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So as we all know there's an Ork list which is known as the Green Tide, and it basically uses a massive amount of troops to overwhelm the opponent. So why isn't there a Tau version of this using the Kroot and Fire Warriors who gain massive benefits from Ethereals (who are cheap in points) and then use things like Piranha to grab objectives while adding to the tide by vomiting out their drones to further clog up the board as needed?

I mean sure, the Tau get access to large and expensive weapons that can be very powerful, and they're most likely more expensive than the Orks themselves, but it feels like the amount of "free" drones they can get and Kroot can really bog down tables while the units that generate the drones have very fast mobility to grab objectives. They also just have the advantage of gaining massive benefit from the Ethereals, and their special "supporting fire" rules to cleanse boards before anything even reaches them. It just feels like the Tau could potentially out Ork the Orks in this particular aspect given some list fiddling and more.

Has this been tried before or am I just missing something critical here?

Fluff wise, there are no blue tides because the Tau try to avoid the loss of life instead of throwing more bodies at the opponent's guns until they overheat and run out of ammunition.

If you wanted to try this in a game by maxing out squads of firewarriors and kroot with a minimal number of the fancy toys. That would be an interesting army to play with and face.

It's been tried. Big swarms of kroot as troops choices, and big swarms of drones with a commander who makes them BS 5, and can give them Ignores Cover, are both choices that can work out well. Unfortunately, relying on their battle suits tends to work out a little better for Tau, and that's the direction most Tau players take it.

 the Signless wrote:
Fluff wise, there are no blue tides because the Tau try to avoid the loss of life instead of throwing more bodies at the opponent's guns until they overheat and run out of ammunition.

If you wanted to try this in a game by maxing out squads of firewarriors and kroot with a minimal number of the fancy toys. That would be an interesting army to play with and face.

Sure, and that makes sense, but fluff wise if they never reach your wall of shooting death no one will die. As for the other situations, well drones aren't lives (are they?).

I do think it would be interesting to try, since I'm a big fan of large armies as opposed to deathstars, but I can see certain issues with it. I'd still always take at least one Riptide because I'm in love with the model, though it's probably wrong.

 Jimsolo wrote:
It's been tried. Big swarms of kroot as troops choices, and big swarms of drones with a commander who makes them BS 5, and can give them Ignores Cover, are both choices that can work out well. Unfortunately, relying on their battle suits tends to work out a little better for Tau, and that's the direction most Tau players take it.

Hm, interesting. Are there any lists and reports on it? I'd love to give them a read.

The thing is, I don't think this army would have troops as the back bone despite having a heavy amount, but rather Piranha (which I think are cool models). The reason for this being that they can move a long distance and create drone walls by disembarking their drones, while also being rather cheap when you take into account the cost of the drones their producing. Once the drones are in place they can create a lot of barriers for others, while the Piranha has enough mobility to capture what it needs. The big problem with this being that Piranha are fast attack, so trying to max out on them would limit the number of markerlights you can take and that's awkward, but there are other sources of those (Sniper Drone teams), and hopefully the sheer volume of shots makes up for it too.

Actually this was a pretty powerful build at the beginning of 7ed. It was called "fish of fury". It was 6 units of firewarriors max capacity in devil fish. They would jump out with an ethereal and rain down death and destruction.

There was also the "fire fortress" that was semi popular toward the end of 6ed before maelstorm objectives. ie tons of fire warriors behind an ADL with riptides going out and contesting objectives. Only worked due to the score at the end of the game mechanics though so I wouldn't recommend it now (nor even then as it was a very rock paper scissors army).

It is still pretty good but just doesn't have the numbers, speed, and flexibility to be top tier.

BTW the reason that "blue tide" doesn't work is;
*Low durability per point. ie all other "tide" armies depend on their troops being being too plentiful for you to realistically kill in the limited number of turns available. This is just not true for Tau.
*Poor mobility. The other tide armies can run during their shooting phases and have abilities to help them move up the board. Fearless also helps to keep them from getting pinned or falling back.
*Lack of target flexibility. Kroot and fire warriors lack the ability to engage any and all targets like green tide orks and the other tide armies. There are just too many units out there that can charge into max units of kroot and fire warriors and kill them all with little to no return damage. What do kroot do to AV12 anything? What do fire warriors do to a dreadknight? Having a bunch of these units thus actually hurts the Tau player as the melee unit in question can then bounce from melee to melee and stay locked in combat for the most part, thus avoiding the Tau shooting.
*Range. The lack of melee ability, mobility, and target flexibility could all be countered if the weapons were at least 36"+ however they are 24-30" across the board with no real upgrade possible. This means if you shoot anything it is probably getting to shoot you back (no JSJ shenanigans). That is pretty much the entire story. The Tau troop units are very good at killing other infantry as long as they can overwhelm them but they usually flop in a stand up fight due to a combination of the above factors.

Don't let my criticisms mislead you. Fire warrior and kroot are actually very good for what they are. They just are not tip of the spear point units.

Ovion on this forum in particular was very fond of his Beige Tide for a while.

His army was four big squads of Fire Warriors, two Ethereals, and three massive units of Sniper Drones. The sheer number of S5 and Sniper shots it put out per turn was insane.

I play Deff Skullz, so my Green Tide is actually a Blue Tide.

 ansacs wrote:
Actually this was a pretty powerful build at the beginning of 7ed. It was called "fish of fury". It was 6 units of firewarriors max capacity in devil fish. They would jump out with an ethereal and rain down death and destruction.

There was also the "fire fortress" that was semi popular toward the end of 6ed before maelstorm objectives. ie tons of fire warriors behind an ADL with riptides going out and contesting objectives. Only worked due to the score at the end of the game mechanics though so I wouldn't recommend it now (nor even then as it was a very rock paper scissors army).

It is still pretty good but just doesn't have the numbers, speed, and flexibility to be top tier.

BTW the reason that "blue tide" doesn't work is;
*Low durability per point. ie all other "tide" armies depend on their troops being being too plentiful for you to realistically kill in the limited number of turns available. This is just not true for Tau.
*Poor mobility. The other tide armies can run during their shooting phases and have abilities to help them move up the board. Fearless also helps to keep them from getting pinned or falling back.
*Lack of target flexibility. Kroot and fire warriors lack the ability to engage any and all targets like green tide orks and the other tide armies. There are just too many units out there that can charge into max units of kroot and fire warriors and kill them all with little to no return damage. What do kroot do to AV12 anything? What do fire warriors do to a dreadknight? Having a bunch of these units thus actually hurts the Tau player as the melee unit in question can then bounce from melee to melee and stay locked in combat for the most part, thus avoiding the Tau shooting.
*Range. The lack of melee ability, mobility, and target flexibility could all be countered if the weapons were at least 36"+ however they are 24-30" across the board with no real upgrade possible. This means if you shoot anything it is probably getting to shoot you back (no JSJ shenanigans). That is pretty much the entire story. The Tau troop units are very good at killing other infantry as long as they can overwhelm them but they usually flop in a stand up fight due to a combination of the above factors.

Don't let my criticisms mislead you. Fire warrior and kroot are actually very good for what they are. They just are not tip of the spear point units.

A lot of these points are true, but emp nades' can do a hurting on knights and believe kroot can outflank.

Also Green tide is an actual formation. Its not just running a bunch of separate squads of boyz and overrunning the field. It is a giant squad (100+) of boyz all being one with Gork(or possibly mork).

Also I'd say tau would get shredded if they just started thowing troops at targets.

When I came in here I figured we were talking about a tide of smurfs.

My lists usually have 48 Fire Warriors in them and I would have more if I had the models (c'mon new Fire Warrior sculpts). 12 Fire Warriors are actually statistically equal in durability to 3 crisis suits when being shot at by bolters and with weapons added the Fire Warriors are generally cheaper. Now I wouldn't call 48 Fire Warriors a tide by any means but get enough Fire Warriors and the Ethereal Storm of Fire becomes more like a Pulse Hurricane (the Ethereal is rather fittingly the eye of the storm). Now a Cad of 6 units of Fire Warriors and an Ethereal (with a devilfish + dpod) is roughly 800 points so you could take 2 CADs in an 1850 list plus 250 points for your AV needs. That's 144 Fire Warriors which is theoretically making 432 Pulse Rifle shots a turn (mother of god imagine the overwatch). Now this is highly unrealistic but even half that number of shots is roughly 220 which still terrifying.

Now the problem with pulse spam is you can't really punch through 2+ armor that well (terminators aren't that much of an issue but something like a dreadknight would be) and rerollable saves would greatly diminish the effectiveness of volume of fire tactics. If you had half the number of Fire Warriors then its a much more manageable number of infantry still with a lot of volume of fire. I definitely can see taking 6 full units of Fire Warriors (or two CADs full of 6 man units for more MSU tactics) as an infantry core while you bring your suits and markerlight sources to provide the surgical element to your Fire Warrior's dice spam tactics.

i have seen some no suit / blue tides tau with fire warriors and some dones, tanks & kroot with the older tau codexes they worked really good vs my foot slogging orks. It might be less popular since you will actually have to buy, paint and transport more models and the suits are just really good in killing most of the modern stuff.

I have played against this in a local RTT. One friend ran big squads of fire warriors, a Riptide, and a couple outflanking squads of Kroot with Ethereals for buffs. We played on a very, very open table and he just shot my Necrons (5th Ed Codex) off the table. In certain environments it was competitive; but I think it still suffers a lot from vulnerability to fast, CC units; drop pod flamers/heavy flamers, ignores cover templates (TFC) and the such. I like the idea and at the time it was very much against the Tau/Tau Suits/Riptide lists that were very nasty.

Awesome, this has given me a lot to think about.

Maybe "Blue Tide" is a bad way to refer to it, because the more I think about it it wouldn't be troops, as much as other units, and it wouldn't play like the Ork Green Tide, but rather the Tau version of it which is very shooty.

What about just taking max Piranha squads, has that been done? At three squads of five, you only pay 600 points for which you get 15 Piranha and 30 gun drones you can use as blockades.

It feels like that would give you a lot of mobility in addition to the fire power for very little cost.

There is one other weakness of Tau preventing this playstyle that people haven't pointed out: low Leadership. Sure, Ethereals can grant stubborn, but that doesnt help when you max out at LD8 on a basic squad. On e failed check and your units are going the wrong way. Fire Warriors also have low durability for their cost, and maxing out on infantry means fewer points for covering the rest of your bases. Blob Tau has all the weaknesses of blob IG with none of the strengths.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
There is one other weakness of Tau preventing this playstyle that people haven't pointed out: low Leadership. Sure, Ethereals can grant stubborn, but that doesnt help when you max out at LD8 on a basic squad. On e failed check and your units are going the wrong way. Fire Warriors also have low durability for their cost, and maxing out on infantry means fewer points for covering the rest of your bases. Blob Tau has all the weaknesses of blob IG with none of the strengths.

The Ethereal's aura is leadership 10 for every Tau within 12" so it basically solves most leadership issues. Blob Tau is pure volume of fire at Str 5 which is very handy against the many T4 and T5 threats commonly seen on the battlefield (similar points value of guardsmen won't have the increased volume of fire to compensate for the effectiveness of Str 5 guns against higher toughness enemies). Fire Warriors have the benefit of being fairly cheap with good guns, respectable armor, and good range. They also benefit greatly from the cost effective synergy from an Ethereal which can greatly boost the firepower of numerous squads for dirt cheap (even if you factor in the devilfish it needs to stay relatively safe). Also markerlights can further boost the effectiveness of Fire Warrior shooting but I tend to ignore them for comparisons as markerlights are often "consumed" by more important units like crisis suits, riptides, broadsides, hammerheads, etc.

 Vankraken wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
There is one other weakness of Tau preventing this playstyle that people haven't pointed out: low Leadership. Sure, Ethereals can grant stubborn, but that doesnt help when you max out at LD8 on a basic squad. On e failed check and your units are going the wrong way. Fire Warriors also have low durability for their cost, and maxing out on infantry means fewer points for covering the rest of your bases. Blob Tau has all the weaknesses of blob IG with none of the strengths.

The Ethereal's aura is leadership 10 for every Tau within 12" so it basically solves most leadership issues. Blob Tau is pure volume of fire at Str 5 which is very handy against the many T4 and T5 threats commonly seen on the battlefield (similar points value of guardsmen won't have the increased volume of fire to compensate for the effectiveness of Str 5 guns against higher toughness enemies). Fire Warriors have the benefit of being fairly cheap with good guns, respectable armor, and good range. They also benefit greatly from the cost effective synergy from an Ethereal which can greatly boost the firepower of numerous squads for dirt cheap (even if you factor in the devilfish it needs to stay relatively safe). Also markerlights can further boost the effectiveness of Fire Warrior shooting but I tend to ignore them for comparisons as markerlights are often "consumed" by more important units like crisis suits, riptides, broadsides, hammerheads, etc.

Leadership 10 is good, but you can still be pinned, affected by Fear, fall back, and be easily swept in combat. Fire Wariors die just as easily as any other T3 4+ infantry to massed fire. Ethereals give away free victory points. In short, Tau should not blob up, as it just makes it easier to kill lots of them at once.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
There is one other weakness of Tau preventing this playstyle that people haven't pointed out: low Leadership. Sure, Ethereals can grant stubborn, but that doesnt help when you max out at LD8 on a basic squad. On e failed check and your units are going the wrong way. Fire Warriors also have low durability for their cost, and maxing out on infantry means fewer points for covering the rest of your bases. Blob Tau has all the weaknesses of blob IG with none of the strengths.

The Ethereal's aura is leadership 10 for every Tau within 12" so it basically solves most leadership issues. Blob Tau is pure volume of fire at Str 5 which is very handy against the many T4 and T5 threats commonly seen on the battlefield (similar points value of guardsmen won't have the increased volume of fire to compensate for the effectiveness of Str 5 guns against higher toughness enemies). Fire Warriors have the benefit of being fairly cheap with good guns, respectable armor, and good range. They also benefit greatly from the cost effective synergy from an Ethereal which can greatly boost the firepower of numerous squads for dirt cheap (even if you factor in the devilfish it needs to stay relatively safe). Also markerlights can further boost the effectiveness of Fire Warrior shooting but I tend to ignore them for comparisons as markerlights are often "consumed" by more important units like crisis suits, riptides, broadsides, hammerheads, etc.

Leadership 10 is good, but you can still be pinned, affected by Fear, fall back, and be easily swept in combat. Fire Wariors die just as easily as any other T3 4+ infantry to massed fire. Ethereals give away free victory points. In short, Tau should not blob up, as it just makes it easier to kill lots of them at once.

If leadership 10 isn't good enough for a non melee unit (can't get much more non melee then tau) then I don't know what is (sometimes going to ground is a blessing so fearless can actually end up hurting you). Fear is hardly a concern for Tau when they hit most things on 5's anyways while getting sweeped is often times a good thing as you don't want 2-3 Fire Warriors keeping the charging enemy locked in combat on your shooting phase. Pinning might be annoying but its also annoying for everything else not fearless. Fire Warriors also operate in relatively small units so they naturally have MSU tendencies which is good for making enemy fire inefficient. Key to using Ethereals is knowing how to hide them and if you can't hide it then you stick them in a D pod devilfish so it has an AV12 3+ jinking skimmer to help protect it from harm.

 Vankraken wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
There is one other weakness of Tau preventing this playstyle that people haven't pointed out: low Leadership. Sure, Ethereals can grant stubborn, but that doesnt help when you max out at LD8 on a basic squad. On e failed check and your units are going the wrong way. Fire Warriors also have low durability for their cost, and maxing out on infantry means fewer points for covering the rest of your bases. Blob Tau has all the weaknesses of blob IG with none of the strengths.

The Ethereal's aura is leadership 10 for every Tau within 12" so it basically solves most leadership issues. Blob Tau is pure volume of fire at Str 5 which is very handy against the many T4 and T5 threats commonly seen on the battlefield (similar points value of guardsmen won't have the increased volume of fire to compensate for the effectiveness of Str 5 guns against higher toughness enemies). Fire Warriors have the benefit of being fairly cheap with good guns, respectable armor, and good range. They also benefit greatly from the cost effective synergy from an Ethereal which can greatly boost the firepower of numerous squads for dirt cheap (even if you factor in the devilfish it needs to stay relatively safe). Also markerlights can further boost the effectiveness of Fire Warrior shooting but I tend to ignore them for comparisons as markerlights are often "consumed" by more important units like crisis suits, riptides, broadsides, hammerheads, etc.

Leadership 10 is good, but you can still be pinned, affected by Fear, fall back, and be easily swept in combat. Fire Wariors die just as easily as any other T3 4+ infantry to massed fire. Ethereals give away free victory points. In short, Tau should not blob up, as it just makes it easier to kill lots of them at once.

If leadership 10 isn't good enough for a non melee unit (can't get much more non melee then tau) then I don't know what is (sometimes going to ground is a blessing so fearless can actually end up hurting you). Fear is hardly a concern for Tau when they hit most things on 5's anyways while getting sweeped is often times a good thing as you don't want 2-3 Fire Warriors keeping the charging enemy locked in combat on your shooting phase. Pinning might be annoying but its also annoying for everything else not fearless. Fire Warriors also operate in relatively small units so they naturally have MSU tendencies which is good for making enemy fire inefficient. Key to using Ethereals is knowing how to hide them and if you can't hide it then you stick them in a D pod devilfish so it has an AV12 3+ jinking skimmer to help protect it from harm.

You are right. Leadership 10 bubble is good. I was thinking that you would use them in a giant blob a la IG, but I was mistaken. Unlike blob guard, you want to avoid melee as much as possible. The problem with lots of small Fire Warrior teams is that they are comparatively easy to kill with shooting, or withered down to reduced effectiveness. Beware of fast melee units and chaff units to tie you up, as those will kill both Fire Warriors and Devilfish and any Pathfinders that happen to be in the way.

Dont forget earth powered stubborn in combat.

take multiple ethreals.

also Fish o fury was a 4th or 3rd edition thing not 7th.

a tactic could of shared the name but its an entirly different level of cheeze back then.

 Desubot wrote:
Dont forget earth powered stubborn in combat.

take multiple ethreals.

also Fish o fury was a 4th or 3rd edition thing not 7th.

a tactic could of shared the name but its an entirly different level of cheeze back then.

If anything from the Tau codex has gotten into melee, something has gone terribly wrong.

Wait, so what's up with the Firesight Marksman not having networked markerlights or at least the ability to shoot units other than what the drones are shooting at?

A squad of Firesights without the drones, or a much smaller amount (one and one base unit comp for example), would be really good for a Piranha spam list since they can't take Pathfinders D:

I've tried using Kroot blobs alongside Pathfinders with recon drone as to allow them to deploy from my opponent's side of the board based on ATT's "Encirclements of Rinyon" idea


It really helps me mulch weak backfield objective-camping units I can't normally reach since midfield is always a nightmare to handle

Otherwise 20-40+ dudes suddenly showing up on your side of the field can be distracting and pulls away some pressure from my army's more immobile elements


(Fire warrior on the dino is an objective a squad of cultists were holding before Kroot shot them to death)

Downsides are if Pathy's don't roll in and Kroots do, the gimmick is scrambled, or if everyone shows up according to plan then expect to have on blob removed by the end of your opponent's turn since Kroot are still kinda fragile like in the previous book with low Toughness, Leadership, and Saves.

A massed infantry cadre with ethereals in charge is quite terrifying. As noted, 6 full fire warrior units and an ethereal isn't army-breakingly expensive and - more importantly - only needs to get to the middle of the table to be effective.

Unlike a 'green tide' which runs right across the board then beats you to death with power klaws, there are a lot of things an infantry cadre can't hurt - so you'll need supporting units with railguns and plasma weaponry, but you'll have the points left for them.

Kroot coming in from the flanks are also good, but you can't afford to invest too much in them. The big problem with this list is that kroot rifles and pulse rifles are useless or essentially useless against anything whose name ends in 'knight', and those are increasingly common on the table. It's also not capable of dealing with wave serpents, chimeras (unless you can get on their side armour), dudes in bunkers, etc, etc. You have a realistic chance of seeing an army on the other side of the board that you cannot actually hurt from long range, and whilst EMP grenades give you options, if your antitank plan is fire warriors on foot trying to do a banzai charge, it's not gonna end well.

Jaxler wrote:A lot of these points are true, but emp nades' can do a hurting on knights and believe kroot can outflank.

Both of these are true however the emp nades while good against vehicles don't allow the fire warriors to hold their ground against anything else in melee (literally any other unit is better at melee) thus inflexible and incapable of walking up the board.

Kroot do have outflank but again that only helps mobility for 1 turn (ie they cannot get away from scary stuff or snatch objectives on different sides of the board). It is also very unreliable as you need 2 rolls to go your way (reserves and outflank board edge).

Desubot wrote:also Fish o fury was a 4th or 3rd edition thing not 7th.

a tactic could of shared the name but its an entirly different level of cheeze back then.

Definitely agree. Though most players probably were not around for it. It has come back somewhat in 7ed as the changes to jink and the need for mobile scoring in maelstorm/tournies and the addition of ObjSec on troop transports has considerably buffed it. It was actually pretty good briefly until the 7ed books started coming out with such high damage builds. (it actually works pretty well against necrons btw, one of the few builds that can table a decurion)