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this came up in a discussion at my lgs and had no idea what it was...

so can someone please tell me what a tau farsight bomb army is?

ty

DSing Farsight and a bazillion Crisis suits.

Commander Farsight (special character) with 7 XV8 bodyguards, decked out into a very point-heavy unit.

I personally want to make one that takes up roughly 1000 points, but I don't know if I ever will. Thats a bit on the high spectrum, point-wise, because I would give them a lot of weapons/wargear/drones.

And I'm pretty sure the idea is for them to deepstrike.

Ive seen it used, its meh at best. I think it would get slaughtered by the super gants the new nid codex has brought out, along with units like TH/SS hammers. Its a lot of points that gets beaten up by any other deathstar in the game. Hell 20 boyz could make a mess of it if they got the charge.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:Ive seen it used, its meh at best. I think it would get slaughtered by the super gants the new nid codex has brought out, along with units like TH/SS hammers. Its a lot of points that gets beaten up by any other deathstar in the game. Hell 20 boyz could make a mess of it if they got the charge.

I was with you up until the boyz comment; seriously? What lived through the massive fire from that unit would have to face farsight and his big, "you get no save", sword plus they all have preferred enemy vs. orks which counters the low WS.... Crisis suits are pretty bad but strength 5, 2 wounds, and 2 attacks is slightly better than a complex nob unit IMHO.

Sinking half your armies points into 1 unit is a BAD idea, I agree.

I've played a Farsight Bomb before, deep-striking it. It isn't bad, especially when you've using target locks to let you fire at different units, so you can drop a flamer on one unit, a couple meltas into a vehicle nearby, ridiculous sums of plasma and melta into terminators in range....and making them all pretty much hit on 2+...during the same shooting phase.

Yeah, its not bad.

The so-called Farsight Bomb was invented under 4e so it may have suffered in comparison with 5e codexes.

I haven't used it myself but Torgoch used it successfully in a UK GT so it can't be that bad.

Eight Crisis suits plus a bunch of drones can put out a surprising amount of H2H attacks and has a lot of firepower and armour too.

One of the tricks in using it is to get the charge on the enemy unit. Most players don't ever expect Tau to charge them.

Well, that's because you're really hoping for the Tau unit to survive for one round of combat, then die on the next so the assaulted unit is out in the open for the next round of shooting. Depending on what they run into, they won't survive that first round, either through a failed LD test (7 base, then losing points for taking wounds) or from taking too many power wounds.

Personally, the Farsight Bomb is what I'm building towards with my Tau army. I tested it out to great effect against some (Admittedly probably bad) armies, and found it at the very least a lot of fun to run. 16 plasma shots is nothing to sneeze at - it will rip just about any MEQ squad to shreds in one round of shooting, especially if everybody has multi-trackers and more guns to fire.

Although honestly? Farsight himself isn't worth it. The only reason it's worth taking is because he can take the 7-man bodyguard squad with him. The model himself is fairly mediocre as a commander - for the same points, a vanilla Shas'o gets a 2+ save, FNP, and more gun. Tack a few more points on there, and he's got a couple of ablative wound shield drones to follow him about.

Ah...but no power weapon and no 7-suit bodyguard!

Farsight Bomb Pros and Cons

(Assuming 8 drones are included.)

For
Leadership 10.
16 support class weapons in one unit.
Can put out 30+ shots at S5+ and a couple of templates in one round.
42+ H2H attacks on the charge.
Crisis suits can be configured to spread wound allocation.
Can easily get 6 invulnerable saves into the unit.
Excellent mobility.

Against
High points cost of a single unit.
Danger of losses in deep strike.
Big -- easy target for templates/blasts, and difficult to hide in cover.
Only one power weapon.

Like all “Deathstar” formations it is not an automatic game winner. A good player will make the most of its strengths. A good opponent will attack its vulnerabilities.