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Hi Dakka,
Dark horse here after a long time of being off the site. Was hoping some Tau veterans here might give a brother some tricks and tips.

Now I am not wanting to play for tournaments its for fun and I also want the army to be fluffy so I have my Sept world sorted out and it is going to be Vash'ya there armour is the 2 versions of purple.
I would appreciate if anyone had any back story to these guys as I can not find anything except the small parts in the codex I already have the optimized stealth cadre formation for the fluff a commander and a fireblade and a forgeworlds variant riptide the XV107 R'avna battlesuit which I have always thought a beautiful model. But I want other things mainly troops and I want to see how things play like the kroot people are saying do not bother with them but I like the look of them and their rules like infiltrate.

So guys and gals need ideas what could be good and fun in a stealthy army. (already have names for some units) so could be a good idea to add names in for units you mention too.

Thanks for looking and listening dark horse.

Take a look at the Army Lists section of the forums, there are a bunch of good Tau lists in there. Unfortunately I can't help too much in the way of stealth - ghostkeels, shadowsun, and stealth teams are your only options though.

I'm the guy who takes two CADs so he can fit a Taunar and a Stormsurge in an 1850 point game. Stealth really isn't my thing.

Other Stealthy options:

Remora Drones are shrouded mini flyers.

Joining Shadowsun to a unit gives it stealth and shrouded- A couple of Crisis Suits with dual fusion and a puretide chip on the Shas'Vre makes for a great superheavy hunter squad.

Snipers, Kroot and Pathfinders all have stealth.

Pathfinder have scouts, not stealth.


Anyway, for a true fluff list, start with hunter cadre. It's a good fluff follow of classic tau forces.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Pathfinder have scouts, not stealth.

Ah, I use drones for marking.

That makes me even more glad I don't use Pathfinders.

Anyway, for a true fluff list, start with hunter cadre. It's a good fluff follow of classic tau forces.

It's a lot more flexible in build than the last few Decurions, certainly.

Still, "Go with the generic detachment" is the opposite of advice I'd give to someone trying to build a specific fluff list. Buffs are buffs, but from a list building perspective it just adds more restrictions to work around.

Restrictions is not always bad, it pushes you in a direction.

And so far, the decurions get you a fluffy army, without sacrificing playability. Mix of unit types, proper cross-unit interactions, and a backboned army, unlike the "spam the best superunits" that FoC push to.

Thanks guys kroot are a must as they are all 1 squad now with upgrades rather than 4 wounds obviously bigger games ill do hunter cadre but I'm stickin with CAD for now. Remora drones??? And forgot crisis suits can take signature systems.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Restrictions is not always bad, it pushes you in a direction.

And so far, the decurions get you a fluffy army, without sacrificing playability. Mix of unit types, proper cross-unit interactions, and a backboned army, unlike the "spam the best superunits" that FoC push to.

With CaD, alternate FoC charts and regular formations, you aren't pushed to a powerbuild by anything other than your own motivations or a desire to keep up with other power builders.

The structure of the decurions is inherently power-build oriented, and quite honestly gives less room for personal fluff by dictating most of your purchase list.

I mean yeah, you can point at say, the actual Necron Decurion and say "This is how Imhotek's Legions are organised", but what if you aren't playing Sautek Dynasty?

In this case, the OP asked for suggestions for making a stealth-oriented force. You -could- make a fairly Stealth oriented Hunter Cadre, as it is the least restrictive core formation so far released, but it's still built around the assumption of standard Tau millitary organisation. You'd still have more points to assign to a specific fluffy stealth build in CaD+Individual formations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 darkhorse19 wrote:
Thanks guys kroot are a must as they are all 1 squad now with upgrades rather than 4 wounds obviously bigger games ill do hunter cadre but I'm stickin with CAD for now. Remora drones??? And forgot crisis suits can take signature systems.

Remora Drones are a Forge World unit- Assumed you'd know because you mentioned the Y'vahra. Sorry.

Anyhow, they're pretty good: Stealthy mini-flyers with networked markerlights, seeker missiles, beefed up burst cannons and Shrouded, which is handy for either a 2+ jink or a 2+ cover save if you switch to hover mode in ruin terrain.

Thanks will look at these drones will they be allowed in the auxillary drone formation or not as id like to hope so as what your saying sounds awesome.

At the moment, no. IIRC, the forgeworld drones only really fit in the CAD designations they're assigned to in the forgeworld rules.

In fact, i don't even know if those rules even properly gel with 7th edition...

To your main question in regards to building a fluffy list:

Tau have two major approaches to war in the fluff, and in their purest forms they counter reach other.

Without going too in-depth in the fluff they are easily characterized as either baiting a trap and trying to force your enemy to overextend itself, or striking hard at important units and reducing your enemy's synergy.

Stealth suits can walk a line here but in practice I think they're better suited to the latter. Taking homing beacons allows you to deepstrike heavy-hitting crisis suits which, as was stated before, can benefit from having shadowsun with them to lay on serious hurt to their more serious heavy hitters. Likewise the ghostkeel and its formation also favour aggressive maneuvers against vehicles and the like.

For the other style, a good way to do it is to tempt them with a perspective target of opportunity, with intent to either make them waste shots on it or even risk deep striking to get at it.

The problem with that style is you're often literally sacrificing points to do it. Buf if you do, the R'avna may be suited for this. Or else a unit of pathfinders in a transport, or, my personal favourite, Longstrike in a Hammerhead in cover.