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Here's a little something me and Gwar! worked out..

HQ;
1 Commander Shas'el @ 71 pts (Shield Drone; Twin Linked Flamer; Drone Controller)
1 Shield Drone (Shield Generator)

Troops;

6 Fire Warrior @ 145 pts
1 Devilfish (Disruption Pod)

6 Fire Warrior @ 145 pts
1 Devilfish (Disruption Pod)

Heavy Support;

1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 155 pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Disruption Pod)

1 Sniper Drone Team @ 80 pts

Total: 596 pts

Gwar! made most of it, although he suggested a Broadsuit instead of the Sniper Drone Team, although since S6 drones cause Instant Death to most human-equilevant stuff and since the Hammerhead already will be picking out tanks, we found this to be better.

If you are going to shoot at tanks, the Broadside works better then the hammerhead


I suggest making your hammerhead a Ionhead, giving you S7 AP3 instead of the S6 AP3 of the Rail rifle
Use those points to buy a Broadside

you end up saving 35 points for whatever you want (maybe give some range to your commander, or add a couple more firewarriors


So, you lose the networked Markerlight, but gain Twin linked rails instead of a single

No no. Tacticts: Rail Gun has 72" range, meaning I'll be picking on his tanks from the very start, the gun drones goes to hunt Characters and add support fire to the warriors whom swoop forth to cover in which the Devilfishies have a 4+ cover from anything 12" away thanks to their Distruption Pods, and the units cover in the terrain, with the skimmer-tank infront making the enemy target that rather than the FW's.

As soon as any enemy armour is down by the Railgun, it'll start blasting apart infantry and such.

Broadsides may be better than the Gundrones for Anti Vehicle, but at 600pts a Hammerhead should be enough already as most vehicles will be APC's with relatively low armour.

Besides, as I told Gwar!, the Broadsides looks like old-school clockwerk robots. I hate all battlesuits, and I'm even considering to convert some FW's into a Tau Command Squad. =P

Riffzor wrote:No no. Tacticts: Rail Gun has 72" range, meaning I'll be picking on his tanks from the very start, the gun drones goes to hunt Characters and add support fire to the warriors whom swoop forth to cover in which the Devilfishies have a 4+ cover from anything 12" away thanks to their Distruption Pods, and the units cover in the terrain, with the skimmer-tank infront making the enemy target that rather than the FW's.

As soon as any enemy armour is down by the Railgun, it'll start blasting apart infantry and such.

Broadsides may be better than the Gundrones for Anti Vehicle, but at 600pts a Hammerhead should be enough already as most vehicles will be APC's with relatively low armour.

Besides, as I told Gwar!, the Broadsides looks like old-school clockwerk robots. I hate all battlesuits, and I'm even considering to convert some FW's into a Tau Command Squad. =P

Fair enough, if you dislike battlesuits, then no BS's

Now, if you are playing 600 points, and most vehicles are going to be weak, once again, take an Ion head, 3 S7 shots on AV10 or 11 is nothing to sneeze at, and you save points.

(I like Ionheads, in case you havn't noticed.

Well, yes the Ionhead is better for Anti- Light Vehicles, but after the APC's and that is down, I'd prefer a huge blast rather than 3 shots to kill infantry with.

Besides I think the Hammerhead looks cooler than the Ionhead. Although I prefer the Sky-Ray when it comes to looks... But I hate that it only has 6 shots per game. >.<

Alright I've written down how I want to upgrade the force to 1000pts when the time comes. Here's what I got so far.


1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 155 pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Disruption Pod)

1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 155 pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Disruption Pod)

6 Fire Warrior @ 145 pts
1 Devilfish (Disruption Pod)

Sniper Drone Team removed.

29 pts to upgrade the Shas'El with.

Total: 971 pts

I'd like some suggestions though..

(Also, the Drone Targetter model will be used in my Tau Command Squad when I'm playing with my friends.)

If you are going to go (mostly) suitless, I might try dropping one of the three hammer heads and replacing it with two sniper drone teams (not sure why you removed them on the 1k list, so this may be contrary to your desires). A lot of times SDTs seem unattractive, but they fill an important hole you have without suits. They are fragile, which sucks, but the stealth field will help some, and I think that's just the trade off you'll have without suits.

Have you looked at the Forgeworld broadsides, by the by? I think they look 10x better, and are (at least in USD) the same price as GWS broadsides.

If you have points left over, I would slap an AFP and HW MT on your commander, that way he can chew through hordes even better than just a TL flamer - this seems to be what you're going for with this unit.

Well, I'm going to have a closer look on the suits. Seems they have a quite critical role in most Tau armies.

I can't quite see how 2 sniper drone teams would be better than a Hammerhead, they can hit 6 models in total at BS 5 when using both markerlights, vs. a Hammerhead that.. Well, sure it scatters and doesn't always hit as many, but has much higher range and ignores cover saves (If I've understood it right? o.O ).

I was looking at the Phiranas too, not because I see what they'd do more than going forth to give some heavy weapon support where needed, which of course may be usefull but.. Well, we'll see.

I was considering to change one of the Hammerheads to a Pathfinder team, then I get the rail rifles and a markerlight, and still get to keep a Devilfish-hull tank. (love 'em!)

Generally I want everything to be in transports, which is another reason to why I'm not too fond of the SDTs, it feels as if they're going to be left behind whilst the others go ahead in their Devilfishes. The only thing I feel that it doesn't need a transport would be any jump-pack units, such as suits or stealth teams, the suits that can deep-strike would be pretty good to have, perhaps I should put more points into a HQ with bodyguards and proper weapons. (The flamers were taken for being so cheap, after all.)

The third Devilfish with FW's are mainly because it feels as if my army has no 'bulk' in it, it's just a couple of vehicles flying around. The barrage of three Hammerheads would smash out a lot of damage on most enemies, and the FW's could pick out whatever is left.

As for Seeker Missiles, it feels as if most Tau players have them somewhere, but I really don't... well, I like them since a Seeker missile can pick out a vehicle that costs a bunch more than the missile does, but after that it's spent. A hammerhead can pick out a vehicle too, and then another, and then some infantry.

Other than that I don't think there's much vital stuff about the Tau I've missed (Except the kroot's cc-block and auxilary support which I willingly skip due to their looks!).

i think you should take some kroots

Here's the thing - your hammerheads aren't going to be firing off those pie plates. Eschewing suits and broadsides means that absolutely the only way for you to deal with AV 12, 13, 14 (and 11 you only get glancing!) will be your hammerheads. That means they're probably going to be firing solid munitions, non twin-linked, at BS 4.

With that in mind, you start to see how you're hurting vs anything better than a 5+ save. Your FW squads are not big enough to handle even a single marine squad in rapid fire range, which is normal with a Tau list, but that's because you make up for it elsewhere (primarily in suits). This is why I think it's a good idea to add the sniper drone teams to at least get 6/3 in the army.

Fact is, Tau were not ever imagined to capably run a suitless army. Not a knock on you, but you do have an uphill battle, because suits serve to fill in all the holes the rest of the Tau list has in it, and also to provide much needed flexibility.

Fair, warning, I've never looked at a suitless army seriously, so I could be way off base, but if I were going to make one, I would probably find myself running a Skyray (yeah, I just suggested that, but in a suitless army, it helps fill the holes), a hammerhead, and 3 SDTs for the heavy slots, and fast slots would be maybe a FB Pir team with pathfinders and even a few rail rifles sprinkled in there, and larger FW squads. Those are just the principles I would start with.

And the skyray only has 6 *seeker* shots per game - the SMS and 2 MLs could still do a lot of damage through the rest of the game in a list like this, I think

Go suitless and more power to you, I say, but it will be a rough climb.

How about... Exchanging one HH for two Body Guards for the Shas'o and give 'em all a decent pair of weapons?

I just remade my list to 750 as a primary goal to fight my brothers with. That looked something like this:

HQ:

Shas'o w. the Ion thingy, a Plasma Gun, Drone controller and a targetting drone.

Troops:

FW team (6) w. Devilfish APC w. Pods.

FW team (6) w. Devilfish APC w. Pods.

Heavy Support:

Hammerhead, Railgun and pods.

Hammerhead, Railgun and pods.

Total: 745 pts.

Now the thought was to use the Hammerheads to bash down whatever moves and let the FW's go take care of whatever survives them. But.. Yeah, it's a pretty dull tactic.

I ain't ever going to contaminate my Tau army with any Kroot.

However I think I'm gonna have to consider some suits, I'll go have a look at it and see what I can do.

I'm assuming that you have burst cannons on your hammerheads...

Besides that, I wouldn't suggest a marker-drone as they are 30 points a piece... that is just too much. It is not only more dependable, but also cheaper to get your commander a targeting array. I would also get your commander a more relevant combo, and give him a HWMT. It makes him a lot more effective, and not too much more expensive.

What army is your brother going to play? It will have a big affect on how I would suggest to change your commander.

Well, I've got two brothers. =P

One's gonna play Black Templars, the other's gonna play an Orkish Green Tide. Then my two friends are going to play IG and SoB. So there's both bunches of infantry, MEQ's and IG's that may come with a lot of vehicles.

Once again Gwar! has given me some tips/advice/suggestions. Here's the latest we came up with:

1 Commander Shas'el @ 101 pts (Hard-wired Blacksun Filter; Marker Drone; Twin Linked Missile Pod; Drone Controller)
1 Marker Drone (Networked Markerlight; Targeting Array)

1 Crisis Battlesuit @ 48 pts (Twin Linked Missile Pod; Target Lock)

6 Fire Warrior @ 145 pts
1 Devilfish (Disruption Pod)

6 Fire Warrior @ 145 pts
1 Devilfish (Disruption Pod)

1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 155 pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Disruption Pod)

1 Hammerhead Gunship @ 155 pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Disruption Pod)

Total 749pts.

Although I love the idea of having two Hammerheads to bash the heck out of everything across the field, I wouldn't want to play only to win all the time (I could basicly wipe out my brother's rhinos and all troops in it, his Terminator Chaplain and his Dreadnough in 2 turns with a bit of luck).

So I'm thinking of droping one Hammerhead and replace it with some commander upgrades and exchange the Crisis into Bodyguards and bump up their weaponry to a wider choise of troop-killers.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've made another army list now that drops one Hammerhead for the stronger HQ. The idea is to Deep-Strike them near the enemies and 'terrorize' them with their firepower and assault-phase moves to keep out of melee range. In the Meantime the Troops go snatch some objectives whilst the Hammerhead remains on its spot blasting down vehicles/troops.

HQ:

Shas'O (Burst Cannon, Cyclic Ion Blaster, Targeting Array, Hard-Wired Drone Controller, Shield Drone)
Shas'Vre (Burst Cannon, Airbursting Framentation Projector, Targeting Array, Hard-Wired Target-lock, Hard-Wired Drone Controller, Shield Drone)
Shas'Vre (Burst Cannon, Missile Pod, Targeting Array, Hard-wired Target-Lock, Hard-Wired Drone Controller, Shield Drone)

301pts

Troops:

6 Fire Warriors - 145pts
1 Devilfish (Distruption Pod)

6 Fire Warriors - 145pts
1 Devilfish (Distruption Pod)

Heavy Support:

Hammerhead Gunship - 155pts (Railgun; Two Burst Cannons; Distruption Pod)

Total: 746pts

Why the target lock on your lone battlesuit? It is completely redundant... and the fact that Gwar! would actually suggest anything like that is strange to me... He generally holds the opinion that they don't do anything...

The Bringer wrote:Why the target lock on your lone battlesuit? It is completely redundant... and the fact that Gwar! would actually suggest anything like that is strange to me... He generally holds the opinion that they don't do anything...

Actually I believe he says that the rules say they don't do anything, and if he comes across someone who plays entirely by the rules, he will comply.

Because the Commander is to join that Suit and form a 'unit' as they're cheaper than the bodyguards. =P

Perhaps should have mentioned that somewhere..