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I played a buddy of mine recently and he brought out an old tau list that apperently was very scary in 4th edition

He used ALOT of SMS on his vehicles and I was impressed at their utility. As long as a target was within 24 inches + 1-12" he could hit it with 4 bs 4 str 5 shots.

I did some looking and realized that for a small points investment, tau firewarriors are destructive when riding in a vehicle that can move 6" and unload 7 bs 4 st 5 shots at 18", or move 7-12" and fire 4 str 5 shots at 24 (that ignore cover and don't require line of site)

In a list I am playing around with at 2000 points im taking 3 warfish. Each have the Mulitracker, Targetting array, disruption pods, and Smart Missile System and two seeker missiles (yes I am playing around with missile spam) With 10 firewarriors for each fish, the squad will cost 250 points IIRC.

Thats 250 pts, for two str 8 ap3 missiles, 4-7 str 5 bs 4 shots at ranges up to 24". A 4+ cover save armour 12 tank that is carrying 10 x2 str 5 shots.inside of it. All things considered I think this unit is ofc over costed like just about everything in the codex. But given what we have, I think this unit is quite capable of being incredibly useful and dangerous.

What say you dakka?

Also on another note, what do you guys think about 6 man firewarrior squads with a shas'ui with two marker drones and a markerlight for cheap scoring and moar marker lights

Due to the fact skimmers lost their uber-pwnage thanks to the horrid 4th edition skimmer rules, the Fish of Fury isn't as useful as it is in 5th.

I don't really see any room for Warfish until you get beyond 2000 pts. For the cost of your 'Fish upgrades, you can (almost) afford another Fireknife. For the price of two upgraded fish, you can bring a tricked out Broadside. You shouldn't run out of space for suits and broadsides until around 2000 pts. Against 'nids, orcs, or foot guard, I can see a place for a Warfish. But against anything else it's probably not worth it. For marines you need bigger guns.


A markerlight Firewarrior team is probably a bad idea. It's static, vulnerable to everything, and expensive. For that price, you can bring a 6-man pathfinder team (DF included!) that has more markerlights, and a big vehicle for blocking infantry and metal boxes if needed.

If you're running minimum fire warrior squads, it's not bad if you have the points, but it's way to expensive for what it does.

A single shaken result means it's not firing next turn anyway.

Warfishes work, but only as part of an entire tau force that's made to be mobile. As soon as you start adding in static elements, you need more firepower than the warfish can bring.

It's great for someone who's starting the hobby, or want's to get the most bang outta their models per $$$ spent. It's not a horrid choice, like sniper drone teams, but it's not the greatest either.

elrabin wrote:I don't really see any room for Warfish until you get beyond 2000 pts. For the cost of your 'Fish upgrades, you can (almost) afford another Fireknife. For the price of two upgraded fish, you can bring a tricked out Broadside. You shouldn't run out of space for suits and broadsides until around 2000 pts. Against 'nids, orcs, or foot guard, I can see a place for a Warfish. But against anything else it's probably not worth it. For marines you need bigger guns.


A markerlight Firewarrior team is probably a bad idea. It's static, vulnerable to everything, and expensive. For that price, you can bring a 6-man pathfinder team (DF included!) that has more markerlights, and a big vehicle for blocking infantry and metal boxes if needed.

You either need big guns for meq, or more little guns XD which is what I was planning. The relative durability and minimal percieved threat of a warfish is likely allow you to put atleast two fish and two squads of 10 firewarriors onto that squad of meq and its likely to die. But that isnt the real beauty of the warfish. As always with tau, you want to pick off your enemy, until you lure them into position. Once your prey is in position, you move in, overwhelm their defences, and kill. The ability to outrange their vanilla brother is where the warfish is superior, the ability to ignore cover is another. The warfish is capable of engaging targets up to 36 inches away. the devilfish is not.

So you would prefer to take 3 squads of pathfinders with their devilfish? Rather than 1 squad of pathfinders, and 2-4 squads of marker warriors? Also, dont discount the fact that firewarriors can score. Pathfinders cannot. A marker warrior squad is relatively cheap aswell. Costing only 132 points if my maths are correct. Which is easily affordable. and 6 pathfinders without a shas'ui will cost you 152 points with absolutely NO upgrades... and remember they cannot score




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And marker drones can move and shoot. SO there is no reason why they could not do something as lovely as move and fire 2 markerlights Something else pathfinders cannot manage

250p per squad.

I think of what I can get in almost any MEQ codex for those points (troops wise) and I can see how that's too expensive for what it does

thakabalpuphorsefishguy wrote:

elrabin wrote:I don't really see any room for Warfish until you get beyond 2000 pts. For the cost of your 'Fish upgrades, you can (almost) afford another Fireknife. For the price of two upgraded fish, you can bring a tricked out Broadside. You shouldn't run out of space for suits and broadsides until around 2000 pts. Against 'nids, orcs, or foot guard, I can see a place for a Warfish. But against anything else it's probably not worth it. For marines you need bigger guns.


A markerlight Firewarrior team is probably a bad idea. It's static, vulnerable to everything, and expensive. For that price, you can bring a 6-man pathfinder team (DF included!) that has more markerlights, and a big vehicle for blocking infantry and metal boxes if needed.

You either need big guns for meq, or more little guns XD which is what I was planning. The relative durability and minimal percieved threat of a warfish is likely allow you to put atleast two fish and two squads of 10 firewarriors onto that squad of meq and its likely to die. But that isnt the real beauty of the warfish. As always with tau, you want to pick off your enemy, until you lure them into position. Once your prey is in position, you move in, overwhelm their defences, and kill. The ability to outrange their vanilla brother is where the warfish is superior, the ability to ignore cover is another. The warfish is capable of engaging targets up to 36 inches away. the devilfish is not.

So you would prefer to take 3 squads of pathfinders with their devilfish? Rather than 1 squad of pathfinders, and 2-4 squads of marker warriors? Also, dont discount the fact that firewarriors can score. Pathfinders cannot. A marker warrior squad is relatively cheap aswell. Costing only 132 points if my maths are correct. Which is easily affordable. and 6 pathfinders without a shas'ui will cost you 152 points with absolutely NO upgrades... and remember they cannot score




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And marker drones can move and shoot. SO there is no reason why they could not do something as lovely as move and fire 2 markerlights Something else pathfinders cannot manage

there is a lot wrong with this post so I'm going to break it down one by one. Relying on the "tactic" of your opponent making an error in target priority is never a good thing therefore saying a Warfish will not be perceived as a threat is wishful thinking. They are carrying our notoriously crunchy troop choices so moving them closer to meltaguns, plasma guns, and all the other short ranged AT available is probably a bad idea.

As to your second claim, two warfish and two 10 man fire warrior squads costs 440 points minimum (Warfish being SMS, Multi, DP, Target Array). Assuming you can get all 20 FWs into rapid fire range, you are looking at ([8*2/3*2/3*1/3]+[40*1/2*2/3*1/3]) = 5.64 dead MEQs. This is assuming you are moving more than 6" in the phase prior to disembarking. So you've just used 440 points to kill roughly 80-100 points worth of stuff.

Your third claim is about luring them into position for the kill. This really has nothing to do with the warfish. If we are to accept that the Fish of Fury maneuver is a good idea (hint: it generally isn't), then the "pounce" as it were would be the massive application of rapid firing weapons (plasma rifles, kroot rifles, pulse rifles, etc.). In my experience, if you are relying on a single, massively successful "pounce" attack, you are asking for trouble. I think it's safe to say that the two main attributes of the Devilfish in general is keeping our fragile scoring units safe, and blocking LOS/providing cover for our crisis suits.

Warfish do have a range advantage over the burst cannon devilfish. That's true, but is the gun worth the obligatory 35 points you spend to make able to fire on the move and able to hit reliably? Keep in mind that for two upgraded warfish, you can get another broadside or a 10 man kroot squad. Those 8 shots firing uninterrupted for 5 turns at MEQs gets you 6 kills. That's hardly impressive stuff. Also, lets be clear that a devilfish is still capable of engaging targets 24" away without a multi-tracker and 30" away with one so the range advantage isn't... you know... that awesome.

On the subject of the fire warrior marker squad, I don't know what you are using for a metric, buit it seems to me that we're a little off here. 6 fire warriors cost 60 points. a shas'ui adds another 10 and 2 marker drones makes it 130. They can't move and shoot their marker lights because the drones aren't relentless. for 130 points you get a static squad that puts out 6 str 5 shots and 1 marker light hit per turn. For 133 points I can get 4 pathfinders and a devilfish with disruption pod. That gives me two marker light hits per turn and a nice AV12 transport. Marker drones are not worth it.

I don't mean to be harsh, but there are a lot of things about your post that are simply not true. Marker drones are not a good idea. Fish of Fury is not going to kill MEQs with anything like the efficiency you imagine. Killing MEQs with massive amounts of small arms fire is almost certainly a losing proposition, especially when you are advocating moving lots of fire warriors into rapid fire range of space marines.

Warfish aren't "bad," but you pay a lot of points for something you can already get in Tau armies - more strength 5 shots. If you like SMS, there are broadsides that can take them or hammerheads that could conceivably use them since they'll already be taking multi-trackers. If you want more anti-infantry fire, just take 10 kroot which can pump out 10 -20 shots a turn, score, can infiltrate, get fieldcraft, and can provide another layer of speed bump for your your suits, finders, and sides - the real heavy hitters of the army.

If you are going to use the Warfish, you want the Fire Warrior squad to be as small as possible.

Think of the Fire Warriors as a 60 point Upgrade to make the Warfish Scoring. The 40 points you didn't put into Fire Warriors helps mitigate the damage done from adding 40 points(ish) of Wargear to your transport.


I do like the Warfish a lot, but it depends on how you want your transports to work.

If you want it to be a gunship, then you (hopefully) Will not need as many Warriors, since they will be unable to shoot unless you disembark them. Spend those points on Warfish upgrades.

If you just want a Transport, them throw a Disruption pod on it and call it a day. Throw in some More Warriors, move them to an objective and use the devilfish to block assaults.


But both are bad if you are light on the stuff that does the Heavy Lifting within the Tau Empire.

Fire Warrior only deserve 12% of the credit for a Win, Since Crisis suits, Broadsides, and Hammerheads do all the Heavy Lifting. Literally All of it.

Kudos to anyone who got what I was going for with that last line,

An argument could be made for 15% of the win.

marker drones CAN NOT move and shoot.

their unit type is "as owner" - of part of a firewarrior squad that means they are infantry. they also do NOT have relentless.

if they attach to crisis teams, then yes. because crisis suits are JI and JI get relentless... but sorry not on FW squads.

I play against a lot of 'crons, maybe 1/3rd of the time. So I can reliably expect lots of Nightfighting.

You know what ignores Nightfighting? SMS ignores Nightfighting. So I am going with SMS on all compatible units at the moment.

As I long time Tau player, I have to say I am a fan of the Warfish. Yes, I know that it doesnt kill very many MEQS per round, but it is handy for standing off and putting fire onto something instead of just being a moving brick. As far as the FW inside, I never run more than 6, as they will never be getting out unless the tank is blown up. I've used these things with great success for dealing with speeders and putting a couple of glancing hits on transports.

I have to agree with the others here that MDs on FWs are absolute crap and should never be taken. Even if you do take them, its not like the FWs could even benefit from it.

Jefffar wrote:I play against a lot of 'crons, maybe 1/3rd of the time. So I can reliably expect lots of Nightfighting.

You know what ignores Nightfighting? SMS ignores Nightfighting. So I am going with SMS on all compatible units at the moment.

Really? Did they get FAQed for this? Night fighting effects all shooting unless specificly ruled otherwise. Both SMS and 'nid Implaer Cannons are affected by nightfighting, just like barrage weapons. SMS ignores cover and does not require LOS, but you still have to be in distance for the target. Night fighting affects distance not LOS.

Markerlight tokens and BSF are on the other hand somethign to really chap a Necron's back side

It explicitly states in the Tau Codex they are not subject to Nightfighting.