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 Mulletdude wrote:
XV8's got so expensive now it's scary. Went from 52 ppm with dual MP to 80. Sure, the extra W and T is nice, but it seems odd that with the loss of JSJ the prices went up so much. I think we're going to be seeing an infantry heavy focus in the future because every gun can hurt everything. The mighty pulse rifle will wound everything on no worse than a 5+, and only costs 8 points with the fire warrior body.

The other thing Crisis/Stealth suits have is the ability to leave combat at will and still shoot, which is kinda huge.

That's assuming they survive, though. And surviving combat has never been something they've been capable of doing against my opponents whenever they get caught. And with many melee weapons doing multiple wounds now, that extra wound is often going to be going to waste.

 Vector Strike wrote:

 carldooley wrote:

 MasterOfGaunts wrote:
Is somebody else also planning on trying pulse carbines instead of pulse rifles on FW? I think I ll try it. Like the look of the gun much better and my models are magnetized anyways. Sure you have nearly half the range, but with assault armies being buffed I don't think that range will be such a big problem. They'll come to you :p. But the capability to run and shoot (BF-1) will help to keep my FW out of melee range as long as possible. What do you think? Pulse carbine finally worth it on FW?

Anyone else gonna put nonstandard stuff on their Crisis suits? Ion Cannons? Rail Rifles? Ion Accelerators?

No, because we cannot. There's a page with a yellow Commander that has the list of things available to Commanders and Crisis

Seems there's a few places on the board having these discussions for Tau... there's a thread on the tactics board where people are spitballing ideas too.

I'll say here what I said there though: I don't think the changes to marker lights are that bad. Their transition back to army wide buffs against a targeted unit rather than tokens to spend on individual shooting attacks means you only really lose the BS stacking. Yeah, 5 lights to buff BS once is a little rough, but that buff goes to everyone shooting at that target, meaning you can pop off the one weapon of a unit otherwise focussing on something else without worry.

I also looks to me that the effect of drone controllers appear to stack. Meaning you can have your marker lights delivered by 2+ shooting drones with three attendant crisis suits. If not, and you can only buff them to a 4+ shot, I still don't think it will be that hard to land enough marker lights.

 Vector Strike wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
No, but it's what made Tau the biggest bully list for two editions.

Given that they killed Death stars completely¹, and gutted psykers², I still think you guys are better off than you think.

1- And now deathstars don't even exist - they were a worse plague to the game than Tau big suits. Tau 'bullied' FLGS games, while Daemons, Eldar and SM were the real winners at tournaments.
2- How? We had 1 item that let us DtW at 4+ against 2 kinds of powers, when we know Blessings and Summoning were much better (and deniable only at 6+)

I think you misunderstood. He's not saying Tau stomped those things, he's saying GW did with the edition change.

Remember folks: poor communications kills

 Captain Joystick wrote:


I think you misunderstood. He's not saying Tau stomped those things, he's saying GW did with the edition change.

Remember folks: poor communications kills

You're right. And I'm not too keen on the psyker change, as I plan to start a 30k TS army once 30k migrates to the new system...

Personally, I do NOT like the new marker rules - depending on your army mix, half the results are useless, and you need five of them for a +1 BS

Also....is the "Jet Pack" keyword defined ANYWHERE?
I can't find it in the core rules either.

I suspect since they bothered to list jet pack, we may have not lost JSJ....

(there are several that are not defined, jet pack, biker, etc.).

DaemonJellybaby wrote:
Vespid are better!
Vespid might be the new choice instead of crisis suits for cost-damage output. They are cheap, T4 and fast.
They still wont see the table because thier models are still in finecast.

Sounds like a prime kitbashing opportunity though. Take Eldar or some kind of fantasy model, add bits from the breacher/striker squad you opted not to build, add some kind of jet pack, instant alien auxiliaries.

davethepak wrote:
Personally, I do NOT like the new marker rules - depending on your army mix, half the results are useless, and you need five of them for a +1 BS

Also....is the "Jet Pack" keyword defined ANYWHERE?
I can't find it in the core rules either.

I suspect since they bothered to list jet pack, we may have not lost JSJ....

(there are several that are not defined, jet pack, biker, etc.).

All of those will show up in their appropriate codex, I think. For now, they're just there

Seeing as the Riptide can still JSJ using its 'boost' nova charge ability there is fairly good chance JSJ is comming back with the release of an actual codex. Otherwise there would also not really be a point to the jetpack keyword, but who knows.

Are you aware of what "100% assured pinpoint deep strike" means for plas and melta crisis?

Plas/plas crisis are still fairly cheap at 64 pts each and can inmediately, from turn one, deploy wherever they want as long as they are 9" away from the enemy and shot the hell out of them at rapid fire range. On top of that, at S5, T5 and 3W each they can actually handle combat rather well against non-specialized assault units, like tactical marines or devastators, and fly allows them to fall back again later on and shoot again.

This all, just after having shot them to hell.

Melta units are in a similar situation. Heck, they can even charge fliers for the heck of it.

I'd argue crisis suits are the strongest they have ever been.

Shadeseraph wrote:
Are you aware of what "100% assured pinpoint deep strike" means for plas and melta crisis?

Plas/plas crisis are still fairly cheap at 64 pts each and can inmediately, from turn one, deploy wherever they want as long as they are 9" away from the enemy and shot the hell out of them at rapid fire range. On top of that, at S5, T5 and 3W each they can actually handle combat rather well against non-specialized assault units, like tactical marines or devastators, and fly allows them to fall back again later on and shoot again.

This all, just after having shot them to hell.

Melta units are in a similar situation. Heck, they can even charge fliers for the heck of it.

I'd argue crisis suits are the strongest they have ever been.

Certainly they're stronger, but also quite costly. For 64p I can get 4 vespids, pumping out 8 S5 AP-2 shots. I don't think plasma is optimal on Crisis...
Also, Melta only get its extra d6 roll benefit when at 9" or less. DS has to come more tha 9", which denies that. Still a S8 weapon, but then there are broadsides/hammerheads...

4 vespids have:
4 T4 AS 4+ wounds
8 S5 AP2 shots

This type of crisis suit has
3 T5 AS3+ wounds
4 S6 AP3 shots

at 11 pts extra per crisis you can gain another 2 shots, BTW

So - they have twice as much fire rate. In terms of point efficience per shot, I'm with you (although the quality of the shots is a different matter).

But here is the catch - Crisis can engage. Very well, I would say. 3 Wounds per model, T5, AS 3+ chasis, can come with drones for protection... they are actually reeally cheap for that kind of chasis. And they hit hard. And fly allows them to flee away from combat and shoot again. Sure, vespids can also do so - but they are in a much worse condition to do that.

Heck, have you noticed that the ATS affects close combat weapons as well?

We've got ourselves a improved, functional version of the forgeworld suits, one that can actually tie enemy units and slow them, or severely damage their heavy support.

Melee tau is a thing.

Shadeseraph wrote:
Are you aware of what "100% assured pinpoint deep strike" means for plas and melta crisis?

Plas/plas crisis are still fairly cheap at 64 pts each and can inmediately, from turn one, deploy wherever they want as long as they are 9" away from the enemy and shot the hell out of them at rapid fire range. On top of that, at S5, T5 and 3W each they can actually handle combat rather well against non-specialized assault units, like tactical marines or devastators, and fly allows them to fall back again later on and shoot again.

This all, just after having shot them to hell.

Melta units are in a similar situation. Heck, they can even charge fliers for the heck of it.

I'd argue crisis suits are the strongest they have ever been.

Plas on an individual is significantly weaker in this edition compared to the previous one (and noticeable and correctly costs far less - more comparable to a Burst Cannon or Flamer now than its former peers, the Missile Pod and the Fusion Blaster).

Doing anything less than tripling your Plasma Rifles seems inappropriate for a Crisis Squad. Rerolling 1's to hit is ubiquitous, so Multi-trackers don't track. An additional -1 to AP is not bad, you're paying almost as much to get two 6/-4/1 RF1 weapons instead of three 6/3/1 RF1 weapons, and the weight of fire is almost always going to win out. You don't have enough damage output to make EWO worth it, IMO, for the loss of firepower against things that don't Deepstrike against you (Put it on the Stormsurges, Broadsides, Ghostkeels, and Riptides if you're a masochist). That's 75 points for 3-6 6/-3/1 shots each.

Probably worth comparing to the new Vespids: for 75 points, you can get 5 Stingwings giving 2 5/-2/1 shots each, from up to 18" (so you can land/make use of terrain more easily and can reach up to 9" into enemy "territory" and still get efficient shooting done). Starting at the same BS, Vespids can be boosted the same by Markerlights and other outside sources, except because the Neutron Blaster is an Assault weapon, the Vespids may also Advance in the movement round (gaining an additional 1d6" on the already remarkable 14" they have base) and still shoot their weapons (either with a penalty, or with enough ML, equal to a Crisis Suit).

Without ML Support, against Devastators, Terminators, Inceptors, and a Dreadnought:
Vespid: 2.22 1.67 1.25 1.11
Crisis:
<=12" 1.67 1.33 1.33 .83
<24" .87 .67 .67 .42

ML Support grants an equal benefit, in terms of the accuracy boost, and ML boosts are now activated for all units, so either squad (or multiple Vespid squads) can all benefit equally. The only real remaining questions are durability (T4 4+ or 3+ in cover, which is likely an option for the longer ranged, faster-moving Vespid, versus T5 W3 3+ or 2+ in cover, which is less of an option if Crisis Suits want to be in the remotely-comparable-in-performance 12" range), which trades more, slightly more vulnerable wounds versus one pool of wounds with a higher defense but more subject to being deleted by a single heavy weapon.

Our Fusion Blasters and Fusion Colliders are all 18" range. The Manta Strike mechanic requires us to deploy MORE than 9" away from any enemy. We're not getting the roll-2-pick-highest damage numbers. For that same reason, Flamers are completely unusable by normal Manta Striking Crisis Suits, and that's undeniable fact. They're reasonably priced for their effectiveness, arguably.

Our Missile Pods got expensive. They're a good mid-range, do everything weapon.

Cyclic Ion Blasters are... Interesting. I can see a use for them, maybe, with a lot of ML support.

Airbursting Frag Projectors seem lackluster to me. Might be amazing in City Fights or dense fields of battle. They're relatively cheap, too - roughly in the Flamer/BC/PR range.

Quick idea - what about 2 x flamers + ATS for melee crisis?

Well, one wishlist item granted: I actually want Vespids now. Thanks, GW, and I'm not being sarcastic!

I personally find the changes to Tau a bit frustrating.

We're supposed to be a shooty army with little/no melee ability.
But we're 50/50 shots which is worse that Necrons (an army that can do everything pretty well and is resilient as hell) and aren't really supposed to be a 'shooty' army. We're also marginally 'better' in melee now.

We're supposed to use markers to improve our shooting but this isn't really massively viable now as you need at least 10 markers to up the BS on one unit. This essentially makes them only useful for the re-roll to 1s which isn't really that useful (20 shots = ~11 hits with rerolls) and seeker missiles which go from a 1/6 chance to hit to a 1/2 to hit. The other options are really situational. I don't deny markerlights were a bit broken last edition more because of the core rules than the abilities themselves.

I literally feel like what happened this edition is GW heard 'these are all the things people complained about being powerful in 8th, let's nerf them.' And 'these are the things everyone wanted to be better' let's buff them.

 Boniface wrote:


I literally feel like what happened this edition is GW heard 'these are all the things people complained about being powerful in 8th, let's nerf them.' And 'these are the things everyone wanted to be better' let's buff them.

That's what it feels like to me as well. Rather than making the changes they wanted to make and looking at how things sat, and then adjusting them accordingly, they made the changes they wanted, then buffed things everyone said was too weak and nerfed things that people said we're too good, without looking at how those things interacted with the new edition.

JSJ is a good example. Some people complained that JSJ was too good, (though I've never actually heard that in person). But with the changes to movement speed, first turn charges, the ability to jump from combat to combat, charging out of deepstrike, etc, I don't think anyone would care. But at the same time, they didn't increase any of the ranges that have been short due to JSJ. For a decent number of units, 18 inches is not a difficult thing to do.

I was thinking about what it was that really annoyed me about this Tau release and I realised that it essentially boils down to Tau are not really good at anything any more.
Now I don't mean I want them to be super OP or anything but let's look at a few armies:
Guard - average everything with loads of bodies
Marines - good everything with no specialisms and medium numbers
Eldar - (should be) excellent specialists in small numbers
Tyranids - good combat but fragile with loads of bodies and speed
Necrons - (should be) average everything, resilient and in medium numbers
Tau - (should be) good shooting in smallish number

What has happened with the Tau now is smallish squads with pretty average shooting.
I'm not saying it's 'bad' but when shooting is really all you have and you can't really buff it you start having to become a quasi-horde army to compensate which isn't really viable with Tau due to squad caps and somewhat restrictive costs.

Deadawake1347 wrote:

 Boniface wrote:


I literally feel like what happened this edition is GW heard 'these are all the things people complained about being powerful in 8th, let's nerf them.' And 'these are the things everyone wanted to be better' let's buff them.

That's what it feels like to me as well. Rather than making the changes they wanted to make and looking at how things sat, and then adjusting them accordingly, they made the changes they wanted, then buffed things everyone said was too weak and nerfed things that people said we're too good, without looking at how those things interacted with the new edition.

JSJ is a good example. Some people complained that JSJ was too good, (though I've never actually heard that in person). But with the changes to movement speed, first turn charges, the ability to jump from combat to combat, charging out of deepstrike, etc, I don't think anyone would care. But at the same time, they didn't increase any of the ranges that have been short due to JSJ. For a decent number of units, 18 inches is not a difficult thing to do.

I am pretty confident we did not lose JSJ (don't have details on what "jet pack' does) HOWEVER - I think you are spot on about "what people complained about".

Tau feel pretty heavily nerfed - seekers and destroyer missiles are very difficult to use, and markers are incredibly annoying now.
(really, were they that complicated before).

I won't complain about the points cost increases too much - as most armies were hit with that - but some units just feel worthless now (or not even remotely valuable - skyray, I will miss you).

Oh, and before everyone goes gaga for vespid - they still need a LOT of marker support, and only have a 4+ save.

The Riptide takes a mortal wound in order to JSJ. If that doesn't mean it's dead for everyone else, I don't know what does.

JSJ could be D6 whilst the rippy gets 2D6 but I feel it's unlikely.

Deadawake1347 wrote:
The Riptide takes a mortal wound in order to JSJ. If that doesn't mean it's dead for everyone else, I don't know what does.

Well seeing as it has 14 wounds now, and my opponent never shoots its anyways that doesnt sound so bad right [edit]wait nm if you just use it to jsj yeah, thats pretty bad, but the other abilities are still pretty good[/edit]? Also, it never fails anymore, and you'll still be able to save it with the stim injector, although only on a 6. Given that the nova abilities are pretty powerful now its more like an actual choice to make, do I activate it or not, instead of just rolling the dice every turn and hoping you dont fail. What makes me reconsider using riptides more is the absolute garbage that is large blasts now. Sure the stat line on nova-charged ion accelerators is nice but 1D6 hits only? Waaaaay to unreliable and to few hits in my book, but thats my view on every large blast weapon that is not 1D6, I cant believe anybody seriously thought that comes close to the performance they used to have.

 Boniface wrote:


We're supposed to use markers to improve our shooting but this isn't really massively viable now as you need at least 10 markers to up the BS on one unit. This essentially makes them only useful for the re-roll to 1s which isn't really that useful (20 shots = ~11 hits with rerolls) and seeker missiles which go from a 1/6 chance to hit to a 1/2 to hit. The other options are really situational

I think you underestimate re-rolling 1's. For most things it means you can re-roll a third of your misses, or half of your misses for the Stormsurge. Then if you get 5 MLs then obviously that gets even better.

Furthermore, I haven't read all army's rules thoroughly, but on a game wide level I think you'll find that re-roll everything abilities are going to be pretty rare. They will be much fewer re-rolls in 8th than in 7th, and so even if it doesn't feel like a strong ability, with fewer re-rolls game-wide, its actually going to be better than you think in the new meta.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DaemonJellybaby wrote:


The Shas'ui is free and the bonding knife upgrade stops entire units from fleeing on a bad day, these are both pretty meh to me, I never took either.

...

Certain elements of the core rules appear to favour Tau, until you realise that any unit that survives a round of the fight phase is essentially dead anyway to morale.

[Emphasis mine]

Seems like you are ignoring the solutions to your problem.

Well, it's a one in six chance, though if you use the well thought out Ethereal ability to subtract one from your battleshock roll, negating the benefit...

Just noticed that the drone controller and the farsight marksman sniper drone buff stack.

that will help the sniper drones.

Deadawake1347 wrote:
Well, it's a one in six chance, though if you use the well thought out Ethereal ability to subtract one from your battleshock roll, negating the benefit...

Yes, rolling a 6 is a 1 in 6 chance, but if you think about it this will have a constant effect.

First lets take the Shas'ui. Basic Tau Ld is 6, so if you loose 1 model, you need to roll a 6 to have 1 guy run away as the number you loose plus your roll must beat your Ld (1+6=7. 7-Ld 6=1). With the Shas'ui this goes up to 2 models as Ld goes up to 7 (I won't insult your intelligence with more simple maths). He saves you 1 guy per turn.

Next, since the Bonding Knife lets you pass Ld checks on a roll of 6, then 5 is effectively the maximum you can roll. Therefore you need to loose al least 3 models before you loose any more to battleshock, and then you only have only a 1 in 6 chance to loose somebody. Rolling a 1-4 doesn't put you over your Ld, a 5 loses you a guy, and a 6 activates the bonding knife.

The Shas'ui and Bonding Knife may seem meh, but they raise the bar for failing battleshock tests, and effectively reduce models lost by at least 2 each time.

EDIT: Also the Etherial says subtract 1 from the test (roll + models lost), not the roll itself, so a 6 still works for the Bonding Knife. You also get to use the Etherial's Ld of 9 if you're within 6, which is nice.

In general, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the saviour protocols thing is kind of busted. For the cheap, cheap cost of 8 points you can substitute any allocated wound from anything on a drone.

Sure, it was already a thing previously, but not with the kind of flexibility we have now. They protect your larger suits, shield you from morale effects - and, since most of our sources generate 2 lone drones that count as their own unit, tend to not care about morale themselves.

And now that cover saves aren't a thing anymore, I could see shield drones becoming popular, too. 8 pts is damn cheap

Let's see my reactions

Markerlights - Aww this sounds weak as balls

Commander MoB - Hah! Cool!

Ethreal - Cool, Invocations are back... I wonder how they stack with Commander MoB...

Commander MoB v2 - Aww wait what, once per battle... lame

Ethreal v2 - What! and Invocations are still every turn? ... and there is no more VP penalty for Ethreal dying? Welp, I'ma probably spam Ethreals!

Fireblade - ooh not bad, spamming you too! // DarkFireblade - and you!

Seeker Missiles - ONLY HIT ON A 6?!!?!? COME ON! ... Then again Mortal Wounds... I think this needs some further study.

Threat Identification Protocol - Does this rules box need to appear on everything? I'm thinking; No...

Razorshark - I don't think you have a purpose to exist...

Bomber - Okay, so the bomb kinda only REALLY works against larger units. Tho hurray mortal wounds?

Vespids - Woah! these are feeling sound insanely good!

X88 - HOLY POINT INCREASE BATMAN!

X8 - HOLY MOTHER DAYUM WHY IS THIS SO MANY POINTS NOW!

Support System - Oh wtf these sound insanely good!


Drone Controller and Overwatch... Overwatch only hits on 6s, but Drone Controller doesn't improve BS or whatever, it only adds 1 to hits... I think it works on Overwatch~

Many things got more expensive but some stayed the same or got cheaper-like Drones or certain Suit builds.

For example, I used to run a double Plasma/target lock/Bonding Knife unit with 3 suits and 6 Gun Drones. That was about 246 points in 7th.

In current rules, that same load out would be 240 points (suit, 2x Plasma and 2x Gun Drones)-the unit is actually cheaper because Plasma and drones are cheaper and no need for Target Lock since you can freely split fire. I'm going to run the same unit in 8th but add a 3rd Plasma and 2 drones so I can have 3-6 Plasma shots per suit. The fact that Suits can now have 3 ranged weapons and fire all of them is HUGE.

The Missile Pod variant got more expensive (90 in 8th compared to 58 in 7th) but I am excited to try out a 2x Missile Pod unit with Advanced Targeting to give the Missile Pods an extra AP. Being able to wound many vehicles on a 3-4+ and at the worst a 5+, regardless of Toughness, with -2 armor and d3 Hull each shot makes them still a formidable anti armor/mc unit IMO.

Also looking forward to trying out suits with double Fusion, Burst cannon or Flamer set-ups and Target Lock so I can Advance and still shoot those Assault weapons without penalty.

Regarding Broadsides, yes Broadsides did get A LOT more expensive. They are currently just over 3x the cost (202 for 2x HYMP and 2x SMS whereas they used to be 65 base, 70 w/Target Locks) but each Broadside noq has 3x the wounds and DOUBLE the shots and built in target lock. They also can have Drones freely take hits for them now.

Overall, I'm pretty excited to try out my all crisis suit/Broadside list.

 Talamare wrote:


Seeker Missiles - ONLY HIT ON A 6?!!?!? COME ON! ... Then again Mortal Wounds... I think this needs some further study.


Drone Controller and Overwatch... Overwatch only hits on 6s, but Drone Controller doesn't improve BS or whatever, it only adds 1 to hits... I think it works on Overwatch~

Markerlights let you fire the Seeker Missiles at full BS. I think it's a good idea to do it this way, otherwise they would be OP and people would spam those mortal wounds. They may do so anyway, you only need 2 markerlights for it.

I think Markerlights are pretty good generally as they stack effects. Bonuses should be rarer in 8th than 7th.

Interesting Overwatch thought. Will need further study.

Why do you think about Riptides? I'm actually not a Tau player but I'm checking them out as my friend is freaking out that they have been nerfed and overcosted so much they are useless now.