# tau piranha's



## warrior-of-hope (Dec 20, 2006)

I have 3 Piranha's for my Tau army, what are good ways of using them. I really like the models, but they dont seem to do so well when i use them in my lists. I need help


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

There's some really excellent piranha tactica on tau-online, but in the meantime, here's some advice:

1: Don't load up on gear. They're fragile and expensive enough as it is. Targeting arrays if you have a fusion gun, maybe decoys if you can afford it.

2: Units of 1 or 2. Too many together are too hard to hide behind terrain. And more fast-moving scoring units the better.

3: Fusion Blaster is your friend. Buy it and go run up and break tanks.

4: Terrain is your friend. Hide behind it whenever you can.

5: Speed is your friend. Always, always ALWAYS be moving enough to get your 'speeders moving fast' rule.

6: Don't forget your drones. Launch them to tangle up enemy units until real help arrives (great for bogging down a small heavy weapon team). You're open-topped and drones are I4. Zoom in, drop drones and have them charge. Drones are also a good free fire-screen for ICs. They force an enemy squad to overkill a pair of free drones if they even want a shot at the IC hiding behind them.

Here's my usual setup for piranha.

1 squad of 2 piranha, Fusion, TA
1 squad with 1 piranha w/2 seeker missiles.

The squad of two flies around and blows up tanks and steals objectives. The solo unit keeps its fragile, expensive, ass back out of the way. It provides seeker support and gives my battlesuit commander a drone screen. Turn 5 or 6 it might break from cover and make a run for uncontested objectives. Otherwise he flies back and fourth through my deployment zone trying not to get shot down.

With the burst cannon and drones it's tempting to mass up a good sized squad and just strafe the holy hell out of infantry, but I'd rather charge a tank than a unit of S4+ guns. Against IG, fine, strafe away, but against most other races with decent guns you're going to get shot to shit. A tank only has a couple guns it can bring to bear, but ten rapid-firing boltguns can be potentially more dangerous. Especially with their own special and heavy weapons thrown in. So take the heat gun and go tank hunting.


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## Ordo Xeno Commander (Jan 17, 2007)

yea, for larger battles, take a squad of five (and yes its crazy but they are skimmers after all, just move more than six each turn), jet down to the enemies armour, staying behind cover as much as possible, when you arrive, you have 5 fusion blasters to blow the living crap out of tanks and 10 drones to pin/kill any infantry you come across.

otherwise id go with galahad, smaller battles = smaller squads


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

Five in a squad is far, far too much.

Sure, you'll blow the holy crap out of a tank...*one* tank. Meanwhile, if you break them up you can take down two or three tanks. Target locks don't help much because smart people spread their armor out, and the fusion range is too short (especially if you want to be in melta range).

Small squads, surgical strikes, hit and run. Five at once is overkill.


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## nightmarine (Mar 30, 2007)

im with galahad. seeing how useful they are im glad my friend doesnt know how to use them correctly.


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## Kujo (Aug 13, 2007)

if you are moving more than 6" per turn... why are you staying behind cover. doesn't EVERYTHING bounce off with the speeder rule???


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## The Wraithlord (Jan 1, 2007)

Avoiding being shot at entirely is far more preferrable to getting those glancing hits which can destroy such light vehicles fairly well, or even blow of the single gun it has, making it nearly useless. Skimmers are a bit more resilient than other vehicles but they can still be damaged easily enough.


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## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

not really, throw enough str 5+ at a skimmer and it will eventually stick, throw lots of high str at them and they are certainly going to suffer some ill effects. Always minimise your return fire.


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

Exactly. By 'hide behind cover' I meant it literally. Block LoS (I usually use the shortest flight stems I can get for my piranhas) to keep people from even shooting at the little buggers before I move them in to strike.

Small units, move fast, use cover, hit hard, fade. Like flying blue ninjas.


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## Ordo Xeno Commander (Jan 17, 2007)

yea i was thinking like 8 player thousan points each where a sqaud of piranhas probably wouldn't be their biggest problem. but yes other wise small squad work well.


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## nightmarine (Mar 30, 2007)

:shock: 8 people with 1k each? how long does that game last? biggest i ever had was 6 people 1.5k each and we never finnished it. (played from about 8pm-2am if i remember correctly)

yeah small squads of skimmers=lots of fun, they soak up fire that could better be used against tanks and deal damage that the opponent hates. Worst-case scenario your skimmer is shot down...oh boo hoo it cost me less than 100 points and took more fire than it was worth.


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## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

well it would seem like they make pretty good tank hunters, can drop the drones for snidey assault vs weak targets, are a bit more durable than most of theere equivilents, and are reasonably cheap. Also they can be very good for housing seekers if tou have the army set up to use them


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## Ordo Xeno Commander (Jan 17, 2007)

yea the battle was suprisingly quick actually, a few hours, maybe 5, mainly because we dominated, eliminating all major problems in the first turn with a hail of fire from various heavy weapons.


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## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

armed with seekers you can move them behind cover, somewhere to the rear or flank of the enemy armour, which should be easy enough when they can move up to 24". Next you light up the target and the seeker missiles fire of from the piranah so hit the rear/side armour. The shot comes from something the enemy doesn't even get los to, whilst they cant afford to turn to face you, even if they see the ploy coming, as that would be presenting there rear/sides to your broadsides, hammerheads and suits.


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## nightmarine (Mar 30, 2007)

nice ordo...very nice.

Jig
unfortunately i dont know too much about tau, but from what your are saying, it sounds devious and sneaky, i like it. once again Skimmers FTW!


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## Galahad (Dec 21, 2006)

My only problem with seekers on piranha is the cost attached. Adding 10 or 20 points to an open-topped, lightly armored skimmer always makes me think twice.

when I use seekers on a piranha I tend to just field one, with no other upgrades. His job is to drop a drone screen for my battlesuit commander, then bugger off behind some cover to launch seekers then fly off at the last minute to grab objectives.


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