Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Tau Army List

HQ

1+ Commander Shas’el
-Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
-Missile Pod
-Targeting Array
-Hard-wired Multi-Tracker

2 Crisis Bodyguard (Shas’vre)
-Plasma Rifle
-TL Missile Pod
-Hard-wired Multi-Tracker


Elites

3 Crisis Battlesuits (Shas'ui)
-TL Missile Pod
-Flamer

3 Crisis Battlesuits (Shas'ui)
-Missile Pod
-Plasma Rifle
-Multi-Tracker


Troops

6 Firewarriors (Shas’la)
-Pulse rifle
-Devilfish
-2 Gun Drones
-Burst Cannon
-Disruption Pod

6 Firewarriors (Shas’la)
-Pulse rifle
-Devilfish
-2 Gun Drones
-Burst Cannon
-Disruption Pod

6 Firewarriors (Shas’la)
-Pulse rifle
-Devilfish
-2 Gun Drones
-Burst Cannon
-Disruption Pod


Fast Attack

6 Pathfinders (Shas’la)
-Pulse carbine
-Markerlight

6 Pathfinders (Shas’la)
-Pulse carbine
-Markerlight

3 Piranha
-Fusion Blaster
-2 Gun Drones
-Targeting array


Heavy Support

Hammerhead
-Railgun
-2 Burst Cannons
-Targeting array
-Multi-Tracker
-Disruption Pod

Hammerhead
-Railgun
-2 Burst Cannons
-Targeting array
-Multi-Tracker
-Disruption Pod

3 Broadside Battlesuits
-TL Railgun
-SMS
-Target Lock
-1 team leader
-Advanced stabilization system
-Hard-wired Drone Controller

1 Gun Drone (independent unit to join broadsides for wound allocation)

Total: 1999

Due to all of the suggestions I figured I'd mention here that the Devilfish are with the Pathfinder squads. The Pathfinders start in the Devilfish, then jump out so that I can put the FWs in. I just listed them with the FWs because I saw them with infantry in the codex, and they're going to be with the FWs more than the Pathfinders anyway. If it would be less misleading, I will list them with the Pathfinders.

All constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I like it, personally I would tweek a couple of things.

-I don't know if you included it in the cost but the pathfinder's need to purchase devilfish's.

-I would drop the 3 broadside's down to 2, upgrade 1 to team leader and give him split-fire (target lock? no codex handy) and add 2 shield drone's, and give the unit Advanced stabilization wargear.

-If you got the points I would give your command team some gun or shield drone's for wound allocation, and give the commander FNP. I always do this so the HQ can absorb some of the low str low ap shots and live. It's always good to have as many differently equip suits in a single unit for would allocation.

-I'm not a fan of pirahna squadron's that's just my preference. I like a single fusion blaster pirhna to tank hunt

Looks like your army is built for mobility. I play a positional relay Tau army and have a blast with it. I've finally got to where I wanted with it after about 4 months of constant play while unemployed. I even include Vespid!. That would be my best suggestion

TL MP on the 'El is kind of a waste since you're hitting more than half the time with it anyway. I'd think about CIB or AFP as a decent option; 18" range isn't great but if you're running the JSJ well, you won't have to worry about assaults. I'd also think about getting a stim-injector for the 'El for the FNP.

Not a fan of DP on piranhas since their weapon has a short range which means you're often getting shot at from within 12" making it worthless. No fusion blasters? Flachette's a good choice on these as you're inevitably going to be assaulted.

No railrifles on the pathfinders? Gotta love the target lock that comes with the rifle, which means 3 of your pathfinders are shooting into a different unit than the others. Not to beat a dead horse but you have to take a devilfish with each pathfinder unit; this is going to make you rethink your army list. If they're the 'fish you put with your FWs then that's ok but remember when you play, you have to start them with the pathfinders.

If you're playing mech-tau, you'll want ASS rather than MT on your broadsides so you can move around more. I agree with Rabidduck, you should take a team leader, a couple of drones, and target lock so the unit's more flexible.

The hammerheads are fine.

I'm not a fan of seeker missiles but if they work for you, keep them. I'd rather put those points towards another crisis unit. I like my devilfish with drones to act as assault screens when needed, rather than the SMS option.

Your FWs will die in droves, are you sure you don't want to drop a unit and work towards another crisis suit unit?

Overall, the list looks solid but gunline tau usually doesn't work for me. Let us know how the list works out for you.

Where exactly is your damage coming from? Fire Warriors? 5 rail guns? 3 crisis suits?

If you drop all the seeker missiles and the SMS from the devilfish you can get a full unit of deathrains with flamers for added transport killing and to give assault armies something to worry about as they go for your throat.

It's good that you have mobility but it's wasted on 11 fire warriors, I would drop the squads down to 6 each and keep them in scorefish (devilfish + disruption pod).

If you're going to stick with burst cannons on the piranhas you should at least upgrade their BS so when you get those tasty rear armor shots you have a good enough chance of doing something. My personal preference is flechette discharger as well but that's up to taste really.

I'd say drop a seeker missile, make a broadside team leader + a target lock.. lets you aquire more targets with those rail guns (less over kill is always good ) efficiency for the greater good!

Thanks for all the comments! I took all of them into consideration and made a few adjustments.

For the record, yes, 2 of the devilfish begin carrying the 2 squads of pathfinders. I'm not entirely sure on the rules yet, but if I'm allowed to start with FWs in the devilfish, the third one will hold one FW squad. If they can't start off with them then I'll just load them up turn 1.

I decided to keep most of the seeker missiles because I kind of like them. They're pretty reliable and strong to boot, but I did need to make room, so I cut some from the piranhas.

When I made this list I figured people would say I need crisis suits. All of your points made sense, so I put in a squad that should hold their own against infantry. And I think with all of the ranged support they should be able to clean up remains of troops fairly easily.

Let me know what you guys think of this list!

I'd honestly think youd be better off losing the gun drones off your FW squads and using the points else where..

Some of your suits are illegal. A TL weapon, although it counts as one for the purpose of firing, counts as two hardpoints. If you have a TL weapon, you only have room for one more hardpoint. For example, a traditional deathrain suit is TL misslepod and a flamer. That's three hardpoints. That's the config you should be using with your elite suits, and your bodyguards will be legal as long as you hardwire their multi-trackers.

Your devilfish should have multi-trackers, too. For five extra points per fish, you can fire the burst cannon and drones after moving 12". You're also definitely going to want to ditch the seeker missiles on the piranhas, and the flechettes too. You are pretty much going to go flat out one turn, blow up a tank the next turn, and die the turn after that. Assaults don't happen too much against piranhas, since they can die from a tac squad's bolters.

Are you taking the HH's for their submunitions, or their solid shots? If it's for the solid shots, you might want to consider only having one HH and taking two teams of two Broadsides. Each one could have a team leader with a HW target lock, so you would have five railguns capable of hitting five different targets. Finally, if you have the points shield drones are a good investment for the Broadsides.

Thanks for pointing that out to me, I wasn't sure how that would work or not.

The list is reposted now, and it should be totally legal (unlike last time...oops, hahaha).
Thanks again for all the feedback! Continued feedback is still much appreciated!

If your wanting to keep the body guards for your HQ...id recomend UN twinlinking the missile pods saving you 16, + 3 you have left over, 19 points... I'd shuffle some points..and just grab a targetting array for each of them at a cost of 20 points... its a little lower % to hit on the twin linked weapon, but it boosts your over all To hate rate more..giving you a better kill ratio.. besidies..plasma is your more expensive weapon it might as well get a boost as well

Yorick_of_Tau wrote:Some of your suits are illegal. A TL weapon, although it counts as one for the purpose of firing, counts as two hardpoints. If you have a TL weapon, you only have room for one more hardpoint. For example, a traditional deathrain suit is TL misslepod and a flamer. That's three hardpoints. That's the config you should be using with your elite suits, and your bodyguards will be legal as long as you hardwire their multi-trackers.

Your devilfish should have multi-trackers, too. For five extra points per fish, you can fire the burst cannon and drones after moving 12". You're also definitely going to want to ditch the seeker missiles on the piranhas, and the flechettes too. You are pretty much going to go flat out one turn, blow up a tank the next turn, and die the turn after that. Assaults don't happen too much against piranhas, since they can die from a tac squad's bolters.

Are you taking the HH's for their submunitions, or their solid shots? If it's for the solid shots, you might want to consider only having one HH and taking two teams of two Broadsides. Each one could have a team leader with a HW target lock, so you would have five railguns capable of hitting five different targets. Finally, if you have the points shield drones are a good investment for the Broadsides.

I highly recommend using Targeting Arrays instead of flamers on the Deathrains. Flamers are a waste of 4 points, Targeting Arrays are very useful when you really need those shots to count. We've been down this road before.

Multi-trackers are 10 points for vehicles, not 5. Not worth it for a Devilfish IMO. Unless you are building a full-blown Warfish, you should never need the extra 3 shots.

Hammerheads > Broadsides. Even with Shield drones, Broadsides are just too vulnerable to AP2/1 fire. Not to mention that Hamerheads are dual-purpose while Broadsides are not, really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

firemind wrote:
For the record, yes, 2 of the devilfish begin carrying the 2 squads of pathfinders. I'm not entirely sure on the rules yet, but if I'm allowed to start with FWs in the devilfish, the third one will hold one FW squad. If they can't start off with them then I'll just load them up turn 1.

I decided to keep most of the seeker missiles because I kind of like them. They're pretty reliable and strong to boot, but I did need to make room, so I cut some from the piranhas.

When I made this list I figured people would say I need crisis suits. All of your points made sense, so I put in a squad that should hold their own against infantry. And I think with all of the ranged support they should be able to clean up remains of troops fairly easily.

Let me know what you guys think of this list!

First off:

The Pathfinder's Devilfish can not start with Fire Warriors in it, but they do NOT have to have Pathfinders in it. What I do is set the FWs right behind it and load up on turn 1. The third DF can start with Fire Warriors in it, but it will not have the re-roll deep-strike scatter rule that the Pathfinder DF has.

That being said, you have a very nice Hybrid list. Use the Markerlights on turns 2-3 to drop Seeker Missiles (preferably T4 multi-wound models), then later on you have ML support for your Fire Warriors. You have plenty of anti-armor (light and heavy) and the ability to take out whatever pops out of them.

Awesome List. I Cant wait to wreck it with my Orks...WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I'll wreck YOU with MY Orks. What now?

Don't discount Broadsides.

While Hammerheads are more flexible, broadsides are far better vehicle killers.

There are two places Broadsides shine:

1. Marker Light usage: That Land Raider full of assault termies just moved to 24" away and popped smoke. What do you want to use your marker lights for, to strip cover for one railgun, or for three?
2. Squadrons: I'm looking at you IG and Kan Wall.
2a: and one and two are often combined. Kan Squadron stripped of it's cover save from the KFF, stripping the cover save off of the vendetta squadron that turbo boosted onto the board, etc.

Broadsides with shield drones in cover are also pretty durable, and single lascannon shots and what not are no threat because it goes onto a drone. where as it has a chance, no matter how small, to neutralize a Hammerhead by either destroying it or knocking it's railgun off, at which point it loses all anti-vehicle threat.

However I would take two hammerheads and a team of three broadsides (with team leader /w HW Target Lock) over two broadside teams and a single hammer head.

So I played a game against my friend's Ork army. I ended up winning, but my Piranha's didn't do jack, so I tweaked them a bit. I dropped the flechettes so I could give them targeting array and target lock. I'm hoping this helps them do some more damage than they did last game.

Granted, I was shooting at Battle Wagons, but still, I'm hoping the extra chance to hit will let them be more effective.

I edited my list a bit after seeing the crisis suits in action. The additions and subtractions are at the end of the list at the beginning of this thread.

Let me know what you guys think now!

Firstly you don't have devilfish transports for your pathfinders which makes them illegal. If you switch the scorefish you have on the FW team to the Pathfinders then the FWs can't deploy in them (or stay in reserve with them).

Other than that there is very little I like about your list. Here goes:

Shas'el and Body guard, wasted without TAs and spec issue weapons, you may as well take normal Crisis which are cheaper. Get an AFP in there, dump the TL on the missle pods and make them have TA instead.

The crisis suites. Why so much Missile Pods? If your only opponent is Eldar I can just about understand but against anything else you just don;t have enough Dakka. Tau are about doing damage with shooting and the Crisis suits are one of their best tools for this. 80% of your opponents in almost any meta game will be MEQ and you have no anti-MEQ fire power except the BS bodyguard. You need a unit of Helios (Plasma + Fusion) at least. Between the Hammerheads and the AFP on the Shas'el you should then have enough anti-horde firepower. Between the MPs on the HQ and the 1 unit of Deathrains (please dum,p the flamers for TAs though) you should also have enough anti-transport.

Troops are fine I'd keep the one unit that has it's own Devilfish in reserve it is only there to score late in the game try to keep all 3 out of harms way as much as possible. Remember you only have to win 1-0 so don;t get ambitious with objective grabbing. Hold yours contest his.

However Seeker missiles are rubbish. S8 won't worry serious armour and only useful against transports in a list with 9 Missile pods you don't need that 10 point 1 shot weapon. Just to compare a Space Marine devastator can take a missile launcher that can effectively shoot a seeker missile every turn for 15 points. So for those 6 seeker missiles you'll on average in a game (suppose everything shooting survives until turn 6) you will cause 5 hits. The Devastators will cause 17 hits and nobody takes devastators because their weapons are too expensive! You don't need them for anti-transport in this list and the only other thing they are good for is a a 35% chance of killing a 16 point Space Marine in cover... Never ever take them.

I like your Fast attack though obviously you havve to mak ethe Pathfinders legal. Ignoer people that say put railrifles in them they are there for markerlights, if you can affordd railrilfes spend those points on more pathfinders for more markerlights. You Piranhas are good 2 is the minimum to survive for anything. Target lock is totally pointless, you need both shooting at the same target to have a good chance of destroying it. However your best bet is to keep them in reserve for late game objective contesting or using them to block Landraider movement (which is suiciding them).

Like much of you Heavy Support. 2 Hammerheads and 3 Broadsides is right fo rthis poitn level. You'll need at least 5 Railguns to deal with heavy tanks. However The SMS isn't great on the hammerhead, drop it to burstcannons and get flechettes so they can hurt anything that assaults them. With the DPs you will be surprised how often it is CC that does in for them and the Flechettes really helps here.

But you have another illegal thing in your list here. Gun Drones can't come in units of 2 and aren't independant characters so couldn't join the Broadsides anyway. However as you have a teamleader he can take a hardwired drone controller an dthen you can take 2 gun drone. However the Shield drones will do far more for you. They can soak the ID wounds and with their invulnerable save they have a chance to even shrug them off.

So to sum up you lack decent firepower at this point level largely due to the poor way you;ve set up your crisis teams. You have several illegal things in the list and a few bits of overcosted or pointless wargear. Sort out the crisis teams and you'll be getting on the right track.

For the record, the Devilfish do start with the Pathfinders in them. I know that they can't start with FWs, I just listed them there because they were listed right after FWs in the codex.

FlingitNow, I took some of your stuff into consideration, like taking out Seeker Missiles, taking off Target Lock on the Piranhas, adding the AFP, and adding targeting array to the HQ.

I am keeping the crisis units the way they are because the missile pods are good for long range attacks at the beginning of the game. The flamers are good for later game when I can move up to infantry 6", flame, then jump 6" back to avoid assault. I didn't give them targeting array because the Missile Pods are already TL, so I'm hitting with them almost all the time already, and the flamers are template, so of course, they'll hit, hahaha. I didn't put in the unit of Helios, but I did add another Piranha, giving me another fusion blaster to hit some tanks with.

I kept the hammerheads the way they are because the SMS keeps me far enough away that I can avoid assaults and still get a few decent shots.

I added the Drone Controller to the broadside team leader, too. I didn't realize that was illegal. Thanks for pointing that out to me! I also switched the Gun Drones to Shield Drones as you (and many others) have recommended.

Just out of curiosity, do you play Tau? If you do, what does your list look like? I'd like to take a look at it just to kind of compare notes.

Continued comments, criticism, etc. is much appreciated!

Yeah I'm a Tau Player. I generally play at the 1,500 point level.

I have 2 scorefish 1-2 units of pathfinders, 2 Broadsides and 2 hammerheads and 2 Pathfinders. My Shas'el has an AFP and missile pod (though sometimes fusion), then I run 2-3 deathrains 2-3 that are either Brightwind, Helios or Firekinfe. I also have Kroot for outflanking or castling depending on opponent or mission.

With the flamers you have an 8" range and given that the only things scared of flamers (Orks and 'Nids) are fleet that jump shoot jump will not take you out of assault range. And if you are hitting them with only 1" of template (which is what you'd have to do to hit them if they didn't have fleet) you're only hitting 1 model and you be better off firing the MPs. Flamers are effective from a max of 3" away and against most things you are best off then assaulting them (robbing them of furious assault).

Yes you have good (if not great) anti-tank fire power and good anti-horde firepower, with AFP now added. What you lack is enough firepower that will hurt Space Marines and Terminators. Missile Pods will bounce off them, submission rounds will not do much damage, SMS will bounce of them as will burstcannons meaning firing your 2 Fusion blasters and 5 Railguns at them (which would mean their tanks going unmolested) or your 2 plasma rifles for a total of 9 shots from your entire army that will worry a Space Marine (or 11 when they get within 12"). Given that 80%-90% of what you will be fighting will be Space Marines in one form or another that is nowhere near enough.

At this point level it will not be uncommon for your opponent to field a unit of 10 Hammer Terminators (particularly if he's using Vulkan). THey teleport in front of your gun-line. You fire those 9 shots and get extremely lucky and hit with all of them and then wound with all of them and guess what you would then on average kill just 3 guys. With this list with your entire army and pathfinders firing at the terminators you'd probably kill 2-3 leaving 7 to come and get you (which they would and very nastily). That is a 400 point unit that can shrugg off all the firepower you have in your army with little effect.

Basically my point is and I can't stress this enough PLASMA RIFLES PLASMA RIFLES PLASMA RIFLES. A lot of Tau players will take one on every suit (excluding the commander with the AFP), you should have a maximum on 1 unit of deathrains and EVERYTHING else should have a plasma rifles (again except a commander with AFP).

Made a few more changes. I think it's pretty solid now thanks to FlingitNow's suggestions.

Thanks, Dakka! Continued comments and suggestions are still appreciated!