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People always go on about the 30" range, but in nearly every game that benefit is gone after turn 1. Dawn of War rules mean you need to roll a 10 in order to use the maximum range. Many, many units are running at the FCW and have cover saves for whatever reason. Spending 120 points to kill 1 marine at 30" just seems silly to me. A death rain will do just as well and and is nearly a third of the price.

Making pulse rifles assault will make carbines disappear.

Taking a markerlight makes the squad static and is very expensive as Kilkrazy points out.

Taking cheap, six man squads as speedbumps goes against army background and hurts in missions with kill points.

Either make the unit much cheaper or allow some reaction capability when assaulted. Maybe, having a designer use them as their main army would help, but I don't see that ever happening.

How do you take your networked markerlights?

I'm assuming it's upgrade an FW to Shas'ui, give him a drone controller and a pair of Marker drones. (A positive side effect is to raise squad Leadership to 8.)

If this is correct, it makes a unit quite expensive and reduces mobility because you can't mount in a Devilfish unless you reduce your FWs to 10 per squad.

Since Markerlights are heavy weapons you can't move the squad and fire. That's not so much of a problem with range 30 weapons, though it does imply a static kind of tactics.

What do you use to capture points?

Drone controllers is correct. My standard list I have 2 normal squads with Drones and then my honour guard with drones all on foot, then I have a third squad in a devilfish (without drones) that I use to take objectives or launch a rapid-fire counter-attack if the enemy gets to close. Depending on the points played I have a squad of kroot usually with oxen as a screen and objective taker. I have around 200 points of markerlight drones but worth every one I say!

As for tactics ya, I sit there and dont move. My other main army is guard, and well...more of the same there too. I have being playing this game since second edition and for shooting armies I swear up and down that to move is to die. My rule of thumb is to shoot for five turns and move for one. So I try to deploy (both my army and the objectives) so that I can get to objectives in one turn with my chimera or devilfish (move 12 deploy 2 and then fleet d6).

You know Tau units with jetpacks in 5th editon are 100% relentless now, not just semi-relentless (Check 5th editon rulebook)

Also note that all drones are equiped with jetpacks!! (Someone check the rulebook for this, i'm pretty sure i'm right)

A new tactic with this can be done with this. Devilfish, 10 firewarriors with 2 marker drones. Drive up and dump the sqaud, fire markerlights (heavy weapons but relentless negates any problems) and hopefuly with BS 5 rapid fire the fools to oblivion.

Drones take the same troop type as their controller. So, drones attached to Fire Warriors stop being Jump Infantry (Jet Pack) and become Infantry.

This means they lose the Relentless rule.

Kilkrazy wrote:Drones take the same troop type as their controller. So, drones attached to Fire Warriors stop being Jump Infantry (Jet Pack) and become Infantry.

This means they lose the Relentless rule.

Awww.. that sucks.. Thanks for clarifiying that (I picked up my codex to take a look about it, in which your right.)...Still... it would be really cool if you could do that. Would make a comeback for the fish of fury tactic me thinks.

Personaly.. i really like that ruling "For the greater good". That would give tau a serious comeback in a way to not get totally F***** by any type of CC attacker (Which is pretty much 80% of the game these days).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dal'yth Dude wrote:People always go on about the 30" range, but in nearly every game that benefit is gone after turn 1. Dawn of War rules mean you need to roll a 10 in order to use the maximum range. Many, many units are running at the FCW and have cover saves for whatever reason. Spending 120 points to kill 1 marine at 30" just seems silly to me. A death rain will do just as well and and is nearly a third of the price.

Making pulse rifles assault will make carbines disappear.

Taking a markerlight makes the squad static and is very expensive as Kilkrazy points out.

Taking cheap, six man squads as speedbumps goes against army background and hurts in missions with kill points.

Either make the unit much cheaper or allow some reaction capability when assaulted. Maybe, having a designer use them as their main army would help, but I don't see that ever happening.

Perhaps a slowing effect like in DoW dark crusade with snare mines? That would give the tau much more of a chance to use it's range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Doombot001 wrote:I wouldn't want to give FW teams a heavy weapon cause that goes against the Tau doctrine and fluff. That, and as stated before, I don't want the Tau to become an "alien" IG.

Indeed... We got battlesuits for that job.

Doombot001 wrote:
But to play devil's advocate, the FW SHOULD depend on other units. That's how their army is supposed to be played. All the units intermesh and support each other, Crisis Suits act as the FW Heavy Weapons, etc. I think that's what GW wanted in the first place.

That is pretty much what makes Tau well.... Tau. It has to work together for the best output of what they can do. The whole is much greater than the sum of it's parts.

Take fire warriors.. FW's are your standing troopers. They got average saves (50% chance not to get killed) and they have great shooting weapons, but they fail against anything with enough armor (Terminators and/or armored tanks/MC's). The tau ain't a IG army. Your troops can't just be thrown away for no reason. A hammerhead or a trio of broadsides can do bloody wonders for them.