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One of the cool things that have come about from 7th Edition is the introduction of new FOCs unique to each faction. With that in mind, I'd thought I'd spitball something for Tau that would match their lore and might be interesting to play:


Tau Elite/Battlesuit Detachment

Restrictions:
- All units in this detachment must have the Tau Faction.
- The Warlord must use a Battlesuit (i.e. cannot be an Ethereal, Cadre Fireblade, Aun'Shi, Aun'Va, Darkstrider).

Command benefits:
- Ideal Mission Commander: If this Detachment is chosen as your Primary Detachment, you can re-roll the result when rolling on the Warlord Traits table.
- Death From Above: The entire army must start in reserve. Half the army (rounded up) must then deploy on the first turn; using special deployments (e.g. Deep strike, Outflank) where possible. All units gain Pinning until the following Movement phase. Flyers may not be deployed on the first turn as normal.

Compulsory units:
- 1 HQ
- 2 Elite

Optional:
- 2 HQ
- 2 Troop
- 4 Elite
- 3 Fast attack
- 2 Heavy support
- 1 Lord of war/Super heavy


Thoughts?


Previous/Outdated versions:

Version 1 wrote:Tau Elite/Battlesuit Detachment

Restrictions:
- All units in this detachment must have the Tau Faction.
- The Warlord must use a Battlesuit (i.e. cannot be an Ethereal, Cadre Fireblade, Aun'Shi, Aun'Va, Darkstrider).

Command benefits:
- Ideal Mission Commander: If this Detachment is chosen as your Primary Detachment, you can re-roll the result when rolling on the Warlord Traits table.
- Death From Above: When Deep Striking, Elite and HQ units may reduce their scatter by the highest Ballistic Skill in the unit.


Compulsory units:
- 1 HQ
- 2 Elite

Optional:
- 2 HQ
- 3 Troop
- 4 Elite
- 2 Fast attack
- 3 Heavy support
- 1 Lord of war
- 0 Fortification

Where are your negatives? Apart from losing Objective Secured i see no reason people wouldn't take this over the normal force org, and that is not the point of these different force orgs.

This is quite literately a normal force org +1 which gives you 4 Riptides, 3 Buff Commanders. What these different force orgs are meant to do is take the basic ones, then add to some and take away others. For example this list should have less access to Heavy Support and NO access to Fortifications because, as you put yourself, the theme is they are falling from the sky.

You have to put more thought into it then just blatantly thinking ''Lets add more Riptides and Battlesuits'' because to me, that's all this is.

I thought the negative and difference from normal organisation charts would be the vastly fewer Troops.

My thought process is that the army has less access to Troops; hence the necessity of the improved Deep Strike. I was quite tempted to reduce the number of Fast Attacks but was somewhat cautious seeing as how most FOCs seem to be based around multiples of 3 (with the exception of HQs, LoWs and Fortifications). Perhaps 2 is in order? As for the loss of Fortifications, is is that big an impact since I rarely ever see people using them. Though I supposed with fewer Troops, people would be more tempted to take them to better protect the Troops.

Also, bear in mind that when it comes to taking lots of Battlesuits, this FOC is nothing compared to Farsight Enclave; which can take 6 Crisis teams and 4 Riptides with no debate; and possibly 10 Crisis teams altogether depending on how you interpret the rules.

When do you EVER see a competitive Tau list running a lot of troops? Troops for Tau are a Tax that take up your valuable Battle Suit points, they have shoddy leadership, low toughness and so-so armour. Their only redeeming feature is that they have strong guns, but due to their mediocre BS they cause the inconvenience of sucking up Markerlights that more important units could use.

Losing objective secured is less of a negative for Tau then most armies anyway, because if there is a unit of Tau Fire Warriors in the opponents deployment zone to snatch an objective from under their noses, something in that game has gone very wrong.

I don't understand the theme of this list, to me it seems you want them to be fast and hard hitting, hence they deepstrike better. So to stick with this theme you...give the army access to more Broadsides, More fortifications and a Lord of War choice (Do Tau even HAVE a Lord of War???). In recompense you only allow them to take 2 troops (what you'd take normally) and maybe take away some Fast attack slots (Tau fast attack is TERRIBLE. Save for Pathfinders what else will people miss out on?).

Again, i don't think you thought this though.

At most you should be rerolling scatter, not potentially dropping distance by 5 inches.

Thanks for the feedback. I recognise that my initial layout was pretty poorly thought out beyond the mental image of an elite army of Tau comprised predominantly of Battlesuits. I've changed the effect of the command benefit and reduced the number of Troops and Heavy Support the army can deploy; while bringing the Fast Attack numbers back to 3. Hopefully, my new suggestion (see original post) will receive better feedback. My thought process for this new layout is to support an aggressive play style but at greater risk and with poorer support for the Elites; who will be the main damage dealers. This would hopefully be offset somewhat by having the initial drop team gain Pinning for the initial turn (representing the Tau army catching the enemy by surprise). Gameplay-wise it should help protect them from getting assaulted until reinforcements arrive.

Anyway, I've attached my original idea below for posterity.

Version 1 wrote:Tau Elite/Battlesuit Detachment

Restrictions:
- All units in this detachment must have the Tau Faction.
- The Warlord must use a Battlesuit (i.e. cannot be an Ethereal, Cadre Fireblade, Aun'Shi, Aun'Va, Darkstrider).

Command benefits:
- Ideal Mission Commander: If this Detachment is chosen as your Primary Detachment, you can re-roll the result when rolling on the Warlord Traits table.
- Death From Above: When Deep Striking, Elite and HQ units may reduce their scatter by the highest Ballistic Skill in the unit.


Compulsory units:
- 1 HQ
- 2 Elite

Optional:
- 2 HQ
- 3 Troop
- 4 Elite
- 2 Fast attack
- 3 Heavy support
- 1 Lord of war
- 0 Fortification