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So I'm a newbie with the Tau (My previous 40K army was Orks so it's a whole new game to plan for) so any advice you can offer will be greatly appreciated

HQ

Shas'el
- Plasma Rifle
- Missile Pod
- Targetting Array
- HW Multi Tracker
- Stimulant Injector
107pts

2 Shas'vre XV8 Bodyguards
- Plasma Rifles
- Missile Pods
- Targeting Arrays
- HW Multi Trackers
164pts

Elites

3 XV8s
- TL Missile Pods
- Targeting Arrays
159pts

3 XV8s w/ Team Leader
- Plasma Rifles
- Fusion Blasters
- Multi Trackers (2 Support Systems, 1 Hard Wired)
- Targeting Array (Team Leader)
201pts

Core

8 Fire Warriors
- Shas'ui w/ Bonding Knife
- Devilfish w/ Disruption Pod
180pts

10 Kroot Carnivores
- 6 Kroot Hounds
106pts

8 Fire Warriors
- Shas'ui w/ Bonding Knife
- Devilfish w/ Disruption Pod
180pts

Heavy Support

2 XV88s w/ Targeting Arrays
160pts

3 XV88s w/ Advanced Stabilisation
240pts


Total = 1497pts

Its not a horrible list, but here are some improvements that can be made. First off i would like to know why you are using kroot. The only real good way to use is to make sure they are in jungle, which almost never going to happen. Another thing i would do is add for more guys to your firewarrior squads. Max those guys out. idk about you but when you got 24 pulse rounds coming at you, its not a good day. A 12 man firewarrior squad with a markerlight and sarge is only 140 points.
you might get better use from your crisis suits if you have one squad kitted for general infantry killing with the flamer burst cannon combo with shield drones..... That is something else i noticed is the lack of shield drones. They are almost a must on broadsides. With an extra 2 2+ models they keep those units alive.
Drop the shashel for a shasho and loose the stimulant injector and the missle pod for another melta gun. You are in general better off loosing the body guards for regular suits and adding shield drones to the commander.

Oh and add one more broadside to the 2 man squad or just drop them for a hammerhead if you want the pie plate.

A Town Called Malus wrote:2 XV88s w/ Targeting Arrays
3 XV88s w/ Advanced Stabilisation

XV88s really need SDs, like Blarg21 stated. They're going to get hit with every LAsCan, Melta & Lance in the enemy's arsenal, and a failed Cover Save means no more Railgun (Instant Death). SDs extend the life of broadsides to Turn 3, which, if you've done your job, should be smooth sailing from there.

If not, the enemy has gained h2h range and you're screwed.

The rest of the list is okay for starters.

Thanks for the advice. Revising my list now and I'll post it back up when I finish it

I thought the Kroot could be useful for keeping the opponent unsure about my forces as I was going to use them as outflankers to attack the weaker elements of their force or pull them away while Deep Striking the PR/FB Crisis suits in to toast any vehicles or high armour infantry like Terminators which would cause problems for the Fire Warriors.

I think your HQ is almost spot-on. I would nix the targeting array and the stimulant injector. The HQ is already BS4 and that's good enough. The stim injector is handy, but tau don't have the points to mess around with defensive upgrades like stim injectors. Those 10 points are much better spent on buying more guns.

Your elites are also very good. However, I don't recommend straying from the fireknife (plasma rifle + missile pod + multi-tracker) or the deathrain set ups (TL missile pod + targeting array). Deathrains are the best suits to run in the elite slot b/c you can make them BS4. One thing to learn about tau is that we're actually a BS4 army--we just have to pay a premium for it. I would typically run fireknives everywhere, but it's very important for you to BS4. I run fireknives in the HQ slot for that reason--I can make them BS4. You can't, however, make elite fireknives BS4 b/c they don't have enough hardpoints to do it. Therefore, I recommend the Deathrain for all your elite slots.

The deathrain also has several factors that make it better than other suit load-outs. First, it's cheap--only 53 points per suit. Second, it's accurate (TL BS4). Third, it's long range (36"). Fourth, it's high strength (S7) so you can take out MCs, transports and light vehicles, and you wound most marines on 2+. Fifth, they're two shots a piece (Assault 2) so they're still decent against hordes.

As for your troops: fire warriors suck. If they weren't a mandatory 1+ choice I wouldn't run them. They're overpriced and don't do enough. Instead, I recommend taking lots of kroot.

Kroot are much better because they're cheaper and fulfill more roles than fire warriors. Kroot can outflank, infiltrate and fight in melee competently enough to beat similar units of non-dedicated melee infantry. I use them to meat shield my important units (the suits). You place them in front of the suits so your opponent has to go through them to get to the suits. Also, place the crisis suits close to them so you can jump over the kroot, shoot (without giving a cover save), then jump back behind the kroot (so you GET a cover save, if applicable). Kroot can also spread out to prevent daemons, nids and drop pods from dropping into the middle of your fire base and wrecking your day. They can also spread along your flanking table edges to prevent your opponent from outflanking infantry and walkers (but skimmers and tanks can still roll on--don't forget that). Just remember to make good use of "infiltrate"--you don't have to deploy them all at once.

You have correctly omitted fast attack options in this list. At 1500 points, I don't think tau has the room to run any fast attack choices. When you expand to higher point levels, you have two decent choices: pathfinders and piranha. I prefer to run piranha.

As for your heavy support: broadsides are the best choices you have. I think you have them improperly kitted out however. You're correct for identifying that the two best wargear options the broadsides have are targeting arrays and the advanced stabilisation system. I usually run all my suits one way or the other, but at the end of the day it's a judgment call. Know that I think the ASS is better b/c you need the mobility. I would counsel upgrading one suit in each squad to a team leader and giving it a target lock. That would allow your six suits to shoot three different vehicles each turn. That will put a hurting on vehicle parking lots very quickly. Just remember to target low and medium armor vehicles first (AV10-12). Clear them out early before turning to the AV14 (unless, of course, that AV14 happens to be a monolith or a landraider--in those cases, feel free to target them first).

Other than that, it looks like the beginnings of a pretty solid list. It's probably the best list a newbie has put out on the first that I've seen. Good work.

Hope that helps,

Knute

I think your HQ is almost spot-on. I would nix the targeting array and the stimulant injector. The HQ is already BS4 and that's good enough.

Do not remove the Targetting Array, it is a very good upgrade that is the reason why we don't take a Shas'O in our lists; we can already get BS5 (and we need it, our shots lack the quantity of other raes, so we must ensure that as many of our powerful shots hit as possible) from an upgrade 15pts cheaper than making our Shas'El into and 'O.

Remove the stim injector if you want (it's a handy upgrade, but not necessary) but keep the array.

I only put the Stim injector in there because I had a small number of points left which couldn't get me the 3rd broadside I wanted so it was a couple more Fire Warriors in each unit and a Stim because it seemed useful to have feel no pain as a backup for small arms fire against my commander.

Knute it's probably only good because I looked at a load of the other lists on here and stole the advice given to them whilst still trying to make it my own

Ok so I think I'll change the PR/FB suits to Deathrains until I can move onto a higher points list when I'll add in some Pathfinders for BS boosts from markerlights and scatter re-roll from their devilfish (because I like the idea of dropping in an AP2 unit behind a tank or Terminators and toasting them before jetpacking into cover or preferably out of sight). That'll net me some more points to tinker with so I'll see what I can do with them

I don't generally advise deep striking your crisis suits, especially given the amount of deep strike manipulation that exists in the meta nowadays. Plus, deep striking suits puts them in the maximum amount of danger with the least amount of protection, and suits are just too important to throw away like that.

But to each is own and I wish you luck with it. Let me know how it works out for you.

High risk for potentially high rewards. It'll be fun to use in friendly games even if it proves to be too risky to consider for more competitive play. I'd like to play my Tau as a kind of guerilla force with fast, powerful hit and run attacks so attacking from deep strike kind of fits that ideal.

Of course it might completely fail but it's only a game and a tank which has been hiding from the Broadsides getting unexpectedly reduced to molten scrap by Crisis suits landing right behind it will provide a small moral victory at the very least

A tank which is hiding from broadsides is a tank that isn't a threat; you don't have to blow stuff up to render it useless, if your opponent is being forced to hide his tank (and therefore not use it to its full potential), then your broadsides are doing their job, albeit in a different way than blasting a hole through it.

Don't waste your suits on targets that are not a threat; that land raider hiding behind terrain looks like a really juicy target, but the fact that if it moves then it dies but if it doesn't move then it can't do anything means that it is no longer a priority target.

Deep-striking is a huge risk, fusion bombs are also far from reliable. Putting your suit down so it'll drop in melta range without scattering also means that 4/6 times it'll scatter and potentially land outside melta range or onto the tank/surrounding units/terrain, however, placing it so that you can scatter into melta range means that you might not reach it all or you might even scatter out of melta range altogether.

This is the same with deep-striking TL flamers to thin hordes. Deep-striking in best done with deathrain suits and employed versus vehicular targets with a low AV facing that you can get into LoS of. Missile pods have a 50% chance of penetrating AV10 (so the rears of most vehicles) and their extra range means that it's easier to find a less risky spot to deep-strike into, as opposed to fusion blasters.

However, this tactic falls flat on its face if you come across LR spam/monoliths or anything with decent armour all around or its other facings hidden.

I tend to run my suits as PR/MP/MT or PR/BC/MT with one suit upgraded to a team leader, given a targeting array and having the MT made hard-wired. These work a charm, with the PR/MP being your basic bread-and-butter suit loadout (a real jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none set-up) and PR/BC there to thin larger units or units with stronger armour.

There was also a thread in Tactics surrounding the maths behind the main suit loadouts (if you can't find it, i'll have a look later and link it, 5am right now) and saw deathrain suits flop against MEQs and TEQs, however, the PR/BC loadout is actually one of the best for taking out terminators with storm-shields (the usual setup you'll face) due to sheer weight of fire; the extra strength helps too.

deathrain suits are great for taking out light vehicles or light infantry, but their effectiveness falls sharply against anything with a 3+ save or better, where plasma rifles start to shine.

EDIT:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360480.page

That should help you decide on crisis suit configs.