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I currently have a 2000 point no-crisis suit Tau army. It is packed with Stealth Suits and Kroot. I have one unit of Fire Warriors, and some broadsides to deal with armor. While infiltrating so many models has it's own value, I often feel like Stealth suits fall a little flat. Is there any way to make them more useful?


I only have a few ideas. One is to simply drop their points and increase their unit size to 9. However, I think their biggest downside is damage output. I admit the Stealth Suits won't be getting a new box any time soon (so no new rules for parts we don't have). So, what can we do with what we do have? Would it make sense to allow Stealth suits to either upgrade to a fusion blaster, but also have the option of taking a fusion blaster IN ADDITION to the burst cannon? The extra shots might make the option worth it.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Sounds like this should be in the Proposed Rules forum

Dude. Do not change your army. The world does not need more surgespams or crisis spams.

The problem with stealth suits is that its just more S5 shooting ( in a army where S5 shooting is the basic gun and excluding every 3rd model if you really want a FB ) and even then you can equip crisis suits with 2 BC and it works out better.

Maybe if the codex have stealthsuits CIB's or something different but more S5 shooting isn't going to save them

Add some Ghostkeels they're like a bigger stealth suit and run an Optimized Stealth Cadre formation which will let you bring them. While the stealth suits won't be all star players the formation gives them just enough of a boost to be playable without being overpowered.

Same with Ghostkeels they're great upper mid tier units. So when added into an army that is low they can boost it up. And since they're stealth suits they fit in with your army.

It seems to me they are designed to be used in conjunction with Crisis Suits (or any other Deep Strking unit that can take advantage of their beacon).

shiwan8 wrote:
Dude. Do not change your army. The world does not need more surgespams or crisis spams.

Crisis Suits are one of the key elements in a Tau army. Why wouldn't you take tons of them?

Not to mention crisis suits are a lot less powerful than riptides/riptide wings, GSC formations, and additional stormsurges, which would all be much better investments of your points. Crisis suits are less maneuverable than riptides, their firepower is nowhere near as devastating as the riptide, and, because they're not being shored up by MC status, you can actually catch and kill them in combat, whereas a riptide can tank wounds all day long as it wipes entire units off the table, and then gets Smash attacks against you if you ever do manage to lock it in combat.

If you like stealth suits, play them. There is a certain level of quality with quantity. They are not bad, just not optimal. It is a shame they don't have more weapon options. I love the Easter Island feel to them.

I think they're more of a mobile anchor for the army. Cheaper than FW in a Transport, you can plop them down and expect them to last against incoming firepower. Not assault, obviously, but there you go.

Unlike many facets of the Tau, they're more about survival through being hard to kill, instead of survival by being the only thing left in the area.

They are not hard to kill though. Even with 2+ cover achieved, it's still T4 W1 unit that costs 30 points base ,not exactly impressive durability. A suit dies to every 13.5 bolter round fired at it, the half cost tactical marine can tank 9.

Stealth suits hardly fill a unique role right now. They can't endure, they can't dish out, they can't threaten anything special, they only have deployment shenanigans, but nothing to do with them once deployed.

Ironically the 2+ cover doesn't really matter much anyway because of Ignores Cover, which is pretty common thanks to Tau.

Actually, they're T3. That's what makes them a poor-to-mediocre choice. If they were, in fact, T4, they'd actually be pretty good. - not great, but good. The buffs from the OSC (+1 BS, ignore cover, hit rear armor) make them a passable unit, but T3 on an expensive 1W model is a deal-breaker.

As so often happens, GW produced a really nice kit with a rather crappy set of rules that makes it a poor choice in game. They are also rather expensive at nearly £5 for a single infantry figure.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Not to mention crisis suits are a lot less powerful than riptides/riptide wings, GSC formations, and additional stormsurges, which would all be much better investments of your points. Crisis suits are less maneuverable than riptides, their firepower is nowhere near as devastating as the riptide, and, because they're not being shored up by MC status, you can actually catch and kill them in combat, whereas a riptide can tank wounds all day long as it wipes entire units off the table, and then gets Smash attacks against you if you ever do manage to lock it in combat.

Dude, as we said in my youth, 180-ish points of Crisis Suits (say, 3 suits with 2 x plasma each) has noticeably more damage output than a Riptide and is much more maneuverable simply by virtue of being three or so different things and not one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
They are not hard to kill though. Even with 2+ cover achieved, it's still T4 W1 unit that costs 30 points base ,not exactly impressive durability. A suit dies to every 13.5 bolter round fired at it, the half cost tactical marine can tank 9.

Yeah, now compare plasma instead of bolters.

Mistyped T4 rather than T3. Ran Calc as proper T3.

And why would I compare plasma? Who will be dumb enough to use plasma on them rather than high RoF weapons?
Not like basic guns are especially rare.

- They need another gun to enjoy multi-tracker
- They need T4

Getting that, they could even stay at current point cost

Yeah.. as much as I want to love stealth suits I have a really hard time.

T4 W2 crisis suit that can take 2 burst cannons for nearly the same points as a base stealth suit.. is just no comparison in my opinion.

Alcibiades wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Not to mention crisis suits are a lot less powerful than riptides/riptide wings, GSC formations, and additional stormsurges, which would all be much better investments of your points. Crisis suits are less maneuverable than riptides, their firepower is nowhere near as devastating as the riptide, and, because they're not being shored up by MC status, you can actually catch and kill them in combat, whereas a riptide can tank wounds all day long as it wipes entire units off the table, and then gets Smash attacks against you if you ever do manage to lock it in combat.

Dude, as we said in my youth, 180-ish points of Crisis Suits (say, 3 suits with 2 x plasma each) has noticeably more damage output than a Riptide and is much more maneuverable simply by virtue of being three or so different things and not one.

Yeah, my bad. I guess that's why every competitive Tau list spams dozens of crisis suits and riptides hardly ever show up anymore.

Either that or all those tournament players are idiots and just don't realize how superior crisis suits are to riptide wings, despite min/maxing practically being their hobby.

 Sidstyler wrote:

Yeah, my bad. I guess that's why every competitive Tau list spams dozens of crisis suits and riptides hardly ever show up anymore.

Either that or all those tournament players are idiots and just don't realize how superior crisis suits are to riptide wings, despite min/maxing practically being their hobby.

So in regards to that.. it is not necessarily that riptides can offer more offense in one shooting phase then a crisis team.. they can't, its just not possible. What is possible and significant, is that in the current meta, it is about how long you can survive, and in that regard the riptide is far more capable of surviving turn after turn. Because of this, over the course of the game, the riptide will start to overcome the crisis team in offensive worth.

And that is what makes it better.

I would argue that aside from Broadsides, Crisis Suits have the best firepower per point in our book. That said, they're also really fragile for their cost, so you can't count on having that firepower around for long. Riptides have the nice benefit of being rock-hard (especially with a reliable way of getting 3++ in the Wing) and reasonably shooty. I wouldn't call a S8 AP2 large blast or a turbo assault cannon on a 200pt model outstanding, but you can pretty well count on it being functional for most/all of the game.

In any event, Stealth Suits suffer from having none of the above benefits but all of the flaws. They have mediocre firepower for the points (compare with 3 Fire Warriors, 4 Kroot, or a dual-burst Crisis) and are paper thin. You can do way better.

I feel your pain OP, I too love my stealth suits but oftentimes they're underwhelming on the table-top. While I have yet to figure out a good way to boost their firepower, my group uses a set of house rules that enables them to be as viable as crisis suits on the defensive. We run Stealth and Shrouded as -1 and -2 BS instead of the normal benefits. Our eldar player was wondering why his pathfinders couldn't hide from markerlights, and I was sick of my stealth suits forgetting to turn on the cloaking fields unless being hit by AP 3.

As far as weapon options go, I'd steer away from some of the more powerful suit weapons. Personally, I think adding the flamer and SMS instead of just the fusion blaster as optional guns would be all the change they'd need. They're meant to be harassing units, and right now where they really suffer the most is not having enough variety for such a cool unit.

It would be nice if they'd get around to upgrading those clunky XV-25s to XV-22s. That would probably fix a lot of the Stealth Suit's problems.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
Dude. Do not change your army. The world does not need more surgespams or crisis spams.

Crisis Suits are one of the key elements in a Tau army. Why wouldn't you take tons of them?

The reason is the same as why you would not spam warp spiders and WKs.

shiwan8 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
Dude. Do not change your army. The world does not need more surgespams or crisis spams.

Crisis Suits are one of the key elements in a Tau army. Why wouldn't you take tons of them?

The reason is the same as why you would not spam warp spiders and WKs.

Crisis don't have Warp Spiders nor WKs' survivability and shenanigans. They're Tau's Space Marines. The most bold thing they can do is JSJ.
An entire army of Crisis is weaker than a mixed one with other stuff. Spamming Crisis aren't a bigt deal, unlike those you mentioned.

The only crisis suit spam that was ever really abusive was the Farsight bomb and the like.

And really Crisis suit spam is the staple of the Tau army since it was the only viable elite unit and most cost effective source of firepower through 5th and early 6th, aside from the Broadside at least.

And even in 6th, the majority of complaints came from people bringing in Riptides in any number. I mean Farsight Enclave let you bring 6 crisis suits as troops, 3 as elite, with another 2 from a Tau ally. Yet this was never really an issue in any meta I've seen or heard from.
I missed the recent update, since I haven't played since the beginning of 7th, but can't you take 6 crisis suits in a squad now?

Yes, you can take 6 crisis suits now, which was the ONE thing that made Stealth suits even mildly tempting. That's why I want their unit to go up to 9, with one in two having the option of a Fusion blaster, and then allowing the leader the option of several weapons.

Right now the leader is the only guy that can use the multi tracker (Marker light and burst cannon).