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first draft 2700pt army
ragnarok
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:29 pm 
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I've decided that my third epic army is going to be Tau, but I don't know what works for them on the feild. ?Working out an army on paper is fine but it never shows any problems that might only appear in playing.

Thas why I'm asking you lovely guys (and girls?) to point mein the right direction. ?I'm not going to start with a prxie army, I just don't like them.

So far my drafts have got me the following concept

formation 1; forward heavy scouts
Pathfinder contingent 175pts
devil fish ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?free
Piranhas ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 100pts
Tetras ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?75pts
350pts

Formations 2 and 3; Mech fire warriors
Fire warrior cadre ? ?300pts
Devil fish ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 100pts
2 ion heads ? ? ? ? ? ?125pts
2x 425pts

Formation 4; armoured thrust
rail head Cadre ? 375pts
2 ion heads ? ? ? ?125pts
500pts

Formation 5; pperation get behind the frisbees
Drones ? ? ? ?75pts
more drones 75pts
150pts

Formation 6; Diplomatic solution
Manta ?850pts
850pts

(If the Manta goes down to 80pts, as I have read somewhere that it might, then the armour cadre will get internet drones and a pair of clown fish)

That is 2K7pts on the dot (unless my maths is off again). ?Oddly enough it acts just like the Tau in the Taros campaign.

Pathfinders garrison ahead and start shooting off seeker missiles. ?Then the mec formations move up, the FW to take out enemy infantry and the heads to take on their tanks. ?With the Manta drifting around being useless.

I'm just wondering if it will work before I sink the better part of ?200 in this army (over 4 months).

The bits I'm not going to change.

No axuillia, the background of my tau is that they don't trust them or think they need them
No Ethereals, In my 40K army they are represented by Tau with Sept banners and I don't want to convert such small resin figures.
The Manta stays, ?It is a legless god of war, it has to stay for that alone!
:p

So does it look reasonable and should I sart getting the bits for it?

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Ilushia
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:22 pm 
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I might recommend dropping one of the Armor Cadres in favor of a Battlesuit Cadre with Supreme Commander and Drones upgrades. That'll give you a nice forward advancing unit, which is highly mobile and can do a lot of damage at short-to-medium range. And that will give you a re-roll for your Initiative tests, which becomes fairly important on Tau since they're largely Initiative 2+. They're also a very solid formation, able to take a lot of fire without falling apart, usually. Potentially if you would rather have more fire-power instead of the Supreme Commander you could drop the Drones and Supreme Commander in favor of the Crisis upgrade and a Shas'El leader for the group. Gives you a nice punchy unit, and something which can deliver a fair bit of AP/AT/MW fire against a target without having to point the Manta at it. Just watch out for MW and you'll do fine.
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clausewitz
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:41 pm 
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6 activations is a bit low for my playstyle.  If was me I would look to break up some of the larger formations to gain more activations.

Such as..

Keep the pathfinders as the basic formation w/o upgrades.(-175)

Change the IonHHs in the FW cadres to skyrays. (-100).

I would also split the drone cont. into two formations of 4.

Use the 275 points left to gain another formation.  Perhaps a GM formation like stingrays?  Or Piranhas plus something.

I find a higher activation count useful with the Tau as you really need to use multiple formations together to be effective.  Some armies (Nids, IG, BL especially) have formations that can act pretty much independently, they can run around and shoot plently and/or have the ability to crush formations in assault.  Tau dont have those kinds of formations.  So to get the same battlefield effectiveness I find I need to use multiple formations in concert against the target part of my opponents army. (Common example Mech FW double forwards and open fire on enemy, -1 to hit means they generally wont do massive damage, then follow up with stingray/piranha/scorpionfish sustain/advance fire that makes use of FWs markerlights)

Nevertheless the models that you would be buying are all good and I even if you were to make changes to your list (and who doesn't make changes!?) you would still have a good collection of models to base your army on. (Well the Manta is a gamble according to some, but if you can afford it then I say go for it, its cool anyway) :)
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The_Real_Chris
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:43 pm 
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(Fake european accent) No - stop, this army list isn't ready yet! (Sorry :) )

Small point on the ?200 pound first. Tanks are cheaper point for pound than infantry. 1st ed plastic guardians look just like firewarriors and for the cost of a few scenic empty bases you can add stealths.

Activation wise you are a bit low.

Armour in general is the best thing in the Tau - high firepower and immune to CC attacks.

I find 'mono-mission' tank formations are best - Anti Armour (railheads, the two upgraded AT 'heads and a skyray) or Anti Infantry/Air (Ion heads plus 2 of the anti infantry missile boats). Both of course are somewhat duel purpose.

Crisis! My second fav unit after pathfinders. Also allows SC access.

Pathfinders - I find lots of formations rather than recon in force works best. For 350 you could get two. For the GM's you really need some redundancy.

This is the list I took against marines with mixed effectiveness. I reckon however it would cut yours to shreds.

850 Manta
525 3 x Pathfinders
350 Crisis with SC
475 Hammerheads with Swordfish and Skyray
500 Ionheads with stingrays

More activations means I can force you to deploy before throwing in my armour to cut your infantry to shreds then it can refocus on your manta supporting mine in the battle of the UFO's.

Those armour formations for instance have
Anti Tank
4x 75cm AP4+/AT3+
2x 75cm AP3+/AT2+ -
8x 75cm AT6+ Guided Missiles
2x Hunter Missiles 75cm AA5+
2x 45cm AP4+/AT4+
5x 30cm AP4+ Ignore Cover
2x 15cm AP5+

And the anti infantry
4x 75cm AP5+ Guided Missiles, Ignore Cover
8x 75cm AT6+ Guided Missiles
6x 60cm AP3+/AT4+/AA6+
8x 30cm AP4+ Ignore Cover

Nasty.

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ragnarok
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:11 pm 
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Well thanks for all the advice. ?After doing a weapon breakdown of my formations (thanks to TRC for showing me that one ?:D ) I realised that the ion heads weren't adding that much to the mech FWs (a pair of 60cm AT4+ shots and an extra body). ?I also like the idea for splitting the frisbees into two swams. ?alas I now have to army lists to chose from.

Army 1
Fotmation 1
Fire warriors, devil fish, skyray

formation 2
Crisis cadre, extra (mid life) crisis, Shas'el

formation 3
pathfinders, tetras, piranhas

formation 4
4 drones

formation 5
4 drones

formation 6
4 rail heads, 2 ion heads, 2 swordfish, network drones

formation 7
Manta


Army B
formation 1
fire warriors, devilfish, sky ray

formation 2
fire warriors, devilfish, sky ray

formation 3
pathfinders, Tetras, piranhas

formation 4, 5 ,6
4 gundrones

formation 7
6 rail heads, two ion heads and either network drones or swordfish upgrade

formation 8
Manta

I'm not really sure about list B. ?To me it seems that it has lots of small drone formations just because it can, for activations and nothing else. ?Though I am moving from nids where small formations are rare things.

Finally, one question.

TRC talks about adding Stingrays to armour Cadres, yet my list (4.4) only allows armour to have ?gun drones, hammer heads, sky rays and networked drones.




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Ilushia
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:40 pm 
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I'd go for List A, personally. On List B though: How are you getting 7 Hammerheads into one formation? it looks like you did the math to add 2 for them, point-wise, but failed to update it properly?

If I were to go for List B, I'd drop the Piranahs from the Pathfinders, and the extra Hammerheads from the Hammerhead Cadre. Go for Swordfish. Then spend 150 of the 225 freed up on making all the Drones into Heavy Drones, that'll leave you with 75 to field a Skyray in with the Hammerheads, so you can go with an all-railhead formation for extra tank-smashing action (Since you seem to be light on AT weapons in that list at present.)

The other possibility I could see being useful would be to free up that same 225 points to field a single Scorpionfish. They're very nice for long-range fire-support, don't need LoS and have lots of MW/AP/AT shots on-demand.
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ragnarok
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:39 pm 
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Opps that should be 6 rail heads and two ion heads  :down: .  Or more correctly 4 rail heads, 2 ion heads and two sword fish.  I'm surprised that you think it is a bit light on AT (okay it is quite heavy in the AP section).  Since the FW have 6 seeker missiles as do the pathfinders.
The armour has another 6 as well as two ion cannons 4 railguns and two twin rail guns..  I thought that that would be enough (with the crisis group and manta being in reserve).

Or is the problem that alot of the AT weapons are AT6+?

I'm also loathed to decrease the pathfinders firepower.  Since they are the only formation that can garrison (since half of them are scouts, I think I'm right on that one).

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baronpiero
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:01 pm 
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Gun drones are good as an ablative shield, but they don't work with me as an independent formation. Better have heavy drones for that use. At 125 pts, they're still a cheap activation and have markerlights amongst other things. The problem is: you need to convert them or scratch-build them.

Your hammerhead cadre seem a bit expensive in list#1. At most I would field 6 gunships + Skyray.

Your mixed scout formation seem a bit expensive. They would work better at minimum size as Clausewitz suggested. They're sacrificable that way. Both Pathfinders and tetras are valuable. The first have more firepower while the second have more mobility.

I fail to use the Piranhas to good effect.

Finally I'm not too fond of adding Stingrays to complement ionheads. You seem to loose flexability that way, indeed:
- the mixed formation requires LoS for the ion cannons, whereas the Stingrays alone can ignore LoS when guided. This comes in very very handy under the trial popup rule, as the stingrays are garanteed to 'see' their targets and can sustain-fire where ionheads wouldn't.
- the mixed formation will always require markerlights in range to be really effective beause there's a lot of GMs in it, whereas ionheads alone don't require much guidance, except to deal with heavy armour.
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Ilushia
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:01 pm 
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I was talking about List B for most of that. List A looks spot-on to me. Piranhas in the group still sits a little odd with me, but I can accept it. As for the garrison: Yes, that's true. You have exactly 7 out of 13 bases with Scout, so they can garrison (Also: If you want a Battlesuit unit which can garrison you can take Stealth Suits and give them the Crisis Upgrade. Makes for a nice forward fire base). The main reason I suggest removing the Piranahs is they just don't strike me as good enough over-all to be worth it. They're AT 6+. And since you'll usually want to move, and rarely be within Sustained Fire range at 30cm, you'll rarely be shooting at better then 5+, usually AT 6+ from doubling. I just think it might be a better choice to go for something a bit more reliable. I like Scorpionfish for this. 6x AT 6+ Guided Missiles. Means they can sit near your rear-lines, behind some heavy cover, and pelt the front lines relatively effectively without moving a whole lot.
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clausewitz
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:48 pm 
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I fail to use the Piranhas to good effect.

When I use them (and I have done in the last 2 or 3 games) I use them for a cheap GM formation in turns 1 and 2 and usually as an objective grabber turn 3 or 4.
(150 points for 6x 75cm AT shots is pretty good, especially if you fire them at marked targets)
In most lists the Piranhas are considered less of a threat than HHs, crisis, support craft etc.  so they tend to attract less firepower in their direction.

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The_Real_Chris
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:04 pm 
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I'd go with A.

BP - Ion and stingrays.
I like them for to reasons.
One, I've got nothing else to add them too :) And it makes the Ion formation great at wrecking mech formations (you know the ones where people hug their vehicles for cover).
Two, I play with the GT 1 piece of terrain per 2x1 area, its very hard sometimes to get a whole formation into direct LOS and the rays can be the ones being blocked by a tree or something.

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Tactica
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:41 am 
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Ragnarok,

Welcome to the tau!

I like mixed ion/rail head formations. I've even played ion-head with swordfish upgrades.

I'll put piranhas with stingrays for ablative support, but I don't really make good use of stand alone piranhas, I know honda likes stand alone piranhas.

Ions and stingrays are not somethign I've tried, nor do they seem like ideal candidates together.

Tau infantry cannot go it alone and the source of power in epic for the tau is the armor, so I think you have the right model counts of vehicles to infantry ratio... I wonder if you couldn't tweak your choices of allocation a bit though.

Let us know how the next revision to the list goes.

PS - of course you can start buying models now! :)

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ragnarok
 Post subject: first draft 2700pt army
PostPosted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 11:13 am 
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Thanks for all the help and the welcomes to the police state, er I mean the gfreater good.

I'm still tweaking selections slightly at the moment, so the first model I'm going to get will be the manta (since I know it will be in the list).  That shouldbe done either next week or next paday depending on my funds.

Now all I have to do is decide upon a paint scheme.

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