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This list seems to break a lot of "rules" the internet has come up with for Tau, and I will say I'm not sure it will work even vaguely well (I'll find out this weekend). That being said it's not really that far of a departure from a lot of cookie-cutter tau lists but I wanted some feedback anyway on this keep-away long range tau list.

Elite:

3 x 3 crisis with twin linked missle pods, flamers (141 pts each, 423 total)

Heavy:

2 x Hammerhead with Ion Canon, Multitracker, Burst Cannons, Decoy launchers (130 each, 260 total)

1 x 2 Broadsides with ASS, TL with Drone controller, 2x shield drones (195)

Troops:

3 x 10 Kroot -210
3 x 6 Fire Warriors - 180

HQ:

Shas'o with Fusion, Plasma, shield generator, HWMT - 132

Shas'el with CIB, Plasma, TA, HWMT - 100

1500

Don't worry about the internet at large. Chock full o'nuts.

Simple critique:

Railguns make the Hammerheads dangerous. SMS make the Hammerheads dangerous after the Railgun is gone.

Kroot in anything but 15+ aren't gonna do much for you. They are horrid in shooting.

Fire Warriors don't do much. I give mine a leader+markerlight, since the rifles are so bleh.

The Shas'o is allright even though I don't get the fusion gun, but what's the shield generator for?

The Shas'el is fine.

The Broadsides I don't use myself, but can be fine.

Not sure what the flamers are for on the Crisis suits, the stuff these are good against you don't want to get anywhere near....

I normally play with 2 or 3 hammerheads with railguns, SMS and target locks (180 or 185 points with a disruption pod) and Plasma/Missle two man crisis teams (maybe burst/missile, or twin linked missile).

I was trying with this list to make the normal things I play with less expensive and more focused. The flamers are only because they're the cheapest thing other than blacksun filters and are (slightly) more likely to be useful. So instead of:

Two Plasma/Missile, one with BS4 - 139 I got
Three BS 3 twin linked missiles - 141

Seemed like a fair enough trade. The Ionhead layouts were partly out of boredom with railheads, and partly to see how effective a 130 point tank would be.

The Shas'o was used to deep strike. I took the fusion gun because I was worried about AV14 with this list with only one unit (the broadsides) that could hurt it. Normally with two or three railheads I don't bother with fusion.

Well, I played with the list, and I could see some problems. I played a not overly scary Chaos list with 2 squads of berzerkers, one in a rhino and one in a land raider, a lash prince, a defiler, Kharn, and a havoc squad with 2 ML, a lascannon and an autocannon.

It is difficult to hide 3 full squads of 3 crisis suits without tons of level 3 terrain, and keep them safe from battle cannons. I missed the 30 points of shield drones I sometimes give the squads.

The flamers, while maybe useful if I played orks, were unused. obviously they were meant to be last ditch weapons, but I spent 36 points on them so I probably need to re-think it.

Twin Linked missile pods are really great. The shooting of those squads was stellar and I was never thinking "oh, I should try to get within 24 or even 12!". Not that thats a huge tactical problem but it was nice to have max shooting at max range.

10 man kroot squads do seem to be too small. I have played with 15 and 10... I used to want to max out my infiltrators, but probably they need larger numbers, and a third infiltrator doesn't seem necessary.

The Ionheads were effective - burst cannons are pretty brutal when they can shoot, but spending the 15 points on each to get the Target Lock + SMS upgrades wouldn't have hurt - I would have definitely ended up with more shots from SMS than from burst. My inability to threaten the land raider from multiple fast vehicles was frustrating for sure.

I tend to give fire warriors a markerlight in my Farsight list (any markerlights for farsight + 5 or 6 bodyguards shooting is nice) but I probably should just use them always. Otherwise fire warriors end up being pretty useless, or at most slightly annoying to my opponent.