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As my farseer predicted, a local player has opted to sell his Tau stuff leaving me with the first pieces of my "hipster Tau" army. I want to run a force that utilizes lots of alien auxillia and other units that were overlooked in the era of the "monster mash." With vehicles getting a durability and popularity boost this edition, however, I'm struggling to find reliable ways to crack open durable enemy vehicles. We just don't seem to have a lot of high-strength, multi-damage weapons, and many of the ones we do have seem to be mounted exclusively on suits and MCs. The hammerhead's solid shot profile is solid enough (no pun intended), but it's offensively very similar to a dark lance or lascannon against most vehicles at a significantly higher price tag. In 7th, the humble pulse rifle could crack open an AV11 vehicle as reliably as necron gauss, but now they're just barely more effective at it than the humble boltgun.

So what am I missing? How do Tau open up vehicles these days? Should I be looking at some sort of structural analyzer + breachers combo? Do I just need to spam as many kroot guns as I can? Or is it more of a death by a thousand cuts situation where I point every gun in my army at a single target, accept that most of those guns won't do anything, and hope that I shave off enough wounds 1 at a time to make a difference?

Since you seem to aim at simply competing in casual games with a niche list, you should consider flyers. The Sunshark Bonber is relatively cheap, and is a versatile platform for both AT and anti-MEQ. It has the capacity for two Missile Pods, two Seeker Missiles, two interceptor drones and it's bomb feature at <200 points. It can move 20-50" and that should allow you to be within 15" range quite often. At that range, you have eight S7 -1 1 Dmg shots, four S7 -1 D3 Dmg shots, your seekers and your bomb.

If you're willing to shell out a little cash, consider the Tiger Shark AX-1-0. It has a macro weapon and an assortment of others; if you choose to fire its main gun you have to forego everything else but it's S18 -5 2D6 Dmg plus normal D3 mortal wounds dealt on a 6 to wound with rail. It costs substantially more than a Stormsurge, but it is hard to jill and should be vaporizing a tank/monster every turn.

Long strike is a non-flyer option and sadly the only real vehicle platform capable of efficient AT.

Fusion Blasters. Take them. You can put them on alot of units ( Commanders, Crisis, Stealth Suits, Piranhas ) and you could also take rail rifles on Pathfinders.

You don't

1st of all, Tau is like 65% Suits

So disqualifying them is basically saying you're not playing Tau

Second of all, Tau is insanely underpowered and one of the biggest reasons is that all our Anti Tank exploded in cost.

Broadsides used to be our main Anti Tank, it used to cost 65 points each. Now it costs 200 points.

Basically, Commander spam with Fusion Blaster is the only thing you got.

No suits? Well, it makes things more difficult. If i get it right, the only things other than suits that carry anti-tank weapons are vehicles and missile drones. s5-6 spam can be used as anti-tank to an extent, so fire warriors and breachers. Darkstrider and fireblade can buff their shooting a bit.

Out of all the vehicles, probably piranhas and hammerheads are the best anti-tank platforms. But you're really shooting yourself in the foot if you're not running crysis commanders.

Missile drones are too expensive for how fragile they are.

If you dont mind nailing you FW to one spot, small teams with the missile DS8 turret might be an option.

Cheers

Andrew

Hoo boy. Your screwed. Our dex is currently one of the worst in the game internally. The only viable anti-tank is commander fusion spam or in slightly more casual games regular crisis suit spam.

Maybe longstrike? Again more casual list, but don't expect great results.

That's it. Everything else not troops tends to be way over costed.

My approach with my Tau army is to keep them in a box and wait until the codex drops. I’d encourage you to do the same. That or just play some games for fun to get the feel of the army, but don’t worry too much about its effectiveness.

As others have noted, our index list is all over the place. A hammerhead is little better than a single lascannon. Fusion commanders are good, but even they aren’t that much better than stuff like quad-lascannon predators – especially when the marines have stratagems and chapter tactics to play with.

I’m not prepared to go out and buy a load of commanders and gun drones. I don’t want to be like the guys who bought a bunch of storm ravens, only for them to be nerfed after a couple of weeks.

Sorry that's not more helpful. Sometimes there's just no good answer.

More inefficient use of points in hammerheads, shooting 1 shot per turn, causing at best 6 saveable wounds and d3 unsaveable wounds, and at worst-while-succeeding, 1 wound. yipee...

unless you want to extra "hipster" your army, and have vespid "pilots" of crisis suits, but gluing on hunks of crisis suit bits onto vespid, and counts-as-suits rules, while not being normal looking suits.. you cannot reliably crack a tank w/o fusion-spam-mander

I played a casual Maelstrom game last night ad decided to try out some non-suit AT options. I took Longstrike on a Railhead and two Forgeworld Fire Support Hammerheads with SMS and Twin Plasma Cannons. Buffed by Longstrike, they were quite good. They all had two Seekers each as well. Over the course of the game they collectively killed a Redemptor dreadnought and two Repulsor tanks (all of which are T8 with 13-16 wounds and 3+). He was also Iron Hands so the Dreads were getting 6+ FNP.

I didn't have a single Fusion Blaster in the list. I still felt that I had sufficient AT. Definitely not a competitive option, but as a firebase in casual games, I think it's capable.

What about seeker missile options? Seems that if you get a bunch of them and some markerlights you can focus down a tank. Sure, it's not as efficient as melta commanders but it's an options here.

 koooaei wrote:
What about seeker missile options? Seems that of you getting a bunch of the and something markerlights you can focus down a tank. Sure, it's not as efficient as melta commanders but it's an options here.

Unless they buff Seeker Missiles to d3 damage... or at least even 2 damage...
They probably won't be viable. Most things that can take them are BS+4, and can only hold 2 of them.

Compare the Skyray to the Manticore

Skyray = 6 Seeker Missiles, 1 Mortal Wound each, Hit's on 6s unless supported by a different unit, in which case hits on 3s, 155 points
Manticore = 4 Storm Eagle Rockets, 2d6 Shots, S10, AP-2, d3D, Ignores LOS, 133 points

Rockets vs a Standard Tank
7 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 2/3 * 2 = 3.11 wounds per turn, 12.44 wounds total
vs Land Raider
7 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 2 = 2.33 wounds per turn, 9.33 wounds total
vs MEQ
7 * 1/2 * 5/6 * 2/3 = 1.94 wounds per turn, 7.77 dead total
vs TEQ
7 * 1/2 * 5/6 * 1/2 * ((1/3 * 1) + (2/3 * 2)) = 2.43 wounds per turn, 9.72 wounds total

6 Seekers vs well, I guess anything without FNP, with reroll 1s
6 * 28/36 = 4.66 wounds total
If they did d3 or 2 Mortal wounds
6 * 28/36 * 2 = 9.33 wounds total

I can definitely see a issue with excessive burst if they make it d3, they could also add a limit on the Skyray of firing no more than 2 Seeker Missiles per turn.