I always liked 5th edition Stealth army
What? No Shadowsun leading the charge?
With a base +3 to our cover saves this army is a sweet idea and will basically be the new terminators of the Tau (since forests have become a dangerous place for our kroot to be in... what with the forests eating people and such...). That said, you're lacking anti-air. AA is going to be super important in the new edition since there has been such an emphasis on flyers in the new edition. I've seen a couple games with the new flyers and they are absolutely monsterous. Sadly Tau have no real anti air, which means we are still using our anti-tank weapons for AA. Shooting is reduced to BS1, and blasts don't work... so we arfe lacking a cost effective way of dealing with the new threat of an AV12 flyer. So far deathrains have been a popular argued choice, or going back to the IA3 skyray may be an option too.
3+ to our cover saves? How is this miracle achieved? I know we have Stealth with is +1, but where do the other 2 come from?
Stealth field generator now gives us stealth (+1) and shrouded (+2) which stack together for a +3 bonus to whatever cover we are in... so 4+ in the open or 2+ in any form of terrain (including other models standing in the way).
Edit: Oh and as an extra stealth kick... what about taking some eldar allies to give yourself pathfinders as troops (who come with stealth or can purchase shrouded), then convert yourself some pathfinders with railrifles to represent them?
. . .That. . .Is. . .Awesome!
Yes. And they are pretty much the only suits that accute sense still has any purpose for since they can outflank (commander can outflank... but only if you roll that on the warlord chart). On the other hand... they are 30 points for a burst cannon, and while they can take a fusion blaster, without a target lock, this means you are either wasting your burst cannon shots firing on a tank... or wasting your fusion blaster shot firing on infantry. I still like the stealth army idea though.
Quote from: Carrelio on July 01, 2012, 09:12:36 PM
Stealth field generator now gives us stealth (+1) and shrouded (+2) which stack together for a +3 bonus to whatever cover we are in... so 4+ in the open or 2+ in any form of terrain (including other models standing in the way).
Edit: Oh and as an extra stealth kick... what about taking some eldar allies to give yourself pathfinders as troops (who come with stealth or can purchase shrouded), then convert yourself some pathfinders with railrifles to represent them?
And a farseer as an Ethreal with staff (know they aren't psykers, but it works for keeping the tau theme.) I might actually have to do this now.
Farseer with divination powers synthesizes quite well with Tau in my opinion. You might also want to consider modeling the farseer as a nicassar.
Another good idea. Which begs the question what the hell do they look like?
To lexicanum!
Really hungry Polar Bears.
Quote from: The Primarch They Call Magnus on July 01, 2012, 10:12:13 PM
Really hungry Polar Bears.
I was of the understanding that Nicassar being polar bears was fanon. Do you have a source for that?
Quote from: Carrelio on July 01, 2012, 08:53:44 PM
What? No Shadowsun leading the charge?
I used to in my 5th edition Stealth army but I really wanted to try with Stealth commander battlesuits leading the stealth squads. As far as I can tell Shadowsun is not allowed to join the Stealth teams and I really wanted commanders to infiltrate with them.
I also like the idea of using lots of gun drones over target arrays but it does make the squads a little pricy.
Throwing "Nicassar" into Google, gets you a lot of Cthulu Aliens. DA doesn't hold much art relating to them.
DakkaDakka, has some concept art which can be sumarized as "Quarian" (see Mass Effect), but the artist seems to have implied the character would be assaulty oriented, which doesn't fit with Nicassar being weak and feeble, due to prolongued space travel.
If I was to go my own way of modeling, I'd depict a smallish alien, floating with tech around them. If armour needs to be represented, looking at Tau Air Cast would be a good start.
Major flaw in this army: I just found out IC without infiltrate cannot join squads with infiltrate :( You can still join sniper teams for steath might be worth it for extra cover in turn 1 then break away.
I was just about to point that out...
You can still do it situationally, if your commander rolls infiltrate on the warlord tables... but this isn't going to happen often.
The Nicassar were depicted as flat floating polar bears by Jervis Johnson at games day. Nothing else is known of their appearance
I know we now how some majorly awesome cover saves... but we've also lost a serious deal of long-range defense.
At their toughness, 2+ armor saves aren't that hard to force, especially from a glut of small-arms fire... fire that can now reliably see and hit them from anywhere on the table, so long as there is LoS and Night Fighting isn't in effect. Of course, Stealth Suits benefit from Night Fighting ONLY when the enemy is 36" away.
I don't know yet if I'll appreciate the more reliable Awesomesauce Cover save more than the You Can't Touch This immunity from all but barrage weapons found in 5th's night-fighting rules. Anyone tested this? Anyone finding difficulty in attaining that base 5+ (or better) cover save to provide our XV-25s with that sweet, sweet 2+ cover?
I played a couple of games yesterday, had a good amount of terrain and had no trouble maintaining a 2+ cover save the whole game. 2nd game they died on the Deep Strike attempt. :(
How well is the variable assault move working in keeping the suits both in range and out of the worse of harm's way?
Quote from: Unusual Suspect on July 08, 2012, 03:48:50 PM
How well is the variable assault move working in keeping the suits both in range and out of the worse of harm's way?
Extremely useful due to premeasuring you can perfect the moving 18
Quote from: Brother Perturabo on July 01, 2012, 10:04:36 PM
Another good idea. Which begs the question what the hell do they look like?
To lexicanum!
I always pictured them kind of like this: http://images.wikia.com/paragon/images/4/4c/Warhulk1.jpg (http://images.wikia.com/paragon/images/4/4c/Warhulk1.jpg). They are totally space dependent and would need a suit that would keep them in zero g while in the g field of a planet.