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God your shooting is going to be deterring charges and wiping transports out now! Good for tau! Especially given the fortifications.

I'm curious about the meat shields though, should they be expendable or tough? Charging or just spaciously distributed?

Tau are looking really cute. I really hope they give you guys some of those neato enormous fliers soon, or maybe something akin to a SC carrier with respect to drones.

Can someone read the CC rules please? It seems to say two singled handed weapons mean +1 A. Not twoCC weapons just two any weapon. Am I right in thinking all battlesuits weapons are singled handed so do all battlesuits now gain +1 A? What have I missed?

Lucre wrote:
I'm curious about the meat shields though, should they be expendable or tough? Charging or just spaciously distributed?

I've been thinking about this for the past few days, Since Kroot in the woods only get like a 4+ now (IIRC) I was thinking I'd try making some room for Ork Allies. Grots are like 3 points a piece(IIRC) So in theory, if you could make room for something cheap for an Ork HQ, you could easily double the amount of Bubble Wrap you have on the board. The only problem would be making room for some cheap Ork HQ.

Pottsey wrote:Can someone read the CC rules please? It seems to say two singled handed weapons mean +1 A. Not twoCC weapons just two any weapon. Am I right in thinking all battlesuits weapons are singled handed so do all battlesuits now gain +1 A? What have I missed?

Guns arent close combat weapons aside from pistols

Just reading through the Close Combat section of the rulebook and the changes to sweeping advances have increased our chances of actually surviving an assault.

Now that we get to use the highest initiative in the unit we can keep some drones at the back of the unit so they survive and then use their initiative of 4 to escape from combat, putting us on equal footing with Space Marines.

Also makes O'Shovah and his retinue a lot better when they test on 5 instead of 3.

I'm thinking you put drones out slightly in front of your suits (except one who sits at the back for safety reasons) to absorb Overwatch fire and get into base contact with the Marines, forcing the Marine player to kill the drones before he can start putting wounds on your actual suits.

Once combat is done, if you win and they fail their leadership test then you can hopefully sweep the Marines with an equal Initiative to theirs and if you lose and run away then that one drone at the back who never got to fight will ensure you're pulling out at an equal Initiative.

Except challenges will kill any crisis suit assault. You get challenged, then either give up a large percentage of your attacks, or risk having a sgt smack you with his power fist. If the drone controller dies, the drones die at the end of the phase. Sure, you might survive on the drones higher ini before losing it, but why did you assault in the first place?

Crisis suit assaulting is essentially directly countered by challenges by powerfist sgts.

Crisis suites should still never assault, especially considering you get to bounce back and give the opponent a chance to fail his assault, and worst case you still get your overwatch.

Ally with chaos, all your challenge problems are solved!

Dracos wrote:Except challenges will kill any crisis suit assault. You get challenged, then either give up a large percentage of your attacks, or risk having a sgt smack you with his power fist. If the drone controller dies, the drones die at the end of the phase. Sure, you might survive on the drones higher ini before losing it, but why did you assault in the first place?

Crisis suit assaulting is essentially directly countered by challenges by powerfist sgts.

Crisis suites should still never assault, especially considering you get to bounce back and give the opponent a chance to fail his assault, and worst case you still get your overwatch.

Manoeuvre into a position where you kill the sergeant with your shooting, if you can.

I'm approaching this more as a Farsight player. Get him into base contact with the Sarge. If the sarge issues a challenge you cut him to pieces with Farsight and your Initiative 5 is safe for this round of combat. In the meantime the normal marines are wasting their time killing drones, allowing your bodyguards to survive, then you pile in with the suits. When each suit is getting 3 S5 attacks some of those attacks are going to get through Power Armour.

One useful thing is that although crisis suits lost nightvision as a free upgrade, one blacksun filter now gives the entire unit night vision, which now ignores night fight rules entirely, 3 pt upgrade for the team leader and bam, done, night fight ignoring fire warriors and suits.
Markerlights are not affected at all by night fight, you cannot pick targets over 36", but thats the markerlights max range, so doesnt matter, and you dont take saves vs markerlights so stealth/shroud is useless
One markerlight allows you to ignore nightfight, so coupled with not needing to see, thats pretty good.

All in all, tau got pretty damn good at nightfight imo, and removing enemies from the front is always good. Plus focus fire is useful when no markerlights are available.

Also, regrouping at 25% now makes shas'ui a little more worth their cost in FW teams for that extra LD

Losing target locks is horrible and I have no idea why they did it. Also multi trackers on tanks are now also useless. Starting to feel like the old DE dex with all this useless equipment..

That seems like a crazy inefficient way of using Tau. What happens when you get tied up and then your opponent brings in a real combat unit? You get chumped into wasting farsights attacks killing 1 model, and then maybe kill one or two more with the bodyguards. If the marines don't run you're probably in big trouble from and sort of counter-assault unit.

Crisis suites =/= close combat specialists.

edit: By the way, the new standard is going to be to have sgts in the middle/back of the units, because they don't need to base an IC to hit them, a challenge will make that happen. You should never be able to kill a sgt with shooting if an opponent doesn't want you to. Precision shot is your only shot there, and even that gets a look out sir roll.

Bobug wrote:
Losing target locks is horrible and I have no idea why they did it. Also multi trackers on tanks are now also useless. Starting to feel like the old DE dex with all this useless equipment..

That doesn't seem that bad to me. I only used target Locks on my Broadsides and by "Used Target Locks" I mean "Spent 5 points and forgot I spend the points on Target Locks"

But look at it this way, I had 4 Vehicles( not including tetras) in my 2k army. With Disruption pods no longer being Absolutely Required and Multitrackers (on vehicles) being useless, That frees up 15 points per vehicle for me. 60 points waving free, to be spent on..... Well I dunno yet. But still It freed up more points for use elsewhere.

Dracos wrote:That seems like a crazy inefficient way of using Tau. What happens when you get tied up and then your opponent brings in a real combat unit?

You use hit and run at I4 or I5 to pull out of combat and rapid fire back.

where do you get hit and run from? Retro thrusters is one per army and disallows drones :s

Bobug wrote:where do you get hit and run from? Retro thrusters is one per army and disallows drones :s

One character starts on his own with it but nothing disallows him from joining a unit after deployment and granting them Hit and Run.

Ahh hit and run transfers now.. didnt occur to me. Huh thats interesting

Dracos wrote:That seems like a crazy inefficient way of using Tau. What happens when you get tied up and then your opponent brings in a real combat unit? You get chumped into wasting farsights attacks killing 1 model, and then maybe kill one or two more with the bodyguards. If the marines don't run you're probably in big trouble from and sort of counter-assault unit.

Crisis suites =/= close combat specialists.

edit: By the way, the new standard is going to be to have sgts in the middle/back of the units, because they don't need to base an IC to hit them, a challenge will make that happen. You should never be able to kill a sgt with shooting if an opponent doesn't want you to. Precision shot is your only shot there, and even that gets a look out sir roll.

When a unit is absorbing lots of Plasma Rifle fire before being assaulted you will get to a sergeant hiding in the middle.
Farsight hits on 3s, rest of his retinue (7 suits) hit on 4s, I have them twin-linked with Shield Gens so that's also a re-roll.

14 shots, half hit, half of the misses hit on the re-roll = 10.5 hits
10.5 hits, wounding on 2+ = 8.75 wounds, which rounds up to 9 wounds.
Now Farsight, 2 shots = 1.33 hits
1.33 hits = 1.11 wounds.

So if you roll averagely that tac squad will be vaporised by your shooting alone. If you roll under average then that unit will still be severely weakened, allowing you to wipe them off the board in that turns assault phase, rather than spend the next turns shooting to do it.

Also, where are people getting the idea that multi trackers on vehicles are useless now? They allow you to move and fire as if you are a fast vehicle, so you can move 12" and fire 2 weapons at full ballistic skill or 6" and fire all of them at full ballistic skill. This makes a Hammerhead with Railgun and SMS capable of moving 12" every turn whilst still firing both of its weapons at full ballistic skill, with the plus side that you will always be able to use Submunition round as you are never shooting snap shots unless shooting at a flier, in which case a submunition round wouldn't do anything anyway. That seems worth 10 points to me.

I think the challenge rules are actually going to help crisis suits a little in unfortunate close combats. I think because sgts. will be able to be picked out, people will feel less inclined to equip them with 25 point power fists. This helps suits a bit. More significantly (and I'm sorry if this has been posted already), Tau will be the kings of Precision Shot. Squad leaders are characters, and unlike other armies' squad leaders, Tau squad leaders are packing multiple heavy/special weapon equivalents.

To maximize this, you would have 2 Crisis suit characters in HQ and 3 Crisis suit characters in Elites. Say they're fireknife, and you're getting a little less than one directed plasma rifle hit and a little less than 2 directed missile pod hits. Broadsides make it even better, for obvious reasons.

At 2000 points it gets stupid, with a second force org you could have 4 HQ Suits, 6 Elite suits (all Monats, probably), and any Broadside team leaders you can fit in.

A Town Called Malus wrote:many words

Except you had to charge forward to engage in the assault. I'd really like to see this in a game - I expect farsight would find himself out of position and sent packing to a counterassault.

How many points is this hypothetical farsight unit worth? I'd wager much more than a single tactical squad. It should seem obvious that they can out muscle the tactical squad, but the tactics you are proposing are suspect.

How exactly are multitrackers on vehicles useless??

A multitracker lets you fire as a fast vehicle (so 2 weapons when going cruising right). And a Warfish has a burst cannon and smart missile system. What am I missing? Move 12" every turn claim 5+ cover and have full firepower. Without the multi-tracker I would only get 1 weapon if I moved 6".

Ah my bad about multi trackers, thought fast vehicles just gave you the additional flat out movement now! derp

Actually, any vehicle can flat out now. Not just the fast ones.

A Town Called Malus wrote:

Bobug wrote:where do you get hit and run from? Retro thrusters is one per army and disallows drones :s

One character starts on his own with it but nothing disallows him from joining a unit after deployment and granting them Hit and Run.

That has not been settled as of yet. Has it? There is a question of whether the restriction is just for purchasing or if it actually limits unit composition. Before running off on an assaumption, I would take it to YMDC. Especially, before trying in a tourny game.

Thaylen wrote:Actually, any vehicle can flat out now. Not just the fast ones.

Yeah but fast vehicles have a bigger flat out movement, I thought that was their only benefit

Dracos wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:may words

Except you had to charge forward to engage in the assault. I'd really like to see this in a game - I expect farsight would find himself out of position and sent packing to a counterassault.

How many points is this hypothetical farsight unit worth? I'd wager much more than a single tactical squad. It should seem obvious that they can out muscle the tactical squad, but the tactics you are proposing are suspect.

I am not so sure a counterassault would be that bad. Twin linked plasma rapid fire overwatch with D3 flamers hits per suit are pretty deadly to any counterassault. At least that’s what I want to try.

As for price not that much the cheapest end are twin linked flamer with blacksun filter dirt cheap compared to normal battlesuits and deadly at close range. 272 for Farisight and 3 more suits is as cheap as you could go although I think I would want to go the plasma route for more long range firepower. I would guess between 300points to 500points depending on what you take.

I don't think challenges will be a problem for a farsight blob, crisis shas'vre are characters according to the summary in the BRB. Give one guy 2+ armor and FNP to accept challenges from PW characters, and a shield generator guy to accept a PF one, and just let farsight lay into the target squad. Also as a unit of characters, everyone has look out sir so we can still pull allocation shinanigans.

DarbNilbirts wrote:I don't think challenges will be a problem for a farsight blob, crisis shas'vre are characters according to the summary in the BRB. Give one guy 2+ armor and FNP to accept challenges from PW characters, and a shield generator guy to accept a PF one, and just let farsight lay into the target squad. Also as a unit of characters, everyone has look out sir so we can still pull allocation shinanigans.

In the FAQ it says that the Shas'Vre from a bodyguard are not characters, unlike those from the normal teams, or GK Paladins for some reason.

Lucre wrote:God your shooting is going to be deterring charges and wiping transports out now! Good for tau! Especially given the fortifications.

I'm curious about the meat shields though, should they be expendable or tough? Charging or just spaciously distributed?

Tau are looking really cute. I really hope they give you guys some of those neato enormous fliers soon, or maybe something akin to a SC carrier with respect to drones.

Right...Forgeworld....Tau Manta...Biggest flyer.

Dracos wrote:Except challenges will kill any crisis suit assault. You get challenged, then either give up a large percentage of your attacks, or risk having a sgt smack you with his power fist. If the drone controller dies, the drones die at the end of the phase. Sure, you might survive on the drones higher ini before losing it, but why did you assault in the first place?

Crisis suit assaulting is essentially directly countered by challenges by powerfist sgts.

Crisis suites should still never assault, especially considering you get to bounce back and give the opponent a chance to fail his assault, and worst case you still get your overwatch.

I can't remember where I read this but, drones taken as wargear take on the unit type of the controlling model, so if a 'character' takes drones then the drone takes his type, which includes 'character' which means that the drones could/can accept/issue challenges for the unit/character.

Cheers

Andrew

Played a game yesterday - 1500 points, Tau empire with Necron auxiliary. My opponent used chaos demons, with 2 flying daemon princes in his heavy slots. We rolled 'big guns never tire' mission which made our heavies scoring units as well as victory points.

So, I ended up winning by prettymuch shooting him off the table (a destroyer lord/wraith unit tied up some bloodletters/great unclean one for about 3 turns, buying me time). The roll that did it for me was my home objective was a 'skyfire nexus', giving my annihilation barge, railgun hammerheads, and fire warriors skyfire. I was able to knock the daemon princes out of the sky and then finish them off with ground shooting.

Skyfire nexus. Tau's best friend until we get our flyer.

Any rumors on the flyer kit tau are supposed to get? last rumors I heard were in august and that it used markerlights 'in a new way'. I suspect it will fire tracer lights at flyers, giving ground units skyfire if they target the flyer using the marker light. Just an idea but would mesh well with the tau mont'ka approach to warfare.

Im interested in the new preferred enemy rules. As they now apply to shooting, I will finally be able to find a use for my ethereal, though his only purpose is to get killed as soon as possible.
It will basically twin link all my suits and fire warriors