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Hey everyone...you might be sick of seeing my name but I am new to this and have lots of questions. This one being, which HQ to take? I am going to get a battle force but I would like and HQ to take back home. I am stuck between 3 choices...

X8 Commander Suit (I like the customization of the straight commander)

Farsight (has cool fluff, a sweet dawnblade, and can have 7 bodyguards? that sounds really good! )

Shadow Sun (I love the idea of playing a stealth based team )

Any suggestions ?

Well, out of those options I would probably go commander or Farsight as my main HQ. From what I can see Shadowsun is just too squishy (and her weapons are short ranged) to make her my warlord.

I think that I'd roll with a regular commander, although the idea of a 7 suit team and farsight dropping out of the sky with pinpoint accuracy right next to someone makes me grin evilly.

 dementedwombat wrote:


I think that I'd roll with a regular commander, although the idea of a 7 suit team and farsight dropping out of the sky with pinpoint accuracy right next to someone makes me grin evilly.

I agree it is really cool, however farsight needs to be ahead of my fire warrior gun lines to be effective, so I am a bit worried about losing my HQ. But then again i do not understand how deep strike works.

1 good tactic is starting Shadowsun in pathfinder squad and infiltrate them in some cover, have a stealth team infiltrate near them, and then in turn 1 move her over to the stealth team to buff them.

I've actually had some success using Shadowsun as Warlord and tossing her in with a squad of Crisis Suits loaded with plasma and fusion. It's great at hunting tanks (5 potential melta shots at 18") as well as dealing with all sorts of Marines and Terminators (up to 11 shots that wound on 2s and ignore armor). Because of how stealth/shrouded works, her suit confers it to whatever squad she joins, so you can have a team of Crisis Suits jumping about the board with a 4+ cover save in the open (and a 2+ if they get behind any sort of cover). The Ghost That Walks Among Us gives her and her team an extra d6" jump move as well.

Farsight is a great choice as well, but bear in mind that it's expensive, and you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket, so to speak. Farsight plus seven suits is, with no wargear options, almost 400 points. Throw in wargear, and you're dropping even more points into it. It is one hell of a sucker punch, though, since you can easily put target locks all over the squad, throw in some specialist wargear, and murder whatever you want when they drop in. Toss in Shadowsun for even more fun - two extra fusion blasters, plus her command-link drone, plus stealth/shrouded for the entire unit.

Overall, I recommend going with one of the three suits as warlord - either a Commander with a Crisis Team, Shadowsun with a Crisis Team (stealth teams are just too expensive for what they do), or a Farsight Bomb. They can all be extremely destructive depending on how you use them.

That said I've heard good things about Aun`va/fireblade.... that could be a lot of pulse rifle shots. Probably not as objectively good as the suits though.

And that whole "roll over the AP" rule on Aun`Va seems pretty hilarious. Not necessarily a good defensive measure, but still hilarious.

I run my Tau with a base Commander as my HQ. He has yet to let me down and the look on my opponents face when I am not using a special character for my main HQ is priceless.

If all you have is a battleforce then farsight is not that great because you need all 7 suits to make him good. On his own farsight is really over priced and doesn't do much. He needs his body guards to back him up or he is just a bad crisis commander.

Shadowsun is actually very good at tank hunting with two crisis bodyguards. Give one suit two fussion blasters and one suit two missile pods and target locks and a pure tide chip and you have one of the scariest infiltrating tank hunting team.

Commander is all around good. One trick is to give him iridium armor and stimulant injectors and put him at the front of your unit soaking up damage. With W4 sv2+ and fnp he can take a ton of hits and if an ap1/2 shot comes his way just look out sir to a drone and let that eat it.

From what you have so far I would say go with the crisis commander. When you build your army out more and have 7 other crisis suits then you can think about farsight.

 lambsandlions wrote:
If all you have is a battleforce then farsight is not that great because you need all 7 suits to make him good. On his own farsight is really over priced and doesn't do much. He needs his body guards to back him up or he is just a bad crisis commander.

Shadowsun is actually very good at tank hunting with two crisis bodyguards. Give one suit two fussion blasters and one suit two missile pods and target locks and a pure tide chip and you have one of the scariest infiltrating tank hunting team.

Commander is all around good. One trick is to give him iridium armor and stimulant injectors and put him at the front of your unit soaking up damage. With W4 sv2+ and fnp he can take a ton of hits and if an ap1/2 shot comes his way just look out sir to a drone and let that eat it.

From what you have so far I would say go with the crisis commander. When you build your army out more and have 7 other crisis suits then you can think about farsight.

This is very true and helpful. Since I'm going to be playing small point games for a while I went with the crisis commander. Then when my army expands over the year I will pick up shadowsun or farsight. Thanks a lot for all your help dakkadakka!