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Last edition it was all about the fireknife, but now with JSJ being neutered because of TLOS, and cover saves abounding, I was thinking that a squad of three suits with twin linked missile pods and multi trackers would be a good set up. That gives you accurate, mobile and fairly resilient anti light vehicle and anti infantry for not too many points. Has anyone tried this? Are stealth suits a better bet for anti infantry?

I figure with broadsides and hammer heads handling anti heavy tank, you need to focus the rest of a Tau list on lighter targets.

What configurations are other people using and finding effective?

Plasma/missile suits are still the only configuration that doesn't have to sit on its thumbs if you find yourself up against a "rock" list. gakloads of terminators? Your missile suits cry. Lots of transports? Plasma/fusion suits suffer.

MP/Plas is the best of both worlds. It's expensive, sure, but you get what you pay for.

That is a good point. However in the list I am putting together, I will have a gak ton of rail cannons and flak fire, so heavy infantry shouldn't be too much of a problem. I am more worried about hordes, as Tau get easily overwhelmed.

Orks and the new Nids are what I am trying to counter.

Are stealth suits the better buy for anti horde duties? Or possibly even loads of Kroot and Fire warriors?

I still advocate MP/plas for orks and tyranids. High strength kills transports, bikers, MCs, etc. Everybody is scared of plasma... not everybody is scared of TL S7 AP4 shots. If you REALLY want some kind of specialized anti-infantry power from your crisis suits, you might take one unit with TL missile pods and flamers. I run 3x3 crisis squads, 2 with MP/plas and 1 with TL MP/flamers, it works well for me.

At low points values you can get away with running 3 hammerheads with railguns as your heavy support, which also gives you some anti-infantry power. Above 1850 you've got to start trading them out for broadsides though, so consider what your final point value will be for this army before you buy those.

Are stealth suits the better buy for anti horde duties? Or possibly even loads of Kroot and Fire warriors?

I picked up a box of stealth suits on the cheap once. "8 bucks? hellz yeah!"

to this day, I have yet to field them. They're that bad.

Kroot can deal with manz, they won't be able to deal with even gaunts once people catch on that the new toxin glands rock. Poisoned attacks vs same toughness or lower = wound on 4+, reroll. Kroot will melt against that.

Can you fire a twin linked M.Pod and the flamer? I thought a twin linked weapon counted as two weapons, therefore needing a multi tracker? Or is that merely the amount of hard points it takes up on a suit?

If so, then yeah, that is a good set up.

I plan on running a 2K list, with 6 broadsides and 1 hammer head. I would run 9 broadsides but I wanted the sub munition round, as you mentioned.

The TL misslepod counts as one weapon for the purpose of shooting, but takes up two hardpoints. So if you are able to hardwire a multi-tracker on, then yes, you can fire the TL misslepod and the flamer. But if you can't hardwire the multi-tracker, then there will be no room for a normal one with the flamer and TL misslepods.

If you really want anti-horde, you might want to give TL flamer's a thought. They get a lot of crap, but they can be effective if you deepstrike them well. Use them to clear objectives, for the most part. Give them misslepods for their third hardpoint, so they can kill transports and/or MC's after they're done with their original target.

A note on stealthsuits: Many people take them for anti-horde because of their supposed survivability due to their stealth fields. These give them some survivability at long range, but are mostly ineffective in burst cannon range. If you want burst cannons, you should just use them on crisis suits. I have heard of people having some major success with a burst cannon/missle pod/multi-tracker configuration in an anti-infantry role. A unit of three of these would have the same fire volume as three stealth suits, without adding the misslepods, and far more survivability at close range. The burst cannon and misslepod fill different roles, so the suit can always have something to do if there's no transports, or you're not playing horde. You could easily use fireknives for anti-transport/MEQ, and BC/MP for anti-transport/infantry. Both of these can fill multiple roles, so they will never end up sitting around as free kill points.

That is a good point, my only concern is the radically different ranges. The BC can put you in range of assault of a lot of units.

For crisis suits, the missile pod is pretty much manditory. After that, you need to decide on what else you want to bring. Most Tau players use either missile pod and plasma, missile pod and burst cannon, or TL missile pods. What you should take depends on the rest of your list and your playstyle. It's also a good idea to take into consideration how many markerlights you have to boost your suits.

That is very true. I have not played Tau and am considering them for my next army. I remember how frustrating it was to play fireknife units last edition but now they can't hide so easily with JSJ so I kill them with ease. I was thinking twin linked m.pods would give you the added range to stay away from most units but still add some useful firepower.

Just don't go overboard with the specialists. Your suits are where almost all of your non-railgun firepower comes from, you want them to be threatening to any targets you come up against. 2 units of MP/plas, 1 unit of your preference is a good idea.

Good call. Then you can still stick it to podding marines or deep striking termies.

My fav is the Twin Link Missiles with a Flamer. You got the long range firepower and close range support.

While I believe you shouldn't make a Crisis Suit a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, this suit has done pretty well for me. It's pretty cheap and does the job. Missiles and Plasma tend to be very expensive and not worth it. Run an anti-vehicle/infantry team and an anti-MEQ team without the Missilepod/Plasma config.

Personalloy, it's too expensive for my tastes...Twin Link Missle Pod is a great buy.

Well, I'd equip all Crisis in a squad differently.
In this way, you can apply wound distribution.
This unit will refuse to die from shooting.

wuestenfux wrote:Well, I'd equip all Crisis in a squad differently.
In this way, you can apply wound distribution.
This unit will refuse to die from shooting.

That's a bad idea. They should all have the same weapons so none are wasted.

One could use the two MPs on all three suits and equip the third hard point in a fashion that doesn't limit the MP's strengths.

For example:
TL MPs, target array
TL MPs, target lock (depending on how your group interprets the target lock rules in this edition)
TL MPs, flamer.

This allows you to focus on the missile pods while distributing the wounds.

Personally, I think TL MPs with target arrays combined with broadsides with plasma is the best config for most opponents at this time. However, I am not playing Tau so much in this edition.

Edit: rule > edition

Hey, that is a good idea as it really makes your suits last longer for a fairly limited points increase.

The team leader can have hardwired gear, so you can use this to your advantage in "differentiating" suits.

For example:

Team Leader - Twin Missile, Plasma, Hard Wired Multi-Tracker
Suit 1 - Missile, Plasma, Multi-Tracker
Suit 2 - Twin Plasma, Missile.

Or some variation of the above.

Adding a flamer or two to a TL MP squad is where I think it's at. You need to roll with at least some templates, and there aren't all that many places to squeeze them in.

Something to consider are the Drones that accompany the unit. If you take something like:

Shas'vre
Hardwired Drone Controller (One Gun Drone, One Markerlight Drone), Flamethrower, Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod

Shas'ui (1)
Flamethrower, Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod

Shas'ui (2)
Flamethower, Fusion Blaster, Drone Controller (One Gun Drone, One Markerlight Drone).

Fusion Blasters to hose tanks, missile pods to kill transports, flamethrowers to burn hordes, networked markerlights to make the former two more accurate, and to enable the pinning tests inflicted by the Gun Drones. All of it spread around to as to maximize the intersection of wound-allocation use with diversity of weaponry, and redundancy.

Abusing wound allocation on your team of suits is WELL WELL worth it! I personally like bonding knives...sorry but i just can't see how 5pts per squad of insurance is ever a bad thing! (only 10pts rly if you throw your HQ into a team)

I like...

squad x3
Team leader missile, plasma, multi, bonding knifes
missile plasma, multi
missile, fusion, multi


Know some people dont like fusion, but hey...it usually gets some work done for me

MorbidlyObeseMonkey wrote:

wuestenfux wrote:Well, I'd equip all Crisis in a squad differently.
In this way, you can apply wound distribution.
This unit will refuse to die from shooting.

That's a bad idea. They should all have the same weapons so none are wasted.

I've seen my friend Heiko playing a large Crisis unit in a tournament.
He did very well with it.

Just don't forget to use the Team Leader's hardwired slot to give yourself more room for a targetting array or twin linked weapon.

grankobot wrote:I still advocate MP/plas for orks and tyranids. High strength kills transports, bikers, MCs, etc. Everybody is scared of plasma... not everybody is scared of TL S7 AP4 shots.

I'm an ork player and I laugh at both missle pods and plasma...oh no! you took away my 6+ save! Better off with with more shots, then again I do play horde.

Good point, but the multi shot weapons in range?

Plasma, Plasma, and more Plasma.

Tau plasma rocks.

As a chaos player who's often at the receiving end of tau firepower I'm most impressed with plasma on a crisis suit.

The missiles are unimpressive.

The fusion guns are nice, but you don't need them if broadsides are doing their job.

I would stick with plasma, and flamers in case you run into a hoard army or units with an obnoxious cover save like Eldar pathfinders.

grankobot wrote:Kroot can deal with manz, they won't be able to deal with even gaunts once people catch on that the new toxin glands rock. Poisoned attacks vs same toughness or lower = wound on 4+, reroll. Kroot will melt against that.

Just one correction on two very good posts by grank.

I thought you had to have greater strength than toughness to get a re-roll to wound, not just equal to or greater than?

Equal to or greater than. It's what makes the Nurgle Daemon Weapon so evil.

Page 42

... in addition, if the Strength of the wielder is the same or higher than the Toughness of the victim the wielder must re-roll failed rolls to wound in close combat.

Always Twin-link a weapon if you can.

Don't forget the ridonkulously cheap horde killer...

Twin-linked Flamer, 2x Gun Drones.