I've got a couple of playtests using 6.71 recently, both with and against. I should be able to get 6+ playtests reports up in time for you as Andy particularly loves using Tau, hopefully another couple of groups will do the same so we can test it out and get it approved.

Railgun Hammerheads seem fine for what you pay for them. Stealthsuits plus Gun Drones can put out a hail of disrupt firepower and I wonder whether they might be a little too good now, but I really need a few more games with them before I can properly say.

Managed to get the Tau out for a game versus the old BA list using the new 6.71.

Sadly I wasn't able to get the new Railheads to do much more than kill two vindicators before being hamstrung and broken.

After a few tactical errors, I lost 1512-862 on VPs. Now given the errors, I feel this was a fair result and not a true telling of the Tau list, however, what really stood out from this game was the horrible Command and Control with the Tau list. A lot of my formations retained a single BM the whole game making my 3+ activation rolls often contribute to further BMs due to horrible dice rolls. Now even if I passed those rolls, the formations often retain the BM to hamper further efforts with suppression etc.

I tried 3 smaller 4-tank formations (as recommended by a few players to boost numbers) and one of 6 but all 4 of my armoured formations spent most of the game broken, suppressed and couldn't rally to get back in the game until turn 3 and then couldn't shed the odd BM or two which left them unable to activate and essentially useless as they couldn't bring the amount of shooting they require to hurt the enemy.

Other lists get good access to leaders in their formations. Tau don't. Given suppression is a big problem for Tau (as they need to shoot to hurt the enemy), I think this might be an issue.

Other than a fluff perspective, is there a reason why support formations couldn't take leaders? Tanks particularly(as they are the main source of stand off firepower) could do with re-intro of the old Command Node upgrade.

Anyway, just some food for thought.

Had a game using Tau 6.71 against Markconz's Eldar a week and a bit ago.

The Water Caste had negotiated a deal with a local Kroot Enclave.
As in, I finally managed to get my Onslaught miniatures painted up.
No formal report, due to lack of time to process pictures, etc.

Game board was still set up from last time, to see the table viewed from Eldar side scroll down a little way (first image of the table).

Heard from an Eldar Farseer on the right flank, "we have a bit of a Kroot situation here".

Anyway forces roughly, Eldar, left in city: Mechanised Aspects + Supreme, Night Spinners, Falcons+Firestorms, single Scorpion, Rangers, Blitz (Guardians with Wraithguard in web).
right on baseline: pair of Revenants, single Scorpion, Shining Spears,
Reserve: Guardians in Vampire.

Tau spread more uniformly across board (right to left as seen from Eldar side of table)
garrison: 2 x Kroot (10 units ea), Tetras (4 Tetra+2 Piranha), Large Kroot (15 units), and Foot Fire Warriors (with Etheral, Bonded Team and Pathfinders) in behind as a Blitz Guard.
in deployment zone: Pathfinders, Piranhas (incl 1 Tetra), Boardsides, Crisis Suits (Shas'el), Hammerheads (4 rail gun + skyray), Crisis Suits (Shas'el), mechanised Fire Warriors with skyray, Piranhas (incl 1 Tetra).
off board: 2 x stealth suits, Orca, pair of Barracudas.

So you can see a couple of errors/omissions from me right there. Was so focused on getting the Kroot horde onto the board that I forgot that you can deploy Broadsides in garrison (15 cm moves). Have been dropping them off where I want them from an Orca for too many recent battles. Also 2 Devilfish don't stop the Pathfinders from deploying forward (more scouts in the formation) but think I could not find anywhere that would hide them sufficiently.

This time the focus was putting out as many of the changes for the 6.7.1 list as I could manage, based of course around getting the most recently painted figures on the table.

The game went two and fro and hung in the balance until the last turn. Sustained fire over a couple of turns had knocked the Revenants out (Blitz). The game was won by a Kroot Kindred assaulting a Scorpion while also deploying to claim two T&H objectives. Their scout AND infiltrate being very useful. Anyway they WON, ate the crew and claimed the DNA.


Comments on the various units under review.

Stealth Suits: As usual I deployed these with ultimate aggression, putting the Eldar right flank in scout ZOC. This is probably/possibly not the best use of them. It does markerlight the enemy, force their hand, keep them reactive (rather than proactive), but does make the life expectancy of my stealth-suit crews rather short. Their one 1 on the dice was re-rolled to leave no BMs. Mark attacked them with his Shining Spears, which drove into rough terrain to chase them (one crashed!!). Suits broken but the comment from Mark was something like, "they are the best assault troops in the army" by which he meant FF5+ (first strike) and RA5+; not so relevant against Lance armed Eldar in close combat!!

Other formation was put in to provide possible crossfire on the other flank. They threw four 1s and on the re-roll took one BM. They distracted the Eldar Mechanised Aspect Warriors for a turn which took the sting out of the dreaded triple assault. No spare points for Gun Drones this time around.

Crisis Suits: These I purchased with a Shas'el included in the 250 points price. A couple of posts have discussed this but basically my reasoning is: fluff wise a Shas'el always leads a group of Crisis Suits, points wise each suit is 50 points, +25 for the formation, +25 for the Shas'el giving the standard formation cost of 250 points, command and control is improved by giving the formation co-ordinated fire, and finally (not used here) make it possible to get 2 leaders in the supreme commander formation to help with BM management on a small relatively critical formation.

In this battle I managed to keep the two formations behind the Forward Edge of Battle Area (or should that be FLOT) for most of the first two turns. Having two formations helped a lot. Perhaps most significant was the ability to launch coordinated fire missions (with Initiative 1+) that took down the Swooping Hawks and ultimately took out the Eldar Guardians (with wraithguard) in the city fighting. One formation finished the battle in tact, whilst the other had a lone crisis suit and two gun drone units at the end. Convenient buildings and the Tau jet pack rule were put to good use as well.

Railgun Hammerheads: These guys never really got into position for a good shot at reinforced armour targets. That was because they got heavily targeted. So their utility was as a threat in being more than anything. Only way to address this is, I think, by having more of them, . . . but then I have only built one and was already proxying the rest.

Etheral: The new rule was not put to the test this game. This Fire Warrior formation was sufficiently tooled up to count as the BTS. And deployed cautiously as a blitz guard. They failed their activation in the final turn when they might have shot the damaged mechanised Aspect Warriors off a T&H to claim Defend the Flag. The embedded pathfinders would have given markerlights and an ability to stretch the formation back to still claim the blitz as well.

Tiger Shark and Gun Drones: Did not find enough points to deploy these. I was worried about super Eldar AA, but discovered during the game that Mark is relatively light on Fire Storms, . . . hummm, . . . next time, . . .
Also had plenty of 15 cm AP disrupt fire in the army already, . . .

Currently working on a (home made, laser cutter) Manta. It is HUGE. As in really H U G E.

Don't suppose you took notes/photos to do a battle report Dobbsy? It's tricky to know what to comment on it without knowing the detail. Even the two army lists would something in a pinch. 700+ points on Hammerheads does sound like a very large amount to spend on them but I guess it depends on what else you field and how you use them.

I don't see any need for leaders on Hammerheads myself, they already have advantages in being skimmers and long ranged but if it were an extra paid for option I just wouldn’t take it.

List building certainly presents some dilemmas in the third phase list, ie the SC vs BTS problem means you end up with at least 2 fairly expensive formations. It seems to be common that the "natural" makeup of the formations I tend to choose for these roles end up at the same points cost, which I find a bit frustrating.

What makes this doubly so is that a crisis suit formation with shas'o at 350 does not seem quite right, which leads me to ask why Tau are paying 75 points over the shas'el for a reroll and a slight improvement in shooting (ap5+ to 4+)? Costs for the SC vary widely across the lists, it's true. But Eldar for example pay 50 for a reroll, leader, commander and MW extra attack. Marines pay 50 for their reroll. I guess it is based on the guard price? They pay 100 for reroll, leader, better armour, better CC and a MW extra attack.

I think the tau one is priced poorly even compared to the guard price, and should be reduced to 75 (ie 50 more than shas'el). If needs be, put the shooting attack at 5+ as a partial trade off.

For the purposes of informed discussion, I should point out the devils advocate position too though. There is an argument that, because BMs are particularly damaging for Tau (they don't have lots of formations and they concentrate firepower into small numbers of units so degrade a lot through suppression), so leaders and the SC are more valuable and therefore should be expensive. This assumes of course that the cost of BMs is baked into the units.

It sort of feels to me like suppression should be a weakness of the army so not sure how I feel about widespread access to leaders. The free shas el I'm not too concerned about because I see it really as about boosting a particular elite formation rather than being about leaders. I think either this or reducing the SC cost as above would be good changes because knocking 25 points off the SC formation will help with army building like I mentioned, no matter how it is done.

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The Tau supreme looks a bit expensive and easy to kill for my tastes. I don't rate Crisis Suits much in the first place, though I'm sure others like them.

I likely won't use a supreme in my Tau lists, I didn't last game and it worked out fine. Tau often have long ranged weapons and still may be able to shoot when they fail.

Thanks for all the reports guys.

I will be putting up a new version of the test list with changed text for the Tiger Sharks and a free Shas'el included in the Crisis formation sometime in the next week. With the cost of the Shas'o upgrade reduced to 75pts.

Feel free to test that.

Shas'el - is free but loses its extra gun attack.
Shas'o - reduced to 75pts upgrade, stats remain the same
Tigershark - play as gains crossfire bonus on the turn it deploys Drones (if Drones are in a possition to claim the crossfire in the first place).

Goodo

Once the next version is up could we have a bit of push to post up battle reports to test it and try to get it approved? It's fairly different from the version in the TP now.

A couple of us in Christchurch like Tau and I'm sure we could get 6 playtests up. If you could too Yme we'd just need one other player group to do the same.

No unfortunately I forgot my camera. This post was more a "what I learned" from this game not specifically a batrep. I feel the make up of the army isn't all that important in the scheme of this as these units are universal and this occurs often.

Umm, I'm confused. I thought this doesn't require batreps because none of changes get put through at the NetEA level anyway right?

You prefer to have your armour formations acting on 3+ then? Fail an activation and you gain another. In a 4 tank formation if you take two blast markers you will be stuck with one for most of the game unless you spend your time marshalling - which means your armour isn't shooting to its full ability - which means they are a liability in the points build. Not sure this should be the outcome.


No thoughts on the C&C, Yme?

Shrug, up to you. I was trying to help and to get more of a context of how they were getting attacked. They're long ranged and skimmers so can stand back at long range and/or pop up to cut down on fire.

Umm, I'm confused. I thought this doesn't require batreps because none of changes get put through at the NetEA level anyway right?[/quote]
Army Champions are free to make smaller changes to approved lists at their discretion, though these still get looked over by the ERC to confirm they're fine.

Yme has made a number of changes to the Tau list - different spaceship, railgun lance, Stealthsuits and Gun Drone teleport re-roll, extra missiles on the Manta and AX, Ethereal change, plus a load of cost reductions and the odd stat tweak. Yme has been putting out developmental lists including these changes which he has said he wants to see a lot of testing for to test out the changes before they are approved. Thinking about it I'm unclear if he wants the same 3 sets of 6 games or something less, but a decent amount of testing anyway.

It's just how small formations of medium tanks work in epic. I'm fine with it and what it means you get to do with the Hammerheads. Personally I certainly wouldn't pay extra to give the formation leader. I used 2 formations of 4 in support of my army in my last game (without a supreme) and was happy with them. They got wiped out by the end but took a decent amount of attacks and I was happy they were getting shot at rather than other things.

I understand the issue with the hammerheads in particular because tau rely on shooting , but it's the same for every army to a large degree and just has to be factored into the cost. You may want to make your formations more reliable and nobody "wants" them to activate on a 3+ but that's just how the game works for all armies. If the vulnerability of Tau tank formations is blast markers, that's a pretty valid counter in my opinion. Skimming, long range, decent armour and powerful tanks that are difficult to suppress doesn't sound all that appealing to play against. They need to have their weaknesses. If they were better then they'd be more expensive. And that means you'd have fewer of them in the first place. If they are over costed then that's a different story but they've already been boosted and I'm not sure there's evidence of that.

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I've loved the four-ship Hammerhead formations in my games; but then I come from Eldar, where tank formations seem designed specifically to break the first time someone looks at them.

Frankly, I don't see how this army would work without taking a Shas'o. I would have lost a Lot of games to critical failure to activate if not for that. BTW I really like the flexibility the Vior'la list gives, with its option of placing her in a Firewarrior formation.

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Let there be code.

I agree the SC would seem to work better in the FW formation, but the crisis minis are cool so I don't mind having to field them too much

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Tau have reasonable access to leaders in their core formations - Ethereals and Bonded Teams in Fire Warriors and Shas'el (now free) or Shas'o in Crisis.

The support formations are obviously lacking in this area but I personally can't say I have found it to be a big problem when using the list, no more than other armies I play anyway. It's just the lot of small support formations in epic as a game.

Most of the changes are actually fairly minor, its really the Stealth suits, Hammerheads and Etheral changes I would like to see tested, the odd seeker missile here or there on already very expensive models or a few minor stat tweaks make virtually no difference to the list and the Protector is basically a nerf to the Hero so needs no testing. I am certainly not looking for a full 18 tests from 3 different groups. I would just like to be confident in the main changes when I propose to the ERC to move this version of the list to approved.