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How would I use Tau, be mobile, and still be decently good ?

Use Battlesuits and the Farsight book?

Mobile Tau is just regular Tau /w Devilfish. The only inherently immobile units they field are Broadsides and Firewarriors w/o Devilfish. Everything else has above-average mobility (what with the plethora of jetpack units, skimmers, and move-through-cover infantry). You don't see people exploiting their mobility much because a) people often use a lot of Broadsides and b) mobility is of limited value to a gunline which outranges almost everything that it faces.

If you play with lots of LOS blocking terrain (which you should be), then mobility becomes important to Tau. But if you play on a wide-open field where Tau can form a gunline, then there's no real reason for him to move his units at all. Case in point (notice that the Tau army in that video does actually have a lot of units with good mobility, but had no real reason to move them).

 DanielBeaver wrote:
Mobile Tau is just regular Tau /w Devilfish. The only inherently immobile units they field are Broadsides and Firewarriors w/o Devilfish. Everything else has above-average mobility (what with the plethora of jetpack units, skimmers, and move-through-cover infantry). You don't see people exploiting their mobility much because a) people often use a lot of Broadsides and b) mobility is of limited value to a gunline which outranges almost everything that it faces.

If you play with lots of LOS blocking terrain (which you should be), then mobility becomes important to Tau. But if you play on a wide-open field where Tau can form a gunline, then there's no real reason for him to move his units at all. Case in point (notice that the Tau army in that video does actually have a lot of units with good mobility, but had no real reason to move them).

That board was awful for anyone facing those Tau. There was pretty much no LOS blocking terrain.

I run a mech tau army and have a lot of fun and don't lose many games.

I use a buffmander with 3 double missile pod suits and 5 marker drones, an ethereal with 2x9 fish mounted firewarriors, 10 outflanking kroot with a hound, a skyray, a hammerhead, an ionhead, a burst-tide, and a couple of piranhas at 1500 pts.

I am not a tournament player by any means but it's a solid army that is "decently good" that constitutes as mobile tau. I play with a good amount of LOS blocking terrain.

Ethereals can add a bit of mobility to with Zephyr's grace. if you need to get a unit somewhere fast the option to run in the shooting phase and still snapshot is pretty big, and it affects suits.

 DanielBeaver wrote:
Mobile Tau is just regular Tau /w Devilfish. The only inherently immobile units they field are Broadsides and Firewarriors w/o Devilfish. Everything else has above-average mobility (what with the plethora of jetpack units, skimmers, and move-through-cover infantry). You don't see people exploiting their mobility much because a) people often use a lot of Broadsides and b) mobility is of limited value to a gunline which outranges almost everything that it faces.

If you play with lots of LOS blocking terrain (which you should be), then mobility becomes important to Tau. But if you play on a wide-open field where Tau can form a gunline, then there's no real reason for him to move his units at all. Case in point (notice that the Tau army in that video does actually have a lot of units with good mobility, but had no real reason to move them).

In the video crisis suits are moving 12 inches , um they are not jump units. What they hell?

 thejughead wrote:
In the video crisis suits are moving 12 inches , um they are not jump units. What they hell?

The guys at miniwargaming are constantly messing up Tau rules. In another video they were using Smart Missiles on Crisis Suits.

 thejughead wrote:

 DanielBeaver wrote:
Mobile Tau is just regular Tau /w Devilfish. The only inherently immobile units they field are Broadsides and Firewarriors w/o Devilfish. Everything else has above-average mobility (what with the plethora of jetpack units, skimmers, and move-through-cover infantry). You don't see people exploiting their mobility much because a) people often use a lot of Broadsides and b) mobility is of limited value to a gunline which outranges almost everything that it faces.

If you play with lots of LOS blocking terrain (which you should be), then mobility becomes important to Tau. But if you play on a wide-open field where Tau can form a gunline, then there's no real reason for him to move his units at all. Case in point (notice that the Tau army in that video does actually have a lot of units with good mobility, but had no real reason to move them).

In the video crisis suits are moving 12 inches , um they are not jump units. What they hell?

Oh yeah.

Crisis Suits have never been able to do that, in any edition. So I don't even see how that could be a mistake.

Actually there has been a forge world suit that has a sms for many years. But you can only take it on cmdrs.

Good god even if it was a 20pt upgrade (more than plasma) i'd take SMS on my suits every day lol. 4 30" S5 AP5 ignores line of sight on a mobile platform? Troops be scared!

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Good god even if it was a 20pt upgrade (more than plasma) i'd take SMS on my suits every day lol. 4 30" S5 AP5 ignores line of sight on a mobile platform? Troops be scared!

That would be hilarious to run with a Farsight list running 5 solo crisis suits. Play hide and seek for 5 turns before jumping onto objectives.

Tried the Skyray today. Without other sources of ML, it becomes pretty hard to move it and be functional, if there is dangerous stuff out there - 2 Ravagers filled with Dark Lances and Nightshields made my Skyrays grab every inch of impassable terrain (he destroyed my tetras) :/

Skyray isnt a good singular source of ML. You almost always have to move it since its rarely able to get a default cover save without moving and still be in range of something. So you can only apply 1 ML unless you get lucky as hell.

It is, however, an excellent kickstarter since its BS4. If i need to kill something NOW and dont trust my 5 remaining pathfinders to land more than 2 lights (and i need 3-4), i will light it up with the skyray then use it for the pathfinders. Also works great against fliers since skyray has skyfire. Bump the pathfinders to BS2 and try to multiply that ML count.

Unless i really only need 1 ML (which is rare) i usually kickstart the pathfinders with it.

If you give it Sensor Spines and Disruption pods it could be pretty stationary. Just move it into some area terrain tall enough to cover the majority of the hull and use the height of the turret to still allow you to hit things with the markerlights.

If anything gets close you can still move out without risking immobilising your vehicle.

Yea, sensorspines are awesome. So many people ignore them because its 5pts for a situational use since you dont take a test flying OVER terrain unlike other vehicles.

Heres the thing that makes me want it on all my vehicles: i dont reroll the rest like Rams, i straight up ignore the test. Epicness lol

So I just load up Firewarriors in a devilfish and unload them in their face?

Traditionally a Mobile Tau army had no real feet on the ground to slow it down, all suits had to have jump packs, all infantry were in Devilfish or infiltrating/outflanking. Riptide is new to the army but it would fit in with the crisis and hazards no problem. Broadsides were not seen and replaced by Hammerheads(which are harder to kill IMO). So essentially main difference was no broadsides and all FW were mounted or had the transport to let them be mounted.

WTF are you saying?
Traditional tau spammed broadsides like no tommorow as in the old codex it was one OP unit in a very weak army otherwise.

He said mobile Tau Army. Pretty much have to go back to 4th/early 5th to find it but yes, Tau used to be mobile

Broadsides could be kind of mobile with Advanced Stabilisation but not enough to keep up with Crisis Suits, Devilfish and Hammerheads and especially not when the Devilfish and Hammerheads could move and shoot like fast vehicles.

then again, with 72" range they had, being mobile was none of their concern, even in a mech army.

But also they are pretty easy to kill if not supported/protected in some way.

An outflanking unit with a sergeant or whatever with a power weapon could deal with them pretty easily.

Old tau was pretty mobile outside the broadsides. 72" range made them not need to move, just deploy them on other ends of the map to cover everything well.

The rest was very mobile. Our vehicles all shot as though they were fast, so the Hammerhead/Devilfish moved 12" and shot at full BS, we had no riptide so everyone brought crisis suits and theyre pretty damn mobile, and firewarriors kinda have to be somewhat mobile unless youre against an assaulty army otherwise they wont shoot anything.

Tau kinda lost their mobility more because of more long-range guns that work than losing the "pseudo-fast" vehicles. Only one that REALLY got hurt by losing that rule was the Devilfish as it needs to move 12" to get its payload in position, Hammerheads rarely need to move that far unless theyre about to get feth'd up if they dont.
Which, btw, this is one reason i love Piranhas. Theyre still Fast, so i can move 12" and fire normally. That lets them get in the way of assaulty units to protect more vital units for a turn or so, depending on how much fire they drew before the assault phase.

We can still be vary mobile, but its much easier to play gunline than mobile force. Also cheaper. I want to use my devilfish, but i feel like im missing some very important assets in order to bring them.

6e tau is slower than 5e tau since they can no longer move 12" and fire.

They are no faster than Space Marines, and tau do not have land speeder typhoons or vypers.

If you want to do mech tau, consider 5 burst cannon pirahna.

Markerlight sources become difficult - stealth suits, sun sharks, marker commanders, and sky rays. You don't need as many markerlights though.

Again: My troops choices would just be FW inside a Devil Fish?

Only one that REALLY got hurt by losing that rule was the Devilfish as it needs to move 12" to get its payload in position, Hammerheads rarely need to move that far unless theyre about to get feth'd up if they dont.

I always ran Hammerheads with the multitracker under the old codex. The positional advantages were huge: shoot around cover, keep out of danger, bring the secondary weapons into range, and even contest and tank shock. It allowed the Hammerhead to be played far more aggressively and helped better differential it from imperial tanks. Not to mentioned that without the multitracker, the Skyray is little more than a glorified turret (a really good turret, but a glorified turret nonetheless) as it has to sit still if wants to fire more than a single markerlight or missile and full BS. Even piranha have to slow down if you want to be able to fire the attached drones at full BS (although that is a separate rule). It is a real kick in the pants for any Tau player who wanted to run mobile vehicle based list.

It has been over a year and I still have no idea what GW was thinking with this new codex. Did they want the Tau to camp behind an Aegis or on a Skyshield for the whole game and table the guy from there? There are still some options for mobile Tau, but it seems like you almost have to fight the codex for it. Especially if you want mobile markerlight support.

 Glorywarrior wrote:
How would I use Tau, be mobile, and still be decently good ?

I can help on that. My blog has a lot of Tau stuff on it and I play an extremely mobile force.

The main thing is not to forget that mobility, in 40K, comes in a lot of flavors.

 Glorywarrior wrote:
Again: My troops choices would just be FW inside a Devil Fish?

Yep - with an ethereal to make your firewarriors triple tap after jumping out of the fish.