Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Another look at Tau


Hey guys,
in my last article I talked about a possible 1750 points list for a Tau army. By this time I came to an agreement with my friend and bought his models already and therefore I started some more planning on how to build such an army.
One of the main problems of my last Tau list was the small number of crisis suits, though I decided to include a lot more of them into my army. In addition to this I equipped lots of them with twin-linked missile pods to get a better result of long range shots at transport vehicles. In order to still be able to deal with some heavily armoured vehicles like LRs, I decided to buy a unit of two Crisis suits, equipped with twin-linked fusion blasters. These guys are cheap enough to deep strike near dangerous units and shot at them at quite short range, to stop them long before they can reach my lines.
Another improvement over my first Tau list is the fact that I made much more use of different wound groups, because I equipped the Crisis suits in the squads different to get the most out of their two wounds, before they go down. Of course, I had to cut a lot of units in order to squeeze that many Crisis suits into the list. First of all I got rid of units which did nothing or at least not very much in my latest test games: The Hammerhead was supposed to give some long range fire power in addition to my Broadside Battlesuits, but I think it didn’t even score a single hit and therefore I know that I can do without it, as well. This already gave me some more points to spend and additionally I got rid of the Pathfinders and their quite expensive Devilfish. My Fire Warriors can as well keep their heads down in order to survive a battle, as long as they stay close to my lines and do not run around a lot, which they normally shouldn’t be doing.
After I added as many Crisis suits as I wanted, I spent the remaining points on another squad of Kroot. These guys are really good in annoying the enemy and I can even keep them in reserve and let them outflank later on in order to kill some scouts or whatever is sitting on my opponent’s home objective. After some reconstructions and some tweaking, I finally came to this list:
***************  2 HQ  *************** 
Commander
- Shas'o
+ - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Drone Controller
   - H-w. Target Lock
   - 2 x Shield Drone
 - - - > 131 Points

Crisis Bodyguard Team
+ Crisis Shas'vre
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Targeting Array
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
 - - - > 66 Points

Commander
- Shas'o
+ - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Target Lock
 - - - > 101 Points

Crisis Bodyguard Team
+ Crisis Shas'vre
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Targeting Array
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Drone Controller
   - 2 x Shield Drone
+ Crisis Shas'vre
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Targeting Array
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
 - - - > 162 Points
***************  3 Elite  *************** 
Crisis Battlesuit Team
+ Crisis Team Leader
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Targeting Array
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Target Lock
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Blacksun Filter
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Drone Controller
   - 2 x Shield Drone
 - - - > 185 Points

Crisis Battlesuit Team
+ Crisis Team Leader
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Targeting Array
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Target Lock
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Blacksun Filter
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Missile Pod
   - Drone Controller
   - 2 x Shield Drone
 - - - > 185 Points

Crisis Battlesuit Team
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Fusion Blaster
   - Blacksun Filter
+ Crisis
   - 2 x Fusion Blaster
   - Target Lock
 - - - > 94 Points
***************  3 Troop  *************** 
6 Fire Warrior
 - - - > 60 Points

10 Kroot
7 Kroot Hounds
 - - - > 112 Points

10 Kroot
7 Kroot Hounds
 - - - > 112 Points
***************  1 Fast Attack  ***************  
2 Piranhas
- 2 x Fusion Blaster
- 1 x Targeting Array
 - - - > 135 Points
***************  2 Heavy Support  *************** 
Broadside Battlesuit Team
+ Broadside Team Leader
   - Smart Missile System
   - Advanced Stabilisation System
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Drone Controller
   - H-w. Target Lock
   - 2 x Shield Drone
+ Broadside
   - Smart Missile System
   - Advanced Stabilisation System
 - - - > 203 Points

Broadside Battlesuit Team
+ Broadside Team Leader
   - Smart Missile System
   - Advanced Stabilisation System
   - H-w. Blacksun Filter
   - H-w. Drone Controller
   - H-w. Target Lock
   - 2 x Shield Drone
+ Broadside
   - Smart Missile System
   - Advanced Stabilisation System
 - - - > 203 Points
Summed up : 1749 points
The main advantage of this list is, of course, quite a large number of battlesuits, but I don’t have that many plasma rifles than before, which leaves me quite vulnerable as soon as my opponent manages to come close to my lines. I think that it’ll take quite a lot testing in order to see whether this list is stronger than the last one or not. But I recently developed another Tau list, which is my favourite list at the moment. The list is basically a mixture of these two lists and will be tested by me as soon as possible. In the next article I will present the list and will have hopefully played some games with it, as well. So stay tuned for the next article.

Cheers Cleutin