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Now that hounds are I5, did kroot suddenly become an effective hth unit?

My thinking is that you take a big unit of half kroot/half hounds. When you fight, generally the hounds go first, then the enemy strikes, you take hounds as casualties and the slow I3 kroot get to actually swing back.

For 156 points you get a unit of 12 carnivores and 12 hounds. If you manage to get the charge off and get everyone in, that's 72 attacks!

Vs. 10 marines (with 2 hand weapons to make it interesting):

36 hound attacks, 18 hits, 9 wounds, 3 dead.

14 marine attacks back, 7 hits, 14/3 dead, or about 5

36 carnivore attacks kill 3 more marines, and you win.

How do you get 24 models all into combat on a charge? Even if they have fleet (I don't know if they do or not) most opponents will kep to the outside range of the charge and if you are spread out to avoid templates it should be hard to get them all in to get all of those attacks. That's still a pretty effective charge though even if you dont't win combat, especially since you can almost do it again with the remaining troops.

No doubt that it's not going to happen all the time, or even when you need it to. But people "come to" Tau enough that I think it'll happen enough to at least look at the math.

And of course the smarter move is probably to make many smaller units of half and half, and send in two if needed.

Tau are rather good at plinking down soon to be assaulters, but not finishing them off. This might be a very good "finish them off" unit.

Posted By mauleed on 03/30/2006 8:19 AM

No doubt that it's not going to happen all the time, or even when you need it to. But people "come to" Tau enough that I think it'll happen enough to at least look at the math.

Very true, it would be a good counter assault unit, but difficult to hide. The smaller units I agree  would work better, and you will be causing enough wounds that even if you did not win combat on the charge you should finish a regular squad the following person's turn and be able to assualt the next incoming unit or hide on your turn.

To me the 10 Kroot unit at 70pts has always been a steal. I can now see adding some hounds to the mix.

I have always thought Kroot would be an effective choice for what they cost in a Tau army.  Alas, after seeing the battle reports from the Atlanta Games Day RTT and taking a look at the amount of terrain that tournaments seem to have, it is difficult to justify ever taking Kroot as the sparse amount of terrain you will have will be reserved for more important elements of the army.

I win 50% of my games with my Kroot Merc army.  And I consider myself to be a good player.  And our terrain covers 1/3 of the board.  And half of it is woods.

I'm sure my win percentage would drop linearly with the loss of each of those elements.

- Oaka

I think Kroot are a very effective counter charge unit. Taking them in too big of numbers will more than likely expose you to incomming fire and without an armor save they die in droves. I think they are very effective in units around 12. What they do is hide 6"+ inches in forests, and contribute to the fireing with there bolter-wanna-bes, there protection is in the fact that they can't be shoot at. Once the enemy come close, they charge and finish off any weekened assault unit.

You shouldn't take kroot for combat.

They are better than before, but unless you're going to swarm the enemy with 5 units of kroot, don't waste points giving the enemy something to chop.

Shapers with eviscerators would do it. Really wish they had done this.

Posted By onlainari on 03/30/2006 9:47 PM
You shouldn't take kroot for combat.

They are better than before, but unless you're going to swarm the enemy with 5 units of kroot, don't waste points giving the enemy something to chop.

Some support or explaination would make this information much more useful.

I'd assume he is referring to the fact that kroot dodn't do well in sustained melee engagements due to lack of armor and low leadership. Therefore, one solution would be to completely swamp the enemy with a huge number of kroot to cripple him in the initial charge.

I think your kroot packs, which include a decent number of hounds (which should strike first), will help mitigate this problem.

How does affect Kroot Merc Armies?

Do the hounds now have I5 too?

156 pts buys you 22.3 kroot with 44.6 shots = 3.7 dead marines,
- this is from 6" further away than you would have needed to be to get the charge,
- and you don't suffer casualities on the way in

If you are considering Kroot for a U.S. GW sponsored event, I'd really think about it first. If Atlanta GD RTT was any indication, you will have very little terrain and only one of the 3 table types (Chaos, Lava board, Open w/ a few trees and craters) had any trees on it.

For games and tourneys that go by the 25% rule for terrain, that's a whole other matter to consider.

I would always simply take more Kroot. As Spooky states, why bother with running the risk of getting into HtH when you can sit in 4+...

How does affect Kroot Merc Armies?

Do the hounds now have I5 too?

I would say no since the hounds in the Kroot Merc list have stats available and does not say anything about using the Tau codex for stats or rules. The Merc list is a self-sufficient list with no need for the Tau Codex to play, so I would seriously doubt that the new hounds init carries over.

-Iron Father

Against some army like tyranids or blood angels that have a lot if init 5 unit they would not even hit first and will not win the assault. you also run the risk if you are assaulted that the unit actually survive the assault and stay in close combat at your turn protecting the ennemy unit. If the kroot are in woods they are assaulting at the same init because of the cover anyway. Patch of wood are 95% of the time not big enough to hide a kroot unit deep enough to benefit from the 6 inches vision or hide a big unit in cover. For mechanized army this is a unit that start on the table. this is some reason why the tau were using minimal number kroot unit in the last codex.

If you go for the assault you might as well go for the 20 kroot, 12 hounds so the unit is stil big enough by the time it is in assault range

Most mechanised tau use lots of kroot. This is because they are cheep and provide disposable bodies/shots. Kroot are better at shooting than combat (because they lose in the long run if the enemy doesn break).

Shooting from a forest, they are a steal. Shoting in the open, they are dead. They only work really well when they get infiltrate because they can set up somewhere near an objective and shoot out of cover.
If you include hounds they do become a more viable combat unit but still need the massive numbers to survive long enough to get into combat and win.