Co-ordinated Fire is a great thing, that lets you drop a massive, 1000-point hammer on some poor target.  The problem is, if you are dropping those 1000-point hammers, you've got ONE to use per turn.

Several people have suggested trimming formation sizes to force the use of co-ordinated fire more.  The counter-argument is that high activation counts break Epic.

A few questions:  

1) What is the largest number of activations that does NOT break a 3000-point game?  12, 14, 15?

2) Should we push the Tau list to run at the high end of the activation count?

3) if we do push to higher activations (ie, smaller/cheaper formations), does that excessively screw over the armies that really struggle to have more than 8 like AMTL or OGBM (since Tau are supposed to struggle a bit against large War Engines)?

A little more math [ducks rotten tomatoes]: 15 activations means that activations need to average 200 points each, 14 activations need to average 215 points each, 13 activations average 230 points each, and 12 activations average 250 points each.  That means it's do-able, if the formations range from 100 points to roughly 350 points.

4) Assuming we push for higher activation counts, what units do we want to shrink?

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It has less to do with an absolute number and more to do with the proportion compared to the opponent.  Anywhere up to almost 1.5x is workable something that can be overcome with tactics and strategy.  Since most armies max out at around 10-11 at 3000 points (once you figure in things like air assaults that take up more than one activation), 14 or 15 is about the limit.

2) Should we push the Tau list to run at the high end of the activation count?

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Neal

It's been mentioned many times before that the EPIC TAU RECON PACK actually has more miniatures in it than the FW site indicates.

No need to shrink the size of the Tetra formation because of that reason.

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Hena, my math suggests that 6x FW would be ~150, while 3x DFish would be ~75, or a total of 225

The suggestion for reducing some of the infantry formation sizes should be done in conjunction with the notion of forcing the Tau to activate the infantry in pairs through *Co-ordinated action* precisely to reduce the 'popcorn' effect. Note, I am unsure just how powerfull this would be as you could potentially get 12x FW in Dfish shooting something up, possibly with crossfire etc which would be quite potent. In conjunction with a Crisis assault this would be very deadly.


However, even without this cost reduction the current list is fairly easy to 'popcorn' to reasonable effect eg:-

Hero Cruiser                150
Fire Warriors               200
Fire Warriors               200
Fire Warriors               200
Fire Warriors               200
Scorpionfish + SC       350 (BTS)
Stingray support group  225
Stingray support group  225
Recon support group  150
Recon support group  150
Recon support group  150
Orca dropship              150
Orca dropship              150
Orca dropship              150
Barracuda Fighters    175
Barracuda Fighters    175

Giving you 16 activations with the Cruiser for TK shooting, Scorpionfish and Stingrays with Recon groups for objective grabs and long range shooting, Orcas and FW for local attacks and air cover if needed. Depepending on how you play it, 12-15 activations per turn and the ability to planetfall a nasty surprise.

Or you could drop the fourth FW cadre to upgrade the Stingrays back to HHeads and use the remaining 150 points to convert another FW cadre to be a Battlesuit cadre with upgrades, dropping the army to *only* 15 activations.


(Edited to correct the 'Skyray' error)

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Ginger, there is no skyray support group. Do you mean hammerheads?

Nope, I actually meant Stingrays saving 50 points over two HHeads. This with other minor savings changes the third Hammerhead support group into the Scorpionfish + SC and makes it the BTS

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Precisely my view. Going smaller and cheaper in formation size will not promote coord-fire use, it will promote stalling tactics to draw out all the opponent's activations before you commit anything important to the fight.

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Ditto.

The major advantage of Coord Fire is to use it like Eldar on a triple activation to push towards making it IGOUGO, with the Tau getting in the first (and therefore hardest) hit.  It's an alpha strike.

Small formations moves in the opposite direction.

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Neal

Guys, if you re-read my earlier post I did say that you also needed to force the Tau infantry to be activated in pairs. This would be a modified version of Co-ordinated fire as suggested here.

However, to cut the Tau activations down to a reasonable level, I have a feeling that other formations would need to be included in this rule (like recon formations) and as I said both here and in the other thread it is a very theoretical idea.

For example if we applied these principles to the above list, the reduced FW cadres would save 150 which could provide a fourth Recon support formation. However the army would then have a maximum of 12-13 activations depending on whether the FW were in the Orcas or not.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

OK, so other than bringing the independent Drone Formation back (which was dropped because of a bad copy of the Expendable rule), and pulling the FW Cadre to 6+3, it can be done now, and should aim to max out at about 15 formations or so.

Just a thought for playtesting.

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