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I've been farting around with different Tau lists for the upcoming 'ard boyz. Since I'll be running lots of broadsides to deal with the mech I'm expecting, I find myself short on points when I try to mech up my firewarriors. So for all you experienced Tau 'els and 'Os out there - do you feel that having devilfishes is a necessity? I know that firewarriors or kroot would have a hard time crossing the field to capture distant objetives (unless I outflanked with kroot) and that neither squad is very resilient. That said, I can get twice the troops if I don't mech up.

The army I'm thinking of running is very 3rd edition gun line(ish) with 12 crisis suits, 6 broadsides, 9 sniper drones, 6 stealth suits, about 24-32 firewarriors, and 20 kroot with 20 hounds. Will it just be all kinds of fail or do you think it's got the firepower to deal with both mech and hordes?

Basically if you don't have transports you don't have an army. Some armies can get away with gunlining, Tau isn't one of those armies. Your basic infantry are in this terrible middleground between Anti-infantry and Anti-Tank and excel at neither. Other armies can gunline because they have the heavy weapons to get away with it. Tau have broadsides as their only true gunline unit.

If you do try it though, take a deepstriking plasma/fusion commander with bodyguards and plenty of drones, 1 12 man FW squad with markerlight and bonding knife, at least 20 kroot (no hounds. ever) and as many broadsides as you have the points for.

hey scruff, only recently started fielding devilfish. i think they are a necessity based on 30 odd games of 5th ed.

Footslogging Tau die quickly im afraid

My list has 4 squads of firewarriors in devilfish and i'm not sure that's going to be enough. especially cause 2 of them are stealing the devilfish from the pathfinders

message received. Looking at including 3 devilfish now... too few?

Best advice is for you to practice the 'Ard Boyz scenarios and see what happens. Personally, I tend to field pure gunline Tau, without any devilfish. I do *very* VERY well with them. I don't try sending firewarriors to hold forward or enemy objectives, I keep my firewarriors in cover in my rear holding my own. Beyond that, I either table the enemy (75% of all my games), or kill their troop choices so that they can't hold their own. My gunline boasts ridiculous amounts of firepower though. Two teams of 3 broadsides with a target lock on the team leader, 3 sniper teams in the 3rd heavy support choice, and my firewarrior squads have 4 carbines in every 12 man firewarrior squad. Instead of gun-drones, I tend towards marker-drones with the firewarrior squads, and the team leader takes a hand-held non-markerlighted drone too. Beyond that, my Shas'o or Shas'el has Iridium armor and forms a bait squad with 2+ armor, 2 shield drones, and sitting in cover with anti-horde weaponry, and my suit teams pack fusion/plasma, and with my plethora of markerlights, they're usually firing at BS5.

Most of my Tau army is AP1 or AP2, with the exception of airburst, flamers, firewarrior weaponry, and AP3 snipers.

I don't bother with missiles; I have 6 freaking twin-linked broadsides who can fire at 4 different targets per turn with a STR10 AP1 weapon. Between those, my low AP weaponry, and massive ability to cause pinning tests my games are pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel regardless of who I play. Deployment and maneuver deal effectively with outflanking stuff, and everything else is pretty much a cake-walk.
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Now, with that said....remember that 'Ard Boyz this year has funky rules and that nightfight is in effect for turn 1 of two different rounds. That's going to seriously gimp a Tau gunline army, where you're denied a significant amount of firepower in the first turn. You can offset this a bit by taking blacksun filters on all your suits to supplement acute senses; it gives you 2d6 x6 rerollable. On the flip side of that again is the fact that you're going to have to chuck in 3 points per model to make it happen.

Your avatar scares me dash

Dash has had great luck with gun line but to be honest i've never seen a gun line that could stand up to most of the lists I run. It's the reason I mechanized my Tau, that and i'm movement obsessed

Hey dash, how much terrain do you guys play with that actually blocks line of sight in your area? I'm just curious.

If you're going to run gunline, you really have to go full-gunline. Semi-mech Tau simply does not work well (I know this because this is what I'm running now).

I tried and tried to make Firewarriors work, but they just aren't worth their points, not really even close. I'm painting up some more 'Fish to see how that works out for me, but I think my Tau army will end up being a "learning" army (you become a better player if you have a crummier army).

So yeah, mech up. I'd also recommend going full Warfish, meaning each has SMS, Multi-Tracker, Disruption Pod, and Targeting Array. Adds a fair bit of anti-infantry firepower, and you'll need it (your Firewarriors should almost never hop out of the 'Fish).

I've played three warm up games now - all against various forms of meq since it seems to be what all the attendees are fielding here in southern maine. I haven't had the devilfish available to fully mech up but so far I've had a fair amount of success running 3 devilfish and a hammerhead (in only two games granted)

I think this has mainly to do with my mainly mechanized opponents being obsessed with killing my shielded broadsides and crisis suits ( 9 fusion/plasma suits usually firing at bs 5) and not any great play on my part.

I think part of the reason I'm doing fairly well in my warm up matches is that it doesn't look like they've had much of a tau presence at the store for a while - 2 of my opponents really didn't know much about tau at all.

The key to winning with any gunline is fire disipline. In objective missions do whatever it takes to kill all troops. If your opponet has no troops you win. Tau have the firepower to table just about any army and with gunline that is what its all about. That said I always have added a positional relay for my commander and have played 90% gunline 10% ninja a deepstriking stealth team or battlesuit team can have a huge impact and give you the mobility the gunline utterly lacks. After that hope you roll well.

Hulk, I'm pretty rigid about having 6-7 roughly 12" squared pieces of terrain, or whatever is required to cover approximately 25% of the table in terrain. The stores around here have a lot of buildings and ruins, so there is plenty of LOS blocking terrain.

Blocking LOS doesn't scare me though; you can't hide your whole army, and I'm going to annihilate pieces of it at a time. When there's a lot of terrain on the board, I spend a *LOT* more time thinking through deployment than I have to with Orks though, that's for sure.

And to another poster: 100% in agreement about semi-mechanized Tau. You either go mobile and...well, suck (because hammerheads are such poor anti-tank) or you go static gunline. I don't worry about objective based games with my gunline. I either table my opponents, or negate their ability to hold objectives. Consistently.

The only thing that *REALLY* presents a challenge:
1. Catachan drop-troops with ridiculous amounts of heavy flaming potential (no longer allowed in the new IG codex)
2. Tyranids in most of their forms: Genestealers outflanking or infiltrating require work and maneuver to avoid (which sucks for your heavy weapons like snipers), and MCs are annoying in that a broadside shot causes a wound, not a kill; a Nidzilla list can close in and absorb a *LOT* of firepower.

Everything else is cake. Tau anti-tank is superior to any other army, and I keep crisis suits with different combinations (plasma/fusion), (Airburst, flamer) to deal with various threats that need to be screened away, killed after deep-striking, turbo-boosting, etc.

The *MOST* important part of playing a static gunline is having cover available yourself. 12 man squads of firewarriors *NEED* to be in ruins, or in cover somewhere. Those broadsides are GOING to draw fire, and need to have cover in addition to their armor and invulnerable saves. My favorite games are those where multi-level buildings / ruins are available that I can turn into a firebase.