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So I ran a game the other day where I had a very clear lack of ap 1/2. Thus i'm thinking of re configuring some of my suits from dual missile pods to dual plasma rifles. So, here's the question. Should these suits be in a unit? Solo? Should they try to run up the board? Deep Strike?

In the league i'm in, formations aren't allowed, CADs/allies only.

It's best to leave AP1-2 to the big suits, and focus of rate of fire on a the smaller suits. This is because rate of fire is king, and the big suits can rate of fire low AP better. Suicide Fusion Monats are still a thing, but not as useful with Hull Points. Multiple S7 AP4 is still better for stripping HP and wounds.

SJ

So as I only have the one riptide, would it be better to keep it with the ion accelerator over the HBC?

Depends on what you want to use him for. With Early Warming and a Velocity Tracker, HBC will kill flyers. If not, and you are worried about bad reactor rolls, stick with Ion.

SJ

I agree with the above regarding Crisis Suit armament, but I'd probably stick with the IA on your Riptide. At least that'll always have AP2, not just a bunch of rending shots 2/3 of the time.

Right on, thanks for the advice. I might have actually just come into possession of a second tide, so I may run both. One of each.

 Pogman42 wrote:
So I ran a game the other day where I had a very clear lack of ap 1/2. Thus i'm thinking of re configuring some of my suits from dual missile pods to dual plasma rifles. So, here's the question. Should these suits be in a unit? Solo? Should they try to run up the board? Deep Strike?

In the league i'm in, formations aren't allowed, CADs/allies only.

Three plasma rifle Crisis Suits is a very strong unit on the offence, and with a few drones and judicious jetpack use can stay alive well enough to do that damage.

Of course I run using Farsight rules so they're troops, and tend to run other things which can meet my 5/5 and 7/4 spam needs so don't really need the Crisis suits to fill that role.

I will say I'm not sure what Jeffersonian is talking about when he says biggers suits can rate of fire low AP better, 4 S6 AP2 shots for roughly 50 points is about as much rate of fire for cost as you can get in that niche.

If you are setting up Plasma Rifles on suits, your best bet is to play them aggressively as you need to get within 12 inches of the target to get the maximum form the suits, which more or less means Deep Striking.

As for how many suits you need, each plasma rifle within 12" kills 1+ 2/3 Space Marines or 1 + 1/9 Terminators. This means to wipe out a squad of 5 Space Marines you need 3 Plasma Rifles. To wipe out a squad of 5 Terminators means you'd need 5 Plasma Rifles.

The above factors ignore Ballsitic Skill which is flexible for Tau, but in a no Markerlight condition you'd nee twice as many Plasma Rifles and in a moderate Markerlight condition you'd still need about 50% more plasma rifles.

So, realistically speaking, you want 6 or more plasma rifles in the unit (at least 3 Crisis Suits) and in practical terms you probably want at least 10 rifles (5 suits) if you are killing minimum terminator squads.

It's also important to note that 5 models crosses the 4x+1 threshold meaning you have to lose 2 crisis suits to force a morale check instead of 1.

So yes, I'd say 5 suits is a good number.

Running 5 suits also leaves you with a 260-pt unit that's pretty darn fragile and relatively tough to hide due to a large footprint, however. I'd still prefer individual suits to anything else outside of a Crisis Bomb.

I will say I'm not sure what Jeffersonian is talking about when he says biggers suits can rate of fire low AP better, 4 S6 AP2 shots for roughly 50 points is about as much rate of fire for cost as you can get in that niche.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I interpreted his statement to mean that big suits are more reliable sources of low-AP firepower, not necessarily a better source of pure damage output. Crisis suits are our best choice for raw firepower in just about every avenue, but it's tough to succeed with an army full of 52-pt 2-wound, 3+ save models. They're going to get wiped rather quickly, and with them will go your offensive output. Riptides aren't amazing because of how much damage they do; they're awesome because they deal an above-average amount of hurt without ever dying, so you can count on having that damage source around for most of the game. Crisis suits drop the pain, but they're going to vaporize rapidly, especially if in squads.

With that said, 2 CADs can get you 12 individual suits to place around the board as you need. That's a solid brick of firepower for 624pts, and it'll be tough to remove, given that it's 12 different units. Give it a shot!

Yeah I wouldn't run 5 suits under any normal circumstance, generally I run either three with plasma or suicide monats with fusion.

Whilst the riptide does have the strengths of sucking firepower away from the rest of your forces then tanking it whilst putting out consistent damage through the game, I find it more a blunt instrument when shooting than a scalpel. Rarely do I remove anything with an individual riptide, rather I spray off a few reliable wounds.

The Y'vahra is much better for that kind of thing if you can get one. It'll do massive amounts of damage flexibly whilst acting as an attention sink.

From the codex though, as I said the larger suits tend to be more hammer than scalpel. Three marker-boosted crisis suits will generally gut their target, and three fusion are pretty good at superheavy hunting be it vehicle or creature. (They won't necessarily kill, but can certainly land a crippling blow that can enable a kill.)

I favour going for a Mont'ka, specialist units targetting key units whilst pumping weight of fire into infantry using burst cannon platforms.

I'm with you on all counts. Y'Vahras are one of my favorite models in terms of both looks and function, so they prowl the battlefield frequently for me.

The best source of AP2 available to us is the Y'Vahra. In competitive games I bring two and they just devastate. Running one at high points levels is tough because they're not as resilient as normal tides and operate very close to the enemy. There better be a lot of terrain. But they are by far my favorite Tau unit and if you're bringing a CAD anyway you should really consider snapping 1-2 up. Great model, fun, fulfills your goal, and will kick the feth out of people.

If you really want AP2 units. I think broadsides do it the better than crisis

double plas crisis will cost you 57 points with the proper gear
TL rail TL plas boradside with the proper gear is 75 points.

Your firepower is about 50% more effective and your durability is too. The railrifle also has really good range and ap1 (only 8 str thought) Anyways - been toying around with 2 single rail rifle broadsides and with interceptor they do pretty well.

OFC there is the Y'Vahra