This is not really an article, but rather the results of an experiment I've been running with Farsight's bodyguard that is working out rather beautifully. Take it as you will, but I rather like what has come of it.

In looking at the weapons systems of the Tau Empire, I realized that there is a lot of overlap. What I mean is, a given target usually has 2-4 different XV8 weapons that have it as one of their specialties. My experiments spring from targeting Heavy Infantry and all vehicles, due to lacking my regular amount of Railguns (limited to 4 due to Farsight Enclave, 3 Broadsides and a Hammerhead). These targets have three major weapons that can make a hash of them, and range isn't really an issue due to the way i operate Farsight's squad (and the fact that I regularly assault afterward, but that's a different tactica).

The three weapons I selected were the Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, and Fusion Blaster. The setup I've nicknamed "woven weapons" is that each member of the team takes two of the weapons and a Multitracker (in the case of bodyguards, TAs as well). Thus, my setup for this group was PR/MP, PR/FB, and MP/FB (all three of which, incidentally, are named and common configurations). By doing so, I get a few major pros and cons over a standard team:

Pros:
1) Much better flexibility in target selection
2) Retaining the high degree of specialization that makes Crisis teams good
3) The team is now differentiated multi-wound models, meaning they take more punishment to bring down than is apparent at first glance

Cons:
1) The team tends to be a bit expensive, depending on specialization and splash.
2) It becomes much more finicky and demanding of proper movement and setup
3) Minor, but their shooting phases take much more time unless you have 3 distinct types of dice on you

Once you have your basic setup, you can begin to invest in making the team more than it was. First step would be to give the team leader a BK and a couple of drones (in HQ slots, it's best to scatter the drones around), making an already-tough team much tougher to kill. A Stim pack in the group also has effects magnified all out of proportion to its cost. Additionally, a hard-wired Target Lock (or locks) can make sure that very little of your firepower is ever wasted. In my example of the Farsight squad, two of his three bodyguards have Target Locks, allowing any member of the team to split fire if his shots can't help (and allowing the team to charge any of the shot-at targets if desired). If they're shooting at AV13+, for example, Farsight and the Fireknife fire elsewhere if they can.

I have two other theorized teams that I haven't myself tested yet, but work on the same principle as above.

1) Specialized target is medium and heavy infantry, splashes to light infantry. BC, MP, PR
2) Specialist in light infantry and anti-cover, splashes to medium and heavy infantry. BC, Flamer, CIB/AFP (HQ only))

There are other such combinations out there, I'm sure, but this is only a ramble and not an Academy article. Any thoughts on the process, theory, or application?

I don't really see the merits of this idea, to be honest. It might work for you, but in my army I like having homogeneous teams. It means I can lay down consistent firepower at the same stand-off range, and not have to worry about either being out of range for some weapons (or on the flipside, whether to risk moving closer to use them).

The issue with mixing builds in a team is that you render their firepower and their role confused. As a Helios team, they're great for Deepstriking/moving aggressively up the board and closing with the enemy into the 18" range bracket (where they can JSJ the enemy). As a Firestorm team, you find your effective range at 24", and Deathrains have to get no closer than 42" to be effective. If you start adding weapons with differing ranges on different suits, you make the unit unwieldy and overpriced for the benefit they give your army.

I do specialise my HQ suits a tad (for example, running a Centurion Shas'O with Fireknife bodyguards, or my AFP+PR+MP triple-threat Shas'El), but their guns are still in the ballpark of the rest of the unit, and fit the role I want them to.

A strategy which seems to work well in other armies is to divide your forces into supportive battlegroups (IG and SM in particular do this a lot). So, deploying a Crisis team, a mechanised FW squad, a fusion Piranha and a Kroot kindred all in close support of one another gives you a flexible and deadly chunk to maneuver around the battlefield. You 'weave weapons', but not through mixing up what your Crisis do so well (which is anti-transport and anti-MC/heavy infantry).

huh, I'd never thought of doing something like that. I'll have to give it a shot - the idea especially appeals to me because I'm a green player that doesn't really know what he wants his Crisis Suits to do. Two questions:
- Could you give me a total point value? I could add up the numbers myself, but having it somewhere in this thread would help budding Tau commanders.
- You stated this system had worked well for you; could you give some specific examples?

I think this approach is simply a more extreme example of having to choose specialized crisis teams versus more versatile ones. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly possible to have specialized teams and take advantage of would allocation rules. An example of this would be TLMP/F, TLF/MP, TLMP/TA.

This is exactly what I do with my XV8 teams & it works amazingly. Usually I run:
'El - Deathrain w/ Positional Relay, HW Drone Controller, 2x Shield Drones, HW Target lock, HW Blacksun Filter, & bonding knife
XV8 Team Leader - Deathrain w/ Fusion Blaster, HW Multi-tracker, HW Drone controller, 2x Shield Drones, HW Target Lock, HW Blacksun Filter, & bonding knife
XV8 - Firestorm
XV8 - Firestorm

At first glance the squad appears to be a hodgepodge of roles, light vehicle, heavy vehicle, & infantry. This is true until you factor in the Target Locks.
Typically what happens is the commander & squad moves as one unit. Over 18" the unit typically will fire as a cohesive unit to destroy light armor with 8 Missile Pod shots.
From 6-18" the Team leader & firestorms will deal with infantry units and AV10 Vehicles while the commander still snipes far light vehicles.
At close ranges, the Team leader with the fusion blaster hops in and melts heavy armor/walkers, while the commander & Firestorms deal with what other threats are pressing.

So far in this config, I have yet to lose the entire team to enemy shooting, have only lost it once to assault, and the easiest way to lose the squad is for it to run off the table. The 4 shield drones make this squad a bear to kill.
You also might ask why I have 2 bonding knifes? This is because I cannot afford to have the squad run off the table, & I need every chance I get to keep this many points on the table.

Basically, I think Psybomb's approach is to have a team that has a mix of flexibility, specialization and resilience (via the wound allocation rules). The combination looks very good I paper, however, from personal experience, the average BS of Crisis suits mean that whatever weapon being fired tends to be ineffective unless fired in threes (as in the case of homogenous teams).

However, this setup makes a very good candidate for Markerlight support. In my config, 8 missile pod shots, 1 fusion blaster, and 6 burst cannon shots hitting on 2's can really hurt

Sure. Here is what I run as my primary HQ (at 1,500pts I swap out the PR on the Shas'vre for BC, mainly to save points)

Shas'O w/PR+CIB+Pos Relay, hw MT, BK
2 x Shas'vre w/PR+MP+TA, hw MT
(299 points)

As my secondary HQ (again, smaller games I lose the PR for BC, and on the Shas'El I drop the PR to twin-link his MP)

Shas'El w/PR+MP+AFP, hw MT, BK
2 x Shas'vre w/PR+MP+TA, hw MT
(281 points)



Combined arms? Sure;

- My two HQ teams typically take out transports, allowing the Fire Warriors to pick off the enemy infantry with massed S5. The HQ teams also help in liquidating enemy infantry once the transports are dead.
- Fire Warriors are only deployed when enemy infantry are in the field (Crisis do well but their ROF is lacking against large enemy units, or even 10-man squads). Otherwise, they stay in their Devilfish (and in smaller games where I don't have 'Fish, they stay bunkered in terrain).
- Kroot function as an Outflanking wild-card, forcing the enemy to re-focus attention on his backline. They don't usually come on during the initial push, but when they do I'm never disappointed. They seem to specialise in anti-armour (can't tell you the number of times they blow up enemy tanks by rapid-firing rear armour). A favourite of mine is to immobilise a vehicle with a railgun hit, then attack it with Kroot (who auto-hit when they charge), then take cover in the wreckage and pot-shot the enemy from there. It's amazing what they do for 70pts.
- Piranha usually lurks until needed, then speeds off to kamikaze an enemy heavy tank. Typically, it kills a Raider, then dies horribly to counter-attack. However, costs no more than a Kroot squad, and the Gun Drones are great for annoyance.

I don't really use railguns for 'combined arms' tactics, as they virtually never need to move (except to deny hull down/out of LOS infantry when submunitioning), and their role is long-range interdiction. They're more like the reliable volley every turn keeping up the kill-rate, while my 'combined arms' sorties move off.



Yeah, but I think you can get wound allocation madness happening by simply giving one dude a Target Lock, and sticking a flamer/TA as the third hardpoint on the Team Leader (who is hard-wiring his multi-tracker). No need to mix up weapons too much (which does distort the costs a bit), just differentiate the Team Leader and one other guy, and you're done.



Yeah, or you could just seperate out which suits do what role. Not only does that mean you can move the fusion dude to where he's needed (without dragging the rest of his unit with him), you also dilute enemy fire. Instead of making things easy (by taking one big unit), make things annoying. Even 2 units is going to help both survive, and 3 seperate squads just makes other players waste yet more anti-tank.
I just think you're spending a lot of points on a single target, when you could cut out the Target Locks+junk and just specialise 2 teams (or 3).



Exactly. I've almost completely eliminated Elite Crisis from my army, only in larger games do I take a single full Deathrain team (and I keep them cheap and expendable, just twin-MP+flamer on 3 guys). With a cheap dakka unit of Deathrains, their BS3 is less a problem (I either re-roll or don't care, depending on the weapon).
When you shift to Shas'vre bodyguards and HQ suits, you really notice the difference. BS4 without markerlights (due to TA), and still firing two weapons a turn (due to hard-wired MT), on all unit members (and in the case of my Shas'O, dispenses with TA for a Pos Relay). Sure, they still miss sometimes (argh!), but it's less frustrating and markerlight intensive to alleviate that problem.

I tried this before by fielding a similar concept on weapons. Missile pod and Plasma rifle based suits with the commander with a fusion for tank popping. It did not work out too well for me which lead to me doing a separation of the two. The end result my 2k point list consists of 2 suits of Fusions with Targeting Array, who are supported with a Pathfinder Team to allow Re-roll of scatter dice for deep strike. This is supported Additionally with a XV-89 Ninja'o Equipped with Fusion and shield. My 3rd elite choice ends up being a Plasma Missile Pod team with 2 Gun drones attached mainly for the purpose of taking wounds. This way I can afford to deep strike in the "Kazi" suits and not feel bad to lose them, on the other hand. properly equipped you could engage many targets at once, the problem is getting the scatter dice to hit where you need it every time. And 299 points in my mind is way to high to sacrifice for a mutli role unit when I can field a full squad rigged up plasma and missile happy, and a second single man unit with fusion for much less.

Though Since my way of war is not yours, I am curious to see this 1500pt army list for reference.

Taipan: I still run Combined Arms style a lot, you pretty much can't avoid it if you're playing Tau decently. You are GOING to have support units nearby to cover everyone's back except in the case of deep infiltration or Piranha dashes. Either that or you're going to have dead units. Granted, "Support Range" for me is usually fairly far, but still.
In addition, I've been finding that "Diluting enemy fire" is not that great of a tactic in many cases, since it usually lets them pick what they want to die. one differentiated team seems to be harder to take down than 3 solos, since it is very, very difficult to saturate their defenses. I do happen to agree, the team is WAY more effective if it's HQ and bodyguard as well.

Elliot: Sure thing. The Farsight squad I was talking about is 440 points, but keep in mind that Farsight is 170 of that and it has a Stim Pack. Assuming you build the group around a standard HQ, the group comes to 283 points, including drones and TLs. As for examples of usefulness, I am currently using it, as I said, in a set-list league as Farsight's bodyguard, and I find it to be one of the most killy units I've ever taken. I usually Deep Strike it nearby a tank (Via PosRel+marker Beacon), and once it comes down I find that said tank is usually vapor.
The trick here is that it poses a major threat to anything else as well, and is therefore a VERY resilient high-priority target. Despite this, it will usually get all of its shots off the next turn and at least one or two of the suits in the turn after that. It's an anecdote, but I've had the group (with Farsight) net me 3 KPs in a single turn, having one more to its credit the turn before and taken its licks from what units could reach it.

Absinteminded: I know about those teams (and use them frequently, truth be told), and those teams really are better at what their specific purpose is (usually). However, the team I propose is quite nearly as good at its main purpose, and immeasurably better at taking on slightly different roles.

lostinnm: Yes, markerlight support is quite important here, but not as critical as you might think. In Farsight's team (and the HQ one I calculated above), they're all BS4. They can use one hit for BS, the rest go to cover-stripping. I won't do this in an Elites slot unless I know for fact that I can have copious Markerlight support.

Huru MorDae: The list is 1850, not 1500. Hate to say it, but those 350 points make a WORLD of difference to the way this plays out.

*sorry this took so long to respond to, but I haven't been around much lately*

I take different drones with mme for differentiation in the unit:
1 Fireknife, 2xGun Drone
1 Fireknife, Gun Drone, Shield Drone
1 Fireknife, 2xShield drone.
However, in much cases i replace the third Fireknife with a shas'vre Fireknife, meaning he can also take 1 Gun drone and 1 Shield drone.
=> You have different multiple-wound models in your units. I also do this for my deathrains

I don't think running single suits is a good idea, but multiple teams is. As for keeping them alive, thats a whole different story. I just feel that focusing a unit on a task is better than trying to be Space Marines and do everything.

My problem with one team is that it's eggs in one basket. Sure, the enemy might be able to take down your meltas in one go, or your plasma in one go, but you still have two more teams which will be performing other tasks (Deathrains doing general interdiction, Firestorms as anti-infantry support etc). Thats why I prefer splitting up weapons and roles between different teams.

And yeah, HQ teams are awesome!


I agree. Markerlights are really something for larger games, in smaller games you don't have the points to build it in. If you invest in making your suits more accurate regardless, it makes no taking/losing the markerlights in a game less painful. They're still useful, but you don't have to deal with the frustration of watching half your shot miss (or more, if you roll like me) because your markerlights failed/died.