Looking to building my Tau army around some infiltrating/snipey/stealth capabilities.
Currently I have:
Firewarrior x5 (75 points)
-shas'ui w/ target lock and markerlight
-pulse carbines
-gun drones
-team bonding thingy
Firewarrior x5 (75 points)
-shas'ui w/ EMP 'nades
-pulse rifles
-smart missile system
I'm planning on adding 3 stealth suits with blaster cannons for 100 points, and then am kind of at a loss of where to go. I was thinking about making the teams of firewarriors have 10 members each, and maybe a team of pathfinders for the markerlights. Maybe a devilfish for deep striking of the carbine team?
HELP!
EDIT: here is a picture of my firewarriors as I have assembled so far. http://imgur.com/a/KLcZv
You'll need a Cadre Fireblade (if they're still a thing?) as your HQ, unless your
LGS is doing HQs, Elites, Fast attack, and Heavy Support as 0-1.
Definately keep the EMP Nades on the Shas'ui. Its minor, but can dissuade your opponent from Tank Shocking your Tau off the objective.
Depending on the cost, lobbing some EMPs on the Carbine Warriors might give them a bit more offensive ability, potentially being able to disable vehicular threats by throwing them.
Stealth Suits are definately a good choice, as their armour makes them more durable, and the Stealth feilds make them harder to hit. Save Fusion Blasters for your Battlesuits and Piranha.
You may want to consider the Devilfish as a transport for your Carbine Warriors, as it will give them greater mobility, as well as some more S5 AP5 shots, especially if you upgrade the Drones to a Smart Missile System (if thats still an option?)
Pathfinders will most likely be your go to Fast Attack choice, as those Markerlights can truly decimate once an enemy unit has been lit up, and a full unit of Fire Wqarriors have done their job. Not sure what to say about the Pathfinder Options, except possibly give them EMPs as well for same reason as Carbine Warriors.
After all that you'll definately need a Commander. There is nothing wrong with buying the plastic Battlesuits and customising them appropriately. There are plenty of inspirational photos around for ideas. Your Commander and Battlesuits should be there to plug up holes in your offensive, such as higher Strength and AP weapons to take care of enemy vehicles and chunkier units.
thats my thoughts for now. Without knowing what your local Meta game (what everyone else is likely to take) its difficult to really suggest anything solid.
Hope that helps :3
So I'm still uncertain about a bunch of things. Is there "must-haves" in your army like HQ (what is that) for certain style games? Like if I was playing a 250 game (which I am currently building for) do I have to have a HQ or am I free to bring something like a single battlesuit worth that much?
Also, if you could help me with a 250 or 200 point team (unsure of which my local GW plays) that would be amazing! I'm also trying to figure out miniatures to buy as incremental upgrades that would be sufficient for the aforementioned point armies while still being able to contribute to my final goal of a stealth/snipe army.
PS. Can you have both a ghostkeel and xv88 battlesuit? I guess this lends to army requirements question I asked first
For now, I'll only talk about the original Force Organisation Chart (FOC). This chart dictates the number of a particular unit class you can take.
Fire Warriors are Troops, and under normal FOC, you must have two of these minimum. You can take up to six Troops choices.
Battlesuit Commanders are a HQ choice, and you must have one HQ choice, up to a maximum of a second.
(Regular) Battlesuits, Stealth Suits, and the Riptide (unless its changed) are Elites choices. You don't have to take Elites, but you are limited to three per army, or Detachment when you're more experienced :3
Fast Attack and Heavu Support choices have the same limitation as Elites.
Tau Fast Attack are Piranha skimmers, Pathfinders, Vespid, and the two Flyers.
The Heavy Support choices are the Hammerhead, Sky Ray, and Broadsides.
Here is the visual for the Standard Force Organisation Chart
(http://orig12.deviantart.net/3d7c/f/2015/314/0/3/1db5061d0ea0f39bb7ca3e401cccc2b5_34071_by_narric_sb0-d9g8ecf.jpg)
Unfortunately, I don't have the latest Tau codx to hand so most I can do is offer the basics and point you in the right direction ;)
Ghostkeel is an Elites choice, so you'd have to choose him over a Riptide, Battlesuit team, or a Stealth suit team.
However, I wouldn't be too concerned with the FOC just yet, because there are other ways. The simplest thing you can do is play an unbound army. In an unbound army, you can basically take whatever you want. There are advantages to following the FOC or building a Cadre (which I believe is a unique version of the FOC available to the Tau), but they aren't overwhelming enough to worry about. Besides, with an unbound list you could technically take an army made entirely out of Ghostkeels. It might not be any good, but it's an option you could try.
As for what you should take, my advise is not to worry too much about what is powerful, and just get whatever you think looks fun. It depends on what you like about the hobby.
If you're looking for a competitive game, then by all means get the powerful stuff. A lot of people enjoy trying to find the most overpowered combinations they can.
If you enjoy the backstory, build your army around a theme. Maybe your commander has an underlying hatred of space marines, so a lot of his forces are geared towards killing them.
If you like the models, buy whatever you think looks the coolest and most fun to build/paint. I sure as hell didn't give take my Imperial guard rough riders because they were powerful (seriously, they're bad).
Still, I'm guessing that you want to get a few games in before you choose your direction, so I'd say getting a commander of some kind and maybe something hard hitting like an XV88 is the best direction to go. Almost every tau army has a shas'el or shas'o leading it, and they can be pretty powerful if you give them the right weapons for the job (hint: don't glue the weapons on at first. Use blue tack or something, so you can swap them out to try different combinations).
A good, all round, take all comers list for the Tau will almost always have a Battlesuit Commander and a squad of XV8s in it. Personally, a Tau army is incomplete without them. They are beyond versatile and can be customised to just about any role you can think of.
If you want some hard hitters, the XV88 is a must, at least 2 would be advisable. Missiles are the most usable option these days. And a Velocity Tracker can keep enemy flyers away from you. Or, if you have a lot of vehicles to contend with, splash out on a Hammerhead Gunship. The Railgun is king of anti-tank at range, and it won't set you back many points for what you get. Adding a submunition option for a few points will again make you more versatile against soft targets like non Marine troops. Or is you do face a lot of MEQ (That's Marine EQuivalent. T4, 3+Sv) You get to play with the Ion Cannon which can pepper a squad with shots, or blast an entire unit into a fine red mist.
I don't know if the Skyray kit still comes with Hammerhead parts though, it used to, which made it the better option to buy.
The key to the Tau is that they are one of the most synergystic armies out there. If they support each other, they become much much more effective, and harder to kill. Kit yourself out for your local meta, make something you enjoy playing, and have fun with it.
Thanks for all the replies and info guys! I bought a team of stealth suits today to assemble for my first game tomorrow. I'm jumping right into it :p
We're playing 200 point kill teams so I'm bringing:
Firewarriors x5 (45)
Firewarriors w/ shas'ui, gun drones and smart missile system (65)
Stealthsuits x3 (90)
The store starts 500 point games in 2 weeks so by then I'm planning to buy another squad of stealthsuits, a ghostkeel to make the stealth cadre and supplement it with commander shadowsun and a team of pathfinders. Thoughts?
"Firewarriors w/ shas'ui, gun drones and smart missile system (65)"
Gun Drones can mount SMS now? That is very interesting.
Quote from: The Man They Call Jayne on November 12, 2015, 09:08:31 AM
"Firewarriors w/ shas'ui, gun drones and smart missile system (65)"
Gun Drones can mount SMS now? That is very interesting.
My understanding is the SMS is on a mobile turret, not the drones. so the unit has a model count of eight.
Still, it is in interesting expansion of the Firewarrior arsenal. Are their other options for this weapons platform?
Yes, the model count will indeed be 8 with it being 4 regular firewarriors, shas'ui, 2 gun drones, and a mobile turret with smart missile system.
The other weapons that are available to the firewarriors are pulse carbines, pulse blasters and plasma grenades. Don't know if these were available in the previous codices, but now you can also form a breacher team of first warriors now that is close(er) combat
Pulse Carbines have been the secondary weapon for Fire Warriors for a long time. Pulse Blasters and Plasma Grenades are newer additions to their arsenal.
What jayne was refering to was the turret. What options are there for it, or is it only an Smart Missile Turret?
Is the turret unit all Pulse Rifles, with the second unit all Carbines? For fire warriors, its often better to use only one weapon in the unit, as it maximises the effectiveness, especially as you don't want to sacrifice the range of the rifle for the carbine.
Indeed. If there were Missile Pod options or Plasma options, or even, dare I dream it, Ion or Rail options, then it would really make Firewarriors something I actively wanted to take. I can get 5/5 anywhere.
Having taken a quick look in the new codex, it appears that the 'DS8 tactical support turret' may be armed with either a missile pod or SMS. So a choice of either more 5/5 shots or a couple of 7/4s. It also seems that the turret is just a piece of wargear and can be 'set up' by the squad. It then cannot move and only functions if there's a model from the owning squad within 2" and no enemy models in that range. So it's fine if you want a static gunline but it's not your ideal option for a mobile fire warrior team.
If you are hunkered down somewhere though, a Missile Pod on hand is great. I would be taking those to deal with light vehicles and walkers.
So I played my first killteam game(s) yesterday and the static gunline of firewarriors with the DS8 tactical turret is AWESOME! Especially with the smart missile system on it, you don't even need line of sight to hit your enemy.
The first game was against some dudes on bikes (space marines) and the only saving grace there was that he ended up blowing up 2 of his 5 bikers because of the Gets too hot rule. The stealth suits were able to infiltrate and pick of his leader from the back, while due to his scout move he was able to kill off most of the firewarrior carbine team but the rifle team was able to support them and inflict casualties. Ended up winning by killing off the entire team in turn 4.
Second match was tau v tau in zone mortalis. It was an objective and the opponent fielded 6 stealth suits and a team of pathfinders, while I still went with the same 3 stealth suits and 10 firewarriors with ds8 tactical turret. We traded blows, and he ended up winning after turn 5 with 5 victory points vs. my 4 with both of our leaders surviving and being inside the objective. Tau are hard to kill...
Congrats on your first win! I've gotta say I'm a little surprised you did so well against the Bikes, since they can be a pain in my experience (but then I play Imperial Guard, so maybe the S3 flashlights have something to do with that...). Any conclusions on where you're gonna go from here?
My local GW is starting an Escalation tournament in the new year when we start off at 500 points and continue going up. I'm Hoping to be able to put together the optimised stealth cadre for the beginning of that supported by captain shadowsun and a team of pathfinders. My friend is also beginning to assemble his orc army so we will have small Killteam games fairly frequently. I'm also starting painting all of my miniatures so I will post progress shots and fill you all in :D
Assuming the rules for stealth and shrouded are the same, you might be better off dropping the Pathies and taking some Marker Drone with the XV25s. More survivable with the 4+ save and the bonuses to cover thanks to being joined to the stealth suits.