Tau/Space Marine, Patient Hunter high five!

[Panxer]

New tactic a buddy of mine used with some space marines that is pretty darn cool... here's how it happens:

1. Get your space marines good and close enough to charge an enemy. Be smart. Don't assault anything you know will string you up with special rules or super high initiative values. Play to your strengths. Space Marines got to be Marines because they were smart, not suicidal.

2. Set your supporting Fire Warrior Squads in a place close enough to your sensor towers, but remember you have a 15" rapid fire range and sensor towers allow 1 unit per tower within 6" to be twin linked, AND they have a TL marker light which can provide additional support for the next turn (so prepare to bring the pain)

3. Charge your marines... Show no mercy. Kill as many heretics and enemies of the golden throne as you can. Laughing all the way.

4. THEN after the combat has been resolved (win or lose) use your now awesome 'And they shall know no fear' USR and combat tactics codex rule to choose to fall back. Worst case scenario, if they catch you, you're just still locked in combat, and if they don't...

5. Your enemy has failed to sweep you. It is out in the open, cannot consolidate, and is facing the dawn of your turn with two full squads of 15" double tap TL S5 AP5 pulse rifles. Mark the target with your towers to get your FW's to TL BS4, and fire away. Most infantry units are T3 or 4, so you'll need 2's or 3+ to wound, but I'm willing to bet there will be MASSIVE amounts of wounds your opponent will have to deal with; so even if you're facing terminators or an equally nasty unit, you can't roll 2's all the time, and that's going to HURT... especially even when only half wound, you've still got to make around 12 saves.

And should your salvo of 48 TL rapid fire shots of pulse rifle deadliness fail to kill a squad of terminators, I'm sure your marine friends can swoop in and do the whole dance again...

Happy trails. "The patient hunter gets the prey":cool:

[Uncle Nutsy]

put an ethereal and shadowsun into the mix, and watch those firewarriors get preferred enemy.

[Panxer]

put an ethereal and shadowsun into the mix, and watch those firewarriors get preferred enemy.

OH...Schnapps!

Which is perfect if your enemy figures out to hit the sensor towers, and kills your ethereal too? Ohhhhh....suicide ethereal on the way!

[Uncle Nutsy]

well you can do that.

or you can place the ethereal right out front as close to the enemy as possible. move/run/charge him into something you know will kill him.

or, put him on top of a really tall building and make him jump off the edge.

[Tynskel]

don't forget to attach space marine characters. And They Shall Know No Fear will prevent your firewarriors from running off the board or being sweeping advanced!

Whatchya do is take Blood angels. (as I said, I don't have the book with me. I am not sure if they are Battle Brothers with the Tau).

Take an HQ (I like Captains when it comes to just adding them to support allies). The nice thing is that there are two Special Characters that are on foot that are quite good for an army like the Tau: Gabriel Seth and Captain Tycho.
Take 3 Sanguinary Priests as 1 Elite choice. Take Jump Pack Assault Squad as the troops. (like the captain, distribute with the Firewarriors, give 'em some good ole wargear).
If you have spare points, take a tweeked out Stormraven (HvS)! Put a Crisis Suit Squad in there (I think you can do that, I don't have The Book with me).

Finally, if you want a Fast Attack, take a Baal! whee!

[Panxer]

don't forget to attach space marine characters. And They Shall Know No Fear will prevent your firewarriors from running off the board or being sweeping advanced!

Whatchya do is take Blood angels. (as I said, I don't have the book with me. I am not sure if they are Battle Brothers with the Tau).

Take an HQ (I like Captains when it comes to just adding them to support allies). The nice thing is that there are two Special Characters that are on foot that are quite good for an army like the Tau: Gabriel Seth and Captain Tycho.
Take 3 Sanguinary Priests as 1 Elite choice. Take Jump Pack Assault Squad as the troops. (like the captain, distribute with the Firewarriors, give 'em some good ole wargear).
If you have spare points, take a tweeked out Stormraven (HvS)! Put a Crisis Suit Squad in there (I think you can do that, I don't have The Book with me).

Finally, if you want a Fast Attack, take a Baal! whee!

Nope...

I had that bubble burst when I looked at the book's allies section. The only 'battle brothers' Tau can claim is vanilla marines and elduhr....

My plan is to field a captain with terminator armor with all the trimmin's and two fat squads to marines with sgts with either power fists or power swords, have em hang close to the broadsides or firewarriors, and play yo yo with whomever's stupid enough to come into charge range...

Later on I'd like to field a squad of marines, a chaplain in terminator armor, and a fat squad of lightning claw terminators to teleport in and punch up whomever gets in my way with TL to hit/TL to wound nastiness

But for now, I'm the happiest I've been with the Tau in quite some time.

[Tynskel]

ah, well, you can get 2 characters in there. Space Marine HQ and a Techmarine Elite. 3, possibly: take a Thunderfire Cannon, and when the cannon get's popped, instant IC. Sicarius is a really good support character. Not only is he rockin' on his own, he buffs out one tactical squad.

I am kinda thinking this would be good to add to Tau:
Sicarius--- his weapon is normally AP3, but his Coup de Grace is Str6 AP2.
Techmarine w/harness, Power Axe, plasma pistol
Tactical Squad w/Rhino n' weapons.
Vanguard Squad--- something like 6-7 guys w/J-Packs, give the sgt a relic blade, melta bombs!
Thunderfire Cannon w/ Drop Pod Locator Beacon.

[Panxer]

Well that didn't work. Space marines are better left in the box and the points better spent on more broadsides.

[Tynskel]

Personally, I think assault squads would be the best addition to Tau. Maybe a libby, but I think a captain or chaplain would be better.

Take a tactical squad for claiming, and then jump pack assault marines/vanguard.


but what you should really get is the Remora!
Shrouded Flyer! With Seekers!

[Panxer]

I'm with you there. I took a captain in terminator armor, stormbolter, hellfire rounds, and a powersword who hung out with my broadsides until a necron death ray took them out and the captain failed morale and fell off of the board. ...Great

I also took 2 squads of tactical marines with sgt's with a power fist and the other with a power sword. One unit got stuck in a building and shot down by warriors and the other got gunned down before they could even cross the field.

If I take allies again, I'm probably going to take the same captain, a full sqaud of marines and leave it at that. at 1850 (all tau) I can field 9 broadsides.

assault marines would be good, although, I'd probably go with terminators with lightning claws or storm shields and thunder hammers.

In all honesty? Something with sky fire would be nice.

[Tynskel]

Remora would work. Same with a Barracuda. All Flyers have skyfire, unless otherwise stated. The cool thing about the remora is that you can have your seekers on the ground, the remora can just paint things all day.

Remoras are also inexpensive both in points and in $$$.

[Kirigakure]

It was a fun game Panxer, just dealing with 60 Warriors can be rough (and I plan on bumping that to 80-100). The Death Ray is just nasty. Whatever gives you Skyfire would certainly help, but your tactic of using Sensor Suite Towers to give FW's a twin-linked ability on firing Snap Shots on the Scythe was pretty good. It only has 3 Hull Points, and you easily took one off. One more round of that and the Scythe would've been toast. :D

[Tynskel]

Barracudas would end a Doom Scythe practically instantly.
3 Ion Cannon Shots, 2 Twin-Linked missile pod shots, and 6 bursta cannon shots. All hitting at BS4. They are expensive, points wise, put to put it simply, you will have 'air superiority' with the Barracuda Air Superiority Fighter.

That's 5 Str 7, and 6 str 5. Not to mention, the Barracuda can deep strike, giving you an excellent opportunity to have all 4 weapons in range on the first go.

Add some seekers and a pair of Remoras, and everyone you fight will cry for Skyfire. Especially Tyranids! The Barracuda will make mince meat of Harpies, and with the Ion Cannon will put serious damage on a Flying Tyrant. (Although, at the same time, Tyranid Flying Monsterous Creatures have a good chance at taking out Tau flyers, because they can whack 'em, it is vs imperial flyers that Tyranids have a tough time).

[Panxer]

It was a fun game Panxer, just dealing with 60 Warriors can be rough (and I plan on bumping that to 80-100). The Death Ray is just nasty. Whatever gives you Skyfire would certainly help, but your tactic of using Sensor Suite Towers to give FW's a twin-linked ability on firing Snap Shots on the Scythe was pretty good. It only has 3 Hull Points, and you easily took one off. One more round of that and the Scythe would've been toast. :D

Yeah it was a pretty bad *** game. It's just demoralizing when you know you can't fight anymore to any effect.

Lessons learned though:
1: Deepstriking XV8 suicide montat vehicle killers are essential.
2: Broadsides need shield generators. It's more expensive (20pts/model) but worth it if it gives me an opportunity to stop that death ray...woof that thing is lethal
3: More broadsides. More broadsides. More Broadsides
4: Marines aren't really necessary for what you can get in exchange for the points. If I did marines again, I'd probably just do a minimum contingent of a Captain and a single squad to bubble wrap important units
5: When I cease to be poor, I will get the kit for a remora. They have long barreled burst cannons, which in the FW update are 36" S6 AP4 Assault 6 TL. Add their ability to deepstrike and their stealth-field generator, and you have a pretty neat flyer.
6: Sensor Towers are ESSENTIAL to make fire warriors more effective.

Now, given this... Yeah I learned TONS.... Now all I need to know a rules based question which the FAQ, Rulebook, and the Codex don't address. Markerlights in relation to Snap fire.

The rule book simply states that snap fire shots are always resolved at BS 1, while Codex states that markerlight hits can be used to up a unit's BS up to a total of BS5, and finally the FAQ only states that markerlight snap shots cannot be used to fire seeker missiles...

We decided that yes, marker hits can be resolved against snap fire shots because it's codex specific, it's not listed as a negative in the rule book, the FAQ doesn't address it, and other codexes have similar buffs to BS in other armies. Ex: Space Marines Devastators have a signum which can up the BS +1 of one of the firing models in the unit in the firing phase.

[Tynskel]

welll er crap, interwebz fails.

I am lazy and not gunna write my whole thing again.

Long story short:

Marker Lights CAN fire 'Snap Fire' as they are a Heavy Weapon that uses BS to hit and no nonsense of beams/blasts/templates/auto-hits.

However, the modifiers you choose may NOT be treated equally.
+1 BS is a modifier, not a set bonus, so if the unit using the Marker token chooses to spend the bonus as +1 BS and, for example, is subject to 'Snap Fire' then = BS of unit, +1 for marker, 'Snap Fire' BS1 = BS1.
Seeker Missiles are an exception. They always fire at BS5 regardless of any modifiers.

[plawolf]

I am not all that sweet on termie armored captains TBH, I would just give him artificer armor for a far cheaper 2+ armor save. The captain has an Iron Halo as standard, so it's not like the 5++ termie armor has over artificer is worth anything to you.

What Tau lack is good CC counter charge units, but just taking a couple squad of marines isn't really going to cut it as everyone is going to be packing to kill MEQ, so they should be able to take them easily.

If you have the points, you might consider taking a Captain on a bike with a storm shield and power weapon/fist/relic blade/whatever, a command squad with a couple of storm shields, plasma/melta guns and a bike squad.

With marines as allies, you were never realistically going to have enough points for a big scary deathstar unit without stripping your main force down too much.

Bikes have close to the mobility of assault marines, but will be more durable, especially the command squad with their storm shields. You can even give your captain artificer armor as well to allow you to use his 2+ to tank some shots for the squad. With the bike making him T5, you will also not have to worry about things like missiles IDing him.

If all you want is a unit that is tough to kill to bait an enemy unit and trap him in the open after you choose to fall back, bikes would certainly be hard to beat, and you can take plasma/melta guns instead of power weapons as you are not intending to try to outfight them in CC anyways, so you might as well making them a solid shooting unit with decent CC abilities as you would likely be spending the majority of your time out of CC.

As for something with skyfire, maybe also take a stormtalon as a FA choice for your marine allies.

[Panxer]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of the scenario where:

1. Oh..Schnapps! There is a flyer over head with some nasty ordinance and I need to take it out!
2. Broadsides to the rescue!
3. Marker Tetras never have worry about snap fire (but in this case I guess they would with the 'hard to hit' flyer rule). We played that wrong I guess.
4. So assuming that 2 hits paint the target
5. The broadsides have been stationary, but are shooting at a flyer (hard to hit rule *snap fire)
6. Snap Fire Rule states, "If a model is forced to make snap shots rather than shoot normally, then its ballistic skill is counted as being 1 for the purposes of those shots."
7. So, yes, the broadside's BS is now 1. But wait!
8. Two marker hits would increase the BS to 3, hitting TL on 4+

This seems reasonable to me because the Tetra has already made the prerequisite to hit shots of 6+ and hit twice which the marker entry reads that the effects of the hits raise the squad's BS +1 to a maximum of 5.

So why not? I haven't read anything official that says 'No. Absolutely not'.

If I'm wrong, or there is such an official GW writing, then point to it and I'll go along.

[Tynskel]

I just told you.

The book states

1) multiply, 2) (+/-), 3) Set Bonus. In that order.

broadside BS3 + 2 Marker lights bonus, snap fire = BS1.

Powerfist Sgt has furious charge, charges, but is zapped by a power the makes him str 1.
4x2=8; +1= 9 ; set bonus =1. Str1 in CC.

[Tynskel]

A model has furious charge and a relic blade.

Str 4 +1. Set bonus 6 = 6

[Panxer]

I just told you.

The book states

1) multiply, 2) (+/-), 3) Set Bonus. In that order.

broadside BS3 + 2 Marker lights bonus, snap fire = BS1.

Powerfist Sgt has furious charge, charges, but is zapped by a power the makes him str 1.
4x2=8; +1= 9 ; set bonus =1. Str1 in CC.

What page is that in the book? I'm not saying that you're wrong, I just want to read it for myself

[Tynskel]

I don't have book in front of me, at the moment, but it is right in the beginning, where the book is describing characteristics and bonuses, etc.

[Kirigakure]

nevermind, snap fire is last, so marker lights would be wasted.

however if he did manage to get a 6 and land a marker hit on the scythe, he could fire a seeker missile at the scythe at full bs! better strategy right there!