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So I used the search function and found some people discussing Tau Sniper Drones but it was a few months ago and I didn't want to necro sooo....

With Tau Sniper Drones squads having a 2+ Cover save parked in area terrain, would it be worth it to take the 3 squads and park them in a corner or both corners as area denial? With some marker light support they could possibly light up some out of cover marines. So while you take up a slot that could be used for Rail guns, you get 9 S6 AP3 shots and 3 marker lights all with a 2+ cover save for 240 points. Plus with the target locks the shots can be dispersed however you like and the ML can be used to support the rest of your army!

Sure they have the draw back of dispersing to the wind if the controller gets sniped, but this is the codex with the space pope. And they don't help with horde armies, but Tau have enough S5 to handle them don't they?

Especially with the decrease to the amount of vehicles being used in 6th (I haven't played hardly any games but that is the gist I am getting from the interwebz) taking up a HS slot doesn't seem to bad in lower point games. I am thinking that in most of the book missions they can either help deter encroaching enemies or help control mid field with their range, setting up fire lanes and all that jazz....

So what do you all think? Snipers viable? Only at certain point levels?

Why would playing at lower point levels change the fact that sniper drones suck?

If they sucked or not was part of my overall question. I thought they might be less suckish with the 2+ cover save.

Thanks for the response though, I will promptly cancel my order for them! Jk, I was going to convert some drones I had laying around, but if they suck then its not worth the time! Thanks!

They have a 2+ cover save in many cases, but their firepower is so limited that your opponent isn't going to bother shooting at them until all of your better units have been killed and you've already lost the game.

Well that is much more useful response than "sniper drones suck". Thanks again!

 Peregrine wrote:
They have a 2+ cover save in many cases, but their firepower is so limited that your opponent isn't going to bother shooting at them until all of your better units have been killed and you've already lost the game.

This. I come across a tau player regularly who uses them. In every single game I've ignored them until there was nothing better to shoot at, or my melta-vets who were dropped back field got bored while waiting to score line breaker would go over and kill the controller.

Notable achievements of sniper drones used against me:

Popped a chimera
Pinned a squad with meltas who had lost said transport
Killed a couple of guardsmen

All in all, another squad of fire warriors would be a better use of the points. Or pretty much anything else in the tau codex.

Here is my two cents worth...

Tau Sniper Teams can be useful under the following conditions:

1. They are in cover (at least 5+), thus granting them a 2+ cover save
2. You place them in a location where they have a good view of the battlefield (wide angle LOS)
3. Your opponent is playing MEQ
4. You have three units of them as 1 FOC selection.

That's three networked markerlights to reduce any cover they have. And 9 MEQ killing shots.

The problems are:

1. They take up a Heavy Support FOC slot (precious in most armies)
2. They have limited use (the points vs kill ratio is bad against horde armies)
3. Virtually no mobility. Mobile firepower has been and still is a strength of the Tau (especially with the new Rapid Fire rules).
4. For their points cost, they will likely kill more MEQs per turn than Fire Warriors, but Heavy Support slots can spend points on much better stuff.

So, If you are playing 2000+ pts and have extra points and available Heavy Support slots, then take them. Less than 2000 pts, you can probably choose better.

Good luck!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S. They might be more worth it if they had the Sniper or Precision shot rules...

Thanks Griddlelol for the real world experience facing them, and kungfujon did you join to reply to my humble post?

I have a long journey before I am playing 2000+ games but I would love to have a large cadre one day.

Maybe they will get some new rules in the new dex that is coming out soon, no wait never, no wait next week, no wait in 3 years, NO, wait, Tau are the first 7th Ed codex, yeah, that's it! ,

kungfujon wrote:

P.S. They might be more worth it if they had the Sniper or Precision shot rules...

I agree, if they were actually snipers they would have some place. AP:3 would be great for making sure you could take out the sergeant or special weapon. Maybe they will be in the 6th ed dex.

 Griddlelol wrote:
I agree, if they were actually snipers they would have some place. AP:3 would be great for making sure you could take out the sergeant or special weapon. Maybe they will be in the 6th ed dex.

Of course in that case you'd lose the advantage of (usually) wounding on a 2+, so I'm not so sure it would be worth it.

True, let's just hope someone who understands balance writes the new dex.

I was playing my cousin in a small point game with IG. I had 500 points and he had about 589 points. I gave him an extra 100 points to spend since he was attacking. he had tau. He had a 12 man fw squad and ethereal, 3 crisis suits, pirhana w/ blaster cannon w/ 2 gun drones, and 3 sniper drones.

I had a chimera, PCS (hb, 2 gls, boltgun) 2 x rifle squad (each w/ gl), 2 armoured sentinels (ml and lc) and a veteran squad w/ 2 flamers and a gl. I also used a forgeworld Heavy Mortar w/ 2 extra crew.

Anyway he had got his sniper drones into some ruins cover (1 objective for him) and shot my lascannon sentinel up. He destroyed it with one volley and it exploded. My veterans were close enough and took the blast.

I lost 4 veterans to this. But then to make things worst, the unit failed its break test (morale check) and fled off the board.

Normally in larger games I do not encounter his drones much. They don't do much for him. But in this game they took out almost 31% of my army's points in 1 turn! Later on they were able to snipe 3 crew men from the mortar and make them break. Later he knocked off a PCS member, and broke the unit, but they rallied. I did not have any units really to deal with them
after the veterans and sentinel died. My other sentinel succumbed to them too, after trying to take out his pirhana. Near the end I was finally able to finish off his crisis suits but my pcs only had my LT. left and the snipers got him too while in cover.

I kept the rest of my force distant and attempted to hold my objective and prevent him from taking his other objective. Needless to say the game turned out a tie.

All in all, his snipers accounted for about 60.5% of my points lost in this game. I underestimated them. Since we tied rolled to see if the game would go another turn. It didn't. Good for me. I only had a sergeant and rifleman left at my objective. 1 more turn would have done me in.

Soldado1 wrote:
But in this game they took out almost 31% of my army's points in 1 turn!

That wasn't because sniper drones are good, it was because the dice hated you.

That was what I was figuring too. Never had this much of a problem with those dudes before.

Ah, Sniper Drones. So many mixed thoughts about these...

I ran with 3x full teams before, and they can be an amazing area denial unit. 36" range with 3 S6 AP3 shots and a 2+ cover save makes for an excellent support unit. They can, and do, tend to pop a lot of unwary light/medium armor - often I'd get side / rear shots on things that were paying more attention to another threat. They do a good job of anti-MEQ, at least when they're not in cover, and are great for whittling squads down to size to finish off with FWs or whatever.

The HS slot never really bothered me in and of itself; I get most of my anti-armor from my Crisis suits anyways - my HS is purely anti-MEQ / anti-mid armor. Snipers fit in well here. Other players may find the conflict with Railguns to be a losing proposition at all times - for me it's always a question of what the rest of your list has to offer.

The biggest problems, for me, were the cost and lack of mobility. I tend to play a very mobile list, and having static elements in it made things very difficult - I'd either end up leaving them behind, they'd be out of position to affect the battle after about turn 3, or they'd be unsupported and eaten by charges / flamers / etc.

The cost, though, was the real killer. For 3 SDTs, you can get a Hammerhead and 2 more Crisis suits, or 3 Broadsides. It's that tradeoff alone that makes SDTs generally not worth taking at any point level.

Reasons to take them? You play more static, gunline style lists. 3x SDTs behind an Aegis, with one of the controllers on a Quadgun, makes a solid core to a gunline. Add massed FWs, take 6 Broadsides to fill out the HS slots, and you've got a great firebase to build the rest of your list around.

Thanks for the comments guys. I might proxy some using regular drones just to see if I like them, and it might be a fun to make some from spare parts. I saw some cool tuts how to do it on here.

Shame the general consensus is they cost way more than they are worth and what you can get out of them.

Unless the dice hate your opponent, but in that case it doesn't matter much what you are using!

The Sniper Drones really need Infiltrate to work right. Position them frther up the board, towards the sides. Force the enemy to either turn and come to them, or watch them nibble the effective strength out of his units and take flank and rear shots at his transports..

4TheG8erGood wrote:
kungfujon did you join to reply to my humble post?

Lol, kinda yeah.

In my YEARS of reading this forum, this was the first time I found a post that I wanted to comment on that didn't already have 10+ posts saying the same thing. Always ninja'd.

Plus, while I'm primarily a Tyranid player, I have a soft spot in my heart for Tau. I preordered the army box on the day they released the army (so many years ago) and have always liked them. Additionally, I'm a Tau purist (re:racist). I only use Tau; no kroot, no vespid, no allies. Thus, I try to get the most value out of all the Tau units. I've had success with the sniper drones, so I wanted to share my thoughts.

So, until they give them the "sniper" or "precision" trait, they'll be suboptimal, but in my army.

Good luck!

If you are taking two teams of broadsides, I see no reason why taking three teams of sniper drones is going to hurt too much. Your broadsides have the anti-heavy tank covered, the sniper drones will pick off MEQ easily, and so long as you have some missile pods and plasma in the army, you should be ok.

 juraigamer wrote:
If you are taking two teams of broadsides, I see no reason why taking three teams of sniper drones is going to hurt too much. Your broadsides have the anti-heavy tank covered, the sniper drones will pick off MEQ easily, and so long as you have some missile pods and plasma in the army, you should be ok.

Except sniper drones don't kill MEQs effectively. Seriously, compare the damage they do to an equal point value in Broadsides or even Fire Warriors, especially if the MEQs have a cover save.

Those drones savage my sw when they are foot it is rather anoying they seem pretty good and my buddies always earn their points back

 Peregrine wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:
If you are taking two teams of broadsides, I see no reason why taking three teams of sniper drones is going to hurt too much. Your broadsides have the anti-heavy tank covered, the sniper drones will pick off MEQ easily, and so long as you have some missile pods and plasma in the army, you should be ok.

Except sniper drones don't kill MEQs effectively. Seriously, compare the damage they do to an equal point value in Broadsides or even Fire Warriors, especially if the MEQs have a cover save.

? Sniper drones can easily down more MEQs than most anything else in the in the codex, furthermore the markerlight can remove cover and support markers can deny cover.

If I wanted to put the hurt on MEQs, I would simply take 3x units of sniper drone teams, nothing else compares. Also they help with monstrous creatures.

Do you play tau? I'd take sniper drones any day over fire warriors for killing MEQs, sure someone could fail their 3+'s, but I'd rather kill them dead.

 juraigamer wrote:

Do you play tau?

This is irrelevant to whether they are good or not.

Im not sure fire warriors will do any better than the drones.

As I hammer it out, a full slot of sniper drones will get on average get 3.75 kills and 2 maker light hit, while a 2 full squad of fw would make only 2.66 kills.

But that’s only raw numbers. You pay for your terminator saves at the cost of mobility though but retain a decent range of attack.

 Desubot wrote:
Im not sure fire warriors will do any better than the drones.

As I hammer it out, a full slot of sniper drones will get on average get 3.75 kills and 2 maker light hit, while a 2 full squad of fw would make only 2.66 kills.

The drones do have a decent advantage in pure firepower outside of rapid fire range (at which point the FWs win), but the FWs are a scoring unit. And the simple fact is that if your heavy support isn't outperforming your scoring units by a decisive margin it's garbage heavy support. Drones fail this important test.

Not that I haven't come around to drones being not so hot, but I thought Desubot did do equal points? 2x12 FWs equals 3 squads of drones....?

Of course there is the whole mobility, scoring, double tap at 15 in, etc etc to consider so I still think the points would be better spent on FWs


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And kunfujon, that's cool I could get you to stop lurking and jump on the boards!

hmm as above said though i agree that the snipers arent as worth it for the .7 in kill as they are not scoring or mobile but for raw area denial they could be of use.

and i did make a mistake on my calc.
9 sniper drones + 3 spoter = 24 firewarrior
9 rail rifle shots at bs 3 = 4.5 hits > wounds 3.7 no armor save.
24 pulse rifle shots at bs 3 = 12 hits > wounds 6 > armor save 3. ( i had accedently made pulse rifle wound on 4+ in my first calc lol)

4TheG8erGood wrote:
Not that I haven't come around to drones being not so hot, but I thought Desubot did do equal points? 2x12 FWs equals 3 squads of drones....?

Never mind, you are correct, I was wrong about the point cost of the drones.

My experiance with the sniper drones tells me this:

1-they are far from perfect, being totally immobile hurts alot, especially if you cant deploy at game start within good terrain. also, VERY valurable to characther sniping (spotter dies=all dies)
2-they do their job when it comes to shooting marines, they usually kill more then what they costed me, and I count that as a plus.
3-tiny unit size makes it hard to deal with them by blasts, SFG makes most regular shooting ineffective. they are VERY hard to kill outside of melee compared to their cost. (do note the spotter death issue reduces it somewhat.)
4-people dont "get" them, and as such makes many mistakes on how to deal with them. (ignoring when they should target, and vice-versa) it leads to them being far more effective in practice then in theory.

They are all right because the fact that they pin is very good Ive had units pinned by them a lot in the past but that didnt change the fact that the next turn I just walked up and executed them. You gotta really know your target priority when using them.