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 bossfearless wrote:
I think that's actually the wrong way to go about it, Payne. The piranhas work so well in my mind because they are totally inexpensive. Throwing a buff commander into a drone squadron does make the drones better, but he could be used elsewhere to greater effect. Instead, just be at peace with the idea that a good portion of the drone shots will miss, and augment with a couple marker lights if you have them to spare.

I totally agree for larger points - that number actually comes straight out of one of my 500pt lists (my favorite points level). At 500, the flexibility two of units over one and shear number of S5 shots the army puts out is crazy!

Personally I love a good 1250 game. Just enough points to play with the big toys, but not enough to even think about spamming.

Yeah, the 4th Ed list utilized the way Crisis Suits could forgo any and all integrated weapons systems for Drone Controllers- meaning you could get 3 controllers (or 4?) per suit, with, like, 3 drones per controller, and 3 suits per slot (or more? Not sure). Plus the Drone squads you could get in Fast Attack and as other basic Troops choices.

Anvildude wrote:
Yeah, the 4th Ed list utilized the way Crisis Suits could forgo any and all integrated weapons systems for Drone Controllers- meaning you could get 3 controllers (or 4?) per suit, with, like, 3 drones per controller, and 3 suits per slot (or more? Not sure). Plus the Drone squads you could get in Fast Attack and as other basic Troops choices.

Except, you can't do that.

It quite clearly stated you could only take each option once.
So while you got 2 drone per controller, you could only get 1 per model.

On some suits (characters and HQ choices) you could potentially take a Drone Controller, and a Hard Wired Drone Controller, but that would only allow max 2 Drone Controllers and 4 Drones.

The most I can think of legally getting, would have been:That's around 106 purchased drones, 30 with Pirahnas and 9 Sniper Drones.
But that's 1060pts just in bought drones, then at least 2-3 times that in the units to purchase them....

- I was curious as to what that'd cost, pointed as a sensible army:4637pts

Well, this idea isn't so much about the drone spam as the deployment of clusters of mobile units on either side of the battlefield as flanking forces. You'd have a full squad of Piranhas, a Riptide, and the drone unit moving up one flank, and a mirror cluster on the other side. It's fast enough and strong enough to hit whatever you need, and having the two flanking formations moving up to midfield in tandem creates a crossfire that will punish enemies for turning to confront either unit.

Yeah.

And sounds pretty nasty tbh.

I was just pointing out you couldn't take 3-4 Drone Controllers with 3 Drones each in 4th.

There was a book you could. Maybe the 3rd? There was one that had no limiters on the number of similar equipments on the suits.

But yeah. I'm actually surprised more people don't go for Str 5 shooting spam with Tau- between drones and Vespid, you could have a nasty, nasty army. And one that does pretty awesomely against Marines too, because of the Ap3.

3rd Ed book has it at 1-2 drones per controller, can only take 1 of any given support system, though again, some models could take a Hard Wired one too (characters, HQs).

And the reason people didn't mostly, is that Battlesuits with Broadside / Hammerhead support, was far, far better.

Personally, my 4th/5thed tau list was 84 Firewarriors, Maxed Sniper Drones, a unit of stealth suits, 1-2 of battlesuits, 1 broadsides
It was very Str5 spammy, and... wasn't that amazing tbh. (Far better with 6x6 FW, and Hammerheads).

These days, my current list is 6x12 Firewarriors, 2x9 Sniper Drones and 2 Ethereals, and 216 Str shots at 15", plus 54 BS5 Sniper shots at 24" is brutal.

S5 is great in large quantities, but you still need something really heavy to take out the enemy's tougher units, stuff with great armor or FNP or both. I actually have an IG Allied "Plug n Play" list that is about 600 points, brings something like 15 autocannons, a couple lascannons and a Manticore to the party and provides a ridiculous saturation of scoring units. And Marbo, if I have the points. Because, well, Marbo. Anyway, the point of that is that, for all the Tau's toys, IG have (and probably still will, with the new dex) had a lot of cheap and numerous ways to bring tons of big guns to the party in FOC slots that the Tau don't always shine in. Like basic Troops that can spam Autocannons. Well, if anyone's wondering, that's exactly the sort of thing I plan to focus on with my TGG Kickstarter troops.

Also I really hope the new IG dex makes Sentinels really good. I want an excuse to field more robots, especially the sexy TGG ones.

 bossfearless wrote:
Personally I love a good 1250 game. Just enough points to play with the big toys, but not enough to even think about spamming.

You'd be surprised. I can think of plenty of spam lists under 1250 that I've written and/or seen

Edit: eg. 3 riptides at 750...

 Brother Payne wrote:

 bossfearless wrote:
Personally I love a good 1250 game. Just enough points to play with the big toys, but not enough to even think about spamming.

You'd be surprised. I can think of plenty of spam lists under 1250 that I've written and/or seen

Edit: eg. 3 riptides at 750...

I can fit at least 9-10 Venoms in at 1250...

 Ovion wrote:

 Brother Payne wrote:

 bossfearless wrote:
Personally I love a good 1250 game. Just enough points to play with the big toys, but not enough to even think about spamming.

You'd be surprised. I can think of plenty of spam lists under 1250 that I've written and/or seen

Edit: eg. 3 riptides at 750...

I can fit at least 9-10 Venoms in at 1250...

I tend to stay lower than 1000 but I know what you mean. Not technically spam but I have a 1k IG list w 2 vendettas and a Stormsword

Have fun dealing w a S10 AP1 apoc blast, ignores cover weapon sticking out the front of a super-heavy

Hold on, I'm getting an anomalous reading here. Let's see...adjust the dials, compensate for interference, yep. Payne, the auspex says you're a dick.

 bossfearless wrote:
Hold on, I'm getting an anomalous reading here. Let's see...adjust the dials, compensate for interference, yep. Payne, the auspex says you're a dick.

Bahahahahah! There are some wicked thing you can do at low points levels

Like only get a game once every five years?

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Like only get a game once every five years?

I very rarely play my lists, they're mostly just for show. I also have a very competitive meta at my FLGS so most of my lists see a game anyway.

Just to clarify, it was just a tongue in cheek joke, no offense intended.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Just to clarify, it was just a tongue in cheek joke, no offense intended.

Absolutely none taken, I kinda got that

All's good then

BLARG!! I need some help from you guys, because I am in this nasty creative funk right now. I can't write, can't paint, can't sculpt, can't do squat. Anything creative and I just can't get interested. Hell, if you gave me a galaxy, I might not even burn that sucker.

So, help. I have a whole bunch of green stuff and an impressive array of bits. Somebody pitch me an idea. Anything at all. I'm trying to push-start my creativity, like maybe if I get it up to a certain speed it will pick up on its own again.

How about a Sangheili Zealot?

Ugh.

Throw words at a page, anything at all. Write a R+D style report for something maybe. Something in the Cadre. A report of some sort perhaps. Hell, move in entirely the other direction. Write grimdark, write real world stuff. Hell, not like it uses actual resources, and if its gak then you can just bin it later. Might spark something useful.

 bossfearless wrote:
BLARG!! I need some help from you guys, because I am in this nasty creative funk right now. I can't write, can't paint, can't sculpt, can't do squat. Anything creative and I just can't get interested. Hell, if you gave me a galaxy, I might not even burn that sucker.
So, help. I have a whole bunch of green stuff and an impressive array of bits. Somebody pitch me an idea. Anything at all. I'm trying to push-start my creativity, like maybe if I get it up to a certain speed it will pick up on its own again.

Hate it when that happens.

Make some terrain for all that cool stuff: the possibilities are endless.

Check out your craft area, sometimes it gets to be such a mess I do not want to be in there. = clean.

Find some great music to play in the area as you do stuff.

Paint a backdrop for your army, make mini-posters for your terrain.

Look up DIY ways to make things you always wanted for the hobby.

Go to a craft store and look at the stuff there and think of all the things you can do that was unintended for that stuff.

Go to a mainly toy train store and do the same thing.

Make a cosplay weapon that lights up like what you did for your army.

Go listen to "Dr Steel's: Build the Robots"... "I'm gonna have to rob a bank again... I'm spending all my time and spending every dime... build the robots!"

Use power tools, even randomly at first, try to laugh manically while doing it.

You are in a funk! The following is only in desperation because it may backfire use these links in order:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM&feature=kp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjR4_CbPpQ&list=PL259B131AA201B854&index=25

Not sure this helps but it was a shot...

Hrm...thanks for the ideas. Nothing's really catching, though. The Sanghelii idea is neat, but way beyond my skill level at this point. This funk is so nasty that even video games aren't any fun. I'm playing through the new XCOM game and even though the game is brilliant, it just feels like work to make myself play it. I tried the whole throwing words at a page thing but I just kind of sputtered after maybe a sentence.

DO NOT WANT!!!

What's screwed up is I think I know what's causing my funk. Ready for the kick in the pants? It's my diet. I'm doing my best to lose weight before I go on holiday to Japan, but that's got my blood sugar low and it's making me apathetic to everything. At least, that's what I think it is, since the two things started at the same time. How messed up is that? I either sack the idea of getting my waistline under control, or I forgo being creative or enjoying anything. This is pure crap. Bollocks, even.

I've had that before.

When I'm in that sort of low, I've found reading is a great outlet, so maybe pick up a good book?

Sci Fi wise I'd reccomend anything by Peter.F.Hamilton (Especially the Commonwealth Saga) or Neal Asher (all of it.), and can dig out a list of noteworthies later if you want.

I should probably try to read something. Or better yet, put on an audiobook so I don't just give up on it. I'll give that a try. Also, I tried sitting down and forcing myself to finish up two fire warriors for the pimps. It went well enough, but didn't seem to help much with the bigger issue of general malaise.



I'm completely out of grenades and fw antennas, so those bits are missing. Forcing myself to paint just gave me a headache.

Well they look great as per usual, not sure what to recommend about the lack of motivation though. Certainly nothing that will help with the diet, that much is certain.

Funk stinks. I Am Not A Psychologist (IANAP?), but in general, when stuck on a creative project, I advise taking a break to
- exercise!
- meditate!
- masturb.... Um.
Anyway, anything but sitting still feeling frustrated. I recall your job involves a lot of sitting still, which sucks, but at least you can do some breathing exercises or something to drain that pent-up negative whatever from your nervous system.

Also if you're trying to restrict your caloric intake without keeping active, your body's just gonna go "aha there's a food shortage, time to hunker down for the winter" and a 100 million years of mammalian evolution are gonna slow your metabolism down to the point that (1) you can't think for sh*t and (2) you won't lose any f***ing weight anyway.

Fight someone. Get pissed. What do you hate- really, really hate? Do something about that (if it won't lose you your job/get you killed). Find one of your buddies and start a fight club. Take up knitting. I've found anger is remarkable in how it can pierce through even strong depression to let you at least start moving- once you've started going, then you can often keep going a lot easier, and so pull yourself out of a funk with activity.

Or burn something. Do you have any models you don't want? Any spare Mahrines or KAOSS or Orks or something that you can use capacitors and wiring to melt big messy holes in that could later be used as the example of what happens when you get on a Plasma Broadside's bad side?

Errr, although I Am Not A Psychologist, allow me to strongly counsel against channelling your internal frustration into violence, destruction, and rage. Having had "anger management" issues for most of my life, I can say with some confidence that this is a high-cost solution with only short term benefits. Exercise, meditation, and introspection are a lot less painful for you and those around you.

Knitting? Maybe.