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I just wondered if it would be possible to use the old rules for Crisis loadouts again.

For those of you that dont know how you equipped your Crisis back in 5th edition heres a quick summary of the relevant rules:
-A unit must fire all of its weapons at a single enemy unit.
-A model can only shoot one weapon per shooting phase.
-Every Crisis has three hardpoints to use for weapons and support systems.
-You cant take the same weapon multiple times but you can take the twin linked version of a weapon(reroll to hit) for two hardpoints.

The most important support system was the multitracker that allowed you fire two weapons instead of one. This allowed for two different types of builds:
1. A single twin linked weapon and a support system
2. Two different weapons and a multitracker
This lead to a very large number of viable options for your Crisis loadouts.

For example: You want to improve the anti vehicle capabilities of your army. The obvious choice is to take one Missle Pod (There was no CIB). But now you get to choose between many different alternatives.
-Missle Pod + Fusion Blaster is best against medium to heavy tanks and characters
-Twin linked Missle Pod is best against medium vehicles
-Missle Pod + Plasma Rifle is best against medium to light vehicles and MEQ
-Missle Pod + Burst Cannon is best against light vehicles and GEQ
You could even consider Plasma Rifle + Fusion Blaster if you want something thats reasonably good against vehicles and MEQ/TEQ.

I hope you can see how much variety there was compared to the few builds we have today. You always had to consider secondary roles for your Crisis which really showcased their versatility.
Another advantage of the old system was that you could run most builds after buying just a single crisis.



Today the game is a little different so we cant just copy the old rules. Now a model can fire as many weapons as it likes and a unit can split its fire to target multiple enemies.
Do you have any ideas how you could achieve something similar to the old loadout system despite the different core rules?

The thing is, this exact playset is still the core operation that crisis suits work to today, having a much more customization in load outs without necessitating any weapon or gear swaps. but due to this, they are unduly over costed on it despite the introduction of rules that allow for all weapons to be fired and at different targets universally. this leads us to current situation where that versatility has been given to other units, but crisis suits weren't given any compromises in return (and lost the ability to JSJ.)

There are really only 2 ways to really give crisis suits this versatile role back, and that's either make them cheaper (Which doesn't work for several reasons, such as weapons equating most of their cost and the need to properly price them) or make their shooting less wasteful by giving them +1BS.
GW doesn't really seem to want to address this issue despite crisis suits being most of the early T'au players being drawn to the faction (Me included) and the big drive into Riptides being the backbone of the army now.


Addenum: Ideally, Increase Crisis suits BS to 3+, Set a hard limit of 2 weapons and 1 sub-system for equipment, and watch as crisis suits become viable again. a crisis suit with 3 plasma rifles in rapid fire only hitting 3/6 times doesn't sound as nice as a crisis suit with 2 plasma rifles and a advanced targetting system hitting 2/3 times (Statistically only marginally better than the above when determining the third hit) and with a better AP sounds so much more gratifying to use.

Don’t forget that Tau paid a premium for safer plasma. Now they still pay that premium for the weakest, least versatile plasma available.

 Jadenim wrote:
Don’t forget that Tau paid a premium for safer plasma. Now they still pay that premium for the weakest, least versatile plasma available.

Which was stupid to begin with because T'au plasma was 1 strength lower to compensate for that and it made more of a difference against beefier units than people think considering the old wound system.

They do need an overhaul. My problem is that they're meant to versatile but they're victim to the rule of diminishing returns so that every additional squad is worse than the one before.
.
During lockdown on TTS the PA Farsight Enclaves allowed one unit of good crisis suits to be really, really good.

7 crisis w/1 missile pod, 1 fusion blaster, 1 cib
1 crisis w/ 1 missile pod, 1 cib, 1 afp + iridium (relic to ignore -1/-2ap to give the model a 2+ save)
1 shasvre w/ 1 missile pod, 1 fusion blaster, 1 cib

Veterans + drop zone clear gave it hitting on 2s, rerolling 1s.
18 missile shots: strength 7 -1ap
27 CIB shots: strength 7/8 -1ap
8 fusion blasters: strength 8 -4ap
1d6 afp strength 4

All for a bit under 700 points. So a sneaky recon drone/stealth team would get into position to allow them to deep strike in within 6" - completely eviscerating 3 units then they'd charge in with furious assault to cause 9 mortal wounds for 1cp.

It feels like if we're going to get the best out of Crisis Suits we have to build a list around one unit, stealth suits/pathfinders/technical drones, which leaves your opponent thinking they're OP.

It was kind of fun but not really sure it'd work too well in 9th, due to the potential of getting them bogged down in combat. (I've run them once in 9th but the rest of my army got tabled so I folded).

Without a massive cost reduction I don't think returning them to the rules from 5th would be fair, particularly with the incoming buffs to Marines.

If we were to cap them at 2 weapons tops I would add some flexibility:
- +1 BS
- The option of taking markerlights (as assault) so if you fired all your shots at one target you could feasibly get a +1 to hit. (I get you could just bring marker drones but they're victim to getting mowed down or having to be relinquished to holding objectives/taking wounds and requiring a drone controller to increase they're BS so for an average (4+ chance) of getting 5 markerlights one has to spend 105 points (10 marker drones and drone controller)
- Let FE take them as troops again.
- Plasma rifles to 2D.
- +1 wound

Then you can have lots of units darting around the place as the main component of your army instead of a mental super heavy bomb that I was running.

Chenko_chenko wrote:

If we were to cap them at 2 weapons tops I would add some flexibility:
- +1 BS
- The option of taking markerlights (as assault) so if you fired all your shots at one target you could feasibly get a +1 to hit. (I get you could just bring marker drones but they're victim to getting mowed down or having to be relinquished to holding objectives/taking wounds and requiring a drone controller to increase they're BS so for an average (4+ chance) of getting 5 markerlights one has to spend 105 points (10 marker drones and drone controller)
- Let FE take them as troops again.
- Plasma rifles to 2D.
- +1 wound

Then you can have lots of units darting around the place as the main component of your army instead of a mental super heavy bomb that I was running.

I wouldn't like to say 2D as that is just making plasma king again (But i understand it with the new marine wound increase) I would have better thought that making tau plasma rapid fire 2 or asssault 3 would have worked. Tau plasma is safer which means it is safer to fire for long periods so you have an increased rate of fire.
Then make Ion blasters alternate fire Assault D6 and D2. Marine killer weapon with risk.
+1 wound yes
FE Enclaves as troops would make sense, but I think farsight enclaves needs a rework as the close combat sept first and foremost.
I also played around with a rule as a predecessor to what JSJ was about where if charged, the unit could choose to either fall back 2D3" or overwatch then fall back 1D3" but im still playing around with other ideas on that one to try and find a suitable replacement.

I don't think Markerlights need to be assault, but i definitely feel that they would seem less of a tax if it was BS3+ and rejigged mechanics.

As a side note too, Drone spam needs to go. Drones bought with units need to count as that unit and remain in coherency, but gain the benefit of not being counted for morale.

Drones can still have saviour protocols for models in it's own unit, but I also feel if it is not part of the drone's own unit it needs to be on a dice roll rather than automatic pass.

 Tristanleo wrote:

I wouldn't like to say 2D as that is just making plasma king again (But i understand it with the new marine wound increase) I would have better thought that making tau plasma rapid fire 2 or asssault 3 would have worked. Tau plasma is safer which means it is safer to fire for long periods so you have an increased rate of fire.
Then make Ion blasters alternate fire Assault D6 and D2. Marine killer weapon with risk.
+1 wound yes
FE Enclaves as troops would make sense, but I think farsight enclaves needs a rework as the close combat sept first and foremost.
I also played around with a rule as a predecessor to what JSJ was about where if charged, the unit could choose to either fall back 2D3" or overwatch then fall back 1D3" but im still playing around with other ideas on that one to try and find a suitable replacement.

I don't think Markerlights need to be assault, but i definitely feel that they would seem less of a tax if it was BS3+ and rejigged mechanics.

As a side note too, Drone spam needs to go. Drones bought with units need to count as that unit and remain in coherency, but gain the benefit of not being counted for morale.

Drones can still have saviour protocols for models in it's own unit, but I also feel if it is not part of the drone's own unit it needs to be on a dice roll rather than automatic pass.

I think that's fair re: plasma and drones.

RE: markerlights, I think 'look out sir' is going to hurt markerlight sources pretty badly. Fireblades and Marksman are, unless they've got specific blocks of infantry guarding them will be easy to shoot and kill, and will be, not least because killing more as a secondary is pretty nice, without them we're relying on Pathfinders (1 per model), Marker Drones (1 per model), Skyrays (2), Sunsharks (1) and Steath Suits (1) IIRC. Outside of Sa'Cea it seems it'll be increasing hard to leverage Markerlights as the game draws on.

I want to perceiver with FE, I like the high risk strategy of being up in your opponents faces. Currently drawing up a list for tonight:


Will still be using Markerlights, or at least the CP 1 to put out a single, but crucial markerlight. The plan is, fly the Tiger Shark near (within 6") something I want dead, pop the extra CP so the seakers can hit on 2s rerolling 1s, then wounding on strength 8 rerolling 1s.

I think the issue might actually be that you feel models and to a degree whole units are encouraged too much to spam the same weapon. Taking both plasma and melta on the same model feels silly in the game but cool and reasonable fluff-wise. The answer is weapon bundles with premiums/discounts depending on how effective it is on the table. A flamer might be worth less on a guy with a missile pod vs a fusion gun. Some things to look out for as well would be making ablative wounds too good such that it is mandatory to have a cheap suit for every 1-5 expensive ones.

A Stratagem that allows every suit in a unit to double shots fired by 1 weapon would encourage mixing weapons since the unit would be able to switch between devastating horde clear and expert tank busters as the situation demands.

1/2cp Use this Stratagem before shooting with a KEYWORD unit, if the unit contains 1 model this Stratagem costs 1cp, otherwise 2cp. Double the number of shots fired by 1 of the weapons each model is armed with for this Shooting attack.

 vict0988 wrote:
I think the issue might actually be that you feel models and to a degree whole units are encouraged too much to spam the same weapon. Taking both plasma and melta on the same model feels silly in the game but cool and reasonable fluff-wise. The answer is weapon bundles with premiums/discounts depending on how effective it is on the table. A flamer might be worth less on a guy with a missile pod vs a fusion gun. Some things to look out for as well would be making ablative wounds too good such that it is mandatory to have a cheap suit for every 1-5 expensive ones.

A Stratagem that allows every suit in a unit to double shots fired by 1 weapon would encourage mixing weapons since the unit would be able to switch between devastating horde clear and expert tank busters as the situation demands.

1/2cp Use this Stratagem before shooting with a KEYWORD unit, if the unit contains 1 model this Stratagem costs 1cp, otherwise 2cp. Double the number of shots fired by 1 of the weapons each model is armed with for this Shooting attack.

Spam isn't for the sake of spam, When you pick a unit and assign it a role, you take the best weapon to accomplish that role. If i'm gonna hunt Marines, I'll take plasma. If I'm hunting horde units, I'll take burst cannons. If i want to pop open some vehicles, I'm going to take fusion blasters. Taking different weapon pairings means you can end up with redundancies in your list that basically inflate the cost of the model without providing benefits. The only time this might not be the case is if you manage to get into a situation to split fire, but the problem there is you can't guarantee that and you are only bringing half the firepower to bear against each that might not be enough.