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I'm trying to help a new player who has joined our group, and he has chosen Tau as his first army. He played a list yesterday that performed quite below par, and in my opinion the biggest problem was the lack of focus and synergy.
I'm looking at creating a pretty competitive list for him to learn the game, as well as tau, with. He is still trying out different units, and that is great, but I believe he will have more fun and learn the basics better if he had more of an effect when doing it.
I've come up with the following list which I will recommend to him, but would appreciate criticism as I am not a Tau player.

HQ
Tau Commander - 2x Missile Pod, Drone controller, Target lock, 2x Markerlight drones.

Troops
12x Firewarriors
12x Firewarriors

Elite
3x Crisis Suits - 2x missile pods (each), 3x Markerlight Drones
3x Crisis Suits - 2x Plasma rifle (each), 3x Gun/Shield Drones

Fast Attack
4x Markerlight drones

Total: 808

These units will provide the basis for the army. The tau commander will run in the drone squad for 6 BS5 markerlights, and target lock allowing him to use his missile pods (at range 36, to match the markerlights) on a different target to the drones.

The Fire warriors are taken for the obligatory troops choices, but are quite efficient in their own right when backed up with markers.

The missile crisis teams are taken to provide some str 7 saturation, whilst remaining more maneuverable than broadsides. Marker drones were taken here, as with 36 range and JSJ they can stay out of the way of most threats, and gun drones have a too short range.

Plasma suits for heavy infantry/ High save MC's.

The remaining 192 points are optional, and I am unsure where to best spend them. I will suggest these points be spent on new things he wants to try out, though some of my suggestions will be:

- Hammerhead - Submunitions, Longstrike, Disruption pod (A strong counter to enemy armour)
- Riptide (With or without ion)
- 2 man crisis team - 2 Fusion blasters (each) 4x Shield drones, Velocity tracker (Counter to armour and air, though no intercept)
- 2 Broadsides - Velocity tracker (+A few more points for upgrades spread around the list) (Works vs medium-heavy armour and flyers, will struggle vs AV

Thanks. Thoughts appreciated.

TBH the riptide is what I would use with that list, plus if you drop some drones or fire warriors to get 220 points spare you can run it with an ion accelerator and a stimulant injector. Then you tell your friend to drop it in the middle of the board and tell his opponent how awesome it's gun is and you have a T6 6 wound model with a 2+ armour 5/3+ invulnerable and a 5+ feel no pain that will soak up damage whilst everything else does the real damage.
Heck you could give it seeker missiles to deny the enemy cover or fusion blasters to kill tanks too.

Not a bad list for a non Tau player to write.

Those Firewarriors are fragile, only two squads without a 'ui will break and rarely make it to sit on an objective. Split them up or, spend 66pts to get a Farsight Enclave Fireblade and bonding on the Suits. For 66pts you get a High LD model in a Firewarrior Squad, and you made those Crisis Squads Scoring and you still have some points to spend to reach 1000.

A Riptide is a good addition and many will say better than Crisis Suits, but he doesn't really help with the biggest weakness, no answer to AV13/14 especially AV14. Fusion Suits are good and could be used effectively. A base Riptide with a TLFB could help, a Longstrike Hammerhead would be good.

Don't spend VTs on normal Suits, especially short range fusion Suits. Shield drones generally aren't worth it, keep them Marker or Gun drones. Broadsides with EWO are ok AA and good Anti AV 10/11/12 and even AV13 in a pinch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yuber_1992 wrote:
TBH the riptide is what I would use with that list, plus if you drop some drones or fire warriors to get 220 points spare you can run it with an ion accelerator and a stimulant injector. Then you tell your friend to drop it in the middle of the board and tell his opponent how awesome it's gun is and you have a T6 6 wound model with a 2+ armour 5/3+ invulnerable and a 5+ feel no pain that will soak up damage whilst everything else does the real damage.
Heck you could give it seeker missiles to deny the enemy cover or fusion blasters to kill tanks too.

Umm.... Couple of mistakes here.

The Riptide has 5 wounds.
They can't take Seeker Missiles, but can have SMS.
And plopping it in the middle of their army is a bad idea. I've had Riptides break and get run down by naked assault marines. Either it will get tarpitted, or assaulted and run down.

Thanks guys.

I know the fire warriors' morale is poor, but I didn't want to spend the points just for 2 sergeants. I was considering an ethereal as he is cheap and solves the morale issue in more than 1 unit if they are close enough.
That said the farsight allies sounds like a decent idea by making those suits scoring.

I guess most of the time tau players should take farsight allies to make 2 units of suits scoring, its pretty strong considering how little it costs.

If he did spend 66 pts to do this, it still leaves enough for a hammerhead which is nice (Though not enough for disruption pods or pie plate shot).

I'm really not a huge fan if the commander for smaller point games, he costs too much for 1 unit and drones I find are more hassle than they're worth. For a 1000 point game I would run a list that looks more like this

ethereal -50

Riptide -220
Ion accelerator, twin linked fusion blaster, stim injector

Riptide -200
Heavy burst cannon, twin linked fusion blaster, velocity tracker

12 fire warriors
Pulse rifles

12 fire warriors
Pulse rifles

6 pathfinders
Market light

6 pathfinders
Markerlight

hammerhead gunship
Long strike, submunitions, twin linked smart missile system

having 2 riptides in your opponents face will force him to choose 1 to try and drop while the other pillages his forces or attempt to drop both simultaneously which will work even worse. In my experience people go for the Ion tide first since its technically a better gun but I have had really good luck with the HBC glancing down flyers and light armour (that rending is juicy)
The hammer head only needs to sit back and snipe with his bs5 from longstrike and will only ever need 2 MLs to remove cover plus with the SMS he can be out if LoS and still ignore cover if need be.
Keep the tides out front and drawing fire while they advance. Move your fire warriors with the ethereal in behind to snag objectives if you space it right you can give them and at least 1 Riptide FNP or give them extra shots. Plus it solves your morale issue if used properly since everything in 12" uses his LD
Having 2 squads of pathfinders will allow you to have enough MLs to cover all your bases with your firepower instead of only having 1 viable target with 4-5 MLs you'll be able to get 2 targets with an average of 3 each.

This is all open to change if anyone else wants to add anything but I feel he will have quite a bit of success with it


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sorry I totally forgot to put point totals for the units and a total

pathfinders are 66/ unit

fire warriors are 108 / unit

And hammerhead should be 130

total I think is 993 ish

I'm not sure on the best place to get markerlights.

It seems to be a question of quantity or quality, both in terms of survivability and accuracy.

Obviously path finders are cheap, but with T3, a 5+ save and limited maneuverability (Either they have to hug cove or invest in a devilfish).

On the other hand drones with a commander are more expensive (around 2x the cost), but they are T4, have a 4+ save, but most importantly can JSJ try keep them out of trouble.

I've tried both; the drones are only effective with a commander which is a lot of points to sink into a unit just to make them effective. You're not wrong that the JSJ is a huge boon and I've thought about trying a buffmander with them (re-roll misses on ML would be pretty sweet) the pathfinders however have been reliable all the way around and have never regretted taking them

If you think about the commander simply as a marker light tax then it must seem bad, but the points are not wasted. The commander is quite points efficient for a 4 wounds 3+ hq choice who has a range of 36. Ethereals are good, but they can die very easy, I'd rather my warlord be a commander and take an ethereal to support him.

Another benefit to the drones is having relentless. Pathfinders can only snap fire their markerlights if they are forced to move or have no enemies in range, with drones the moving isn't an issue, and with JSJ they can still move fire and then go an additional 2d6 in one turn. I'm leaning more towards them because of the versatility and also because they can dictate the range of engagement a little more.

If you HQ slots are full however and you have no space for a commander, then certainly the pathfinders can provide some cheap markers.

Oh I'm aware the commander is a great unit I just don't like the idea of using him for markers; seems like a lot of wasted potential is all. While we're on the subject of marker drones can I ask what you use for them? I think I have a whopping total of about three in all if my 6000 points (another reason I use pathfinders more often)

The tau commander really needs target lock, that way his shooting is not tied up with the markerlights. The downside is of course is that he has no hard points to spare.

If my friend did decide to get 2 units of crisis suits like in the list, then he will have lots of drones to spare. If it was me, then I would use the spare upgrade components from the crisis suits, remove the guns from the drones and convert my own. Seems to me to be the most efficient way to do it. Why GW doesn't release an actual Tau Drones box with all the upgrades is beyond me. The only official model for a markerdrone is the one model you get in a box of stealth suits -- which is obviously not a cost effective way of getting them.

That's the way I was thinking about doing it too I've got to have almost 50 unassembled drones lol