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I've played Tau for a very long time now, and have always enjoyed playing a mechanized and highly mobile Tau army. With that in mind, here is my first attempt at a TAC 1850 list with the new codex:

Shadowsun - 135

Crisis Suit Team - 165
---3 Members
---Plasma Rifle
---Fusion Blaster
---Advanced Targeting System

Crisis Suit Team - 216
---3 Members
---Missile Pod
---Fusion Blaster
---Skyfire

Fire Warrior Team - 208
---12 Members (Shas'ui Upgrade)
---Pulse Rifles
---Devilfish Transport
---Smart Missile System upgrade

Fire Warrior Team - 208
---12 Members (Shas'ui Upgrade)
---Pulse Rifles
---Devilfish Transport
---Smart Missile System upgrade

Fire Warrior Team - 208
---12 Members (Shas'ui Upgrade)
---Pulse Rifles
---Devilfish Transport
---Smart Missile System upgrade

Fire Warrior Team - 208
---12 Members (Shas'ui Upgrade)
---Pulse Rifles
---Devilfish Transport
---Smart Missile System upgrade

Hammerhead Gunship - 175
---Longstrike
---Railgun w/ Submunitions

Hammerhead Gunship - 131
---Railgun w/ Submunitions
---Blacksun Filter

Sky Ray Gunship - 116
---Smart Missile System
---Blacksun Filter

This leaves me with 80 points.


So here are the plans: Shadowsun joined to the low AP deathstar Crisis team to go TEQ and MEQ hunting. Other Crisis Suit team to go tank hunting, or deep strike and eradicate a flyer if they have them. Hammerheads to lay down pie plates and knock out tanks from a distance. Skyray for AA redundancy and Markerlight support. Fish of Fury to be furious and provide mass amounts of S: 5 long range firepower.


My concerns are that I might have a lack of Markerlights in my list. Besides that I feel that I cover all my bases pretty well while staying true to my favorite theme

Seems a little excessive with the warfishes, but if your going to run them that way, why not take carbines on your FW, they generally wont be sitting tight at range and when they come out of there transport can shoot things up like no ones business at 18" range instead of 15" plus pinning... lol.

with that many warriors though you could keep the rifles and much a few warriors for a ethereal as that synergies better with mass infantry and will generally be safe inside a fish.

and juuust in case it happens maybe take some backup EMPs just in case.

I'm curious why you think that the number of Warfishes is excessive? The experience that I have makes it so 4 scoring units at 1850 always works pretty well.

Can the Ethereal use his abilities inside a Warfish? Also, his abilities seem much more beneficial to static forces than a Mechanized force. I haven't used him yet though so I can't say for sure.

Carbines vs Rifles isn't something I've thought about haha (old habits die hard). The difference that I see is that I'd get an extra shot at 15-18" but I can't shoot past that. What other benefits can you see? I still feel like rifles are superior.

 rabid1903 wrote:
I'm curious why you think that the number of Warfishes is excessive? The experience that I have makes it so 4 scoring units at 1850 always works pretty well.

Can the Ethereal use his abilities inside a Warfish? Also, his abilities seem much more beneficial to static forces than a Mechanized force. I haven't used him yet though so I can't say for sure.

Carbines vs Rifles isn't something I've thought about haha (old habits die hard). The difference that I see is that I'd get an extra shot at 15-18" but I can't shoot past that. What other benefits can you see? I still feel like rifles are superior.

well by excessive i mean i don't see that many warfish anymore lol 4th ed codex syndrome (in 6th ed)

BUT i will say you are investing about 1/4th your points into transport and will require very careful positioning and use as they no has DP.

Carbines vs Rifles:
Carbines: 2 Shoots at 18", pinning, can assault after lololol
Rifle: 2 shoots at 15" 1 at 30, cant assault after shooting lololol.

I can see carbines are generally only good for that extra 3" range which should be fine if your bumbrushing in with devilfishes. however with an ethereal rifles become much better as you get 3 shots at 15" instead of only 2. so it depends on how you are going to use the fire warriors.

Ah, well I had the most fun with Tau when I was playing Fish of Fury Though it's probably not going to be top tier, I'll give those a shot again. I'm considering taking the Disruption Pods again, seeing as how they are going to always be moving (and getting that juicy 4+ save)

I'll stick with the Rifles for now, but will definitely try out some Carbines at some point soon.

As for taking the Ethereal, I definitely need to think about that. I just have a hard time with using one because they don't fit the theme of my list very well.

How would you suggest using the extra 80 points I have though. It's a pretty significant amount to work with.

Well since your already investing a ton into Fishes, you can give all of them DP and sensor spines that's exactly 80

So for the Fish, if you drop the squad upgrades on the firewarriors, you can get the point defense systems, which gives you 4 TL S5 shots on overwatch, at the cost of practically nothing.

If oyu drop a warrior from each fish, you can add 1 ethereal, boosting everything. My 2 cents on troops.

Why are you bothering with the 'ui upgrade on your firewarriors, seems like wasted points if you're not using any upgrades

I like the list. I run something similar, just not as many fish. Just wondering about your tactics. Do you reserve some of the fish? what do you do with Drop armies?

The two things missing are the force multipliers that Tau now have, Markerlights and HQ with Army buffs (Ethereal, Fireblade, etc.). The Ethereals really make a difference particularly in the midgame where ranges fall below 18 inches. Adding 2 ML drones and drone controller to your Commander to work with Longstrike will make it deadly when you remove cover.

I would drop one squad to 6.

Save 60 pts, just a safe scoring unit. Add a squad of pathfinders or some drones w/ marker lights to make the sky ray more of a threat. then,

Add seeker missiles to all your tanks.

 dpal666 wrote:
Why are you bothering with the 'ui upgrade on your firewarriors, seems like wasted points if you're not using any upgrades

With fragile units of T3 and 4+ saves, you're going to be making a lot of morale tests from shooting casualties. LD8 is a massive upgrade to LD7 (almost a 14% better chance of success), and is unequivocally worth 10 points by itself.

Atma wrote:

 dpal666 wrote:
Why are you bothering with the 'ui upgrade on your firewarriors, seems like wasted points if you're not using any upgrades

With fragile units of T3 and 4+ saves, you're going to be making a lot of morale tests from shooting casualties. LD8 is a massive upgrade to LD7 (almost a 14% better chance of success), and is unequivocally worth 10 points by itself.

okay but why have 5 ld 8 units, when for the same cost you can have 5 ld 10 units with +1shots?

 chrisrawr wrote:

Atma wrote:

 dpal666 wrote:
Why are you bothering with the 'ui upgrade on your firewarriors, seems like wasted points if you're not using any upgrades

With fragile units of T3 and 4+ saves, you're going to be making a lot of morale tests from shooting casualties. LD8 is a massive upgrade to LD7 (almost a 14% better chance of success), and is unequivocally worth 10 points by itself.

okay but why have 5 ld 8 units, when for the same cost you can have 5 ld 10 units with +1shots?

Exactly. Bring an Ethereal if you're worried about army LD.

Spend your remaining points on pathfinders with markerlights. I think you will need them. lol 2 teams ideally, full markerlights.

If you think you don't need them, then get Pirahnas. I guess more armour without hurt, since you have so many already.

You are REALLY low on AA fire. Your points seem off on the Crisis teams:

Fusion + plasma + ATS = 55 points x 3 = 165

So that's nearly 100 extra points.

Also your HS needs looking at. Id consider dropping a railhead and Skyray for 2 Ionheads. I also feel Longstrike is wasted on the Railhead. It takes advantage of almost none of his benefits whereas the Ionhead maximises all of them.

Well how i can see the list go:

IF you dont have SMS on your devilfish, then you would have a line of mobile cover for your firewarriors and you can detach your drones to stand in front or do their own thing ( the drones have TL assault 2 pinning carbines ) might be a little better for "close-up" fishies. and with pin-point defense you can make the fishies and drones support fire, and so can your warriors behind them.

For the SMS system you prolly go for a high mobility set-up where you rush for the best locations and then set up camp with FW and have your devilfish fly around making hell and providing cover. utilizing the fact they are skimmers with 4 ignore cover shots.

Also the note that you can put seekers on devilfish too.

So far you have 4x 12AV in front ( 11AV sides ) and 3x 13AV in front ( 12 AV sides ) so as Elden said: more armor or just make sure that your enemy never get the chance of flanking your armor ever.

Whoops, forgot to change the points for the unit but changed it in the total. Thanks for pointing that out though

I thought that the Crisis team and Skyray would actually give pretty good AA coverage.



The Ethereal is looking more attractive, but how can I fit him into this list? If I drop a single Shas'ui from one of the squads then I can still fit him into a Warfish. Are there any other ways I can make it work?

Piranhas I've thought quite a bit about, but I'm not sure how best to take them. I've actually never owned them so I'm pretty unfamiliar with their tactics.

Skyray is mesh even for AA, broadsides are infinitely better. The crisis team is then your only AA so it gets targeted first.

Wow, I thought that it would actually be pretty good at it now.

If it stays still, can't you use this tactic:

Shoot the Network Markerlights at it, if you hit with the first one use it to help hit with the second and give BS 5 to the Gunship.
Now shoot missiles until you kill it, hitting on a 2+ with a S: 8 weapon.

That seems like a dead flyer to me, and if it's not then give +1 BS to the Crisis Team or a Hammerhead on a last ditch effort.


Though I could be wrong.

I'd drop the sqs of fire warriors down to 10 giving you an additional 72pts, making a total of 152. With those pts take 3 tetras, each it's own slot. You now make up for the lack of markerlights without really sacrificing any firepower. You also gain potentially 3 more scoring units and keep your mobile army theme.

I'd drop the railgun on the 2nd hammerhead for an Ion cannon. Longstrike railhead is a must with his tank hunter special rule. So good set up for him.

All in all, great list for 1850pts. Let us know how it performs.

 rabid1903 wrote:
Wow, I thought that it would actually be pretty good at it now.

If it stays still, can't you use this tactic:

Shoot the Network Markerlights at it, if you hit with the first one use it to help hit with the second and give BS 5 to the Gunship.
Now shoot missiles until you kill it, hitting on a 2+ with a S: 8 weapon.

That seems like a dead flyer to me, and if it's not then give +1 BS to the Crisis Team or a Hammerhead on a last ditch effort.


Though I could be wrong.

Thats not how it works though. You fire both MLs at the same time. For each ML hit you can fire 1 missile. You still can't fire its seeker missiles independently of MLs which is why the Skyray still sucks. If it could fire multiple missiles from a single ML then it would be good. If it also had interceptor then it would be amazing AA as is it is just meh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I agree with ajsnips44 that tetras are perfect ML support for this list but I disagree about Longstrike as Tank Hunter is largely wasted on 1 S10 shot except against AV14 where you're far better off with melta. It also seems weird to not see any Piranhas in a mech list which if you factor in the cost of 2 gun drones even at the cheaper 12 upgrade cost mean you're effectively paying 16 points for an AV11 burstcannon!!!!!!

You don't have to expend the marker-light to fire the missiles. you could just fire them at BS4 with sky fire because of the sky ray. If anything fire your markers, increase your own BS then fire a full volley of seekers if you want. (though if your fighting against flyer spam then you may not want to lol)

was thinking sit it in some ruins with a Dpod for a constant 3+ cover so that you don't have to move.

Sorry I missed the change to seekers didn't realise you could just fire them. That makes the Skyray not suck and Seekers on Broadsides and Piranhas more attractive.

I completely forgot about Tetras, and I think they'll fit into this list perfectly.

I think reducing the numbers down to 10 will not reduce my effectiveness all that much, but the 4 shot markerlight will increase everything else significantly. I might use the few extra points to get another seeker missile.

I had strongly considered the Ion Cannon for the Hammerhead (without Longstrike) but couldn't decide. I think I'll give it a shot and see how it goes

Might want to wait on tetras till they are re-updated.

Is there any word or hint on when that may happen? I can proxy all this currently, but it'd be nice to actually give it a shot haha.