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I did a bit of math on vespid but it might be a little spotty. Consider a unit of 12 vespid with a strain leader.
- A unit of 12 shoots a unit of 10 space marines with their neutron blasters dealing an average of 4 wounds.
- Then they charge with their jump packs and get hammer of wrath and manage to get 8 models into base to base contact. thats 8 Initiative 10 hits that auto hit and wounding 1/3 of the time. averaging 2.7 wounds. with 3 up armor saves its reasonable to assume an average of about 1 wound.
- Then they attack before the space marines because of initiative 6 and because of their charge thats 17 attacks hitting on 4s so an average of 8.5hits then wounding on 5s so thats about 2.8 wounds average. After saves thats about 1 other wound.

In 1 turn before the space marines even get to attack back they now only have 4 guys left. Is it reasonable to say that vespids are good now?

Now lets look at twin linked burscannons on crisis suits. A loadout i like looks like this.

Crisis Team x3 - 201 pts
2 Shas'ui
TL Burst Cannons
Flamers
1 Shas'ui
TL Burst Cannons
Drone Controller
6 Gun drones

Thats 24 str 5 ap 5 shots at 18" hitting half the time and rerolling misses. Using my mathhammer phone app it averages about 4 unsaved wounds against space marines and 12 unsaved wounds against orks. Is it safe to say these are good too?

I personally do not like vespides. The only do an okay job against marines and are pretty bad against everything else.

As for the burst cannons. I wanted to see what the most cost effective burst cannon/pulse carbine unit was. Here is what I got:
piranha 5
drone 7
stealth 7.5
firewarrior 4.5
crisis 2 burst cannons 5.25
crisis 1 burst cannon 8

So firewarriors are the cheapest but also the most fragile. Piranhas were almost as cheap, the are fast and not hard to take down but not easy either. (s4 infantry shots can't hurt the front armor but a deticated tank gun will kill it dead fast. Depending on if you can take 2 burst cannons on a single crisis suit or not makes the crisis suits one of the cheapest carriers. Stealth suits are possibly the most expensive but come with a bunch of great abilities.

Hope this helps.

 lambsandlions wrote:
I personally do not like vespides. The only do an okay job against marines and are pretty bad against everything else.

As for the burst cannons. I wanted to see what the most cost effective burst cannon/pulse carbine unit was. Here is what I got:
piranha 5
drone 7
stealth 7.5
firewarrior 4.5
crisis 2 burst cannons 5.25
crisis 1 burst cannon 8

So firewarriors are the cheapest but also the most fragile. Piranhas were almost as cheap, the are fast and not hard to take down but not easy either. (s4 infantry shots can't hurt the front armor but a deticated tank gun will kill it dead fast. Depending on if you can take 2 burst cannons on a single crisis suit or not makes the crisis suits one of the cheapest carriers. Stealth suits are possibly the most expensive but come with a bunch of great abilities.

Hope this helps.

thanks but what do these numbers mean? does that mean wounds or something?

Crisis suits are far more useful when equipped with other weapons. Fire warriors are almost-mandatory inclusions that do the same thing as burst cannon crisis suits.

Its not that they're bad choices, but that they're filling a role you already filled and competing with other crisis variants that do jobs the other units in the army don't.

 GyrfalconXV25 wrote:



thanks but what do these numbers mean? does that mean wounds or something?

It's cost related to damage output. The lower the number, the better.

 GyrfalconXV25 wrote:

thanks but what do these numbers mean? does that mean wounds or something?

Sorry, it is 18" s5 shot per point so a piranha is 40 points for 8 shots or 5 points per shot.

If its just killing infantry, for the same 201 points, you could get a Riptide with additions, and ion accelerator, who is much more survivable, and his overcharged ion large blast will inflict a Str 8 AP2 on said infantry squad, potentially wiping the entire squad. Not to mention said Riptide has other weapons, and said Ion accelerator can also be used to take out armor.

Elite slots are valuable, make the most of them. If I really wanted to take crisis suits over Riptides, I would equip them with high str weapons, either missile pods, fusion guns, etc because that's something Tau army needs now that rail guns have been nerfed from str 10 to str 8.

Methinks ITT people are forgetting that throwing a ton of dice at a TEQ/MEQ squad is one of the best ways to kill it. If I remember correctly, BC MP suits were the most point efficient anti-MEQ/TEQ platforms because of lower cost and volume of fire.

Besides, relying on Fire Warriors to dish out S5 damage is not a very good idea. It's not that hard to imagine all your fire warriors dying.

If its Str 5 shots, I think Fire Warriors are the most efficient point wise. Hard to beat 9 points for 1 Str 5 shot at 30 inches which can become 2 shots at 15 inches.

Even a crisis suit can't exactly top that.

Fire warriors with ethereal backup are indeed your best source of s5 shooting.

If you lose all your FW, not only did you do something wrong, but all your other units should be up (or you already lost) so loss of anti-infantry/low AV firepower isn't the end of the world as you can repurpose AT firepower with some success. Also tank secondary weapons.

If you take bc suits for anti-infantry work (bc+other suits for TEQ killing are different) you've cut off an otherwise useful elites slot.

Vespids are still worthless. The range makes them kinda require deepstriking which has its own issues and theyre expensive for what they do which is ONLY kill marines, which is average anyway.

12 Vespids is the same cost (ish) as a Riptide. Yes, different slot, but your FA should be used by Pathfinders anyway (or drones whichever floats your boat). Riptide is AP2 and only has a Gets Hot issue with his pi plate that wipes out way more marines and kills other things too. And for the record, Gets Hot means jack squat when you have a 2+ save. Even less when you have FNP on top of it.

Burst cannons are a great third weapon on Sunfire Crisis suits.

Firing the Burst Cannon and Plasma Rifle at 12" is 6 shots per guy. The Fusion Blaster and Plasma Rifle at 12" is three shots at high strength with low ap.

I use this config in my Farsight Bomb and it hasn't failed me yet.

Dual untwinlinked burst cannon suits now can act as a option to running stealth suits, and 8 shots per suit is pretty good. Add in gun drones for more laughs.

Vespid fight for a slot with our pathfinders, but they bring two things to the table, speed and ap 3. Used properly they wreck any MEQ and even monsterous creatures, add to that they are easier to use this edition with more range, better armor, ruin stealth and hit and run... sounds good to me.

Vespids are at least worth considering now. Not like before when they were just a wall decoration.

 juraigamer wrote:
Dual untwinlinked burst cannon suits now can act as a option to running stealth suits, and 8 shots per suit is pretty good.

I don't thing you can do that. (Long debate on the matter here.)

I think BC have a place. Super cheap weapon that can bring weight of fire easily. If you need more anti-infantry, it's an attractive option. It all depends on how the list is built and what the holes are.

BC suits were good before, and are even better now.

Vespid...while not amazing, they got their uses, and in the right list might shine.

 Crimson wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:
Dual untwinlinked burst cannon suits now can act as a option to running stealth suits, and 8 shots per suit is pretty good.

I don't thing you can do that. (Long debate on the matter here.)

Trust me, the codex doesn't say you can't and clearly gives the prices for a single gun and a twin linked version. Let people cry about it.

Dude, I play tau, and tau alone-so I would only benefit from it if this would be possible.

But is just strikes me as too fishy, and until FAQed to specifically allow it, I would say its impossible. because following a nearly identical line of logic I can take multiple Dpod, having a longstrike hammerhead with 1+ cover save running around.

Also it would be mighty silly if twin-linked flamer costs exactly as much as two flamers, and also takes two slots, don't ya think? (though considering giving the hammerhead a TLBC or a TLSMS costs the same, I dont know any more...sometimes they drop the ball...)

You can't benifit from the same piece of wargear more than once, and stealth doesn't stack with itself, so your example doesn't work.

Being able to take lots of stuff is just like the BT book, their marshall or really anything can take a plasma gun, plasma pistol, melta gun, bolt gun and still more stuff on one guy, but he can only use one gun per turn.

I brought this up in a thread on the general topic forum but here is my take!


Take 4-5 pirhanas and break off the drones - they form one big unit (see new drone rules on page 33 in relation to squadrons and drones)

I plan to take 4 fusion pirhanas break off the drones and the commander with drone control takes over!

thats a 8 pt per shot cost, but all of em at bs 5 twin linked.

 juraigamer wrote:
You can't benifit from the same piece of wargear more than once, and stealth doesn't stack with itself, so your example doesn't work.

Dpod is not stealth, but blanket +1 to cover, so that part do work if you could get multiples. (no question you can't)
EDIT: and before you send me to the summery in the end of the book, it is just a summery and not actual rules, the entry in page 72 is the one that matters. and as they contradict, the page 72 is the right one.

On the other hand its rather fishy saying that you cant benefit from the same piece of wargear more then once, but you can get the same gun twice for the crisis suit.

 juraigamer wrote:

Trust me, the codex doesn't say you can't and clearly gives the prices for a single gun and a twin linked version. Let people cry about it.

Did you read the thread I linked? In any case, take further discussion on this matter to that thread; no need to debate this on several threads.

My new experimental list features the stingwings and Stealthsuits. Looks like fun.

 Jancoran wrote:
My new experimental list features the stingwings and Stealthsuits. Looks like fun.

Oooo

Keep us all updated on this. I like the concept... 12 stealth suits, 12 vespids (with shadowsun joined), a riptide... sounds like a very different but fun list

There will be a battle report. Soon. Like tonight.

Im going to give vespids a shot, but im going to use them as a counter attack unit. Something like intercepting and tying up droppod marines, taking care of rhino contents, and a good bike deterrant. Additonally, I might have them cover hugging to go take out the 5man las cannon/missile squads you usually see from combat squaded marines in razorbacks, maybe deepstrike them onto a forward pathfinder with a relay. Also, im going to be incredibly cheap, because im going to get little jump packs and magnetize them onto firewarriors with beefy looking pulse rifles for counts as Vespids. also because i do not like the model.

I've actually been working on a spreadsheet over the last few days to calculate the effectiveness of various crisis weapons against various targets. So far I've calculated several kinds of common infantry types. I have not taken into account range or point costs as yet, purely was interested in basic unsaved wound output. Have not yet done numbers on Cyclic Ion Blaster, or Airbursting Frag. Plasma Rifle assumed not to be in rapid fire range.

Monstrous Creature (tested as T6, 3+): Burst Cannon (BC) about half as effective as Fusion Blaster (FB), close to equal to Plasma Rifle (PR) and exactly equal to Missile Pod (MP).

Plague Marine (T5, 3+, 5+ FNP): PR and BC identical. FB slightly more effective (but negligible) and MP very slightly worse (but negligible). All options close enough to equal to not matter.

Terminator (T4, 2+, 5++): PR, FB identical. BC slightly less effective. MP slightly less effective than BC (about half as good as PR & FB)

MEQ (T4, 3+): Here is where it starts to turn. PR, FB and BC all basically identical, tiniest of advantages to BC. MP about 2/3 as good as others.

Ork (T4, 5+): BC just over 3 times more effective than PR or FB (which are identical). MP twice as effective as PR or FB.

GEQ (T3, 5+): BC 4 times as effective as PR or FB (which are identical). MP twice as effective as PR or FB.

Overall, shooting at infantry, BC's are either just marginally worse than any other option (by so little it barely matters) or are WAY better. PR pulls in the gap within rapid fire range and is still a very good weapon, as it always has been. Considering points costs, BC is an excellent option when only considering infantry targets.

Please note I am not saying OMG BC's ARE THE AWESOME!!! Every Tau player knows we have plenty of s5 kicking around, generally, and there are so many other factors to consider like availability of cover, wargear modifiers, range, points costs etc. But it has been an interesting study. I'll be running numbers for all the weapons against AV values at some point, should be another interesting study! I'd really advise any player to do a little bit of math on their army, it can really open your eyes to some things.

I would be tempted to take a TL FB and a BC, or maybe a TL BC and a BC just so that i can make a platform that can engage in anti infantry and anti tank as long as im being constrained to an 18" tange. Does that configuration have a name?

 Jancoran wrote:
There will be a battle report. Soon. Like tonight.

Please give us a link when you got it up!