Fellow persons of the board, thanks to you all my last campaign was a great success!

Now I need your help again.

I am planning a home-brew adventure based on the Q-Ship adventure seed in MotX. Yet my issue is this: Since this is my second outing and I have five players, all at Rank 1, how tough should the opposition be for Tau? I don't want my difficulty scale to be off.

The party consists of an Iron Hands Apothecary, Ultramarine Techmarine, Space Wolf Assaulter, Blood Angels Assaulter and a Dark Angels Devastator.

I would be grateful for any suggestions.

Thanks,

MR.

The question of how difficult a fight should be should be more about how much you want to rough them up. If you want them to have an easy fight with few scratches, a handful of drones. Want them bleeding, a few squads of fire warriors coordinating fire and using cover. If however you're like me and prefer your marines either dead, dying or in smouldering messes of molten flesh and metal, a few Tau Broadsides (old variant, shoulder mounted ftw), Pathfinders to light em up and a few XV-8s to jump all around to use plasma guns plus missiles from every angle. Heck, sod that, XV-104 Riptide.

That group though could be an interesting balance, two dedicated melee, one dedicated ranged and two interchangeable...no psykers. That could allow some nice trickery.

One way I've seen which seems to be a close balance, Grey Knights in table top 5th ed are stupidly expensive per figure with upgrades. Consider that one of them is a Deathwatch marine and create a Tau force of equivalent point value from the old codex. That seems to provide a roughly even fight in some cases...odd but it isn't half far off.

OK, time for my few cents;

Based on my (not really extensive, mind you) experience, you should not make too many Tau Hordes. Unlike typical Hordes of cultists or Hormagaunts, the main danger of Tau is their weapon's Damage and Penetration - most of your players will soon learn that 10 Fire Warriors on 60 meters means a lot of hits with strength only a little bit weaker than heavy bolter. Trust me, it hurts.

To be honest, I find Tau as a great change of pace for most campaigns; instead of horde of Cultists and some CSM or horde of Hormagaunts and some big monsters, you can show that Tau are fundamentally different from both these opponents - and also from Imperium.

Make them use tactics. Tau value their soldier's lives. If you really need a wall of bodies, use Kroot. However, in most cases, they should be just a lure or part of bigger tactic. Fire Warriors should fire from range and use Devilfish to quickly retreat. Stealth Suits are great for making your players paranoid and careful; and one sudden charge of weapon-blasting XV8's in the worst possible moment can basically break the Kill-Team completely.

If that fails, they should reposition. They are faster than Kill-Team, unless they are full-Assault or White Scars; but even then they are probably scattered and far away from each other, perfect target for one-turn-kill with all this firepower.

To be honest, difference between 30 Magnitude Horde of Fire Warriors and 30 Magnitude Horde of Cultists isn't that much. However, 30 Fire warriors will be a real problem.

Now, there is a question of how strong your Kill-Team is. Iron Hands are really tough. With SW and BA Assault Marines, Dark Angel Devastator and Ultramarine Tactical - with exception of Iron Hand, everyone is perfectly suited for their role. It means that they're really going to break through everything.

BTW - do not be afraid to play on chapter's rivalries - SW vs DA, Ultramarines vs everyone who's not full Codex-adherent (especially SW), this can be really amazing.

Back on topic - this kill-team is really strong. Only thing lacking is Librarian, but I personally think it's fine, this group already has everything it needs. For them I would suggest such challenge as a good base:

If you like Mont'ka tactic;

- 3x12 Fire Warriors deployed in long range, using Devilfish to quickly move away in case Assault Marines get too close. Devilfish can also use their firepower in the meantime, and they can kick ass. They are also surprisingly tough.

- 2x6 Stealth Suits, attacking with bonuses from Surprise in a middle of firefight - with such high number of Characters, someone will pass Awareness, but than they will have to choose between being hit by Fire Warriors or Stealth. And stealth Suits can survive really long with their fields, and they put out a lot of damage.

- If everything goes fine, drop team of 3x Crisis Suit to force Marines to either divide their fire, or ignore incoming fire. Both will hurt them. If objective is really important, add 2x6 Vespid.

This is an easy challenge - my players managed to beat it with 3 Marines, and not so well chapter-optimized, so you should be fine. If your players never played any 40k RPG and do not know how it works in terms of mechanics, reduce number of Fire Warriors and Stealth Suits by half. If they played any other 40k RPG's (or if they are min-maxers), you can easily add another team or two of Stealth Suits - they are tough and present a challenge, but they are not too deadly.

That's my 2 cents, I'm sure someone more experienced will add something . I'll write more tomorrow, I'm little busy now.

These are all superb hints and tips, thanks very much - I shall chew it all over.

Appreciated as always.

MR.

Worst case scenario though, always feel free to rebalance things on the fly. Start off with a small group of enemies and if they arent suffering as much as you'd like, start to raise the numbers or change the tactics.

Say your squad of fire warriors start to lose, bring in a few drones which burst out from under the soil, ambush drones as seen in DoW, to pop up and take pot shots at close range with carbines. If the kroot are having difficulties, bring in a shaper to organise them with a pack of kroot hounds. If you do it right you can make it seem like a consistent and careful flow and escalation as reinforcements assist them. Conversely if you feel you are being too mean (no such thing frankly...) then you don't necessarily need to have things as strong. Maybe a few of the enemies spontaneously rout (silently or opt to not roll a willpower/leadership check) and have a few leave the field in fear. Perhaps if it's going too well in their favour they may mistakenly believe that the fight is there. Confident that "the defenders will handle it", they might leave or be reassigned elsewhere.

Never feel pressured to have every encounter perfectly numbered out from the off. If this is a group that you've played with before and characters you've seen then you know what they are capable of but for the first few fights you might want to use them to get your eye in for how they might play. Will the assault marine go recklessly charging up the field as a diversion for his allies to shoot as cover? Will he sit back and counter charge when the enemies get too close etc. From there you can start to plot encounters and enemy composition to challenge those conventional tactics and force them to think outside the box. I've had some encounters where I know what I'm going to throw at them and then all of a sudden get a flash of insight and suddenly change things a few minutes before to a much more interesting layout.

The other idea though is just be unpredictable. If they have a few scraps with XV-8 suits and it goes well, they might get a bit thrown when one drops in with a secret weapon such as shield gen, vectored retros, self destruct device or with one of the prototype weapons like the cyclic ion blaster or airburst frag to drop some shells on their tin can backsides...

It's seldom though going to go perfectly and that's all because of the unfortunate nature of RNGesus. Even the biggest and baddest of daemons can still have epic double zero fails and players can just score so many crits you'll begin to suspect weighted dice.

First session down and am getting a handle on things - threw some stealth suits at them, seemed to go ok...thanks for your input good people

Will report further as I go.

MR.