Let's talk T'au Kill Team

[9x19 Parabellum]

Ah yes. Thanks for that. I'd probably just go with a different Pathfinder for the leader.

 

I was positioned in such a way that I had Genestealer Cults on my left flank and 'Nids on my right.  So the first turn I had no shooting to worry about from Nids and only hitting on 6's from my left.  Each player more or less split their forces into 2 semi-equal groups of 50% to counter each person on their left/right respectively, while ignoring the player furtherst across from them.

 

I, on the other hand, moved to my left, and engaged all my shooting against GSC on my left during my first turn, and really whallopped him pretty good.   On the second turn, I got initiative, which allowed me to move first out of Tyranids charge range (thanks in part to Grav drone). He got shot up pretty hard during turn 2.  On turn 3, they both decided to close in on the Imperial Guard player and leave me alone, at which point I bumrushed the center objective for the next 2 turns.

[Panzer]

Ah yeah classic beginner mistake. Splitting forces is rarely a good idea. Better focus on one front and overwhelm your opponent there. ^^

[brother_b]

Some insight after a few games of KT and using Tau.

 

Tau weapons are insanely strong. Tau shooting sucks. To mitigate that I'm painting up two Recron drones that buff your nearby shooters allowing you to ignore the negative to obscured models.

 

The rail rifle is an amazing weapon; rapid fire, high str, high AP, and a chance for mortal wounds. My sniper can give himself +1 to hit with his strat and the drone can remove the penalty to obscure. Add in a comms specialist for another +1 and you're hitting on two, wounding most on 2 or 3. I'm going to pick up another non-specialist gunner with rail gun.

 

The stealth suits are insanely powerful; they're fast, tough for Tau, have two wounds, and have an innate -1 to hit against models that target you. I've been using a leader with fusion blaster (only one shot but when it hits, oh boy) and target lock. I can then advance all around with no negatives to my shooting. I use a heavy specialist with blast gun. He can advance around with his level 1 ability and not suffer the penalty to hit. I use his stratagem and I'm putting out 5 strength 5 shots. It's easy to flank behind your opponent when you're moving so fast.

 

Basic fire warriors hit hard and are great. Bring as many as you can.

 

I made a veteran breacher. He's not really done much. He can get that free move in the beginning of the game but it's cat and mouse and I need to get in close for that bad boy gun.

 

Moving second is nice, you can react to your opponents moves. Shooting second is no fun.

 

I'm considering a fire base of one pathfinder with markerlight, 1 recon drone, 1 pathfinder with rail rifle. Maybe I'll be able to land the markerlights with the drone buff providing a nice reroll bonus.

 

Anyway, just some thoughts, it's a fun game and I can't wait to play more.

 

 

[Panzer]

Some insight after a few games of KT and using Tau.

 

Tau weapons are insanely strong. Tau shooting sucks. To mitigate that I'm painting up two Recron drones that buff your nearby shooters allowing you to ignore the negative to obscured models.

 

The rail rifle is an amazing weapon; rapid fire, high str, high AP, and a chance for mortal wounds. My sniper can give himself +1 to hit with his strat and the drone can remove the penalty to obscure. Add in a comms specialist for another +1 and you're hitting on two, wounding most on 2 or 3. I'm going to pick up another non-specialist gunner with rail gun.

 

The stealth suits are insanely powerful; they're fast, tough for Tau, have two wounds, and have an innate -1 to hit against models that target you. I've been using a leader with fusion blaster (only one shot but when it hits, oh boy) and target lock. I can then advance all around with no negatives to my shooting. I use a heavy specialist with blast gun. He can advance around with his level 1 ability and not suffer the penalty to hit. I use his stratagem and I'm putting out 5 strength 5 shots. It's easy to flank behind your opponent when you're moving so fast.

 

Basic fire warriors hit hard and are great. Bring as many as you can.

 

I made a veteran breacher. He's not really done much. He can get that free move in the beginning of the game but it's cat and mouse and I need to get in close for that bad boy gun.

 

Moving second is nice, you can react to your opponents moves. Shooting second is no fun.

 

I'm considering a fire base of one pathfinder with markerlight, 1 recon drone, 1 pathfinder with rail rifle. Maybe I'll be able to land the markerlights with the drone buff providing a nice reroll bonus.

 

Anyway, just some thoughts, it's a fun game and I can't wait to play more.

 

 

I admit I've mostly played with my Primaris lately since T'au and negative to-hit modificators just don't mix well ... especially with short-mid ranged weapons.

However yeah Stealth Suits and Rail Rifles are amazing. That's my go-to for Kill Team as well. Especially the Rail Rifle Sniper + Comms + Recon Drone is super potent and probably the strongest thing we can take but it's also incredibly squishy with just T3 Sv5+. Be prepared to sacrifice your Recon Drone as bodyguard (it can soak up two wounds regardless of their damage before it dies) once your opponent got some experience with how dangerous that guy is and try to put up pressure with your Fusion Blaster Stealth Suit at the same time so he has to decide what he wants to focus (it's usually the Rail rifle tho).

 

By the way you can have only ONE of the Pathfinder Drones each in your Kil Team. Two would be awesome and the best friends of any T'au fire base. :P

 

Markerlights and Breacher are the two things I'm absolutely not convinced of in Kill Team. I'm looking forward to see what you'll think about them after actually using them but let me explain why I'm not convinced.

First up the Breacher. My favorite T'au infantry apart from Stealth Suits and Rail rifle Pathfinder, however the problem is with the weapon in Kill Team. It's not just a 15" weapon that gets better the closer you get because then you'd suffer from long range 'only' at >7.5". Instead it's three different weapons with their own range so you'll suffer from Long range at >7.5", >5" and for the best profile at >2.5". That's basically melee range for the profile you take them for but hitting on 5+ unless you're really hugging your target and even worse if you decided to advance them.

If you get that close you better make sure your target dies or your Breacher will either be dead or stuck in melee for the rest of the game which means you have to potentially focus fire a lot on one of your opponents front line guys and it probably has to be a somewhat isolated model since otherwise the Breacher still has the same problem against the other two guys standing behind the model you just hopefully killed.

That being said I still want to try a list with a focus on Breacher. But ONLY on a board with tons of LoS blocking terrain so they actually have a chance to get close!

 

Next up Markerlights. In theory they sound great. You hit with them, pop the +1d3 Stratagem and have greatly improved your Teams accuracy. In reality however it means you improved your Teams accuracy against that ONE target. A target you could have potentially killed already with that hit (since Markerlights don't hit any more reliable than other weapons on their own) if you had instead shot at it with a Rail rifle, Fusion Blaster or even just a Pulse rifle already. For each time you hit with a Markerlight I think to myself "had I decided to shoot with a damaging weapon instead, then the model I try to make easier to kill could probably already have been dead and my other models could focus on something else instead..."

[brother_b]

Yeah good points all around. We've played the half range is 7.5" only and that's it. You may be right but it seemed a little confusing.

 

Didn't know about recon drone limit I didn't have the book open. I plan on hiding the drone from LOS as long as I can to give that sniper the bonus.

 

Have you used the little missile turrets? That seems to be a good choice for a back field gun line.

 

For my veteran breacher, I have him at level two now and can use the strategy to ready him. At least I can move in close and then ready him with that strat. That way I can shoot first. That's been a big part of the cat and mouse game. Do I move and shoot second, do I stay in place and get ready?

 

I'm not convinced with marker lights either, and the drone can only buff one Pathfinder per turn. That being said Pathfinders are cheap and can sit in the backfield. I don't mind getting that reroll bonus against one model that's probably all I would go for. We will see how it works in game.

[Guest Triszin]

thoughts on my list?

I think I'll remove the second xv25 and use the extra points to upgrade my medic, and maybe add a drone/pathfinder?

 

 

Leader

• XV25 stealth shas’vre   x1

• Far sight sympathizer

  • Burst Cannon

  • Marker light target lock

 

Specialists

• Medic

  • Breacher   x1

  • Precise

    • Pulse blaster

    • Pulse pistol

    • Photon grenades

• Sniper

  • Pathfinder gunner x1

  • perceptive

    • Rail Rifle

• Heavy

  • XV25 stealth shas’la  x1

  • Dishonoured

    • Burst cannon

Troops

• Pathfinder gunner x1

  • Ion  x1

    Mb3 Recon Drone x1

        Burst cannon

    -    Pathfinder  x1

       -    pulse carbine

    Marker light

Breacher x2

    Pulse blaster x2

    Photon grenades x2

    Pulse pistol x1

[elmo]

Please don't post detailed points values as it contravenes the site rules

 

 

No excessive points values in army lists or discussions

This means that you may not post Army Builder print outs (or those from similar products) or fully detailed points/stats for your army lists. Keep it simple, such as "Chapter Master; Terminator armour, storm bolter, thunder hammer; 285 pts" or similar.

[Guest Triszin]

 

Please don't post detailed points values as it contravenes the site rules

 

 

No excessive points values in army lists or discussions

 

This means that you may not post Army Builder print outs (or those from similar products) or fully detailed points/stats for your army lists. Keep it simple, such as "Chapter Master; Terminator armour, storm bolter, thunder hammer; 285 pts" or similar.

 

whoops, my mistake. should've removed em from my copy paste of my list.

[Bryan Blaire]

I haven’t gotten to actually assemble and play with the following list, but I’m very much looking forward to doing so (this is all from memory):

 

Leader - Shas’ui Fire Warrior - Pulse Rifle, Pulse Pistol, Marker Light

Comms - Shas’la Fire Warrior - Pulse Rifle, Pulse Pistol, R2D2 Missile Pod can

Sniper - Pathfinder Gunner - Rail Rifle, Pulse Pistol

Shas’vre Stealth Suit - Burst Cannon, Marker Light, Target Lock

Shas’ui Stealth Suit - Burst Cannon

Shas’ui Breacher - Pulse Blaster, Photon Grenades, Pulse Pistol, Marker Light

Medic - Shas’la Breacher - Pulse Blaster, Photon Grenades, Pulse Pistol

Shas’la Breacher - Pulse Blaster, Photon Grenades, Pulse Pistol

 

The marker lights are basically there because they are free, even if I never use them.

 

I figure I can swap in several things, Heavy Stealth Suit Shas’vre w/Burst or Fusion, another Rail Rifle Sniper Pathfinder, a Recon Drone, and even trade out all the Breachers for standard Fire Warriors if need be.

 

Now to get it all assembled, painted and down to playing (luckily I already have Fire Warriors painted up).

[elmo]

I have the Kill team starter boxes (even bought a couple of the previous Tau/SM Kill team boxes when they came out a couple of years ago) but have yet to dive too deeply into it - it was just too good an offer to miss for all that scenery but it is not like I don't have enough T'au already ;)

 

Looking forward to seeing you slap some paint on your models BB :)

[brother_b]

For Tau I would say that Medics aren't that important.

 

I would go for heavy, comms, sniper, and the leader. Tau must get hits on their enemies. The rail rifle is imho the best sniper rifle in kill team. It's rapid fire 1, 30" range, big strength, good AP, and great damage.

 

You need to set up your sniper for success; comms + recon drone with the sniper special ability. Throw in a second pathfinder gunner with a rail rifle for even more shooting goodness.

 

Taking a heavy XV25 stealth suit with the burst cannon is great. You move 8" base and can advance each turn without having any penalty to shooting thanks to the heavy 1st level ability.

 

Your leader should also be a stealth suit. You've got good toughness, wounds, and save. I used the fusion blaster on my leader, if I had to redo the weapon I'd take a burst cannon. The fusion is insanely powerful, has a great range, but unfortunately is only 1 shot. That hurts for Tau. More shots at str 5 may be the better choice.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Panzer]

Definitely Comms over Medics. Either to support your Rail rifle sniper guy or to support a Stealth Suit with Fusion Blaster. Once you hit you are bound to kill your target due S8 AP-4 D1d6. I second the Leader being a Stealth Suit unless you have better specialist roles for all the Stealth Suits in your list since a level 1 Leader really isn't that interesting compared to the other available ones.

[Guest Triszin]

for my "narrative lore" I'm writing for my kill team they need a medic. =D

 

might not be an optimal choice, but I'll stick with 1 medic and see how it plays out.

 

thanks for the advice on the other stuff.

 

I have to decide, which stealth suit I should drop from my list so I can upgrade my specialists. and If I have any points left over to bring anyone else.

 

decisions decisions.

 

 

-

 

and im going for volume of shots instead of hard hitting. so my stealths have the burst cannon.

[brother_b]

I understand the desire to do fun or fluffy stuff. Although the internet, and most podcasts, may think that Tournaments drive this game they are wrong. It's people having fun. I digress. 

 

I took a veteran instead of comms. Over three games he didn't do much. He did get to level 2 though, and that's where he'll shine in my opinion. He'll be able to move, then ready himself. That's huge if I want to have him out of sight and then let him peek around cover and take aim. He's off the roster for now as I level up my comms specialist. 

 

Anyway, let us know how you do!

[Guest Triszin]

made these for kill team. have my whole team of 8 dudes on there own cards. =)

 

[Kythnos]

I am liking these a lot! Do you happen to have an empty template that you could send me? :)

[Aothaine]

I'll have to look into it more but I think Drones are going to be some of the top dogs in T'au Kill Teams. I'm looking at one drone per dude or even more. Make it kind of like the T'au sniper with the sniper drones where you have 1-2 elite T'au commanding multiple drones in a recon mission. Why risk their lives ya know?

 

I'm thinking something like this maybe.. my book is at home so I'll most likely go over points.

 

T'au Stealth Battlesuit (Veteran most likely)

Shield Drone following him around

 

T'au Pathfinder (Sniper)

Sniper Light Drone 

 

Fire Warrior 

Marker Light Drone

 

Fire Warrior 

Marker Light Drone

 

Gonna have to edit this later tonight when I get home and can look at the book more. But the general idea is to use about 50/50 T'au and Drones. 

[Panzer]

I honestly don't see the appeal in Drones in Kill Team. Aside from the Pathfinder Drones that is.

The Shield Drone uses the old rules without FnP and all Drones have only Sv5+ in Kill Team. They'd be hitting on 6+ all the time. The only good thing about them is having M8 and FLY, but I got that covered by my Stealth Suits already. Maybe as cheap bodyguard for some Stealth Suits since they cost a lot less but that's it, really.

[Happy-inquisitor]

I honestly don't see the appeal in Drones in Kill Team. Aside from the Pathfinder Drones that is.

The Shield Drone uses the old rules without FnP and all Drones have only Sv5+ in Kill Team. They'd be hitting on 6+ all the time. The only good thing about them is having M8 and FLY, but I got that covered by my Stealth Suits already. Maybe as cheap bodyguard for some Stealth Suits since they cost a lot less but that's it, really.

 

Gun drones spit out lots of bullets - which means that they are as good in overwatch as they are when shooting properly. It makes long-bomb charges into Tau much less appealing for most opponents. Also if your opponent is relying on negative modifiers to hit then they hit just as well as any non-specialist Tau most of the time, for less points with more shots.

[Panzer]

 

I honestly don't see the appeal in Drones in Kill Team. Aside from the Pathfinder Drones that is.

The Shield Drone uses the old rules without FnP and all Drones have only Sv5+ in Kill Team. They'd be hitting on 6+ all the time. The only good thing about them is having M8 and FLY, but I got that covered by my Stealth Suits already. Maybe as cheap bodyguard for some Stealth Suits since they cost a lot less but that's it, really.

 

 

Gun drones spit out lots of bullets - which means that they are as good in overwatch as they are when shooting properly. It makes long-bomb charges into Tau much less appealing for most opponents. Also if your opponent is relying on negative modifiers to hit then they hit just as well as any non-specialist Tau most of the time, for less points with more shots.

Yeah but if they don't want to charge you and don't rely on additional hit penalties then they aren't better than Strikes. So basically against most targets. Also they can't shoot at all at >18" while Strikes at least have one shot up to 30".

 

If they still had their Sv4+ and the Shield Drones their FnP I'd be much more inclined to use them.

[Guest Triszin]

I'll post the templates after I finish them.

 

these were my rough draft. I need to do some refinement on them before I upload a template

[Guest Triszin]

Played my first game!

:D

Lost but did well all things considering

[Panzer]

More details! :P

[Happy-inquisitor]

Re-visiting this thread post-FAQ

 

Drones now all have a 4+ save across the board

Shield drones get their 5+++ ignore wounds roll

Marker drones get to ignore movement penalties for wounding

 

The rest of the T'au changes seem like technical wording fixes.

 

I think this really elevates all of our drones. Recon drones continue to be an auto-take and gun drones are now really excellent - the range is still a bit questionable on them but for throwing buckets of dice and hoping to roll a 6 they are hard to beat. All drones still do have the issue that they are harder to obscure on the average table setup due to the shape of the model but they are fast and moderately tough and threatening for a very low points cost.

 

I personally will be switching my lists to specialists as "proper" T'au and then everything else being drones. Anyone else see something in the FAQ that changes the way we would usually play?

[Panzer]

Yeah I'm looking forward using some Gun and Shield Drones in my next games. I still think Markerlights aren't that great in Kill Team tho. The only Markerlight I can see myself using is the BS2+ Markerlight on the Fireblade Commander because a single BS2+ Pulse rifle won't do much on its own either.