While we're on the subject, what are the main disadvantages of the vior'la list compared to the third phase list, would you say?

_________________
Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

The army generally has larger formations (more upgrades, upgrades that encourage taking larger formations to get the full effect, adding additional firewarriors costing 150/200pts rather than 100/125pts, etc) potentially resulting in less activations in an activation sensitive army.
More expensive Orca (improved, but still not a grade-A transport at 25 less than a thunderhawk)
No bonded teams
Only 2 Gun Drones (one of the best value per point upgrades) can taken per formation
No access to Kroot, kroot hounds, krootox
No Custodian battleships
No broadside upgrade for Firewarrior formations
No hammerhead upgrade for mech firewarrior formations

The net result is a list likely to be less proficient at Stand-And-Shoot from a distance than 3rd phase, but better in the 15-45cm range band and close encounters.

I am just waiting for a new camera charger so that I can get photos ready and add them to the army list.

In the meantime, does anyone have a suggestion for models that might be suitable for the long-awaited Vespid? If all else fails I might use Swooping Hawks.

Thanks! Those Kreen assault infantry are suspiciously perfect.

So the tournament I went to past weekend was blast. My Vior'la did very well and I got first place. I played against Onachus 10.2, Codex marines and steel legion.

The first games against tyranids will get a report done my opponent fredmans. I thought it unnesecary for both of us to take pictures. It was a draw in favor of me, due to a late start and time constraints. Had it gone the full 3 or 4 turns, then I'd probably had lost as almost all my FW were dead by the end of turn 2 and both the tyranid titans were alive. I tried to play aggressivly with my tau, but was probably to much so with my FWs.

Second game was against the marines. Battlereport can be found here. I didn't take any notes so just had the photos to go by so there might be the odd activation missing.

I will try to post the report of the third game later during my lunch brake today and give some thoughts.

You played great! A worthy winner indeed!

_________________
https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Congratulations Borka! That's a great result, I'll have to make time to read the battle reports tomorrow, thanks for writing them.

Thanks and sure no problem I'm happy to do it.

Two of my opponents had not played against Tau before and I think they did some tactical errors due to that. My good result has to be looked upon in that light. I don't think I would have done as well against more Tau-experienced opponents.

Report from the third game is found here.

This is the army I used.




Ok some thoughts on the list and the new stuff.

Cadre Fireblade:

I wanted to add the fireblade upgrade to my FWs on foot, but in the end more troops were taken instead. I think that will always be a problem. Even at only 25 pts, especially with 2 gun drone units being only 25 pts.



Riptides:

I really liked theses guys. I pushed them up the field in all games. This was very nice as they're described to be spearheading attacks in the book. They felt durable enough so that I dared to do that even without reinforced and even when being my BTS. I think the change to no reinforced was good. I feel 3 saves should be avoided. Their attacks are good, but not over the top in any way. They didn't feel over or underpriced to me.

One thing that could perhaps need rethinking are the shielded missile drones. Are they supposed to shield the riptides? is that their purpose in 40k? In that case they don't work very well since they are AV's and the riptides WE. The opponent can just ignore them and choose to shoot at the WE riptides.

I can't see any way to fix that though. I mean adding a special rule seems unreasonable and making them WE is out of the question. So it's probably something I'll just have to accept. At least they bring some nice Suppression/breaking resistance to the formation.

I would like to suggest one change to the stat line, they can't have two Heavy burst cannons in 40k. Please change from "2x Heavy burst cannon, AP4+/AT5+" to the following "Heavy burst cannon, 2x AP4+/AT5+".
I know that they in fact can't have both the the heavy burst cannon and the Ion accelerator, but I can see why you did that. I mean the smart missile system or the plasma rifles would make them somewhat underwhelming (considering their stats in epic). Double MW attacks is not a good option (if going with twin fusion blaster and the ion accelerator).

The only viable (epic-)option I can see (if you feel like staying truer to the 40 stats) would be something like this

Heavy Burst cannon, 30 cm, 2x AP4+/AT5+
Twin fusion blaster, 15 cm, MW4+

This would make them somewhat harder to use, but would also force the player to get a lot closer to the enemy and would push the "spearheading-attacks-theme" even more, but it would also make them significantly worse in my view.

I'm quite happy with current stats, so I'm not saying you should change them. Just giving some food for thought.



Sun Shark Bombers:

I could only get these guys to work in one game (the third against IG). They refused to activate (air caste hippies) every time against the tyranids and were shot down against the marines.

Against IG they worked perfectly accept for not activating on turn 2. I used them to prep a garrison (by that I mean adding BMs for suppression and not prep for assaults). I could then move up and shoot the garrison without being to concerned about the overwatch fire. The second time I used them to bomb a broken inf company for a lot of hack down kills.

I thought these were real force multipliers if you know what I mean. The old Tau had the loss of BP weapons built in as a weakness.

A flying barrage unit that can effectively sustain (with markerlit target, something flying barrage units normally can't) is quite powerful.

It was only one game were I got to really use them so I can't make any suggestions yet really, but my gut feeling is that they should be increased in cost, by quite bit. 50 pts or perhaps even more. Not for what they bring in actual attacks but for what they bring to the list. Need to test them more to give more solid feedback though.

I hope this input is of value.

cheers

Having just run Tau army in a game where the Tiger Shark AX-1-0s stood down on two of the three turns [failed to activate] I am a little uncertain about how such air assets should be costed.

Did some probability trees and if you include the chance of not activating (especially if carrying blast markers from AA fire) the actual potential/expected damage is somewhat more modest than the payload stats might indicate. Relatively few dice rolls mean they tend to pay off big time or fail completely.

I've encountered several more experienced gamers on these August boards who have moved away from the rather luck dependent, binary nature of such force selections. If the Sun Shark Bomber was placed at a higher points cost it might drift into a similar category. I decided I'd try to get to grips with the standard Tau 6.6 list before embarking on the rather interesting/intriguing Vior'la List, so just my gut reaction.

Yeah you might be right. For me they failed to activate at 3 times out of 6 possible activations and one of the succefull activations led to them getting shot down. That was quite unlucky though as they had no BMs at two of the failed activations and they had some mayor defensive AA, that all missed, when they were intercepted. I would like to test them some more.

I have uploaded the pictures, and will try to write the battle report tonight or the night after. I have faced regular Tau before, and can really only comment on the Vior'la army Borka used, but it feels like it has the potential to be a more aggressive Tau list. I can see Sunsharks become popular. No barrage means that the opponent can optimize cover and distances by not having to spread out and makes it easy to protect commanders. Also, by putting the SC in a Riptide suit, Crisis suits can be used as an assault formation, rather than being a very cautious body guard.

It was a fun game, and if it was not because of us being a little sloppy in our preparations, we would have made a third turn. Now, we stopped by the end of turn 2 and counted VPs. Battle report to follow.

The only thing that stood out a little was how fast the Riptides were. I figure the movement is based on Jump Infantry, making them Jump War Engines, but War Engine usually comes with a little shift towards slow. Compare, for instance, Eldar. All their AV skimmers have 35 cm movement, their skimmer WEs have 25 cm. IG tanks have 20 cm move, Super-heavies 15 cm. Ork super-heavies stand out as an exception, but I think it is because they are an upgrade and not even using Reinforced Armour.

/Fredmans

Yeah we discussed that when we played. I forgot to address it in my previous post. It does seem odd that they are so fast compared to the crisis suits that are smaller and also jump pack elite suits. Or is there fluff or 40k rules that suggest they should be faster? I looked at the 40k codex but couldn't seem to find anything indicating or justifying that, I'm not that good with 40k rules though.
It's also quite powerful to be able to double 60cm and then shoot 45 cm MW 4+. I think a move of 20 cm like the crisis would be more appropriate. It would harmonize the suits, all the three kinds of elite jump pack suits would have the same move.

I've been away at the CANCON Epic tournament, so will work through feedback and battle reports as time allows. Thanks very much for both by the way - it's great to see the list get played!



I have the same issue when list-building. You can take both the fireblade and the drones, but there's always a draw to more models over fancy toys.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though - this is intended to be an option for the players who are passionate about Firewarriors having better FF than IG, rather than a no-brainer.



Good feedback, and that's exactly where the Riptides should be and what they should be doing, so that's encouraging.
Regardng the shielded missile drones, you are right of course but they can't be made into minature WE without some dramatic price change. The opponent can pick them out from WE, but they still have the advantages of additional models for suppression, breaking and in engagements which is all you can expect from their price as an optional upgrade.



Makes sense.



It's a problem with all initiative 2 flyers, sadly Tau suffer from it worse than most as they are more air-reliant. It's even worse with the really expensive ones like AX1-0s, and with only 1 reroll per turn the air assets tend to get first dibs on it because of how utterly useless they are compared to ground units that fail and still have options (or can at least sit on objectives).
That's the risk anyone takes with air, I just know I hear it more from Tau players because they can anticipate at least a few air unit failures per game.



They definitely are force multipliers; it's the only thing in the entire tau arsenal that encourages an opponent not to bunch up in one big pile, and that alone makes it worth taking and trying. I'll try a couple of games with it moved up in cost by 25pts.

Thanks Borka, excellent feedback.