Actually I tend to play smaller games, the 2000 point IG example was just based on the fact that a lot of people prefer that point level. But everything I've said is just as true in smaller games (scaling down the numbers as needed). Unless you're playing in extremely small (<1000) point games, you aren't going to have spare heavy slots for sniper drones. And it's not really worth thinking about games that small, since 40k starts to break down and become unplayable below ~1000 points.



So? I never said that Tau can't beat Razorback spam, just that Broadsides are far more useful in that situation than sniper drones. I really don't see how this game disproves my point.



Sure.

Peregrine's advice for playing in a less hypercompetitive environment: do exactly what you would do in a hypercompetitive environment. A list that can beat top-tier tournament lists will easily deal with weaker lists, and doesn't automatically lose if your opponent happens to be tougher than expected.



Fine, but that's your personal preference. The argument the quoted statement refers to was suggesting getting these units as a strategy for winning, not because they wanted a pretty model to paint.



Err, take a Barracuda, a far superior choice if flyers are part of the game?

Unfortunately, the Sky Ray's AA ability is unclear at best. The IA:3 rules are obsolete (IA:3 was published before the current Tau codex) and kind of conflict with the newest rules for seeker missiles and AA mounts. On the other hand, the Apocalypse Reload formation, even if it's allowed in non-Apocalypse games, doesn't grant an AA mount to the seeker missiles, making it the single worst "AA" unit in the entire game.


And in any case, taking a Sky Ray as an AA unit has absolutely nothing to do with the comparison of Sky Ray vs. sniper drone markerlight efficiency that brought the Sky Ray into this discussion in the first place. Not only is it not very relevant to general Tau strategy (non-Apocalypse games where flyers are legal are incredibly rare and require a completely different strategy), if your Sky Ray is dedicated to shooting down flyers, you aren't going to be using its priceless AA markerlights to support your other units!

Erm, I think you might be taking his point a bit too literally. I think Taudau was referring more to a background fluff-point rather than actual in-game AA support.

Be careful people, at the risk of being a wet blanket I'm worried this thread might be getting a bit too heated. Please be gentle people, and try to stay on-topic.

I know, I was kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that he had something relevant to say.

If it is a fluff choice, then it's even less relevant, since fluff choices have nothing to do with strategy. This thread is supposed to be about how to use sniper drones (if at all) to win games, not each person's individual preferences about what makes a "fluffy" army. Otherwise, there's just nothing to say beyond "I'm glad you like that", and no point in having a discussion about it.

In this case, it's probably best to keep the discussion as much related to pure tactics as possible - remember we are in the "Tactica" subforum.
That said, Peregrine, just because someone doesn't want to hyper-optimize doesn't mean they don't want to optimize their army to some degree, while still remaining within their self-given fluff boundaries. It's not irrelevant to offer justification for their reasoning.

So anyways, let's keep this cool, and have a nice, rational, non-escalating discussion about the best way to use sniper drones with fluff and optimizing.

So, what exactly was the point of bringing up a thread that's been dead for over a month to say "keep cool"?



List building is tactics. Before you can even begin to consider tactics for a unit, you need to consider whether the unit belongs in your army in the first place.



This is only true to the point that "fluff" crosses the line into "hopelessly bad strategy". If this was a discussion of a mid-tier unit in a 5th edition codex then there would be a point to discussing tactics within the fluff constraint. It might not be the absolute best strategy, but the gap in power level is small enough that a skilled player with a good strategy can still expect to win a lot of games.

Unfortunately, this is not the case here. Sniper drones are a terrible unit in a weak codex, and can only be justified if you abandon all hope of actually winning a game.



There is no way to do so. "Sniper drones" and "optimizing" are mutually exclusive concepts. Like it or not, the only "tactic" that leads to an increased chance of winning a game is "remove the garbage unit from your list".

I'm really not sure why so many threads pop up along the lines of 'I really like this unit but it seems bad so please tell me how to use it' and then when well thought out reasons behind why the unit actually is bad come up, people who don't want to accept it get all defensive.

If you like the unit then use it. But the worst heavy choice in the codex can't really be "optimised" for and arguing semantics over the validity of the argument is pointless, overdone, and doesn't help the op use the unit.

I'd say that there is a degree of almost backward's optimisation, Sniper drones aren't vespids by any stretch of the imagination and there are situations where they could be a decent choice. There's scope for discussion outside of the worst case scenario tournament list, particularly since you're not just waiting for the next codex to be released to change the worst case scenario at a tournament but one that drastically changes the metagame to the point that you're no longer likely to encounter that particular type of list (heavy mech, in the current case).

It's more recognising when sniper drones might be useful rather than how to make them useful, which might be of interest to people playing against regular opponents with a different metagame from the average ToK or Ard Boyz tournament, or perhaps in escalation, Tale of 'X' gamers leagues.

This was the case for one of my friends whose metagame tended to be MEq-based, both SM and CSM. Alongside his Broadsides and Hammerhead he would field a triple set of sniper drones in many games, and they did seem to work fairly well for him. However, his style of play tended to be either Static Tau or Mobile Infantry, the former of course benefitting the SDTs.

Although I too have three teams of SDTs, I have yet to use them as I am a kind of dyed-in-the-wool BASS + Railhead player. Having said that, I am currently putting together a second Tau army which is based around Farsight, and I'm considering taking the SDTs instead of the Sky Ray. The decision has not yet been finalised though....!

E.

>.<
My bad everyone, I was just looking at the top of the tactica and neglected to check the dates. Sorry! And now I appear to have only made people more angry. Awesome.

In that case I was agreeing with you that a fluff-based list is not entirely relevant to this subforum.


Be that as it may, people still have the right to use the discuss the most optimal tactics for the least optimal units, if they so choose. This is, as far as I know, a forum for the discussion of any and all tactics.

Situations like?



A complete list of when sniper drones might be useful:

1) If you can house rule them to a different FOC slot.




It's not just "hardcore competitive tournaments" vs. "everything else", even in very casual games sniper drones are still a terrible choice. Sure, a weaker metagame might not punish you as harshly for taking a terrible unit (as long as the rest of your list is good), but that doesn't make it a good decision.



Did they work for him because the sniper drones were a good choice, or because his opponents were not strong enough to exploit his poor decisions? My guess is the latter, since sniper drones are terrible even in a MEQ-dominated environment.



ATT is supposed to be about quality discussion, and that demands a certain level of optimization. After all, a discussion about the most optimal tactics for a list consisting of two minimum-size Fire Warrior squads and a bunch of crisis suits with no guns would hardly be appropriate for ATT, so why should we ignore the fatal drawbacks of a unit that is only marginally more effective?

It's just that simple: listing an increasingly unrealistic set of scenarios where a unit "works" in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable conclusion that it doesn't work is not productive discussion.

Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing that discussion. One of the guys at my LGS threatened to make a list similar to that for me to play with (and I would make him an equally terrible list as well for his army). Broken as all heck, yes, but hilarious to watch unfold on the tabletop.

A topic like that is best saved for another forum... Theambit

Non-mech Meqs mainly, perhaps drop pod/deep strike lists where the enemy is going to be on top of you very quickly and up close.
Pretty much any time you don't need all three slots filled with railguns - they came out more or less the same as Fireknives for MEq killing points effciency alongside at least one statistically probable failed pinning test with their own MLs.

They aren't a bad unit, the trouble as you say is more that they are in competition for a heavy slot with two very important units (Broadsides and Hammerheads). Guess the real question is how much can you expect 6 XV88s to deal with.

Um, what?

Fireknives cost XX points. They fire (outside of rapid fire range) one Plasma shot and 2 MP shots at 50% accuracy, for 5/12 kills (Plasma) and 5/18 kills (MP), which comes out to .0112 MEq kills per turn per point.

[For comparison, a stock squad of Fire Warriors scores a .0111 in this statistic, meaning that they are virtually equal to Fireknives at killing MEq. So maybe comparing Sniper Teams to Fireknives isn't really a good test. They can be a lot better than Fireknives and still not be very good.]

Sniper Teams cost XX points. They fire three shots at an average accuracy of 7/12, producing an average kill count of 35/24 for the team. Or, .0182 MEq kills per turn per point. That's roughly a 63% increase in per-point firing efficiency.

This does change at Rapid Fire range, to .0179 for the FKs, meaning the Sniper Teams are only better by a couple percentage points. But how often can you really keep your Crisis Suits within 12" for the entire game?

Edit: Math fix't.

The problem with comparing a static unit to battlesuits is that the battlesuits can stay alive much longer due to their Jetpacks and higher toughness value.



So what do you think about Pathfinders with Rail Rifles (4 Pathfinders, 3 Rail Rifles)? They are essentially the same thing, coming out to just 2 points less than the SDT (if I recall correctly).

Err, how exactly is this good for sniper drones? Against an army that immediately gets up close, stealth fields are useless and therefore the drones will only survive if they're so weak a threat compared to your other units that your opponent just ignores them.



"Times you need all three slots filled with railguns" and "times you play Tau in a game of Warhammer 40k" are synonyms.

===============================================



Now remove half of that because shooting at MEQs at long range (we're out of rapid fire range, remember) means they'll have a cover save. Now the efficiency of your sniper drones is less than the fireknives, you have no option to improve it by getting closer, and just to add insult to injury you're a T3/4+ static unit that dies entirely if the wrong model takes a wound.

===============================================



Still bad, because now you lose the stealth fields, lose a point of BS on the markerlight, lose the ability for the squad to use its own markerlight hits, and sacrifice a vital Piranha slot. For sniper drones to be useful, they need to be either elites or troops, the two slots that aren't already full in a Tau army.

Now, they're still "better" than sniper drones, but that's not saying very much.

Cover is cover whether you are talking about Rail Rifles or Plasma Rifles.

The points about mobility and durability are certainly true. I mean, I also think Sniper Teams are terrible. I just don't think it's related to their firepower. Their guns are fine - it's everything else that's all wrong.

It's kind of a tragic thing about the current codex - Rail Rifles are amazing, but there's nowhere to put them.

It really wouldn't surprise me much if Pathfinders got a FOC reassignment in the next codex. They really don't belong in the FA slot in 5th ed (nor 6th, the way it's shaping up to be). As for SDTs, I think they should be akin to Imperial Assassins.

Which is true, but misleading, for two reasons:

1) The rail rifles are on a static unit that needs to be deployed far back on the table, preferably in cover. The 4+ save is the same, but's much easier to ensure that you get a cover save against the drones than against the crisis suits.

2) The fireknives get a substantial part of their firepower from the AP 4 missile pods, and cover has no effect on them.



Their guns really aren't fine. Consider the Piranha TX-42, which has the option to take rail rifles, missile pods, fusion guns, or plasma rifles (at TL BS 4 even, on a nice mobile platform!). Missile pods and fusion guns are awesome choices, plasma rifles have some potential, and rail rifles are by far the weakest of the options.

Yeah, but I'm sure you'd concede that that's all relative to the unit taking the gun and the points spent.

When I say Rail Rifles are good, what I really mean is they're a good design - like Sniper Rifles but with a distinct Tau flavor. They're long range, dedicated anti-MEq, and have pinning randomly tacked on. Not to mention the coherent flavor with our iconic Rail Guns.

You can't argue theoretical army choices based on power because at some point level they are worthless and at some other point level they are absurd. Rail Rifles on a Piranha? No that's just dumb. What about as a Devilfish upgrade? I don't know, maybe.... How about if you could upgrade any Fire Warrior to a Rail Rifle for free? I'm willing to bet you would take a few then. What if Crisis Suits could take them? Do you think Fireknives would keep their popularity next to Crisis Suits with Plasma Rifles and Rail Rifles? There's just no way. [Though I'm sure you'd still have Deathrains in the mix too.]

Point is - unilaterally saying some gun is bad is just silly. At some points level, nothing is bad. When I say Rail Rifles are "amazing," what I'm really saying is it's a very stylish gun and I wish we had a viable way to deploy them because I expect they could be fun.

Be clearer when you post, Aven. When you post that something is "amazing" in a Tactica forum, it is assumed that you mean tactically. If you aren't clear that it isn't, it's just troll-bait waiting to happen! -D&G

Was thinking more along the lines of them buying you time by pinning one of the units, whilst your army takes the other units to bits. Against this sort of list, you'd probably not deploy the stealth teams within your kroot shields (save that for broadsides etc) as they've got a pretty decent range and you're going to be setting up where the main battle happens. On their own they aren't that intimidating and are fairly disposable so even if the enemy panics after a couple of turns of pinning and goes after them they've served their purpose and kept a unit away from your main lines.