I don't want to write a novel here, when I've done it in other Tau army list threads here that you can read just as easily and that apply directly to you, so I'll be brief.
1. 6 Firewarriors, 8 firewarriors...if you're not taking 12, might as well take 6 and save 20 points. If they get assaulted or targeted, you're going to lose them all whether you have 6 or 8.
2. Your suits are a disaster. Your commanders honestly should be without bodyguards and then attached during the game to save points, you're missing critical weaponry, and not using any drones with your elite suits is suicidal.
There are two things that are going to be important in 'Ard Boyz...TWO THINGS. Anti-tank,
MEQ killers. You've got light vehicle killers and close range crowd control in abundance, but no serious anti-tank or
MEQ killers. You have two hammerheads that can drop STR6 AP4 templates for crowd control, but their single shot is absolutely unreliable as a vehicle killer. A bit better than 50% chance to hit, depending on the vehicle, a 50% or a little better chance of doing something to it, they may have a 50% chance of getting a 4+ on the cover save if they're doing a semi-decent job of screening, and then you have a 50% chance of actually destroying it. There's a lot of IFs.
Seeker missiles are STR8 and don't scare big tanks, which you'll see lots of in 2500 points. AV13 or front armor AV14...either way you need to roll a six to be relevant. Not reliable.
Fusion blasters are nice if you can get in close, but you only have two of them. If I'm a mechanized list (which is pretty much EVERYONE this year), I'm going to kill your pirahnas, then get *something* on your two hammerheads...doesn't matter what; can't shoot, weapon destroyed, destroyed, explodes....any of those options are good enough to take out the railgun...and then I'm going to go after your Skyray followed by your suit teams. In the meantime, your devilfish are going to be zipping around the board being ignored until the rest of your army is dead, at which point your opponent will look at them amusedly and kill them.
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You *need* to be a threat. You need threatening units. You need units that scare people. Hammerheads don't scare people; pretty much any sort of hit on it will neutralize the railgun. If I roll a glance or a penetrate, pretty much anything except for rolling a 1 is good enough to take it out of the picture and that single shot you get isn't reliable.
You need 4-6 Broadside suits in there. People are going to be playing mechanized lists this year. Bring anti-tank. Lots of it. Mechanized lists full of terminators, and screaming, howling nobs, seers, whatever. Two solid units of broadsides, with shield drones and a target lock each, screened and protected to destroy the mobility of any army you play against. You can take down 4 tanks per turn at 72" with just those two units, and they're twin-linked just to make sure.
Your suits need to be a threat. Having a single unit of
Deathrain suits in the back to kill transports is nice so that your real anti-tank can focus on the tanks. But you need to complement that with another team of suits set up to KILL SOME FOOLS. Plasma. Fusion. You know what scares Jesus into my opponents? A team of suits with plasma/fusion with a couple of shield drones running cover on my front lines; they can kill advancing vehicles, they can kill
MEQs or terminators, they can take down a Nidzilla, there will be no armor saves of any kind.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I don't think that your list is very competitive. Its a list, it has 2500 points worth of Tau in it, but it won't scare anyone. Read some other threads, or the Farsight bomb thread in the (tactics?) forum, and stuff.
You've seen the polls about what the most fearsome unit in
40k is? It seems to always tie between obliterators and broadsides. You GET one of those units. Use them to full effect! If you want to make a list that SCARES people, try this:
Heavy 1: 3x Broadsides
Heavy 2: 3x Broadsides (or a Hammerhead if crowd control worries you)
Heavy 3: 3x sniper teams
Fast attack 1: 8x pathfinders
Fast attack 2: 8x pathfinders
Troop 1+ 6x firewarriors
Elites: Discussed above.
Scout move in pre-turn one: Drop the pathfinders into cover. Turn 1, scoot the devilfish over to your firewarriors and mount up.
Beyond that, you can use your plethora of markerlights to do crazy things. Sniper drones are STR6 AP3 and cause pinning. If you have three teams of them, picture this: Your broadside team(s) are levelling 1-2 tanks per turn, and you're completely immobilizing your enemy troops by markerlighting them, killing 2-3 of them per turn with your sniper drones, then forcing them to take pinning tests with -4 or -5 to leadership. You can do that to several teams per turn. I like to take 5 markerlights and 3 railrifles with target locks. That one squad can potentially drop 5 markerlights somewhere, and cause three separate pinning tests across the enemy army with those three rail rifles.
If you have two pathfinder squads and three sniper teams, you can cause 9 pinning tests per shooting phase across the enemy army (even repeated on a unit) and influence the results with markerlights. THAT scares people.
Broadsides incinerating tanks scares people.
Suit teams that insta-kill anything they shoot at scares people.
Take some of it.
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Dang it man, I wrote a book anyway. :(
