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2000 Point Mechanized Tau List

Started by Carrelio, December 16, 2012, 11:13:11 PM

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Carrelio

I figured at least someone around here might be interested in seeing a Tau list for a change, and I'm pretty proud with how this one has turned out. It's based on a throwback to 5th edition mechanized Tau, and takes full advantage of the latest errata. I'll talk through the reasoning and application of each unit for you, and if anyone has questions or comments I will be happy to answer and discuss them.

HQ:
Helios Pattern Shas

Rej

I really like the list. It seems well thought out and you know what your doing with each unit which is great! And 18 Broadsides would be ridiculous!
Phew...

knightperson

Generally, those are good solid builds. The only real thing I don't like is the excessive blacksun filters. Even though they're cheap, they're not going to be much good on helios/aurora suits since you want to be inside 12 inches anyway, and they're not much good on a fire warrior team either since a lot of targets have a 4+ or better armor save anyway. It's a tougher call on the fire warriors though since when Night Fighting is in effect they will be shooting at long-range targets fairly often. And definitely keep it on the broadsides!

I'm not sure you understand how the disruption pod works on your devilfish as the numbers you quoted didn't make sense. A moving skimmer gets a 5+ Jink, or 4+ if it goes flat out. The disruption pod adds 2 to that save. So outside of 12, that makes it 3+ as long as it moved, and 2+ if it went flat out or is in some kind of cover. Inside of 12 it's still 5+ moving, 4+ flat out.

Your hammerheads don't have multitrackers, which could be a problem. I'm fuzzy on the vehicle firing rules at the moment, but I know at cruising speed a "single-tracked" vehicle can only fire one weapon at regular ballistic skill.
Cured of what I'm suffering from, but suffering from the cure.

Carrelio

I see your point on the Shas'el black sun filters, but the 6 points I'd get from dropping them really wont be of too much help elsewhere (about as useful as getting one of them a HWTL instead).  Likewise, while their optimal range may be 12" (which funny enough would be effected by night fight since the rule states "units less than 12" can be shot normally" while 12" and up grants stealth), they wont always be in optimal range of a target (such as at the end of the game when night fight may kick in, or after the initial drop if they scatter large against a necron night fight list).
I think that to not take BSFs on the fire warriors would be really wasting their potential.  The most common chances of night fight are the times when the fire warriors will be taking the most advantage of their 30" range (which we pay for in their cost).  In the first turn Tau are one of the only races that is going to be reliably hitting people, and I don't want that taken away by trying to shoot at Orks with a 3+ cover safe (KFF and shrouded); likewise in the last turn or two, I want my units (now far flung to distant edges of the board) to still be able to support one another without facing down a horde of cover saves.

This all said, where would you suggest I use the leftover points if I dropped the BSFs from the shas'el (at least), and the fire warriors?

I am aware of how the disruption pods work.  They grant us shrouded outside of 12".  That's a +2 to whatever cover we have.  Our vehicles should always be on the move (why would they be still?) so they will at least be getting a 3+ cover save; flat out will grant an additional +1, but at the cost of shooting (5 snap fire shots from a fish is really not adding too much to the overall battleline, but if needed I will slow my tanks down a little and use them).  From where I am standing, in an edition entirely driven by scoring units and objectives, keeping our scoring units safe should be priority number 1.

It's actually a little worse than you think... In 6th, a stationary vehicle may fire all its weapons at regular BS (this is not likely to ever happen unless I am immobilized); while moving at combat speed it may fire a single weapon and snap fire the others (this one is the plan of attack for the hammerheads); at cruising speed a vehicle may only snap fire (less likely to be used unless immediate evacuation of an area of the board is the only option, in which case I am likely going to be using flat out).  So yes, not having a multi-tracker, my hammerheads will be only moving 6" a turn, but they will still be getting a 3+ save outside of 12".

knightperson

Good points. I was mostly thinking that if you dropped 3 BSF's you could almost afford another fire warrior, but you make a convincing argument for leaving them on the fire warrior teams. My preferred method of dealing with night fighting (left over from 5th edition, but still effective) is to have a markerlight-equipped unit with blacksun filters: usually a skyray. The skyray can ignore the night fighting and mark the necessary unit, then the actual damage dealers could use the markerlight hit to ignore the night fighting. Unfortunately, I don't see any good ways to do such a thing unless you wanted to trade in a hammerhead for a skyray, and you probably don't want to do that!

I hadn't looked closely at the devilfish configurations, so I just now realized that they are "pinto fish", just mobile walls. I usually run mine fairly souped up since a full warfish produces a comparable amount of hits per point to a fire warrior squad at long range, but the mobile wall is a viable way to do things now. Since Flat Out happens in the shooting phase, you can open a firing lane in movement, fire the pulse rifles or whatever, then close the firing lane by Flat-Outing the vehicle into the way.

I still think you should drop a couple of fire warriors to multitrack the hammerheads. A Shoots-As-Fast vehicle can fire 2 weapons at normal BS while cruising, or all of them at combat (right?). That's two more weapons normal-firing than without the multitracker, at either combat or cruising speed, which I think is definitely worth it!
Cured of what I'm suffering from, but suffering from the cure.

Carrelio

I think I will pass on the skyray idea (at least until someone gives it sky fire, it's just really lacking in 6th edition).  Though now that I think about it, I'll definitely consider dropping a couple of the fire warriors (maybe a gun drone off the 2 squads that have 2).
The sea turtle (opening the firing lane in the movement phase and closing it again at the end of the shooting phase) was exactly what I was thinking of doing with those devilfish, and so far it's worked really well in every game I've played. 

knightperson

Seeker missiles are still semi-viable ways of taking down flyers since they still hit on 2's after you hit with a snapshot markerlight, but you need a lot of markerlights to do it. A squad of pathfinders spotting for a skyray is one of my favorite synergies, and it would probably work well for flyers also as long as you can keep the squishy pathfinders alive. That being said, the skyray absolutely should have Skyfire. Seriously, in the fluff it was an anti-aircraft platform from the beginning, and it's called a SKYray! The next Tau codex can't come soon enough.

You're probably right that the skyray is less cost-effective in 6th than it was in 5th, and I was in the minority with liking it even then! It's main advantage was that the markerlights were explicitly defensive weapons so a skyray was one of very few Tau vehicles that didn't lose any firepower by moving at cruising speed. In 6th, one weapon is rather like another, so it has no more firepower on the move than anything else. On a related note, vehicles with single-shot, single target weapons in 5th edition and later 40k suck. A markerlight or burst cannon on a vehicle counts as the same number of firing weapons as a hurricane bolter (12 shots at rapid-fire, isn't it?), Punisher gatling cannon, multi-blast Executioner plasma turret, large blast battle cannon, or twinlinked rending assault cannon. Maybe they'll make the hammerhead railgun Heavy 2 in the new codex, but I'm not counting on it.
Cured of what I'm suffering from, but suffering from the cure.

Carrelio

#7
Wouldn't that actually make the seeker missiles the worst anti-air weapon in our whole arsenal at the moment?  Since unlike all our other weapons you are rolling to hit with snap shot, then rolling to hit with the seeker.  That should make it 17% worse at hitting than any other weapon.  It's damage potential then (if we factor in penetration rolls) sits at the roughly the same as firing a single missile from a missile pod... which is not great when you factor in the seeker missile alone would work out to be double the cost of the weapon it is equivalent to in damage.

Edit: having thought about it over last night, I am going to drop 2 of the gun drones to give the hammerheads multitrackers

knightperson

#8
Granted, they're not the best, but where I see them having an advantage is that a missed snapfire shot does not cost you one of the 6 missiles. The missile rack on the skyray is not so much 6 shots as it is 5 hits, and those hits can be applied to flyers as easily as land targets. Against an AV11 flyer, the best bang for your buck is probably going to be the trusty deathrain suit, but against the various AV12 flyers out there I'm not sure. It's awfully hard to kill AV12 with a Strength 7 weapon, so the skyray might do well against things like the Vendetta or Storm Raven. You still might get more bang for your buck with the twin-linked railguns of broadsides, assuming there isn't an even more important target for them.

EDIT: Just did the math, and the broadsides win by a long shot. The odds of getting at least one hit from 8 pathfinder markerlights on a skyray is 77%, then the odds of the seeker missile also hitting make it 64%. A squad of 3 broadsides have a 67% chance of at least one hit, and those are S10 AP1! Average number of hits for the skyray / pathfinder combination is 1.11, slightly better than the broadsides' 0.92, but I'm still giving the nod to the broadsides. I'm assuming the cost of 3 broadsides is similar to the cost of a skyray and 8 pathfinders.
Cured of what I'm suffering from, but suffering from the cure.