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I have recently started playing Tau, I bought a large army off ebay and really have no clue on what to do with it. I thought I would just list all my assets and see what y'all think would be a good direction to take it list-wise.

HQ
1x Battlesuit Commander
2x Ethereal

Troops
35x Fire Warriors
40x Kroot
2x Krootox

Elites
5x XV8 Crisis Battlesuits
16x XV25 Stealth Suits

Heavy Support
1x Hammerhead
1x Hammerhead/Devilfish (I have not built it yet)
2x XV88 Broadside Battlesuits
1x Sniper Drone Team

Fast Attack
5x Pathfinders
5x Vespid Stingwings
1x Piranha

and about 20 various drones.

I'm open to any and all army play styles and techniques. Thank you.

I was about to post the exact same question. I just got to playing tau as well. Everything came in the mail yesterday! :-D

I currently have:
commander farsight
3 xv8
xv104
24 fire warriors
xv88

I was looking to pretty much spqm xv104s and xv88s as the models are what dragged me to the tau. So i want as many gundams on the ground as possible.

Commander farsight
7 xv8 body guards
3 xv104s
36 fire warrior (2x12 in piranahs, 12a behind adl)
2 piranah
1 adl
3 xv88

i like you am unsure about what is great ok and mediocre. So someone please come to our rescue.

Broadsides are super effective killing machines. I love to run them with their HYMP and smart missiles for taking down infantry and light armor, and if you give them velocity trackers the squad is a very good anti flyer unit.
Riptides are also sweet and like alpha tango they gave me the Gundam feel which drew me to tau. They also have incredible survivability. As far as a 1000 point list a very tough list I like to run is:
Ethereal as hq
2 squads of 7 fire warriors
2 Riptides with ion accelerators
Squad of 3 broadsides with HYMP and smart missiles all with velocity trackers
Squad of 3 broadsides with either HYMP or rail guns depending on what you expect to face, (if there's a lot of a 13/14 run railsides)

Obviously alpha tango is closer to building this list but you'd still need more broadsides which are one of my favorite units in the army, but to get going you could sub out the second broadside unit for crisis suits with either double fusion or double missile pods then with extra points fill of the fire warrior squads


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Alpha sorry I misread your post thinking you had all the models in the second part of your post but my list is something that you could proxy and test to see if you like it before you build the models


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ASTRO the Commander is fun when you use him as a buffmander which usually means to outfit him with a c and c node, a msss, pen chip, nsj and vectored retro thrusters. Then I usually give him double flamer and only use him to shoot in over watch because if you read the msss and c and c descriptions in the codex they buff the unit he is in when he doesn't fire.
With your models you could attach him to a crisis squad and basically give them twin link and ignores cover.
Hammerhead are really great when used with long strike to take out heavy armor.
I never really use stealth suits because I only have 3 of them and I'm not a burst cannon fan, but infiltrating them into cover isn't a bad idea to shoot up light infantry.
Fire warriors are an excellent troop and with support from an ethereal they put out a ton of shots in rapid fire range (3 shots per model if you select the right rule from invocation of elements at rapid fire range)

Thanks for the info! Im glad im headed in the right direction with broadsides. That and the xv104 look absolutely amazing on paper. Do you have any tips on farsight and his body guards? Ill have to look into the fliers. I still have yet to get the stormfang for my pups. :(

Farsight is a fun list but you need to tailor the whole list to run the farsight bomb if that's what you want to do

In that case deep strike farsight and a buff'o (a Commander with c and c node, msss, nsj, a flamer or two and maybe an iridium suit up to you and how many points you can spend) with a body guard team full of dual fusion or plasma suits all with target locks so each can shoot his weapons at different targets. Then if you don't fire with the Commander (use the flames for overwatch) the squad becomes basically twin linked and ignored cover


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And then to go along with that take your mandi tory troops and then units like broadsides and Riptides that will stay alive long enough so that you don't get tabled before the farsight shenanigans come in from reserves