Fixture of Dakka
Feasting on the souls of unworthy opponents
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You get a copy and paste from me because I don't want to retype all my junk.
Tau have just gotten a MASSIVE boost. 5th edition has shifted the meta-game into much more mechanization, and Tau are hands down the best tank killing army in existence. The second thing that Tau have at their disposal is the unique ability to influence a battle in interesting ways. You have LOTS of pinning weapons, the ability to pretty much force-pin units, wound allocation goodness to increase suit survivability, and the best troop weapon (the pulse rifle) in 40k.
How you use it all determines how you do. Personally, I find kroot distasteful. If I want a close combat element in my army, I play a 2v2 and have my wife join me with her orks. Tau are meant to shoot, shoot more, and lay down such a withering fusillade of firepower that enemy armies simply evaporate under your firepower. You'll see some interesting ideas for tau army lists floating around, and some incredibly dumb ideas too. I've been incredibly successful with a pure Tau gunline (using some tactical deployment to avoid being flanked and annihilated). Here's my advice:
1. Tau firewarriors: Take groups of 12 of them, with a shas'ui who has a handheld markerlight (10 points). Give the squad 2 gundrones, or 2 marker drones if you can afford it pointwise. I deploy these guys almost 2" apart, in a line where possible, and always in cover. 4+ armor save doesn't impress anyone, but 4+ armor save in addition to 4+ cover save does wonders for keeping firewarriors alive.
2. Broadsides. In 5th edition, Broadsides rule supreme. You should have six of them. Two teams of three. If you're playing 1,000 points or less then two teams of two. Team leader with a target lock, and both teams need two shield drones each. You've got 2+ armor saves, and your drones have 2+ armor saves and 4+ invulnerable saves. These puppies ALSO need to be deployed in cover. Preferably on top of a building somewhere that counts as ruins, so that climbing is required if people are going to try outflanking and assaulting you. Putting them in cover gives you 4+ cover saves in case you run into AP2 weaponry. Those six broadsides should form the backbone, the core, the heart, and the basis of your army. The rest of your army is really just support for your broadsides, ESPECIALLY today where everyone is running such heavily mechanized lists. Depending on mood, sometimes I'll take a Railgun hammerhead as a third heavy support for its large blast template; as anti-tank its next to useless.
3. Snipers! A heavy support choice that can consist of three individual teams of snipers. Each of them STR6 AP3, and able to headshot an MEQ without a save, and each able to pin a unit. One of my favorite, FAVORITE tactics in 40k is to have a broadside team blow up a transport, have a firewarrior team drop 1-3 markerlights (2 drones + shas'ui) on the disembarked unit, or have a pathfinder unit drop 5-8 markerlights on them, then pin them using a rail rifle and markerlight modifiers. You play against Eldar often, and those pesky wave serpents turbo-boost around the board getting cover saves, right? Drop a couple of markerlights on it, reduce its cover save to nothing, and introduce it to a whole team of broadsides. 4+ rerollable to hit, depending on facing, you need 3 or less to glance, and if they're turbo-boosting, 3+ destroys it. AP1 gives +1 on the penetration table, and if a turbo-boosting vehicle is immobilized, it counts as destroyed. Hey! Free pinning test on the guys inside!
4. Speaking of rail rifles....if you have a team of pathfinders with rail rifles+target locks, and 3 sniper teams, you can cause 9 seperate pinning tests across an enemy army. If you toss a bunch of markerlights into the fray, you can go a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way towards immobilizing an entire enemy army.
5. Crisis suits: Crisis suits exist to fill holes in your army strategy; this includes your HQs. With broadsides levelling every tank on the field, sniper drones and pathfinders forcing pinning tests on anything with a leadership value, and multiple firewarrior squads laying down ridiculous numbers of STR5 shots at anything willing to step 30" into range, you've got your anti-tank answer, some anti-MEQ, and the first step towards anti-horde. The gaps in your army are reliable MEQ and terminator killers, and more anti-horde. My favorite suit combination is plasma/fusion with multi-tracker, team leader giving me two gun or shield drones (depending on points). Drop 2 markerlights on a terminator squad, and you've got BS5 needing 2+ to hit, and at the 12" mark, you've got 6 plasma shots and 3 fusion shots. Thats 6x STR6 AP2 and 3x STR8 AP1. 2+ to hit, 2+ to wound. No saves, no feel no pain. Insta-killed anything you like. In larger games, I also take a team of "deathrain" crisis suits, which is twin-linked missile pod suits in my back, working on killing light transports or geting side armor shots on anything they can. That saves the broadsides for the big guns. Give your Shas'el Iridium armor and two shield drones, and you've got three 2+ armor save models; I think the fragmentation airburst launcher (large blast, ignores cover) is pretty much mandatory, and I give him a flamer too. Perfect anti-horde! Suits range across the field dealing death to anything that isn't being pinned or destroyed by your longer range firepower.
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Strategy: You now have a static gunline capable of destroying ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that can be thrown against you. The weakness: You're static. You're not moving across the board to take objectives. Believe it or not...there's a simple solution for this one too. In capture and control, you have one objective, and your enemy has one objective. In Seize ground, you're going to have one, and possible two objectives to control. You don't NEED to go take the enemy objectives. All you have to do is destroy their troop choices. With the vast amount of firepower and long range dakka....its pretty easy. Don't forget all those pinning weapons either. Pinned units can't hold an objective.
You'll need to learn and understand enemy lists, and a VERY important question you need to ask EVERY game is "What are you keeping in reserve?" You need to know what's in reserve and if its outflanking or deep-striking. If your flanks are going to be threatened, then deploy in the middle so that flanking units can't get to you. You'll also learn the magic of spreading across terrain to prevent lictor entrances, and using firewarriors to wall off access to broadsides.
That's basically it. This type of list and this strategy has pretty much won me almost every Tau game I've played in the last year. I've been playing Orks heavily for the last six months because I've decided I prefer assaulting over shooting. If you go first, the game is practically over; you can level 1/3 of the enemy army in turn 1, take out most of its mobility, and probably pin a unit or two. If you go second, you'll have to be a bit more tactical about target priorities and threat analysis, but either way, between your broadsides, markerlights, and pinning weaponry, your enemy is not doing much moving the entire game.
If you could imagine what I just described in a movie or a video game, its basically a defensive fortress. Firepower would be flying across the screen so heavily that you'd feel like getting underneath your computer desk to keep your head down. And now the metagame has shifted even more in your favor; more vehicles means less troops, and Tau anti-tank is unrivaled. Don't worry about objectives; you can deny objectives to an opponent by tabling them or killing their troops easier than you can use your own troops to hold them.
Honestly, I don't think Kroot are worth using. If you wanted to play a sneaky, outflanking army you should pick something besides Tau. Dark Eldar, or Orks. Every point you waste on a kroot (who is a subpar model in every respect; its melee usefulness is solely in its ability to tie up an enemy unit for a turn before dying) is a point that you didn't put into the overwhelming firepower that will win you games.
That's my....much more than two cents.
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Quest of Enlightenment 
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(6k total, 1k painted) : 37-3-7 v 
