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One of my main armies is tau, and the one problem I always have is my pathfinders die. Now they don't die because of anything I do/don't do, It's only because anyone who plays against tau knows that if you take out the pathfinders, the entire list is much, much, much worse. They're a decent point sink if you want enough for any benefit, and the fact they can't move and shoot hurts them immensely. Any opponent I play against focuses them down right away, even if it takes their entire army to do it (which at that point the support that I relied on to at least bring them down to an even playing field is gone and things start to go badly for me). Due to this I have mainly made non-pathfinder lists, which are ok, but often I'm battling uphill.

One night while sleep deprived I started thinking why not take marker drones? I wrote that down and the next day looked at it and almost dismissed it right away out of common sense. But looking at it in an 8 man and dfish with pods only squad you're effectively paying 22.625 points per markerlight (181 points total divided by 8 markerlights). Now a marker drone is 30 points, which means your paying 7.375 points more per markerlight. Right away this sounds bad, but then I started thinking how to make it worth those extra points.

My solution: Stealth Suits.

Normally I avoid Stealth Suits like the plague since their ppk (points per kill, which is 90 for a stealth suit) at 18" is about equal to a fireknife at 24" (89.28) and worse than one at 12" (55.8) (which means that a team of fireknife costs 6 more points, no team leader or drones on either squad, and kills an extra 1.333 guys every turn at 12" and .08 more at 24")

However, if I kit out the stealth suits with 6 marker drones, 2 gun drones, and 4 shield drones as well as a team leader with marker lights, I have a squad that is always shot at using night fight rules, can move and shoot 7 markerlights, has wound allocation to protect the marker drones, and has other things that can actually cause damage, I think this could possibly be worth the extra 5.857 points per markerlight (assuming only 7 pathfinders instead of 8 to keep markerlights equal).

What do you think? Yay, nay, and why?

My head hurts. You smart math man. Must sacrifice things to god of math hammer.

I don't play Tau and would only be able to comment against its effectiveness once I've played against it, though surely anything that increases the Tau's effectiveness and survivability is a good thing. Especially if those usual targets cost more, which your opponent will see as a weakness.




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(and focus more fire on them, leaving the rest of your force to capture objectives, kill other stuff etc)

kitch102 wrote:(and focus more fire on them, leaving the rest of your force to capture objectives, kill other stuff etc)

This is one of the things I was looking at, even if you just sit them in cover like you would a squad of pathfinders (which takes on average an entire army a round of shooting to eliminate) there are more bodies that are not marker drones that can be removed first and you don't necessarily have to even allocate to the marker drones. Of course, this is assuming you're not hopping from cover to cover to avoid the big guns/kill the big guns, or doing something like deepstriking the squad turn 2 with a relay (not too sure on the effectiveness there, it would be tricky to pull off I'd think).

I don't really understand wound allocation shenanigans, but I've used the Stealth Marker Team to pretty devastating effect. It's all about finding the right place to Infiltrate them so that your opponent has to chose between attempting to take down the stealth team or ignoring them and focusing on something else - it's a classic chess-style "fork," because neither is a good choice. The fact that they can jump-shoot-jump, because for some reason they're the only jet pack infantry in the Tau 'dex whose Relentless quality wasn't nerfed away for some reason, makes them a much more mobile - and therefore, useful - platform for markerlights.

I would take it as a unit of 3 stealth suits w/ 6 marker drones. Costs 270 pts (much less than your proposed build), and realistically you're not going to be moving around that much. You're taking the stealth suits to provide the nightfight rules to the marker drones and keep them safe. Marker drones have 36" range, its unlikely anything will EVER see them if you're playing to your advantage. The stealth suits are there so that you can defend yourself if an enemy unit gets close. If you really want some ablative wounds for those rare occasions that someone does manage to spot them, then just take 3 additional suits. It makes the unit more survivable vs. opponents that get too close, plus the 3+ save is more than good enough.

ElectricPaladin wrote:I don't really understand wound allocation shenanigans

If you have 6 Marker drones, 2 normal stealth suits, and a team leader, thats 3 allocation groups where 2 have markerlights (66%)

If you have 6 marker drones, 4 shield drones, 2 gun drones, 2 suits that control marker drones, 2 suits that control shield drones, 1 suit that controls gun drones, and a team leader that controls shield drones, then you have 7 wound allocation groups where you don't want to allocate to 3 of them (43%)

*note the percentages are based on allocation group and do not take into account the the number of models in each group

chaos0xmega: see above for why i'd rather kit them out so much as opposed to 6 drones and 3 suits (if a suit controlling a drone dies you loose up to 2 drones as well)

like i said though if youre sitting back with the unit and JSJ'ing the ablative wounds are largely wasted points.

You are going to be buying Devilfishes for your Fire Warriors anyways and will have at least one squad. All the pathfinders do is move where you are buying the Fish.

So pathfinders only count as 12 PPM (Points per Markerlight).


Other than that, your Stealth Markerlight team in the OP costs over 400 points, almost 100 points less than three squads of three crisis suits (Deathrain/Bladestorm/fireknife).


If it works for you, more power to ya, but that squad is almost as expensive as my whole Elites section.

What I did to cut down on people shooting up my pathfinders is breaking the one team of 8 into 2 teams of 4. They are easier to hide in cover, they have to split the shots among more targets and it cuts down on having a surplus of Markerlights on one squad.

It's a better Stealth Markerlight team than I normally see (Once on ATT, someone posted a Steath Markerlight team that was about 700 points), but it just seems a bit pricey compared to pathfinders.

Yes, I'd agree, but there are times where the suits are more useful then the drones, also you never know what will happen (ds enemy right next to them, 2nd turn assault squads, etc)

I've been saying stealth marker teams are the best delivery system for markerlights forever.

The points cost, the elite slot needed, these things don't matter.

The stealth team is mobile, always night fighting when your enemies try to see it and are much sturdier.

Putting 6 stealth suits with 2 marker drones and 10 gun drones is costly, but super effective.

juraigamer wrote:I've been saying stealth marker teams are the best delivery system for markerlights forever.

The points cost, the elite slot needed, these things don't matter.

The stealth team is mobile, always night fighting when your enemies try to see it and are much sturdier.

Putting 6 stealth suits with 2 marker drones and 10 gun drones is costly, but super effective.

I agree the elite slot isn't a big deal. If your running a pathfinder team you normally only have the points for 9 or so suits anyways, which is an hq and two elites.

As for the 6 suits, 2 marker drones, and 10 gun drones, I'd say nay if your aiming for markerlights. that's only statistically one markerlight hit.

Buy 2 FW Tetras and be done with all this nonsense talk of Markerlights, Stealthsuits and Squishy Pathfinders!

If you play Tau and some Arsehole wont let you run 2 AV 10 Skimmer with TL Pulse rifles on the front, because FW make them, tell them to suck a nut... Our codex is ancient and arguablly the worst in all of 40k.... Or just tell them you understand that losing to Tau is horrid and would be no shame in backing out =]

Milisim wrote:Buy 2 FW Tetras and be done with all this nonsense talk of Markerlights, Stealthsuits and Squishy Pathfinders!

If you play Tau and some Arsehole wont let you run 2 AV 10 Skimmer with TL Pulse rifles on the front, because FW make them, tell them to suck a nut... Our codex is ancient and arguablly the worst in all of 40k.... Or just tell them you understand that losing to Tau is horrid and would be no shame in backing out =]

Or I could just try to find ways to make the codex work instead of buying more models that aren't always supported in tournies or by casual gamers.