Droning On: A Farsight List

At the onset of 7th edition, it was my intention to try out lots of different lists so I could get a feel for the edition. With that in mind, I decided that my game logs would just give you a brief description of whatever list I would be playing so I could churn out game reports without getting bogged down in the details (which is why I ended up burning out on game logs last edition). Welp, it turns out that with Feast of Blades Qualifier, OFCC and The Harvester coming up this year I am going to be needing a lot of practice with my tournament list, which just so happens to be my Tau, so the vast majority of my games will be at least some variation on this list. So for the sake of completeness I decided I would do a quick write up and explanation of what I have taken and why I took it. 

I also, figured I would give a little explanation as to what the idea behind the army is. This army was designed to be a very visually unique army on the table, instead of crisis suits I have decided to do a few conversions to set the army apart from other armies out there. Every crisis suit in my army is represented by what I call a Man-o-war drone which is just a conversion based off of the recon drone model from the pathfinder kit. The commanders will be what I call Angelfish command drones. I'm still debating on the inclusion of broadsides in the final list, but if I do, they too will be drones. I will admit I may have dropped the ball a little bit on the riptides who are mostly just out of the box models but I plan on them being heavily battle-damaged to represent that they are of the few remaining living fire-caste soldiers left on the planet, which is an earth caste manufacturing planet where technology at present is available in much larger numbers than soldiers. Below is a picture of an angelfish, escorted by 2 observation drones (counts as markerlight drones but modeled different to represent that they are attached to the angelfish) joined to a unit of 4 markerlight drones. In the midground is a unit of 3 Man-o-war stalker drones (Crisis suit w/ 2 missile pods) and in the far back is a man-o-war demolition drone (Crisis suit w/ 2 fusion guns)

Anyway, now that you have an idea of what the army looks like, here is a look at the present 1500 list that I have been playtesting:

Codex: Farsight Enclaves 1500pts

HQ:
2x XV8 Commanders (Angelfish Command Drone)
-2x missile pods
+Target lock
+Drone Controller
+2 Marker Drones

TROOPS:
(all of the following models have bonding knives as required by Codex: Farsight Enclaves)
3-man crisis suit team (Man-O-War Stalker Drones)
2x missile pods each

3-man crisis suit team (Man-O-War Suppression Drones)
2x burst cannons each
2x Gun drones each
+Advanced targeting system on each crisis suit in the unit

2-man crisis suit team (Man-O-War Hunter Drones)
2x Plasma Rifles each

3 single-man cisis suit teams (Man-O-War Demolition Drones)
2x Fusion Guns each

ELITE:
Riptide:
+Ion accelerator
+Twin-linked fusion gun
+Early warning Override
+Velocity Tracker
+Earth-caste piloting array

Riptide:
+Ion accelerator
+Twin-linked fusion gun
+Early warning Override
+Velocity Tracker

FAST:
2x 4-man units of markerlight drones

A quick explanation:
This army is all about putting firepower where you need it, when you need it.

Typically I deploy both of the commanders each attached to a marker light drone squad, both riptides, and the missile suits, then I deepstrike the three solo fusion suits, the 2-man plasma squad and the burst cannon squads.

I use my long range firepower to chip away at the enemy and take out whatever targets present themselves as well as set up targets for my reserves. Once reserves start arriving I use them to take out their respective target of choice/ claim objectives. This list is all about being flexible, putting units where you need them when you need them.

There are a few drawbacks, however, due to being such a small elite force. First and foremost this list has got nothing going for it in the psychic or assault phases. Str 5 T4 troops aren't horrible, but I'm under no illusion that they have any business being in combat. Next up, my anti-infantry is lacking at best. The burst cannon unit can do some serious damage, but they are hindered pretty bad by their 18 inch range. Finally, the warlord is very vulnerable being in a unit of only 7 models at toughness 4, only having a 3+ save and that unit being a very high priority for my opponent to take out.

Despit all this though, I think the basic list idea does have potential, I just need to work on boosting up my anti-infantry and better utilizing terrain to keep my commander safe.

Expanding it to 1750 and beyond I am either going to include broadsides or increase the number of crisis suits I bring to the table for more resilient mobile troops. Also, I am looking at bringing skyrays as my anti-air and shifting my riptide's roles to be more surviveable anti-infantry/ anti-vehicle units.