Blog #2 - Rant - Tau EMP Grenades: Worth It?

Now, I started the game with Tau, so they are pretty close to my heart, and I thought I'd talk about a piece of wargear that I always found interesting: EMP grenades. With the way the Tau fight, I've always questioned why this upgrade was put in the codex in the first place. When would you need anti-tank assault grenades on your Fire Warriors or Pathfinders? I'm gonna go through some numbers and look at the possibility of fielding EMP grenades in a game.

The first unit this upgrade can be given to is the good old Fire Warrior. Lets start with a small squad of 6 in a basic Devilfish. Thats 168 points, and with it you have a small scoring unit in an AV12 transport. This is a unit normally designed to be anti-infantry, and to hold objectives, so to attempt to use the grenades would be putting this unit far out of its norm, and put it in pretty serious danger. Besides, even if you're only going to use it for anti-tank purposes, your only going to take out one vehicle at the most, since they are going to get assaulted or shot to death. Plus, in terms of anti-tank, you can get 2 Broadsides for about 20 Points cheaper. So that won't work.

Now, lets move on to another unit that could make more sense: Pathfinders. Despite being more expensive to start out, you do get scouts, so you can come in and take out any pesky artillery piece(a lot of IG vehicles come to mind, whirlwinds, maybe predators, other hammerheads, maybe fire prisms if you can hit it before it zooms off) you might see out on the table. Once they have done their job there, you can move on to using your invaluable markerlights. A good size squad (I'm gonna say 6, not too small, not too big for Pathfinders) with a basic Devilfish will run you 170 points. Only 2 points more than the Fire Warrior squad, and you lose scoring, but you do get markerlights which are, as I said, invaluable to your army. You still only have a 4+ save, so watch out for any heavy weapons, and stay in your transport as long as you need to. Once again, if used strictly for tank hunting, the same cautions apply as the above Fire Warriors, and Broadsides would be a better option.

So, to sum everything up, EMP grenades won't justify having anti-tank assault units, Crisis suits fitted with Fusion Blasters or Piranhas with Fusion Blasters will do better for close-range anti-tank power. If you have the spare points to just throw some into a unit, go for it, but you probably have better things to put your points into.