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So as ive been looking for some allied detachments to use or my imperial guard ive come to look at tau. They've come up to the local shop more and more and ive thought what could they bring to a guard army. Guard and tau both being very shooty armies and ig having the vendetta for air support im unaware of what tau could bring as a competitive detachment.

I like a unit of Firewarriors led by a Fireblade anchoring my gunline in or out of an ADL. That takes care of the minimum rec's for using them as allies and keeps the points pretty low. Next up is going to be a Riptide. No battlesuits, no stealth teams, just go with the Riptide. You need it. You want it. Your going to LOVE it. I like mine kitted for AA duty with the Ion Accelerator and its been doing great for me, and asides from Marbo what were you going to take for an Elites choice anyway? I honestly gloss over the fast attack when using Tau as allies especially since your going to team up with the IG and their lovely Vendetta's. For heavy support there's nothing wrong with a trio of missile pod broadsides for some nice S7 saturation (if you havent taken care of that with Auto-cannons elsewhere that is). Otherwise their heavy rail rifles work pretty good in all situations (especially for AA). Hammerheads are nice too but I just dig on the new Broadside's. I've been running doubles tournaments with IG/Tau for some time and its been working out VERY nicely now that the new Dex is out.

What are you taking in your IG?

What holes do you have?

So basically i normally play foot guard where my ccs, pcs, and a good majority of my infantry squads have lascannons with them. The nnext step is making sure there are at least 2 vendettas in the list and whatever points i have left are filled with russes depending on what roles need to be filled. Another varient of this list would be blobs of guardsmen running up the field to try and apply mass rapid fire on my opponent, i would possibly have sitnw conscripts and my tau allies help hold back objectives. But with either of those lists what would be a solid allied tau? The riptide ordeal is very nice and a big mech would be nice.

The next list i run is mech guard. Unfortunetly i believe me h guard is only at its best when its pure ig where i can maxemize the number of chimera vets and vendettas to compliment the list.

Thinking about running x3 Broadsides with a cool conversion using sentinels and a Dreadknight kitted out so it fits the conversion for my Elysian Drop Troop army. With that, taking some Kroot (for Elysian "Pathfinders") or Fire Warriors with "Elysian Long-Rifles" and a Fireblade, should be a solid firebase

This will work really well with my army that I have now as I feel that I dont have enough on the board to start the game. This way (if I choose to do either all or some of those conversions) it will give me some range and alot of firepower, especially from a team of x3 Broadsides with missile spam!

In both my foot lists I have forgotten to mention that I do have an aegis line supporting it with a quad gun. Im thinking basic troop and hq with riptide might be one of the best routes to take, what upgrades are usually taken for a riptide?

Riptide is expensive for AA purposes, and it's shooting abilities are not that great with no markerlight support.

Broadside option would be better IMO, as it gives you TL shots that hit just as hard as the riptide does. A full broadside team with VT costs only 50 points more than a IA / VT riptide.

When it comes to AA, Tau have almost no equal in terms of options and strength.

What would then be the hq and troops, just a basic fire warrior squad and Im not familiar with their hq's. I also usually have 2 vendettas in a list, if I run allies I may drop it down to 1 depending on senario.

But 3 broadsides with missiles?

Is this for fluff reasons? Like a human world now working for the Greater Good? What to take depends on what you already have.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Is this for fluff reasons? Like a human world now working for the Greater Good? What to take depends on what you already have.

ABSOLUTELY love your profile picture lol. But anyways no its not really fluff reason, its more of trying to get some competitive allies. Ive looked into all the Marine chapters and have come up with varying allies and as I am now saying it Im looking into some of the xeno possibilities, I think the only other factions Im really looking into is eldar and tau and so Ive figured I would look into tau at the moment as they've got pretty strong codex. Only problem is tau is very much the same as IG in the fact that they are a sit back and shoot army. The broadsides with missiles is really nice and would help my army if I dropped down to 1 vendetta.

I play a more so gunline type list with IG, as mentioned Infantry squads all have lascannons attached. usually 2 vendettas but when allies are run sometimes just one. Then theres usually 2-3 leman russ in varying loadouts. The whole army bascially sits back behind a defense line with a quad gun and shoots, and 2 PCS's 1 in each vendetta usually armed with x4 flamers try to grab late objectives or kick my opponent off them.

Unless you are going for the farsight bomb as allies, then the normal route will be the Fireblade and a full FW squad for is basically a permanent "FRFSRF" firebase.

After that you just pick if you want elite, fast or heavy. Most common is either a riptide or 3 Missilesides. You could do a full piranha squad if you wanted something IG can not really do. That would be 5 fast moving speeders with either 8 s5, ap5 shots or 1 s8 ap1 melta + 4 s5 ap5.

 tankboy145 wrote:
In both my foot lists I have forgotten to mention that I do have an aegis line supporting it with a quad gun. Im thinking basic troop and hq with riptide might be one of the best routes to take, what upgrades are usually taken for a riptide?

Velocity Tracker and Early Warning Override for the Riptide. Fireblade with a squad of firewarriors in your ADL. Two marker drones on the Fireblade, two more marker drones with the Firewarriors Shas'ui. Those 4 marker lights should be plenty good enough for your Riptide.

Love can-*BLAM*

....

I have nothing real to offer to this thread though, so I'll leave with that.

 guinness707 wrote:

 tankboy145 wrote:
In both my foot lists I have forgotten to mention that I do have an aegis line supporting it with a quad gun. Im thinking basic troop and hq with riptide might be one of the best routes to take, what upgrades are usually taken for a riptide?

Velocity Tracker and Early Warning Override for the Riptide. Fireblade with a squad of firewarriors in your ADL. Two marker drones on the Fireblade, two more marker drones with the Firewarriors Shas'ui. Those 4 marker lights should be plenty good enough for your Riptide.

But those marker drones are bs 2 and hardly reliable.

and you generally want at least 6 markers to make a riptide bs 7 with ignore cover. which is average 2d6.

sniper drone squad with 3 marksmen and a fire blade with 2 drones attached = 6 bs 5 markers on a 4+ sv body with stealth. think like 130 total?

not awful

 Desubot wrote:

 guinness707 wrote:

 tankboy145 wrote:
In both my foot lists I have forgotten to mention that I do have an aegis line supporting it with a quad gun. Im thinking basic troop and hq with riptide might be one of the best routes to take, what upgrades are usually taken for a riptide?

Velocity Tracker and Early Warning Override for the Riptide. Fireblade with a squad of firewarriors in your ADL. Two marker drones on the Fireblade, two more marker drones with the Firewarriors Shas'ui. Those 4 marker lights should be plenty good enough for your Riptide.

But those marker drones are bs 2 and hardly reliable.

and you generally want at least 6 markers to make a riptide bs 7 with ignore cover. which is average 2d6.

sniper drone squad with 3 marksmen and a fire blade with 2 drones attached = 6 bs 5 markers on a 4+ sv body with stealth. think like 130 total?

not awful

Personally when I use Tau as allies I tend to skip the markerlight bit. To me a Riptide is simply a slightly more expensive Leman Russ with better mobility and AA capability. A BS3 pie plate is killy with or without the markerlights.

If you absolutely needed the ML's then I would rather take a commander with Drone controller and attach him to a markerlight drone squadron as a fast attack option and leave the heavy support for something really good like a hammer head or missle-sides.

A fireblade with firewarriors will give me a pretty good squad to help out with the gunline which seems pretty good wih the s5 shots and ap 5.

Now what really seems better 3 missile sides or the riptide? iirc the missile sides can indeed be insta killed but what is all equiped with them? The riptide indeed does seem like a beefed up leman russ so I could just drop a russ for him.

Now aside from those two picks are their any other interesting things tau can do, and what is this farsight bomb? Ive just recently gotten the codex to start looking over.

And with the piranha squad are those all the shots the squad puts out or is that how many shots just 1 vehicle puts out, and how reliable are they, I would assume since speeders they are pretty easy to put down.

Are there any building with crisis suits at all, the mech look of the different suits is what has really caught my eye and has made me want to try tau out, with the broadsides, riptides and crisis suits there seems to be a bit of options.

Since the missie-sides are HS and the Riptide is Elite, why not take both. In fact, take a 3 man team of broadsides, a 3 tank squadron of Leman russ, and a 3 gun battery of Bassilisks? Mmmmmm...that sounds sooo yummy.

Farsight bomb is basically an HQ that deepstrikes without scattering and can have up to 7 crisis suits as his personal bodyguard. As allies I dont like this though as its very expensive and at that point you might as well go ahead and just make a Tau army.

For fast attack I'd just go with a small squad of pathfinders for their markerlights or give them rail rifles for that sexy 30" S6 AP1 Rapid fire goodness.

Sadly for the crisis suits right now, the Elites choice for Tau is spoiled by how good the Riptide can be. There are builds for Crisis suit commanders and bodyguards but as allies I would avoid them. Stick with the Fireblade or an Ethereal for your HQ to bolster up your lone firewarrior squad.

Everything that's been mentioned so far, IG do better, or roughly equivalent. The only stand out option is the farsight bomb, but once you go down that route, you're better off playing tau with IG allies.

Other than Fortifications, IG have no interceptor. Have you seen what a Ripties Ion Accelerator can do to a sternguard squad deploying out of a drop pod on turn 1? Let me tell you....it's not pretty.

The lone riptide isnt that spectacular without either marker support or the buffmander following him around, which that one is deadlier by far but a little pricy (usually adds ~150 to the riptide cost). His secondary weapon is almost never used unless someone is right up in his face...which 72" range kinda means that rarely happens if at all...and his main weapon is not twinlinked and only shoots 3 S7 Ap2 shots at fliers. My last list i built (pure tau btw i dont have IG) the only reason i have Skyfire on my riptides at all is because i had 35pts to dump somewhere so i replaced counterfire on one and gave both skyfire since i was expecting helldrakes to fly over them, and double pen Melta is bound to hurt. But thats not their main job, thats a last resort point dump.

If you want AA i'd go for the broadside team. Fully kitted out its about ~285pts of insane anti-anything (except av14) shooting within 36", and what flier can avoid that range and still do anything? Slap a buffmander in there for the HQ choice and now the drones are twinlinked (not BS5, remember that), everything ignores cover by default (so no Jink saves), and now you have Tankhunter so those 5+ rolls on AV12 can be rerolled for on glance/pen results.

AA is the only reason i can think of IG wanting tau, since theyre as good if not better than Tau at table-length shooting (with Tau only having possible anti-cover making this questionable). I see no reason for stealth or crisis suits taking out backfield things for this reason.

What do you mean by buffmander? Im very new to tau.

And after looking at all the options its pretty narrowed to using either a riptide or the 3 man squad of broadsides, most people i see suggest the missileside but what about the heavy rail gun or its standard weapon?

Or the riptides and broads sides what are optimal load out, if i went with the missile sides would it be the high yield missile with a smart missile system and whatever the one shot missile is?

As i have looked over the riptide yet what is optimal load outs for it?

Buffmander = Commander in crisis suit equiped with drone controller, Puretide Engram ('tank hunters' or 'monster hunters'), multi-spectrum sensor suite (giving the squad default "Ignores Cover"), and a Command and Control Node (re-roll misses). Although, I think you can skip the DC depending on how you use the commander.

I will say it again as to the Riptide 'or' the broadsides. Use both! Riptides are elite, and broadsides are heavy support. Do both, you wont regret it. I'm seeing more Broadsides with high yield missile pods more often than their stock counter parts but there are merits to both designs. Personally though I do like the missilesides. They seem to be able to get their points back more consistently.

I don't know about "optimal" load-outs or even if such a thing exists on face value. An optimal load-out is based on soooo many factors. Honestly though, the interceptor upgrade for the riptide is boss IMO. I almost never see an all-comers list that doesn't include at least one unit coming in from reserves (that includes deep strikers obviously). If I had to choose an upgrade that's the one I wouldn't leave home without. For the missile sides they almost beg to have the Skyfire upgrade but its very expensive. Especially when you go up against an opponent who left his flyers at home or don't show up until Turn 4.

Speaking of leaving things at home, don't waste your time on the Riptides drones, they are drek and will only cause your Rippy to run away crying for his mommy. Although there was some trick to taking a drone thus making the Riptide and drone a squad and then attaching a Buffmander to it for some uber fun though I haven't tried that out yet.

Riptides almost always have the IA (Ion Accellerator) and vast majority of them also have EWO (Early Warning Override, i.e. interceptor) since both are 5pt upgrades and both are very powerful on a riptide. I only fill the 2nd support slot if i have left over points since most of them arent that spectacular for a riptide anyway unless you REALLY want skyfire on it or FNP. And guinness is right ignore the riptide drones, theyre 25pts a pop, die easy (why they arent 2+ armor is beyond me) and BS2 non-TL'd single missilepods arent that awesome when youre shooting further than 36" most of the time anyway. If one of them dies, leadership check. Im spacing out on whether or not Jetpack units roll 3D6 on fallbacks right now but i dont think they do...either way the issue is if he runs now hes useless for a turn even if he regroups.

Railsides are pathedic now. They cost the exact same as the old ones and are 60" instead of 72" range (not that big of a deal) and S8 instead of S10 (BIG deal). If they gave them an extra shot, or was atleast S9, it would be worth it. Its 210pts for 3 w/o drones and they have Interceptor upgrade for 3 S8 AP1 shots that are twinlinked. Not worth it.

Yes, its wounding almost everything on a 2+ and pens all armor, but invul saves are still around and so are cover saves (though that can be stripped). Before, they were justified because they annihilated all vehicles under AV13 and did very good against AV14 at table's reach, so any vehicles just disappeared with them on the board. S8 only takes out light vehicles or glances heavier ones, and they lack the shots the missilesides do to glance to death. And missilesides are a free upgrade anyway so why take rails over it?

Riptide Overcharge/Novacharged Ion Accelerator takes vehicles out as easily/easier than railsides and also does other things. There is 0 point to railsides now days.

Also, the Drone Controller can be ignored if you take a buffmander if you are putting him with a riptide. It has no effect on Shielded or normal Missile Drones. And sorry not sure if thats even a common word to use (buffmander) its just what i started calling it lol but guiness hit it on the head.

 guinness707 wrote:
Other than Fortifications, IG have no interceptor. Have you seen what a Ripties Ion Accelerator can do to a sternguard squad deploying out of a drop pod on turn 1? Let me tell you....it's not pretty.

I suppose, but only if you don't count sabre defence platforms. Which I have no reason to know why you would ignore.

So about how many points will i be estimating for this unit with broadsides and a riptide? I know the firewater opts are cheap as i checked out their profile, and depending on the hq the riptide and missile sides are what about 200 a piece?

Broadsides are 94pts a pop if you take Interceptor and both missiledrones and come in a unit of 3. Mind you, if you take Skyfire instead of Interceptor its 15pts more per model and the drones do not get either rule (and are locked to that unit if it happens to die, so their shots are lost in the next shooting phase)

Riptides are 190 with the IA and Interceptor, if you want skyfire theyre 210 (they can have both). Dont touch their drones.

If you ran both and wanted a buffmander in the group, youre looking at easily 700 points since a buffmander usually runs between 150 and 200 depending on how picky you are. I dont know the IG point costs other than the basic LRBT so i dont know what else you would bring after that much pointcost dump in allies. I know for me as Orks i would not be happy since i wouldnt have the points left over for a green tide OR my usual 5man bikernob missile + boss with however many boyz i can get (this tau list would replace the lootas i'd normally bring)

Before all the wonderful Tau goodness totally kills your points re-think/focus on why you want Tau in the first place? Personally for guard allies they add solid interceptor and skyfire (unless your one of the 2 people who field Hydra's). IG can otherwise do just as well in almost all aspects as Tau.

I'm just not convinced IG need anti-infantry interceptor. Against mech guard, even the scariest drop troops can only pop two chinerae then die to a hail of plama. 110pts for 250pts is definitely a trade I don't mind making. Against foot guard, there's no way your bubble wrap will let anyone in melta range.

Killing MEQ isn't an issue guard has that you need to invest in allies to intercept one squad.

IG can also trivially bubble wrap anything they care about being dropped on. And then kill with plasma.

Yea i would say that guard is very similar to tau except taus standard troops are so much better with greater range, greater strength and ap5.

The buffmander seems nice but i think for the points i would just use a fire blade. Also after 700 some points its kinda iffy. The riptide and 3 broadsides are nice but will it really perform well. I honestly think i will stick with the broadside for now because the only anti air i have is a quad gun and 2 vendettas. And my planes are usually focused right off the bat. Plus i face a lot of monstrous creature spam so i believe the mass of missile shots would really help me bring down some units.

I would also agree that with guard i can bubble wrap stuff easily so my opponent cant melta my stuff and i will have weight of fire with lasguns to put them down.

And more so as mentioned before ive been playing guard for almost 3 years now, 1 and only army. Tried blood angels allies but quit that early as it wasnt good, then went to sw and had great success but there was like 1 set way to play them ass allies. And i looked into other marine chapters and have recently worked with da and am about to give them a try. Im trying to stay loyalist with a little bit of other non chaos armies and since tau is supposed to be pretty competitive i figured i would give them a try. Maybe make an army out of them later down the line but for now i wanted to ask dakka what would be the best allies of tau for guard and possibly what fun combinations can also be done.