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And I mean literal suicide suits, I am thinking of giving them the following:

Crisis Shas'vre:
Onager Gauntlet
Failsafe Detonator
Repulsor Impact Field
2x Gun drones

2x Crisis Shas'ui each with
1 Flamer
1 Twin-linked Flamer
2x Gun drones

The idea is they charge strait at hordes, flame the crap out of them, get charged, kill as many as possible with overwatch/repulsor impact field, challenge any leaders, blow up if I am outmatched and take them with me. 203 points to kill 50+ model mods, not optimal, but fun and sure to piss off the opponent with certain claims of Tau cheese even though it is unwarranted in this case.

Yeah or just get shot to death. Hate to break it to you but that is easy to avoid and would do very little damage. The blast is normal, 6 models at best and not auto kill.

It's a fun idea but just too hard to execute. Only a folkish opponent would fall for that.

Shooting a crisis team full of drones to death with pistols, even 30 of them is a tall order, and that is the kind of thing this squad is intended to stand up to. It could also be used as a barrier to prevent charges by bike units, including seer councils. The blast wont get many, that is true, but the onager gauntlet will kill pretty much any squad leader in one hit, meaning their leadership will most likely be below five.

Even if I lose melee, that is an average of 8 hits from overwatch, assuming marine stats that is 5 wounds. repulsor means an average of 3.5 attacks at initiative 10. and that is not including the shooting phase I get where I hit with all 4 flame templates. The unit is low priority, low AP and range, and not a scoring unit. The odds it is ignored for the first two turns is high.

So we have a wall of drones and suits that is in your face preventing your mob from assaulting what you would like to, and my gentle assurances in the forms of complaints, "come on man, don't charge them, tau suck at melee."

I am fairly certain I can get them to charge it, and fairly certain they will serve their purpose. 99% of my lists include units that have no business existing yet do their fair share in my army.

You underestimate the power of numbers. My crisis bombs always die if more than 1 troop gets to shoot at them because theres ALWAYS a big gun across the table to add to it, since theyre a huge immediate threat.

I wouldnt assault that, even as orks - i'd shoot the feth out of it with ~50 boyz and some lootas. It will die lol. If need be, i'll blast it with Kannons. At best, you'll draw some fire - but a normal plasma/fusion bomb does the same and usually takes something BIG with it.

Also Tau flamers suck. Weakest damn flamer in the game on our ELITES. Hardly anything outside Burnas, which are significantly cheaper, or combi weapons even uses the S4 flamers cause theyre so bad.

50 boyz would kill the drones and damage one of the suits. Slow you down, prevent your charging other units, and waist shots that could be put on things more relevant. And your underestimating the influence I can have on my opponents verbally. I am a psychology major after all. My friends go out of their way to tell every opponent I face in a tournament not to listen to a word I say, but I even use that to my advantage and confuse and manipulate them to make the tactical decisions I want them to.

I do the same thing as these suits would do with piranha. Two piranha with flecthet dischargers in your face. I put them 5/8ths of an inch apart and 2" from your unit. Have fun going around, or go ahead and charge, but your movement phase is now moot, and you will gain no ground by charging. I have won several tournaments on using piranha in this way alone. Gained me breathing room vs flying daemons, seer councils, even nob bikers. This unit is intended to do the same thing but for melee oriented hordes.

How do you figure that with los 4+? 50 boys would force 16 saves, 8 los, 8 saves on 3+ is minimum 2 wounds.

2 flame templates per suit works really well.

16 wounds means 12 4+'s on the drones, most likely they dies here. that leaves 4 on the crisis. 4/3=1.333 wounds on the crisis, so an average shooting phase of 1 wound on a crisis and 72 points of damage at a cost of 50 boyz shooting.

4+=.5 16 x .5 =8 los not 4. I guess you mean drones sit out front not you are screwing up the range of your flamers.

Burst cannons are better and more versatile.

I'm all for innovation, and you've certainly had a good idea to try and break out of the box. Unfortunately, I think this idea is a bit of a non-starter. Crisis suits are just too expensive to be good suicide units, in my opinion.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I'm all for innovation, and you've certainly had a good idea to try and break out of the box. Unfortunately, I think this idea is a bit of a non-starter. Crisis suits are just too expensive to be good suicide units, in my opinion.

I agree entirely, they are 203 points, not worth it for what they do, but the goal is to demoralize the opponent, is much the same way that Jaws, or other such thins tend to. I know they will die, and I know they will not live up to their points cost. The goal is to have them show off "Tau cheese" where there is none. I guarantee that they will be refereed to as such even though they would not be a good choice for this type of action unless they were 100 points cheaper. Piranha do the same job, better, for cheaper, and are more survivable. But this isn't the point, something about crisis drones wading through the battle field to detonate on target just seems silly and attractive to me.

I say go for it but no one is going to call it cheese. I have put these in fun lists, different variations and there never was a big boom. Self detonation never went off after about 8 games. Gaulent helps kick in heavy armpit in a pinch, and no one charges refractor field plus 6 flamers unless 2+ or mc then they just laugh.

To put it softly this list will only work on a clueless opponent. So if you play hidden lists go for it otherwise it's always bad to assume your opponent is susceptible to dumb decisions.

I used to love doing this back with the old codex. I'd take a flamer, burst cannon, and multi-tracker (or twin linked flamer and something else) on 3 one man crisis suit teams, then deep strike them all and try to get them close enough to something important that they tie up the enemy long enough for my broadsides and hammerheads to nuke important units.

I could see this still being a legitimate tactic in casual to semi-competitive games (and it kind of fits the crisis suit roll in the fluff, so that can be a plus depending on how you feel about that), but the fact that our codex is actually good now means there's probably better options.