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Hi guys,
I really like the Tau tanks and infantry design, but the Asian battlesuits are awful, all of them. So I was thinking of a very mobile mecanized infantry army, devilish, breachers, fire warriors, one crisis team...
This kind of things.
Do you think it could be playable ?

Playable? Yes. Fun? For sure. Somewhat catch your opponent by surprise since you aren’t castling? Definitely. Competitive? Not so much, but if that isn’t your goal then all the other boxes are checked.

Having played with one, I can recommend running a Tiger Shark FB as well. The amount of firepower on that one model can be truly awe inspiring.

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
I really like the Tau tanks and infantry design, but the Asian battlesuits are awful, all of them. So I was thinking of a very mobile mecanized infantry army, devilish, breachers, fire warriors, one crisis team...
This kind of things.
Do you think it could be playable ?

It seems like most competitive tau lists are heavily infantry-based. As tau have very few anti-tank weapons available on infantry platforms and their anti-tank weapons on vehicle platforms are limited and pretty garbage, I think that would be your biggest struggle.

Anecdotally, I have a friend who feels fairly similarly about the bigger battlesuits, though he still uses a couple of battlesuit commanders equipped with fusion blasters and stealth suits as frontline anti-melee bouncers. He just avoids the larger mecha-looking suits, ironically because he is a diehard gunpla fanboy from malaysia and feels the larger suits are just lazy aping off the success of gunpla and are much worse models for much more money, but he doesn't think the designs that came out with the release of Tau were that way necessarily, just that they were asian inspired. He sees them however as inspired by HISTORICAL asian armies with the helmet and weapon design of the fire warriors mimicking traditional peasant infantry armament in several periods of famous asian medieval period history (3 kingdoms era china, sengoku era japan) with the battlesuits performing the close-combat shock troop role of heavily armored noble elite units, so he likes those.

He uses large units of footslogging fire warriors directed by Ethereals and Firesight Marksmen as his infantry core, with units of Fusion Piranha as his "cavalry spearmen" and crisis commanders/stealth suits as his "heavily armored noble infantry" whose role was to keep the peasant infantry from routing in the face of elite enemy troops.

An army of Tau vehicles and infantry will of course be playable. Anything is playable. You can put a random assortment of units from any faction down on the table and get some games in.

But there will be 2 major disadvantages from going with this kind of army build, which will translate to weaknesses on the battlefield and therefore probably affect your endgame results. And those 2 major disadvantages stem from not effectively utilizing or fully maximizing Tau's 2 most powerful rules : Savior Protocols and For The Greater Good.

Without Battlesuits, Savior Protocols doesn't really have a purpose as it is wasted on infantry and vehicles don't even have it. Shield Drones protecting Battlesuits is what gives Tau its true durability and staying power. If your enemy doesn't have to worry about Shield Drones getting in his way, all his big guns are free to blow up your tanks right from the start of Turn 1. This kind of army is just very susceptible to being crippled by a devastating alpha strike.

Not taking Battlesuits will also severely weaken your overall For The Greater Good output, which is Tau's only serious defense from the nastier assault units in the game. Aside from Longstrike, vehicles don't have FTGG, so they cannot contribute to assault defense at all. Sure, you will have plenty of Str 5 Ap - shots from all your infantry but that's mostly it. Battesuits are what bring the serious heat in Overwatch. Things like Broadsides with HYMPs and Riptides with overcharged Heavy Burst Cannons and Counterfire Defense Systems. With multiples of these units in close formation, that kind of layered FTGG can wipe out 30-man Tzaangor bombs or destroy a Knight from full HP, just for declaring a charge against you.

So just keep in mind that, while yes you can certainly play anything, you will be moving away from some of Tau's biggest strengths by doing so.

Not sure why everyone is down on this. There have been two lists I've seen that did well at tournaments (GT's I think). One was super piranha heavy. The other was piranha, devilfish, hammerheads, which can be found here

https://www.40kstats.com/carnageofsummer

It does have 2 commander suits, but you could switch those out for...stuff. Would it be worse? Yes. But a tournament quality list with 2 units pulled is most certainly "playable"

Maxwell00 wrote:
Not sure why everyone is down on this. There have been two lists I've seen that did well at tournaments (GT's I think). One was super piranha heavy. The other was piranha, devilfish, hammerheads, which can be found here

https://www.40kstats.com/carnageofsummer

It does have 2 commander suits, but you could switch those out for...stuff. Would it be worse? Yes. But a tournament quality list with 2 units pulled is most certainly "playable"

How many total players in the tournament? What were their lists? Their skill levels? Was this itc? All of this play a huge factors. Please update the post with this info and we can talk on the validity that these lists are “competitive”

Id say go for it. personally i love kroot. and the older stealth suits. and iv always wanted to make a recon army.

im 90% sure its going to be very good but you will end up having to not play like Tau.

aggressively moving up for high volume of fire. using various buffs that you can and abusing drones.

Are kroot hounds potentially competitive in large numbers?

would like to see some one brew a list.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

Maxwell00 wrote:
Not sure why everyone is down on this. There have been two lists I've seen that did well at tournaments (GT's I think). One was super piranha heavy. The other was piranha, devilfish, hammerheads, which can be found here

https://www.40kstats.com/carnageofsummer

It does have 2 commander suits, but you could switch those out for...stuff. Would it be worse? Yes. But a tournament quality list with 2 units pulled is most certainly "playable"

How many total players in the tournament? What were their lists? Their skill levels? Was this itc? All of this play a huge factors. Please update the post with this info and we can talk on the validity that these lists are “competitive”

There's a number of mech Tau lists that have done well, though I think it's a bit of an all or nothing kind of deal. If you pop over to advanced tau tactica they have a bunch of details. I had a quick look and saw mech tau took 2nd and 3rd at steel City slaughter or something like that but there's a lot more including some good placings at major ITC and GW events (the above pirhana heavy list won the GW GT I think) .

A list built around Longstrike and friends plus some midfield armor seems absolutely viable for anything from playing with a few guys in the garage to attending small/mid sized tournaments (maybe even GT's if the info is correct?) anyhow I don't think it would take away from the fun of the game. Obviously including the odd battle suit can give the army a bit more flexibility or punch, but in overall trading a Stealth suit squad for a Piranha etc. won't matter.

True downside to mechanized T'au is your reliance on Longstrike. Upside is a more unique approach and a lot of practice for airbrushing

Don’t listen to most answers which have been written, maxwell is right. I can add that in Europe, many lists with HHs, piranhas and lots of FW and sometimes some gun drones (you need a battlesuit drone controller though just accept one the ugliness of 1 Tau commander in that case) , have done from ok to pretty good results.
Perhaps not « winning a major good », but certainly go for it even in a comp setting.
Spamming MWs with guided missiles is apparently possible with that sort of build, so you go see that

Go for it. Back in 4th ed mobile devilfish infantry was a pretty effective tactic, as you could shoot under the devil fish and stop the firewarriors from getting charged.

Drive them close, disembark, double tap and don't get charged by the enemy. That was the Fish of Fury in a nutshell.

Yeah, Longstrike and 3 Ion Hammerheads does quite well, even lacking savior protocols. Load them all up with 2 seeker missiles, and you have a nasty alpha strike.

Also if you like mechanized infantry, 10-man breacher squads in devilish will do good work. Especially if you take them as Vior'la sept, so you can advance the devilfish without penalty T1, then turn 2 jump out and advance the breachers, then use the strat to double tap. You get 18+2d6 inches of movement, which has a good chance of getting in the sweet, sweet, 5 inch range, and even if not, 40 S5 AP -1 shots are nothing to sneeze at.

 godardc wrote:
Hi guys,
I really like the Tau tanks and infantry design, but the Asian battlesuits are awful, all of them. So I was thinking of a very mobile mecanized infantry army, devilish, breachers, fire warriors, one crisis team...
This kind of things.
Do you think it could be playable ?

I love the Ghostkeel model.

That being said, I saw some EARLY On lists using tanks, but tanks are highly exposed in this meta. It CAN be done. I am not suggesting it can't be. I am saying that if you go this route, make sure you have Gunrigs because the Railhead is a failure.

Ionheads are actually decent.

I'm not really sure how to make a mechanized list work because of things like Castellans who delete 2-3 T7 tanks a turn off the board. The reality is that Breachers would have to do a lions share of the work in that list and I am not certain they really can, sicne they are doing so little damage if any the first turn and even possibly in turn 2. If Tank Shocks were still a thing I'd be more optimistic but that isn't a thing.

I would love to see some ideas on this honestly. It would be great to see if anyone is doing it.

Mech Tau with Sunsharks took 2nd at a 37 player GT.

https://www.40kstats.com/hoodedgoblin

 Plainshow wrote:
Mech Tau with Sunsharks took 2nd at a 37 player GT.

https://www.40kstats.com/hoodedgoblin

Edit: oooh i thought you meant the Forge world ones. My bad.

 Jancoran wrote:
Edit: oooh i thought you meant the Forge world ones. My bad.

Weird right? You have to give the guy his due for seeing a very specific use for a unit that no one else had been using competitively. There’s more of a discussion about how he used them specifically over on ATT.

http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=29695

 Plainshow wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Edit: oooh i thought you meant the Forge world ones. My bad.

Weird right? You have to give the guy his due for seeing a very specific use for a unit that no one else had been using competitively. There’s more of a discussion about how he used them specifically over on ATT.

http://advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=29695

I absolutely do. He's got scathing firepower turn one against a Castellan/Whatever. So there is a lot of merit to this idea. His ability tio deal with invul saves is massively increased by the mortal wound production.

I have been in love with the bombers for a while and even made a list using them which has yet to be played but I have the models! I've liked the bombers since they came out. They just really are a good time.

If I played Tau I'd do a mechanised infantry list right away too. But what I'd find impressive and fun to play AGAINST would be a Tau list without Drones. But I guess I won't see that any soon

 Aaranis wrote:
If I played Tau I'd do a mechanised infantry list right away too. But what I'd find impressive and fun to play AGAINST would be a Tau list without Drones. But I guess I won't see that any soon

You won’t see unless a) units become more surviveable via more wounds or better saves or b) units become cheaper allowing us to take more and therefore losses don’t hurt as bad. So, guard

 Plainshow wrote:
Mech Tau with Sunsharks took 2nd at a 37 player GT.

https://www.40kstats.com/hoodedgoblin

It's not exactly what I had in mind but it's impressive he got so high with such a list ! Very interesting.