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Hey guys, so obviously 7th edition has given a change in the meta slightly but without playing a game yet I'd like to know what's the main deciding factors to my Tau army, who had a handful of games under in 6th edition due to me much preferring 5th, (The new codex was great, but I preferred 5E Ruleset). Now i want to start getting back into it at 7th Edition and would like to know what has changed for my army.

I ran mostly a mechanised force with Crisis Battlesuits. Devilfish FW's, Piranha, Crisis, Hammerheads were the main idea. I'd like to know if this is still effective now. Also, is the Riptide still amazing? I've always preferred Crisis suits for personal reasons but have before been tempted to take one in my army.

So leave your thoughts here and hopefully with a bit of assistance I can get round to writing my 7E List

Cheers

Welcome to the ranks of the Tau! to break down your questions:

-Devilfish are REALLY good right now especially with Smart Missiles and Disruption Pods as you always get a 3+ Jink with them now and since our weapons are TL it is almost always worth it to Jink. The "Fish of Fury" are definitely strong in this edition.

-Crisis Suits are great to especially with people moving away from S8 Ap3 weapons (like missile launchers) because of the change to Vehicles in this edition. They are a super mobile to help get to those ever important objectives and have lots of firepower to dish out.

-Piranhas are also very good, for only 40pts. you get x8 S5 AP5 shots, have a friend who spams them (runs x15 of them) with his mechanized Tau and it really kicks the snot out of a lot of the armies he faces. With the return of Vehicle spam in this edition it also is not a bad idea to equip them with Fusion Blasters.

-Hammerheads are Hammerheads, if they hit they will do great things usually, however with the change to Vehicles (needing a 7 on the chart to blow them up) it kind of nerfed their effectiveness as you need to hit, penetrate and then roll a 5+ to blow up the vehicle. Still good but not as good as it once was. Take Longstrike to help with the effectiveness of the unit as Preferred Enemy against Imperial Guard and their Tank spam is really useful.

-The Riptide is very strong especially if taken in groups of x3. Personally I think it gets a little to much hype (my buddy always seems to fail his Nova Reactor charge) but if it is able to get it off scary things can happen. I am with you as well, I prefer the Crisis Suits over the Riptide because I think they are cooler but you can never go wrong with having at least x1 or x2 Riptides in your army. Depending on what you want to do I would look at the Farsight Enclaves book as well since you get Crisis Suits as troops which is awesome! Hope this helps

 GoDz BuZzSaW wrote:

I ran mostly a mechanised force with Crisis Battlesuits. Devilfish FW's, Piranha, Crisis, Hammerheads were the main idea. I'd like to know if this is still effective now. Also, is the Riptide still amazing? I've always preferred Crisis suits for personal reasons but have before been tempted to take one in my army.

Well there's your problem. Devilfish is overpriced and Hammerhead plain old sucks, and in 7th it sucks even more. Really, there is absolutely no reason to use Hammerhead at all.
Riptide probably took a very slight nerf due to changes in Monstrous creature rules but it likely won't matter much.

Only issues with the devilfish is that they are overpriced for what they do when you could instead be putting points toward other things. As far as Hammerheads go they are still one of the best anti tank with that damn S10 Ap1 railgun BS. It is the bane basically all my armies tanks from battle wagons to vindicators. Overall Tau are still amazing especially Crisis suits with plasma being just insanely gross!

Sounds like you like Farsight Enclave.

gmaleron got most of it. But as note of the DF gun drones are really nice, becuase they don't have to snap-shot on the Jinx as they are passengers.

 fedorarogue wrote:
Only issues with the devilfish is that they are overpriced for what they do when you could instead be putting points toward other things. As far as Hammerheads go they are still one of the best anti tank with that damn S10 Ap1 railgun BS.

Hammerhead was pretty average AT platform even in the old Codex (where it's main role was anti.infantry, not anti-tank) and it has got worse since: odds of one shot inflicting decisive damage just aren't that high, and with 7th edition they got even lower. Railhead was OK back in the 5th when there was decent chance that it could cripple the enemy with just a glancing hit: now, most of the time you only inflict a loss of HP which does little good by itself.
Ion Cannon maybe isn't bad, but Riptide has better variant of same cannon in much better platform.

Devilfish would be great if they came with Dpods and SMS at their standard cost but because those put them into the triple digit cost range, I think their utility is limited.

Tau in general have fallen back into the middle of the pack. SM, Eldar and Necrons have risen up in 7th (well, Eldar were already there) because of Objective Secured Wave Serpents, Combat Squadding MSU rhino/drop pod spam, and AV13 wall respectively. It's realllllly tough to beat those lists with Tau.

Whatever you choose, holding territory is not our strong suit, nor has it ever been really. But especially now. I would try to maximize firepower. Hold nothing back. Our best chance is to play for the table or near table and then try to score objective at the end.

I feel like one of the greatest strengths of tau is that they can apply a pretty large portion of their firepower from turn one. Many armies have to wait for reserves, get into range, assault, etc.
Tau, thanks to their mobility, long range, or combination of both, can start shooting right off the bat and never have to stop.
I've found my games go the best when I cripple the enemy army right off the bat then worry about objective in the late game. This obviously doesn't work as well in maelstrom missions, but the general idea is the same.

Your general idea is actually very good right now. Hammerheads are a bit lack luster but still viable. I use it more because i love that big rail gun than the model's usefulness lol.

Devilfish are outright awesome right now. Theyre actually properly costed atm since now they score and can get a 3+ jink. 100pts for an AV12/11/10 3HP body with 3+ jink, ignores danger tests, that can score and tankshock is epic, especially when brought in pairs for an ethereal "drop" as ive been calling it (23 Firewarriors dumped off in 15" range of a target and ethereal invokes bonus fire for 69 shots).

Piranha are one of my favorite units right now. 200pts for 5 AV11 Fast Skimmers that gives me TWO units with a large footprint that force my opponent to deal with them before getting to the rest of my army. AV11 makes them just strong enough so common infantry cant kill them for squat (or at all in most cases), forcing either bigger weapons you would rather fire at my tanks/riptides/crisis suits or an assault, which delays you by quite a bit.
The gun drones on their own is annoying as gak to deal with, since its 10 wounds at T4 4+ armor shooting 20 TL shots that cause pinning. And they arent worth points since they came off a vehicle, so the opponent does NOT want to even bother shooting them. Even without a commander using a drone controller, they can cause some pretty nasty damage.

Riptide is as strong as it was before, just the "cheese" of it got removed since buffmanders can no longer join them and we have no battlebrothers anymore for psyker goodness. Proper marker support, or even on its own provided your dice dont hate you, its going to cause a lot of damage and is durable as gak.

Yeah I agree with Vineheart about Piranhas. They actually can function as a cheap tarpit/roadblock for Imperial Knights and their ilk. They just take up so much space. In addition to being able to use their fusion against said threats.