A more balanced Tau 1850...

I've been rocking my Missile Spam Tau (to which I've added more S7 lols with Missile Drones now - survive the alpha strike from a certain IG flier...) at the club and its been a bit too hot to handle.
I've had literally a DOZEN games with it and just find that it pumps out too many shots.

I read a line somewhere..think it was 3++... about bringing knives to a gunfight.. It is true.. you think you can get close and overwhelm, but then you can't charge and have to hang out and take it in the face, or you get up close and use terrain, only for Ignores Cover and No LOS req'd missiles to seriously damage units and a clustered Tau gunline Supporting Fire just rapes assault unit face..

It's not perfect.
It lacks mobility.
It lacks REAL Av14 with now just 2 units that can deal with it.

But for everything, there's S7 and S5 en masse.

And I feel like a dick.
I'm bringing tournament level armies to the club and whilst there are a few guys that really dig this and either rock that level or aspire to it, there are so many others that simply don't want it at all.

So today's post is about bringing in some subpar units or concepts, almost creating a balanced but somewhat fluffy force.
Now, I'm not going to purposely gimp myself to the point where I get butt raped every game, what's the learning point I take from that? Don't play shit armies? Nah.

So I'm still bringing plenty of S7, still bringing Markerlights..but I am also going to bring some other units around the theme of SUITS.

To me, this is what Tau are all about, using technology to pimp a little fish head til he's a bad ass that can fuck the Emperor's Holy Light right out of an Adeptus Astartes.

So this is what I think is a more "friendly", balanced Tau list that I don't feel bad for running at the club - new additions are marked out with italics and '!' before and after - NOTE: I wouldn't normally run these:

 

Crisis Commander - Missile Pod, PENChip, Iridium armour, Drone Controller, Target Lock, 2 Markerlight Drones

!Commander Shadowsun - 2 Fusion Guns, ATL!

!6 Stealthsuits - 2 Fusion, 4 Burst Cannons, Shas'Vre - 2 Markerlight Drones!

Riptide - Ion Accelerator, Interceptor

3 Crisis Suits - TL Missile Pods, Burst Cannon

6 Fire Warriors

6 Fire Warriors

10 Kroot

10 Kroot

Aegis Defence Line - Quad Gun

5 Pathfinders

!5 Pathfinders!

!Skyray - Blacksun Filter, Point Defence!

3 Broadsides - TL HYMP, TL SMS

3 Broadsides - TL HYMP, TL SMS

 Not changed up too many things, but the removal of the 3rd Broadside unit makes the army a lot less dangerous offensively - taking away 12 TL S7 and 12 TL S5 (Ignores Cover, No LOS) shots and replacing it with a few Seeker Missiles, SMS and a couple of Skylights (Networked, Skyfire Markerlights) makes a huge difference to my output.

Now there are benefits to it, I get to boost my shooting via markerlights, have access to lower AP, higher strength weaponry - effective against FMCs of the Demon and Nid variety (but then, I wasn't worried before with volume of fire).

I get access to a very cool unit in the "ShadowStealth Team" unit. They can infiltrate, move, fire 4 Fusion Blasters and light something up with a couple of Markerlights, then melt away into the shadows with Shadowsun's 'Ghost who walks' - the coolest named Warlord trait since 'Dust of a Thousand Worlds'...plus it's immeasurably useful in keeping them alive with 3D6 JSJ move in the assault phase.

The second unit of pathfinders would normally be Marker Drones for the Commander to use his Drone Controller with whilst he mans the Quad Gun and dakka's some bitches.

But, it is my hope that this is a more approachable Tau army than the one I have been using, and it gives me an excellent opportunity to try out a couple of units that I have been wanting to for some time - the Skyray, an excellent model I've had for literally years but never every used :( and of course the ShadowStealth Team...

I'm looking forward to Eldar and Allied opportunities to bring in Karandras led Striking Scorpions troops (fingers crossed Eldar in June) with the ShadowStealth Team for very thematic shenanigans.. purely for local lols though!