in prep for the 1750 tournament coming up I have been working on some different ideas. Namely, missile spam. Now this list isn't as crazy as you could go with seeker missiles, but it has enough for 2 turns of alpha striking with 12 pathfinders and a skyray.
Shas'El MP, CIB, PR with a hard wired multi-tracker
2 groups of 3 deathrains
2x 6 FW
3x 10 Kroot
2x 6 pathfinders
2 Piranhas
Skyray
Railhead
2 Broadsides
My current list above.
All vehicles have a D-pod (the P squad only has 1) and each vehicle other than the skyray has 2 seekers on it. This equals 16 seeker missiles, and 14 markerlights.
What I am gonna do with this list is pick one thing I don't want to deal with, and blast the bejeezus out of it. I am tempted to run 2 skyrays, but right now i think i would rather have the mobile railgun.
The whole basis of the army is that the suits, pathfinders and tanks all shoot at 1 thing until it is dead. with 36" ranges on both the markerlights and missile pods they should all be able to shoot the same thing.
I see the shooting phase going like this:
Pick a unit, for the sake of argument let's say there are 5 plague marines in a rhino with a sorcerer who has lash.
First shoot at the transport with one squad of death rains, if they fail to pop it use the second squad, if that fails, broadsides, then hammerhead.
Once it is open, marker light the squad up and shoot as many seekers as possible, assuming average rolls it will be about 7 between the two pathfinder units and the skyray. let's say 6 missiles connect, S8 is insta kill for plaguemarines (they are T5 but for the purposes of instakill they are T4 which means no FNP) and with AP3, see ya later bye marines. Let's then say that the sorcerer passed his invul save, well you still have your HQ to shoot with as well as the 2 broadsides.
Ideally you will blow up that target sooner with less firepower, but even if it takes everything in your army, you still don't have to worry about those plague marines or that sorceror, thus completely changing how your opponent is viewing the game.
A lot of the time people want to go second because they get the last say. With this army going first is most beneficial because you want to deny your opponent the ability to use key items that his or her army is probably based around. (lash, fortune, hive commander, other psychic powers, orders, etc)
Removing that "fun feature" will be a psychological victory and force your opponent to react to the fact that they are starting the game with 325 points less than they thought they were (in the example of the plague marines with sor in rhino)
Also they don't get to rely on their "trick"
Obviously deployment changes based on whether you are going first or second, but due to the pathfinder's scout move you can still get to the best spot after your enemy has deployed so that both pathfinder units can shoot at the same target.
The main change for me in this list (besides the missile crazyness) is that I don't take any fireknives and I have 3 units of 10 kroot total. I used to never take kroot, but they are pretty cheap, can outflank, and have good charge stats (well, good enough to tie up oblits anyway) Plus they are a troop choice which means in 66% of the games my opponent HAS to pay attention to them. With 5 troop choices in 1750 I should be able to get some good positioning for holding objectives.
I am kind of sad about the fireknives, but they always get me into trouble. I think it is the mentality of "well I paid 20 points for the dang gun I better get as many shots out of it as i can" so instead of safely using them i used them very aggressively and they ended up dying around turn 3 or 4 on a regular basis. When I started using Deathrains I found that they lasted until at least turn 4 and most of the time until the match was over. They hit more often at a higher strength and a farther range, I think that i will have to run deathrains for a while until GW makes them assault 2 in the 5th edition tau codex (come on R'myr, share your gun tech with all your normal troopers, they have been working so hard!)
More updates to come on how the missiles are working out.
-Krox
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