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I know "Farsight bomb" lists seem to be the big thing, but I've been having an idea recently.

Let's say you want your deep-strikers to be able to work independently of markerlight support (not an unreasonable desire) and be cheap, because you don't want too many of your points tied up in reserve (also reasonable):

Farsight

3x Crisis Suits
3x twin-linked plasma rifles
3x flamers

that keeps each suit at 47 points. 306 points for Farsight + his posse. They have roughly BS4.5 with their plasma rifles, and their flamers auto-hit, obviously. The flamers also ignore cover. Flamers kill MEQ better than burst cannons at BS3 simply because you're cutting out an entire dice roll.

Even being conservative about how many targets can be hit with each flamer, this loadout can decimate a squad of MEQ and completely eliminate a squad of 5 TEQ. Farsight can deep strike onto the head of a pin, which lets you set yourself up for maximum flamer coverage.

2x Flamer on the Crisis suits is an attractive idea just because it would be SO MUCH FUN to do all that roasting, and then you could probably afford to bring a ton of drones or even the much-maligned Shield Generators. But that setup gets less kills against MEQ, and significantly less against TEQ. Probably a ton better vs. Xenos, though. Like 30-50 S4 auto-hits that ignore cover. 15-25 wounds against Ork boys and just remove the models, thanks.

And anyone who does survive and tries to charge has to not die by fire on the way in. And then they'll probably get cut to ribbons by Farsight's anime fan sword before they have a chance to attack.

Has anyone done this, or anything like it? For me right now it's purely academic.

why on earth would you use twin linked plasma rifles over 2 plasma rifles? I don't care that they're 10 points more.

4 shots = 2 hits. 2 shots can only ever equal less than 2 hits bat BS3.


Alternatively to producing a one trick pony using your warlord (and farsight has to be your warlord) you could take this

Commander, 2 PG VRT, SI. XV8-02, NSJ.
3 suits, 2 with PG and ATS, 1 with 2 FB and TL.
8 drones

That unit will also annihilate a unit of 5 TEQ, or about 8 MEQ (picking out specialist weapons, your real target, with ATS 6's.)

The unit can then engage a vehicle as well, having about a 30% chance of blowing up an AV14 vehicle.

Add markerlight support and you've got death in writing.

Also anyone who assaults a farsight bomb isn't that bright. Killing drones isn't fun.

A -real- farsight bomb makes use of all 7 crisis suits, with my variations taking an extra commander to give a 2+5+ (FNP acts as an invulnerable save if you don't have S10.) as well as a drone controller to maximise drone output.

I don't get why you're even bringing farsight in at all if your overall goal is just three suits with standard equipment. Why not just cut farsight out all together and use a basic commander and bodyguard and hope for the same warlord trait or try something with homing beacons.

If your going to do that just take one support suit to make everything twin linked. you don't really need ignore cover ether.

that way you reroll wounds with the flamer as well.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
why on earth would you use twin linked plasma rifles over 2 plasma rifles? I don't care that they're 10 points more.

4 shots = 2 hits. 2 shots can only ever equal less than 2 hits bat BS3.


Alternatively to producing a one trick pony using your warlord (and farsight has to be your warlord) you could take this

Commander, 2 PG VRT, SI. XV8-02, NSJ.
3 suits, 2 with PG and ATS, 1 with 2 FB and TL.
8 drones

That unit will also annihilate a unit of 5 TEQ, or about 8 MEQ (picking out specialist weapons, your real target, with ATS 6's.)

The unit can then engage a vehicle as well, having about a 30% chance of blowing up an AV14 vehicle.

Add markerlight support and you've got death in writing.

Also anyone who assaults a farsight bomb isn't that bright. Killing drones isn't fun.

A -real- farsight bomb makes use of all 7 crisis suits, with my variations taking an extra commander to give a 2+5+ (FNP acts as an invulnerable save if you don't have S10.) as well as a drone controller to maximise drone output.

Your setup also costs 90 points more than mine. That's like saying "Silly forum noob, why on earth would you take these two predators when you could simply take these two predators AND a landspeeder!

Or maybe you missed the whole part about cost effectiveness. I may not even be -right- about the cost effectiveness (this is a forum for discussion after all), but at least match me for points instead of trying to prove my idea is crap by outdoing it with something 1/4 again more expensive.

I like the idea about the support suit. I had sort of forgotten that twin-linked flamers re-roll to wound. That's potentially really nasty.

Also, Farsight is there because he:

A) Guarantees you can deepstrike wherever you want (suggesting one simply hope to roll a 6 for Warlord Traits is lulzy)
B) Can mix it up in close combat.
C) has a BS5 plasma rifle, which is a fine choice.

Mostly it's the deep-striking. "Doing something" with homing beacons would, again, cost more points. Farsight gets you there right out of the box.

CDRAlbrecht wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
why on earth would you use twin linked plasma rifles over 2 plasma rifles? I don't care that they're 10 points more.

4 shots = 2 hits. 2 shots can only ever equal less than 2 hits bat BS3.


Alternatively to producing a one trick pony using your warlord (and farsight has to be your warlord) you could take this

Commander, 2 PG VRT, SI. XV8-02, NSJ.
3 suits, 2 with PG and ATS, 1 with 2 FB and TL.
8 drones

That unit will also annihilate a unit of 5 TEQ, or about 8 MEQ (picking out specialist weapons, your real target, with ATS 6's.)

The unit can then engage a vehicle as well, having about a 30% chance of blowing up an AV14 vehicle.

Add markerlight support and you've got death in writing.

Also anyone who assaults a farsight bomb isn't that bright. Killing drones isn't fun.

A -real- farsight bomb makes use of all 7 crisis suits, with my variations taking an extra commander to give a 2+5+ (FNP acts as an invulnerable save if you don't have S10.) as well as a drone controller to maximise drone output.

Your setup also costs 90 points more than mine. That's like saying "Silly forum noob, why on earth would you take these two predators when you could simply take these two predators AND a landspeeder!

Or maybe you missed the whole part about cost effectiveness. I may not even be -right- about the cost effectiveness (this is a forum for discussion after all), but at least match me for points instead of trying to prove my idea is crap by outdoing it with something 1/4 again more expensive.

I like the idea about the support suit. I had sort of forgotten that twin-linked flamers re-roll to wound. That's potentially really nasty.

No, it is not like that at all, two weapons that aren't twin-linked are superior in every conceivable scenario to one weapon. Additionally, one more oversight with your premise is that if you are close enough, with XV8s, Farsight or no Farsight, you are going to be in the one place you don't want to be next turn, combat, Thrust will not take you far enough away I guarentee it.

 Krellnus wrote:
No, it is not like that at all, two weapons that aren't twin-linked are superior in every conceivable scenario to one weapon. Additionally, one more oversight with your premise is that if you are close enough, with XV8s, Farsight or no Farsight, you are going to be in the one place you don't want to be next turn, combat, Thrust will not take you far enough away I guarentee it.

Oh FFS.

Yes, two non twin-linked weapons are better. Yes, they also COST MORE POINTS. I swear to god, zombies have invaded my thread. See the OP where I talk about a unit working independently of markerlights and being cheap. The benefit of spending the additional points for two separate weapons is not as pronounced at BS3 as it is at higher BS. It is also. Less. Points. To twin-link a weapon.

And my whole supposition here is that if the unit is not going to get reliable markerlight support, it might just be better to give them a twin-linked melta/plasma and a flamer, because they're cheap and still effective.

Flamers dont kill meqs....

You will only be able to fire 2 of the flamers to begin with because of the way deepstriking deploys you (you cannot hit your own unit with the flame template) and unless you hit the entire squad (unlikely) you will cause 2-4 hits.

Flamers are S4, so 50% wound chance. He gets armor saves that are better than any cover he'd get.

If you want to deal specifically with MEQs, you want plasmas out the butt. 12" Rapid fire, 3 suits = 12 shots that wound on 2s and WILL kill whatever they shoot provided you markerlighted to ignore cover or landed in a spot that ignored the ruins. And even if you dont ignore the cover, now hes saving against just as much if not more wounds on a 4+/5+ or being forced to goto ground.
And this is 156pts with a spare support slot and does NOT need farsight btw.

Farsight really has no place in the army if its not a farsight bomb. Which is sad really.

I see what you're getting at, OP. I've become frustrated with the farsight/shadow sun bomb. On the one hand, I need to run farsight because I like suits and I also want to run riptides, on the other hand, it sucks up all my points and prevents me from using an ethereal.

This post got me thinking about how I'd run a discount farsight squad. Here's what I came up with.

Commander Farsight 550
• 7 Crisis Shas'vre:
3x plasma rifle
3x flamer
6x target lock
airbursting fragmentation projector;
One suit with drone controller vectored retro-thrusters; Multispectrum Sensor Suite; command & control node;
Neuroweb System Jammer;

Its a little more expensive than what you posted but it seems like a good compromise if you want to run a cheaper bomb.

That also makes the flamers twinlinked, which is rerolling wounds. Much more reliable.

Unless its a big game though dont think you'd have much left after you get 3 riptides. Worth trying though.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
That also makes the flamers twinlinked, which is rerolling wounds. Much more reliable.

Unless its a big game though dont think you'd have much left after you get 3 riptides. Worth trying though.

Yeah I'd have to bring only 2 riptides to get a decent sized troop base, but thats ok. I've played a few games with min troops and it hasn't really worked out for me, so I feel like losing a riptide for more troops would be worth it.

See, now we're getting somewhere.

The setup I posted was just a brainstorm. The whole point I was trying to make is that I think Farsight + flamers (three at the most) in a squad of deepstriking suits, I think, can be effective. Because they're cheap and you can maximize the number of wounds because you have complete control over where the squad lands. Also, flamers are awesome for getting charged, where they once again automatically hit. 3 Flamers is 3 MEQ wounds on average. That's one dead, non-charging MEQ, on average.

I mean crap, for 5 points, it's almost worth it to give everybody one just to spam overwatch, since you're not using a template at that point.

However!

I just checked my Tau Codex. The CCN does not count the rest of the squad's weapons as "Twin-linked." It states that the rest of the squad can re-roll failed to-hit rolls in the shooting phase. So I don't think it would have any effect on template or blast weapons. Re-rolling wounds on twin-linked template weapons is specific to the Twin-linked rule.

In my Tau list I run a less than maxed out Farsight bomb.

Farsight
Shadowsun

2 suits x2 plasma with advanced targeting.
2 suits x 2 fusion with target lock.
1 suit with with all the unit enhancing wargear

This comes in right around 700 points.

The fusion suits each try to find a tank or big bug to shoot and then Farsight shoots with the plasma suit to annihilate MEQ squad. Shadowsun just hangs out to make the squad hard to kill and blow up stuff in addition. I have found this to be well worth the points in a 1850-2000 point game and functions very well without markerlight support.

CDRAlbrecht wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
No, it is not like that at all, two weapons that aren't twin-linked are superior in every conceivable scenario to one weapon. Additionally, one more oversight with your premise is that if you are close enough, with XV8s, Farsight or no Farsight, you are going to be in the one place you don't want to be next turn, combat, Thrust will not take you far enough away I guarentee it.

Oh FFS.

Yes, two non twin-linked weapons are better. Yes, they also COST MORE POINTS. I swear to god, zombies have invaded my thread. See the OP where I talk about a unit working independently of markerlights and being cheap. The benefit of spending the additional points for two separate weapons is not as pronounced at BS3 as it is at higher BS. It is also. Less. Points. To twin-link a weapon.

And my whole supposition here is that if the unit is not going to get reliable markerlight support, it might just be better to give them a twin-linked melta/plasma and a flamer, because they're cheap and still effective.

I never denied that they costed more points, merely that spending the extra 10 points is more point - efficient than buying just one twin-linked gun, especially on a rapid - fire weapon such as a Plasma Rifle.
Although if you want to keep the bodyguard independant of the rest of the army's markerlights, might I suggest the XV84 signature system from IA3: 2nd ed. which IIRC replaces one of the hardpoint slots with a networked markerlight, which means, if you bung it on a standard commander, you get a pretty cheap way of buffing up the unit with +1 to hit.

Additionally, if you are taking only three bodyguards, you should consider a standard Crisis Team instead, each model is 10 points cheaper, which if you use it to upgrade your guns from twin-linked to two weapons, brings the unit up to being the exact same cost, with more firepower and with the commander is relatively free of maker support.

So a unit would look something like this:

XV8 Commander
2 Plasma Rifles (or whatever guns you want really, but since the unit has PRs, may as well match weapons
XV84 Battlesuit
Not 100% on his points cost since my IA3 is still in the mail, but should sit somewhere in the 130-140 range

Then you take the Crisis Team as a standard team and Two guns

3 XV8s
2 Plasma Rifles each
1 Flamer each
Still 57 ppm, but now has a ~50% increase in firepower for the same cost (not counting that the commander adds 2 BS5 PRs instead of 1).

 Krellnus wrote:

CDRAlbrecht wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
No, it is not like that at all, two weapons that aren't twin-linked are superior in every conceivable scenario to one weapon. Additionally, one more oversight with your premise is that if you are close enough, with XV8s, Farsight or no Farsight, you are going to be in the one place you don't want to be next turn, combat, Thrust will not take you far enough away I guarentee it.

Oh FFS.

Yes, two non twin-linked weapons are better. Yes, they also COST MORE POINTS. I swear to god, zombies have invaded my thread. See the OP where I talk about a unit working independently of markerlights and being cheap. The benefit of spending the additional points for two separate weapons is not as pronounced at BS3 as it is at higher BS. It is also. Less. Points. To twin-link a weapon.

And my whole supposition here is that if the unit is not going to get reliable markerlight support, it might just be better to give them a twin-linked melta/plasma and a flamer, because they're cheap and still effective.

I never denied that they costed more points, merely that spending the extra 10 points is more point - efficient than buying just one twin-linked gun, especially on a rapid - fire weapon such as a Plasma Rifle.
Although if you want to keep the bodyguard independant of the rest of the army's markerlights, might I suggest the XV84 signature system from IA3: 2nd ed. which IIRC replaces one of the hardpoint slots with a networked markerlight, which means, if you bung it on a standard commander, you get a pretty cheap way of buffing up the unit with +1 to hit.

Additionally, if you are taking only three bodyguards, you should consider a standard Crisis Team instead, each model is 10 points cheaper, which if you use it to upgrade your guns from twin-linked to two weapons, brings the unit up to being the exact same cost, with more firepower and with the commander is relatively free of maker support.

So a unit would look something like this:

XV8 Commander
2 Plasma Rifles (or whatever guns you want really, but since the unit has PRs, may as well match weapons
XV84 Battlesuit
Not 100% on his points cost since my IA3 is still in the mail, but should sit somewhere in the 130-140 range

Then you take the Crisis Team as a standard team and Two guns

3 XV8s
2 Plasma Rifles each
1 Flamer each
Still 47 ppm, but now has a ~50% increase in firepower for the same cost (not counting that the commander adds 2 BS5 PRs instead of 1).

I don't see where you're getting your points costs from. A regular Crisis Shas'ui is 57 points with 2 separate plasma rifles and 1 flamer. A Bodyguard is 67.

CDRAlbrecht wrote:


I don't see where you're getting your points costs from. A regular Crisis Shas'ui is 57 points with 2 separate plasma rifles and 1 flamer. A Bodyguard is 67.

No he's right. it's 47 points for a 2 PR + Flamer Shas'ui.

I want some of what you guys are smoking.

Shas'ui: BaseCost + (2 x 15) + 5 = 57.
Shas'vre: BaseCost + (2 x 15) + 5 = 67.

Yeah that was my bad, I was basing it off your OP where you said each bodyguard was 47 each not 57 and just went off that bodyguards are +10 base on a shas'ui, post corrected. Perhaps you should adjust yours as well for future reference (you have your bodyguards w/ TL PR and flamer at 47 not 57 ppm).

You will find the word bodyguard nowhere in my OP.

I did refer to them as his posse, though, which might have caused the confusion.

I have a couple of "Budget Bombs" I'm working on, but it's getting late and I'll have to finish up tomorrow.

As a man who hasn't even seen any of the new tau on a table it makes me laugh when you say 550-700 points is a discount squad.. I like your think though OP sometimes it's better to be cheep and versatile.

I belive You can mount 3 weapons if you take no support systems.

How about 2 flamers and 1 pr on each of 3 suits. Worse vs meq but mass wounds coming on the drop. Plus 6d3 overwatch hits are nothing to overlook.

CDRAlbrecht wrote:
You will find the word bodyguard nowhere in my OP.

I did refer to them as his posse, though, which might have caused the confusion.

I have a couple of "Budget Bombs" I'm working on, but it's getting late and I'll have to finish up tomorrow.

Ah, that would do it, you said posse, I assumed bodyguards -.-

First0f0ne wrote:
I belive You can mount 3 weapons if you take no support systems.

How about 2 flamers and 1 pr on each of 3 suits. Worse vs meq but mass wounds coming on the drop. Plus 6d3 overwatch hits are nothing to overlook.

Its still 3D3 overwatch, you cannot fire 2 weapons unless its the Shooting Phase according to the Multi-tracker description being specific.

Which kinda blows. I want to add a flamer to every suit for some countercharge but i usually need that third slot lol and only firing 1 gun in overwatch means i cant have a suit be dedicated anti-charge.