Crisis suits, the big guns of the tau (well, I guess that's railguns, but still), the true heavy cavalry of the Greater Good.
They can be equipped for almost any kind of firefight, being able to take melta, flamers, plasma, burst cannons and missile pods, along with a whole host of wargear and support systems, ensuring there are always other ways to equip one.
They are our codex's monster unit, you can have a strong list built around little other than spamming them. They are our 2W killers, while GK have their paladins, and SW have their thunderwulves, neither of those can hope to outshoot crisis suits.
The reason why crisis suits are so good comes down to a single piece of wargear.
The multi-tracker.
While there are strong loadouts for crisis suits that don't involve multi-trackers, they are generally extremely specialized. The ability to fire two weapons a turn makes them scary. The reason people take 10 strong tactical squads is so that they can get their big gun and their special gun. A crisis suit can match the fire power of BOTH those gunners. Alone. And they can come in squads of 3 (or eight, but we're not talking about Farsight here). That puts the firepower of a squad of 3 around that of a devastator/havoc squad (before you say "but they don't get lascannons and plasma cannons etc. your squad of three can fire three autocannon equivalents and three heavy bolter equivalents in a turn, which is devastator comparable).
The big differences between them and devastators are that they are mobile, they are 2W and they can punch rhinos hard enough to make them explode, in an emergency. While that last one is pretty iffy, the first two are what make the big difference. A lucky plasma cannons shot can wipe half a devastator unit in one shot. Full health crisis suits literally cannot be killed by a single plasma cannon shot. Also, the more wounds devastators take, the less their firepower becomes. Crisis suits have full firepower after suffering 3-5 wounds (depending on drones on a character or not).
Mobility is important because while crisis suits are pretty tough, they are not thunderwulves with their 3+ invuln save. They are not paladins with their 5+ invuln and 5+ FNP. You can still lose a crisis suit to a single krak missile. Depending on how you kit it out, it can be 60+ points gone in the blink of an eye, or if you have a team leader and went crazy with the upgrades, 100+ points. There are few ways to make your suit resistant to missile sniping, with iridium armour and shield generator being the only ways I can think of, but neither are very good for various reasons. Drones maybe, but a crisis suit's real protection is JSJ (jump, shoot, jump). Start your turn in cover, move out to get a better shot, move back in during the assault phase. With any luck, you'll break line of sight. JSJ also let's them outrun almost anything, so they'll rarely end up in an assault unless you position them poorly or your opponent has unholy good luck with his assault distance rolls.
As far as sixth edition goes, they got better, though not as drastically as certain other units. The main changes they're interested in are weaker cover saves, getting to take their armour saves against dangerous terrain (huge deal) and also deepstrike mishaps being more lenient. As to the new jetpack move, I have not yet decided if it is good or bad. While on average you'll move 7", 1" further than before, if your luck abandons you, you may only move 2". At the same time though, if your luck has completely abandoned you and you keep rolling snake eyes, no mechanic will ever save you, so we'll see as time goes on whether or not this is good or bad.
PROS:
-Bigger, better, faster, stronger
-Wide variety of options (will go into that in part II)
-Almost all their weapons can glance 90% of vehicle to death
-Squads of three
-Relentless
-2W
-Fairly inexpensive for what you get
CONS:
-BS3 (not a huge issue, we actually have several ways to make them BS4/5)
-Vulnerable to missile/lascannons sniping.
-Still not great at CC
Those cons are pretty mild when you consider that all 2W models are vulnerable to high-strength weapons, just more so crisis suits that the others, and that we don't expect them to perform in CC.
Anyways, crisis suits are awesome, one of the best units in the game.
Check back in later for part II (wargear and weapon configurations) and part III (Application/tactics)
I have a few configurations I prefer, bt for me the guiding principle with Crisis Suits has always been BS 4. If the suit isn't BS 4 I am too dependent on marker lights to get hits with the important shots that the suit puts out.
ReplyDeleteThis means that, if I want a mixed weapon suit with a multi-traker, I need to go Commander with Body Guard so I can hard-wire the multi-tracker on to every suit.
If I am going Twin Linked then I can go with a regular Elite team and not worry about the hardwired gear.
Multi-Weapon I really like to combined Plasma Rifle sand Fusion Blasters. At 12 inches that's 3 shots per suit that blow through even terminators. The downside is this suit's effectiveness is cut by about a 3rd when you are more than 12 inches away, so if you leave anything in the target unit, it comes out and eats you.
Twin Weapon Sits I go Missile Pod Primarily, with Plasma Rifles a secondary choice. The twin plasma doesn't hit as hard at 12 as the plasma-fusion, but does better outside of that 12 inch bubble. The Missile pods are even better at dancing around out of reach with thei r36 inch range. Having them twinned also makes them a good anti-aircraft weapon (functionally BS 2 instead of BS 1 vs flyers) until we get something with Skyfire.
Other than that, basic unit configurations are the same, leader will have a drone controller and 2 shield drones. There will be 2 subordinate suits.
I get a HW BSF on the team lead/commander if I am playing twin missile or twin plasma, but don't bother for it with the plasma fusion.
Plasma-Fusion teams I tend to get a VRRT in there due to the likelihood of being assaulted.
That's more or less the way I play them.