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I am an old Tau player, mech Tau was my game in 5th and I was good at it. But in 6th I want to try something that requires more finesse and hopefully turns out to be a little less boring. To do this I am basing my whole army around a unit I never brought in 5th Pathfinders.

I am looking for any ideas for keeping them alive, capitalizing on marker lights, and making as much use as possible of their obligatory Devilfish.

My main questions are:
What should I marker light and when?
What units should I spend the marker lights on?
How are marker lights best used, bs upgrade, heating cover, lowering ld, ect.?
What units should I deep strike?
What should be the primary targets of my deep striking units?
How do I distract my opponent from targeting my pathfinders/devilfish?

Any other good advice is really appreciated, and thanks in advance for any help.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have already thought of trying to use broadsides as a distraction. I did this in 5th and it worked well enough. A tank could draw anti-tank fire from the devilfish, but that would be a lot of points to spend on a distraction, and atleast broadsides can take the punishment with a shield drone or two.

Crisis teams are obvious for deep strike, but will they last long enough to achieve line breaker? Or would stealth suits be better suited?

The whole goal of my army should be to focus on pulling the enemy into my trap, but how will i spring it? and with what?

Personally I think anything but a mech. army for tau in 6th wouldn't do very good.

One idea is mass S5 AP5 fire.

a few squads of 12 fire warriors, and a couple squads of stealth suits with burst cannons. Each suit can take 2 gun drones so with a squad of 6 Suits that's 12 drones with them. Outflank, and lay down a couple waves of fire. Make sure your drones are in front of the suits so they can soak up a few wounds. I will warn you though, it's an expensive squad.

As for markers, I like to marker things that are in cover that are causing me problems.

Just remember that because the target lock was removed from the infantry wargear, you can no longer use your marker on one unit then shoot at another with the rest of the fire warriors and the fire warriors can't use the same marker the Shas'ui fired as it is not networked.

I belive you can strip jink saves off vehicles with markerlights making it useful against that vehicle you JUST have to break

as for deepstrikeing there i find that giving them specific duties like tank killer, horde killer works best but my favorite use has to be ninja land grabs/contesting, because most of the game is objectives. (also i may start running drone squads only for the fact that i belive they can capture points in the scouring. i needa recheck that)

Use the ML with your pirhana, fly the pirhana to the other end of the table, full speed. ML verhicles that are angering you, but you don't want waste broaside shots one, such as transports. Use ML to guide seeker missile to rear/side armour from the pirhana. Profit.

The current situation calls for the pathfinder fish to become a warfish (SMS, targeting array and multi-tracker).

The days of needing a disruption pod are gone, just deploy so 25% is covered.

For every pathfinder team you bring, have 2 units that can make use of it at least.

Now for your questions:

My main questions are:

What should I marker light and when?
Whatever needs to die first. Tag that landraider and light it up, as always standard target priority stands.

What units should I spend the marker lights on?
Normally, broadsides, firewarriors, battlesuits or vespid. If you have extras boost your vehicle shooting.

How are marker lights best used, bs upgrade, heating cover, lowering ld, ect.?
Best use is situational, but as a standard against infantry, add BS, remove cover, and then if you can reduce their LD for pinning. A neat trick is to light up an enemy vehicle with a bunch of markerlights, then fire a team of 3 broadsides at them. Reduce the cover (2) and increase their BS (2) and all the leftovers can be used to reduce the pinning test for the models inside. I've pinned deathstars, fearless units (because LD 0 auto-fails) and this works because the vehicle explosion causes pinning.

What units should I deep strike?
Crisis suits designed for the job, or needed to. Vespid work, as do stealth suits in small numbers. Generally, don't deep strike though unless it's for anti-tank or because your opponent is all the way over there. You need your shots.

What should be the primary targets of my deep striking units?
Enemy tanks. Pretty much it.

How do I distract my opponent from targeting my pathfinders/devilfish?
A standard list of mine has 3 broadsides, ethereal attached, 2 pathfinder units, 1-4 12 man fire warrior teams, 11 vespid, 2 railhead, 1-3 20 man kroot teams, shadowsun, and maybe a few other things. It's all about placement. You can always use your pathfinder devilfish to block LOS for your pathfinders if need be.

FR33Kandy wrote:Crisis teams are obvious for deep strike, but will they last long enough to achieve line breaker? Or would stealth suits be better suited?

The whole goal of my army should be to focus on pulling the enemy into my trap, but how will i spring it? and with what?

Don't think of your deep strikers as line breakers, at least not through brute shooting force. Their job is to arrive, destroy nasty backfield tank(s), find cover that also leaves them in a position to threaten your opponents front line flanks and thus force your opponent to make a difficult decision. (Whether to back up and deal with the threat, continue forward toward your lines or to split their forces to do both (which breaks their line).

When thinking of the Kauyon or mont'ka, many Tau players make the mistake of trying to lure to a single static preset point.
Remember your mobility.
This means that the trap point is a fluid/moving point. Like in chess, you want to move where each turn can allow for the unveiling of another trap.




@ juraigamer- I agree with all of your advice with only the following few caveats.

1)The current situation calls for the pathfinder fish to become a warfish (SMS, targeting array and multi-tracker).
The Pathfinder Devilfish probably needs to also take Sensor Spines. This is due to the new terrain rules. Also, gundrones can be just as good of a choice as the SMS. It depends upon player preference and whether said player wants a small screening unit for the Fire warriors when they hop out to claim an objective.


2)What units should I spend the marker lights on?
Normally, broadsides, firewarriors, battlesuits or vespid. If you have extras boost your vehicle shooting.

In your answer, you left out gundrones, seeker missiles and may have overly downplayed the vehicles benefitting from Markerlights.
If you are using the HH Railgun sub-munition against a lightly armoured horde unit in area terrain then use the markers.

3)How are marker lights best used, bs upgrade, heating cover, lowering ld, ect.?
Best use is situational, but as a standard against infantry, add BS, remove cover, and then if you can reduce their LD for pinning. A neat trick is to light up an enemy vehicle with a bunch of markerlights, then fire a team of 3 broadsides at them. Reduce the cover (2) and increase their BS (2) and all the leftovers can be used to reduce the pinning test for the models inside. I've pinned deathstars, fearless units (because LD 0 auto-fails) and this works because the vehicle explosion causes pinning.

How are you pinning Fearless units?
Are you talking about reducing their leadership to 0 or something else?
I don't know if Ldrshp 0 overrules Fearless. Do you have a source for this? Not trying to be argumentative, just have never heard of this and if true then there are some new tricks that I'll be using.


Everything else is great. I'd like to invite you to my Tactics thread here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/458910.page" target="_new" rel="nofollow"> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/458910.page

I'd appreciate your bringing this level of tactical knowledge to the dicussion in my thread.
Thanks

Is there a point in taking BSFs on Pathfinders? MLs have a 36 in. range anyway, and since MLs don't wound or cause damage, the target gets no save anyway, right? And who in their right mind is going to use them for their pulse carbines?

You are right there is no point in BSF on ML