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Has anyone tried playing a Tau army maxed out in seeker missiles and marker lights?  3 pathfinder units and 3 skyrays.

 

I was wondering how it fairs in a normal game (not COD)

Never played with that config but have been thinking a lot about seekerheavy lists and tend to have a rather large amount ( last tourney list had 8 seekers)
Before skyrays you couldn't get enough seekers (needed too many expensive hulls to mount them on ) and with skyrays they still are rather expensive and stops you from taking railguns.
If you can manage without rails then it will be a good load but playing railless is to close to winless for comfort.
However, a good load of seekers and a fair amount of markers allow alpha-striking that tends to shock and awe opponents so it can be very satisfying.

Oh well, if you play with WDR then you can get a really nasty missileboat, but if WDRing then don't bother with seekers, just load up on SMS......

Alpha strike, destroy enemy on turn 1 or lose....Problem is you won't destroy the enemy on turn 1 unless the enemy is armoured company or a variant of, even then it would be unlikely, what will you do on turns 2-6 when your out of missiles?

Though I would love to see someone try it, alpha strike on turn 1, then hide and grab objectives later on :=)

No one would want to play you though...

I use pathfinders and markerstealths to deliver an extra knock on prio 1 targets first turn, everything that can shoot to stun and/or knock out stuff first turn to reduce workload in later turns. That is what I call Alphastriking. It is also very important to shoot as many seekers as possibly before your 'finders and other markers must move, othervise the chance of losing seekers increase with every turn that pass.

I would be happy playing against an alpha only army, I think that it would be a pretty assured win for all armies with any mobility at all.

the skyray is a waste of points pure and simple.

it's an unlimited range krak missle with limited shots.and S8 still needs 6s to even glance AV14

it does't have the every turn tank killing ability of the broadside/railhead or the every turn troop killing ability of the rail sub munition or ion head.

and once you fire your missles it is only really useful as a mobile markerlight platform with one backup weapon.

would it add variety?

yep

would it look kinda cool?

yep

would it be very effective for the points?

not really

 

 

i have 6 seekes in my tau list, in one game for fun i fired al of them to see how they would work, as with dice odds i hit with 5 and glanced with 1 for a glancing 2. the only thing i use them for is to add another weapon in my tank to preclude runing out of weapon destroyed results and causing an immobilised.

I would not say that the Skyray is completely a waste, it does give a massive amount of Alpha Strike power for a relatively low price. It also functions as a very accurate indirect fire platform that needn't expose itself to still cause casualties. It does suffer from a weakness against Av13+ vehicles, and cannot effectively take out units like Obliterators, Terminators, or similarly armoured targets. It does work very effectively against Wraithlords, Carnifex (without Ext. Carapace), Greater Daemons, and for pot shotting Space Marine HQs/non-statured Lords. It is very much a metagame choice. It can be quite powerful against certain army configuration, but I will agree that it generally has some trouble breaking even.

I ran a seeker heavy alpha strike list when  I first started Tau, it really was an all or nothing turn 1. 

I don't recommend it for people in gaming groups that see alot of the very tuned performance lists.

Seekers aren't that bad from a cost pow, I mean how many shoots do you reliably get out from a squad heavy weapon in a match and at what point cost?
Seekers cost 10p each and in the previous codex one of the bigger problems was the need for costly markelights that had rather small utility once the seekers was gone.
Now markers are more interesting and have a place in the list with or without seekers and then the marginal cost of buying a seeker decrease.
So now when the real cost of a seeker approche 10p ( how close it comes depends on the actuall list) then 8 krackmissiles (not just the potential of them but actual shoots) fare rather well in a strickly point perspektive compared to other ways of hitting stuff with a Tau list.

Will try to come up with some math to support my theories.

Someone on the EoT was advocating a pure alph-strike list with three Skyrays, two Pathfinder squads (I think) and more seekers on Piranhas.

This kind of list could, if everything goes well, give a good first turn kicking to an SM army or light-to-medium enemy vehicles. The problem is that things never go well in war and things would go very bad very quickly once your missiles had shot off or been knocked out.

The thought of a serious Tau list without a single Railhead simply scares me rigid.