8e Tau Discussion Part 5: 8th is Out, Ghostkeel is in edition

Calm down shas'o'bama.

I would field more but I just think it's ridiculous, fluff-wise. A single Shas'O leads a Hunter Cadre. Now you're gonna see 4+. It's kindof like how the Riptide was supposed to be this super-rare and expensive thing only seen on heavy assaults against huge bastions but you ended up seeing -3- in every bloody game.

I fully understand its effectiveness but it doesn't sit well with me.

With all the talk of how much better commanders are than crisis suits I played around with seeing how many I could cram into a list and still deep strike them all.

Three Battalions, three Commanders each (6 with quad ion, three with quad fusion, two Shield Drones each), three Strike Teams each (Markerlight on every Shas'Ui because why not), and three units of four Shield Drones to round out the last 100 points or so.

As stupid as it looks it's probably a pretty decent list.

who cares about fluff commander/w 4FB is one of the best units in the game currently

Do you know where i can find all the detachment ? I have the index xenos 2 and I can't find it

Anyone running multi-Commander lists is going to be using normal Crisis suits to represent them, so if you want to go by fluff just think of them as elite Crisis soldiers and not actual Commanders. Commander rules are broken and this is the consequence.

Yes, they're in the Rulebook mate. I think under the Advanced Rules section.
I care about fluff. I never fielded a riptide or stormsurge on principle and it didn't suit my theme. I will continue to use my commander, probably with fusions too but probably just 2. I like having some survivability like a shield gen.

They're all in the main rulebook. Everyone uses the same detachments again now.

I understand you. This overuse is just going to make GW smash the Commander upside the head sensor with the nerfbat, so expect that coming.

why not just give him drones or a battlesuit squad instead. Remember characters can't be shot unless they are the closest model so you can just pile drones and suits around him

We flyrants now.

Honestly, this is what I do. I have one cool Commander model (that is all fucked up, shout outs to Finecast), so my Commanders are just Crisis Suit models.

I could but I'm afraid I don't have enough drones. I'm testing out a list next saturday. Used 7 marker drones back in 7th but now that markerlights aren't as must-have, pathfinders are great and Strike Team Shas'uis are effective with them, I might downsize the marker drones. Fielding only 4 would give me a good 7 extra I could juggle around.

Gun drones seem pretty fucking dope now, 4 shots a piece, goddamn!

yeah the 4 shots is nice i gave my shas'vre a drone controller 24 bs4+ shots is super good

Wish Sniper drones were good, but just having extra range and ability to target characters, they feel fucking useless. No mortal wounds, no AP or anything..

You could consider dropping one of your Commander guns for a Drone Controller, then fielding Gun Drones as shooty bubble wrap for him. Since youre probably gonna take Fusion Blasters or Plasma Rifles, having more short range dakka to supplement it really helps.

The new Crisis kit is really cool, too, and honestly the older Commander kits weren't much different than normal Crisis guys anyway. The only issue is having enough guns to actually cram four guns on every guy - which, even on the larger Commander model looks hilarious - but there's third party sellers that make pretty good Tau gun bits for that.
Yeah gun drones are surprisingly good, they're basically just burst cannons now. It's a little weird.

Yeah might end up doing that. The hole underneath the drone top is perfect for a small magnet, so I think I'll just make tons of variations and switch them out as needed.

Commander with 2 Fusion Blasters, Drone Controller and maybe something like a velocity tracker to hunt flyers down or just an extra flamer with 6 gun drones would be baller.

Ahh, that's a non issue for me. I have a fucking ton of spate gun bits. The issue is having enough magnets. Also the new Shas'o model that came out with the 7th codex is pretty sweet. It's a shame that the finecast one is better except for the fact that it's finecast.

Might you gimme a lead on those third party sellers?

found reddogminis.com/crisis-suit-compatible.html last night, their Ions are p. decent but not sure how well they'd work shoulder mounted

rate

between being characters and being able to pass off wounds to drones those commanders aren't dying until you're tabled, I like it

the drone hive must protect their queen(s)

>Dual-barreled gatling gun like Heavyarms Custom
>Fatass missile launchers like in Armored Core
>mfw

Y'know, getting pretty tired of people calling me a weeb for playing Tau but now I'm thinking you know what? Fuck it. I like mecha anime and vidya, might as well just go full fucking fanboy and bask in the salt.

youtube.com/watch?v=VaLsg3M7jOs

At least put 3×fusion on the commanders, and drop the hanger-on drones since they are free killpoints.

wait, drones are scoring units now too aren't they? drone spam actually seems... kind of viable in a weird way. S5 is wounding even LRs and Knights on 5s, so enough spam is gonna bring down anything

More commanders than troops
Drones everywhere
Firewarriors

Neat new meta

I realised today that drobes can easily tarpit the shit out of knight, since the knights kan walk over them due to drones lacking the infantry keyword.

And with fly you can easily surround them, and knights are pretty shit at murdering hordes of drones in CC.

Phone spelling fucking me up...

Knights cant walk over drones

yeah drones and battlesuits lacking infantry messes up a lot of things, it's great. vindicare snipers can't really do shit to commanders because they're not actually infantry as if you'd every take vindicare over ratlings anyway

4 days till Tautron rules boys

Man I miss being able to ally a Vindicare in my Tau army. I used to run a Kroot Headhunter counts-as, follows my Cadre about picking off dudes in return for getting to eat the corpses of the ones that showed the most skill. On a quest to become the bestest.

Aux detachment should allow you add one I would think. Thinking of using my Culexus with my Tau, for obvious reasons.

pretty sure a battleforged army has to share at least one faction keyword across every detachment for matched play, not just within each detachment

Sadly no. is right. in Matched play, your entire army must share at least 1 faction keyword.

You can still just use open or narrative play and adopt some matched play rules and use points values of course but from the looks of it, everyone but newbies are going to focus on matched entirely.

Dont have access to my copy of the detachment, but isnt the special thing about the aux support detachment that it can contain a single unit from another faction at the price of -1 CP?

Nope. I think that's only for just in case you have like.. 7 elites and only 1 HQ, so you can take the vanguard and add an extra elite slot.

I had to check, but the broader faction rules are earlier on in the matched play section on page 214. "All of the units in a match play army, with the exception of those that are Unaligned, must have at least one Faction keyword in common (e.g., Imperium or Chaos), even though they may be in different detachments."

The Auxiliary Support Detachment just exists for people that need to cram in one more unit than their other detachments have slots for and don't mind losing a CP. Considering that HQs are great in a lot of armies (not just Tau) and that unlocking more detachments for extra CPs is great it's not a very good option... but it exists.

Cheers, guess I will just add 10 more drones or so then.

Not sure if I should go with 8 or 12 drone units or something inbetween. With an ethereal 12 drone units are pretty resilent aggaibst battleshock but without it can get rough.

Also considering to run a 1:2 ratio of shield: gun drone aka 4 shield 8 gun etc. Might be nice for some AP shooting.

I would think it's a very situational detachment choice honestly. They should just make it so it allows you to ally in a different faction unit at -1CP each and doing so loses you battleforged status and thus a further 3CP.

Seeing how precious and limited CP will be, sheisters looking to cheese shit wouldn't risk losing a minimum 4 CP lightly.

I had a similar idea... this would be nice. Wanted to sprinkle some (hacked) canopteks in my army

No more Come The Apocalypse allies was one of the things the ITC people lobbied for with the new rules, so nah. It's gone, and for good reason. CtA/Counts-As was stupid.

Y'know what would be cooler? Tau actually have cool Kroot/Auxiliary allies like the 'nids have with Genestealer cults.

Tau and Imperium were Desperate Allies at worst though. I think a measure of unlikely alliying could come back provided the combos weren't retarded. I mean now thanks to keywords, you're far less likely to be able to do stupid combos. They'll only be able to buff their own and at a huge CP penalty. Considering a brigade gets you 9, you could end up with 0 CP.

I can see where you're coming from, especially since Gue'vesa auxiliaries used to be a thing, but I'd rather they had actual rules and models rather than using weird ally rules and counts-as conversions.

How we lookin' here? What am I missing? I've got no hammerheads, and I'm waiting for my remoras and Shas'ORLY to get rules. Any wargear worth putting on the stealth suits?

Strike teams don't have to be 6 man if you don't want them to be; the sgt is a free replacement/upgrade to a model.

Are you really gonna planning on moving your Broadsides? Might be better to do drone controller on the railside so they can both bring missile drones, and then take an ATS on the missileside for better AP.

The biggest challenge to my broadsides in 7th were getting doubled out by S8, which is no longer an issue, and targets staying out of LOS. I figure with Target Lock that's not a problem.

I took a 6th fire warrior because I have the models and I don't know where else to put those 24 points. 62 points, really. Kroot? They really don't seem that good still.

I know very few people own them but has anyone tried the tidewall drone port? You can load it up with 4 marker drones and put fireblade cadre on top for a source of 2+ markerlights. Even better you can have cadre fire first so your drones are hitting on 2+ rerollable. Because The drones in the tidewall turn 1 they are much harder to alphastrike. You could also put a pathfinder team with heavy weapons and darkstrider for extra markerlights.

I thought of trying to use a shaper + dogs as a screen, but drones seem better at that, too. not really sure what the point of kroot is at all when drones are better than most of the units in their army lists.

speaking of which... I'm not even sure it's worth taking stealth suits when gun drones are just burst cannons that fly. like, sure, they have the stealth field thing and more wounds, but drones are so dirt cheap that as long as you get a drone controller somewhere nearby they do the job better.

Several 1-creature units of Riders are pretty good at adding more firepower to your Fire Warrior wall.

well, try mathhammering

I think the biggest reason to take stealth suits is actually as a cheap drone controller. 90 points is about as low as you can get while still slapping it on something mobile. A commander could, but only stays cheap if you take no guns on him.

yeah, I was thinking that too. commanders with three guns and a controller may cost more, but those three guns are BS2+ and the drones serve as his bodyguard, so I think it still synergizes better

I haven't seen a single list be posted where people are taking the turret with the Fire Warriors. Is it just that bad? Haven't played in years and just now getting back in on 8th edition hype (plus employee discount making it easier), and trying to gauge what's good.

It's good if you ignore the fact that it costs as much as 5 or 5.5 Fire Warriors, and can't be moved once set up.

Guesses on the Heavy Railgun?
It has got to be among the most powerful single shot weapons in the games entirety
Str 16 maybe?

IIRC in 7th you could leave it behind and keep moving, in 8th it's destroyed.

Ghostkeels look really fun to build

How does it work if you're just putting Fire Warriors in a Shieldline? RAW it sounds like it just deploys outside the fortification and then can't be targeted.

So, if you actually commit to the firing line it might be good. It's still cheaper than a missile pod for a BS4+ missile pod, and it can shoot at whatever it wants to.

Then again, one of the perks of the Shieldline is that it's basically a slow, open-topped transport (which is awesome) and not being able to move the turret is a bit of a killer.

Honestly I think it's one of the best models in the entire GW 40k range, not just for Tau. It's so cool and it has the flip up cockpit with the pilot and everything. I love it.

I know I've posted this is the 40kg thread before but I'd like some final feedback on this list before I actually take it for a spin.
markers hand with drone controller commander who sits around the strike team and broadside to use Kauyon when needed to buff them. Fusion commander strikes in with homing beacon with Farsight staying up to counter charge and use mont'ka if needed. thing is my plan is to have the stealth teams and the ghostkeel moving back shooting with the two commanders ready for manta strikes while the rest of the army moves up so that they can meet and set up a forward moving gunline for some combined overwatch.

>Honestly I think it's one of the best models in the entire GW 40k range, not just for Tau. It's so cool and it has the flip up cockpit with the pilot and everything. I love it.

Yup, I wanna build one and strike a good pose with it.

Is there any reason you can't deploy the missile pod ON the shieldline? Even in the Index it shows it sitting on the shieldline. And if you can, couldn't it move with the shieldline?

I got a Ghostkeel unassembled myself but I need to do a few conversions. Some for looks, some for transport. Hope I still enjoy myself with it, it's probably the best looking battlesuit.

RAW you wouldn't be able to deploy it at all because units in transports are not on the battlefield.

Don't have access to any of the indexes and barely looking into 8th out of curiosity, what has changed for us since 7th?

Balance shakeup
Things up in the air, riptides nerfed, some new neat mechanics

the indexes are all on 40kg in the mega
changes:
good:
>stealthsuits are better
>fire warriors are better and cheaper
>crisis commanders and coldstars are better and cheaper (depends on loadout)
>ghostkeel better
>broadside is now more like a dreadnought than a crisis suit and literally has double the dakka and HRR are good
>GW tau flyers are now devent and sunshark is especially good
>stormsurge is good
>pathfinders are better (especially special weapons)
>gun drones are now our most efficient unit
>XV109 looks pretty rapey
>Longstrike now a HQ and even better than 7th
>Hammerhead back to rapey especially since longstrike gives nearby tau hammerheads +1BS
>All drones better and don't cause morale problems
>shield drones really value meatshields
bad:
>rip riptides, unusable, too expensive and too shit
>crisis suits are not as good as crisis commanders are now minimum squad size three
>sniper drones still meh, though may be necessary unfortunately due to character rules
>Seeker missiles unusable
>Sky rays unusable because of previous
>Destroyer missiles less shit than seekers but still bad
>Piranhas meh
>Rip drone controller, provides only +1BS and afaik isn't stackable, though still usable since it affects all drones in 6"
>Homing beacons not as good as before, but with new manta strike rules will be necessary for deep striking melta suits/commanders

Sidegrades:
Markerlights changed completely, will need testing for verdict, now usable by any tau unit (not expended on use) but buffs are a bit weaker and require 5 hits for +1BS

Commanders are the new Flyrants
Fire Warrior and Drone spam is great again
Fish of Fury seems pretty viable with how good transports with Fly are
Riptides got nerfed into the ground
Ghostkeels are still great, possibly the new Riptide
Longstrike and Hammerheads both excellent

The FW book hasn't come out yet but they showed the rules for the zoomytide and it looked pretty okay. I'm homing the rest is just as good.

Explain how Homing Beacons make Manta Strike better? Unless I'm missing something they do literally nothing. Manta Strike lets you place anywhere on the battlefield more than 9" away from an enemy. Homing Beacons are destroyed if an enemy moves within 9". What's the point...? It's not like anything scatters, so all they do is say "I'M GOING HERE" instead of just... going anywhere.

Sounds like it's RIP to my Farsight army then

Not at all. Just use Crisis suit models as Commanders. Crisis Suits themselves aren't bad either, it's just that Commanders are better.

It really only hurts you if you were a Riptide Wing spammer, in which case fuck you, you deserved it.

Hey guys, what do you think of this list? It's partly based off of what models I own, but also kind of specialised to fight MEQs, since my friend that I play most of the time pretty much brings different varieties of marine, whatever he's playing.

Seems pretty okay. It might be worth breaking the Broadsides into two different units so that they're both Shas'vre though.

True; though since their primary concept is to shoot, Id like to have the shield drones both have to die before the Broadsides can be shot at, but there's all sorts of redundancy issues in either case.

I initially thought so too, but then I realized you can put the homing beacon within that 9". The issue is its destroyed if at the END of your movement phase, you have an enemy within. So you start by putting it down, immediately calling in a deepstrike with it and it destroys itself.

With the homing beacon, you can put down your units 2" away if you want to, then it's shooting time! no-pain meltarange for tons of fusion guns, in range for a fuckload of flamers!

I'm the user you're replying to and I thought the same thing when it was leaked
Ok so here is hypothetical:
Stealth team is 12" from a land raider, tey drop a homing beacon next to them which is 11" from the land raider. Using manta strike you deep strike a commander with 4 meltas within 8" of the land raider (which you can't normally) and then blast that land raider with 4 melta shots.
For 20 points it's situational, but I'm running farsight and a 4 fusion commander in my 1500 list so i'll get 20 points of value out of it
Farsight himself is pretty good and is even rapey-er against orks by giving twin linked to all models within 6" if they're shooting orks
also Crisis commanders are 10/10 and crisis teams with 3 flamers are great against the horde spam this edition will be filled with
>commander: swap flamer for extra plas
>strike team: 4 teams of 5 is better for morale, DS8 turret is kind of bad, put marker drone on commander or fireblade
>Breacher: idk much about them
>Rail rifle pathfinder team: why a recon drone on them?
>Normal pathfinder team: 2 squads of 5 better, drone can buff both since it's an AOE buff iirc
>2 teams of one broadside with 1 drone each better, make them both shas'vre
>Stealth team: markerlight + target lock on shasv're with a multi-tracker can give you some forward harassment, shas'ui need a target lock more than anything else
>Ghostkeel: Burst cannons better than fusion if running ion raker, support systems perfect

Am the list guy, will try to respond to each point.

>Flamer vs Plasma: was a points thing, but I suppose many of your suggestions could take care of that.
>Strike teams: A good suggestion
>Breachers: I have them and just like them vs marines out of a Devilfish
> Recon Drone of Railfinders: I like the cover denial on Ap -4 guns.
>Normal Pathfinders: it's actually a 9-man squad plus drone; I own exactly 14 pathfinders, so 5 (minimum) go in railfinders, the rest in regulars.
>I made a point above about redundancy and broadsides, but will take into consideration
>I dislike how firing a markerlight prevents you from firing anything else, but I have considered it as well.
>A fine idea, will strongly consider it.

ah, I didn't know firing a markerlight stopped all other weapons, thanks for bringing that to my attention
I didn't see that they were 9 pathfinders in the squad, oops
Does the recon drone confer ignores cover now? Sorry I don't own any of pathfinder drones
as for the broadsides, you can still deploy them as if they were one squad, and each shield drone can take a shot for either broadside, the only difference to having them in one unit is if they are charged, only one is died in melee and you are immune to battleshock, otherwise it's almost identical
If you want fusion in your list, your best option is a 4 fusion commander over a full fusion keel, and in that case a homing beacon on the stealth team may be helpful as well
breachers look good for a counter charge unit
one final suggestion is that farsight would be much better than your current commander if you do own him since he can also tie up and beat marines in melee

So is the go to build for Commanders 4 Fusion Blasters now that you can fire all weapons?

until the xv84 commander is released it seems so

Seems so. But I dunno about not taking any support systems. It seems like a bit of a suicide unit considering you'll be the closest unit for sure.

> yeah its in the markerlight section in Xenos 2, not the heavy weapon type or anything like that
>good point on the drones and broadsides. I'm convinced.
>Don't own farsight, and I just put a bunch of work into a commander so I want to field him. not crunchy reasoning, I know.

What will the markerlight meta be?

-Standard (specialised units)
-Cascade (markerlights buff other markerlights)
-Commensal (markerlights everywhere)

well markerlight drones and pathfinders are both viable (drone controller really helps marker drones).
markerlights on fire warrior shas'ui's are 3 points now and are probably good value.
I'm thinking that cascade will be the new meta since MSU and cheap markerlights on fire warriors especially with them being cumulative not expendable like 7th.
>put work into a model
>running it even if it's not 100% as crunchy as something else
I respect that, do you have a pic of him?

He's the one in the middle.

I'm jealous of your painting skill user, wish I could paint like that

It's just lots of practise and being taught little tricks. If you keep pushing yourself; you'll get there.

Old codices actually had two ranks of commander, shas'o who is the higher ranking one and shas'el who is equivalent to a lieutenant. So you could fluffwise have a shas'o and his lieutenants.

...

What's a good place to get cyclic ion blaster bits?