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I'm curious to know how effective a full Farsight unit can be? Iconsidered using farsight and his bodyguard a while ago, shortly after the Tau Empire codex comes out but never went through with it.

Then the other day I saw a Farsight army in action in a 1750pt game, the guy had spend around 1000pts on his farsight unit all of them armed to the teeth and accompanied by 2 shield drones. I watched as his opponent threw everything at it but he took most of the hits on the drones or the one battlesuit he geared up with the 2+ armour and feel no pain to take the hardest hits and rarely lost any models. It even defeated two deamon princes in combat!

The rest of his army had 2 units of battlesuits kitted out for swarm killing and a hammerhead he brought these 3 units on with the 'postioning array' which allowed him to keep his fire warrriors in reserve till the last turn when they could come on and grab objectives.

This is made me rethink my original idea of taking a farsight army especially since I'm currently looking for an elite army that can be stored and transported in something like a lunchbox.

So how effective is a full farsight unit? Also I'd like to know what experinces people have had against or playing such a unit/army?

Farsight is like putting all of your eggs in one basket. You become more susceptible to large blasts (like a vindicator) and a straight up assault squad will still be able to take you out quite quickly.

The large unit can be quite devastating but overall you sacrifice. The rest of your army suffers as well. Only having a single hammerhead or one squad of broadsides is rough.

Having 20 suits at max (give or take 1-2) and being able to move quickly around with them is great. You can also tool the squad up correctly so that they can target a unit individually (since all of them can have target locks) and simply move your firebase with them up the board using the specific weapon for the exact purpose it is needed for.

Lash + vindicators will simply destroy the list. Tau are best when used in combined arms - not stacking and spamming units.

Its a gimic like Ninja Tau. Meaning that it may work once and then your opponent will be able to tear it appart.

It's even questionable if it will work as Target Locks are in a grey area as to if they work in 5th edition at all. (no more target priority test...)

Another downside to Farsight is that he limits what you can take. Tau are the only race who's special characters actually hurt their own army.

I would proxy it first to see if it works for you. I keep mine in my display case for a reason.

Its quite funny actually.

The unit is about twice as effective as a standard assault squad and has destructive compacity of 2 marine squad and 2 dev squads put together (it packs a lot of pain).

It is also the only squad left that can shoot one way and charge another (use target locks, have one guy shoot target A, most shoot target B or C, and assault target A).

Used correctly it is an incredibly fast and destructive squad. Being a monsterous creature backed up by 7 str 5 guys it is actually good at assaulting tanks and killing them.

On the defensive side it is an extremely tough unit. I have run it and been able to take 2-3 russ's worth of templates for numerous turns before having all the shield drones go down. Spread some plasma wounds around, keep the shield drones behind cover (trailing them behind your guys) and it takes 40+ wounds before you lose a suit.

All is not roses though.

Farsight is basically your army. You will have a squad of broadsides providing a little long range anti-tank support and a couple other things but basically you get to move farsight around and kill things with him.
He has to kill about 1.5 units a turn on average to be effective.

The other problem is you have even less troops than normal. And since firewarriors are less than resilient and easy to dispatch its not to hard for them to be removed from the table. Pulling the ninja tau approach can help some but i still find they are to easy to kill.

Generally I crush everything in front of me with farsite but have serious problems actually taking objectives. One unit can only attack a few things a turn and some enemies will slip past you easily killing the troops. Currently I am at 1-1-10 with farsight. Easy to tie, hard to win.