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Hello, I have found myself madly in love with the Tau Barracuda model. I am wondering if it is worth the points cost to field one, both on its own merits and compared to other fliers I could be taking.

Just a little background, my usual game is 1500 points, and I go ethereal with 3 FW squads. fast attack is currently two 6 man pathfinder squads (no upgrades except a pulse accelerator drone, I really need to re-evaluate these guys but they give me either markerlights or pulse shots, so they earn their keep) and a marker drone squad for my commander to hide in. Heavy support is a railgun hammerhead with sub-munitions and 2 single man broadside teams with interceptor and missile drones. They bounce back and forth between missile or rail depending on whetehr I will need str 8 interceptor shots to insta death t4 things dropping on my head. Elites are a ion riptide and two single man crisis suits with gun drones, fusion blasters, and plasma (again the weapons can be bounced around, but I usually deep strike them to get rid of annoying stuff I can't see otherwise).

I've also been thinking about picking up some Necron warriors in a nightscythe and a lord with resurrection orb to give my army some ability to claim objectives that aren't in my deployment zone. I think they could do that much better than the outflanking kroot I'm using now.

Also, my local group doesn't do fliers. I'd be the first guy to bring one in if I got the `cuda.

Personally? As Tau, I'd like to load up as much S8 Large Blasts as possible. 3 Riptides, 3 Barracuda, 3 Ionheads. The only thing stopping me is cost and I don't have the Taros 2E book yet :c

The model, from what I've heard of it, has some amazing stats now - easily competing with other great fliers.

See here for IA3 update: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/531229.page

Short version is the Barracuda got a lot better, and IMO is significantly better than either of the awful codex flyers. If you're going to take a flyer at all then it's either a Barracuda or Remora squadron.

In your case since nobody else has flyers it's the perfect time to get one. AA defenses will be limited to a quad gun at most, which the rest of your army can easily kill on turn 1.