This is leading to a further shift in thinking in a number of armies. For example, on Advanced Tau Tactica, there is an interesting evolution of the formerly static gunline that is emerging. They call it Mobile infantry. Many of the players there currently play either Mech Tau, using primarily a variety of skimmer Chassis to protect their infantry and maneuver them into place to deliver a powerful strike, or they play a Hybrid list, which uses some elements of Mech Tau as well as Crisis suits and some static infantry firepower. The Mobile infantry concept gets rid of all or most of the skimmer chassis and replaces that Mechanization with more infantry-based firepower. In this, a lot of the firepower comes from large teams of Broadsides with Shield Drones and Advanced Stabilization, which allows them to move and still fire those massive Railguns. Additional mobile fire is provided by Carbine-equipped FireWarriors, Crisis Battle Suit teams and Stealth Teams. Finally, a further element of mobility and rapid reaction is applied by Gundrones or Vespid Stingwings. The concept is to replace the points spent on skimmers with points spent on Firepower and resiliency. It's a very interesting idea, and it's been interesting watching it evolve.

On the other hand, I've actually been thinking in another direction. I've been exceedingly impressed with the basic Jump, Shoot, Jump battle drill that my Crisis Suits have been doing. I've been doing respectable damage to a variety of armies with it and taking little damage in return. In fact, the damage that I have taken is almost entirely limited to my FireWarriors and my Piranhas, both of which are visible at the end of the turn, unlike my Crisis Suits. That means that they are the only targets for the enemy, an enemy that now wants to exact some vengeance for the damage my Crisis Suits have just done to them. Poor FireWarriors and Piranha, they just don't have the resilience to take that kind of abuse. Even when I remember to put them in cover and limit line of sight to them, they still get shot down. With those facts, I decided to take another look at the Tau army and see what units I could use that would let me keep more of my units out of harm's way.

There is no I in Team, unless you can't spell.

Okay, looking at the Tau list, we've got Crisis Suits in both the HQ and Elite slots, and these things really shine in the staying hidden but unleashing firepower on the enemy game. Stealth Suits are also an Elite choice and they, too have the option of a Jump move in the Assault phase. Not bad, though they don't generally offer quite as much firepower as Crisis Battlesuits. They do have two more tricks up their hard-to-see sleeves, however. The main one is that they have Stealth Fields, which makes them difficult to see (think Night Fight rules, but no searchlights.) This is a good thing, though it is limited by the medium range of their weapons. Their other trick is that the leader can get a Markerlight and it's possible for them to have Marker Drones as well. Overall, they've got some potential, but they aren't necessarily a must-have. (Actually, I think it's worth separating the Stealth Teams and the Stealth Marker Teams. The Marker teams give you Markerlights and their longer range gives them much more protection. Stealth Marker Teams are probably a First-Tier choice for this army, while Stealth Teams by themselves are probably a second-tier choice.

FireWarrior Teams can also get a Markerlight, and they've got decent Firepower and a fair number of bodies. They are also generally static and this means that they will stick around in the enemy turn to get shot at or assaulted. Although we have to have at least one or two of these, they certainly wouldn't be my first choice for this army due to their static nature and poor resilience. Kroot are also static and are even more fragile than FireWarriors, though they can make up for this if they can hide more than 6" into Wooded terrain, since they can shoot through up to 12" while most enemies can only shoot back through 6". This isn't something that can be relied on, but it could prove useful now and then. Again, not ideal, but they might be slightly better than a unit of FireWarriors, primarily for the possibility of hiding deep in the Woods.

Pathfinders are _very_ effective Markerlight carriers and they can also bring some of those nifty Rail Rifles. (Space Marines _really_ hate S6, AP3 guns!) On the other hand, they are every bit as static as FireWarriors and they are significantly more Fragile. (Being more expensive means you can't have very many and each loss really hurts.) They also have to bring a Devilfish, which makes them even more expensive and gives the enemy another target that will have a hard time hiding. A small squad might be useful as snipers at the very edge of their range, hopefully using terrain to mask them from most threats and range to hide them from the rest. (If they are set up far back and to one side of the board, they should be out of range of all but Heavy Weaponry and even a small amount of terrain should block some of those weapons from seeing the squad. Definitely not a first choice, though.

Watch out, they Bite!

Good, Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.

Okay, so if we look at our First-Tier choices, what does that give us? Crisis Teams, Stealth Marker Teams and Sniper Drone Teams. The first gives us that classic Jump, Shoot, Jump effect, while the others use Stealth Fields and Medium-Long range to survive. The first thing to notice is that without Broadsides and Hammerheads there are no Railguns in this list. That means the traditional ways for Tau to deal with vehicles are gone. In addition, without Piranhas, there won't be as many fast Fusion Blasters to take care of those pesky vehicles either.

Now more and more armies are going without vehicles or using them lightly, but not having an answer to vehicles would mean that even a single Predator could have a field day with this army. That being said, what can our first tier units do against vehicles? Well, Stealth Teams have Burst Cannons that make them effective against anything AV11 or less, which includes most back and side armor, but they have to get close to use their Burst Cannons, negating their Stealth Field advantage and making their heavy Markerlights useless. Sniper Drone Teams are much more effective with their S6 weapons that can hit out to 36" and take on up to AV12, which covers all but the heavy vehicles. Each Drone firing has a 1 in 6 chance of causing damage (a glance or a penetrate on the tables) which means that for the whole team firing, that's rougly a 50 percent chance of having an effect. Very useful, but we can only have so many Sniper Drone teams and they are heavy weapons, so they can't move and fire.

That leaves Crisis Battlesuit teams. Even though they have no Railguns, Crisis Battlesuits aren't slouches when it comes to taking on vehicles. Aside from the flamer and some special issue items, every weapon they have is capable of handling at least AV11, and some of their weaponry can handle even tougher stuff. I decided to have a look at what the best weapons were individually, then work out the best configurations for Battlesuits. While I actually did the calculations for everything orginally, I'm going to limit this list to an assumed BS of 3 for simplicity. Let's have a look at each weapon and how they stack up against AV11 and AV13 (nominal strengths for light and heavy vehicles, respectively.) An Effect would be a glancing or Penetrating Hit, expressed as a percentage chance.

Weapon Chance of Effect vs AV11, Chance of Effect vs AV13
Burst Cannon 0.12 0.00
TL Burst Cannon 0.18 0.00
Plasma Rifle 0.12 0.00 (Note: double effectiveness at 12" or less due to Rapid Fire)
TL Plasma Rifle 0.18 0.00 (Note: double effectiveness at 12" or less due to Rapid Fire)
Missile Pod 0.33 0.08
TL Missile Pod 0.50 0.12
Fusion Blaster 0.17 0.08 (Note: _Much_ more effective at 6" or less)
TL Fusion Blaster 0.25 0.12 (Note: _Much_ more effective at 6" or less)

Knowing these numbers, we can look at the best configuration options for damaging vehicles. The first thing to note is that the Missile Pod and the Fusion Blaster are obviously the best performers. This configuration is a bit counter-intuitive, since it combines the shortest range standard weapon with the longest range weapon. On the other hand, it's the combination of the 2 highest strength weapons available. I have seen this configuration called Stormforge (though Sunshower might also be a good one, given the rather poetic nature of Crisis Configuration naming conventions.) The Helios Configuration (Plasma Rifle and Fusion Blaster) is also quite good, though it still keeps that short range. On the other hand, it also is much more effective against Heavy Infantry, even though it isn't quite as good against vehicles. The ubiquitous Fireknife configuration (Plasma Rifle and Missile Pod) is nearly as good and gets a good deal more range as well, showing why it is generally the king of configurations. Finally, the DeathRain, the Twin-linked Missile Pod Crisis suit does a great deal of damage as well and it can do so from very far away, which is a comforting thought.

Tanks! Tanks a lot!

So, now we've got an idea of which configurations and weapon systems do well against vehicles, and we already know which ones do well against Heavy and Light infantry, and we have several First-Tier choices for our notional army list for playing Hide and Seek. Let's put it all together and see what it looks like.

Tau Tactical Mobility Army List

127 Shas'O Crisis Suit with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Vectored Retro-Thrusters. HWMultitracker, Stimulant Injector (Commander known as an O'Ninja. Uses IC status and terrain to hide on the way to a target unit. Shoots unit, engages in HTH and survives two HTH phases, then uses Vectored Retro-Thrusters to jet out of combat just in time to do it all again.)

132 Shas'El Crisis Suit with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Target Array. HWDrone Controller w/2 Shield Drones, HWMultitracker, Bonding Knife. (Good combination of antivehicle and anti-Heavy Infantry with BS5 and 2 Shield Drones for protection. Attaches to Bodyguard team below.)

234 2x Shas'Vre Crisis Suit Bodyguard with Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster and Target Array. HW Drone Controller, 4(total) Shield Drones, HWMultitracker, HWTarget Lock. (BS4 Helios Goodness with Target locks to spread the love around. 6 Shield Drones make the team perfectly capable of moving up to the enemy army and unloading on vehicles or particularly nasty Heavy Infantry. Can also attempt short-range character assassination.)

231 3x Shas'Ui Crisis Suits with Plasma Rifle and Missile Pod. 2 Suits have Multitrackers. Team Leader has Target Array, HWMultitracker and HWDrone Controller with 2 Shield Drones.(Standard JSJ unit, capable of long range and good damage against a broad spectrum of targets. Shield Drones provide additional protection in case of being flanked or needing to move from cover to cover.)

205 3x XV25 Stealth Suits Each with Burst Cannon and Drone Controller. 3xMarker Drones. Shas'Vre has Markerlight and HWTarget Lock. (This team hides at very long range and provides marker support for the various other units of the army. The Shas'Vre and his Drone can target a separate target from the rest of the unit. Note that the team could have as many as 3 more Marker Drones.)

169 3x Shas'Ui Crisis Suits with Twin-linked Missile Pods. 1 has a Drone Controller and 2 Shield Drones, the others have Target Locks. (This team provides some very long range sniping and relies on using the long range of it's weaponry and the Shield Drones to protect it from harm.)

80 5x FireWarrior 'La, 'Ui with Markerlight (One team is mandatory, and if they have a Markerlight, they might do something useful, but mostly they'll try to stay hidden.

70 10x Kroot (Again, a mandatory Troop choice, these will try to stay hidden deep in Woods if possible.)

80 Sniper Drone Team (Great effect against Vehicles and Heavy Infantry)
80 Sniper Drone Team
80 Sniper Drone Team

1488pts total

So now we've got an army that's capable of nailing vehicles and Heavy Infantry, with some Light Infantry capacity as well and plenty of protection. Although the Shas'El and his Bodyguard team don't follow the theme of being able to hit without fear of reprisal, I felt the army needed a little more help against Heavy Vehicles and they should do more damage than they cost. As a note, though, while I was running through various builds in my head, an all-DeathRain list came to mind. Imagine 3 teams of 3 DeathRains, plus 2 Teams of a Shas'El Deathrain and 2 bodyguards each. With that kind of range, there'd be very little most opponents could do. At first I scoffed at the firepower until I did the math. Even though they could really only kill 6-8 Space Marines per turn, they'd likely be able to keep doing it all game. Over 6 turns that's a potential 36-48 Dead Space Marines. Very few armies can handle that kind of damage. Against Guard it would be something like 15-20 casualties/turn, leaving 90-120 bodies. Finally, it would have a heyday against light-medium vehicles, and even do fairly well against all but AV14 ones. Hmm, I might just have to play around with that!

There is more than one way to skin a Catachan, and there's more than one way to build a disengagement-type list. Why don't you have a go at it and see what you come up with. If you come up with something interesting, send it to me. I'd love to see it, and if I get a couple, I'll put them up for others to see as well. Have fun out there, and remember to stay safe (preferably behind a tree!)

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