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Well, you've successfully roused me from my dakka posting hiatus.

I think tau in general do need some reworking, pathfinders more so than others.
If you want to encourage mobile play with pathfinders you need to do just that, encourage it, don't punish them for hanging back. However, they need to be able to handle being close up.

So up the points a little for balance first, cap the limit at 8 pathfinders. Markerlights remain heavy 36" but gain a special rule, for argument's sake, lets call it Beam. Beam makes the weapon twin linked at half range, in this case 18". Now we have a reason to be close and within firing range mind you.

Now they need to be buffed a little for survivability, give them move through cover and stealth(cover), this would mean no cover save out in the open. Allow them to take combat armour at 2ppm and maybe a 15pt drone with infiltrate and you have the makings of a much more mobile pathfinder squad.

I actually really like that idea, although that's now a potential six drones flitting about the squad!

The best way to make markerlights less of a problem is to remove the idiotic decision to make Tau shooting suck without markerlights. For example, crisis suits in the old codex could take an upgrade for +1 BS, which meant you needed fewer markerlights to get them up to an acceptable hit rate. Tanks could take an upgrade to allow them to fire like fast vehicles (and always did), which meant that they could move 12" and still shoot effectively instead of having to bring markerlights to turn snap shots into real shots. As a result markerlights were a nice luxury that you spent on a few critical shots instead of a mandatory tax that you have to bring to make your basic shooting adequate.

Oh, and to make up for the increase in power remove the Riptide from the codex. It's anti-fluff garbage anyway, so nobody will miss it.

Actually peregrine, I like having to rely on pathfinders, it balances tau, imagine static gunline tau didn't need markerlights. The only real weaknesses apart from reliance on markerlights is the tau cc ineptitude. But to get there armies need to weather the storm of pulse rifle fire, of which I can deliver 52 shots at half range without getting really creative.

Unless my opponent's ravenwing go first. In which case I'm mercilessly slaughtered on turn 1. But don't let that undermine what I've just said.

Miko, it could be, but you'd pay out the nose for them, 10pts for Shas'Ui to get the 2 12pt drones (34pts already) the 3 15pt drones and a 28pt drone, that's over 100pts in drones (107 to be exact), that's more than the squad costs, drop any drone and throw in a devilfish and it's much closer to 300. Another tau flaw is how quick the upgrades start costing and this really demonstrates it, but I like it, constraints make you more creative and help balance. It's why I'm not totally sold on the new way of structuring armies as yet.

Just allow cover saves against marker shots and a lot more people would be happy

Cover saves are allowed against marker lights, but they don't cause any wounds so there is nothing to actually save against.

Jefffar wrote:
Cover saves are allowed against marker lights, but they don't cause any wounds so there is nothing to actually save against.

There is nothing stopping an amendment in the rules for Markerlights saying "cover saves may be taken as if the owning player had successfully rolled to wound" I hope this clears the confusion of what I was trying to suggest.

That seems rather complicated.

Why not just remove markerlight's ability to make allied shoot ignore cover?

BlaxicanX wrote:That seems rather complicated.

Why not just remove markerlight's ability to make allied shoot ignore cover?

Not really, it's just a few more options in the pathfinder entry, for a tau player, that's not a big deal and as for beam weapons, I really think they should be a thing, because it's basically a slightly less effective rapid fire and I really think there needs to be a less effective option.

Beyond that, allowing cover saves could break tau, they're fragile, expensive and not terribly likely to hit, if that got worse or effects were removed they'd really need to be recosted, meaning more pathfinders, more markerlight spam, making it harder to kill them all off.

Making them the double edged sword of cost/effectiveness and encouraging new play instead of limiting current play is the best way to do it, it's simply smarter design. Costing a tau army can be pretty difficult, between all the upgrades (and there are many) for units that are pretty squishy meaning they're really risky investments.

Biggest problem with markerlights i see is that they usually come on a 3+ cover save skyray (ruins or jink + dispersion) or markerlight drone squad with a buffmander who tanks with 2+ / 5++.

These are both incredibly resistant to ranged attacks.

Buffmanders get 200pts sunk into them easy, the opportunity cost is huge, skyrays however I have less experience with, but should they not just go down like most tau? drop in behind and blast them and let 10 armour disappoint the player yet again

How do you intend to 'drop in' for rear armour. Their range is the entire board so there's no reason for skyrays not to sit right at the back where rear armour is impossible or so close that deep striking is suicidal and there's still the 3+ cover.

buffmander cost a fair bit but drone controller, irridium armour, stimulant, rerolls to hit gives you 6 marker lights with 3+ rerollable that are basically immune to shooting. The only way to break it is targetting the drones with barrage or deep striking so the boss isn't at the front .

or firing a plasma blastgun at them.

All this does is force a certain play style. Why not remove all range weapons from ork or lower them to 6" cause orks are running and shooting alot. Or make it required for space marine to have atleast 3 jump squads?

Markerlights are fine the units 36" range is needed the whole tau army is about keep them there and you over here. Get rid of that and you have oh look a space marine army in skinny form yay.

i think we're getting off track, two networked markerlights is hardly spam, in fact I'd worry about those the least and buffmanders are hardly broken, the entire squad HAS NO GUNS (or 2 at the most, or 1 if there's a shield gen) and it costs about 300pts, yeah it'll soak up shots but once the commander is gone, those drones are toast, and within 36", besides,

if you're playing against tau and shooting at anything that doesn't have a markerlight on turn 1, I think you might be doing it wrong.

Also, they're tau, try using jump infantry to close to cqc, you should probably be able to close nicely while they're bouncing around

wtnind wrote:
How do you intend to 'drop in' for rear armour. Their range is the entire board so there's no reason for skyrays not to sit right at the back where rear armour is impossible or so close that deep striking is suicidal and there's still the 3+ cover.

buffmander cost a fair bit but drone controller, irridium armour, stimulant, rerolls to hit gives you 6 marker lights with 3+ rerollable that are basically immune to shooting. The only way to break it is targetting the drones with barrage or deep striking so the boss isn't at the front .

or firing a plasma blastgun at them.

You play on 36" board? because that's a skyray's rage on the markerlights, and the seekers are one-shot missiles that need a markerlight to fire properly.
Also, as he has two markerlights, if he even moves-he can't shoot them both properly.
And if he jinxs, forget about hitting anything next turn.

The buffmander setup you suggest is 228 points, and relies on two relics meaning you can't get two of this setup. and in return, you get 5-6 marker hits every turn, whoa re alot, but over the point of optimal efficiency anyway (too many markers in one place.) and 5-6 hits can be aquited by a bunch of tetras/pathfinders for cheaper.
As for it being "immune to shooting", if you got no way to shoot either through or around a single tank character, you need to rethink your shooting strategy or shift to choppy one, as nearly every army can pull of stronger tank characters, and they tend to stand in front of meaner things than a few high accuracy markerlights, and tend to smash faces in their own right too.

 BoomWolf wrote:

You play on 36" board? because that's a skyray's rage on the markerlights, and the seekers are one-shot missiles that need a markerlight to fire properly.

If the skyray doesn't move it can fire all 6 missiles at once at full BS 4. Sounds like proper firing to me.

 BoomWolf wrote:

And if he jinxs, forget about hitting anything next turn.

This must be why nobody takes waveserpents either right?

 BoomWolf wrote:

The buffmander setup you suggest is 228 points, and relies on two relics meaning you can't get two of this setup.

You can only have 1 warhound titan, not being able to double up doesn't make something bad.

 BoomWolf wrote:

you get 5-6 marker hits every turn, whoa re alot, but over the point of optimal efficiency anyway (too many markers in one place.) and 5-6 hits can be aquited by a bunch of tetras/pathfinders for cheaper.

That's really a matter of opinion. MSU markerlights are easier to kill / whittle down.

I raised these two setups for the purpose of refuting the argument "target his markerlights first", because this kind of setup makes it impossible / sub optimal to do that. Of the two, the skyray is probably the worst offender since it can fire all its missiles turn 1 and get back at least half it's points immediately.

yes but again, if you've set up a decent table there should not be unobstructed los and unless i'm mistaken, would all 6 not be at the same target?

the skyray is only really nasty when it is supported by mobile marker units and can use markerlights to fire bs5 s8 ap3 seekers w/ ignores cover w/o los, but that's where the whole strategy part of Warhammer comes in, maybe try outflanking?