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Fizzywig wrote:personally i would advocate more FW with devilfish and FoF the marines. What gives tau the mobility i spoke of is the sixe and shape of our transports, and the ability to make tanks fire as if they were fast. Im with Shas'O Dorian.

the problem with 3x1 piranhas is simply that in a kill point game (where tau already face problems) you have 6KP wrapped up in fragile units. something I'm wary of almost always.

The other main key with tau is remember, you are going to lose the assualt phase, you are going to likely win the shooting phase (or your doing it wrong) so, if you want to win, you need to also win the movement phase. that is why i advocate FoF, it allows you to cut off avenues of movement and have turns of shooting with pulserifles at 12" away.

Math-hammer, 2 full units of FW, 1 unit pathfinders, FoF vs marines,

1 unit pathfinders gives 4 marker-light hits.
use them to up both Firewarriors BS to 5,

48 shots, hit on 2+, so, 40 hits

40 hits, wounds on a 3+ so 26.67 wounds

3+save, means 8.89 marines dead.

the last marine you can likely kill with the devilfish and gun drones that you are using to keep the FW safe. next trun, load back up in the DF, and rinse repeat.

Fizzywig, I have done the math and in a perfect world it can be done, but you do not get the opportunity to always drop all those points out in the open and have 2 drones protect them all the time. I do agree you cant win the assault phase, but what ifyou can deny or slow down the assault. I.E. use the drones from devilfish and piranhas to guard more expensive harder hitting things like crisis suits and hammerheads or even the devilfish its self.

Its kind of like a shooting retreat, shoot 2 rounds and back up droping somthing in their way, target priorty the assault and jump infantry, and wittle down the rest while moving back and using the drones, piranhas to deny them the close combat, because I am sorry i have had only 1 suit every make it out of a close combat on 1 occasion, and while that squad was being assaulted I lost 3 turns of crucial fire from it.

People talk about cost effective, but i say turn point effective is much more important. If you can kill more points than you lose a turn you win the turn. Win enough turns and you might when the scenario. Sure I might lose that piranha and its drones, sure i might have given extra kp for the drones, but that squad of bikers and deep striked termies just were denied 2 turns of assault, while taking fire, and they have to roll for dangerous terrain for the buring wreck they will have to climb through to get to my guys, and rest assure they will have to run a full turn before they get close enough to assault even then so, I say piranhas ftw.

Now back to the subject of firewarriors effectivness. I have found them to be great against everything else but meq. I also throw bikers in there as if you mark light up bikers that like to flat out into the open and say i got a 3+ cover save I will pwn you next turn. I say hello to my stealth marker lights, my hammerhead submunition and a mass of burst cannons SMS and firewarriors for dead bikers all with no cover save and a lot of them had no save at all.

Oh and for Mr. Plague marine player that says, but they will get their FNP. I say in my tactics against old nurgle. The only thing I need is some plasma rifles and a few markerlights and dead marines for a lot less than 500 points.

Gold tooth Jerry wrote:
Fizzywig, I have done the math and in a perfect world it can be done, but you do not get the opportunity to always drop all those points out in the open and have 2 drones protect them all the time. I do agree you cant win the assault phase, but what ifyou can deny or slow down the assault. I.E. use the drones from devilfish and piranhas to guard more expensive harder hitting things like crisis suits and hammerheads or even the devilfish its self.

Its kind of like a shooting retreat, shoot 2 rounds and back up droping somthing in their way, target priorty the assault and jump infantry, and wittle down the rest while moving back and using the drones, piranhas to deny them the close combat, because I am sorry i have had only 1 suit every make it out of a close combat on 1 occasion, and while that squad was being assaulted I lost 3 turns of crucial fire from it.

People talk about cost effective, but i say turn point effective is much more important. If you can kill more points than you lose a turn you win the turn. Win enough turns and you might when the scenario. Sure I might lose that piranha and its drones, sure i might have given extra kp for the drones, but that squad of bikers and deep striked termies just were denied 2 turns of assault, while taking fire, and they have to roll for dangerous terrain for the buring wreck they will have to climb through to get to my guys, and rest assure they will have to run a full turn before they get close enough to assault even then so, I say piranhas ftw.

Now back to the subject of firewarriors effectivness. I have found them to be great against everything else but meq. I also throw bikers in there as if you mark light up bikers that like to flat out into the open and say i got a 3+ cover save I will pwn you next turn. I say hello to my stealth marker lights, my hammerhead submunition and a mass of burst cannons SMS and firewarriors for dead bikers all with no cover save and a lot of them had no save at all.

Oh and for Mr. Plague marine player that says, but they will get their FNP. I say in my tactics against old nurgle. The only thing I need is some plasma rifles and a few markerlights and dead marines for a lot less than 500 points.

I am not to make the FW your be and and end all against MEQ, they are not perfect, but you have to take some, so, rather than taking minimum squads, take enough to be effective synergistically, my all comer list uses 4 squads of FW, against MEQ, i would likely use only 2, but as i am lazy, i generally use my regular list rather than building one specifically for the army. it makes it a bit tougher to deal with MEQ but also makes me have to pay more attention to the movement phase which is where your victories will really come from.

as to your slowing down the assault, i concur, slowing down the assault is great, that is one of the main benefits to the FOF it slows down possible assaults, as long as you are careful in the movement phase. get a real good eye for measuring distance without a ruler, that alone will help you out more than anything else. know where you can be assaulted or where a melta can get within 6 and stay out. Precision is the name of the tau players game.

I do pretty well against MEq armies, I just do my damage with crisis and stealth suits, I find FW just to fragile to be of use. If it works for you, great.

However be careful with using gun drones to slow down armies, especially in squads of 2. It's a bad day when your opponent moves 6", assaults 6", wipes out two drones, and consolidates 1d6" on you. Slowing them down can be done and does work, just play it smart about how you do it.

Gold Tooth Jerry:

You don't have to point to me about markerlights + plague marines+ ap2.
I've already noted that.

The issue is, focus fire is great and all, but that just means you are not focusing on the 2 other rhinos with 10 plague marines, 2 daemon princes, and 6 obliterators......roughly 1750 a bit less that that actually....1600 maybe.

/shrug.

I've never had issues against Tau before, not sayng I've played it all, but they are the most enjoyable games for me.

Sanctjud wrote:Gold Tooth Jerry:

You don't have to point to me about markerlights + plague marines+ ap2.
I've already noted that.

The issue is, focus fire is great and all, but that just means you are not focusing on the 2 other rhinos with 10 plague marines, 2 daemon princes, and 6 obliterators......roughly 1750 a bit less that that actually....1600 maybe.

/shrug.

I've never had issues against Tau before, not sayng I've played it all, but they are the most enjoyable games for me.

I am not trying to talk down to you. I was actually agreeing with what you posted.

Gold tooth Jerry wrote:See i could really see how vespid could be amazing if you can get them to move say 12" fire 1 inch away then assault.

You just lost that squad, unless chargeing FW or Guardsmen and you outnumber them/have similar numbers. Vespid in CC don't pack any punch at all. No PW option, Str 3 Ws 3, 1 Attack, only thing you've got is I5.
Vespid are relatively good when shooting at a small squad of Marines (even with cover, and BS3 due to ML), other than that they fail pretty hard at everything.

Vespids are a contradiction.
Best non-suit infantry toughness, worse armor save than fire warriors(except for kroot).

They have high initiative, but no combat weapons to make exenstive use of it.

Fast to deliver guns, but guns are short ranged which means (as said here or elsewhere, they better kill what they shoot/charge) and being the clean up crew as Joostuh has described, even that, they bend over to a stiff breeze...hell, random Rhino/drop pod fire can do serious damage to them.

The vespid need at least amour of 4 and str 4 maybe even some sort of rule to help them in cover. Dont know why they arnt ws 4 either. They are about as good as the kroot fluff wise. As we all have said the 12" gun range is very lacking. Its like wow i have to commit the unit to an assault if The wan to to shoot, because they will get charge probably next turn and will defiantly get wiped from that. I might play with them in the future, but right now I am just working on piranha tactics.

15 Piranha, turbo forward. Shoot whatever next turn.
Done.

My old Sushi Legion on Vassal comprised of:
15 Piranha.
Cheap'O.
2 Warfishes with max troops.
2 Railheads.

Sort of a fun list, not very fun for Daemon armies to fight though.

wow thats a expensive list 15 piranhas, monetarily. I'll have to save up to try that.

I used Vassal to try it out.
I ended up going a different route and bought myself a biker army instead of the Feeding Fenzy sort of list.

Yea, $$$, and needs transport...so more $$$.

But 15 AV 11/10/10 flying around 24" is a fun thing, much area denial (as long as they are alive, which can be a problem as they tend to die...).

ehh if you slow them down long enough and kill all of their armour who cares

I've not seen it tried in person, but the Piranha spam list strikes me as an effective all comers choice, since only armies built to fight it are well equipped to deal with that many fast skimmers.

Jack

Maybe, but I would think if it was an effective list you'd see it all over the tournament scene, and you don't. Part of that is probably because three squadrons of five with fusion blasters, dpods, and targeting arrays costs 1,125 points.

People that can handle Eldar would probably also be able to handle piranha spam.

/shrug, it's highly dependent on reserve rolls for me most of the time.

Then there's the...we hit a section of the army with our whole army.

Generally they only care about taking choice units out.

But yea, I view it as more of a 'fun' army than a WAAC army.

I think part of the problem is it's an open topped vehicle, which gives it a plus 1 on the damage chart. an immobilized vehicle in a squadron is destroyed, so a result of 4, 5, or 6 kills a vehicle. With only one gun, a result of three also renders the vehicle nearly ineffective.

So on a penetrating hit, anything but a one is going to seriously damage the vehicle's ability to contribute long term, on a glancing, anything over a 3 does the same.

Also, once one vehicle in the squadron dies and it's gun drones detach, all the other gun drones in the squadron must also detach at the same time.

However it would be fun to have 15 skimmers zooming around the board

Ok the list i presented earlier in this post, is a big winner. Honestly its all about the drones and the blocking line of sight with the 3 piranhas. I dont know how 15 would do. Maybe in a higher point game like 2500 or 3k, because they will be able to give screen for those 2k other points that can get into rapid fire range and destroy whats infront of the 15 piranhas.

About the list i posted here, it worked very well. Game was against demons, and I just kept making the demon player make those 5 +saves. I kept my drones at 1 inch from all of his assault units and 2 inches away from each other pretty much deniying him 6 inches of path to run through or assault them. Sure he can assault them and consolidate to 1 inch away from me but they will have to go through 2 rounds of firing at them to do that and my guys could get over 18 inches away by then. I loved it. I lost a hammerhead 6 FW, 1 gun drone and 2 shield drones. Everything else died, 3 pink flamers in cc and big harvester thing. Looked sick. His big nasty harvester deep striked shot and cause 1 wound then got shaken and immobilized. We both had to go so he conceded, game ended after turn 2. Only thing was left was 2 blue flamer in cc with a gun drone and the shaken and immobilized harvester 2 inches from anything. To his credit i rolled high and he had rough deep strike rolls.

My thinking is piranhas are mandatory now, however they are only there for protecting the suits and Fw. I like to have the burst canons too, because I already have 3 hammerheads, and i have 14 missile pods that can clean up. Also, I think giving them flechette dischargers is a must. Everything has to have them. I got 12 wounds from them this game. I really cant say enough good things about them wounding on 4+ on horde armys its amazing.

The logic is stunning. Since when is having 500 pts killing one squad a good thing? Crisis suits do it much more efficiently.

I thought it was a solid list, but I do think the Stealth team is a wash. Take Pathfinders. Yes, they are fragile. But they are far more cost effective. And they don't take up an elite slot, which should be used for your primary unit, the crisis suit.

Honestly, I will never not have the stealth marker team i can honestly say they are why I win. Sure they are expensive, but if your pathfinders get caught into cc they are dead or get shot to much for that. You have to factor in the fact that your opponent has to roll to see them first then has to roll to hit them and they are always in cover. if they get assaulted they get a good amount of attacks and always go first. To top it off you can move and shoot, just priceless. I run 7 markerlights and if I really need to shoot I got 6 pulse caribines and 9 burst cannon shots.

Sure they might cost a but i get 5 turns of marklights for that cost. I usually get about 5 to hit every time with my rolling and thats usually all I need. Sure I could do the pathfinders, you get more marklights, but it cost more in the long run, and if i wanted to really run it out i could have 13 marklights I just think a stealth team with 6 markers and team leader with 1 is sufficiant.

It also is very intimidating when your opponent trys to shoot him the first round and doesnt get to, or when they assault and take wounds or even lose combat to maker drones. It has happened.

/shrug.

Daemons are inherently handicapped vs. mech.

In my exp. with a 15 piranha list, it's not really a good indication of how competitive a list is when it's mech vs. Daemons.

I remembered people started refusing to play with daemons against the list.
Several people quit turn 1 or 2...

Daemons seem to have a hard time with Tau in my limited experience, the only list I play against is a tzeench list, which is majority T3 and 4++ saves. With only half the army coming in on turn one, that gives me a lot of time pooring a *lot* of fire power that all wounds on 2+ into half their army.

The Lord of Change and Demon Prince can make things more dicey, but once the rest of the army is shot from around them, they go down easy enough.

The hardest thing is learning to deploy against them, having three flamers deepstrike next to your battle suits is a painful, painful experience.

Daemon armies are also the only army I don't mind not bringing marker lights against, since most of them have 4++ saves, I'd rather take another squad of troops to throw more shots on them.

I basically just filled up the area with drones and vehicles he tried to deep strike in a few time, but was limited to where he could go. Honestly playing daemons scared the gak out of me, because everything pretty much deepstrikes. What killed him, I think, was I dropped almost everything he had on the first turn. Top of turn 2 the fire warriors got to rapid fire and i got rapid fire on the plasma rifles. It was nasty. I then dropped drones about 1to 2 inches away from him and he couldnt assault anything but vehicles with flechette dischargers. Same story on turn 2. top of 3 he conceded.

I really thought i would have done much works vs all deepstrike army. He did tell me that daemons are not competitive, but I just thought it was a fun game.

I always find Deepstriking scary as a Tau player, but there are definitely orders of things to fear. Having Daemonettes deepstrike next to you is worrisome, but with only 5++ saves, you can put the hurt on them since they can't assault that turn. Having a full squad of TH/SS Termies deepstrike next to you is an entirely different matter, or a squad of flamers in template range (ignoring cover and armor saves on a 4+ regardless of toughness hurts. I've seen an entire squad of Dante+Death Company dropped immediately to these guys).

Nice use of gun drones, against mech armies though they tend to just get tank shocked through, with strength 2, they just don't pose a threat to even the most lightly armored vehicles.

Fizzywig wrote:If the marines are advancing in a wall, you just keep away from them and whittle down the targets with broadsides and suit and hammerheads, nothing in a tau army shoudl be done out of context with the rest of the army, everythign is synergystic. you will win when you can control the tempo and the game plan, force the marine player to split his units, kill the transports. against drop pods, i suggest using the PosR to keep your pathfinders and fire-warriors off the board until you know where the drop pods land, hit the dreads with rail-guns from the broadsides. The key is in the movement phase, If the marine player insists on using the wall and you cant break it, go to denial tactics, contest objectives with with Gun-drones, or piranhas. you don't need to kill everything, Tau is not an army where you are going to beat marines with a board-wipe (except very occasionally) it is one where you will win by SELECTIVE applications of IMMENSE force. you are not going to win by going toe to toe against his entire force you need to be surgical in your application of your force, that is where FoF is very helpful, yes I am firing 500 pts against 170, that 170 will die.

I completely agree that it's hard to explain things out of context with the Tau since the entire army works as one. True you can do FoF and have it work. With marines advancing towards you you have to set up to run a different way when they get nearby. Statistics are against the gun line sitting around and firing at the enemy advancing towards you. Target priority is a major tactic for the Tau. You're entire army may take a turn killing one unit. The next round the firing moves onto the next unit down the line. You overkill the unit with as much firepower as you possibly can until it dies. The Kroot work the same way as the Fire warriors. The exception is that you assault with overwhelming numbers causing an outrageous number of attacks to kill a single unit in hand to hand combat.

If you combine firewarriors and Kroot a tactic would be to markerlight up the marines advancing (since the rhino should be destroyed). Once they get nearby advance the Kroot and charge with the Kroot into the fight. Kroot with hounds charging at marines will kill them. Afterwards your Kroot squad may be much smaller than they were previously but even so it allows for a variable tactic.

Why did i read this thread!

Now i want to play my Tau!

great advice here so far... You can't really kill marines with just 'weight of fire'. In my experience killing T4 3+ with light arms is a little bit of a myth. Sure you can kill some. But for a decisive volley, you absolutely need 6+ plasma rifles.

The markerlight advice of course was spot on, but you sound like you've got your lights covered.

Move blocking with piranhas can be such a devastatingly powerful combo. Flaring out on one and walling off land raiders, rhinos, even dreadnoughts is majorly awesome.

Lastly, the reason I made my first comment about wanting to play tau again is that tau have about the same assets as my IG army, they have plasma, melta, good long range anti-horde/anti-vehicle, but my IG army is all relatively similar in survivability. I just spam armor 12. Tau has thoe same offenseive tools, but they have a bizarre mix of infiltrating horde/jump infantry/heavy vehicle/skimmer/gunline infantry. You have to micromanage your board position and your target priority is insanely important.

In other words, the same tools to win as an IG army, but infinitely more challenging to use those tools to maximum effect before you lose them.

I had been getting worried with tau. Sure they got the best guns in the game, but if you only get 2 rounds of shooting what is good it.

6+ plasmas is the way to kill the toughness 4 armor 3. I personally like to mark up a target. fireknives +bs 5 =dead marine squad
If you use the drones to take assault from advancing wall you might get to shoot whose rifles the whole game.

Gold tooth Jerry wrote:Honestly, I will never not have the stealth marker team i can honestly say they are why I win. Sure they are expensive, but if your pathfinders get caught into cc they are dead or get shot to much for that. You have to factor in the fact that your opponent has to roll to see them first then has to roll to hit them and they are always in cover. if they get assaulted they get a good amount of attacks and always go first. To top it off you can move and shoot, just priceless. I run 7 markerlights and if I really need to shoot I got 6 pulse caribines and 9 burst cannon shots.

Sure they might cost a but i get 5 turns of marklights for that cost. I usually get about 5 to hit every time with my rolling and thats usually all I need. Sure I could do the pathfinders, you get more marklights, but it cost more in the long run, and if i wanted to really run it out i could have 13 marklights I just think a stealth team with 6 markers and team leader with 1 is sufficiant.

It also is very intimidating when your opponent trys to shoot him the first round and doesnt get to, or when they assault and take wounds or even lose combat to maker drones. It has happened.

I think I've seen you mention this a couple times now, you may want to double check your rulebook, I'm pretty sure that marker drones do not also have pulse carbines, they only have the marker light and a target lock.