5.0 Tactica - Tau Empire

[Fraf]

Broadsides-2 with Target Locks

you only need one target lock in a squad of 2 models. The second one does nothing and is a waste of 5 points and a wargear slot.


About Helios, I second what Kelanen said. While they can do it, their purpose is not heavy tank hunting (piranhas, broadsides and TL fusion monats do it way more efficiently). The main purpose of Helios suits is to hunt heavy infantry and monstrous creatures. Also, they need markerlight support to kill their target in one blow due to their short effective range, but watching your opponent's face when his squad of paladins or FNP Blood Angels gets wiped in one volley is priceless.

[Rogerio]

6 helios!!! wowza im guessing marines do not enjoy facing your army on the battlefield!!

[Kelanen]

6 helios!!! wowza im guessing marines do not enjoy facing your army on the battlefield!!

That's the intention. It's 100% MEQ around here, I'm the only non MEQ player...lol

That said it's still not cut and dried - of my 5 armies, Tau struggle the most.

[meltedwing]

I think that's why I enjoy pounding Blood Angels into the ground so much.

[Rogerio]

I like my local scene its not marine heavy really, infact most people play massed infantry guard with the sprinkle of chimera squads here and there but my usual opponent always switches up with marines of all varieties, Dark Eldar, Orks, Eldar too so theres good variety.

Whats the thinking on mech Tau?? with like 3 squads of firewarriors in Devilfish supported by loads of suits and hammerheads?? my list is a mix of kroot fws in devilfish and loads of suits etc but a fully kitted out warfish is 120pts and can fire out and impressive amount of firepower with 7 ST shots if it moves 6inches or 4 shots if it goes 12 and its at bs4! I like disembarking the FWs and torrenting but skimming around firing missiles inside a transport sounds pretty sweet.

[IAMNOTHERE]

It's like everything in the tau dex, over costed. Personnaly I like them but it means getting into melta range to be effective.

I run a warfish as with my pathfinders but I do keep it back until late game before comiting it to battle.

[Kelanen]

I used to play Mech-Tau. Back in 4th with Warfishes that worked, Fish of Fury that worked properly, and a few other changes. In 5th it was lacklustre, and I kept tuning and tuning my lists, until they weren't Mech, and weren't Hybrid either. I use Piranhas as my only vehicles (maybe Tetras soon). Neither Hammerheads nor Devilfish are worthy of inclusion right now (although you may get more mileage out of Railheads since you face a lot of hordes).

[Rogerio]

Yeah i love hammerheads they are great its just that i always seem to roll badly to penetrate either that or my opponent rolls well on cover saves and i do no damage, we do play with tons of terrain so pretty much everything gets a save.

I can see what you mean about hordes as well, last game i played a 2v2 me and salamanders v 2 tyranid armies, when a massive load of hormagaunts came on outflanking they swarmed my tetra then once it was gone they were grouped together big time, i submunitioned 16 out of 20 in one go POW!

[lantzkev]

I'm actually looking forward to trying out the hazard suits for their anti hoard abilities eventually.

Rogerio, this is one reason why markerlights are so damn cool, remove the cover saves before shooting at em!

[Reivax26]

If you have a 3 man Broadside team with 2 Target locks in the squad then you can fire at 3 different targets. The team leader can fire at one, then the other 2 can split fire so you could theoretically fire at 3 different things. Against a Razorspam/Rhinospam list this could be highly entertaining lol

[lantzkev]

If you have a 3 man Broadside team with 2 Target locks in the squad then you can fire at 3 different targets. The team leader can fire at one, then the other 2 can split fire so you could theoretically fire at 3 different things. Against a Razorspam/Rhinospam list this could be highly entertaining lol

This is exactly how I equip mine, and this is also why I find a broad side team more effective than a hammer head point wise. If you're dealing with hoards you just switch to SMS.

[meltedwing]

I would honestly rather run one team of two and one team of one broadside(s) without target locks than one team of three with target locks. The reason being that when you shoot with a team that has target locks, you have to designate what they are all firing at before you roll to hit. This means that you could whiff shot/pen/result rolls on something that was important and not be able to follow it up with more shots from broadsides that will help ensure that the important target goes down. If Target locks allowed you to fire one, then decide for the second one, then I would agree with the configuration you have here. Ultimately it just depends on how many points you have and whether or not you have enough marker lights to support multiple units of broadsides.

[lantzkev]

I would honestly rather run one team of two and one team of one broadside(s) without target locks than one team of three with target locks. The reason being that when you shoot with a team that has target locks, you have to designate what they are all firing at before you roll to hit. This means that you could whiff shot/pen/result rolls on something that was important and not be able to follow it up with more shots from broadsides that will help ensure that the important target goes down. If Target locks allowed you to fire one, then decide for the second one, then I would agree with the configuration you have here. Ultimately it just depends on how many points you have and whether or not you have enough marker lights to support multiple units of broadsides.

That doesn't seem like a well thought out reason. also if you're running so few you'll run the risk of never taking down what you need. The point of target locks is that you do not waste shots. if you have one target you really want to take down you assign 1-3 of the broadsides to shoot it, if there are multiple you divide up the first three shots on three different targets, then when your next squads shoot you shoot at what's left, etc. if all three wiffed you fire at all three again, if one destroyed now you have 2 on one and one on the last, if only one is left, all three fire on it.

Without target locks you can only take out one target per squad per turn.

[Kelanen]

Yeah i love hammerheads they are great its just that i always seem to roll badly to penetrate

Barring the odd emergency you shouldn't ever be rolling to penetrate with your Hammerheads - they should be firing the submunition round at things with AP4+ or worse. If you are finding that more often than not you are not doing that (and in particular you are firing at vehicles a lot) then you shouldn't be running Hammerheads - you should be running Broadsides. There's no comparison, the Broadsides are *much* better for anti-vehicle duty - the Hammerhead is there for the pie plate, or shouldn't be there at all.

[meltedwing]

That doesn't seem like a well thought out reason. also if you're running so few you'll run the risk of never taking down what you need. The point of target locks is that you do not waste shots. if you have one target you really want to take down you assign 1-3 of the broadsides to shoot it, if there are multiple you divide up the first three shots on three different targets, then when your next squads shoot you shoot at what's left, etc. if all three wiffed you fire at all three again, if one destroyed now you have 2 on one and one on the last, if only one is left, all three fire on it.

Without target locks you can only take out one target per squad per turn.

You say my reasoning is not well thought out and then repeated what I said pretty much.

[Fraf]

There's another problem with target lock equipped broadsides : it prevents you from taking a more valuable support system, like A.S.S.
You can still take a hard-wired target lock on the team leader, in order to shoot at 2 different targets.
This is why teams of 2 broadsides are optimal as long as you have enough heavy support slots. Only when increasing in points and saturating the HS slots should you take teams of three, and even then, I think A.S.S. still trumps target locks for non leader broadsides (by the time you fill your HS slots, you can already shoot at 5-6 different targets per turn with only TL on leaders)

[lantzkev]

You say my reasoning is not well thought out and then repeated what I said pretty much.

I somehow read that as a argument against locks because you couldn't one at a time fire em. When I'm at saturation I usually do two squads all with target locks, then one with multi-trackers (it usually has either 2 or 3 in the squad)

Completely misread what you wrote somehow, my apologies. That's the problem with reading things while working.

[meltedwing]

I somehow read that as a argument against locks because you couldn't one at a time fire em. When I'm at saturation I usually do two squads all with target locks, then one with multi-trackers (it usually has either 2 or 3 in the squad)

Completely misread what you wrote somehow, my apologies. That's the problem with reading things while working.

If I'm in a game where the point value is high enough that I should really have more than 2 or 3 broadsides then target locks become invaluable due to vehicle spam. However in my 1k list I can get away with having only 2 and the leader takes a lock in case I need to split fire but that one is hard wired. Some day I hope to be in a game big enough to field 9 broadsides and in that case I would definitely want at least one in each unit. That gives me the ability to hit six targets per turn. Which I hope I have at least 8 tetras to mark stuff up with lights. Currently I only own three broadsides and 4 tetras.

[lantzkev]

have you tried out the sensor towers? in my 2k list I usually went with four squads of 10, but I may go full 12 now and have only three with a squad of towers, and two units of kroot + hounds for the troop slots (clocks in at roughly 850pts for 96 models then another 90 for the three towers to let three squads near it re-roll...)

also I found even in 1k having 4-5 broadsides exceptional performers.

[Rogerio]

I can see what you mean Kelanen, the hammerheads are not really doing the damage and more Broadsides would be great but i only get the forgeworld ones and they are 30 quid each, plus im not mad on spending loads on new models if there is a possibility of a new codex coming in the next 6 months or later in the year.