What's the Big Idea?
The basic idea is to keep the enemy from doing damage to my units, while I can damage them. If you do this on a small scale, it's called point denial. If you can do 500pts of damage to them while they only do 200pts of damage to your army, you've won the game by a small margin. If you can keep them from doing that 200pts, you'll have won convincingly. On a larger scale, it's the same idea, but it can be hard to pull off. For starters, there aren't very many units that can damage the enemy without receiving any damage in return. In addition, the more units that you have that need to hide behind terrain, the harder it is to hide them all. With these issues in mind, I sat down and took a close look at the codex.

What units would be good for this?
Obviously the Crisis Battlesuits are ideal for this. More specifically, Fireknife configuration Crisis Battlesuits are ideal for this. With the best combination of long range and effective punch and multirole capacity, the Fireknife is really the king here. With multiple units using cover, having the longer range helps significantly, since it increases the area that you can do your damage from and thus the area that you can choose terrain from. Stealth Suits have a similar capability, but the limited range of their weaponry definitely keeps them from being ideal here. There is, however a great way of using Stealth Suits that might just work here, and I'll explain it in just a minute. Aside from Crisis and Stealth Suits, there really isn't anything in Codex: Tau Empire that has the capability of moving out, shooting and then moving back behind cover. There are a number of units that have access to Smart Missile Systems, which allow you to strike the enemy while you are safely out of Line of Sight. I actually briefly looked into that concept at the very beginning of owning my Tau army. The Smart Missile Systems are great, but they don't do a lot of damage.

There is another option as well, which takes advantage of the Stealth Field. The Stealth Marker team. I first saw this concept at advancedtautactica.com. You utilize the Stealth Field at long range to keep the unit very safe. You then add a Markerlight and some Marker Drones so that the unit can make other units much more effective while still remaining safe from damage. This also allows you to have at least one unit that doesn't really need terrain. Another unit that makes use of this concept is the Sniper Drone Team. With 36" range weaponry, the team can take advantage of near immunity while still nailing the enemy. Another variation on this is the lateral sniping concept. This is most useful with extreme long-range weaponry such as Railguns. They can hide behind terrain from units in front of them and shoot all the way across the board at enemy units more than 5 feet away. Finally there are a number of units that can start behind cover, then move out and damage the enemy, but not move back. The Tau army has a good number of units that can do this (such as Broadsides with Advanced Stabilization.) Unfortunately, these units become very vulnerable once they have moved out. While they can limit return damage by blocking line of sight to everything except their target and then obliterating that target, it's not nearly as reliable as the other options. I've ordered these options approximately from most to least effective for this style of army.

The List itself
179 Shas'El Commander: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Targeting Array, HWMultitracker,Bonding Knife +Shas'Vre: PR, MP, TA, HWMT.
179 Shas'El Commander: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Targeting Array, HWMultitracker,Bonding Knife +Shas'Vre: PR, MP, TA, HWMT.

211 3xCrisis Suit: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker. 1 is Tm Leader and gets Target Array.
211 3xCrisis Suit: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker. 1 is Tm Leader and gets Target Array.
201 3xCrisis Suit: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker. 1 is Tm Leader and gets Target Array.

78 6xFW. 6xPulse Rifle, 6xEMP Grenades
78 6xFW. 6xPulse Rifle, 6xEMP Grenades

100 Broadside: Tm Ldr w/DC and 1SD
100 Broadside: Tm Ldr w/DC and 1SD
160 2xSniper Drone Team

1497pts total.

Even though I feel that Crisis Suits are the mainstay of this style of list, I chose to use the Sniper Drone team and Broadsides to limit how much I rely on well-placed Terrain. I'm already going to be having 5 units jumping in and out of terrain, making them larger would just make things harder on me. With lateral (ie: cross-board) sniping or non-LOS missiles and a shield drone on each Broadside, they should be pretty safe. With Stealth Field and 36" range, the Sniper Drone teams should be pretty safe as well.

I put Bonding Knives on 2 of the 3 Elite teams, (I couldn't fit the 3rd one in) because they can be knocked below half strength and I want to give them a chance to rally, preserving my points and hopefully doing some more damage to the enemy. I didn't give the Shas'Els Bonding Knives because they are in teams of two and thus cannot go below half strength and still have any alive. In addition, once they lose the Shas'Vre bodyguard, the next turn they will revert to their Independent Character status and not have to take "all on their own" tests. As a final note on the various Crisis teams, usually a Shas'El is great to leave on his own as an independent character, since you can use the Independent Character rules to prevent them from being shot if there is a closer target. With this list, however there won't be anything else to act as a closer target, so I gave them bodyguards to add some extra damage.

I put EMP grenades on the FireWarriors as a "just in case" preventive measure. This way if a vehicle gets close, they make a pretty good threat. If they kill a single 100pt vehicle in even one game out of 5, they'll have paid for the extra investment of points. In addition, if they hang back and hide all game, that's an extra 18pts per team that I am denying the enemy. In my standard Tau list, I often give the FireWarriors a Shas'Ui Team Leader with a Markerlight to provide a little additional assistance to other units. In this particular list, however that would be suicide, as almost everything else will be completely hidden, leaving the poor FireWarriors hanging out to dry in front of the firepower of the entire enemy army. The plan with these guys is to leave them hidden so that they can survive the game and maybe hold objectives behind or near my lines, not put them into action except in an emergency.

What models do I already have for the list?
Well, I've already got 7 Crisis Suits, though they'd be more effective if they had different weaponry. I've also already got a couple of Broadsides. I also have all 12 FireWarriors. I'd need 6 additional Crisis Suits, plus the Missile Pods for the original 7. I'd also need 2 Sniper Drone teams.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

Return to Warpstorm!