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I've been out of 40k for a while. My friends who still play tell me that assault is nerfed in 6th ed and shooting is king. What's the status on the Tau gunlike army? Something like:

Shas'O

Crisis Suit x3

Crisis Suit x3

Stealth Suit x5

Firewarrios x12

Firewarrios x12

Firewarrios x12

Firewarrios x12

Kroot x14

Gun Drone Squadron x6

Broadside x2

Hammehead

Hammerhead


Can a static Tau gunline work?

Honestly I've found that Tau aren't very good for "put x down and win". They're very easy to knock off objectives, and our biggest strength is mobility.

Your list also seems to be lacking in synergistic units. What kind of combos were you looking at? What would you be doing with everything? I usually have my broadsides and SDT pretty static, and everything else in motion. Feint, draw, distract.

The only reason imo that tau aren't a top tier or near top is that they require too much synergy between units which leaves a lot of room for error and if one thing goes down the entire army is drastically changed and hurt

maceria wrote:
Honestly I've found that Tau aren't very good for "put x down and win". They're very easy to knock off objectives, and our biggest strength is mobility.

Your list also seems to be lacking in synergistic units. What kind of combos were you looking at? What would you be doing with everything? I usually have my broadsides and SDT pretty static, and everything else in motion. Feint, draw, distract.

My Crisis Suits all have TL Missle Pods & Plasma Guns. Shas've has the same loadout, plus a hard-wired Target Lock. Shas'O has MP, Plas Gun, Shield Gen and hard wired Multitracker.

Their primary job is to hop out from behind cover, pop eneny transports with their Missile Pods, then Tau Shuffle back out of LOS. That should leave enemy infantry footslogging under the withering S5 AP5 fire of my Firewarriors & Stealth Suits.

The Plas Guns are back-up to take out footslogging MEQs.

The Broadsides & Hammerheads Job #1 is to pop enemy tanks & MCs with Railguns, and harras enemy infantry with Smart Missles. That done the Hammerheads can use submunitions to pound footslogging enemy infantry.

The Kroot & Gun Drones are to infiltrate/deep strike into open table quarters and contest them, depending on mission victory conditions.

Stealth suits are very overpriced for what they offer. BS3 and T3 models should never cost 30ppm when they are supposed to only survive and shot.

Crisis suits should just stick with twin-linked missile pods. Better accuracy and cost effectiveness. The BS3 plasma will do nothing but disappoint. Especially when you realize you paid 5 points more than the BS4 marine did.

I prefer having 2 squads of broadsides and a hammerhead. Broadsides are more reliable because they are twin-linked. BS4 hammerheads miss way too often for me.

Kroot are a joke, and not a funny one either. Gun drone squads are quite bad too, since they are wargear yet take a FA slot.

And FW are really expensive. You're getting subpar LD, subpar BS, subpar T, and the CC stats are a joke. You pay an excessive price for the 4+ save and S5 gun on a flimsy unit. I'd suggest against taking so many squads of FW just because even at max size the enemy only needs to cause 3 wounds to force a morale check at LD7.

As i play tau i find that i just cant move mid field ever (not till turn 4-5)

our troops are not reliable enough to sit on an objective mid field so its best to sit them back. kroot are pointless, you might as well take ork allies honestly unless your gaming area has nothing but forests.

It is best that they sit behind cover or a ADL

but for the rest of there hard equipment, Broadsides are nice as they can secondary as anti air, hammerheads are a great multi tool. crisis suits can easily be magnetized so try all the different builds and combat styles till you find the one you like.

but i think the main thing is to keep everything cheap and bring lots of it because tau have alot of point sinks.

Edit: also as above said stealth aren't that great. though for fun a full squad of stealth suits with 2 gun drones each can make for lulz.

My Fw chill behind the mid field and stick to trying to shoot things, i never take kroot because lets face it, when a chaos cultist is better than you, your trash. My crisis suits bounce a little between my deployment zone and mid field, just kinda where ever they get a good shot from. As for steath suits.....maybe on a fun day.

ALWAYS pair those broadsides up! They have always done me good.

Tau + Eldar gun line is alive and well. Very powerful IMO.

Their ability to dominate against some of the top tier armies makes them a sleeper at tourneys. I watched my Monsters get gunned down in 2 turns and cried.

DarthDiggler wrote:
Tau + Eldar gun line is alive and well. Very powerful IMO.

So Darth what are some of the stronger Tau-eldar gun line lists you have seen?

I ran a Tau + Eldar list at GBU: 4 Broad Sides, 6 Crisis Suits, 2 FW teams, Eldrad + Shaso w/ 2+ armour and 2 SD + SeerHarlies, and a JB squad. It did pretty well but I wouldn't call it very powerfull as it fell hard to a 2 Valks, 4 Vendettas List.

 wyomingfox wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:
Tau + Eldar gun line is alive and well. Very powerful IMO.

So Darth what are some of the stronger Tau-eldar gun line lists you have seen?

I ran a Tau + Eldar list at GBU: 4 Broad Sides, 6 Crisis Suits, 2 FW teams, Eldrad + Shaso w/ 2+ armour and 2 SD + SeerHarlies, and a JB squad. It did pretty well but I wouldn't call it very powerfull as it fell hard to a 2 Valks, 4 Vendettas List.

Reverse the armies. Eldar as main with Tau as secondary. This gives you Eldrad to grab Divination powers he can cast on Tau and a second farseer to cast Fortune on Eldrads unit and Doom an enemy unit (which tau can also take advantage of.

Eldrad (usually takes Divination)
Farseer, Doom + Fortune

Either a Fire Dragon Exarch or a Dark Reaper Exarch to man the Quad Gun/Icarus which is on a Bastion. The Bastion blocks LOS for your War Walkers to hide behind turn 1 and it can give Hard cover to Broadsides or another unit (like Fire warriors) to sit inside immune to return fire.

A big Guardian squad can be useful in this list. Either regular or Storm. A small unit of Harliquins to counter attack and give Eldrad a 2+ in cover when he attaches. Sometimes I've seen Eldrad attach to Wraithguard and go for Invisibility instead of Divination. That changes the list from a psychic hammer to a psychic anvil list. This could be the way to go against 4 Vendettas because if you get Invisibility, then your Wraithguard will have a 2+ rerollable cover save. I guess that works even better in the relic scenario or any objective scenario that has 3 or less objectives.

The possibilities are numerous, but one hard fast rule is to have Eldar as the main force and Tau as the secondary because you need that second Farseer for Fortune. The Tau give the Eldar the long range shooting they desperatly need and the Eldar give the Tau some CC punch.

Gun lines behind Aegis Defense Lines can be pretty good.

Wouldn't include Hammerheads in a Gunline, but that's just me. Then again, i wouldn't include them at all, so that's not saying anything.

I wrote an article o nthe Unholt alliances of 6th Edition you might find interesting. One of the options was Tau:
http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/02/6th-edition-warhammers-unholy-alliances.html

Thanks for your thoughts Darth.