Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I want to run stealth suits since i have the old metal ones collecting dust. However im curiois what else to bring, or if i should take two groups of them.
My meta doesnt really have anything more than av12 vehicles, and i ays felt fusion stealth suits to be a waste. What would be a good backup? Two riptides, two crisis teams, or one of each?

Stealth team with a homing beacon and positional relay could be fun if you got a Kroot and deep strike heavy list.

Run them naked, 3 do fine at 1k.

They are great for outflanking vunerable infantry or just shooting down troops while sitting in any 5+ cover you can find.

For 90 points you don't feel bad losing them and you'll be surprised how much dmg 12 strng 5 shots can do.

Or how many wounds their 2+ cover can shrug off.

right now the only person i ever play against runs CSM, and hes random on how many cultists he takes. I was planning to run them 6man strong with only precision shot upgrades.

My fear is not their cost, theyre pretty cheap, but rather its taking an elite slot away from a second riptide or crisis bomb. Usually i have either a dedicated marker team for the riptide and 2 crisis suit teams deepstriking, or 2 riptides with HBC and one crisis team to take out background stuff like gunplatform rhinos or that spider thing CSM has (translation, 2 with dual plasmas 1 with dual fusions and gun drones for ablative wounds and anti-charge possibilities with pinning shots).
Im probably just overthinking this...after all i used to think Bikernobz were dumb LOL

Stealth suits are never worth it. Crisis suits with two BCs cost 40% more but have double the firepower if you really want BCs (and you probably don't), while fire warriors can bring plenty of STR 5 shooting while also scoring objectives.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
right now the only person i ever play against runs CSM

In this case it's definitely not worth taking stealth suits. If all you ever face is CSM Riptides and crisis suits will always be more effective since you don't have all of your shots bouncing off 3+ armor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Aijec wrote:
Or how many wounds their 2+ cover can shrug off.

Actually what you'll be surprised by is how worthless a 2++ can be. Stealth suits have very limited firepower compared to everything else on the table and definitely have the worst firepower to durability ratio* in the Tau army. Your opponent is rarely going to make the stealth suits a priority target, so whether they have a 2+ cover save or no save at all is irrelevant. You could give them a special rule that they automatically ignore all wounds and you wouldn't be improving their durability by any meaningful amount. At least until the rest of your army is destroyed and your opponent gets down the target priority list to the stealth suits, but by then you've already lost the game anyway.


*You generally want to reduce incoming damage as fast as possible, and the best way to do it is to make units with high damage output and low durability a priority. You can kill them quickly and when you do you've significantly reduced the damage your own units will take. Units with low damage output and high durability, on the other hand, are a very low priority because they take a lot of damage to bring down but even when you finally succeed you haven't done very much to protect your own units. If you calculate a firepower to durability ratio for ever unit in your army you can sort them in descending order and have a pretty good approximation of your opponent's target priority.

Technically they put out the same amount of dakka, stealth teams cost around what ~15pts more than no drone crisis suits, but lack the cover trick and are able to use all 24 shots in overwatch while crisis suits are limited to 12 + whatever drones they have if any (no idea why you wouldnt have drones though).

I view it as more of a deterrence. Its either ignore it because its not THAT big of a deal, or try to get lucky with your shots since they have a 2+ cover almost 100% of the time, and aside from flamers (which shouldnt get that close unless its a hellchicken or dreadknight torrent flamer) which doesnt pen the armor, other tau, or noise marines what strips cover that actually works and is used? Ignore it, and thats 12-24 more saves you need to take from something very close (least on turns my crisis team was unable to do anything substantial, these would get the marker support to make those attacks land)
...actually i think i just pushed my wanting to use stealthsuits out the window with that comment lol...2 of those 3 common anti-covers are CSM and this guy has both (though he hasnt ran noise marines lately, surprisingly).
Well, its 198pts to ditch those stealthsuits i had i might as well swap that into a second riptide haha i'll save the stealthsuits for when he decides to finally use necrons again (been eons since he fielded those) or i find someone else...our group kinda fell apart when 2 of us had to change duty stations.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Technically they put out the same amount of dakka

No, they do not. Assuming equal point values the 2x BC crisis suits will put out more shots than the stealth suits, by a large margin.

but lack the cover trick

See previous post. A 2+ cover save is worthless if your firepower is so low that nobody bothers to shoot at you until the rest of the army is dead.

and are able to use all 24 shots in overwatch while crisis suits are limited to 12 + whatever drones they have if any (no idea why you wouldnt have drones though).

This is assuming you take the rather silly interpretation of an ambiguous rule that GW will almost certainly rule the other way when they get around to doing an FAQ. If you play it according to the more sensible interpretation multitrackers do allow you to fire two weapons on overwatch.

How is it a silly interpretation when its not the ONLY rule in the game that specifically states "shooting phase" when involving shooting of some kind?

MC has had the same wording for far, far longer and its never been changed.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
How is it a silly interpretation when its not the ONLY rule in the game that specifically states "shooting phase" when involving shooting of some kind?

Because overwatch is done like shooting (including the rule that it is resolved "like a normal shooting attack" which, for crisis suits, means being able to fire two weapons), and it doesn't make any sense that crisis suits suddenly forget how to shoot both their guns if it's a different phase. The overwhelmingly likely outcome here is that if GW ever does FAQ it they rule that yes, you can fire two weapons in overwatch just like any other "normal shooting attack".