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I'll begin by stating I've yet to actually play a game. There are no venues for play in the town I'm in, so I'm mainly just into the modeling aspect. However, a new store is opening soon and is going to carry 40k That being said I've been doing a lot of theory craft. One particular issue was whether or not to field 1x unit of 12tau or 2x units of 6 Tau. Even if the units were fielded as 2x 6man, I'd still rlun them fairly close together to serve as a "virtual" 12 man unit. Splitting them seems to give the follow advantages.

(bear in mind point efficiency is not being considered as I'm happy with how they've already been spent. Also, all transports in the army are already claimed)

1. The ability for one of the two peel off if assaulted and set up for a rapid fire counter on the assaulting unit or try to drop back to the main gunline as opposed to the 12man getting locked up in fairly futile combat.
2. 2x shas'ui as opposed to one (giving an extra attack)
3. Unit division, for whatever conceivable reason. (holding an objective, minimizing casualties on one-off attack that target a single unit, etc)
4. 1x additional markerlight. (were fielding a skyray)

As I said, I've got no field experience yet, so I'm looking for some constructive counter points.
Thank you for your time. (pardon any weird spelling errors, I'm typing this on my phone ) ^^;

What little I know about Tau won't help, but tactically here are a couple of issues with dividing:

Taking large amounts casualties from shooting.

25% of 6 is 2 models
25% of 12 is 4 models

This just means it takes fewer model losses to wipe out the unit. You get to keep the other 6 but it will be just as easy to kill those 6.

The same is true for the unit to be considered below half strength, 3 losses of 6 or 6 of 12. 6 of 12 is better in the long run.

Sorry I forgot to mention Tau have the bondig knife which both shas'ui will be equipped with. It allows their unit to regroup if below half strength which I assume means they're pretty good at tactical retreats.

Pros
its 2 units instead of 1. So you can shoot at different targets, or shoot together, as well as being 2 targets to shoot at.

cons
Its small units and small units are easier to destroy.


Id say when the store opens, just play test to see what way of using them you like best.

Pretty often, Fire Warriors don't take part in the battle proper - in objective-based missions, the common strategy with them is to simply have them hijack a devilfish from a group of pathfinders and hide inside while holding the objective. For strategies like this, minimum-sized units are best, as if frees up points to spend on crisis suits or tanks.

If you're wanting to field a static gunline of FWs, though, you'll want to make the squads as big as possible. Ideally, you need to be able to completely annihilate whatever you shoot at, and the more fire you can pour into it, the better. Large units also allow for much more efficient use of markerlights, improving your army's overall efficacy.

It really depends on what you want to do. To be completely honest, I can't see myself bringing any firewarriors without a devilfish to put them in. If I wanted more troops to footslog, I would just bring kroot
For the price of 12 firewarriors I could bring 12 kroot and 6 kroot hounds
Same number of shots(technically a bit fewer because Kroot have a shorter range), the kroot get decent cover saves depending on your terrain, you get more wounds before the good bits die, and you can almost hold your own in close combat, plus the infiltrate ability make kroot far superior for footslogging Tau. I would honestly just spend that 120 points on vehicle-less tau on either a broadside with some drones or kroot if you really want that scoring unit.