:
Did I start getting devilfish and HamHead kits with extra flight stems in them? Yes
Did I ask a GW employee about them? Yes
Did he give me the answer that the extra stands were there so I could represent the look of firing under the vehicle?Yes
Is repeating the possible misinformation that a red shirt gave me no for calling me a liar? No

The more appropriate words you could have used were that the information is either wrong, incorrect, or inaccurate. That is a statement that can be worked from for further discussion. Where saying that everything I said was untrue comes off as a direct insult as to the character of someone you do not even know. Such actions and wording make you appear emotionally based and trollish in nature.

Now as to that your experience could quite easily predate mine I am willing to listen and learn.

edit for spelling

Some good Tau tactics here also come with fielding the right force to go with it.

- A generic idea is to field a railgun of some sort every 500 points (broadsides are the cheap way of doing this)
- Terrian is your worst enemy, because 1/2 your army is jump infantry, dangerous terrain tests ahoy!
- JSJ is a effective tactic, just make sure your not trying it on assault based troops or jumping into low cover (true line of sight).
- Targetting arrays are your friends
- Only use your scoring troops to hold objectives on a late game turn (4 or 5, 6 if the game goes that long), Keep them safe via a devilfish or heavy cover to keep them in the game

focusedfire wrote:You still have to maintain the 1" bubble. Covered it in a game last night.

Vehicles (non walkers) do not have a 1" bubble you need to stay out of.

The reason one must keep their models 1" or farther from enemy models is because of close combat, as soon as 2 opposing models are actually touching, they would be in combat. Non-walking vehicles cannot lock you into combat, and you can freely move into and out of combat with them, therefore you can move within 1"

of course this is just my interpreptation of RAI as i dont have a BRB to pour over while im here at work.

Sweet, thanks guys

This is going to seem obvious, but with Tau it's really important to be able to estimate distances accurately, and know the numbers involved for enemy movement (taking into account running, etc).

Demogerg wrote:

focusedfire wrote:You still have to maintain the 1" bubble. Covered it in a game last night.

Vehicles (non walkers) do not have a 1" bubble you need to stay out of.

The reason one must keep their models 1" or farther from enemy models is because of close combat, as soon as 2 opposing models are actually touching, they would be in combat. Non-walking vehicles cannot lock you into combat, and you can freely move into and out of combat with them, therefore you can move within 1"

of course this is just my interpreptation of RAI as i dont have a BRB to pour over while im here at work.

I'll go back and reread it. was working from the point of assaulting past a squad to get in to base contact with a tank. Now even if there is no one inch limitation you shoulden't be able to break the plane of the hull(run under the skimmer). Am I correct on this? If thats the case then the shape of the Devfish still works in your favor but you almost have to have the drones deployed to make FoF to work now.