Is there a particular way we have to set up the aegis defense line? I'm hearing that you can put it out in a straight line w/ all the ends connecting and or a box. Anyone know for sure. Thanks.

As long as you fill the requirements for long pieces and short pieces mentioned in the rule book, it should be fine. I've seen it set up quite a few different ways before, so really however you want.

I believe the only real requirement is that every piece must be touching another piece from the same defense line. So you can set it up in a long line, make a box shape, or some other imaginative shape as long as you follow that rule.

Thanks guys breaking it out in a 2k list saturday night in a 2 on 2 match. Should help out immensely.

well, according to the rulebook, it says "composition: up to 4 long and 4 short aegis defence line sections, each section of aegis deffence line must be placed in base contact with at least one other section."

so tecnically you make up to 4 smaller fortifications from one pack. if i've understood it correctly.

I read it the same way. This leads to the interesting possibility of creating fortified "islands" your units can leap-frog across the table with and remain in cover. It also allows you to patch holes in the cover in your DZ. Mind you, only one of those segments has the Quad-gun, but keep that one centrally located and you should be golden.

that would have been quite cool, but on page 120 it says that you deploy the fortifications inside your own deployment zone, but i know that atleast I will try to play all my friendly games to get as good as possible narrative terrain. and then it maybe isnt as big of an deal.

Oh, I know, but there's been more than a few games where my Crisis Teams have been over here, when I need them to be over there, and there's a great big patch of abso-bloody-lutely no cover between the two and a Devastator/Long Fang/Obliterator/Scourge/etc. unit lurking on the far end of what's suddenly become their own personal shooting gallery. My point is, four pairs of Aegis lines could help mitigate situations like that.

It could also help create bottlenecks in the battlefield. I dunno about you, but I do NOT want to walk into a dug-in Stealth Team backed up by a Markerlight-guided Quad-gun. I don't care how good your armor is, that volume of fire is going to take a toll.

In larger games, we can create quite a bunker with Aegis Lines and Stealth units. Four or six pieces of the defense line, both Quad-guns, two units of Stealth Suits with Gun Drone and Marker Drone accompaniment, each with an attached Shas'el (arm them with TL-BC, a Flamer, and a HW MT for Overwatch shenanigans and a HW BSF and have them operating the Quad-guns). Since Stealth and Shrouded are now conferred, you have a stupid amount of firepower with Skyfire and Interceptor capability pouring out of a 2+ cover save bunker that's capable of dominating the entire board if it's well-placed.

Yeah, I know; the Tau do not hold ground. But when the ground you're standing on makes your killing that much more efficient, I think you can afford to stand there for a while. Plus, it's not like we're actually sacrificing any mobility to do this. If the position is about to get overrun anyway, we can scuttle the guns and then the entire defensive force just vanishes into the night.



EDIT: Huh... Now, that begs an interesting question: If a Battlesuit with a Multitracker fires the Quad-gun, can he fire one of his on-board weapons in addition? The MT simply states that the user can fire two weapons in the same shooting phase, and the gun emplacements rule says "all relevant special rules from the firing model and the weapon are used".

Aegis worked well, brought it with my 2k point list. Teamed up w/ a GK player and went up against a Chaos SM/Necron force. 6 objective with the points counters underneath. Won 9-8. Aegis was nice for kroot, crisis teams, and hammerhead. Still took disruption pods on the hammerhead and tetras and it helped out a little. I brought my 2k list from 5th w/ bsf's on everything but kroot and never got night fight. Finished on end of 6th. Problem was that my Tau needed more troops. I brought 2 12 man teams of fw's and 2 15 man kroot squads and it wasn't enough. Firewarriors survived kroot did not. I need to re-vamp the list. Broadsides were useless, as no tanks and only one scythe was taken which fortunately was dropped 2nd turn, after that xv88's just stood there. HQ El' w/ stim. inj and iridium armor w/ shield drones worked well. 2+, fnp, sd's in front taking most wounds. That was nice.

I believe you would be allowed to fire both weapons (quad gun + one other weapon) if you had the multi-tracker. This would be an interesting option for a Deathrain+ commander with a hard-wired multi-tracker getting a whopping 6 BS5 Twin-Linked autocannon shots (only two of which are BS1 against fliers) per turn.

Actually - if this is the case, Broadsides with Multi-Trackers

I'd rather the broadsides shoot at some ground vehicles instead - and the gun emplacement only gets to shoot at a different target if its firing automatically IIRC

That's why Shas'els. If there's only one target to deal with, he stays with the unit and benefits from the improved save. If the Quad-gun needs to deal with a different target from the Stealth Team, the 'el slides over a couple of inches in the movement phase, detaches himself from the unit, and fires away at whatever he needs to. He loses the 2+ cover in the second instance, however.

That whole Shas'el idea seems kind of point heavy, don't you think? Especially if you're paring with Broadsides your easily talking 400+ points once you factor in the Aegis. The idea of building 1/5 of your army taking down a single flyer doesn't seem worth it

Not exactly. You only have to do this in games where there are fliers to begin with. In a game where you don't feel threatened by the enemy fliers, or there simply aren't any enemy fliers, you can put the Shas'el somewhere completely different. You're only really dedicating the 100 points for the Aegis Defense Line with Quad Gun to deal with them, and even then you're still getting several benefits from the defense line and gun emplacement even in other games so its hardly a waste of points in almost any scenario, just requires a different implementation of the same units.

Plus, the Shas'el loadout I specifically mentioned for your Aegis Bunker is only 74 points. That's hardly going to break the bank; at 2000 and up, you can bring two of those and still bring two "real" HQ choices with more flexible loadouts.

Six bonded Stealth Suits with a Leader toting a pair of Marker Drones, the Aegis Line with Quad-gun, and the assault-deterrent Shas'el grand-totals to 424 points, and it's hardly the case that you're absolutely locked into that specific tactic considering the bulk of your points is in a highly efficient, fairly flexible unit that you were probably going to take anyway. The whole thing has a 2+ cover save when it's bunkered down and will routinely be sending a high volume BS 5, S 5+ shots down range.

(Assuming 1 NetML hit per turn, the unit kills 3 marines per volley, plus another from the 'el's TL-BC, plus two more from the Quad-gun for five marines dead and a panic test. The Quad-gun is being fired by a character, which means Precision Shots so there's a decent chance the power weapon was one of those casualties. Overwatch then kills about 3 more, which stands a good chance of causing their charge to fail. Even if it doesn't, the last two marines deal maybe 1 wound in return and are then clubbed to death by a bunch of angry, invisible goat-fish-men. This all assumes the bunker is unsupported by friendly units--Add in a Railhead submunition, a Fireknife salvo or pulse fire from a nearby Fire Warrior team and our theoretical marine squad ceases to exist long before they ever reach melee. So throw one at me if you want, hash head. I got all five senses and I slept last night and that puts me six up on the lot of ya.)

As a hardened anchor point for the rest of our forces to operate around, I can't think of many better options.

The aegis will, in the case of tau especially, be a lifeline for any sort of stationary anchor hold. The flexibility that the quad gun provides for the points cost is almost always a plus, and the 4+ cover is worth its theoretical weight in gold. The Shas'el might be a bit overkill, since bs5 is generally overkill for a twinlinked weapon in all but the most pressing of issues. An entrenched deathrain team with the squad leader on the guns (and shifting the hwmt off the flamer use) puts down ridiculous fire power. If you're taking allies however, its usually better to put them on it as it allows us to distribute our fire power more evenly among threats by giving up the shooting of a relatively weak shooting element (the 4 shots from the gun can pen most vehicles easily enough, no need to add another 2 shots to it until after checking for a wreck). A space marine devastator squad for example, only needs the 4 special weapons, the sergeant, and one extra man to cover the gun, or a scout squad screen with the sergeant manning the gun will serve just as well (given that camo cloaks boost the bonus given by the aegis defense line, space marine scouts should be among the first of our ally choices to consider... sniper shots or shotgun salvo's can put a dent in any advancing force, and we can get tellion in there to make them just as tough as terminators at range for about half the cost. The opponent isn't going to shoot them out of the way anytime soon short of ignoring cover entirely, and then there's the 4+ armor, which most cover ignoring weapons don't bypass entirely.

Simply put, shooting should be the only thing the Tau need worry about with such a force backing you up.

Killing your theoretical marine squad is all well and good Starylight, but it assumes your opponent isn't using anything fancy. Drop Pods, Assault Marines, Deep Strikers and a myriad other elements come into play. Killing one assault squad is great, but when there are two more there you've either gotta surrender your weapon and ADL to him or eat the charge of a dedicated assault unit. You can shoot the quad gun yourself to prevent it from being used against you if you wanted, but those are then guns not being shot at your opponent.

I just had an idea for making the Aegis more fluffy for Tau. Since the Tau sometimes test new weapons designs out in the field, perhaps we could convert a heavy missile platform (since missile pods and auto-cannons are fundamentally the same) and dub it a "Fortified Weapons-Testing Area" for an anti-flyer ship weapon

Heh - I'll do you one better. I've spent my down time today designing the stands for the Tau Force Field Line Generators. All I'd have to develop is a base for the Ion Cannon to site on and boom (almost literally) - there's your quad gun counts-as