Eeeek! O'Shaserra is under attack, defend her. She must not fall!
*ahem*
Right, I've posted this before somewhere but I'm far too lazy to fight with the search engine to find it. O'Shaserra is, perhaps, the most useful and valuable of the special characters contained with Codex: Tau Empire. Like so much of a Tau army it is not what she, individually does to the enemy that is important; it is what she enables the army to do as a whole. Let's look at what she has shall we?
- XV22 battlesuit.
- Stealth Field Generator.
- Advanced Drone Controller enabling her to control more drones than usual.
- Advanced Target Lock.
- Shield Generator.
- 2x Fusion Blaster.
- 2x Shield Drones.
- Advanced Command and Control Drone.
Now that is an awful lot of kit for the points you pay. Let's do a quick bit of math using the standard versions of everything and bearing in mind that she is of Shas'O rank. If you were to load up a standard Shas'O with the same equipment it costs 164pts. Okay, an XV-8 commander has an additional wound but they don't have a Stealth Field Generator (I'll just assume a straight trade), they also have an additional point of Toughness, Strength and Wounds. Now Strength is pretty meaningless to us but Toughness does have an impact, particularly for multi-wound models. Is it a massive down side for her? In a similar vein to the loss of IC status because of the Drones the Stealth Field Generator helps her out here. It, on its own covers a multitude of sins.
Now you also have to bear in mind (from a pure game balance point of view) that being able to load up on more hardpoint equipment than you can squeeze onto a generic XV-8 chassis mandates an increase in cost for the equipment so installed. Points wise she is very close to what you pay for the same thing if you could actually squeeze everything in. Remember that this is before we even start to look at the equipment she carries which is not available anywhere else. You're pretty much getting all of these improvements for free.
What is O'Shaserra useful for? Well, it's a bit like the Vespid. The armament suggests one thing but it doesn't really bear up to much scrutiny. If you want to charge forwards and take out heavy enemy vehicles there are better, cheaper options available. These would range from Oinks deep striking Gun Drone Squadron'O'Doom through to the one shot Ninja Suit. So, if suiciding her is out what is left? Actually, quite a lot!
Let's take a look at
the most important piece of equipment that she brings to the table. The
Advanced Command and Control Drone. If the special issue variant (Command and Control Node) is good then the ability to use her leadership value for Morale and Pinning tests as well is even better. Oh, don't forget that the radius of her sphere of influence is 150% that of a model equipped with the Command and Control Node. Never forget that this ability is an optional one; should you prefer to fail the test rather than pass then just don't use it. Whilst I'm here, let's make note that combining this rule with the "inspiring presence" rule for an Ethereal gives you unparalleled control over your troops.
The part most people usually balk at is the range. Now I really don't understand this since most games are played on a 6'x4' table with many being on 4'x4'. Let's look, though, at the in-game range that this ability has rather than the on-paper range. Okay, this primarily concerns the range with respect to the Target Priority rolls. With O'Shaserra benefiting from the rules for Jet Pack models she can actually bounce 6" forwards to extend the range of the Command Link Drone and return to her starting position at the end of the turn. Now, most units that are going to be operating out in front will also have the Jet Pack rule so they can bounce 6" towards her, if necessary, before returning to their original position at the end of the turn. This means that the Command Link Drone has an effective range of 30". If you place on the center line of the table running from your edge to that of your opponent then any model that is within 24" at the start of the turn will be able to benefit from it. That means that you are covering a circle with a diameter of 48". That is FOUR FEET. What size table are we playing on again? 6'x4'? That is one hell of a large chunk of it under her command. For the largest sphere of influence you would be looking for O'Shaserra to operate within 12" of the above mentioned center line. So we aren't even really limiting her deployment that much since she has a 24" area of deployment that maintains the full range for her abilities. To put it another way, anywhere in the middle third of your deployment zone.
Actually, things are a little better than that. Because the range is measured from the Command Link Drone itself rather than from O'Shaserra you only need to place the Command Link Drone as mentioned above. With another two Drones in the unit as well you can actually shove O'Shaserra quite a long way over if you want her in a particular location to either draw your enemy towards her or operate a zone of fear for vehicles.
On the shooting side of things the most important thing that can be said is that she has 2x Fusion Blaster rather than a single twin-linked one. Yes, she can split her own fire between two units if she wishes but that isn't going to happen all that often unless you make the basic mistake of assuming that she is intended as some sort of uber-vehicle-hunter. Just like the basic mistake that Vespid are uber-Marine-hunters. You can try it, but it will end in tears more often than not. As Oink noted above she is of most benefit when used with a large static firebase. In such situations what you are going to be in fear of is deep striking, heavily armoured enemy units appearing close to your lines. Anyone that has seen what happens when a Marine player drops a Terminator unit next to a heavy firebase consisting of Fire Warriors, XV-88s etc. and gets into close assault on their following turn will understand this fear. They have the ability to withstand the combined fire of the firebase with minimal casualties and once they hit your lines that is it. If you have O'Shaserra on hand as well then your opponent is going to give some serious consideration to not attempting this trick. If they do, then you've got an extra pair of weapons that excel at taking down TEQ on hand; best bit is that they're hitting on 2s. Her weapons are best used defensively, but you can take her into the enemy lines if you wish. It just needs a little thought.
So, you want O'Shaserra to assault the enemy lines? Right. She's going to need some protection then. Step forward a team of XV-15s or XV-25s. Whilst the GW official Tau FAQ buggered up the ability for O'Shaserra to join another unit whilst any of her drones are alive (in direct opposition to the way every other IC with Drones character works in the codex), she can be effectively screened by another unit. This unit doesn't have to be stealths but it tends to work well if they are. Why? Well, first off your opponent will need to pass a Target Priority test to shoot at her, then they're going to have to roll again to see if they can see her. If either of those two goes wrong then she's safe anyway. Besides, even if your opponent does dedicate themselves to her eradication from the table at least they're wasting the firing of their units on a non-scoring unit that isn't all that easy to kill anyway.
Why accompany her with a Stealth team? Simple really. Burst Cannons! In this role her primary function is to assassinate a target, be it a Vehicle or otherwise. To do this you are going to have to break through to them and this is where the Burst Cannons come in. They can clear a path through to your target and hold off anything that looks like it's going to get in the way. Close assault worries? Remember your Stealth Field Generator. If anyone charges you they'd better be packing Frag or Plasma grenades. Whilst this is unlikely to alter the overall outcome of the assault it does buy you some time. Once there you can deliver the killing blow and then worry about how you get out again....... Usually it needs you to use a unit to get her in and another to get her out. What you'd be looking for is to force a path through from another direction and as O'Shaserra hits and runs from her target this other unit uses the assault phase move to interpose themselves between her and the enemy line to both provide covering fire and force those additional dice rolls before your opponent can actually roll to hit her.
Now this may well seem like an overly large expenditure of points simply to deliver and retrieve a killing blow to a target that absolutely must die but it's not like the other two units are doing nothing and will often be seen in the army anyway. The other common counter to this kind of strategy is that of removing the Command Link Drone from close to your other units. As shown above the range isn't that small, besides, with the Command Link Drone along for the ride those units that are providing insertion and extraction for her benefit from the leadership bonus and will, therefore, be doing the job unless they are destroyed utterly.
Remember that all of this is just in normal games. Once you get into a Cities of Death match up things get even juicier! Ok, in CoD units remain scoring until they are under 25%. Fair enough. Consider the following basis for building a CoD army. O'Shaserra and six units of six Fire Warriors with no upgrades. At 6 models strong the unit will score until it is down to a single person and with the way things tend to go a unit of 6 is unlikely to ever get to having one model left, it is usually the case that there will be enough to count as scoring or they are all dead. No upgrades? With O'Shaserra on hand you really aren't going to need it. Not with that Leadership score of hers. It may be playing the odds somewhat but don't say that like it's a bad thing. How much does all of that cost? 535pts. So in a basic game at 1500pts, one of the more common varieties, at least over on the right side of the pond, that means you are starting out with 6 scoring units which will need to be destroyed to remove their scoring status, see above, plus some nasty anti-surprise guns. That's not a bad basis at all for a CoD army, take that and throw in some flavour. Usually you'd be looking at spending around 500pts on the flavour at 1500; in this case you have almost 1000pts still left to spend. That is just sick. In my standard anti-arrogant-Boy Snide's Outrageously Shiny Leather and PVC clad Soul Trainor CoD list this base is backed by a team of 8 pathfinders with Warfish, two Railheads with SMS +usual +sensor spines for capturing ruins, 4 Helios XV-8s and 2 Deathrains with flamers. That is a total of 10 infantry units all of which will need to be destroyed before ceasing to count as scoring (Pathfinders and Fire Warriors cease scoring at 1 model left, but again see the note above), the XV-8s are all either scoring or dead and with the Railheads now being able to enter and capture ruins through their Sensor Spines that is another 2 units that are hard to make non-scoring. Try doing something similar without O'Shaserra and see where it gets you. :)
-S
This has been a party political broadcast on behalf of the O'Shaserra party.
