Doing the Jump-Shoot-Jump dance with your Crisis Suits can sometimes leave you relying on that clump of rocks or ruined building for cover, preventing your XV8s from moving away from it. Effectively chaining them to one spot. Well here's how you bring your terrain with you! Adam at Warhammer Tau coined the phrase 'circling the wagons" for this tactic. It refers to XV8s taking cover behind a Hammerhead upgraded with a Disruption Pod and moving and working together for the Tau'Va. This way XV8s can take their cover with them, be protected from assaults and play the moving game which is what the game is all about. This is just one of those Tau Basics. It won't win you the game but it will keep your XV8s alive.
It's called circling the wagons because when this is done with multiple Tau tanks, you effectively build yourself a skimmer wall of protection - a wagon circle if you will.
9 comments:
I'm curious as to why you chose flamers for the Deathrains instead of a targetting array? Do you find that you get a lot of use from the flamers?
I've seen a bunch of different ideas of how the Deathrain type suits should be done. Generally it comes down to 3:
- TL MP and flamer (47 pts)
- TL MP and targeting array (53 pts)
- MP and TL flamer (43 pts)
In the first case, you have pretty accurate Missile shots with the chance to burn anything that gets close. With the autohit of the flamer, that could be a lot more powerful than landing 6 (at the most) missile shots, especially when you have three suits and each may get 4-5 hits.
The second case keeps the suits as a long distance missile platform. Possibly the most pure of the Deathrain variants but it is a little more costly and may run out of space to dance away from the enemy. Definitely more reliable as a MP platform though.
The last is something that Adam on Warhammer Tau was working with and trades missile reliability for close range firepower and intimidation. It probably needs markerlight support to better do the missile job but it might cause hesitation to horde or assault armies that rush in. If each suit gets 5 enemies with a template (15) and gets to reroll wounds (for TL flamers) that can be a whole bunch of pain for a horde.
Each has its ups and downs and I suppose it's down to the player to choose which they prefer and which fits better with their army. In Adam's case, I think he came to use them because it made people more reluctant to rush in and assault his tau skimmer wall knowing that there were TL flamer suits behind it.
"I'm curious as to why you chose flamers for the Deathrains instead of a targetting array? Do you find that you get a lot of use from the flamers?" -Simon
Pete pretty much hit the nail on the head. I like to have the flamers in case of any close assaults and I twin-link the missile pods because I want to be able to pop transports. The other options just don't seem worth it. A lot of Tau players have an obsession with BS4 but you end up paying lots of points for it. Even in my current list posted this past week, I am little reluctant to be paying all those extra points to give BS4 to my Fireknives...I try to live with majority BS3 the best I can. I think I might soon go back to fielding some pathfinders in my list.
I think I called it the 'Tau Tank Wall' but 'circling the wagons' sounds cool!
Think you could make that mention of Warhammer Tau a link? Someone is trying to steal my google ranking and it would really help me out.
Cheers
Adam
Done and done!
OSH I just watched your video about circling the wagon! always good to watch your explanations for tactics advice and I'm sure many of have probably benefitted from them;
However, (Time for an arguement!) I dissagree that deathrains are the best congfiguration. (though again it's down to wot you're up against)fireknifes are more beneficial all round, but I like to go in with fusions and plasmas. with multitrackers you are looking at a maximum 3x strength 8 Ap 1 hits and 6x strength 6 Ap 2 hits, total terminator killing power.
But like I said it's down who your up against and also personal preferences!
Fire knives and helios are great if you have markerlights. I don't tend to run any markerlights anymore. Pathfinders had been disappointing me for a bit and that's not the army I wanted to field anymore. So when I got no markerlights---deathrains are the best!
Take the Skyray for a spin!
The Sky Ray rocks :)
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