8e Tau Discussion Part 2: Electric Krootaloo

so how about a 3 man squad where every suit has a flamer, plas and fusion blaster.
would be 82 points per suit

Looking at running a kroot list for shits and giggles, though I'm struggling to find a hq to match the theme, was thinking of just 1 ethereal and body guard to 'oversee' the force, then take a shaper elite as the actual 'fluff' hq

I could see it working as a multipurpose suit, though do keep in mind the cost. You could get a full 10-man FW team at about the same price. I may also recommend checking out the CIB; the two profiles could be useful on a flex suit like that.

Again, this all needs testing, which is why battle reports will be so important. We're not sure yet what will rock and what will flop.

Ethereal is the fluffiest option.

Beware though that Kroot alone gives you fairly few options. You're not terribly mobile with your main forces, and the Krootox is your only source of anti-armor, and even that is only AP-1, D:d3. You can do it, but it'll be an uphill battle.

Tau guys, I got a fluff question. What kind of government do the Farsight Enclaves have? Is it a dictatorship where Farsight is the leader or is there some council? Is the caste system still rigidly enforced or can a Earth Caste join the military?

I don't know much about the government, but IIRC, one of the Eight is an Earth Caste in the riptide, who in 7e has a specific option to represent that.

I would say to just model a kroot with a robe and a totem-looking staff and count that as an Ethereal

I think government-wise theyre a military dictatorship of sorts, but with a lot more feedom for those in different castes

So what are the go-to suit loadouts you're looking at, and what support systems for non-crisis?

Guard: 2xPR+EWO, used to guard backline
Hunter: 2xFB+SG, used to attack vehicles and heavy, SG used to hopefully stay alive longer
Destroyer: 2xMP+ATS, used to fight light vehicles or heavy infantry
Slayer: 2xBC+Flamer, used versus hordes of chaff

Force mobility isn't a major issue for me, I generally play with friends, and we all play silly fluff armies, I believe one of them is planning on a human wave guard force with only lasguns, as in his words 'even lasguns can kill a titan with a 6'

Ooch, I feel sorry for your friend for if/when he eventually faces a proper heavy vehicle. It takes literally hundreds of shots to scratch those things with lasguns.

Welcome to the world of 30 year olds who can afford to buy 2000 points of meatshields

His list is literally

Detachment 1
-Lord commissar
Bolt pistol
Power sword
-Lord commissar
Bolt pistol
Power sword

Conscipts (50) - 6 squads

Detachment 2
-Lord commissar
Bolt pistol
Power sword
-commissar
Bolt pistol
Power sword

Conscipts (50) - 6 squads

That's something like 604/605 models on the table rapid firing lasguns

This is hilariously close to the 666 conscripts joke army on the main general. It seems like it'll be problematic versus absolutely anything with armor or large wound pools.

How useful is having a Recon drone in a Devilfish? With the way the rules work it doesnt even have to follow the pathfinders when they disembark I don't think

I don't think you need to build crisis suits to hunt infantry. Tau have -so much- strength 5 shooting on every little thing that the points you spend on a crisis team kitted for infantry hunting can buy you more and more consistent damage if spent on gun drones instead.

It's not that Tau are spending a lot of points on their heavier weapons, it's that the units that are allowed to carry heavier weapons cost more points for the privilege of being able to do so. You should therefore look to establish a hierarchy where your light infantry and drones are kitted to kill light infantry, your heaviest stuff is kitted to kill the heavy stuff you expect to encounter, and your crisis suits are fitted to fill the gaps in between.

Quad fusion commanders for maximum wounds

I expect BC and ABFP to be fairly rare picks, with MP, PR and FB being far more common.

What units are best served by bringing along gun drones?

Firewarriors.

Any unit that has synergy with their 18" carbines.

With saviour protocols, a lot of things

how is this list?
I don't know what to fill my 1 point with.
I will in future replace the missile pod commander with an xv84, would it be better to remove the coldstar and gun drones and replace them with a full crisis team for now?

Played a game against tau today with my night lords. I stacked the icon of despair with their leadership debuff effect. I barely got to fight, everybody just fled and I shot the riptide to death with meltaguns. Man you guys got some shit leadership. Respect for fireblades tho, those guys hurt

>he was running a riptide
confirmed for being shit

At this point, hard to tell how things will work from reading, gotta test.
But, why an ATS on the Keel? A target lock would enable ignoring the heavy penalty without needing ML support. AP -4 already ignores the vast majority of saves and an ATS won't help with the invulnerables.

Something I never would have anticipated hearing less than a month ago

Gun drones are cheaper, you actually have 9 points to spare in that list.

well now it's the worst model in all of 40k

if you add tactical drones to a stealth team do they infiltrate as well?

So wait, is the new paradigm for small, medium, and large games in 40k now 1000, 2000, and 3000 point increments?

Yes. Attached drones are placed in coherency with the unit they're attached to when that unit is placed. So Infiltrating stealth suits are placed on the table and the drones are placed with them. Then they split into a separate unit.

Are tau really that bad this edition? I feel like it's way too early to say they are. Drones are baller and stealth suits seem to be more fun than they ever were.
I am a little disappointed about ML and really sad about losing JSJ.
Fuck tha police

tau are solidly mid tier
exceptional units are stealth teams (and ghostkeels) since they cost the same while buffed, tactical drones which are cheaper and the sunshark bomber for actually dealing with hordes in a horde edition. Also vespids are really good now. Oh and deep strike has no scatter

Sidegrades/light nerfs would be crisis suits/fireblades and lots of things lost deep strike

Shit tier are riptides and homing beacons

Overall it will be a better edition for tau as we're balanced but not op

>homing beacons
>shit tier

Whut 'chu talkin' about, user?

20 points for a one use beacon that only allows one unit to deep strike within 6" of it with no scatter in an edition where deep strike has no scatter as long as you do it outside of 9" from an enemy unit, which is exactly where you want to be for fusion weapons and further out for other weapons since we are tau

Ah, I thought it was free for some reason.

Still, it has a situational value if you want to get fusion suits in range for best of 2d6 damage.

fusion suits still need 9", exactly provided by standard deep strike function.

No, standard deep strike must be GREATER than 9", melta needs to be inside of half range, which means LESS than 9". You explicitly cannot deep strike and melta the same turn unless you use the beacon.

Manta strike placement needs to be -more- than 9" from enemy models. Can't obey that rule and still be in fusion range. Homing beacon allows you to arrive closer.

Good fuck that weeb trash model

Give me hammerheads and combined arms warfare any day of the week

So how good is a sun shark? I'm thinking of picking one up. Generally speaking, if I'm expecting dudespam, will one be enough at 1k points?

I didn't realise that, I thought exactly 9" meant it was an option, anyway the beacon is destroyed if an enemy moves within 9" of and at 20 points is a lot of points unless you are running multiple fusion suit teams in manta holds

It's definitely situationally useful at best, but I could see it being used in higher-point games where you want to drop a group of 5+ FB suits to take down a titan or something.

It looks solid, but as with everything will need testing.

The beacon is also destroyed when the suits deep strike onto it too, and that happens at the end of the movement phase, the same phase where you dropped it.

FRFSRF turns each of those blobs into 200 shots each at 12", 100 at 24". That easily approaches the numbers needed to seriously hurt armor each turn.

I would not underestimate that weight of fire even playing the odds.

Farsight is actually still pretty rigid with the castes, but it was a case of "this earth caste guy is so cool I gotta let him help me kill shit"

I expect he'll be more lenient over time. If he's still alive.

It's not completely impossible, it's just very inefficient, given that the guard has actual options intended to deal with heavy infantry as well as proper vehicles. Enough lasguns will eventually down anything, but that doesn't mean that that's an efficient strategy.

Gotta pop the commisars then let morale murder the numbers
LD4
Kill 10, 7-12 run away after, essentially you kill them twice as fast then

It doesn't stack.

For the Pulse Accelerator, the subject of the action is the improved infantry unit. The Accelerator isn't performing the action of a buff, therefore multiple accelerators don't perform multiple applications of buff.

We don't really know for sure, but imo I've always imagined them as a true socialist/communist state that actually works, but is contested by it's own isolation and the normal sort who want to take Farsight down.

Basically, I imagine the Enclaves as the /true/ good political idealists that function, but are as a whole sort of underdogs to even the underdogs (mainline Tau Empire).

3plusplus.net/2017/06/8th-edition-battle-report-1500-pts-tau-vs-orks/

GW called him the crimson freedom fighter once

According to the 6e farsight enclaves supplement the Enclaves are:
-Pure meritocracy
-"Each of the principal world of the Farsight Enclaves has democracy overseen by one of the Commander O'Shovash's old allies"

Is it back?

Eh, I can still see a heavy burst cannon + plasma rifles/MS with ATS to work to some degree. 12 s6 ap-2 shots are potent.

OH man. If this gets to come back, I will never stop laughing.

>be innocent 12 y/o me
>get into sweet mecha Tau
>unbeknownst to the massive hate about fish o fury at the time.

so many people hated on my starting army (which only had 1 devilfish for transport btw) I didn't play until late 5th

Lel
Cheaters

A unit within range of 20 drones is in range of A drone. It gets the bonus once.

On paper Enclaves are a meritocracy. In practice they keep dragging Farsight out of his self-imposed exile and installing him as a war-time dictator (very Roman style).

Friendly remainder that this model is armed with a single ion rifle and pays some heavy premium for it.

Are Broadsides worth it? I want to run two behind my wall of Fire Warriors with HRRs and SMS. The extra 16 SMS shots should deter a few more charges into the line.

It's a strictly worse, more expensive dreadnaught that has to pay points to have unfocused weaponry. Granted you can split fire your guns to different targets now but it's not like tau has trouble of getting s5 ap0 shots.

The 2+ save gives it more survivability and with an Ethereal nearby they can ignore wounds on 6's. A shield generator is only 8pts and gives a 4++, and nearby drones could soak big hits for them. You can make them a fair bit tougher.

What units do you think synergies better with mechanized Tau?

Breachers, for sure. They aren't as devastating as they were before, but for 8pts a model they sure pack a wallop when inside of 5"

>if you keep pumping points into already expensive unit it might survive a bit further!
Meanwhile dread has +2T, +2W and costs less.

Sure, but we can't take dreads. We can take Broadsides.

that +2T won't mean that much as almost nothing is S12+ which means that similar types of weapons will be aimed at both units, also a 2+ save is so much better than 3+.and it can deal mortal wounds

I wonder who will lead 4th Sphere of Expansion and who will lead the 5th one.

Are homing beacons single use only? I believe the RAI is that they are but the wording on the rule says nothing about deploying it again after it's used in further turns.

Thanks for the answers. I wonder if auxiliaries are included in that meritocracy, since I know one of the Enclave's planets is literally named Gue'Vesa Planet.

Do we know whether FW will be updating the rules for knarlocs? I know it's unlikely but since they are updating a bunch of discontinued stuff...

It would be a shame if they weren't, now that we can field a proper kroot army (except for the converted HQ and possibly kroot vultures counting as vespids)

I'd say Vespid. They can keep pace with most of our vehicles and provide some decent anti-heavy-infantry, or a counter charge.

Don't forget that Devilfishes are tougher now. If you deploy the Breachers on the other side of the 'fish then you're much safer than you were before.

You take one, you deploy IT.
As much as rules lawyering is fun, 40K isn't MTG, the rules are written with common sense in mind.

Yes user I agree with this. It doesn't matter how many are within 3 inch. Just if one or more are within 3 inch.

c... can I play my Tau without everyone at the LGS groaning at me now?

It took like 1,5 editions for stuff like AM and grey knights to cool down all the hate they gathered in 5e.

No they aren't

I'd imagine that the local race gets self-governance for the most part, with Ethereal oversight.

On the FW site, there's a preview for the Xenos index there, which includes the table of contents. No Knarlocs, sadly. Technical drones are getting stats, though?

>Ethereals in Enclaves
Nice try Aun'va, not gonna fall for that.

Damn you Farsight! We'll get you one of these days!

And it can no longer detach at any point in the Sunshark's move. And it doesn't have interceptor or skyfire equivalents.

At least it can use the super-charged profile again.

Commander spam seems potentially better than crisis teams.
The native BS2+ plus a 4th hardpoint gives a strong edge as well as the character keyword.

Which it now has a greater chance of dying from.

One user was talking about using Supreme Command to run something like 10 commanders, half coldstar.

Commanders also have the benefit of being min size 1, whereas crisis are min size 3 now.

Didn't realize there was another tau thread.

posted this in 40k general thread.

225 = Longstrike with smart missile systems Rail gun + 2 seeker missiles.

42 = Cadre fireblade with marker light

43 = 5 firewarrior team with marker light
127 = devilfish with gun drones

43 = 5 firewarrior team with marker light
127 = devilfish with gun drones

40 = 5 firewarrior team
127 = devilfish with gun drones

67 = 6 pathfinders with rail rifle

59 = 5 pathfinders with rail rifle

52 = 5 pathfinders with ion rifle and pulse accelerator drone

188 = Hammerhead with ion cannon and gundrones

188 = hammerhead with Ion cannon and gundrones

171 = hammerhead with railgun and gundrones

1499pts
6 CP

vespid, piranhas. fighters.

anything that can reliably move 12" in a turn.

they stack with each other though right.

like if i had a fireblade next to an accelerator my pulse rifles would then triple tap at 18" and my carbines would triple tap at 12". right?