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I do feel like Tau has gotten the short end of the stick here. I have already gotten into building my Tau army and am pretty deep into it. I am not going to back out now because it would be a waste of money. I think that as long as the D weapons are banned, everything is fine then. Well we might as well just wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. Is there any idea on how long we might have to wait to know what happens? More suggestions on how Tau can take these bad boys out of the fight would be much appreciated. If it continues at this rate, I think I can speak for all Tau players on this one, the R'Varna better get approved pretty soon here so we can get a large threat on the board too. Thanks for all of your support so far.

I have the Rvarna, and love it
also I am not saying quit tau by any means.. they are my favourite army to play with by far.. lots of fun
and I think once the forgeworld pdf comes out it will be a lot better

I agree with you. Do we have an estimated time of arrival for when the rules for the R'Varna will be cleared? There is a pdf on FW, but its just the rules that are being tested. Have you tested out the R'Varna in matches? If so, how has it faired? Can you also tell me why Tau are still a very viable army to play. I have gotten 3/4 of the way into building the O'Vesa Star and then all of this madness happened. I feel like my army will be totally obsolete if going up against a Revenant. Could you give me some help in figuring out how to overcome this predicament? How do you take one of these monsters or vehicles down? Crisis suits with FB? Please help me regain more faith in the army I have almost finished.

well the formation prob wont hurt..
tank hunters will definitely help you take down some armoured stuff.. also it will free up your heavy slots for some more hammerhead madness... I would think that would help


As for Rvarna.. so far I have only played 1 game with him and it was in a 3000p match against my friend nids...
It wasnt fair at all because as you know.. nids only really have 3+ saves and it wounds their MC's 3 times for each blast...

he took out over 1000p of his army in 3 turns
I think this thing was designed to rape nids...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also you could take a farsight bomb with a group of fusion crisis suits and deepstrike them right next to their Lord of War

Well, fluff-wise the R'varna was designed to destroy nids so that makes sense!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Rail Guns. The titan is only AV12-12-10

Though with the Holo-fields, you may want to drown it in S7. It really depends if you want that +2 bonus on the damage chart or not.

Also, what's with the variable stats? Like, for the Antimatter Meteor, it says something like - S10/8/6 AP1/3/5

That's an apocalyptic blast.

You could look into some of the new fortifications. I believe they have some D for everyone.

Would the Tiger Shark AX-1-0 be the same hull points as the normal version in Escalation? (If house ruled or when made available)

What does SP mean in the IA:3 book?

Noctem wrote:
What does SP mean in the IA:3 book?

It means you have an old edition of the book and need to get the new IA3 or the new IA:Apocalypse (the Tigershark AX-1-0 rules are the same in both).

And SP was the old 4th/5th edition way of representing the extra durability of superheavies over normal vehicles, essentially each SP required a "destroyed" result to remove, with the vehicle not dying until the last SP was removed. The 6th edition Apocalypse update from FW said to convert SP to HP at a 1 SP = 3 HP rate if you find any older units that still have SP listed. But that doesn't apply in the case of the Tigershark since its new rules have HP, not SP.

Oh ok, well I don't have any book, besides Escalation for Super Heavy rules. I had just read somewhere that it was 2 SP, but that makes sense that 1 SP = 3 HP.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
Ok thanks. It makes me want the R'Varna to come into the game even more now. With all of these titans etc. running around, it also sounds like Tau don't have much of a Super Heavy with the Tiger Shark. So if I was playing against someone running a Super Heavy, would I wan't to run it? I think that it is kind of the anti Super Heavy unit as a posed to a pure destruction unit, am I wrong?


I guess my main point is, should I get the Tiger Shark or the AX-1-0 or neither one? I just want to know if its even worth it, because if it can dispatch of other Super Heavies, it doesn't sound too bad. Is it a waste of points and money? And if it is a waste, what do you suggest I add to my army so I can dispatch of Gargantuan Creatures and Super Heavies?

There are 2 versions of the Tiger Shark. I don't have the book with me but I believe it is the AX-1-0 that has a TL-Destroyer gun. The normal one (found in the Escalation supplement) does not. So if you get the AX-1-0, you're going to have to ask for permission to use it in a game of Escalation. Of course, there is always the chance that they will update Escalation with units over time to cover more of the super-heavies and in a worst case scenario, you can always use it as a count-as regular Tiger Shark.

R'varna will require permission from your opponent as it is only experimental at this stage. Don't be expecting to be able to use in FW-sanctioned tournaments any time soon, however, due to its experimental rules. Other than that, that guy is nasty! If I was running a tournament, I definitely wouldn't allow him in it without modifications to his rules.

BTW, did I tell you that I just got a R'varna? The model is just so sweeeeet.

Nice!! I think that the rules are still to cheap, but the model itself is beautiful!

Being that I am running the O'Vesa Star, I am just going to make some changes on my riptides to accommodate the new Escalation rules better. I will also possibly add more FB suits to DS so I have a better chance at being able to take out the Super Heavies etc. For now, I will stick to that then. Do you guys have any suggestions on other ways that Tau can dispatch of these OP models? Especially since the Tiger Shark is such a disappointment.

Oh, and one last thing, what can the Orca drop from it. Can it take Riptides? It can take anything up to Broadsides, I know that for sure, but Riptides?

A riptide would take as much space as two broadsides, iirc.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
I agree with you. Do we have an estimated time of arrival for when the rules for the R'Varna will be cleared? There is a pdf on FW, but its just the rules that are being tested. Have you tested out the R'Varna in matches? If so, how has it faired? Can you also tell me why Tau are still a very viable army to play. I have gotten 3/4 of the way into building the O'Vesa Star and then all of this madness happened. I feel like my army will be totally obsolete if going up against a Revenant. Could you give me some help in figuring out how to overcome this predicament? How do you take one of these monsters or vehicles down? Crisis suits with FB? Please help me regain more faith in the army I have almost finished.

A revenant costs like $250 dollars, do you know anyone who spent that much money on a toy?

If you're seriously so concerned about it, go buy yourself a shadowsword and ally it in with some IG or something.

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
I do feel like Tau has gotten the short end of the stick here. I have already gotten into building my Tau army and am pretty deep into it. I am not going to back out now because it would be a waste of money. I think that as long as the D weapons are banned, everything is fine then. Well we might as well just wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. Is there any idea on how long we might have to wait to know what happens? More suggestions on how Tau can take these bad boys out of the fight would be much appreciated. If it continues at this rate, I think I can speak for all Tau players on this one, the R'Varna better get approved pretty soon here so we can get a large threat on the board too. Thanks for all of your support so far.

Many of the Super heavy selections are not that great - although I am afriad it hard to feel sorry for the Tau with all the other toys they have been given recently.................compared to other armies especially.

It would have been better to have a more even playing field but thats no happened......ah well

Adepta Sororitas got sweet FA from the book, Dark Eldar got a Titan for no apparent reason - they do have their own FW super heavy..................

 jy2 wrote:
It's ok, but nothing can really compete with the power of the D. But seriously, even the D-version of the Tiger Shark honestly isn't so bad. Why? Because it isn't a blast. It's just 1 TL-shot and so you can only kill 1 model a turn. However, if you were to put it up against the Titan, most likely it will kill the titan since most ground titans can't handle flyers.

Or it can chose to shoot a s7 AP 3 10" blast that deviates less due to it being drone controlled. And you guys thought the baledrake was bad

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
I do feel like Tau has gotten the short end of the stick here. I have already gotten into building my Tau army and am pretty deep into it. I am not going to back out now because it would be a waste of money. I think that as long as the D weapons are banned, everything is fine then. Well we might as well just wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. Is there any idea on how long we might have to wait to know what happens? More suggestions on how Tau can take these bad boys out of the fight would be much appreciated. If it continues at this rate, I think I can speak for all Tau players on this one, the R'Varna better get approved pretty soon here so we can get a large threat on the board too. Thanks for all of your support so far.

Many of the Super heavy selections are not that great - although I am afriad it hard to feel sorry for the Tau with all the other toys they have been given recently.................compared to other armies especially.

It would have been better to have a more even playing field but thats no happened......ah well

Adepta Sororitas got sweet FA from the book, Dark Eldar got a Titan for no apparent reason - they do have their own FW super heavy..................

Dark Eldar don't have any superheavies, the Tantalus is just a big skimmer.

DE have the Revenant Titan

 Gitsmasher wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
It's ok, but nothing can really compete with the power of the D. But seriously, even the D-version of the Tiger Shark honestly isn't so bad. Why? Because it isn't a blast. It's just 1 TL-shot and so you can only kill 1 model a turn. However, if you were to put it up against the Titan, most likely it will kill the titan since most ground titans can't handle flyers.

Or it can chose to shoot a s7 AP 3 10" blast that deviates less due to it being drone controlled. And you guys thought the baledrake was bad

That certainly does give it some added flexibility. However, unlike the baleflamer, the Tau blast doesn't ignore cover (without the help of markerlights). Thus, you can still go-to-ground behind the Aegis for 2+ cover.

BTW, one of the most annoying things to happen to me was one of my very first games of Apoc. I fire a baneblade with a 10" blast at a unit of 10 chaos marines in area terrain. It hits and wounds 8-9. My opponent then goes-to-ground and I end up killing only 1.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Commander_Farsight wrote:
I agree with you. Do we have an estimated time of arrival for when the rules for the R'Varna will be cleared? There is a pdf on FW, but its just the rules that are being tested. Have you tested out the R'Varna in matches? If so, how has it faired? Can you also tell me why Tau are still a very viable army to play. I have gotten 3/4 of the way into building the O'Vesa Star and then all of this madness happened. I feel like my army will be totally obsolete if going up against a Revenant. Could you give me some help in figuring out how to overcome this predicament? How do you take one of these monsters or vehicles down? Crisis suits with FB? Please help me regain more faith in the army I have almost finished.

A revenant costs like $250 dollars, do you know anyone who spent that much money on a toy?

If you're seriously so concerned about it, go buy yourself a shadowsword and ally it in with some IG or something.

Super heavy has to be from your primary detachment.Unless he plays IG with tau allies he can't.

One can always go IG primary, Tau allies and then the Tau riptide/broadsides formation.

That's a lot of frickin Tau just for IG support.

What's the difference between Tau allies and Tau formation? Don't you need Tau allies for a Formation?

No, the formation is independent. That's 1 riptide and 2x3 broadsides which you can add to any army that can ally with Tau.

So you can potentially add the formation as well as an allied attachment with a Tau Commander, riptide and another 3 broadsides. That's 2 riptides and 9 broadsides just as add-ons to your Primary detachment of IG + baneblade/shadowsword!

Just HOW many points are you playing to even GET that much inside a list?!?

Dunno. I don't really play Tau. But as an estimate:

Tau Commander 165
2x Riptides 200x2
Kroots 60
9x Broadsides 630
CCS 50
2x Vet squads 140
Shadowsword 450

About 1900 so far

200 point riptides, 70 point broadsides.

You have 0 AA in your list as it seems.
Unless your riptide setup is HBC and VT, and thats far from a noteworthy setup.
Actually what kind of riptide DOES cost 200 points a piece?! I almost never get them this low. they usually go from 210 for a VT/EWO/IA setup to a 245 points ECPA/HBC/STIM supertanker in enclaves. (or 250 is I get VT instead of STIM)

So ye, you managed to shove the formation, 3 more broadsides another riptide, a buffmander and a shadowsword.

And that's ALL you have.
No troops to speak of.
No marker support (essential in making riptides useful)
No real anti-tank. (yea, the D gun is nice, but it can only kill 1 each turn)

Honestly? I'm not scared of that list, and its even beyond the limits of a 1850 turny (current standard)
MSU army with plenty of anti tank will decimate you, and that's the automatic result of FE and SoB armies, or drop-pod armies, or serpent spam, etc...

Excluding D guns, the screamerstar is worse.

I think that your suggestions are good. My only issue is that I am new to the game and have chosen to start with Tau. I don't want to make Tau my secondary detachment if I can. I have not played that may full games of 40k anyway, so I have not gotten the opportunity to see if these OP models are being played very frequently. Have more experienced people seen these models being played much more? (Yes, I understand that the book practically just came out). Now is IG the only option. I am not totally opposed to putting Tau on the secondary even though it may have sounded like I was. I just want to be able to keep up with the game. Fortunately I have alot of IG models already, so it wouldn't be that bad. Are there other options though just so I could look at them? Of course I would love to play the Revenant just because of how OP it is, but there is no space in an army to run the Revenant and ally Tau in (there might literally be a way to do it, but I don't think it would be competitively sane). So yes what are the other options with good Gargantuan Creatures or Super Heavies with D weapons? I really appreciate all of your support so far.

Plus, the release of the GC and SH make puppet master all the better making Daemons also very good (when it goes off).

 jy2 wrote:
Dunno. I don't really play Tau. But as an estimate:

Tau Commander 165
2x Riptides 200x2
Kroots 60
9x Broadsides 630
CCS 50
2x Vet squads 140
Shadowsword 450

About 1900 so far

Just a heads up a super heavy can only be attached to the primary army so keep that in mind when list building.

What do you thing about IG and Tau? What other things would work?

 Gitsmasher wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
Dunno. I don't really play Tau. But as an estimate:

Tau Commander 165
2x Riptides 200x2
Kroots 60
9x Broadsides 630
CCS 50
2x Vet squads 140
Shadowsword 450

About 1900 so far

Just a heads up a super heavy can only be attached to the primary army so keep that in mind when list building.

Ig is his primary.