Hey all, this is my first post so apologies for anything I get wrong.

Looking through the posts since 6th release, there has been a lot more talk of using Ethereals. I have never used one myself in a game but have always liked their fluff, the option to have BS4 fire warriors intrigues me intensely too .

The purpose of this post is to see how the brilliant minds of ATT would incorporate the ruling caste of tau, things to think about would include:

1. What equipment to take.
2. Honour guard or not.
3. Tactics.

With 6th making our FW far better I think the Ethereals ability to help with morale checks will be invaluable, plus the option of having better (fearless?) FW is always nice.

Terry.

I know a lot of people have been considering the ethereal... Fire warriors are back in a big way thanks to the new rules for rapid fire, and prefered enemy works for guns now... but I still worry the 'Price of Failure' is too high to risk. All it takes is a stray plasma shot to find its way between the rows of fire warriors... and bam. Half your army is running. Nothing has really changed in this regard in that regard. Maybe others will disagree, and I've seen some crazy schemes to make it work... but at the end of the day... I think the newly stealthed up shadowsun with a 36 inch bubble of Ld10 may be the better way to keep moral up.

Now that said... were I to run an ethereal... I'd likely equip him with a pair of shield drones, and a black sun filter. Shield drones attached to a character become a character themselves, which is great for blocking a space marine powerfist punching your ethereal in the face. Black sun filter is obviously to gran nightfight to whatever squad you join him to.

Not sure if I'd honour guard or not... BS4 is pretty nice, especially if you've got a fortification with a quad gun to be fired.

Why not include both Shadowsun and an Ethereal? All it would take then to keep your squads rooted if you lose the Etheral then would be good placement of the Command-Link Drone. Not to mention with the doubling of the FOC at 2,000 points you could flood the board with up to 144 Fire Warriors.

Now Shadow sun is not an IC (with drones) butt the Aun is. Shadow sun and her drones cannot join other units but nothing states ICs cannot join her. All kinds of shenanigans arise from this possibility.

Shadowsun and suicide ethereal is a tactic worth experimenting with I think. Shadowsun will be very resilient with stealth, and will help reduce the damage of the price of failure. Run an ethereal up for the greater good and use the command-link drone to take the morale tests on a 10. Also keep in mind that Shadowsun will become an IC if all her drones are killed, and when she joins a unit the unit will gain stealth and shrouded (ka-ching!)

Also worth consideration is a stealth-bait-ethereal: Bring the ethereal and attach him to a big unit of stealth suits. Make sure your opponent is familiar with the "price of failure" rule, so that he will target the ethereal. Then kick back and roll so many 2+ saves it will make his head spin. Still risky; if you lose that ethereal things could go rather badly.

I think that other configurations of the ethereal are non-competitive; they are extremely vulnerable, and you still have to bring a fire caste commander anyway, so you don't save points by taking him.

Actually, past 2000pts you could have 3 Ethereals and so, be able to field 180 Fire Warriors (3 Honour Guard)



This is true, I was thinking of him as more of an upgrade though, an option to possibly give our little warriors a bit of fighting spirit. Personally I will be taking a lot more FW and an Ethereal now sounds like an excellent way to improve them all. (plus an excuse to model a combat Aun )

If nothing else, he would make a great lure for Kauyon

You can only field 2 ethereals. You still have to obey the 1+ requirement for a commander in the second force org chart.

I would argue that you wouldn't have to take a second commander, as the second FoC is simply increasing the maximal and minimal sizes of different things in your army, not a seperate army in and of itself. Therefore, I believe, you wouldn't need a second, as your army (the collective pair of FoC) has 1 commander, which would satisfy the 1+. Similarly, if you had an irrational hatred of Firewarriors, you could take 1 unit of them and three of kroot at 2000pts, to satisfy the requirement, meaning that you could have 11 units of them! That's up to 385 kroot, if my math is correct.

Sorry man, the second FOC is basically considered a whole sepperate army. You have to follow the requirements for it, including 1 HQ and 2 troops, along with any codex specific requirements (this does allow a Farsight army to have kroot though).

Carrelio, specifically, it is not "basically considered a whole seperate army", but rather grants YOUR army a second FOC in addition to your first. The contention is that some believe this "adds" to your current. This is incorrect.

The second FOC is treated literally as a second FOC. Standard game rules require that an FOC has a required 1 HQ and 2 Troops. The addition of the second FOC therefore requires that you take a minimum of 2 HQ units and 4 troops if you utilize the second FOC in any capacity.

Hang on... now I'm confused... was what I was saying wrong because of the casual nature of how I said it... or did I actually get the ruling wrong?
To take a second FOC we do need to follow the rules as though we had a complete other force including at least one HQ of which must be our +1 crisis commander, and 2 troops of which one is the +1 fire warriors?

It's probably better to not do that. Plainly, we see how much trouble it causes in GW's writing. Precision and specificity matter in rules discussion.

For the record, your conclusion was correct. At 2000 points and up, there's still only one "army", but it might be composed of several detachments, each with its own force organization chart. Each of those FOCs must have its prerequisites met, whether imposed by the FOC itself or by the codex. For us, that means that each FOC must include at least 1 HQ choice and 2 Troops choices, AND which must include at least one Crisis Commander and at least one Fire Warrior Team.

Again, I would argue that that is incorrect. It increases the maximal capacity, but it is not a separate detachment, requiring it's own crisis leader and fire warrior team, but rather a larger battlegroup of tau forces. The tau commander is 1+ for an ARMY, not a demi hunter cadre.

I will be more precise in my discussion in future, and thanks for clarifying, I was worried I'd gone astray on the rule somehow.

I don't have any books to hand so correct me if I'm wrong

I am inclined to believe that the extra FOC is in addition to your existing army and not to be treated as an extra "army". RAI Farsight would never be able to have kroot because by that logic he could be fielded with Shadowsun or any Ethereals.

Well, the line from the rulebook is "[I]f you're playing a game of 2,000 points or more, you can take an additional primary detachment"; it doesn't say "double the amount of choices in each category", "change the Force Organisation chart to...", or anything similar. This would seem to imply that the two detachments are independent of each other. This is supported by the phrasing later on:

• ...either of the primary detachments...
• ...an extra primary detachment...
• All primary detachments...

However, the issue is neatly confused by the second sentence in the paragraph, which goes ahead and lists the merged totals for how many of each type of unit you can have.

Personally, I lean towards the "each detachment is independent" view - this is what the majority of the wording implies. I think the (potentially confusing) second sentence is an example that is supposed to be helping you, in case you can't work out what 2 + 2 is, but is actually confusing the issue.

Codex: Tau Empire says that the army list is "used in conjunction with the Force Organisation chart", which therefore implies that any restrictions are per Force Org - this would include not only the 1+ Commander and Firewarriors, but also the limit of 1 on Special Issue items...

Well if you are interested in tactics for your Ethereals, I wrote up an idea that I had and other people have contributed to this as well.
Take a look [urlhttp://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18794]here[/url].
It is a risky tactic, but if used correctly can largely benifit your Tau army.