Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

CKD, I don't think you grasp the reason why your proposal is nonsensical. Your basis is flawed, which leads to your suggested tactica being flawed. Sorry that you can't work that out.

SJ

SJ, I understand and I will take your opinion into account when I re-write the article. I was introducing a proposal or a rule change and I was showing how things would be with the rule change not how they currently are. I did not make that clear in this article I made the assumption that the reader would be able to tell the difference so the article could be a lot better! The revision will be better understand I was rushed when I was writing the article as I wanted to complete it while Tau is the current topic of discussion.

I hope you do not have bad feelings towards me as I have always enjoyed your post we just bump heads because I did not make something clear.

I reckon if a house rule were to be made to 'fix' it then I'd say that the best fix would be this:

The formation can only use its resupply move once per game.

It would still allow the squadrons to get two uses out of their drones and seeker missiles, and I think the formation would still be strong. In its current formation I wouldn't want to take it - it just feels too gamey to me, and isn't the way I'd want to play.

It'd be more fun to play against this way, and would feel a lot more fluffy - rather than having piranhas loitering around the board edges all game repeatedly circling on and off and magically receiving tons of extra material from somewhere...

This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

Sigh, you do know that it's a choice between either dumping a bunch of drones (S5, no scoring, no contest units) or staying on the table firing expensive "krak" missiles thus leaving you open to any kind of counter.

X078 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

Sigh, you do know that it's a choice between either dumping a bunch of drones (S5, no scoring, no contest units) or staying on the table firing expensive "krak" missiles thus leaving you open to any kind of counter.

Well in that case it is no choice - you spam the drones. Who cares if they can't score...1600 points of free shooting insures you table your opponent. Plus you have 2/3 of your full 1850 army of some other tau stuff that is also great at killing stuff.

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.

The ITC had a knee-jerk reaction and nerfed it despite it not needing to be nerfed.

It is NOT any better than daemon summoning. in fact, its not even as good, as you can't pick and choose the units you need, and can't deploy the reinforcements anywhere but deep within your deployment, and they can't even hold objectives.

Had they given it a single test before going nerfhammer wacko on it, they would have seen just how little impact it has on the game.

Enough firepower to take down 2-3 knights against front shielded armor? yes, but it won't win the game. takes FAR too long.

I'll run an example scenario here, where everything goes out perfectly in favor of the tau player, just ot get the point across that even in wonderland, its not doing all that much.


Assume a full flock of 16 fishes (that's a not insignificant of minimum 896 points, usually more than two knights to begin with.), with the knight within the tank hunter buff range, and tau gets first turn-the best case scenario for the formation.
Each of the squads shooting at it has 10 rockets, hitting 6.66 against the marked one, generating 3.7 hull point hits and after ion shield its down to 2.47 hull points stripped.
Meaning, by the second team, you probably still didn't get it. by the third, you probably did, the buffer piranha spends its shooting going flat out for jinking better-and the formation took down a knight on T1. as they spend the shooting phase on the table, they can't leave-meaning they CAN be targeted, counterplay ensues.
Come knight turn, lets assume he did horribly, and the ONLY thing he could kill is a single piranha. guess what? the buffer one is alone. even if I gave it a free Dpod, its a 11/10/10/2 open topped skimmer. even with a 3+ jink, its still remarkably easy to kill, the knights surge forward, doing knightly things.

Turn 2, the tau player can only evacuate his piranhas now, they got no seekers, the drones departed, and the knights are immune to the burst cannons. (fusion you say? many extra points, 160 for full stacking. and requires being within 21" on your turn start to preform, knights don't have to give you that option, they are perfectly fine standing 22" away.)
Knights turn 2-you keep doing knightly things. most likely, you began crashing into enemy lines by now.

Turn 3, the piranhas come back, but this time, they number 15, hit on BS3 and has no tank hunter tricks.
So, 30 missiles. 15 hits. making a safe assumption that you got one team to a side that got shield, another to an unshielded side and a third on front we are looking at almost another dead knight (about 5.65 hull points on average.)-so its very much possible you just dropped a second one. lets assume you did. now-you stay on board, as you shot.
Knights, now with two down-are already well within your deployment zone, taking names and butchering stuff. assuming the piranhas are still left unchecked somehow-it means that turn 3 knights are doing SOMETHING in your area, safe to assume the rest of your dudes took a pounding, if not outright decimated.

Turn 4-against piranhas leave table, again knights go on a killing spree.

Turn 5, FINALLY the third knight is taken down. you got little else if anything but the firestorm left by now-it was half your army to begin with. and they can't get another rearm-the turn counter is ticking. so, you gotta hope for rear shots if you want any hope of taking down the last one.


So, yea. an expensive unit that is designed just for that managed to take down 3 knights over 5 turns, with tau getting the first action, assuming the knight player utterly failed to take out squads (or didn't even try) the turns after they shot volleys and only managed to kill a single lone piranha (and that's very, very easy.), wasn't in charge range after the turn 3 volley, etc.
It took the formation until turn 3 in order to make only how much it costed (well, technically it still didn't kill its cost, but it did drop some extra drones, so I'll give it a wash), meaning you are losing on the early game advantage here.

So, overall, you did decent enough. in fact, you even probably have the upper hand-if nothing goes wrong, you win! if anything does go wrong though (losing turn 1 or losing the lone piranha), you have a real fight in your hands, that you may not win.
AGAINST A LIST YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY BUILT TO COUNTER.
The same firestorm facing a drop pod armies? the firestorm list is screwed. you need to hide the firestorm in reserves or else they will HAMMER your piranhas, meaning you got 900ish points on board-and no reliability on when they are coming to assist.
Decurion? you will be hard pressed to hurt them.
Gladiolus? it has enough metal boxes to not care. even considering you took out 3 in your initial volly, you barely scratched their list.
Real "reinforcements" lists can take the punishment and out-spam you. (Either Tzeentch summoning flavor, or unending host.)
Renegade artillery lists will likewise bombard you to hell-at a similar cost they can filed 5 teams of 3 earthshakes with 12 ablative T7 wounds each team, before the relevant wounds start to tick (3 guns, 5 crew each). even if your initial volley takes a whole team out (and that's crazy talking-as even if you gotten the BS4, your 32 shots hit 21.33 times, wounding 14.22 times assuming no cover-that's , and given that they can fire without LOS, they WILL have cover.), the remaining 12 cannons will easily start nuking your fishes.


congratulations, you have officially entered the RPC (Rock Paper Scissors) list realm. you can beat knights with relative high probability, non-spawning hordes are easy wins, and most anything else beats you.

Compare it to the current top dogs, and you will find the very things that punish the firestorm to begin with, are the ones taking tournaments.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

That's per the ITC, which nerfed it by 60% from what you are saying. The actual codex rules are broken is all I'm saying. ITC made a decent ruling that made the formation not that great by forcing the piranhas to stay on the board for a few turns and reducing the overall output of drones to a huge degree. Would you play against the unmodified formation? I'll play vs decurion - i'll play vs wraith knights - i'll even play vs invisibility - no way I'm playing vs that mess. Also - it's not as if ITC is some golden standard ether. In fact - local tournaments that I play in do not use their rulings (because a lot of them are kind of wack). Fluff has no basis in balance anyways. If fluff were a factor marine drop pods would keep on coming too and would have no problem destroying an entire planets armies with a company of marines.

The ITC had a knee-jerk reaction and nerfed it despite it not needing to be nerfed.

It is NOT any better than daemon summoning. in fact, its not even as good, as you can't pick and choose the units you need, and can't deploy the reinforcements anywhere but deep within your deployment, and they can't even hold objectives.

Had they given it a single test before going nerfhammer wacko on it, they would have seen just how little impact it has on the game.

Enough firepower to take down 2-3 knights against front shielded armor? yes, but it won't win the game. takes FAR too long.

I'll run an example scenario here, where everything goes out perfectly in favor of the tau player, just ot get the point across that even in wonderland, its not doing all that much.


Assume a full flock of 16 fishes (that's a not insignificant of minimum 896 points, usually more than two knights to begin with.), with the knight within the tank hunter buff range, and tau gets first turn-the best case scenario for the formation.
Each of the squads shooting at it has 10 rockets, hitting 6.66 against the marked one, generating 3.7 hull point hits and after ion shield its down to 2.47 hull points stripped.
Meaning, by the second team, you probably still didn't get it. by the third, you probably did, the buffer piranha spends its shooting going flat out for jinking better-and the formation took down a knight on T1. as they spend the shooting phase on the table, they can't leave-meaning they CAN be targeted, counterplay ensues.
Come knight turn, lets assume he did horribly, and the ONLY thing he could kill is a single piranha. guess what? the buffer one is alone. even if I gave it a free Dpod, its a 11/10/10/2 open topped skimmer. even with a 3+ jink, its still remarkably easy to kill, the knights surge forward, doing knightly things.

Turn 2, the tau player can only evacuate his piranhas now, they got no seekers, the drones departed, and the knights are immune to the burst cannons. (fusion you say? many extra points, 160 for full stacking. and requires being within 21" on your turn start to preform, knights don't have to give you that option, they are perfectly fine standing 22" away.)
Knights turn 2-you keep doing knightly things. most likely, you began crashing into enemy lines by now.

Turn 3, the piranhas come back, but this time, they number 15, hit on BS3 and has no tank hunter tricks.
So, 30 missiles. 15 hits. making a safe assumption that you got one team to a side that got shield, another to an unshielded side and a third on front we are looking at almost another dead knight (about 5.65 hull points on average.)-so its very much possible you just dropped a second one. lets assume you did. now-you stay on board, as you shot.
Knights, now with two down-are already well within your deployment zone, taking names and butchering stuff. assuming the piranhas are still left unchecked somehow-it means that turn 3 knights are doing SOMETHING in your area, safe to assume the rest of your dudes took a pounding, if not outright decimated.

Turn 4-against piranhas leave table, again knights go on a killing spree.

Turn 5, FINALLY the third knight is taken down. you got little else if anything but the firestorm left by now-it was half your army to begin with. and they can't get another rearm-the turn counter is ticking. so, you gotta hope for rear shots if you want any hope of taking down the last one.


So, yea. an expensive unit that is designed just for that managed to take down 3 knights over 5 turns, with tau getting the first action, assuming the knight player utterly failed to take out squads (or didn't even try) the turns after they shot volleys and only managed to kill a single lone piranha (and that's very, very easy.), wasn't in charge range after the turn 3 volley, etc.
It took the formation until turn 3 in order to make only how much it costed (well, technically it still didn't kill its cost, but it did drop some extra drones, so I'll give it a wash), meaning you are losing on the early game advantage here.

So, overall, you did decent enough. in fact, you even probably have the upper hand-if nothing goes wrong, you win! if anything does go wrong though (losing turn 1 or losing the lone piranha), you have a real fight in your hands, that you may not win.
AGAINST A LIST YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY BUILT TO COUNTER.
The same firestorm facing a drop pod armies? the firestorm list is screwed. you need to hide the firestorm in reserves or else they will HAMMER your piranhas, meaning you got 900ish points on board-and no reliability on when they are coming to assist.
Decurion? you will be hard pressed to hurt them.
Gladiolus? it has enough metal boxes to not care. even considering you took out 3 in your initial volly, you barely scratched their list.
Real "reinforcements" lists can take the punishment and out-spam you. (Either Tzeentch summoning flavor, or unending host.)
Renegade artillery lists will likewise bombard you to hell-at a similar cost they can filed 5 teams of 3 earthshakes with 12 ablative T7 wounds each team, before the relevant wounds start to tick (3 guns, 5 crew each). even if your initial volley takes a whole team out (and that's crazy talking-as even if you gotten the BS4, your 32 shots hit 21.33 times, wounding 14.22 times assuming no cover-that's , and given that they can fire without LOS, they WILL have cover.), the remaining 12 cannons will easily start nuking your fishes.


congratulations, you have officially entered the RPC (Rock Paper Scissors) list realm. you can beat knights with relative high probability, non-spawning hordes are easy wins, and most anything else beats you.

Compare it to the current top dogs, and you will find the very things that punish the firestorm to begin with, are the ones taking tournaments.

I admit that the seekers are not what makes the formation strong. The strongest option would be just drone spam. 600 points for an uncounterable spawning of 320 points of drones every turn for 600 points. You still got 1250 points left over to do all kinds of tau stuff. Which would primarily be anti armor granted drones can kill anything else with weight of fire.

The ITC nerf kinda makes the unit unusable though - which is probably exactly what they wanted. Spamming free units without a counter is ridicules.

Again that "free points drone spam" argument.

Its "technically correct", but irrelevant. most drones never come into play, the ones who doarrive the frontlines too late to matter.

Yes, doing it that way will generate more raw firepower, but it will gear you towards late game dominance, while your early game will be as if you are playing 600 points short-and losing 600 early to gain 1500 late just doesn't work in this game.

Trying to simply drone spam fails for the very reason summoning spam isn't dominating-the game is too short for the gains to outtake the costs.
the costs, in this case, is the fact they can't do anything on turns 1-2, who are by far the most important turns in this game if you are not playing ethernal war. (and even there, they are the most important, just not by such a big margin)

Again, all the ITC ruling does it shift the utility from Drone production to Seeker production, which comes with a pretty hefty tax in Seekers and Drone-Net (although, as we all know, the Drone-Net would have been there anyway).

SJ

I am so happy that others are telling people why the formation is not broken instead of me. That is why I wrote the article so now when people go vote on this formation for ITC events they will hopefully make the right choice.

People should play this Formation as it is written until it proves to be broken.

This is less powerful than Demon summoning and the tourney scene handles that just fine.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Again that "free points drone spam" argument.

Its "technically correct", but irrelevant. most drones never come into play, the ones who doarrive the frontlines too late to matter.

Yes, doing it that way will generate more raw firepower, but it will gear you towards late game dominance, while your early game will be as if you are playing 600 points short-and losing 600 early to gain 1500 late just doesn't work in this game.

Trying to simply drone spam fails for the very reason summoning spam isn't dominating-the game is too short for the gains to outtake the costs.
the costs, in this case, is the fact they can't do anything on turns 1-2, who are by far the most important turns in this game if you are not playing ethernal war. (and even there, they are the most important, just not by such a big margin)

Drones are fast. Unless your opponent is sitting on the back line all game, they'll have something worthwhile to shoot at probably the turn they come on.
Piranhas move 6" on to the table, deploy drones 6", 18" range, they've got 5/8 of the board covered. If not, they get an extra 3D6" of movement after that, putting them way up the board on their second turn. A squad of 10 drones (Especially BS3 twin linked) is a decent threat against AV10/11 vehicles (rear armor for most things), and can put wounds on essentially everything in the game.

But their big advantage is that they can be a throw-away, speed-bump unit that a) can be a threat to most everything, b) requires 1-2 units of shooting to take them out, c) awards no Kill points when killed.
Those Knights? Drop 10 drones off in front of them, just encircle them 1" away, no shooting. You neutralize its combat potential, keep it away and in range of your guns for longer. ANd you do this every turn, the knight moving all of 2" per turn towards your lines. Thunderwolf cavalry? Ravenwing/White Scars bikers? Speed bump units let you engage on your terms. So when the enemy is trying hard to take out your Riptides throwing ignores cover ap2 large blasts at them, they can't get any closer to you. They don't necessarily need to be scoring: they can form a line around an objective and just prevent you from getting to it.

I agree with everything Trasvi said and would add that while you're definitely starting with a relatively minor disadvantage, you've already made up the points differential and then some by turn 2. (448 pts of drones per turn generated but 640 pts for the cost of a full Firestream Wing.) I don't know that the formation is broken, but it is definitely very, very powerful and just on the edge of broken, if not.

Trasvi wrote:
Drones are fast. Unless your opponent is sitting on the back line all game, they'll have something worthwhile to shoot at probably the turn they come on.Piranhas move 6" on to the table, deploy drones 6", 18" range, they've got 5/8 of the board covered. If not, they get an extra 3D6" of movement after that, putting them way up the board on their second turn. A squad of 10 drones (Especially BS3 twin linked) is a decent threat against AV10/11 vehicles (rear armor for most things), and can put wounds on essentially everything in the game.

Does this make drones broken?

Trasvi wrote:
But their big advantage is that they can be a throw-away, speed-bump unit that a) can be a threat to most everything, b) requires 1-2 units of shooting to take them out, c) awards no Kill points when killed.
Those Knights? Drop 10 drones off in front of them, just encircle them 1" away, no shooting. You neutralize its combat potential, keep it away and in range of your guns for longer. ANd you do this every turn, the knight moving all of 2" per turn towards your lines.

Yes, these are the good things that they can do but does this make them broken?

Trasvi wrote:
Thunderwolf cavalry? Ravenwing/White Scars bikers? Speed bump units let you engage on your terms. So when the enemy is trying hard to take out your Riptides throwing ignores cover ap2 large blasts at them, they can't get any closer to you. They don't necessarily need to be scoring: they can form a line around an objective and just prevent you from getting to it.

Retaliation Cadre
Commander
Crisis Suit
Crisis Suit
Crisis Suit
Broadside
Riptide

Firestream Formation
Piranha
5xPiranhas 5 seeker missiles
5xPiranhas 5 seeker missiles
5xPiranhas 5 seeker missiles

Drone Network
4xMarker Drones
4xMarker Drones
4xMarker Drones
4xMarker Drones

Optimised Stealth Cadre
1xGhostkell
3xStealth Suit
3xStealth Suit

The problem with taking the drone factory and the drone network is that it cost close to 900 points, after that you dont have enough to spend on serious fire power, that is why I wrote this example list to display that. So those assaulty units dont have much shooting at them! The drones can provide roadbloacks but if you shoot at them they will die and hopefully you will have room to charge them and the target you want to charge. This means you can kill 4-5 drones than force a ld 5 test on a riptide and bam both units are dead! So as roadbloacks they are not that great!

In my experience people rarley fight this hard against decisions made that hurt fluffy units. This fervor is usually reserved for OP auto win units.

I'm liking a full Piranha Firestream Wing, two Marker Drone Nets, and a minimal Ghostkeel Wing set up to EWO and VT for an optimized ITC list. It lets the Gun Drones do the bully work while the Marker Drones guide Seekers and the Ghostkeels agro threat. Its both fluffy and competetive.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.

 CKO wrote:
Does this make drones broken?

The problem with taking the drone factory and the drone network is that it cost close to 900 points, after that you dont have enough to spend on serious fire power, that is why I wrote this example list to display that. So those assaulty units dont have much shooting at them! The drones can provide roadbloacks but if you shoot at them they will die and hopefully you will have room to charge them and the target you want to charge. This means you can kill 4-5 drones than force a ld 5 test on a riptide and bam both units are dead! So as roadbloacks they are not that great!

I'm not saying 'broken' (well, not any more broken than 75% of what's come out in the last 18 months)... but you're underestimating the utility of drones. And the amount of shooting that Tau can pack in to the leftover points. This list isn't necessarily about killing though: its about dictating flow of play via innumerable blocking units. ANd killing, because TL BS3 S5 A2 pinning weapons aren't actually bad
But if you're so bad at roadblocking that you end up with your roadblock AND its ward being charged, yeah, this tactic isn't for you.

Trasvi wrote:
I'm not saying 'broken' (well, not any more broken than 75% of what's come out in the last 18 months)... but you're underestimating the utility of drones. And the amount of shooting that Tau can pack in to the leftover points. This list isn't necessarily about killing though: its about dictating flow of play via innumerable blocking units. ANd killing, because TL BS3 S5 A2 pinning weapons aren't actually bad
But if you're so bad at roadblocking that you end up with your roadblock AND its ward being charged, yeah, this tactic isn't for you.

I am not underestimating what drones can do, yes they are above average but like you said not broken. If it is not broken why make a rule change to make the formation weaker?

We make rule changes for stuff that is an auto win not something that is good.

tedurur wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.

It's an example of hyperbole.

SJ

Well I think it's safe to say...for about 1/2 the investment you get about 3 times the free stuff with this piranha formation. What you get is in fact - more usable too. Jet packed str5 twin linked pinners! Just the AA this formation provides alone makes it broken. It also would wreck gladius so thanks for bringing up gladius.

Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

tedurur wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
This formation needs a ban...clear and simple - yes - it is broken. It offers 0 counter play and essentially give the tau player a free drone army around 1600 points in a standard game - not to mention the insane seeker firepower enough to statistically destroy 2-3 knight titans in game firing directly into their shields. LOL. It is without a doubt the most ludicrous thing ive ever seen or heard of. There is no basis of balance.

I would never play against this idiotic formation. I would forfeit the match in a tournament and walk out if it were allowed to be played.

A bit heavy on the hyperbole, don't you think? As we've been discussing in this thread, the impact this formation has is somewhat midigated by the fact that you can only get two extra waves of Drones AND Seekers in a 5 turn game. If you ignore Seekers, you can get 5 waves of Drones in a 5 turn game. Given the ITC ruling, which limits the formation to only two resupplies in a 5 turn game, it behooves you to pay for Seekers on all of the Piranha, a 256 point tax. Seekers require Markerlights to succeed while the shoals of Drones require the Drone-Net formation to be useful. That's another 224 point tax. This means that in order to make the most out of a Piranha Frestream Wing at an ITC event, you have to dedicate 1120 points just to have three waves of Non-scoring Jump Pack Firewarriors and three volleys of Krak Missiles, of which only two of those waves are "free". Compared to War Convocation, which can have a free 500 points of gear each turn for 5 turns (2500 free points), or a Gladius with 500 points of free transports for 5 turns (2500 free points), the PFW spawns 1600 points of units during the same 5 turns. Taken in context, the PFW is actually pretty weak.

As to fluff, the PFW represents several waves of Piranha dropping off infantry at a battlefront, then leaving so the next wave can land. Modern militaries do the exact same thing. The ITC ruling just moves the focus from infantry delivery to firing off your guided missiles each dust off.

SJ

Im sorry but saying that you get 2500pts worth of free stuff from the Gladius is just strange. Do the drones automatically disappear after a turn? Since they do not then this calulation is very off. Using your calculation you would get 320*5+320*4+320*3+320*2+320*1 = 4800 pts from this formation in five turns and 6720pts in 6 turns etc. For a smaller investment than the minimum Gladius cost as well.

It's an example of hyperbole.

SJ

Not really, hyperbole would be like saying that something is 100 times as good when in fact its just 10 times as good. If you say that something which is worse than something else is actually better than the same something then thats not hyperbole, its simply being wrong and/or lying. Either way, its clear by these numbers that the drone factory is in fact much more points effective than both the war convocation and the gladius. Those are formations that are already borderline broken. The drone factory, by virtue of saving more than twice as many points as the previous mentioned formations while still costing almost half as much, is clearly broken.

It has a downside that they have to enter from their own table edge each turn. So, the drones are gona be 18 + 2d6 from table edge and most likely, near the side of the board so that pranhas would be able to fly away even if something gets stunned.

Btw. If one is immobilized within 6", does it mean that 2 units of 5 return if they form separate units?

X078 wrote:
Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.

With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.

 Xenomancers wrote:

X078 wrote:
Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.

With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.

This is kind of the point. We have yet to see a Tau Army with the Piranha formation dominate or win any kind of tournament. Preemptively nerfing it based on theoretical scenarios is just silly.

X078 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

X078 wrote:
Put it to work, win competitive tournaments, post results then we can talk.

With the ITC nerf it is no longer competitive. The unit ramp really requires 3-4 turns of spawning to become broken. I mean were talking about the difference 320 points of free drones per turn. Turn 1 You already paid for those drones - turn 2 you get marginal return on investment but really can't utilize the piranhas so you are just breaking even . Turn 3 is where you start getting real free stuff. Turn 4 is where it gets real ugly and theres almost no way you aren't overwhelming the enemy at this point and even if you were behind on objectives - the enemy should have very little left to score with at this point and you can start getting absurd objective bonuses like controlling every objective on the board because they have no units left.

This is kind of the point. We have yet to see a Tau Army with the Piranha formation dominate or win any kind of tournament. Preemptively nerfing it based on theoretical scenarios is just silly.

It's called foresight. I didn't need to see invisibility in action before I knew it was extremely broken. Simple math tells us that.