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Ok im new to tau and semi new to chaos( ive played like 7 regular games and 5 or so apocaplypse games)

So far with chaos all my stuff dies before it does anything ive learned some ways to cope with that but still is a big problem

With tau the only tactic i see is fish of fury(witch i dont understand very well) and i have no clue what wargear to give my fw crisis suits stealth suits or devilfish

Chaos: 2 Berserker squads in LRs, one with Kharn. Max capacity. Then a third LR with Abaddon and termies with combimeltas. Fill out the list with Plaguemarines preferably in daemonic rhinos to follow the charge.

Another tactic is drop the termy squad/abaddon/lr and buy a DP with lash and a squad of obliterators.

Tau: Shoot them and pray you live long enough in HtH

I can talk a bit about tau. I'm going to share my opinions, some of which may be arguable, but I'm pretty confident about them.

You don't need to worry too much about fish of fury. It is a pretty outdated tactic. TLOS kind of hurts the tactic. Which involved using pulse rifles and getting out of a devilfish with the tank itself blocking the unit you are shooting at from charging. With TLOS the actual eyes of the model need to have an unobstructed line to the model being fired at. This means you need to put the devilfish on the tallest flying stand GW makes. In many cases, your firewarriors won't get a cover save, as no part of their body is obscured by the devilfish. Also with many units (including all infantry orks) having some means of assaulting over 12", declaring a dual charge into the devilfish and contacting fire warriors as well has gotten easier.

For now I would suggest that you arm any firewarriors that plan to ride a devilfish with pulse carbines. Rather than using the fish of fury technique, get out on the side door, use the devilfish to obscure LOS to the fire warriors from the majority of the table and fire at 17" range. Your firepower will be halved but the consistent survivability increase from this technique will make it worth while. And every once in a while you will pin someone.

Wargear for the devilfish. My favorite (but by no means the only viable) setup is this...

devilfish, smart missile system, multi-tracker, disruption pod, targeting array

You'll see people here calling this the smartfish or warfish. the other one i like to use is known as the dumbfish...

devilfish, disruption pod

That one is WAY cheaper and has an additional unit to block objectives with. But isn't nearly as powerful.

Stealth suits are usually an anti-infantry unit. Take some number of them and stay at their maximum range and fire, then jump away from the return fire and hope the steath field saves you. Alternately, you can upgrade to a team leader, buy him a markerlight and a drone controller with 2 markerdrones. the drones gain jetpacks, which makes them relentless, and they gain a stealthfied too. This way you can just shoot markerlights while keeping tons of distance and never get shot at in return. They are also the most flexible unit in regards to deployment in the tau army. They can choose regular deployment, out-flanking or deep strike. Once you develop your gaming style with them, that will give you more options.

And last but defintely not least are the crisis suits. What you put on crisis suits has everything to do with what the rest of your amry can do. My army has kroot, warfishes for firewarriors and pathfinders, a stealth team in addition to the crisis teams. As you can see i have tons of infantry kill but i am devoid of tank kill. So that means I will equip my crisis suits with targeting arrays and twin-linked fusion blasters. I deep strike them aggressively next to enemy tanks with the help of the pathfiners devilfish.


On tau tactics. I use the 'positional relay' to basically play almost the entire game with no units on the table. Then on turn 4 or 5, I unleash every unit into play and try to take the game in one or two turns. My personal opinion is that this is the most competitive way to play tau at the highest levels, but it requires a lot of concentration and knowledge of your enemies units. And knowing exactly what you can expect from your own units.

People around here call this tactic positional relay tau or 'Ninja' tau. When you use this tactic, units that don't have a special deployment tend to not be used, even though some of the taus' most feared units fall into this catagory.

Give it a try it is really fun! PM me if you need a little bit better of an explanation I'd be happy to elaborate.

Hope that helps!

Well I don't know much about tau....I have played against them before but never fielded any myself.

Chaos on the other hand I do play a bit of and I guess I can toss out a few of my tricks lol.

Well first off every enemy I come across likes shooting at berserkers... so i usually like to toss a squad of those out, not upgraded or bad ass, just a nice little group of about 10 of them. March them forward, i don't put them in a transport for this one. Then what I do is I have a squad of both noise marines and a squad of 1k sons, both in transports hanging out. Then a land raider with terminator champion, all with duel lightning claws and mark of slaanesh, so they go before most enemies in HTH. Then I have a lash whip in the middle of my army on a DP. Things tend to fire at the berserkers because they are exposed little infantry, most of the anti tank fires ad my LR because its scary. So after stuff shoots at me I know what I need to kill and so I lash appropriately and fire with what I have to and charge stuff with my termies, which almost always rip anything to shreds. This list isn't awesome and its not the best, but it works for what I have and hey if nothing shoots at the berserkers then maybe they will get into HTH and kill stuff.

That is one of a couple ways I play my army, but it would make it easier to give you advice if I knew what units you have, and or what units you are going to get. Tactics go hand in hand with what you are using, so that would make it easier. Also I really don't like the way lash is used as a main army theme now, even if it is amazing, I just think it is abused so I try not to use my DP for that now, but whatever it is a good tactic so sometimes I do use it. Hope some of what I have said helps.

I you want to run Berzerkers successfully there are two things you can do. one is to take a ton of them and put them in Rhinos. Or, take a ton of them and put them in LR. Take your pick. Either works well.

ok ill list what i have and some of the stuff ima try and get asap

i have
Abadon
12 Khorne berzerkers
8 Chaos marienes
3 Bikers
land raider
rhino
defiler
(yes i know i need more troops)

for tau i have
1Crisis suit
12 Fire warriers
12 Kroot
1kroot shaper
3 stealth suits
a broadside
a devilfish
and 4 extra drones
(once again i know i need more troops)

for tau i have a hammer head a second crisis suit a second broad side 24 more fire warriers and a few more drones coming in

im planning on getting more crisis suits broad sides and maybe some kroot hounds for tau

for chaos ima get the black reach set and convert the marienes to chaos to get a chaos lord 5 termies 10 csm and a dreadnaught
i was also thingkin plauge marienes or obliterators but i prob need troops b4 obliterators ( sorry if i misspelled anything dont have codexs and horible at spelling)

Sheps analysis and tactics are very sound, so please don't take the fact that I play a very different style of Tau that works well for me as anything but a different style or tactic.

I run the Illusion of a static gun line tactic. In order to use this tactic I usually run:
2 man Plas/fusion multi Shas'el Crisis HQ
An Ethereal
2 man Plas/miss Multi
2 man fusion/flame multi deepstrike/suicide Crisis
2 Fire warrior squads of 10
1 10kroot, 7hound squad
2 Pathfinder 6-man squads (No upgrades) w/warfish
2 Hammerheads (sometimes both rail heads, sometimes one railhead & one ionhead depending on mood)
1 Broadside squad usually 2strong w/shield drones(Sometimes I shake the list up for the third)

When deploying with this list I often try to set up at 6"-8" in (Sometimes right on the table edge when facing lots of ordinance)with one squad of pathfinders then stringing a gunline to where my broadsides(Joined by the etheral and some extra drones) are castled in a corner.

I hide the warfish best I can and set the hammermeads up to flank(Sometime strong side with thebroadsides, othertimes the other corner) The Hq sits with one Fire warrior troop and the crisis miss team sits near the other. Kroots and the suicide squad are my reserves/infiltrators variable.

This set up usually gives me at one to two turns of max firepower before the hard charging units get there. I usually try to "sell" the Broadsides as the lynch pin of my army. With everything loaded heavy that way my opponents usually take the bait and rush that side strong.

When they do this I pack up the ethereal and the troops into the Pathfinder warfish the turn before they get there and the Static line just disappears leaving only a pathfinder squad and the broadsides in the corner as my army begins its push towards the objectives.

If they load the weak side then I turn the game into a long edge game.

If they try the steadily advancing wall, I'm in position to use overwhelming focused fire on the priority targets/section of the army. More or less punching a whole for the army to run towards it objectives.

For some reason, when I run this style, my suicide tank/swarm killer team survives more time than it dies.



Now for what you currently have and including whats on the way, I'd limit the games to no more than 1250 points. Anything beyond that your too light on FA, Elites, and vehicles for a good list. You'll be buying stuff just to get your points up to that level.

Hope this helps

Ok so you have Abadon, 12 berserkers, 8 marines, 3 bikers, a land raider, rhino, and a defiler. You can make a cool army out of that, but yes I would say get more troops.

Well here I go, I think what I'm thinking could be pretty good for what you have.

1. Give your bikers mark of nurgle, this makes toughness 6 guys running around, makes perfect contesting units because things just have very hard time woundings toughness 6 in HTH.
2. I have never used a defiler so I wont talk to much about things I don't understand, but from what I know you should just have its battle cannon thing, fire and kill something in HTH with it if something gets to close.
3. Put Abadon and as many berserkers as possible in the LR and go forward, blasting away and getting ready for a disembark and charge.
4. The rest of you marines should just go in the rhino. Give them a mark specifically for what they are doing, nurgle for objective holding, tzeentch for survivability, and slaanesh or khorne for some HTH goodness.

Now here is what I would do with that. Pretty much everything starts out in a transport, or has toughness 6 so not much should be dying first turn. Go forward with your LR blasting away with guns, if something is close enough after that then charge out of it but that probably wont be the case. Go forward with your bikers as fast as possible and lock something important in HTH, like a squad of devastators or ork flashgitz, or some other random unit that you know will give you hell, or just zoom on over to the enemies closest objective and contests it with whatever unit he has by it. I would say keep your marines in the back if you are playing objectives and support another one of your units if they are close by, but don't run off to far, stay close enough to get to that objective at the end of the game. If you aren't playing an objective game then just use it as a support unit with the rest of your army. Have you defiler as a support unit in the middle of the field, shooting its blast weapon and what ever else you might have on it, and then charging appropriately if it seems necessary. As soon as that LR hits the enemy front lines, shoot and then disembark and charge like crazy, destroying everything you can in HTH.

That's all the advices I have for your units, hopefully it works out.

On tau tactics. I use the 'positional relay' to basically play almost the entire game with no units on the table. Then on turn 4 or 5, I unleash every unit into play and try to take the game in one or two turns. My personal opinion is that this is the most competitive way to play tau at the highest levels, but it requires a lot of concentration and knowledge of your enemies units. And knowing exactly what you can expect from your own units.

How do you unleash your whole army when the Positional Relay only allows one unit per turn?

Capt K

CaptKaruthors wrote:

On tau tactics. I use the 'positional relay' to basically play almost the entire game with no units on the table. Then on turn 4 or 5, I unleash every unit into play and try to take the game in one or two turns. My personal opinion is that this is the most competitive way to play tau at the highest levels, but it requires a lot of concentration and knowledge of your enemies units. And knowing exactly what you can expect from your own units.

How do you unleash your whole army when the Positional Relay only allows one unit per turn?

Capt K

Positional Relay says 'may be used' On either turn 4 or turn 5, just declare that you will not use the relay and roll for reserves normally. If its turn 4 they'll all come in on a 2+. If turn 5 no roll is necessary.

Yeh thats about what i did i throw abadon and berzerkers in lr and lr dies turn 2 every game and my rhino blows up before i go or right after i move defileler almost a;ways does some damage unless im stupid and charge something with meltabombs( wont do that again)

abadon almost never dies for me in hth most of the time 2 or 3 of his wounds come from shooting

Positional Relay says 'may be used' On either turn 4 or turn 5, just declare that you will not use the relay and roll for reserves normally. If its turn 4 they'll all come in on a 2+. If turn 5 no roll is necessary.

Still trying to figure out how that helps the Tau cause. For more than half the game your unit with PR will be out numbered and out gunned (and if not careful...he'll be dead). Then you are adding only one unit for turn 2 and 3. 3 units versus a whole army? Maybe it's because it's early in the morning and I'm not seeing it, but I think that strategy sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Capt K

CaptK, the point isn't to take on the entire army with your 2-3 units for the first few turns. In fact, those turns are spent playing evasion and avoidance, or luring/baiting the opponent to overextend himself. It's not like he can get a lot of points/KP during those turns in any case, as there's not much on the board. Instead, on T4-5 the entire army shows up, hopefully taking advantage of the opponent's weaknesses/mistakes from the previous turns. It gives the enemy little time to shoot at our more vulnerable units, and we can say where our board control will happen. Kayuon, the patient hunter!

Problems with this include really fast opponents who can likely get to our table edge quickly/kill our PR guy, people who simply castle up (although then it's more of a push, as he's not killing our stuff in the meantime), and if the game goes on for multiple turns past 5. Leaving aside the fact that it's nearly impossible for Tau to get a massacre result in the first place, it may do best in simple win-lose-draw situations, as it's good at objective rush and KP sniping.

Problems with this include really fast opponents who can likely get to our table edge quickly/kill our PR guy.

Which every army can do by turn 2 or 3....in some cases sooner. Like I said, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. A rather unorthodox way of playing Tau. Hmmm. Just for sh*ts and giggles, I might try this tactic this weekend, then pass judgement on it.

Capt K

Broadsides are really good now. If I was building my list to be the best it could be at the UKGT 1500pts I would take 3 units of 2 with shield drones.

I thought EXACTLY like you about it before I tried it. I couldn't see how in the world it could do anything with the diminished firepower. But here was enough hubub for me to try it so I did.

Ok, here are some concepts that go along with it....

First and foremost is objective placement. Every good opponent who sees a positional relay on your shaso is going to put every objective he can in the center of the table. In almost all cases however you'll be able to place at least two. Place each objectve in the most extreme corner you can, caddy-corner from the other one. With this placement outflanking kroot never come on the 'wrong side'

Start the game with just the shaso in play, many times you'll have a spot where he can be completley out of LOS. Unless your enemy has strength 8 ap2, it doesn't really matter if hes in LOS either. In some cases, there is enough of a danger where he'll need ablative wounds. No reason not to include a unit of kroot on the table for him to join or a couple of crisis suits. He hasn't died before the end of the game for me yet, and here is why.

The pos relay is the ultimate toolkit, assuming you built the rest of your list appropriately.

If he starts trying to angle for LOS with an exorcist or a predator or a land raider, then the first thing you call down is a deep striking unit of suits. Just before he's able to get the kill shot, you'll be pumping fusion or missile pods into their rear armor.

Say its an assault unit and they are getting very close to turning the corner and corralling your evasive shaso. Well, the whole time you've been driving them closer and close to the table edge, and then you ask for the kroot, who show up and get the charge off. Outside of genestealers and harlequins, there isn't much that can just absorb 10 kroot hounds + 15 kroot. Just remember to allocate all wounds onto hounds, so that your whole unit is guaranteed their attacks.

Every game I've played with the army I get the same complaint from my opponent. "well, if I had the right stuff in the right places, I would have beat you." Of course you would have! But the pos relay doesn't ever let you have that matchup. You move your anti-infantry to the left table edge and kroot roll on from the right, you move your anti-suit/anti-vehicle firepower forward then they'll deepstrike in your backfield (probably taking rear armor shots along the way) You castle up? Well then I won't bring my scoring units on until turn 5 and then I'll just walk on and take my spread out objectives. I will have cut off your mobility with suicide suits first.

There is also tons of opportunitis that open up. Generally you save your troops for last, so that the ultra fragile tau troops dont get shredded, but I was playing against a guard player, and he had a large platoon near one of my spread corner objectives. Multiple units from that platoon were easily within 12" of the short table edge. On the other edge, attempting to score the other corner objective was a chimera full of troops.

On turn 2 I asked for my 25 man kroot unit, outflanked into a turn 2 charge. I didn't get the side with the platoon, but managed an easy charge on the stationary chimera. 16 glancing hits later, it was dead, the troops dead soon after. Then I just consolidated back onto my objective.

The basics of it that can't be theory hammered are... your opponent not only has to deploy first, hes got to move around almost all game blind. he doesn't know where you are going to be coming in from, because you've got lots of options. when you do come in. You are designed to come in swinging. Multiple melta hits per drop cripple transports and or scary tanks. They either spread out and get picked apart, or they clump up and are unable to cover the objectives they need to cover.

Kill points in this matchup is probably the best you get. They go all game without anything to kill. And then you just maneuver for a mismatch, get 3 or 4 kp in one shot, lose maybe 2 back and win. It is amazingly infuriating to play annihilation against.

Cap and control is probably the worst mission for it. A wise opponent will put his own objective as central as possible. But you'll place you own objective in the opposite corner from where you deploy your shaso. So now he has to choose between going after the objective, or going after the pos relay. If he goes full bore for hte objective, the shaso gets side amror shots with a missile pod and doesn't have to worry about surviving. If they go full bore for your shaso, you can just match their firepower on that side and just slip a cheap fire warrior unit onto the objective late game. if they split up, well, then its fun time.

You just have to play it to see it work. Like I said I was convinced it was Busch League. But I was shocked at what an advantage having the toolbox of 'whatever unit I want, whenever i want, almost wherever i want' mixed with the finite number of turns that assault armies have to make their effect. Just think about how frustrating it is to see your intended target appear with only a random number of turns left in the game, on the other side of the table. And then while you trundle off to engage, some other unit shows up and blows away your transport. Do you turn and kill the two crisis suits that just DSed in? Or do you continue on to that kroot unit however many inches away, knowing that the clock is ticking.

More than anything else, it is insanely fun to play. It is VERY true to Tau fluff. You'll find yourself whispering "dance my puppet, dance."

Sounds fun ill have to get more crisis suits and some hounds to try it but as of now im stuck with a firebase

The word "toolbox" sold me, I am a ninja tau convert!

Shep, do you find a pathfinder unit to be good for this army, as the marker beacon would seem like a boon for it. I usually have bad luck with the scatter dice when it comes to deep striking, (ordnance not so much).

Thanks for the idea Shep. I think I'll try it out. As it is, I'm on the verge of selling the army, because I think that IG will reset the metagame...but leave Tau out in the cold.

Capt K

guardpiper wrote:Shep, do you find a pathfinder unit to be good for this army, as the marker beacon would seem like a boon for it. I usually have bad luck with the scatter dice when it comes to deep striking, (ordnance not so much).

Absolutely. Once you get to about 1500 points, the pathfinder unit becomes a staple.

CaptKaruthors wrote:Thanks for the idea Shep. I think I'll try it out. As it is, I'm on the verge of selling the army, because I think that IG will reset the metagame...but leave Tau out in the cold.

Capt K

Cool, looks like this thread came just in time. You are an IG player too right? I think you and I play the same three armies (IG, Tau, Templars) IG certainly is going to have more raw power than even a really well played tau ninja army. I think you'll have a lot of fun with this type of list though, and hopefully you might keep it for when you need a break from your other armies, then you'll be ready in a couple years when they get a new book

And to the OP... like focusedfire said. There ain't nothing wrong with a firepower based tau army. Ninja tau = kauyon, the patient hunter... firepower tau = mont'ka, the killing blow.

I expect some VERY cool things to happen to 40k when the Planetstrike expansion comes out this summer. For one, I see the whole 'attacker/defender' setup to be really intriguing. For tau there could be missions where all of the objectives for the game start in your own deployment zone. That'd get me motivated to paint up some broadsides and some fire warriors with actual pulse rifles! Gonna be a lot of new ways to play the same old armies

Yeh just played a game with taudidnt work to hot but could have been worse

1 fw unit getting decived of table turn one

1 fw unit dieing after a failed fof vs necrons with a lord

and 1 untoched to hold objective

stinks my partners guy died right before the game ended he was contesting other objective i did learn quite a few things thow like how jsj and fish of fury work (fof just not to good vs necrons) and how i should tool up my broadsides and crisis suits better

ninja tau looks like fun i just dont think i can pull it off till i get new models since it wouldntbe very effective with my fw squads id need them all in devilfishes

o before i forget what equip does a devilfish need to be a "warfish" i give mine disruption pods and decoy launchers

LOL. Yeah it's funny how that works...LOL. I am a die hard IG player and finally my main army is going to be getting some love. My Tau were simply a distraction until the IG stuff comes out. However, now that I see what the IG are capable of...the Tau army is really getting the shaft. I'll be taking pictures and posting the battle reports of this weekend's games with the relay. Stay tuned.

Capt K

CaptKaruthors wrote:Thanks for the idea Shep. I think I'll try it out. As it is, I'm on the verge of selling the army, because I think that IG will reset the metagame...but leave Tau out in the cold.

Capt K

Cool, looks like this thread came just in time. You are an IG player too right? I think you and I play the same three armies (IG, Tau, Templars) IG certainly is going to have more raw power than even a really well played tau ninja army. I think you'll have a lot of fun with this type of list though, and hopefully you might keep it for when you need a break from your other armies, then you'll be ready in a couple years when they get a new book

And to the OP... like focusedfire said. There ain't nothing wrong with a firepower based tau army. Ninja tau = kauyon, the patient hunter... firepower tau = mont'ka, the killing blow.

I expect some VERY cool things to happen to 40k when the Planetstrike expansion comes out this summer. For one, I see the whole 'attacker/defender' setup to be really intriguing. For tau there could be missions where all of the objectives for the game start in your own deployment zone. That'd get me motivated to paint up some broadsides and some fire warriors with actual pulse rifles! Gonna be a lot of new ways to play the same old armies

Sorry about hijacking this thread...no offense intended to original poster...in fact, maybe this list can help?

Shep, I just sent you a PM regarding this thread, and asked your advice on a couple of lists...

Just so you don't think I'm too lazy, I'm posting my first try at a 1,000pt Ninja Tau list...let me know what you think...

Shas'O - 157 pts
-fire/knife
-positional relay
-HW drone controller
-HW multi tracker
-2x shield drones

2x Fire Warrior squads - 220 pts each
-10 Fire Warriors
-pulse carbines
-warfish with targeting array, multi-tracker, and disruption pod

1x Kroot Carnivore squad - 100 pts
-10 Kroot
-5 hounds

1x Stealth suit squad - 200 pts
-4 suits
-burst cannons
-Shas'ui upgrade
-markerlight
-drone controller
-2x markerlight drones

1x Crisis suicide squad - 102 pts
-2 suits
-fusion blasters and flamers
-targeting array

total = 999 pts

Thanks in advance for any comments or criticisms,

Fango

The games that Ive one using Tau work on the principle of never changing my army's stuff, and just changing the way they are fielded.

The thing I find works, if you spend points on fielding at least three squads of FW's, with Either XV88's or a hammer hear, then allow the rest of the army which is more maneuvered based to counter any threat. I personaly hate the Kroot and vespid, so I use good old Farsight!!!!! Use shield drones for the troops!!! It gives the sergeant a extra wound basically!!! and marker lights!!!

jariksolo wrote:Yeh just played a game with taudidnt work to hot but could have been worse

1 fw unit getting decived of table turn one

1 fw unit dieing after a failed fof vs necrons with a lord

and 1 untoched to hold objective

stinks my partners guy died right before the game ended he was contesting other objective i did learn quite a few things thow like how jsj and fish of fury work (fof just not to good vs necrons) and how i should tool up my broadsides and crisis suits better

ninja tau looks like fun i just dont think i can pull it off till i get new models since it wouldntbe very effective with my fw squads id need them all in devilfishes

o before i forget what equip does a devilfish need to be a "warfish" i give mine disruption pods and decoy launchers

Don't sweat this one. I don't know about anyone else but personally the necrons gave me the hardest time of any of the armies. At least until I noticed that they don't have flame templates, only one Large Blast template, and what happens when a good sized kroot squad gets a hold of them.

You don't have to run all kroot but running 2 large squads can really do a number on most of their units. Also, (dirty little trick alert) Did you know that 4 gun drones will tie up a full Heavy destroyer squad for usually 2 turns in HtH, thus keeping them from jetbiking and shooting. I've had 4 drones tie up a squad of 2 heavy destroyers for a whole game. If he wants the Heavy destroyers freed up he has to commit other units to the assault in order to free up his heavy shooters.

O no the heavy destroyers where no problem at all he only had one tank (his monalith) so my 2 broadsides had target practice on his destroyers and when the monalith came on it exploded next turn

I think i need a way to make my guys fearless or near fearless

fearless firewarriers own(apocalypse game with a made up specIAL caracter) a fire warrier squad actually lived threw 2 rounds of combat

i need more hammerheads thow they kick but 1 hammer head took out 2 structure points and the main gun of a stormsword in 1 shot

Thats some fine rolling. I have to use every trick in the book to compensate for the quirkiness of my rolling.

Just to give you an idea of how the dice treat me at times(11 penetrating hits in 3 turns and the best result was a destroyed weapon).

This is the reason that I don't use overly aggressive strategies that gamble soley upon rolling statistically average or well. I plan for the worst and hope for the best instead.
So I try to use every strategic and tactical advantage except for rules manipulation and conservative gameplay. Now if I ever get on a hot streak be assured that I'll try some of the more aggressive tactics.

I don't know about fearless for the fire warriors, with the new 5th ed rules I'd prefer stubborn.


Oh, to answer your question. A warfish is a devilfish equipped with sms, multi-tracker, and dispod at least. I usually throw in the flechettes, also.
BTW, the decoy launcher is a complete waste in 5th ed until it either gets faq'd or the Tau get a new codex.

dont know if its been mentioned (didnt read all the posts) but I higly suggest running 2 pathfinder teams. So far the best tau 1750 build Ive seen is (roughly I may forget something)

2 pathfinder teams
2 full fire warrior teams
2 of the big tanks with the big guns
2 of the transport tanks with accompannying fire warriors
5 stealth suits
and 2 of the big suits with a commander in big boy pants with I think 5 shield drones

you get a hippoass load of marker lights a turn and that basically takes away everyones cover and you get to hit on 2's and for the most part wound on 3's

(sorry I dont play tau so I dont know all of the things names)

As far as chaos there really isnt one they screwed up the book big time, if you want to do chaos pick a theme and wait until they release the new codexes(yes codexes, they are making a codex for each power plus one for undivided and this is confirmed) so if you want to do say a death gaurd army start building a death gaurd army just hold off on weapon load outs and wait to see what you can take when the codex comes out.

Basically whats going on is they made orks really powerful, realised their mistake and now everything is getting pumped up (and it seems everything is getting the ability to table ork armies, way to go GW make a good ork list then make every army able to wipe orks so no one plays them for 10 years again)

Ive only really been able to field a pathfinder army against Space Marines!!!!! Other than that I find the points are better spent on weight of fire! For example a mate and I (he being the evil Dark Eldar jobbies) had a short game of 800 pts! I had my pathfinders for a year by then, so I though id use them. however when i saw how many warriors he had I died!!!! I love then In COD though!!!