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Hey dakkites,

At my FLGS we have very, very heavy urbain terrain (which makes JSJ unstobbable, since it is almost maze-like) and I was wondering: XV25 spam or regular crisis load-out?

Because I can get an enormous volume of fire with these (3 units of six get 18 shots a turn each) and their fragileness really doesn't matter due to their JSJing around corners. Also, there are trench that'll completely obscure the smaller XV25s but only give a cover save to the crisis suits.

Any help would be appreciated, as I've never played urban with Tau before.

Most of my enemies would be horde players I.E. nids and orks.

Well, urban terrain tends to favor infantry over mechanized. But that being said, the effective longer ranges available to crisis suits over stealth suits is still better. Most of the problem that stealth suits have is they are very expensive, have single wounds, and their gun is VERY underwhelming. Short range heavy bolter? Yeah, HB spam doesn't take out an ork or nid horde in a empty field with full 36 inch range. It won't be good enough in an urban setting and tau version half range. You can back peddle all you want, but eventually you will be on your own board edge, and in assault range of the enemy.

To put into perspective, I have run a DE list of 20 warriors with 2 splinter cannons in it. Firing at rapid fire range without moving it gets 48 shots, takes up one troop slot, and wounds anything in the game on a 4+. The mathammer in the ideal shot against an ork horde has me hitting 32 times, and wounding 16. In urban terrain they will save 8, with just KFF (which all orks have these days) they only save 5. With 54 shots from stealth suit BCs, you will hit about 27 times, and wound 18 times. Which works out slightly better than the DE shooting. But that is 3 FOC slots (and those are valuable elite slots), and nearly 3x the points invested.

Now that being said, with difficult terrain slowing the enemy down, but not really slowing tau, you should get multiple rounds of shooting. The problem is 3 rounds of the above only kills one mob of orks. There is at least 2 more plus whatever else he has (30 man squads are only about 220 pts) Also, foot orks are ones with shootas generally. 18 inch range, which means that if you are shooting them, they are shooting you (sure, there is the stealth suites rule to worry about, but it isn't that effective at the ranges dealt with here). They get 60 shots per unit, hitting about 20 times (not including any big shootas) Hide completely? Must be some pretty good terrain for you.

So what I have to say is don't bother with stealth suites, they are expensive, and not even good at their ideal role (urban fighting). Crisis suite are better on most maps, and still better than stealth suits on urban terrain. Unless you are running a city fight game, which is different.

notabot187 wrote:Well, urban terrain tends to favor infantry over mechanized. But that being said, the effective longer ranges available to crisis suits over stealth suits is still better. Most of the problem that stealth suits have is they are very expensive, have single wounds, and their gun is VERY underwhelming. Short range heavy bolter? Yeah, HB spam doesn't take out an ork or nid horde in a empty field with full 36 inch range. It won't be good enough in an urban setting and tau version half range. You can back peddle all you want, but eventually you will be on your own board edge, and in assault range of the enemy.

To put into perspective, I have run a DE list of 20 warriors with 2 splinter cannons in it. Firing at rapid fire range without moving it gets 48 shots, takes up one troop slot, and wounds anything in the game on a 4+. The mathammer in the ideal shot against an ork horde has me hitting 32 times, and wounding 16. In urban terrain they will save 8, with just KFF (which all orks have these days) they only save 5. With 54 shots from stealth suit BCs, you will hit about 27 times, and wound 18 times. Which works out slightly better than the DE shooting. But that is 3 FOC slots (and those are valuable elite slots), and nearly 3x the points invested.

Now that being said, with difficult terrain slowing the enemy down, but not really slowing tau, you should get multiple rounds of shooting. The problem is 3 rounds of the above only kills one mob of orks. There is at least 2 more plus whatever else he has (30 man squads are only about 220 pts) Also, foot orks are ones with shootas generally. 18 inch range, which means that if you are shooting them, they are shooting you (sure, there is the stealth suites rule to worry about, but it isn't that effective at the ranges dealt with here). They get 60 shots per unit, hitting about 20 times (not including any big shootas) Hide completely? Must be some pretty good terrain for you.

So what I have to say is don't bother with stealth suites, they are expensive, and not even good at their ideal role (urban fighting). Crisis suite are better on most maps, and still better than stealth suits on urban terrain. Unless you are running a city fight game, which is different.

Thanks for the thorough post. +1.

Yeah...by urban I meant city fight *sheepish grin* probably could have been more clear. Are Crisis suits still better than SS at that? Or should I go with the third option, and start bringing my hazard suits to the FLGS?

The thing with Tau is that they will always function best in an area with clear fire lanes.
Kroot could be useful, but be very wary of dedicated CC troops using ruins as cover, that's a tactic I've used to great sucess Vs Tau in the past.
Do tau have acess to any flamer-type weapons? If they do then they would be a must-have.
Sorry to keep blabbing on, but I'm rather a fan of urban conflict, from my experience stealthsuits are less of a threat (to me at least,) in dense terrain than crisis suits are.

Regular suits will be king in an urban enviroment.


you might actually consider running a Farsight list.


Hammerheads, Skyrays, and Broadsides are less useful in craped coditions so the restrictions arn't a big deal.


Kroot arn't great at CC due to no saves. Flamers will be prelevent in City Fight games and your kroot won't last long.


with Farsight you can get a larger unit of Bodyguards, meaning more suits possable.

Dark Apostle 666 wrote:The thing with Tau is that they will always function best in an area with clear fire lanes.
Kroot could be useful, but be very wary of dedicated CC troops using ruins as cover, that's a tactic I've used to great sucess Vs Tau in the past.
Do tau have acess to any flamer-type weapons? If they do then they would be a must-have.
Sorry to keep blabbing on, but I'm rather a fan of urban conflict, from my experience stealthsuits are less of a threat (to me at least,) in dense terrain than crisis suits are.

Yeah, my HQ has several flamers, as do my deathrain. 5 total flamers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

im2randomghgh wrote:

Dark Apostle 666 wrote:The thing with Tau is that they will always function best in an area with clear fire lanes.
Kroot could be useful, but be very wary of dedicated CC troops using ruins as cover, that's a tactic I've used to great sucess Vs Tau in the past.
Do tau have acess to any flamer-type weapons? If they do then they would be a must-have.
Sorry to keep blabbing on, but I'm rather a fan of urban conflict, from my experience stealthsuits are less of a threat (to me at least,) in dense terrain than crisis suits are.

Yeah, my HQ has several flamers, as do my deathrain. 5 total flamers.

Also, my HQ unit has a CIB and AFB within the unit.

Anti-horde powers activate!

Ok this almost seems too easy to me. If its a heavyily urbanized board then just run as many Battlesuits as you can, so 15 if you have the points. Now for the fun part.
If your main enemies are hordes just spam as many flamers and burst cannons as you can.
Take one HQ squad with anti elite weps (i.e: PR and ML) and the other one anti tank weps (i.e: FB and ML) just in case. Then the other 9 battle suits all flamers and burst cannons and then your gravy arent you? Take 2 fire warrior squads, 3 if you have the points spare to capture objectives, etc.

In larger games it might even pay to give the fire warrior teams marker lights or even take some patherfinders. Because Emperor knows those blighters are never useful.

What do you think?
Yae or Nay

Trollhammaren wrote:Ok this almost seems too easy to me. If its a heavyily urbanized board then just run as many Battlesuits as you can, so 15 if you have the points. Now for the fun part.
If your main enemies are hordes just spam as many flamers and burst cannons as you can.
Take one HQ squad with anti elite weps (i.e: PR and ML) and the other one anti tank weps (i.e: FB and ML) just in case. Then the other 9 battle suits all flamers and burst cannons and then your gravy arent you? Take 2 fire warrior squads, 3 if you have the points spare to capture objectives, etc.

In larger games it might even pay to give the fire warrior teams marker lights or even take some patherfinders. Because Emperor knows those blighters are never useful.

What do you think?
Yae or Nay

I was running suits the other way around. Anti-horde HQ (flamers, BC, CIB, AFB etc.) then 1 elite unit with anti-elite (bladestorm) and 1 elite with anti-mech (deathrain).

To top it off? two full squads of XV9s w/phased Ion Guns. 8 shots per model.

This was what I was planning on running. horde-killy enough?

Im thinking "what the feth is a XV9 w/phased ion guns". Then i thought forgeworld. What does a phased ion gun do? im assuming something like
Range: 36 Strength: 5 AP: 4 Assult 1000000 or something rediculous?

Trollhammaren wrote:Im thinking "what the feth is a XV9 w/phased ion guns". Then i thought forgeworld. What does a phased ion gun do? im assuming something like
Range: 36 Strength: 5 AP: 4 Assult 1000000 or something rediculous?

Yeah, the PIG (teeheehee for the acronym) is forgeworld, and assault for, and you get two, and the rest of your stats are right, but they're expensive. 115 for what is basically an XV8 with a few more shots, but the sheer VoF of a unit with these is just too much to resist.

CF is so damn fun, but alas tau fair better on an open board I personally believe. Suits with flamers, 'nuff said. simply fire it, fly off in assault phase, then simply dance round your opponent. Mech becomes a hinderence often in city fight games, as is can block roads if immobile or destroy, which is even more annoying if the one at the front is destroyed, and the rest of your armour has to find another route.

im2randomghgh wrote:

Trollhammaren wrote:Im thinking "what the feth is a XV9 w/phased ion guns". Then i thought forgeworld. What does a phased ion gun do? im assuming something like
Range: 36 Strength: 5 AP: 4 Assult 1000000 or something rediculous?

Yeah, the PIG (teeheehee for the acronym) is forgeworld, and assault for, and you get two, and the rest of your stats are right, but they're expensive. 115 for what is basically an XV8 with a few more shots, but the sheer VoF of a unit with these is just too much to resist.

Sounds groovy but i would rather my config. The points you save on not taking oinkers can be used to take another battlesuit or another troops choice. But hey what ever works for you.