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What are the best/ most necessary Tau units, which should I buy first?

Most necessary units: Fire warriors. You'll run at least 2 units in every list you build, no matter what.

Best Units: Crisis Suits and Broadsides. Crisis suits are what allow Tau to perform at all. However, you might want to wait a few months before buying these. There is a slight possibility that Tau will be receiving an update in a few months. It might be BT, but nothing is 100% confirmed yet. With a new update, Crisis Suits should be getting new models and presumably new rules.

Safe and good things to buy: Vehicles. Specifically Devilfish and Hammerheads. AFAIK, these aren't getting new models and you'll probably want at least a couple so you can play more than just gunline Tau.

How effective are Kroot?

1 unit of Fire Warriors is sufficient for scoring purposes. You may field a 2nd mechanized unit, but they don't offer a lot other than contesting or scoring late game. Also try to field a single unit of Pathfinders and embark Fire Warriors into Pathfinder's mandatory Devilfish on turn 1. Rest of the points should be invested in either Broadsides or Hammerheads, Crisis Suits, Kroots, and Piranhas.

SabrX wrote:1 unit of Fire Warriors is sufficient for scoring purposes. You may field a 2nd mechanized unit, but they don't offer a lot other than contesting or scoring late game. Also try to field a single unit of Pathfinders and embark Fire Warriors into Pathfinder's mandatory Devilfish on turn 1. Rest of the points should be invested in either Broadsides or Hammerheads, Crisis Suits, Kroots, and Piranhas.

units cannot embark another unit's dedicated transport

They can in 5th edition.

The restriction is that at the start of the game you can only embark unit A in unit A's transport. After that a unit can get in any transport you like.

See rules at bottom right hand corner of p.67.

my bad

Starting by buying 1-3 Battleforces is generally a good way to go.


You get a battlesuit, 3 stealth suits, 12 FW, 12 Kroot and a Devilfish in each box.

It also depends on what type of force you want.
I mean my army is going to be a Firewarrior Gunline, boasting obscene amounts of S5 shooting.
So I'm buying 4 Battleforces, 2 Skyray kits, an ethereal and 5 boxes of Fire Warriors, along with a few bits from ebay to give me 7 battlesuits, 12 stealth suits, an ethereal, 96 fire warriors, 24 pathfinders, 3 devilfish, 2 hammerheads and a skyray, packed full of drones and seeker missiles.

The 'standard' seems to be as many battlesuits and broadsides as possible, with minimum troops in devilfishes.

That said, I'd prefer to have more than 2 scoring units, so even then I'd run 4-6 squads of 6 firewarriors then max out broadsides and battlesuits after if going that route.

General tactic with kroot is to tarpit / bubble wrap your soft targets protecting them from assault.

I'd suggest getting the models in this order or close to...
A battle suit commander
12 Firewarroirs
Devilfish (Buy the Skyray kit though, since you can build/magnetize the tank to be a Skyray, Hammerhead or Devilfish)
Kroot
More Crisis Suits
Broadsides
Piranhas (great for blocking moment and super speedy MG)

Does anyone have experience using the Barracuda in standard games?