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I've always liked the look of the Tau vehicles but not the suits, now that the new codex has been out a while, what do you think of the possibility of mech Tau?
Can Tau with no suits even work, and how well/poorly.

What do you mean by no suits? Crisis, Riptide, stealth, and broadsides I'm assuming? If your goal is a thematic one, then your list will suffer from the theme rather than the goal of making a list. I don't think it'd be bad, I just don't know if it would be considered that much of a mech army.

Devilfish are very expensive and offer very little in the way of offensive output IMO. Still it wouldn't be unplayable. But that's all you really have for troop vehicles/transports. So you'd be running an infantry HQ, no elites, and probably light troops due to the point restrictions.

Piranha definately aren't terrible and can put out quite a bit of mobile S5 shots. However you'd probably need a slot or two for pathfinders and maybe devilfish for them. Without markerlights however your heavy support wouldn't work too well, so this probably is the most limiting factor to the Piranha.

Heavy support gives you the Hammerhead and either varient is actually very good. Personally I like the Ion head a bit more, but it will probably be more reliant on markers. I don't like firing the template without BS6 for the reroll of gets hot and removing cover to maximize the anti MEQ firepower.

Skyrays offer a bit, but aren't really able to carry the army on their own, and since the goal is for a mechanized army, these fit a very uneasy space. They provide 2 BS4 markerlights and 6 one shot missiles. The issue is that if you try to get markers from here, then you'll either not have enough to support the army or run too many and have nothing worth supporting.

So 2 six man firewarriors at 108 points
2 devilfish at 160
two pathfinder squads of 6 is 132
two more devilfish is another 160
5 piranha in a squadron is 200
and three ion heads with BSF is 378.
totalling out at 1138. If you're not planning on playing higher than 1.5K I think it'd be fairly doable. Throwing in two ethereals and another unit of firewarriors and devilfish gives you 128 points of gear and upgrades to toy around with. Not what I'd say is comptetative, but could be fun.

I run Mech Tau, and am finding that it still works pretty well. I don't feel that you can go without Riptides/Crisis/Stealths entirely, but you can come close. My current list at 1850 features 5x Crisis with plasma and fusion. The core of my list is 3x9 FWs in DFs, plus 2-3 HHs and 0-1 Skyrays and 2x Tetras. Seems to work well enough, though I really really hate drop podding Sternguard or Dreads in Lucius pods.

Tau vehicles just flat took a hit, and it showing in doing mech lists. Savageconvoy has the best plan I think.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
What do you mean by no suits? Crisis, Riptide, stealth, and broadsides I'm assuming? If your goal is a thematic one, then your list will suffer from the theme rather than the goal of making a list. I don't think it'd be bad, I just don't know if it would be considered that much of a mech army.

Devilfish are very expensive and offer very little in the way of offensive output IMO. Still it wouldn't be unplayable. But that's all you really have for troop vehicles/transports. So you'd be running an infantry HQ, no elites, and probably light troops due to the point restrictions.

Piranha definately aren't terrible and can put out quite a bit of mobile S5 shots. However you'd probably need a slot or two for pathfinders and maybe devilfish for them. Without markerlights however your heavy support wouldn't work too well, so this probably is the most limiting factor to the Piranha.

Heavy support gives you the Hammerhead and either varient is actually very good. Personally I like the Ion head a bit more, but it will probably be more reliant on markers. I don't like firing the template without BS6 for the reroll of gets hot and removing cover to maximize the anti MEQ firepower.

Skyrays offer a bit, but aren't really able to carry the army on their own, and since the goal is for a mechanized army, these fit a very uneasy space. They provide 2 BS4 markerlights and 6 one shot missiles. The issue is that if you try to get markers from here, then you'll either not have enough to support the army or run too many and have nothing worth supporting.

So 2 six man firewarriors at 108 points
2 devilfish at 160
two pathfinder squads of 6 is 132
two more devilfish is another 160
5 piranha in a squadron is 200
and three ion heads with BSF is 378.
totalling out at 1138. If you're not planning on playing higher than 1.5K I think it'd be fairly doable. Throwing in two ethereals and another unit of firewarriors and devilfish gives you 128 points of gear and upgrades to toy around with. Not what I'd say is comptetative, but could be fun.

Quick semirelated question, what do you think of XV9 Hazard suits and Shas'O'Ra'lai? So far they've proven to be a pain in my rear.

I tried a game against the XV-9 SC, and he definately is a pain thanks to his versatility and amount of damage output. He's probably even better now that 2 markerlights ignore cover and you can buff his BS to 6+ so you get to reroll gets hot.

I don't have much experience or knowlegde of standard Xv-9's though I do know that the fusion cascade is actually pretty impressive. I believe it was 2d3 melta shots with 18" range per model.

Honestly the only thing that's really prevented me from trying them out is I don't want to get the IA books, since a majority of the material isn't for my army. Another reason is I hate the way they sell the suits. Hazards are huge and should be sold with both weapon options or sold without either and the weapons as bits. Since they sell them stock as one suit with one load out, I'm not interested.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I tried a game against the XV-9 SC, and he definately is a pain thanks to his versatility and amount of damage output. He's probably even better now that 2 markerlights ignore cover and you can buff his BS to 6+ so you get to reroll gets hot.

I don't have much experience or knowlegde of standard Xv-9's though I do know that the fusion cascade is actually pretty impressive. I believe it was 2d3 melta shots with 18" range per model.

Honestly the only thing that's really prevented me from trying them out is I don't want to get the IA books, since a majority of the material isn't for my army. Another reason is I hate the way they sell the suits. Hazards are huge and should be sold with both weapon options or sold without either and the weapons as bits. Since they sell them stock as one suit with one load out, I'm not interested.

Yeah the fusion cascade is a nasty piece of work. At first I didn't think an S6 melta would be all that great, but it's still AP1, it still has armorbane, and it fires an awful lot of shots. I've seen XV9s reliably waste land raiders and pop MCs like zits.

honestly running a no suit list leaves no riptides, no crisis suits, no stealth suits, and technically no longstrike (since he wears an XV02)...which means no elites, little in the way of reliable anti-tank (since you could have, at most, 3 railguns) and even reliable anti infantry is dubious. You could field a gakload markerlights for sure, and vespids could pick up some of the MEQ killing slack, but vehicles and fliers would be basically untouchable.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

So 2 six man firewarriors at 108 points
2 devilfish at 160
two pathfinder squads of 6 is 132
two more devilfish is another 160
5 piranha in a squadron is 200
and three ion heads with BSF is 378.
totalling out at 1138. If you're not planning on playing higher than 1.5K I think it'd be fairly doable. Throwing in two ethereals and another unit of firewarriors and devilfish gives you 128 points of gear and upgrades to toy around with. Not what I'd say is comptetative, but could be fun.

It makes me sad to see that you say a list like this sucks.

I run 3 devil fish with 10 fire warriors in each
2 7 man squads of pathfinders
3 piranhas
2 hammer heads (1 with ion and long strike)
and a squad of 2 broadsides (missilesides)

The major weakness is that the piranha squad is too large, and the ionheads are inferior to missilesides according to the mathhammer...at least when you account for the cost. It would be more effective (at least, to my mind) to put the piranhas into a squad of 3 and a squad of 2, that way they can attack two separate targets at once for free, and use the missilesides' smaller size to use cover effectively and overwatch the rest of the army...something the ionheads can't do.

 Kain wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I tried a game against the XV-9 SC, and he definately is a pain thanks to his versatility and amount of damage output. He's probably even better now that 2 markerlights ignore cover and you can buff his BS to 6+ so you get to reroll gets hot.

I don't have much experience or knowlegde of standard Xv-9's though I do know that the fusion cascade is actually pretty impressive. I believe it was 2d3 melta shots with 18" range per model.

Honestly the only thing that's really prevented me from trying them out is I don't want to get the IA books, since a majority of the material isn't for my army. Another reason is I hate the way they sell the suits. Hazards are huge and should be sold with both weapon options or sold without either and the weapons as bits. Since they sell them stock as one suit with one load out, I'm not interested.

Yeah the fusion cascade is a nasty piece of work. At first I didn't think an S6 melta would be all that great, but it's still AP1, it still has armorbane, and it fires an awful lot of shots. I've seen XV9s reliably waste land raiders and pop MCs like zits.

XV'9's are amazing. The Fusion Cascade suits are the perfect anti-TEQ/MC and as you said they can really waste a land raider without any problems by even just glancing it down.
I have also had excellent results with the Phased Ion Guns, S4 AP4 isn't great but with 8 shots per model and rending they can be a serious threat to small TEQ units, MEQ, MC and light transports just though shear volume of fire. With marker lights a squad of 2 can easily produce enough wounds and rending shots to neuter key enemy units.

 dbsamurai wrote:
honestly running a no suit list leaves no riptides, no crisis suits, no stealth suits, and technically no longstrike (since he wears an XV02)...which means no elites, little in the way of reliable anti-tank (since you could have, at most, 3 railguns) and even reliable anti infantry is dubious. You could field a gakload markerlights for sure, and vespids could pick up some of the MEQ killing slack, but vehicles and fliers would be basically untouchable.

You can run a Tau flyer, for some AA duty. The Shark with tail mounted quad gun looks like it could be a good dogfighter simply because it will have an easy time getting up the tail shots.