|
CS,
It should be pretty straight forward to test out on your own.
Simply assemble some common Orc, marine and Eldar assault heavy lists from air that you see contending well enough in tourny's.
Then, build a Tau force that you think can deal with them.
Tune the Tau force until you can adequately deal with lists in 50% of the games. Now you have the necessary amount of Skyray's with no ion-heads in the list.
Note the amount of units you are forced to remove in order to get the adequate amount of Skyray's in the list.
Now, play against some bug, chaos, ork and IG lists that have only counter measures for aircraft, not rely on aircraft themselves, but may still splash one or two formations of air.
See if the "necessary amount of skyray list" which was winning 50% of its games, can conceptually (or actually) hold its own with the tourny list of IG, orks and bugs that ?have miminal reliance on air assets.
Postulate:
I think you'll find rather quickly that removing AA only from ion-heads:
1) requires you to cut other stuff from your current list so you can add in the skyrays to compensate for the loss added requirment of paying for 2+ skyrays that you were not previously taking. This means either loss of activations or at minimum, loss of ground force effectiveness and unit count out of existing formations.
2) Reducing the effectiveness of your army against ground formations as you've removed points from somewhere to pay for the additional 2+ skyrays you'll need to add in means you'll have to increase the effectiveness of some ground formation(s) to compensate for the loss. Which formations will be compensated by a net 'increase' to maintain the balance we currently have?
Example:
2 Skyrays @ 75 points added to 'some formation' are nowhere near as effective as a seperate formation of piranhas or two seperate formations of gun drones for the same cost against ground formations... and I would rather have an upgrade of 125 points for hammerheads over two skyrays for 150 when I'm considering ground force effectiveness - but something has to go in order to 'pay' for the skyrays, so something must be 'given back' to counter their impact to the ground force net effect.
3) The ion-heads losing their AA benefit will also become less appealing without their AA, so either stat change or points change to make them viable again, perhaps the 2x will distinguish them enough but I suspect a points adjustment down will be in order here.
+ + +
So by solving one 'issue' you'll have created a few others.
Again, the test above is going to be needed to see the true impact the list change will have.
Bascially - once you figure out what you need to take to sustain yourself from the air assault - will that list now maintain itself against non-air threats?
I dare say, it will not from a conseptual stand point since I feel the Tau list is already hovering around the 40% / 60% win/loss ratio presently.
This proposition is perhaps needed, but it will further the divide, not help it - regardless of what the actual ratios are.
+ + +
Seperate AA tank? I think that's a bad idea.
Be mindful, the Skyray is supposed to hit marked targets (aircraft or land vehicles) on 2+ with its seekers from core design, that's why its so deadly there and the premier of AA in the franchise.
removing it from being good at what it does just to make a new tank that's good at what the Skyray is supposed to do - really is bad on top of bad. Not the right solution at all IMHO. A new unit for something shis should do is questionable in its own right considering your premis, but its further diluted in potential when another unit means more points invested in AA and more points removed from effective ground formations... bad, bad, badd!
Cheers,
_________________
Rob
|
