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notredameguy10 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 coblen wrote:
man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.

But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.

Too bad piranhas have 18" range with their guns so that isn't an option if you ever want them to go back into reserves again for the rest of the game

Ya my opponents never get within 24 inches of my board edge either. I never play vanguard strike, and my opponents never deepstrike near me. I also never need to contest an objective near my board edge. Good thing you can always just make more drones instead.

I'll quote here what I said in another thread with regards to the Piranha Firestream formation. This is to share my actual in-game experiences with the Firestream pre-ITC-FAQ'd.

 jy2 wrote:
With regards to the Piranha Firestream formation, I don't think some of the Tau players here even realize just how powerful that formation is. They say it can't score/contest/whatever and so it isn't good. Really? It is "nerfed" and rightly so. It is an extremely powerful build and I will share with you my experiences with playing against it.

I basically wrote a Tau list and my friend ran it against me. It consisted of the Firestream formation (10 piranhas in total), the Dronenet and "other" Tau stuff. We played it the "un-nerfed" way.


Game #1 vs Daemons

This was a larger game, I believe 2500. I ran Chaos knight with 2++/3++ Invuln, Fatey, D-thirster, Be'lakor, Grimoire Prince and some troops. Chaos Knight was basically useless here and just couldn't get through the infinite drone screens. D-thirster and other FMC's eventually got taken down through Tau VoF (volume-of-fire). Result: Tau Crushing Victory

Game #2 vs Daemons

This was an 1850 game with a Daemon list that I won a tournament with. It is actually a worse list than the one I used in Game #1. It was a close game, but my experience and the game ending on Turn 5 gave me a 1-pt win. Had the game went on, it would have been another crushing Tau victory. Result: Daemon Minor Victory

Game #3 vs Tyranids

I brought my 1850 tournament-winning Pentyrant (5-flyrant) list this time, but I just couldn't deal with his Piranhas, which I couldn't even target. Of course it helped that all his riptides had Skyfire, but by Turn 3, all of my flyrants were dead. I then conceded on Turn 4 with just 1 mawloc left. Result: Tau Crushing Victory

Game #4 vs Eldar

This game was played at 2250 and we didn't use ITC list-building rules. I ran an Eldar list with 5 Wraithknights! This was going to be an uphill battle for the Tau, or so we thought. By Turn 4, he had killed all 5 WK's and only lost 2 riptides (including the Y'vahra) in the process!!! Oh, and did I mention that I had Invisibility on 1 WK almost every turn? Result: Tau Crushing Victory


Analysis:

If you're thinking that for formation is not good because the drones can't score/contest, you really don't see the true power of this formation. The job of the drones is A) firepower and B) protection for the rest of the army against assault units. The amount of firepower it puts out is just staggering. With 10 piranhas, my opponent was producing 20 drones a turn. That is 40 twin-linked S5 BS3 shots a turn. And yeah, that's right....BS3 because of the Dronenet. Against my Daemons, the drones did just as much damage as his "main" offensive units (i.e. skyfiring riptides). Against my Tyranids, they shot down 2 flyrants and a couple of Mawlocs just through sheer VoF. Against Eldar, they had a hand in wounding/helping to kill almost all of the WK's. Flying or T8, it didn't matter. Sheer volume of twin-linked shooting was just devastating.

Do I think it is broken? As a competitive tournament player, nothing to me is really broken. Not Invisibility, not re-rollable 2+'s, not even unmodified D. HOWEVER, does that mean it is ok? Not in my opinion. IMO, the majority of tournament-goers won't know how to play against it and they will not have fun against it. The formation as is, before the ITC changes, allows for very little interaction, other than for the opponent to kill freely-generated units. Unlike Daemon Summoning, Scarab-farm or Tervigon-spawning, the Drone Factory is operating at 100% WITH NO LOSS IN EFFICIENCY ALL THE TIME and there is just nothing you can do about if the Tau player doesn't let you. It is mechanisms like this (and Invisibility, re-rollable 2+'s, unmodified D, etc.) that organizations like the ITC are trying to curb in order to create a more "fun" environment to play in, at least for their tournaments.

 coblen wrote:
man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.

I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.

 coblen wrote:
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.

So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.

 jy2 wrote:
Do I think it is broken? As a competitive tournament player, nothing to me is really broken. Not Invisibility, not re-rollable 2+'s, not even unmodified D. HOWEVER, does that mean it is ok? Not in my opinion. IMO, the majority of tournament-goers won't know how to play against it and they will not have fun against it. The formation as is, before the ITC changes, allows for very little interaction, other than for the opponent to kill freely-generated units. Unlike Daemon Summoning, Scarab-farm or Tervigon-spawning, the Drone Factory is operating at 100% WITH NO LOSS IN EFFICIENCY ALL THE TIME and there is just nothing you can do about if the Tau player doesn't let you. It is mechanisms like this (and Invisibility, re-rollable 2+'s, unmodified D, etc.) that organizations like the ITC are trying to curb in order to create a more "fun" environment to play in, at least for their tournaments.

Now JY you on the other hand I know the type of player you are and lets applying some in game knowledge to the mix.

So this maximum efficiency thing that you are talking about comes down to this. Lets pretend that for 640 points you get 3 drone units each turn starting at turn 2. So you start with 1210 to spend on other units and you start with 1210 points worth of other stuff plus the 3 drone units created by the piranhas.

Is 60 str 5 shots turn 2 worth 600 points? Whats worse what if they cant target the appropriate target?

600 points for 120 str 5 shots on turn 3 assuming any havent died.

600 points for 180 str 5 shots on turn 4 assuming the orginals are alive.

You get where I am going its not worth it as a drone factory, its better used as seeker missile farm in which case your not creating alot of drones, and you need marker lights which requires even more points and you quickly are running out of points to spend on riptides.

If they are doing pure drone factory all you have shooting at you is1200 points worth of other tau stuff factor in they need marker light support to make that any good that means they have around 900 points to spend on true fire power and all you have to do is kill those 900 points before you are consumed by str 5 shots assuming that your list is weak to str 5 shooting. Once you kill the riptides or marker light sources the tau list is garbage.

You of all people know this it is not broken maybe a slight revision.

 CKO wrote:

 coblen wrote:
man I wish I could choose to just put 600 points of stuff into ongoing reserve. Its super common to see both sides putting most of there army in reserve. With the piranhas you would get to choose what turn you actually wanted them instead of leaving it up to chance, and they would generate extra drones for every turn you held off. Thats sweet.

I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.

 coblen wrote:
But really you're not putting 600 points in reserve. The piranhas without the drones are not 600 points. If you felt like I actually valued having the piranhas shoot instead of bring in more drones then that is still an option, and it wouldn't surprise me if you end up choosing that against some armies, but always having the choice to deny your opponent is strong, and getting rewarded with a ton of drones is amazing.

So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.

There is nothing wrong with leaving the table. As a matter of fact, it is a very powerful tool to be able to go into Ongoing Reserves. As someone who runs flyer armies - Necron scythes in the previous edition, FMC-Daemons and Tyranids in this edition - I move my units into Ongoing Reserves all the time. Sometimes, the strategy of denial is better in certain circumstances than to stay on the table and risk getting killed. It is a defensive mechanism that allots your army a lot more flexibility.

In the case of the Firestream, sure, you can leave the piranhas on the table for their 20 shots. But do you want to take the risk of doing so and then letting your opponent blow them off the table, thus denying you future drone generation? Moreover, you are losing 1 turn of drone generation. It is a fallacy to say that you are missing 600-pts of firepower when in fact, you gain much more by trying to preserve them.

Playing with a chunk of your army out can be a viable strategy. Hence, why a lot of people are resorting to Null Deployment-style lists (or lists that have the flexibility for this style of play). Just because I deploy 1250 of my list doesn't necessarily mean that my list is inefficient. Rather, I am playing the long game, going for more survivability in the late game as opposed to exposing them to risk so early on. Maybe I want to reserve my riptide(s) instead of leaving him(them) on the table against a White Scars alpha-strike Grav-army going 1st? It's not always I-need-to-deploy-everything-on-the-table-to-maximize-my-firepower.

Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!

 CKO wrote:


I can tell the type of player you are by this statement, if you are trying to protect your units instead of using them to claim objectives or kill your opponent. If you think that by removing 600 points so that you can protect them is a good thing meaning you go from 1850 vs 1850 to 1250 vs 1850 is a good move than I do not need to try to convince you otherwise.

Some of the top table games at the LVO where recorded including the finals, and you can watch them on frontline gaming's twitch. I think if you watch them you will notice a pattern that these players often hold a lot of there army in reserve. These players didn't get to the top tables by playing poorly.

 CKO wrote:

So whats the value of a piranha without the drone? If its ok to lose 5 piranhas which put out 20 str 5 shots, but the ability to gain 20 str 5 shots in the form of a drones is to powerful? See the contradicition. If you decide to stay than you cant leave and create more drones thus no drone factory Everyone thinks of the benefits of the formation and think you can do all of them at the same time and you cannot. I am not saying its bad I am saying its not broken.

You can value you them at 12 points each since that's there cost minus the cost of drones, or you can value you them at 300 saying you are only down half your shooting it doesn't really matter how you want to value them its pretty obviously not 600.

You aren't giving up 20 shots to gain 20 shots later. You are giving up 20 shots to get 40+ shots later. If you don't need your 20 shots now you can bank them by going back and getting more drones. Your 20 shot unit comes back a 40 shot unit so you haven't lost any total shots over the two turns you have only lost having them right now. But you haven't just banked them for later. If your opponent doesn't wipe out the drone squad then you've generated even more shots. So every turn you get to think. Do I need my 20 shots now or is it fine to have them next turn if it gives me the potential of generating even more shots. The more turns there are left in the game the more potential for the drones to live. You don't have to generate drones every turn, but your likely going to do it the first 3-4 turns because the potential is going to be worth more then what you lose.

Just the ability to go into ongoing reserve would be strong. It lets you bring your units on your own terms, and guarantees that the shots come when you want it to. It gives the general the option of shoot now, but risk losing the unit in return fire or hold the shooting until I have a better target. The choice of delaying the shooting a turn, vs actually losing the shooting is a big difference and your acting like it is the latter

 CKO wrote:

Now JY you on the other hand I know the type of player you are and lets applying some in game knowledge to the mix.

So this maximum efficiency thing that you are talking about comes down to this. Lets pretend that for 640 points you get 3 drone units each turn starting at turn 2. So you start with 1210 to spend on other units and you start with 1210 points worth of other stuff plus the 3 drone units created by the piranhas.

Is 60 str 5 shots turn 2 worth 600 points? Whats worse what if they cant target the appropriate target?

600 points for 120 str 5 shots on turn 3 assuming any havent died.

600 points for 180 str 5 shots on turn 4 assuming the orginals are alive.

You get where I am going its not worth it as a drone factory, its better used as seeker missile farm in which case your not creating alot of drones, and you need marker lights which requires even more points and you quickly are running out of points to spend on riptides.

If they are doing pure drone factory all you have shooting at you is1200 points worth of other tau stuff factor in they need marker light support to make that any good that means they have around 900 points to spend on true fire power and all you have to do is kill those 900 points before you are consumed by str 5 shots assuming that your list is weak to str 5 shooting. Once you kill the riptides or marker light sources the tau list is garbage.

You of all people know this it is not broken maybe a slight revision.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend running 16 drones (640pts). Rather, at most I'd run are 10 (400pts) and feel that is sufficient in most cases. Thus, I'd actually have 1450pts to spend in my Tau list for the rest of my army.

Massed S5 shooting is excellent for the majority of armies in the game. Competitively, you actually don't see very much AV12+ vehicle-spam builds anymore. What you do see is a lot of AV11-spam (Battle Company) and infantry, of which drone-spam excels against. Against heavier armor, well, the rest of your list better have the tools to deal with that. (However, even against the likes of multiple Imperial Knights, the drone factory can still excel against them as a screening agent.)

And it's not always about being in range to shoot or having a target to shoot at. None of the other unit-generating mechanisms have hardly any shooting at all (i.e. Daemon Summoning, tervigon-spawning, scarab-farm, daemonkin). Rather, drones can be useful because they can impede the mobility of the more aggressive armies that Tau normally has trouble with. But most importantly, it takes up resources from your opponent to deal with the drones. He needs to allocate resources from his army to take out these screening units, thus providing more survivability to the rest of the Tau army. Drones actually have a lot of utility besides their firepower.

When up against an alpha strike list reserve denial is a good viable tactic. To pretend that the ability to do this during the midddle of every game is a great ability is another. Mainly because when you use reserve denial you get to protect things such as a riptide or a broadside unit but the ability to protect a unit your opponent was never going to shoot at which is the case as who shoots at piranhas that can come back at full strength, what are you protecting or denying?

If anything your opponent just focuses more on your riptides as the piranhas left the table and its drones, marker light sources, or riptides? Such a hard choice.

 CKO wrote:
Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!

This is the list I made:

Retaliation Cadre:
Commander - Drone Controller, other stuff
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Fusions
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Plasmas
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Missile Pods
Riptide - Ion, EWO
2x Missilesides

Dronenet:
4x4 Marker Drones

Firestream:
1x Piranha
3x3 Piranhas

Riptide Wing:
Riptide - Ion, EWO
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire


Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CKO wrote:
When up against an alpha strike list reserve denial is a good viable tactic. To pretend that the ability to do this during the midddle of every game is a great ability is another. Mainly because when you use reserve denial you get to protect things such as a riptide or a broadside unit but the ability to protect a unit your opponent was never going to shoot at which is the case as who shoots at piranhas that can come back at full strength, what are you protecting or denying?

If anything your opponent just focuses more on your riptides as the piranhas left the table and its drones, marker light sources, or riptides? Such a hard choice.

Not true. If the opponent has the firepower to take out your piranhas and you leave them on the table, you take the risk of losing them. For example, with my 5 flyrant list, if you leave a unit of piranhas on the table and I have range/LOS to them, you can be sure they are going to be dead. However, I do take the risk of wasting my firepower if I can't get rid of all of them so I will only go after them if I feel confident that I can take them out. Otherwise, I will go after the other Tau targets.

 jy2 wrote:

 CKO wrote:
Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!

This is the list I made:

Retaliation Cadre:
Commander - Drone Controller, other stuff
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Fusions
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Plasmas
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Missile Pods
Riptide - Ion, EWO
2x Missilesides

Dronenet:
4x4 Marker Drones

Firestream:
1x Piranha
3x3 Piranhas

Riptide Wing:
Riptide - Ion, EWO
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire


Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.

First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.

Because I feel 640 on the formation isn't optimal. I'm much more comfortable running 400 of the formation and feel that it is a more balanced list that way.

 CKO wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 CKO wrote:
Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!

This is the list I made:

Retaliation Cadre:
Commander - Drone Controller, other stuff
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Fusions
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Plasmas
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Missile Pods
Riptide - Ion, EWO
2x Missilesides

Dronenet:
4x4 Marker Drones

Firestream:
1x Piranha
3x3 Piranhas

Riptide Wing:
Riptide - Ion, EWO
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire


Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.

First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.

20 drones a turn is not enough to consider it a drone factory? I'm pretty sure when most people talk about the drone factory they are just talking about the formation not maxing out the formation. It doesn't matter if he maxes out the formation or not, if taking only 10 in the formation is overpowered then the formation is still overpowered.

 jy2 wrote:
Because I feel 640 on the formation isn't optimal. I'm much more comfortable running 400 of the formation and feel that it is a more balanced list that way.

I agree with you, you are using the formation because it is good not broken am I right?

 coblen wrote:

 CKO wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 CKO wrote:
Jy make me a list using the formation, and I will tell you how to beat it! 640 points must be spent on the drone factory, show its broken worthy of nerf bat. Give me the list that will top 8 using the formation!

This is the list I made:

Retaliation Cadre:
Commander - Drone Controller, other stuff
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Fusions
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Plasmas
1x Crisis Suit - 2x Missile Pods
Riptide - Ion, EWO
2x Missilesides

Dronenet:
4x4 Marker Drones

Firestream:
1x Piranha
3x3 Piranhas

Riptide Wing:
Riptide - Ion, EWO
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire
Riptide - HBC, EWO, Skyfire


Usually, you would leave the RetCal in reserves. I also tend to leave 2 units of marker drones in reserves as well.

First off this isnt a drone factory you spent 400 points on the formation I requested you spend 640! The reason why you did not spend 640 on the drone factory is that its not worth spending 640 points on the formation or its impossible to provide a realistic threat and spend that many points on the quote on quote drone factory.

20 drones a turn is not enough to consider it a drone factory? I'm pretty sure when most people talk about the drone factory they are just talking about the formation not maxing out the formation. It doesn't matter if he maxes out the formation or not, if taking only 10 in the formation is overpowered then the formation is still overpowered.

So, the riptide wing doing all the damage and taking out your army before you can do anything is not the key to this list? Its the drone factory, you looked at this list and were afraid of the piranhas! You understand that you will lose because you are afraid of the piranhas instead of the riptide wing, right?

My fear of the piranhas isn't going to do anything since most armies cannot interact with them at all. Triple riptide lists have existed for years. I've played against them and beat them before. They may be strong but at least you get to interact with them.

 coblen wrote:
My fear of the piranhas isn't going to do anything since most armies cannot interact with them at all. Triple riptide lists have existed for years. I've played against them and beat them before. They may be strong but at least you get to interact with them.

What does interacting with them has to do with anything? You see drones instead of piranhas do you get to interact with the drones that they create? Is the piranhas the problem or the drones?

I already posted a 1850 Drone Factory list both on this thread and in the Army List forum. Have at it, Hoss.

SJ

You said my fear is going to make me lose. My fear would only make me lose if it made me play any different. If I cant interact with it I can't make mistakes out of fear.

The formation is the problem. That includes the drones and the piranhas. 20 drones a turn is a lot.

Interaction is important. Its the thing that keeps broken things in check. A lack of interaction is bad, its gakky to play against, and when its too strong its oppressive.

I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol

notredameguy10 wrote:
I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol

And they will beat the average player because average players cannot beat spam in any form. Than they will get crushed by the great players!

notredameguy10 wrote:
I find it funny people are arguing over this formation when realistically no one but the absolute most die hard tournament player will ever use the "drone factory". Who has 80+ painted up gun drones lol

It isn't practical in tournament play, just like a pure Daemon Summoning army isn't as well (mainly due to time constraints). Hence why I think no more than 10 piranhas is a more practical number (as opposed to 16) in tournament play.

Your list was ok but Jy you know its not top 8 worthy, am I right?

It is plenty strong enough to win a normal GT. However, if you are talking about a GT the size of the LVO (with almost 300 players), when you get to the Top 8, it is more about the player than it is about the list.

Your list has nothing to do with drone factory, your list mainly uses the riptide wing am I wrong?

Yes, the piranha formation has its purposes in that list but its mainly use for utility. People have been complaining about all the str 5 shots and drones that list doesnt do that!

People are afraid of the formation because its another form of spam and average players cant deal with spam! This formation is feared because of the potential to spam something and that doesnt make it broken.

 CKO wrote:
Your list has nothing to do with drone factory, your list mainly uses the riptide wing am I wrong?

Yes, the piranha formation has its purposes in that list but its mainly use for utility. People have been complaining about all the str 5 shots and drones that list doesnt do that!

People are afraid of the formation because its another form of spam and average players cant deal with spam! This formation is feared because of the potential to spam something and that doesnt make it broken.

The Factory many not be the offensive focus of the list (at least not initially), but you better believe it sure is an important part of it. It functions similar to that of flyrants in a Tyranid army in that it acts as a force-multiplier in a Tau army. How does it benefit the Tau army?

1. Excessive firepower. Better believe its shooting is powerful.

2. Almost unlimited screening agents.

3. Anti-air firepower. Don't under-estimate the twin-linked firepower versus air targets. I've seen - actually, I've experienced - it take down flyrants and FMC Daemons.

4. Deterrent vs armies that Tau traditionally have the most problems with - fast assault armies. You don't necessarily have to kill them when slowing them down with free units can be just as effective.

5. They drain your opponent's resources. Yes, this game is one of resource management. If you have 10 guns but have to dedicate 3 guns to shooting down drones, then you've only got 7 guns to deal with the army. This makes the "core" Tau army much more resilient.

6. Movement blockers. You can block your opponent's movements, both to your units and to objectives. In one of my games, my Tau opponent actually surrounded my Knight with drones, thus preventing him from moving at all!

7. Piranhas can still claim/contest objectives on Turn 5 and as a fast skimmer, they've got the mobility to do so.

To think that the main firepower in the list comes from just the riptides is to under-estimate it. Yes, the riptides provide the initial firepower. However, over time, as more and more drones get produced and your riptides starts dying to enemy firepower, the offense of the drones will actually surpass those of the riptides. In my games as WK-Eldar and Pentyrant Tyranids, the drones did just as much damage to those units as did the riptides.

People don't really fear the formation. As a matter of fact, most people don't even really understand how the formation works, that is, until they get owned by it. Only then will they truly see how powerful the formation actually is.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CKO wrote:

So, the riptide wing doing all the damage and taking out your army before you can do anything is not the key to this list? Its the drone factory, you looked at this list and were afraid of the piranhas! You understand that you will lose because you are afraid of the piranhas instead of the riptide wing, right?

This has nothing to do with fear of piranhas. They aren't even on the board for you to target! Your only recourse is to go after the rest of the Tau army.

But I will tell you what happens.

You start targeting the riptides and marker drones, but it will take considerable resources to take them down. Riptides are already tough enough to take down and drones will be jumping back and forth behind BLOS terrain. If you are lucky, maybe you kill 1 riptide a turn for an army with average to above-average firepower.

Meanwhile, the factory is building more and more drones, which you will use minimal firepower to deal with, preferring to focus the majority of your firepower against the "core" army itself.

By T3, perhaps if you are lucky, you could have taken down 3 riptides by now. However, by this time, the Factory has produced somewhere in the vicinity of 60 drones (for a 10-piranha factory) and their firepower is starting to hurt.

On T4+, now the drones are causing much more damage than the rest of the Tau army and you can't ignore them anymore. You have to allocate more resources to deal with them but your resources are quickly dwindling as well in this shooting war of attrition. As your firepower is going down, the Tau firepower is actually going up or staying the same.

That is how the Drone Factory in a Tau army is supposed to work. It has nothing to do with whether you fear the piranhas or not. You can only deal with the main force but you will not win that war of attrition because his firepower is going up (or staying the same) over time due to all the free units whereas your firepower is going down drastically.

 jy2 wrote:

Thank you for posting your tests of the Tau Piranha Firestream list. I have read it some days ago and in my view it is a very good example of unnerfed Tau being able to handle top armies such as Eldar etc. So if we would just leave Tau alone and unnerfed the diversity would probably increase in my view. As a Tyranid player (and Tau and Eldar) myself i welcome this.
However maybe i am missing something from your report but i cannot see where the drones really made that big of a difference? It seemed to be more that the complete army composition was able to cope with stuff together. They seemed to do the same thing as other spamlists or summoning lists or free stuff lists e.g. act as roadblocks, bubblewrap, firedrains etc. Once you have good amount of drones on the table sure the firepower is good but so is summoning if you let it run rampant. For me the Firestream along with maybe the Hunter Contingent (and some other formations) is just what Tau needs, proper msu.

X078 wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

Thank you for posting your tests of the Tau Piranha Firestream list. I have read it some days ago and in my view it is a very good example of unnerfed Tau being able to handle top armies such as Eldar etc. So if we would just leave Tau alone and unnerfed the diversity would probably increase in my view. As a Tyranid player (and Tau and Eldar) myself i welcome this.
However maybe i am missing something from your report but i cannot see where the drones really made that big of a difference? It seemed to be more that the complete army composition was able to cope with stuff together. They seemed to do the same thing as other spamlists or summoning lists or free stuff lists e.g. act as roadblocks, bubblewrap, firemagnets etc and once you have good amount on the table sure the firepower is good. For me the Firestream combined with maybe the Hunter Contingent (or other formation) is just what Tau needs, proper msu.

You're welcome.

You can't just look at the formation in a vacuum. Rather, real feedback is gained with seeing how well it synergizes with the rest of the army. For example, centurions in a Marine army are good but alone, they can be dealt with. It's when you start putting characters in there that can ignore cover or cast a million psychic powers or tank a lot of enemy firepower that centurions become much, much more effective.

In my games, the drones provided much of the offense. They bubble-wrapped his units, thus helping to minimize assault from my Daemons and wraithknights. They also wasted a lot of my firepower (from my scatterbikes) in order to try to clear a path for my wraithknights to assault. They threatened my troops with their advancing firepower, thus denying me from going after Maelstrom objectives for fear of losing my scatbikes and not being able to grab objectives at the end of the game. Firepower isn't just the yardstick with which to measure the effectiveness of the formation. Rather, they did a lot of the little stuff to help the Tau not only survive, but to win as well.

Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic! Having 6-8 gravcannons on 4 riptides because your in range turn 1 because of scout and only 1 die!

Drones are bad speed bumps if you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them you now have room to charge both the riptide and the drone unit you than force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc.

Also this illusion you are creating about not hurting the piranhas is false! If you have interceptor you can use it on the drones that the piranhas created, what happens when a burstide uses interceptor on a 6 man drone unit? So you cant hurt the piranhas but they have contributed nothing if you kill the drones and the piranhas left the field.

 CKO wrote:
Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!

Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.

I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.

With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CKO wrote:

Also this illusion you are creating about not hurting the piranhas is false! If you have interceptor you can use it on the drones that the piranhas created, what happens when a burstide uses interceptor on a 6 man drone unit? So you cant hurt the piranhas but they have contributed nothing if you kill the drones and the piranhas left the field.

Sorry, but I didn't play Tau vs Tau. I don't have Interceptor. But even if I was running Tau with Interceptor, targeting the drones means that I will lose out on my shooting next turn! I'd rather shoot on my turn and use my Markerlights than intercept on his turn without the aid of Markerlights.

 jy2 wrote:

 CKO wrote:
Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!

Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.

I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.

With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.

Would be interesting if you could run the Eldar against the Firestream list again but diversify the Eldar list with more templates and barrage weapons (warpspiders, skathach wk, hellstorm and all that).

X078 wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 CKO wrote:
Jy so a whitescar gladius strike force with gravcannons can only kill one riptide a turn, are you being realistic!

Also if they bubble wrap a riptide with drones you shoot the drones kill 2-3 of them, charge both the riptide and the drone unit and force a ld 5-6 test on a riptide because you kill 3-4 drones in cc. As a speed bump they are risky with tau.

I believe I mentioned an army with average to above-average firepower. The White Scars Battle Company isn't such an army. Rather, it is an extreme alpha-strike army. Against such a list (and against other very strong alpha-strike armies), you need to vary your tactics. Against such an army that is going first, you might want to consider putting all of your riptides in reserves and deploying smaller units that can hide behind BLOS terrain. It really depends.

With regards to bubble-wrapping, you've got to do it in layers. In my games, by the time my WK's were close enough to assault, my opponent's main offensive units were wrapped in drones 2-3 units deep. It is not as easy to deal with those, especially when you are running more of an assault Eldar army (5 WK's....duh!) rather than a shooty one.

Would be interesting if you could run the Eldar against the Firestream list again but diversify the Eldar list with more templates and barrage weapons (warpspiders, skathach wk, hellstorm and all that).

Indeed it would be, and I might just do that.

But for my next game, I will be running my centstar against the Drone Factory.