Armies in 5th: Tau Part 2: FW & Piranhas

Well dearie me more stupid comments on Warseer to fuel the fire. Check out the page here. Wisdom lacks some wisdom me thinks.

Anyways I decided to put FWs and Piranhas together here. The most under appreciated and over utilised units.

What do Piranhas do for a Tau army? They are the only unit which can move fast and can be used as an effective movement blocker and melta delivery system. In a direction comparison to SM Land Speeders they seem to lose out as they have less duality and cost a bit more and bleed KPs (but who cares?) though Piranhas do have that extra AV on the front which is at times invaluable (go away pesky bolters). However, the ability for a backline army to move out of their deployment and into midfield aggressively changes the dynamics of the game. No longer do TH/SS termies get into your lines by T2. Add in the fusion gun and if they survived the T1 firepower they are a large threat to your opponent whilst increasing Tau's already effective anti-tank. The only problem is they compete with Pathfinders for slots. Whilst at lower points 2 Pathfinder units isn't advisable it becomes a trade-off at 2K+ points.

Now onto Firewarriors. In relation to newer books they are extremely overcosted but at least one unit has to be taken. Now it is becoming increasingly popular to hijack a PF devilfish and use a single 6 man FW squad. Personally this is the best use of them. They are far less effective than an SM tac squad (which the internet hates...can't see why) in that can't take special weapons, are too expensive for what they do and require markerlights to be truly effective (raise their BS).

However, too many people still try and use FWs as the staple of their army. This is a sure way to a bad army list. Because they are not cheap and require a transport (and MLs) to be effectively used they are a very expensive unit that is fair at anti-infantry (becoming better as MLs are introduced). This means the rest of your units have to be that much better at taking out tanks (a potential reason why Deathrains are popular?) but this makes your overall list weaker. A list which has units A, B, C for anti-tank and C, D, E for anti-infantry is going to lose to a list which has units A, B, C, D for everything.

So far we have highlighted the importance that Crisis suits and Piranhas add to a Tau list. The suits offer the best of duality in able to take down tanks with a lot of high strength weaponry and then using their rate of fire also hose down infantry whilst still remaining mobile and at range (remember foot units in 5th generally suffer from lack of mobility compared to a mech army and have to get close to be effective). Piranhas allow the Tau army to affect a greater area of the board and significantly limit an opponent's movement.

FWs on the other hand limit what the Tau commander can take in his army by sucking up points and force his other units to be highly effective at anti-tank because so many points are being tied up in a unit that is only good at anti-infantry (S5 only goes so far, S6 on the other hand...).

Next up I'll do Kroot. Yummy critters they are.