Fire Warrior Strategies

[The Underdweller]

I have had my Tau army for about 5 months now, and played around 10 games with them - mostly losses, but the occasional tie or win! I generally feel I get my points value for most of my troops, but I still haven't got a handle on how to use fire warriors effectivly.

I have heard two main strategies for Tau: 1) concentrate my fire on one enemy unit at a time 2) Fire warriors who aren't mobile are dead. Ok, I have the "concentrate my fire" part down!

However, I prefer not to move my fire warriors for the following reasons:

-If I move, I lose my 30" range on my rifles

-Moving them towards advancing assault troops seems kind of pointless, since they are likely to be in 30" range within a turn and if I move, I'll be that much closer to being assaulted/shot at.

-Once someone is in 12" range of me, if I want to move out of assault range it means I can't shoot them-again, I'd rather not move.

-If I stick them in a devilfish, they can't shoot during the turn they embarked, or while they are in it, so they are not doing much good. When they do come out, they only have a 12" range for that turn-why not just stay out and use the 30" range while I can?.

Of course, I understand they need to move to reach objectives and such things, but basically, everytime they do it feels like I am wasting shooting potential.

So, if there are any Tau friendly allies out there, any advice you can give me would be great!

[Primarch]

Both points 1 and 2 seem valid. Keep your guys mobile and have all of them jump out of transports and wipe out units. In todays games you did roll a little poorly which of course didnt help matters. Occupying higher levels on buildings in your deployment zone is good for FWs as they can use their longer ranges without being assaulted easily, but for the Devilfish squads, fly a couple of devilfish up to a target unit, disembark and shoot the unit to bits. Next turn jump back in the devilfish and speed away.
This will require some practice, and you will need to throw some wargear on the 'fish to keep it alive for a while longer. I think Tau have some gadget that allows them to reduce damage or some such at ranges over 6"?
Use Markerlights from Pathfinders to increase the firewarriors chances of hitting and support them with some battlesuits.
You can also use firewarriors with carbines for capturing objectives. The range is shorter but they have assault guns so they can move around and fire.
I'm sure other Tau players can help you out here more than me though.

[The Underdweller]

Thanks for the quick reply

I usually get disruption pods on my devilfish, they allow an automatic cover save as long as the fish is 12" away from the shooter.

Yeah, I've tried the "Fish of Fury" thing; from what I've read 12 Fire Warriors plus the fishes' gun drones will kill an average of 3 space marines - so I've always been afraid of doing it much - I guess as you said, doing it with two devilfish would have more impact!

Anyways, thanks for the advice!

[me_in_japan]

Fire warriors are a bit of a "hmmn" unit, in my opinion, but can defintely be used effectively, if you support em right.

All this comes with a caveat: This is all from the point of view of an eldar player, so take it with a grain of salt.

1) use markerlights. BS3 sucks. It really does. Either attach a marker drone to the Shas'la, or have multiple pathfinder units to spread around.

2) 30" is a nice range, but it effectively halves the number of shots you can be pumping out per round. 12 FWs should equal 24 shots a turn. If theyre more than 12" away, then youre losing out on half your army's firepower.

Bearing (2) in mind, one unit of FW is unlikely to wax a squad of anything in one round of shooting, but I dont think thats what theyre for.

Looking at the eldar troop choices, they dont have anything that could wax an entire enemy squad in one round either. Guardians, Dire Avengers, Scouts, Jetbikes. None of these are heavy hitters. Much like the Tau, the eldar troop choices are there to help out their elites.

For Eldar, that means the above mentioned units kill off 2 or 3 marines, and then the banshees, reapers, scorpions do the business on the survivors. For the Tau, it means Battlesuits.

I'd say for each unit of FW you need a unit of 3 battlesuits with a specific battlefield role. Mostly, itll be marine huntin'. Plasma guns, melta guns, and maybe a drone of some kind. shoot the marines with the FW, shoot em with the battle suits and then decide whether or not to wade into CC with the suit to kill the last 1 or 2 marines, or back away and let the marine player decide what to do with his survivors next turn. He canny shoot the FW and the BS at the same time, and whoever he doesnt kill will wipe out his squad next turn. This should all be taking place somewhere near the middle of the table, btw.

Sure, a unit of 12 FW and a unit of 3 BS costs more than a unit of 10 marines, but the key point is, after one round of shooting, the FW and BS are still alive, and the marines are dead. Now they can go do it again...

You can subsitute BS with a Hammerhead, broadsides, or sniper drones, and the FW can be substituted with drones, Kroot, a squad of piranha, or stealth suits, but the basic principle is: Use your mass firepower units to kill 2 or 3 guys, use elites to kill 4 or 5 guys, then decide whether the survivors need assaultin' to finish em off.

Finally, dont forget Krootox. 3 of em in a unit of redshirts can pump out 6 S7 shots a turn. That will wax rhinos like nobody's business. I like Krootox, me

[Admiral-Badruck]

To be honest I like the potential of 30 inch range.. however I do not think it gives you what you need to make ShasLa(AKA Fire Warriors) good...

For me ShasLa are the weakest link in the Tau army only because they can't kill much and they are an expensive unit.

They are a good unit to sacrifice and as they are very likely to die the turn they get charged this is good because the next tun you can shoot the unit that just killed them...
When I uses them like them in units of 12 coming out of a devil fish shooting a marked squad of most anything.. as long as your dice do not hate you boosted BS 5 Strength 5 can shoot most enemy units to death or at least to the point where even if they charge you you can still potentially take them down with a volume of attacks...

The other thing you might want to try is never leaving them out of cover. and when ever possible in a building high up on the 4th floor or 6th if there is one at the very least keep them behind a squad of Kroot the point of cover is there are a lot of AP 4 AP3 weapon out there... and they were all made for killing ShasLa. keep your heads down and keep shooting.

I think point for point Kroot are a better option to ShasLa but I am sure there are people out there that will disagree. My new Tau army is going to be mostly Kroot and other Aliens.

happy hunting and good luck with your Cadre.

[The Underdweller]

Thanks guys.

So, let's see if I've got this straight:

-Go for 12" rapid fire whenever possible, with lots of markerlights, and backup support from Battlesuits or other heavy hitters.

Sounds good, but if my FW are zipping around in a Devilfish, won't it be a bit hard to coordinate with Battlesuits, for the (possibly neceesary) close combat, at least?

-Don't rule out carbines

-Cover - I'd got used to not needing it against Taurebelz's Tau, but I figured it out pretty quick after getting shot by Crimson Fists yesterday! Also buildings.

-Kroot and their friends are cool- I have bought a unit of 10 Kroot (the box said 16, but when I'd got them together there seemed to be only 10 - mabye I left some in Canada...) - but no other aliens so far. I've got lots of Fire Warriors already and am getting some more Battlesuits soon, so it looks like that's the way my army will swing for now

Anyway, thanks for all the advice, I'll try to use some of it the next time I play!

[The Underdweller]

Thanks guys.

-Go for 12" rapid fire whenever possible, with lots of markerlights, and backup support from Battlesuits or other heavy hitters.

Sounds good, but if my FW are zipping around in a Devilfish, won't it be a bit hard to coordinate with Battlesuits, for the (possibly neceesary) close combat, at least?

Nevermind, just remembered the jet pack rules, duh

[Admiral-Badruck]

Good luck with them I think they are a thinkers Army... I am doing mine mostly alien themed this time around. heaps of Kroot and other Home brewed goodies.

[Konrad]

Tau are tough to play is an understatement. If there is any army suffering from Codex creep it's the Tau. If it's any consolation, a couple editions ago, the Tau were seriously spreading some greater good all over Japan. My boyz just got gunned down left and right. For the time being good luck!
More Kroot might be helpful. Devil fish and Crisis suits for the hit and run, Kroot to hold the ground. I seem to remember one guy writing that that was his tactic.

[Admiral-Badruck]

One of the reasons I stopped playing Tau back in the day was they were not a chalenge for me... Nowdays I am playing them because of the challenge..

And lets not for get what people said about Necrons back in 4th ed... those guys were absolutely brutal.