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RogueFox wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:Hrm...

A Skyray takes up a valuable heavy support slot to give you a limited number of Skyray missiles, which are STR8. You have PLENTY of STR8 available elsewhere in your army....I'd find another choice there honestly.

By the way, OP, even if you don't want the Skyray, get the Skyray box; All the hammerhead bits are in the box with it, so you basically get the Skyray parts for free and it's the same price as the Hammerhead.

The skyray is the reason I want to get it...(Originally) Cuz of the bits that I can make it into a devil fish or a Hammerhead etc. Although if you guys feel getting broadsides is a better deal I can sort of see why. I still think that large blast template deal with the rail gun is a good idea for anti infantry. Maybe I will make it a last objective. But for now I want some of those SV88 2 broadsides I saw from the apocolypse book. Its a really sweet looking version of the XV88. I am guessing its the same thing but with a different look. You think I should get a few? Anyone know how expensive it is compared to the normal XV88?

Dashofpepper wrote:

ObiFett wrote:DoP:

I keep seeing you talk about using pinning weapons + markerlight leadership reduction to force armies to be pinned. While its a great tactic, how viable is it really?

The reason I ask is because nearly every unit I face is either fearless or they are space marines (who can choose to pass or fail morale). Seeing as how pinning doesn't work on fearless stuff and almost all of 40k is fearless, how is this strategy still viable?

I actually just addressed this over in the army list forums, and so am going to copy and paste below. Space marines can choose to pass or fail a leadership test, which is different than a pinning test. They don't get to choose to pass that, only fearless units do. Against fearless units....you have other weaponry. If they're space marines, so what if they can't be pinned? All those pinning weapons are STR6 AP3 FREAKIN' SNIPER RIFLES!!! You insta-kill several MEQs per sniper team or pathfinder rail rifle. Getting all those pinning checks is just a huge bonus for non-fearless enemies.

Vasarto, in answer to you getting drone teams and farsight next: You can make Farsight out of a regular suit. Give him a plasma gun, a shield generator, and find a nice looking sword in someone's bitz box. My farsight is using a chainsword with the bloody stump of a space marine arm still attached. If that isn't scary, I don't know what is. I think sniper drone teams should be further down on your list. My advice:

You need 24 firewarriors; you can combine them in different ways.
After that, you need broadsides. Six of them. An army consisting of 2 squads of 12 firewarriors in cover + 6 broadside battlesuits = win!
After that, you need crisis suits.
After that, you need 24 more firewarriors
After that, you need more crisis suits.
After that, you need to decide if you want your third heavy support to be 3 sniper teams or a railgun equipped hammerhead.

You can't field 6 Broadsides with O'Shova. You can only field 3 max. Peronaly i don't like sniper teams. I really love my stealth suits with gun drones attached. This is the main shooty of my shooty army.

OP you may not want to start an army with O'shova because he requires a 1500 point army which is not exactly a small army to start out with and all those suits are freaking expensive money wise.

Quick note about kroot:

In order to be effective, kroot hounds go a long way thanks to their better-than-kroot initiative. They're also a bit cheaper.
Krootoxen are stupid and worthless. Use the points to buy more blueberry people.
Kroot should be used as a melee shield around your other forces. They can protect you very well against deepstrikes, and infiltrate allows them to deploy just that much further which can be useful at times.
Contrary to popular belief, Tau aren't actually a pure long range army, but are somewhat similar to sisters in that most of their weapons get better as the enemy closes in. Kroot are useful to protect the shooting elements by physically blocking assaulters. If you place the kroot models 2" apart from each other, a 10 kroot 5 hound squad and cover a 45" long line along your border while remaining in coherency. You can squeeze the models a bit closer to each other and still end up with a 30" long line of "you shall not pass" in case you're afraid of multi-charging models that opponents insist are allowed to move through your unit and into the next one. (which I believe is cheating, but I've seen it done a couple of times)

Their scoring status and low cost work well with this strategy, and because they don't autolose combats like most tau do, they might survive an assault and go grab an objective afterwards. If not, just shoot the enemy next turn with the rest of your army, since your shooting elements should be unscathed. Kroot shouldn't assault themselves unless you face a Tau mirror match or another shooting army like non-mech IG. Against mech IG, they need to give 4+ cover saves to the rest of the army, namely the suits.

You shouldn't use more than 2 squads of kroot, though, at least not in my opinion. Those points do add up fast, and you need to have the superior firepower advantage or you'll lose.

About Tau:

While many people may not like him, Stelek values the Tau highly and ranks them as one of the better, if not the best, competitive armies in 40k. He may be a bit ahead of the curve, since most people are just now starting to run mechanized lists against which the tau excel, but he offers good advice about purely competitive lists. I'm not saying that Stelek is always right about everything or that he somehow knows everything about 40k and has ascended into tzeentchian daemonhood, but he's not the only one advocating Tau superiority in 5th edition. I do think he was one of the first, though, and maybe even the first to talk about it extensively on the internet. He's thought of the matter so much that by now he has to have good advice by virtue of time spent on the matter.

DashofPepper has so far given excellent advice about the Tau, although I do disagree with him about the kroot and about sniper teams. Sniper teams have the misfortune of being only bs 3, so they need markerlights to reliably hit and pin the enemy. Those markerlights could go straight into killing the enemy instead of disabling them when used by other units with more firepower. The sniper team also loses all its models if the controller is killed, so with some bad luck the entire squad only has a single t3 4+ save wound. It can be a bit too fragile for me to consider taking it, I'm afraid.

Pinning as a strategy doesn't tend to work well for the reasons stated before, the abundance of fearless/LD9+ units with or without stubborn.

Also, don't take markerlights outside of pathfinder units. The devilfish they come with can be given to other units, and the pathfinders have the best "points spent per markerlight hit" - ratio in the codex. As a consequence, you shouldn't pay extra to get pathfinders with rail rifles, since you lose markerlight efficiency, and often the extra 1-3 markerlight shots can make a big difference.

So what do you need to build a competitive Tau list?

Broadsides
Crisis Suits
Pathfinders with their standard loadout, no rail rifles!
Firewarriors who steal the devilfish from the pathfinders
A couple of kroot
Piranhas

Why is piranhas bolded and underlined? Because they can take mobile meltas that don't rely on deepstriking. Because those mobile meltas are the cheapest place to take them in the entire codex. Because they can take flechette dischargers and act as assault blockers. Because they can carry an extra unit of drones to contest objectives. Because they are awesome in general. Take about 4 or 6. More if you'd like, but their points can add up fast.

The rest can be anything you like, really, but Hammerheads or more suits are the optimal choices.

My 2 cents. Please do carry on.

Agreeing with the pirahna sentiment; there was a long established thread discussing the merits of 5 man pirahna squads being able to block not only LOS, but to literally wall in your opponent in their deployment zone andt being able to absolutely wreck havoc on transport heavy armies with the ability to target seperate vehicles.

That and in batches of 5 they give you a free Fast Attack choice w/ drones.

edit for comparison

2 Pathfinder squads w/ Devilfish and one Squad of 5 pirahnas comes out to 4 Fast Attack Options.