{Tau} I am a bad man.

[cenpjas]

Hello to them peeps wot have not seen me around for awhile, sry been busy with RL... damm them.

Anyhoo, I have spent a bit of time with the Chaos Codex, being that its new and shiny, and after getting hacked off with it I have been comparing it to the old one and the current SM codex. Anyway, my thoughts on that are not for this thread, no?, NO.

Whistle building things in Armybuilder (wolflair) I noticed something very very very very very very very very evil (IMO).

If you have not experienced the love of the skyray and the joy and love of markerlights you will not appreciate this/fear it as much as you should.

The first thing I should point out is I love markerlights, but I have not found a good way of deploying them , I am not a big fan of Pathfinders by far the most cost effective way of getting many market lights, and I am unwilling to lumber other 'manoeuvrability' units with marketlights as there 'heavy'. Yes I cringe at the idea of having marker light drones attached to my XV8's, where they all end up in the open for a turn to get shot by the whole other army (bugger that), not to mention the drones are 30pts a shot + drone controller.

Ok to cut to the chase:

Stealthsuits with marker drones.

Take 3 suits, upgrade one to a team leader, you now have upto 6 marker drones with STEALTH - AND INFILTRATE, and you can give the team leader the BS upgrade and a marker light and targetlock and black sun filter.

Now this works out no real expence over pathfinders, however. Its hard to shoot 'em because there stealth so they 'can' sit in the open and not get shot (other than by indirect). They have a 36" range so thats really nice as you can NOT be seen at max range.

If you really need to redeploy you can do it quite fast, and as you infiltrate you can markerlight from turn 1, and you can place your chaps in a good place for doing it.

Now as you may or may not know, markerlights can not benefit from marker lights.... HOWEVER, if you can tag a unit with a marker light you can benefit from using its 'light' to allow your unit to see another target in night fight , you can not however use your team leader to do this (but you can't have everything).

Anyhoo, just a passing evil thoughts on (beats the hell out of giving the stealth teams +1BS.)

the idea of covering a unit of necron warriors (pref including there lord) in marker lights, causing 51% casualty's, forcing a leadership test normally at -1ld, but this time at -6 or more, and watching them all run away with no chance of rallying -hurra. (another good reason for loving the skyray).

My current thoughs are 'evil suits with markerdrones', a sky ray, a unit of xv88's and a hammerhead. + sundrays.

-cen

thoughts?

Modification to append this note:

I have used skyray, stealth drones + hammerhead combo on a necron player, and slayed 1 unit of scarbs and warriors in one round, round 1 (he got first go). And yes I am aware that its 'benefits' will depend on the target army.

[lowlygaunt]

Do the stealth suituse the 2d6x2" (average of 14") rule or 2d6x3" night fighting rule (21" average, no real protection) for being shot at? In my experience it is very rare that I can't shoot at stealth suits. Seems I always have a unit or three in range. Not to say they are not a good usefull unit. but you may be overating the "can't be shot at" portion? In any case I think the marker light idea youhave is a good one, i had not realised the marker light was heavy, need to have a "talk" with my local tau player.

[cenpjas]

heheh a 'talk' hu?, just remember its 'he fell up the stairs' these days, down the stairs got old.

Stealth suits are 2d6x3, harq's are 2d6x2... irritation but there u are. And they no longer have that range 1/2 at night.... I don't know why considering how often night fight is in use.

Still, 21" is an average roll, and if you try to shoot 'em you can not shoot anything else. And of course 36" which is the range of a markerlight is the MAX range you can see, so as soon as you go above 21 or so inches your running a very real risk of doing nothing with a unit (and presumably a unit that could hurt stealth suites).

It is indirect fire that is the weakness of Tau as it negates many of the benefits they rely on to win, IE not getting shot at. Indirect Earthshaker cannons being the worsed, AP3 instant kill, which makes XV8's and XV15/25's very tempting targets, I mean you can give them all 4+ inv saves, but that just makes them even more expensive! and tempting.

Anyhoo its just an intresting alternitive to pathfinders.

-cen

[J.Dogg]

Now i'm even more interested starting with TAU
(snicker)

[cenpjas]

Tau are surprisingly flexible considering how new they are (albeit 2 codex's old already).

I find the Tau codex almost as interesting as the current (old) ork codex, or sister codex. But the difference is the Tau 'interesting' bits kick ass and the others are mealy 'interesting' but don't expect to win.

-cen

[snelgaroo]

Brilliant idea cenpjas I think I'll use that with my Tau