[Shas-o Y-eldi-he]

I'm looking at Stealthsuits, and I have to question their effectiveness, especially considering they take up an Elite slot.

First, lets look at point cost. Your vanilla XV25 costs 30 points and comes pre-equipped with a Burst Cannon. For comparative purposes, if you strip the cannon away, you get a bare unit cost of 22 points. A mere 3 points less than an XV8 Shas'ui. Considering the stat superiority of the XV8, I don't see any reason to use XV25s over XV8s.

Also, I question if Fire Warriors can't do the job...or even do it better. For a 6-man vanilla XV25 team, you get 18 shots at 18" at a cost of 180 points. A 12-man fire warrior squad can achieve 24 shots at 12", and has a base cost of 120 points. Add in the goodies...Shas'ui, Bonding Knife, even a fully equipped Warfish...I'm up to 245 points for a Warfish-of-Fury. Now you've got 24 shots at 12", protected from charging units, with an additional 7 shots from the Warfish.

For the same 180 points it would cost to take a vanilla XV25 team, I could easily take a Deathrain team which, in my opinion, is far more effective at putting wounds on the board than a stealthteam.

Now, of course, the stealthsuits do have a couple of advantages over Fire Warriors and XV8's. For one, they can infiltrate. But with the range of Tau, do we really need to infiltrate stealthsuits? I'd much rather infiltrate Kroot and charge.

They also have stealth field generators, but this is another thing that I see as unreliable. After shooting from 18", jumping 6", and enemy infantry advancing 6", at best you can stay 18" away from the enemy. This means your opponent only needs to roll a 6 or greater on 2d6, which is higher than 50% probability.

Maybe I'm just playing them wrong, but is it really worth taking Stealths over XV8s? And can Fire Warriors do their job better?

Before I wrap this post up, another thing comes to mind. Indeed, they can take Fusion Blasters. But again, do you really want to get within 6" of your enemy to bust a vehicle with such a relatively expensive team? And also, can't a Fusion Piranha do the job better?

[Souchan]

staying 18" inches away after an adversary has moved will leave you safe against most troop weapons, rapid fire and heavy weapons can't move if they want to shoot you from that distance which boosts the difference to 22-24 inches. Unreliabe enough to have your opponent wonder if he should bother. Now if your doing this to grey knights it isn't gonna work and you will get the 18", but you should be able to send them after the right targets eaasily enough.

One other thing is they are essentially a unit that brought their own cover, sometimes I just don't have enough places to hide and then stealths deal with that really well. One way I use them(sometimes) is to have my entire army concentrated to one side and leave the stealths on their own on the other flank(ofcourse dont do this if the exposed flank is filled with bikers/jump packers etc, unless your using a bare bones unit that your fine sacrificing). This has differing effects on my opponent who you can then respond to accordingly.(stuff like this is really dependent on terrain setup though)

But yeah, I love my stealths, no other unit of mine has ever shot so horribly, but they keep winning close combats(compared to all my other Tau not counting my commander Snowblight(farsight)) and distract a lot of my enemies forcesXD

[scoutfox]

I have found Stealth teams to be an invaluable addition to my Cardre. My last game they made the difference between a loss and a draw, as they took my enemies table quarter in a cleanse mission.

You really can't look at thier offensive capabilities when comparing them to XV8s or Fire Warriors. Thier main advantage, which you pointed out, is their ability to infiltrate. Add the fact that they are hard to target and they become a large thorn in your opponents side.

Recently I've started using bare bones squads of just three models for 90 points. Many times my opponenet ignores them for juicer targets, since the Stealth team can't really hurt him so badly. Then the small team takes objectives or kills that last squad member to drop a unit below 50%. The small teams won't wipe anything out, but can be used to force your opponent to make a choice. Do they use a 150 unit to hunt down your 90 point Stealths, or ignore them knowing the Stealths will be plinking him all game and possibly gaining VP with objectives? Either way you win. If your opponenet diverts some of his forces to deal with your infiltrating team, then that's one more unit not attacking your skimmers or XV8s.

I wrote a tactica about a slightly larger team if you want to read that: http://forums.tauonline.org/index.php?topic=40908.0 This unit will draw more attention than a bare bones team, but has a little more offensive capabilities and can possibly causing pinning (very small chance given leadership of other armies).

Remember you still have two empty slots for XV8s and two HQ slots as well, so there should be room for your favorite JSJ suits.

[Shas-o Y-eldi-he]

I guess I just like the idea of using a full force of 15 XV8's instead of filling gaps with stealthsuits. (I already have 6 XV8s, not counting my O'Shovah. And I'm planning on buying the Apocalypse Tau Rapid Insertion Force, which has 9 more XV8s).

[scoutfox]

If you maxed out a Farsight army you could use 14 XV8s and still have the open slot for a Stealth team. Allthough I would then suggest making a Stealth Marker Light Team instead. It would cost more points but would likely be looked over when there is a ~1000 HQ squad with 8 XV8s in it.

You should at least give them a try before you dismiss them. I have six Stealths total and I love how they play.

[T0nkaTruckDriver]

XV8's a really good, there's no doubting that.

However in a suit-heavy army, there's rarely enough LoS blocking terrain of the correct shape and in the correct locations to hide 10+ XV8's with good lines of fire to appropriate targets. And they certainly do rely on terrain for their survival! So what a lot of people realize after trying out these suit-heavy lists is that they can limit their dependence on terrain (which is often notoriously light in tournament environments) by swapping one of their XV8 teams for a Stealth team. Stealths fit well into the VP denial methodology of the Tau without being dependent on terrain to succeed.

Regarding the effectiveness of the Stealth field, as Souchan pointed out, you have to pick your targets carefully. Anybody that can move and shoot their guns beyond 18" range is a bad target (Landspeeders, Terminators, Dire Avengers, etc). Devistators are a great target for several reasons, most prominantly because they can't move-and-fire and your opponent won't want to remain stationary to shoot them when there's a 58% chance he'll fail his spotting roll and waste all his high-strength shots for the turn. Additionally, they are usually parked in cover meaning that your more deadly XV8 weaponry (read: Plasma) is of reduced effectiveness. Burst Cannons don't care about cover.

So in small games or on big tables with plenty of LoS blocking terrain, XV8's are king. In larger games or on more sparsely equipped tables (read: tournaments), a unit of Stealths can reduce your dependence on terrain.

[greensmurf]

I have 2 squads of 5 stealth suits, and would like to add more! The ability to pack up to six 3+ saves and dish out a torrent of s5 shots can be key when you need to remove a squad from cover or a small fast moving squad. Most skimmers will suffer enough glancing hits that you are bound to roll a six for damage . Not many squads can save all the wounds 30 s5 shots can deal out when both of my teams concentrate fire. They have proven effective VS marine tactical squads, bike squads,and fast approaching assault squads that had to die. Sometimes volume of fire is the key to eliminating a threat. I use the stealthsuits agressively, coordinating the attacks from both squads.
This leaves my XV8's to counter heavier threats, and my fire warriors to mark targets. This is not the most effective army list you can take, but it is fun and effective enough to give you a chance against anything.
I think a large pack of xv15's work because if you role enough dice even 2+ targets will fail saves. Give them a chance. I did not like them and even tried to trade mine. Now they are my favorite tau unit.

[Genmotty]

I think something that has been forgotton is that XV-15s or XV-22s have a 24" Zone of threat as they can move fire and retreat.

Thats an average of 9 hitting shots every turn at 24" compared to 6 at 24"-30" for Firewarroirs quite equal.

The stealth gen cannot be relied upon, but it has a nice psychological effect making a squad uneasy about shooting back.

But the beef is to use them as that pain in the @ss GEQ mower taking a squad down in a blase of pulse fire then scooting. As a Guard player this tactic can kill a squad a turn and can leave a flank very vulnerable without much counter attack possible. As FW have to stay still in the same role it makes XV-15s XV-22s a lethal unit.

Genmotty

[nerdHammer]

Stealth suits are an interesting unit, one thing for sure is that they are expensive. 40pts a basic model if you want a targeting array, which I for one would want. I don't know if they are a must for every army though. I think the thing they do best is either tank hunt(Ord.) or go after a heavy weapons squad in cover.

I think I must play like the author of the thread because I ususally don't field them. XV8's I find are far more useful and they can deepStrike. They fill the gap very well between troops and heavy support. They have access to the best mid-range weapons which is what is needed. We have fireWarriors to deal with infantry so I see no need to have stealths just because the have can have 12-18 burst cannon shots, 24-48 pulse rifles from the stock troops handles that quite nicely in my opinion. Fusion blasters for tanks is good and well but I find Helios Shas'els are even better. We also have the biggest gun with the hammerhead to deal with tanks.

It is not worth the sacrifice to me to give up what tau need midRange support. Look at how the XV8's function.

1. Transport Killers - Missile pods are just about the best in the game. S7 36" weapons equiped on
a unit nearly asures that the transport never makes it to it's objective.

2. Elite Killers - Most armys have the nasty unit that you want to keep from ripping your
fireWarriors to shreds. Even other HQs or MCs.

Using them for these purposes balances the army well. I would say however that a good tau general will have a unit of 6-8(2 with fusion) just incase they need them. Infiltrate is too powerful to over look.

[s3d]

I like them more with the apocalypse rules when they can "call in" some fellow suits to do some nice "omg look at all those suits in my flank" moves ;D