The Eight

[Muckwarrior]

Has anyone been able to determine how to use The Eight to make them competitive?

[Panzer]

I fear competetive The Eight is just not a thing. Their loadout is just not optimized enough and it doesn't fit into the T'au Sept castle list which is almost exclusively played in tournaments.

[Happy-inquisitor]

The Eight are more viable than they look but I do not think you are going to build a top tier tournament list around them.

 

You could probably win a local 1 day tournament with them, they have enough going for them to do that. I do not really think they could stretch to winning a big 2 day tournament without one amazing run of luck on your side. Sooner or later you will run into something more honed and efficient in the hands of a player who is unfazed by the tricky and unusual way that The Eight play.

 

Also they bleed kill points if you are in a tournament where the missions still use that mechanic (or in a much modified form such as ITC secondaries). If you are playing the CA18 missions however then they have a lot of strength in a couple of those and you can fill out additional detachments to give you options to get the win in the others.

[Muckwarrior]

Thanks for the input. What kind of casual lists work well with them? Any other Septs that work with them that support them?

[Panzer]

Well casual is casual. Just take whatever else you like. ^^

 

Markerlight sources and Troop choices would probably of interest for your. Also some ranged anti-tank I guess.

[Happy-inquisitor]

Thanks for the input. What kind of casual lists work well with them? Any other Septs that work with them that support them?

 

Start out with a Battalion to give them some much needed CP, initially stick with FSE because they also need a few more drones to jump in front of incoming shooting. While it is probably not actually a good choice running FSE Breacher teams with them could definitely be fun. At this point you are probably at or close to 1500 points.

 

Then take your pick of what you like with what points you have left. If you are playing at 1750 you may just want to fill it out with a Sa'cea detachment with the regulation markerlight sources and maybe an Ethereal - because Farsight might not trust Ethereals but their rules help him and his buddies out a lot. 

 

I have found Kroot Hounds quite nice with The Eight, there are some pretty choppy characters in there but they lack volume of attacks to clear chaff which is where the hounds are really strong. Charge something durable into a blob of infantry to eat the overwatch then charge in the hounds to apply volume of attacks to them. Also the hounds are really fast and if you hide them they can deny shooting on all those valuable but relatively fragile characters.

[beefeb]

I would buy and build the 8 in a heartbeat if the farsight model were a plastic or fw resin piece....

Unfortunately its failcast and i wont waste anymore money on that crap.

[Panzer]

I would buy and build the 8 in a heartbeat if the farsight model were a plastic or fw resin piece....

Unfortunately its failcast and i wont waste anymore money on that crap.

 

There aren't any failcast models sold by GW. They improved their Resin a lot since then.

[Waking Dreamer]

I would buy and build the 8 in a heartbeat if the farsight model were a plastic or fw resin piece....

Unfortunately its failcast and i wont waste anymore money on that crap.

 

I would recommend it if you're already 60% thinking of wanting to do The Eight.

 

There are some minor work / clean ups you probably have to do, like heating the sword straight, but the doesn't take more than a few minutes. 

 

As long as you paint The Eight consistently, you wont notice the difference between the resin and plastic models.

 

[Marshlands]

Get to 2.5k/ 3k they're decent enough. Main thing is battallions for the cp.

 

They go well alongside a big farsight crisis blob to buff/ use stratagem. Aside from troops and hqs to make up the lost cp, you basically need more hard hitters to support their limited damage output, hence larger games as you can't fit all this in at 2k

 

Also put a hazard suit at the front with grav and warscaper drones and watch the opponent fail 2" charges against the -2 and -2D3 charge debuffs!

 

If your opponents deepstrikers don't have guns (say tzaangors) torchstar can deny an entire flank by herself too which is pretty badass

Edited February 12, 2019 by Marshlands

[Charlo]

Playing about with using The Eight in my head as a purely fun way to build a Tau army and have a laugh with it so glad I found this thread.

 

Firstly Waking Dreamer those models look great! LOVE the Fusion Blades!

 

If you wanted to play this as (for arguments sake) 1500, would a battalion of Breachers + Fireblade etc be enough support? Really like the idea of Breachers with the FSE Sept.

[Happy-inquisitor]

Playing about with using The Eight in my head as a purely fun way to build a Tau army and have a laugh with it so glad I found this thread.

 

Firstly Waking Dreamer those models look great! LOVE the Fusion Blades!

 

If you wanted to play this as (for arguments sake) 1500, would a battalion of Breachers + Fireblade etc be enough support? Really like the idea of Breachers with the FSE Sept.

 

My last 1500 list had 2 Strike Teams and a Breacher Team, minimum size with 2 drones each. 2 Cadre Fireblades with 1 drone each. I unit of pathfinders with a couple of the special drones. That is about all you can fit into 1500 but it is enough to camp objectives and all those drones are stupidly annoying for an opponent to get through before they can hurt your Character models. Breachers can definitely find a place but you do need something to go grab objectives and Breachers lack the range to do that and still contribute. Please bear in mind I was playing CA18 missions so I literally did not care about kill points - not that you can avoid bleeding kill points with The Eight anyway.

 

Having just one unit of pathfinders basically just paints a huge target on them. This is fine, they are a distraction. Once all your BS2+ shooting is in effective range you don't need more than a couple of markerlights. By turn 3 your opponent will realise that every anti-infantry shot that was not directed at drones was an anti-infantry shot wasted.

 

Honestly it is only barely functional at 1500 and you will suffer a severe shortage of CP but it is a blast to play.

[Charlo]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking... I'm considering doing it for funsies as it wouldn't be a HUGE amount to paint.

 

Makes sense to use some strike teams I suppose, you need that 30" to stand back. One unit of breachers would be a must, maybe two to maximize aggression.

 

In terms of actually using the Eight, how do you go about it? Drop as many together as possible near appropriate targets and let rip?

[Panzer]

If you go with Strike Teams give the Shas'ui a Markerlight as well. Every little bit helps. ^^

[Happy-inquisitor]

Yeah that's what I'm thinking... I'm considering doing it for funsies as it wouldn't be a HUGE amount to paint.

 

Makes sense to use some strike teams I suppose, you need that 30" to stand back. One unit of breachers would be a must, maybe two to maximize aggression.

 

In terms of actually using the Eight, how do you go about it? Drop as many together as possible near appropriate targets and let rip?

 

Keep The Eight together for the most part, run them all at whichever part of the enemy lines you want to break and shoot/chop it up. The try to roll up the flanks. They have some sweet overlapping buffs and defensive rules for each other, if you split them up too much they lose power fast. When going into combat go in mob-handed if at all possible - between them those commanders pack a mean punch. Remember you have two uses of Mont'ka - one is usually on turn 1 then you probably do not want to be using it on turns 2 & 3 as you will mostly be using charges to increase your mobility so the 2nd is most likely on turn 4 or 5 to reposition for objectives or hunt down stragglers.

 

Ob'lotai and O'vesa can lay down decent covering firepower but it is not a pure shooting list in the normal T'au way it is much more a mixed list in which the old adage is your guide :

 

Shoot the choppy things, punch the shooty things.

[Charlo]

Makes sense, basically send them off and try to steamroll whatever get in their way!

 

Why do the Tau commanders hit hard in combat? I'm not seeing it currently? Obviously Farsight has the Dawnblade then there is the Fusion Blades and Onager Gauntlet, but what about anything else? Aren't they just AP0 1D? 

[Marshlands]

Makes sense, basically send them off and try to steamroll whatever get in their way!

 

Why do the Tau commanders hit hard in combat? I'm not seeing it currently? Obviously Farsight has the Dawnblade then there is the Fusion Blades and Onager Gauntlet, but what about anything else? Aren't they just AP0 1D?

By tau standards, because they're all WS 3+

 

You still can't kill anything tough and are vulnerable to anything melee orientated, but against shooty non fliers you can win the fight and stop them shooting.

 

Notable exception is if you keep drones nearby you can embaress some pretty heavy hitters by negating high damage attacks

[Happy-inquisitor]

Makes sense, basically send them off and try to steamroll whatever get in their way!

 

Why do the Tau commanders hit hard in combat? I'm not seeing it currently? Obviously Farsight has the Dawnblade then there is the Fusion Blades and Onager Gauntlet, but what about anything else? Aren't they just AP0 1D? 

 

Farsight hits like a typical Smash Captain. Brightsword is not far behind in damage output. Bravestorm is not too shoddy as his "normal" punches are S5 AP-1 D1 which are decent at clearing out infantry. Similarly Torchstar does S5 AP-1 D1 punches which hurt most infantry.

 

The other  2 commanders only contribute numbers of less quality attacks. As a group they are putting out 24 S5 attack quite a lot of which have AP or better damage/strength or both.  If you split them up then they lose the re-rolls on many of their attacks and they lose the concentration of force that lets them cut through enough of the opposition that they take fewer punches in return - and they still have that special Tau trick of offloading any big punches onto drones.

 

They have some pretty good defence against counter-charge which also combos up - e.g. Warscaper drones forcing an opponent to either risk failing the charge or do so from within range of all those flamers. I find that really helps them tilt the tempo of the game and get off more charges than the opposing forces do.

 

I have had them go toe-to-toe with combat-oriented Aeldari (Drukhari plus Harlequins) and just pulverise the squishy elf characters. S5/T5 is just so much better basic statline than S3/T3 (and against those 4++ who cares if a lot of the attacks are only AP-1 or AP0). They cannot match the absolute best smash characters in the game but nor should they - what they can do is surprisingly good for Tau and actually not bad by a reasonable objective measure of CC ability. 

Edited March 15, 2019 by Happy-inquisitor

[Panzer]

 

Makes sense, basically send them off and try to steamroll whatever get in their way!

 

Why do the Tau commanders hit hard in combat? I'm not seeing it currently? Obviously Farsight has the Dawnblade then there is the Fusion Blades and Onager Gauntlet, but what about anything else? Aren't they just AP0 1D? 

 

Farsight hits like a typical Smash Captain. 

 

 

Farsight hits far far below a Captain Smash to be fair. He has the same amount of attacks, strength and slightly better AP (which is not that important at -3 vs -4), however he does only 1d3 damage instead of flat 3. Now that's just the default Captain with a Thunderhammer. The Captain Smash has +1A in the profile, gets +1d3 attacks via Stratagem and gets +1 to-wound because he's a Blood Angel. Not to mention the Stratagems to fight twice and fight once again after death. Oh and the Warlord trait to increase the hammer to flat 4 damage.

 

Farsight fights slightly worse than a regular Thunderhammer Captain (which is still good!) but isn't nearly as devastating as a Captain Smash.

[Marshlands]

Yeah a smash captain is a whole different league.

 

The other points are all valid though it's not their melee damage output it's their 'close range' damage and various tricks, most of which work best close up. Even having so many small units with fly allows for a bunch of shenanigans (block a knights movement and Charge with lines of 2 drones)

 

The main appeal of the 8 to me is all the tricks they can pull at close range, there's nothing to do with them holding back.

[Happy-inquisitor]

Yeah a smash captain is a whole different league.

 

The other points are all valid though it's not their melee damage output it's their 'close range' damage and various tricks, most of which work best close up. Even having so many small units with fly allows for a bunch of shenanigans (block a knights movement and Charge with lines of 2 drones)

 

The main appeal of the 8 to me is all the tricks they can pull at close range, there's nothing to do with them holding back.

 

Smashguinius is in a whole different league but that is why I said The Eight were not a match for the best smash characters in the game. A regular Codex Compliant smash captain is not really so much better than Farsight and if you play him right - i.e. keep him in good company to be a team player like a real T'au - he can win that fight. Drones are the magic ingredient here as in almost any discussion about The Eight.

 

Get up close and personal, use the FSE trait to your advantage. Then charge because that way you get to swing first. On the opponent's turn use every special rule you have to mess up and disrupt their ability to counter-charge and regain the initiative -  and of course use and abuse drones at every opportunity.

 

The main appeal to me is that they are just so interactive with the other player and basically just so much fun. They are also really not bad; they are not the best most optimised T'au list possible but nor are they hopeless.

[Charlo]

Awesome guys. Loving this. Always drawn to hero-hammer and think this could be a good project to do eventually!

 

If you have a squad of drones near a commander,can they tank the wounds? So could be worth taking a drone squad to sit near the 8 if needed? Sorry if a silly question, I'm not familiar with Tau outside of punching them with Knights.

[Panzer]

Awesome guys. Loving this. Always drawn to hero-hammer and think this could be a good project to do eventually!

 

If you have a squad of drones near a commander,can they tank the wounds? So could be worth taking a drone squad to sit near the 8 if needed? Sorry if a silly question, I'm not familiar with Tau outside of punching them with Knights.

 

For sure! Surround them with Shield Drones and watch the opponents low RoF weapons cry. ^^

[Happy-inquisitor]

Awesome guys. Loving this. Always drawn to hero-hammer and think this could be a good project to do eventually!

 

If you have a squad of drones near a commander,can they tank the wounds? So could be worth taking a drone squad to sit near the 8 if needed? Sorry if a silly question, I'm not familiar with Tau outside of punching them with Knights.

 

Absolutely, mastering the art of drones is the key to playing well with T'au in 8th edition.

 

Saviour Protocols allows a drone to intercept a successful wound roll on any <Sept> Battlesuit or Infantry on a roll of 2+. The important thing is that they do not intercept damage they intercept a successful wound attempt and turn it into a single mortal wound. So that volcano cannon gets turned into just one mortal wound, which a shield drone can then try to save on a 5+.

 

Similarly in close combat a thunderhammer has the advantage of flat 3 damage over the Dawn Blade but as you were going to use Saviour Protocols on it anyway it does not matter. It is (maybe) one dead drone. That is how I have had Farsight cut down a regular SM Smash Captain before now - just watch out for them fighting again when you kill them and make sure you still have a couple of drones handy.

 

Always make sure you keep some drones within 3" of your key models and you can offload the big nasty hits. Go ahead and take the majority of bolter-fire and whatever on the commanders themselves if your opponent makes the mistake of shooting directly at them - with several wounds and a 3+ save you should not sacrifice your valuable drones too easily.

[Charlo]

Nice, didn't realise it was per wound that a drone is lost before rolling for damage. That's great.