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Yes I'm new to the game and yes I picked up a bunch of Tau for cheap. I like the look and fluff alot. I'm okay with a shooting army and a fan if the JSJ tactics. Largely I'm looking to see whats worth expanding with and whats not worth it. Here's what I got:

1 devilfish
1 piranha
2 squads firewarriors
2 squads kroot
1 squad pathfinders
1 squad stealth suits
1 squad sniper drones
2 broadsides
3 crisis suits (run as HQ)
Bunches of drones

2k if i max,1500 with options. Whats worth using and whats not? I wasn't blown away by any of the characters, but I think I'm not seeing everything to them. Any tactics and list suggestions would be great.

Not a bad start. I suspect the comments will (mostly) run something like this:
Lose the stealth suits and sniper drones.
Pick up crisis suits (this will be strongly emphasised).
Some may advise for a tetra (a Forge World model)
Probably more broadsides/hammerhead.

Welcome to the Tau Empire! Population: Growing!

I'm not surprised on your opinions about the special characters. I run Shadowsun, mainly to shoehorn in some anti-tank and give the leadership bubble, but I've seen people use Farsight and swear by his 1-7 bodyguard.

As a rule, most "competitive" lists involve maxing out your crisis suits (worth considering joining your HQ to a unit of 3 Elite suits unless you're taking Special Issue wargear, which saves on points and lets you take a squad of 4), minimizing numbers of Fire Warriors and "bubble-wrapping" your units with kroot and piranhas.

HOWEVER... There's no real "right" way to play an army, within reason. If you like the look of vespid, which die horribly to bolter fire, run them and see if you can make them work!

The inalienable rules of the Tau are...

1) Take Disruption Pods on vehicles. No exceptions. A 4+ cover save has saved me more times than you would believe.
2) Don't rely on ANYTHING in close combat, even kroot, or Farsight, or vespid. Some of our units can stick around with some lucky rolls- a Shas'o of mine once tarpitted an Emperors Champion for a few turns- but if you imagine Close Combat = Death, you won't be far off.
3) Railguns are your friend. Psychologically, other players fear it. Statistically, a Vendetta is probably better (off the top of my head), and probably cheaper. Don't let them know this. This leads to...
4) Focus fire. They're in transports? Shoot them out of them (Railguns excel at this!). A unit about to assault? Move a devilfish with Fire Warriors close, set up firing lanes for crisis suits, and move the target unit closer to shoot more and fight on your terms. If CC is unavoidable, make sure they pay for leaving cover.

Essentially, since the new Tau codex is (apparently!) imminent, I'd stick with stuff that won't be replaced. I could see new broadside kits, and you don't have a Hammerhead, so I'd suggest that. More crisis suits would probably work well.

Bear in mind- I follow what's going on on forums, I read tacticas, and this is what comes up time and again, but I really lack the practical experience to say this with any of my own authority. I really don't win games of 40K very often

EDIT: Dheneb got that right, but bear in mind everything anyone says is only advice, and if you can build an alternative competitive army, do it! We really need another... A friend of mine once wanted to run 15 Piranhas, all with Disruption Pods and Flechette Dischargers. If we read the rules right, assaulting a single piranha in the squadron with a 30 man mob of boys leads to 150 4+ rolls to wound

Well i started tau a while back and i will warn you its a steep learning curve lol. At first ont expect to be spnking enemies because the codex is not good enough. But I promise you will win games after losing a fair few times lol.

My advice to you is get some tetras they rock. 4 markerlights each, move 12 and hit on 3's.
Second peice of adivice is suits suits suits lol and if you can afford it i recommend PR and MP loadouts.
Thirdly most people side with Broadsides, they are good dont get me wrong but its definately nice to have a hammerhead. Dont overlook the Ion cannon either. Field broadsides for th stregnth 10 tank killer and take an ionhead for those pesky 3+ save units.
Dont ignore kroot. Infiltrate them in a build on the top floor. They tend to get ignored and a unit of 10 still pump 20 shots out at rapid fire (termi killers ) 4+ cover save and only 70pts.
FW are pretty expensive for what they are so thats why i field more kroot. If you take firewarriors stick them in a devilfish and use the FIsh of Fury tactics. If you use your markerlights in synergy you could be look at 24 shots hitting on 2's and wounding most things on 2's or 3's most things cant savethat many wounds.

I honesty think the tactic that ill help you out he most is one that most people tend to overlook with Tau is their mobility. When most people start with tau they stand and shoot. Good tactic but in practice it doesnt work often. If you are playing a good opponent that tactic will see you lose. I have played loads of battles and the best tactic is this:

If you choose to go first then set up three bases left middle and right. Your opponent will tend to follow this pattern to ty and match your units and thats their first mistake. Most of the tau units can move 12 and still shoot (suits move 6 shoot assualt 6) this means you can rotate your army to one side of your opponents force. You can then concentrate your fire on one side and wiped him out. He then has to run his unit from the other side of the table whilst you are popping his units. This doesnt always work but if it does the opponent doesnt know which direction to head in. Its good to hav say broadsides in he middle to attract the enemy as they tend to see broadsides as number one target.

If you deploy second. Address your opponents weakest flank. Be aggressive wipe one side and sweep behind. if he clumps his army together then split to the left and the right to force him move further and split his force.

Sorry for the essay just good to see a Tau player and like to help the few of us that do play with Tau.

ATO

Like the other guys said... don't be disheartened by initial losses. We do have an old book and almost everything in it costs more than what it should (compared to newer books). One thing I love about my Tau is that I'm not really afraid to try out everything in the codex and just have fun. In my experience I've found most units in the book to be OK, if used properly (yes... even vespid).

My advice is pick a list you like, and try and make it work. You will lose a lot at first, but when you do start to draw and win games it's great! Personally I use sniper drones, stealth suits, vespid, and skyrays rather frequently, and can't complain much, even though they're the weakest units in the book.

Also, you are correct that our special characters are garbage. The Forld world one, O'Rymr, is the least useless, but he's still a bit on the expensive side and has quite dated rules.

Always nice to see new Tau players, and don't let the learning curve dissuade you... the wins will come and they will be glorious. (esp. if it's Blood Angels or Grey Knights that you beat )

Play hard, play smart and focus your fire.

New players should shy away from using any of the following:

ethereals
vespid
sniper drone teams
gun drone teams
skyrays
any of the special characters

Protect your markerlights and keep the enemy at range. Use vehicles to block or make quick escapes. Hit the enemys in the speed (their transports) before trying to gun them down, a slow enemy is a dead enemy.

Thanks for the input guys. Love the deployment tactics, Alltheones. Mobility is obviously key, I'm just not used to it with my other games I'm sort of happy to hear that I was initially right about the Characters, but not overly so (thanks GW....). the markerlight mechanics have me a bit confused, but I can probably find another thread about that here.
I've seen some tactica video so I know what you mean as to 'bubble wrapping' my units.
Anyway, thanks again guys.

Marklights only really have one confusing rule. The rest is straight forward.

ML's come in 2 flavors Markerlights and Networked Markerlights. The main difference between the 2 is that Network Markerlights tokens can be used by the unit that scored the markerlight hit. Normally Markerlight tokens can be only used by subsequently firing units.

Any Tau (Crisis, Fire warrior, Hammerhead, etc) or Vespid Strainleader can use markerlight tokens to gain bonuses.

1 Markerlight token can be expended to give 1 unit 1 of the following bonus:

+1 BS up to BS5
+1 penalty to cover up to 7+ effectively removing cover
-1 penalty to targets LD check for pinning no limit
Ignore night fighting

The above are very straight forward uses. The last use can is the problematic one: fire a Seeker missile at BS5. General play is that if there is Markerlight token on an enemy unit, the Tau player can spend that token to fire a Seeker missile at the target. This get messy when you start breaking down the rules of how this works out.

Markerlight tokens expire at the end of your shooting phase. So use them or lose them.

You have a good start there, a few mistakes (the snipers for examples)

If i where you, i'd take another kroot unit, an other pathfinder unit
(you can then separate the devilfish from them and use them for you FW, only then they become good at capturing objectives)

the stealth suits are not that bad, if all armed with burst canon and with a markerlight drone, they become really good against light infantry (if you play against Meq don't use them, against guards, eldar or other tau, or a swarm nids list they're good)

for your FW, pulse riffle, against Meq, pulse carbine against others, but I wouldn't count on the pinning effect (except if you couple them with the markerlights) , not on its actual rule though... maybe in another codex or edition it'll change.

If you plan to field another piranha, forget about farsight, you simply can't deploy them, or shadowsun, you'll now have an anti tank skimmer that would more likely last longer and won't draw all the fire power to them

in the past, broadside have been really reliable, in particular combined with marker teams (bye bye 3 land raiders and minies inside on first turn), field them by couples, one with target select (sorry spanish codex, don't know the actual name)
and both cyber drone control with defense drone and targetting array, they'll last longer and you can select up to shoot to up to 4 tanks being almost sure to hit them, if you're lucky past 2nd or 3rd tour there shouldn't be any left on the board.

And yes, as said above, crisis, crisis, and again crisis, always with ML, and the other weapon depending on your oponent, plasma for meq, burst canon against others, the burst canon can even take over light tanks or walkers

hamerhead is good, always, either against tanks or light infantry.

The lack of good characters has already been mentioned, but to hammer a particular point home:

Never take Aun'va. Never ever ever. Period.

The Space Pope is significantly worse than a vanilla ethereal, can't hide in an ablative unit, and costs a ridiculous amount of points. Honestly, he should be a handicap.

Other than that, the previous posters are spot on for how best to develop your list.

Yeah, i did some digging and honed my markerlight knowledge since my last post. Time wasted, it seems, since you summed it up nicely Barnowl. Thank you though. I bought them as a lot from another player, so I didnt exactly pick the units. I can see why he sold them, though; his list doesn't seem solid from what I'm hearing and seeing myself. But that's why I appealed to the vast knowledge of you guys here.

How many Kroot you got?
How many drones?
I am guessing you got 24 FW (Probably run them as 3 squads of 8+a drone)

You should be able to hammer out a very solid 1500 point list out of that mess. You will need to make a few odd choices to get good use out the models you have, like taken stealth suits with ML drones or gun drones and sticking Seekers on the Piranha and devilfish.

Get very used to the idea of sacrificing your non-suit units to save the deadly suits from charges. fielding your kroot in cover in front of your broadsides will keep you from losing your guns to a charge. Tetras are a fw model and not everyone wants to play with fw models, luckily you're playing the tau and most people are ok with buffing the tau's power a bit (less likely if you're trying to run a grey knights or blood angels FW model). Use them if your groups around you let you.. they're awesome. Not only do they put out solid ML capabiltiy you can use them as movement blockers for the other sides tanks and transports.

Don't listen to people that tell you fire warriors are good. take the six you have to take at the start stick them in a devilfish. Do that twice if you feel your troops are getting wiped out too easy. There are precious few reasons to actually get them out of the fish. Kroot in cover (especially kroot in forests) outperform fire warriors on almost every level for their points.

Just be aware that you picked a fairly weak army compared to others right now. We've been waiting for a new codex for a long time and they keep saying sometime before the end of the year (they said that last year though). You can win, but you have to make zero mistakes against competent players.. that will take practice. That said Tau are not actually that bad against Grey Knights which is the army to beat right now.

Advanced Tau Tactica is another site that concentrates solely on the Tau, and they have a ton of articles. I'd check them out, they've basically picked the tau book to death by this point so if there is something you have a question on its probably answered there.

So, for my birthday, I got to play my first 40k with my Tau against some orks! 1500 points. A lot of JSJ, gurellia tactics and kroot sacrificing but it was a blast. I even managed to eek out a loss by only one point! For my first game, I'm definitely pleased with how it went. I'll get some details to you later today. Surprise of the game: I took 3 stealth suit with two markerlight drones and they were certainly my mvps.

Grats on your opponant's Pyrrhic Victory! Just a word about fielding Pathfinders: You see that statline there that's nearly all 3's? Strength, Toughness, etc? It's a misprint. Trust me. For all intents and purposes your pathfinders have a statline of all 1's and no armor save. They will get punked by grots. If you deploy them that way, they will serve their purpose. Your pathfinders need to be Lighting the enemy, and so need to be stationary. Don't move them closer, don't try to shoot their carbines, don't give them Rail Rifles. You'll lose the whole squad to one IG sergeant with a pistol. If you think like this, your Pathfinders will perform for you every time, because you will have made them too much of an effort to remove until late game because they are out of the way of the enemy's advance.

New to 40k and having Tau. That's not a very good prospect. Tau is an underwhelming army at this time.

Interesting bundle of stuff.

You will here a lot of people poo-pooing the Stealth Teams and the Sniper Drone Teams.

To be honest, in a purely mathematical analysis they may be right, however this game is about more than math. If you use them intelligently and imaginatively you will find them as good or better units than anything else in the codex.

So where to expand? I have a few suggestions.

1) Crisis suits. Elite slots equipped with twin missile pods and targeting arrays for killing transports or HQ slots equipped with Plasma Rifles, Fusion Blasters and Multi-Trackers for killing tanks, marines and terminators (give the Body Guards a Targeting Array to get them up to BS4 and this unit will rock face).

2) Broadsides. Run lots of them, I currently do 2 teams of 2 in 1000 point lists, yeah that eats up about 400 points when I kit them out but they kill so much. If you want to do a static list this is the way to go, I recommend Targeting Arrays over A.S.S. and a couple of sheild drones. A really dirty trick is a hardwired target lock on the Team Lead, doubles the number of targets the team can engage. Also even fully kitted out a pair of broadsides is comparable in price to a single Hammerhead.

3) Tetras. As mentioned these are a forge world unit designed for the regular game. If there are no issues with you playing forge world on our local scene replace your pathfinder team and devilfish with a pair of tetras (I'd break them into 2 units if possible). You will have more markerlight tokens per game to play with and they will survive far longer than the pathfinders would and you'll probably have points left over. A Targeting Array is a must for these guys.

4) Piranhas You have 1. These units have a few surprising tricks up their sleves. Number one, with a fusion blaster and a targeting array they make a pretty decent tank killer. Number 2, because of their size and their detachable gun drones, you can actually turn them into a sort of mobile wall forcing enemy transports and ground units to move around them or spend a turn kiling them rather than charging across the field into your precious troops and broadsides. So don't be afraid to run them in and block the other guy out.


Those would be my must have/best buy suggestions. Here are a few interesting ideas you may want to consider.

1) Piranha TX-42s Another forgeworld unit, it's about the same price as a standard pranha when both are properly kitted out but it trades the gun drone team for a twin lined weapon system and an extra point of side armor. With Twin Linked Fusion Blasters they are consummate tank hunters. Twin Linked Missile Pods they wreck other light vehicles and can stay away from enemy units. There are other options for weapons but they cost more points and aren't as cool.

2) XV-9 Hazard Battlesuits. More forge world here (Forge World has always been really good to the Tau Empire). These are like Crisis suits but they fit into the fast attack slot and are actually survivable in close combat. They also cary some really crazy weapon systems. My personal favorite i the Fusion Cascade. It's range is short but it hits like a plasma rifle crossed with a fusion blaster making it great against marines, terminators and tanks. Scarier still, it's rate of fire is Assault 1D3, which if you equip 2 of them means 2 to 6 shots a turn, each capable of killing a tank or vapourizing a terminator. This is a point intensive way to go about things, each suit costing more than a broadside, but if you want to go mobile over static I'd say go for it.

3) Hammerheads Okay, back to the codex again. These things may not be as points efficient as a broadside in killing tanks (in fact I have yet to kill a tank with one of my hammerheads, even in the game I took 3 of them!) but if you want to play a moving, fluid game they are pretty decent. The Submunition round for their rail guns combined with two burst cannons or a Smart Missile System will make a mes of any large horde units you might come across, so if you face a lot of bodies on the table you might get more use out of this. Plus there is a fun sub-school of Tau Tactics involving a body of tanks moving across the board and jumping in and out of cover behind them.

4) Skyray - okay, this is weird but I'm going to suggest you get some skyray kits but not play them quite yet. Heres the reason though. In a skyray kit you get all the parts for a devilfish, a hammerhead and a skyray all for the price of a Hammerhead. It's a great buy! (The battleforce is a good one too, great if you run stealth suits). Buid your model but don't affix the turret to the top. Build both the Skyray turret and a Hammerhead turret and you have a tank that can switch back and forth as needed. Also, I have a suspicion that the next codex may be very, very good to the Skyray, so in a year or two those skyrays could be the jewel of a Tau army.

5) Firewarriors - again this is a unit that doesn't get much love these days, but I'll let you in on a secret . . . If you have enough firewarriors and markerlights on the board, you can kill anything that is Toughness 8 or less and AV 11 or less. Pick your target, put markerlights on it and fire your entire army at the target until it dies. Just one markerlight token on the target gives that 12 firewarrior squad the firepower of 16 firewarriors. 2 Tokens gives it the firepower of 20. I have killed Terminators, Wraiths and Striking Scorpions with 1 to 2 turns of this sort of treatment, even when they jumped out of a vehicle or deepstrike dangerously close to my lines.


One big general bit of advice I will give you is the Tau units tend to be a unit of specialists. They generally do 1 job very well, a secondary job maybe okay and then suck at everything else. When you build your army figure out what jobs you need to be done in the army and build a unit specifically to do that.

I'd recommend not buying a horde of crisis suits. They are the best thing in the current codex, but they are expensive. And with 6e and a new codex imminent, you could be wasting money on stuff you won't use. You're new, but for Necrons, destroyers were in the same boat, and after the update nobody plays them.

Okay, so I'm going to do this from memory...I think most of it is accurate.

1500

Orks;
10 boys in truck
10 boys in truck
10 boys on foot
10 lootas
10 Nobs + Warboss in battlewagon (the tank truck thing)
20 stormboys deepstriking+ a named guy I cant think of

Tau;
10 FW + 2 marker drones
10 FW + 2 marker drones
3 Stealth suits + 2 marker drones
3 crisis suits + 2 marker drones
13 Kroot
12 kroot
2 broadsides
1 piranha (targeting and disruption and 2 seeker missiles)
1 commander + marker and shield drone

Seize Ground (objectives left, center and right near the center line)

There was so much little bits of cover that I only infiltrated the stealth units. In an attempt to deny flank, I used the broadsides to draw attention to my left flank which was where he deployed his battlewagon.He went first which was largely just movement. I did manage to have my SS and Kroot blast his boys on foot and actually cause them to eventually flee off the board. I made a huge mistake and left a FW unit in LOS of his lootas though. They were all but three wiped out, but I took a bonding knife so they regrouped later.
The next round he tried to deepstrike his stormboys in on my broadsides but he mishapped to try again next round. His battlewagon moved closer to my broadsides same with his trucks, firing all the way. He trimmed down my Other FWs and destryed the right side kroot. I managed to detroy his far right truck, pinning those boys and destryed his battelwagon on the left. His center truck only lost its weapons.
Then, his stormboys deepstriked near my broadsides and would assault to destroy them. His warboss and knobs moved to fire my kroot his remaining truck tank shocked my larger FWs and his boys disembarked to assault them, winning of course. I tried to destroy the truck hoping to blow up his boys but only wrecked it. My SS, piranha and regrouped FWs pecked at them. I mowed down most of the pinned boys and assaulted with my Crisis suits ( Rookie mistake, very stupid move). The Suits won, but lost all but one suit and his two drones.
One the fourth round his storm boys started stalking my SS. His Knobs assaulted my kroot and would win, which I was fine with because it let me sweep forward towards his lootas, killing the remaining boys on the way.
On the fifth round he assualted and detroyed the piranhna. He aslo tried to assault my SS with his Stormboys but he misjudged the distance, fortunately. His lootas killed my little FW group, but its For The Greater Good. His Warboss and Knobs moved to claim the center Objective (Neither of us were near the left most objective at this point). I accidentally left my SS in his Lootas sights trying to escape the stormboys and mopped up his Lootas with my Commander. The roll to end the game had us play another round.
On the Last round he simply booked his stormboys to barely be in the distance of the Right Objective. His Lootas tried to drop my SS but couldn't see them (Horray for for stealthiness!). Knowing I couldn't beat his Warboss/Knobs I Tried to mow down his Stormboys hoping to have them fall back so I could Assault move and claim the objective. I managed to have him take a leadership test which he failed, but he had an ability to lost a guy and auto-pass. So I took advantage of the Pile-In rules and Assaulted them with everything I had left that I could. I figured that if I could win I may be able to consolidate on the objective, making it a tie. I didn't accomplish that, but his Pile-in pulled him away from the Objective and I wasn't wiped out.
Battle ended on the next roll.

Final result:
Orks 1
Tau 0

As I said, For my First game, a very awesome outcome and It was a darn good fight. He took a bunch of pictures and said he send them to me soon. I have no doubt that I would not have done half as well if I hadn't got the awesome advise of every here. Thanks All!