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I am brand new to 40k and these forums and apologize as I'm sure I've overlooked the place where this should have been posted.

I've started just these last few days and have decided to go Tau for a few reasons:

1. They seem to be evasive/ranged specialists with their mechs and that is interesting to me.
2. They seem to be slightly easier to paint in detail vs. things like the chaos or grey knights.
3. I just plain like their concept.

This all being said I'm trying to start with a 1,000 point army to keep costs down and give me a jumping off point. In doing this I've started with one FW team and a some Crisis suits. As I'm looking at the XV8's and their many configurations I'm starting to look at using them in their Deathrain configuration. I'm running into confusion as to what twinlinking is though. It seems to be the same weapon pod installed twice but here-in lies my confusion. Some posts I've come across seem to reference this as one pod just designated as twinlinked and others seem to say it's two separate pods that are "twinlinked". Could someone clarify this for me. The models only came with one missile pod for each crisis suit and if twin linking means two pods per model, I'm going to be 3 short to make that happen.

Any help is greatly appreciated, even if it's just pointing me to where I should have posted this. Thanks again!

Weapons for Crisis Suits can be bought in a single, non twin linked version for the first points cost shown, twin linked for the second cost shown or you can buy two separate weapons using the first cost for each of them, so a TL Missile Pod would be 20 points versus Dual Missile Pods for 30 or a single at half of the dual price.

So if I build the model with a single missile pod and designate it as TL, is that considered right for the game purpose?

One of the big revelations in the new codex allows you to actually take two of the same weapon. Previously in the old one you could only take two of the same weapon by making it a single twin linked copy of the weapon. The cost on the left of the slash is the cost for one copy of the weapon. You can get two weapons by just paying double the points cost. The cost after the slash is for a twin linked copy, which of course lets you fire only once but re-roll to hit if you miss (but still takes 2 "selections" from the chart).

To be honest now that the new codex is out I can see no advantage to taking twin linked over two weapon copies other than it being slightly cheaper, and the times you just want maximum fire power so you take a twin linked weapon and then a second weapon on top of that.

I am fairly certain you can get 2 pods per suit, I honestly haven't put an XV8 together in so long I've forgotten.

Last thing, I highly, HIGHLY, recommend learning how to use magnets if you plan on collecting Tau. XV8's are some of the easiest things in the game to magnetize and with the versatility of load-outs you will really want to. There's tons of way to do this, you can find them on the internet, here's one that looks pretty simple, just scroll down to "Magnetizing optional weapons and equipment" (I just used one big magnet recessed into each arm/shoulder and pushed little metal tacks into the weapons to attach to the magnet. It holds well enough except that sometimes your weapons will "droop" during combat since there's only one point of attachment)

http://themanufactorum.com/kits/tau/crisis/assembly.htm