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The recent "Anti Space Marine Tactics" thread has seen a lot of hate for a Tau battlesuit known as the fireknife. I must admit, I don't play tau, and I can see the reasoning behind the fireknife....

but the reasoning is that it can do two jobs. My question is should units try and do two jobs at once? (or maybe not at once, but diffrent jobs in diffrent turns?)

It depends on the build of your Army. In a standard Marine army, it is a great advantage to have your tactical squads equipped to perform several different missions so that they can take advantage of tactical opportunities that present themselves. In other cases, it does not pay to diverisfy because a unit's stat line precludes it from excelling or even holding its own in a particular situation (i.e. a powerfist is wasted in a WS2 unit because the unit itself will always fare poorly in assault).

With pure shooting units, I see no problem in trying to handle two different jobs. For example, if the primary role is long range anti-tank then a lascannon is a great weapons choice. But by placing a plasma rifle in the squad, you do a good job of handling short-range anti-heavy infantry as well. In both cases, it is not as efficient as a unit set up to deal purely with tanks or purely with heavy infantry but it opens up alot of tactical options should you need to deal with rampaging Terminators who survived a series of shooting from your infantry killing units or a tank that slipped through your primary AT screen.

Bottom line: Multiple roles for a unit is not a bad thing.

Yeah i think this really depends on the army. Where does multitasking draw the line with equiping for in-case? i.e my friend has a Noise marine squad with blasters+blastermaster...and a pwrfist sarge. He uses this squad to sit on objectives on his side and belt out a rock concert, so is his fist multitasking, or simply giving them a chance to punch up a MC that gets through to them/deepstrikes? My plague marine squad with 2 flamers also has a fist sarge, but its seems to be aiming towards infantry models- what if theres a deff dred behind that mob of boys? It really depends on the army imo. I have a Havoc squad (lol at me for fielding them because i know 90% of you are ) with a 2 ML's, 2 AC's. It's jobs which it has fared well in is cracking transports, walkers, and laying into troops, and i mainly use it against my friend who plays orks.

The major downside i think to multiple roles is that you must choose 1 target out of probably many optimal targets- said havoc squad in had a nice view last game on trukks, killa kans, boyz on foot, lootaz, deffkoptas all up in my lines, and some stormboyz heading right for the havocs. The only one i can recall for sure as being not too worthy were the lootaz which were all in cover... thats still 4 optimal targets, and targets i needed to deal with that turn. Having said that, i love that the whole game my havocs had something they were equipped for to shoot at. Maybe a unit with multiple roles should be included in a list that has a solid counter for everything i.e armour, hordes of inf, MEQs? Then again i find it hard to have a list that leaves feeling like i have a solid counter for everything probably why take-all-comers lists are so hard to draw up

my 2 cents

The thing is space marine squads can combat squad to take as much advantage as they can of their different equipment. (The las plas squad can break up and send the squad with the plasma gun off to an objective to shoot someone off it, while the las team takes up position and shoots tanks)

Though I donno about CSM, can they do that?

Maybe there's a relation between this thread and "The Melta Myth"

Multi-tasking with BS3 isn't all that effective. Tau can't multi-task, they have to focus.

Multi-tasking with BS3 isn't all that effective. Tau can't multi-task, they have to focus.

I disagree here. BS doesn't matter for the purposes of multi-tasking with Tau. In fact, a Missile Pod/Plasma suit is the definition of multi-tasking. It gives the Tau player a little range with which to engage transports and a close in AP2 punch, but when firing at transports and heavy infantry one of the weapons is less than optimal but the suit can do both as the Tau player needs to do. Read Jihallad's post again because he worded the idea alot better than I did. Its not so much multi-tasking as giving your units options for use on the battlefield to respond to what your opponent brings.

I agree that he has a bit of a point though, sometimes a focused unit is good, I like focused units. However, BS3 isn't THAT bad.

I think there's a limit to how much you can make a unit do two jobs, but a unit that basically your entire army revolves around, should be able to do more than one thing based on where it is standing/floating. Units that can only take one gun on one man/vehicle? Yeah they need to be focused, unless you wanna try and wound-bucket them. But if a unit can take 2-3 different guns, then take those two guns!

The situation is a bit strange for the Tau Battlesuits, as they don't really have the option to focus on one job. Because the Battlesuits can't take multiples of the same weapon, but do have a very cheap upgrade to be able to fire two weapons per turn, it is often most efficient to use them as 'multi-taskers'. This is simply because the additional price you pay for being able to fire two (different) weapons isn't that much.

I'm almost sure that, if taking multiples of the same weapon on Crisis Battlesuits was allowed, nearly all Tau players would switch to focussed Crisis Battlesuits.

I agree that he has a bit of a point though, sometimes a focused unit is good, I like focused units. However, BS3 isn't THAT bad.

I think there's a limit to how much you can make a unit do two jobs, but a unit that basically your entire army revolves around, should be able to do more than one thing based on where it is standing/floating. Units that can only take one gun on one man/vehicle? Yeah they need to be focused, unless you wanna try and wound-bucket them. But if a unit can take 2-3 different guns, then take those two guns!

Again, the rest of the Army needs to be a concern when building tactically versatile units. You need to have units dedicated to killing infantry and dedicated to killing tanks. But you also need a couple of units that can play "sweeper" if you prefer British football and "strong safety" if you prefer American football. No one's dice will ever perform perfectly in every game. Sometimes, your AT units wiff at a stopping a battlewagon or land raider and you need that extra lascannon you tucked away to stop it at range---even if that units special weapon can't hurt it that turn. Other times, you might need the extra plasma shot from a unit to stop a terminator or mega-armored ork squad even though the units heavy bolter is not ideal against a heavy infantry target. The point is to construct a balanced force capable of taking on all opponents and you will need units with tactical flexibility to support your specialized ones and, occaisonally, bail them out of a tight spot when something goes wrong.