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Farsight is pretty cool, but he really limits the lists for the chance to get 5 extra crisis suits.
My Idea was to offset this by buffing his close combat bonus.

Close Combat Weapons Training: All Tau Units (not kroot, vespid, or drones) may
use one of their assault weapons in close combat replacing their STR with the
weapon's STR and their Attacks with their weapon's Type (Assault 3 = 3 attacks).

Ap 1 and AP 2 count as Power Weapons.

Twin-Linked Weapons may re-roll to wound.

Template weapons (ie. Flamer) always hit and attacks are equal to the amount of enemies in base contact with the model

This would mean Fire Warriors double their chance to wound, but would still lose to MEQ.
Flamers might be a tad too power, just a bit , since for 6 points you get probably 3 automatic S4 hits with re-roll for wound, but I would think that helps make up for lack of templates, especially since you can only take 1 Hammerhead.
Crisis Suits would also be able to get a Power Fist equivallent that strikes at I3 but is limited to 1 attack.
To go along with this his point cost would go up to 250 and maybe add an increased point cost per model, possibly an extra 2 per firewarrior/pathfinder and 6 per battlesuit.

Any thoughts on how this could be balanced more would be good.

Edit: Spelling

This is entirely unbalanced. The tau have awesome shooting. This is balanced by them being crap at CC. You may not have an army that has no weaknesses, that is ridiculous.

They would be mediocre in CC, except Tl Flamers in Base contact with 4 models, they would be awesome.

Fire Warriors would be the same price (16 points) as Space Marines if they are equiped with grenades (photon & emp) which is similar to their krak & Frak.

Marines would still win in CC since they have the same chance to wound as FW, yet they also will land more hits, strike first, and have a 3+ sv.
This also requires FW to use Pulse Carbines so they lose out on their famed range and double tap.

Crisis suits costs 25 + wargear, lets say it has TL Burst cannon and Fusion Blaster, thats 55 points. giving it 3 S5 re-roll to wound or 1 S8 attack that ignores armour, hitting half the time.

Vet Marine is 23ish + wargear, lets say with a lighning claw (38 points) has 2 S4 attacks that ignores armour and re-rolls wounds hitting on a 3+, and again strikes first.

a vet on a bike is slightly more compareable with, Power Weapon at 55 points, hitting 2/3 of the time with 3 S4 ignore armor attacks, T5, and TLBolter hitting on 3+

I would not say this is entirely unbalanced. Although the crisis suit is better then these vets at shooting, its not better at CC, being T4 its extra wound is not hard to negate by a Power fist or a lascannon, and Farshight's restrictions means there will be less tanks fielded freeing up some missile launchers to shoot at crisis suits.

Maybe a further 4point increase making it 10pt extra per crisis suit would help balance out their better shooting ability.

I'm gonna say it again, since you didn't hear me the first time. This is ridiculous. Tau do NOT need a CC buff. Their entire point is that they are AWFUL at close combat, and amazing at range. You don't get to have units that jump shoot jump with plasma and fusion and then pack armor ignoring close combat weapons on top of all that, oh btw they have multiple wounds. That's straight moronic. You may think it's a good idea: It's not, and if you tried it out, I would definitely not play your list with these dumb rules.

I don't know why Tau players think they deserve a buff in CC. You guys have some of the best shooting in the game with crisis suits. If you don't like how fire warriors perform in CC, just take the minimum squads and DONT GET THEM IN CC.

Tau should not, should NOT get a buff to their CC, or a thing that lets them run away before combat, or any of the other ridiculous unbalanced things that people suggest for them. They are balanced as they are right now, albeit a little bit on the low end, they don't need to be the OMGWTF BEST RACE EVER!

The entire point of Farsight is that he said "Gak you" to the rest of the Tau, "We're better than your shortsighted combat doctrines. We need to be flexible, and at least competent in Close Combat."

Tau is a shooty army. They don't it as well as they should currently, but we'll see what happens with the next codex. I can understand Farsight giving some kind of combat bonus, but the idea proposed here is WAY overpowered. Making Farsight confer universal furious charge and +1 WS and I, and possibly counter attack. That would at least give Tau a semblance of staying power, without making them OP, but Farsight would have to become a 200+pts character.

Its not supposed to make them the best ever. It just supposed to open diffrent strategies for those who decide to play with Farsight. They give us this HQ which cuts down on our long range fire power and takes away our combat staller for the potential of 5 suits, regrouping under half strength, and re-rolls to hit orks... for 170pt and you only get a suit with a power weapon and a plasma rifle with a 4+ invul

This is just extending that further instead of being watered down. I do think that it can be balanced by increasing the point cost of crisis suits, the more expensive they are the less you have of them, which means less fire power overall.

Crisis suit w/Twin-linked plasma + Fusion blaster 77pt
Obliterator 75pt

both of which can fire twin-linked plasma guns and the crisis suit has an extra 0-5" of movement, while the obliterators get 2+ armour, 5+ invul, 2 power fist attacks each and 3 on charge instead of the crisis suit 1, increased accuracy, and long range utility. i'd say they are pretty compareable point wise, and both suffer from instant death rule.

The +15 (crisis base 25 + farsight cost of 15 + wargear) already makes you lose 1/4 of the suits you could of had otherwise, plus its an extra 130 points for this once you subtract Farsight's wargear from his point cost.

I would add in the additional rule that you can not use your assault weapon in CC if you had shot in the previous shooting phase (ie. you can't shoot with your burst cannon then charge an enemy with your burst cannon effectively doubling your shots from it. However you could shoot, then on your opponent's turn if you are charge your weapons would be ready).

I suppose this is similar to the space wolves in that they are a shooty army but everyone has counter charge.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blacksails wrote:Tau is a shooty army. They don't it as well as they should currently, but we'll see what happens with the next codex. I can understand Farsight giving some kind of combat bonus, but the idea proposed here is WAY overpowered. Making Farsight confer universal furious charge and +1 WS and I, and possibly counter attack. That would at least give Tau a semblance of staying power, without making them OP, but Farsight would have to become a 200+pts character.

Too me it seems similiar, in the case of fire warriors they get +2 Strength instead of +1 WS, S, and I.

Crisis suits get
+ 1 A re-roll wounds
or
-1 A +3S ignores armor
or
1 to 4 A -1 S always hit, re-roll wounds

instead of +1 WS, S, and I.

This means they are still squishy since they are easy to hit and take damage first, but then they now ca hit back and each crisis suit is 15pt more then it was before.

It's still overpowered, even when you break it down like that. It's not a good idea, no matter how many times you repeat it. If a tau player came up to me asking if I would play him with those rules, I'd laugh in his face and tell him to pack up his models.

As a long-time Tau player, I don't like it.

I could fix the Tau with two army-wide USRs.

1) Defensive grenades, for free, for everyone.
2) Every unit has Hit And Run.

Simple as that. The Tau use their tech to make assaults less deadly, slightly. And with Hit And Run, it exeplifies their willingness to drop back from a fight they can't win or have no desire to lose. And because Initiative is low for Tau, it's not game changing, so Fire Warriors can leave 1 in 3 times, Crisis Suits and Stealth Teams 1 in 2 times and Kroot 2 in 3 and the even-quicker Vespid 5 in 6 times.

You might take it a step further and use the rule applied to XV9 Hazard teams - you can auto pass your Hit And Run test if you sacrifice your drones - which I love, very Tau.

It doesn't change the character of the army, it doesn't change the way they play, it makes them a bit more survivable in combat and makes assaulty armies think twice for risk of the unit stepping back and firing once you've hit them.

My intention wasn't to fix "tau", it was to add a bit more flavour to farsight and to change how the army played.
I'm having trouble seeing how its over powered now, though i get the feeling nothing I say will make you (Darkjediben) think its balanced.
If seems like you should have just left it at 'the tau are long ranged and should always be long ranged, thats why i think this idea sucks.' rather then just saying its over powered.

The new tau codex is coming out summer 2012? Hopefully they'll add some interesting new and useful IC.

You are correct that you cannot convince me, because it's a stupid rule. The guy above you, who said add regular old hit and run, and also Defensive grenades, that's an example of a balanced way to fix tau. Your idea is ridiculous, as several other people have also told you. If you want to cling to the idea that it's somehow an actually good idea, that's fine, but dream on if you ever think of actually trying to play it that way.

Darkjediben,
Rather than your rather rude comments of "this is ridiculous" why not try to help balance the concept.
Or just keep your opinions about it to yourself, there's always that...

Your comments come off as someone who's either a whiner, or been beaten by Tau frequently. (or both)

That being said, this is rather powerful

I would have said lower their BS by 1 to represent their melee training taking away from their shooting, but they're already mostly BS 3 aren't they? If not, then that would be my first step.

Would it be unreasonable to lower the strength by 1 of any weapon used in melee? This might represent the "concentration of fire" in shooting and the "shoot from the hip" style in melee?

Maybe limit the fire warriors to melee with weapons only if they are using Carbines instead of Rifles. (negate the pinning rule while in combat, pinning doesn't work in combat anyway)

Roger if I were you I would find a friendly opponent (someone distinctly opposite of Mr. Darkjediben) and play test several different rule changes along this line. Just write them down before hand so you don't change in the middle of a game.

>Your comments come off as someone who's either a whiner, or been beaten by Tau frequently. (or both)

Actually, I'm just somebody who is exhausted of looking for interesting rules in this forum and CONSTANTLY coming across Tau players whining about how they want their army to be good at CC. YOU ARE GOOD AT SHOOTING. THAT IS ALL YOU GET. I don't know why it's so hard for these little kids who play tau to get it through their heads that their army does not get to follow the fluff. If their army actually followed the fluff of how Tau are supposed to be OMG THE BEST SHOOTERS EVAR then the Space Marines would wipe the floor with them every time, since they are basically demi-titans in the fluff. It just gets obnoxious.

And as far as being beaten by Tau...hahaha ok. Sure. Whatever you say.

>That being said, this is rather powerful

So...you agree with me, but decided to call me a whiner because your poor little feelings got hurt? Grow up, man. It's not whining. He posted in an open forum asking for people's thoughts, and I gave him mine. He refuses to accept them, but that's too bad, if he didn't want to hear that his rules were dumb and overpowered, he should have kept them to himself. Giving Tau, a shooty army, the ability to have high strength Armor penetrating close combat weapons on multi-wound mobile platforms with 3+ saves and the ability to take extra ablative wounds in the form of shield drones is absolutely ridiculous and overpowered. A Tactical squad would charge a crisis suit team that had shield drones and plasma, kill a few of the shield drones, and then get massacred as all the enemy attacks were at Str 7 AP 2. If you honestly can't see how that's ridiculous, I'm just really glad that you don't play at my FLGS.

I agree that Tau need a fix. But once again, their fix is NOT "Give them awesome CC powers". If you want awesome CC, go play a different army.

Hahaha are you serious


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Roger wrote:If seems like you should have just left it at 'the tau are long ranged and should always be long ranged, thats why i think this idea sucks.' rather then just saying its over powered.

How about this, it's overpowered AND the idea sucks.

Hahaha, hey, howabout this: Everyone stops making personal attacks on other posters, and doesn't post anything that's not about the topic. After all, it's easy enough to ignore people- it's just writing on a screen.



Now, on topic...

I guess it's just the Ork player in me, but I do think there should be options for most of the armies out there, to determine their play style. Orks can be a Horde, or they can be heavily mechanized and extremely fast, or they can use small numbers of elite units, or they can completely flood the field with Walkers or Tanks. Heck, it's even possible to make an Ork army that's based around Shooting instead of CC. Thing is, they're still going to be better at CC, though if you ignore the wargear and options available for CC, they're not going to be the best at CC (and bear with me, I know they're not the best).

Similarly, it's possible to take either Horde or Artillery based IG, Footdar vs. Mechdar, Blood Angels have the flying assault based stuff vs. the Space Wolves' gunlines, heck, even Necrons can put together a decent CC list, when they're usually best at short-range shooting.

But whereas an Ork Player might field Kan Wall, or Green Tide, a SWer might do Razorspam or Drop Pods, IG has Power Blobs or Gunlines, Nids have Nidzilla or Swarms, all I ever see a Tau player field is, well, Tau. Shouldn't there be some way to create an intrinsically different army with them? One that plays differently to basic Tau?

Yes, Anvildude, there should definitely be different options. I would like the options of Kroot armies, or Battlesuit armies, or renegade type Farsight armies. But none of those ideas are explored when some idiot goes "HURR WE NEED A CC BOOST ON EVERYTHING". It just doesn't make sense.

Im gonna have to agree with the above poster 100%. I am a tau player, for life, and one of my biggest problems is how constraining the list is, if you want to be competitive. There is not a lot of room for creativity most of the time and pretty much every tau army at a tournament is uniform, therefore their is not a lot of room to try and counter your armies weaknesses. For the tau were stuck with range, but not a lot of shots like IG, and we dont have a lot of models on the table, and we dont have CC. that being said Tau is not a weak army, just very limited sad to say. Now as with the posters idea, your can go ahead and hate his exact idea. But im gonna go ahead and back the theory behind the idea, paying some sort of price to allow our army to diversify a bit. Now maby it could be diversified to be better, not amazing or the best, but better than it is now for CC. To be honest im a little skeptical of the original posters exact idea for how to go about doing this, but I would not say coming up with a way to make a Farsight Enclave army more suited for CC is terrible at all. It goes along with the lore, or at the very least does not contradict it. His enclave was known for using tactics the ethreals did not approve of, so somehow gearing his army for better CC sounds like a great idea in my opinion and I thank you original poster for opening us up to this sort of insight, even if your exact idea is a little off.

His exact idea is a LOT off. You can't just give a unit that already has jump shoot jump, ablative invulnerable saves, and plasma/fusion out the ass a whole bunch of power weapons and fists in CC. There's a reason that Sternguard and Vanguard vets are two different units, and why Assault Terminators can't also take Cyclone MLs and stormbolters on every man as they walk up the field. It's because every unit has a weakness, and eliminating the only weakness of Crysis suits, you make an already good unit insanely difficult to put down, unfairly so.

All right, everyone, less of the nebbing.

Attack the argument, not the user.

"Your idea sucks" is rude.
"The idea sucks" is nothing but an opinion.
"The idea sucks because it wouldn't work" is useless.
"The idea sucks because it wouldn't work due to such and such factors" is a contribution to advancing the thread.

Rightly stated, and we have already gone over that the original exact idea is flawed so Dark'js continual spamming of this sucks is getting really old. we get it the original outline was over powered and you do not like it. however your not contributing to the main idea here, how could it be improved? No offense your arguments are sound but please just try and be more helpful in working towards a solution rather than repeatedly stating the obvious again and again. So we know that the first outline is over powered. Is there any way of making the original posters idea of making a farsight enclave army or something like that where it is better suited for CC work? I would say perhaps train a different type of FW unit or a type of battle suit that does not have powerful guns but is equip with some sort of melee weapon. That way it would just be jump melee, rather than jump shoot melee.

I don't know about shooting weapons in close combat, although GW makes repeated point of "Durr CC isn't just punching and slashing, you can do close up firrefighting, pistols, hence they get the extra attack.." but obviously every army would be entitled to that, so it would have to wait for a whole new set of rules, and completely invalidate WS and strength, so i doubt it will happen i'm afraid.

HOWEVER, i do agree that farsight is a little sucky atm, the whole point of him is indeed, he has abandoned the tradition ways of fighting because he finds them closed minded, so has trained his fire warriors to be more flexible at the expense of some of the more advanced equipment, and auxiliary troops.

I think he should lose ALL vehicles, not limited to one, have a 0-1 on broadsides and no auxiliaries or drones. Then all his firewarriors can be upgraded to "farsight veteranns" or somesuch, with +1 BS and WS and I. This cost can then be independent of farsight, and can be as significant as necessary. Then all battlesuits get hit and run, and all get defensive grenades. THis represents his soldiers who have stuck by him developing their fighting style to be more flexible and competant at close range. It would even be possible to give them something like 3 shot rapid fire at 8'' or less, not good in CC, but closer range abilities. That's my two cents.

Wouldn't it be easier to when you take Farsight, he unlocks power weapons/fist/hammer type weaponry for crisis suits as well as giving the ability to take power weapons on squad leaders? That would add to the whole CC feel I guess...
Just my 5 cents

Kilkrazy wrote:"The idea sucks because it wouldn't work due to such and such factors" is a contribution to advancing the thread.

"The idea sucks because it wouldn't work due to being OP as balls"