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Well, I am starting my Tau army (I must have something like 1500+ pts), and first thing that comes to my mind : Not enough high AP (and no, I will not play 3 Riptides; why ? Cuz it's just not cool and friendly), not enough high Str Blast, not enough anti-vehicule capacity and not enough fast units. Don't get me wrong; I love the Tau. I love to play them and all, but presently I'm having difficulties against three things:

1-Tyranids swarms.
2-Tyranids hordes of psykers
3-SM armour saves.

So here's the big question : are the Eldars and the Necrons good additions to a Tau force ? Eldar have good psykers (shame they aren't battle brothers because they would boost our gimmicks awesomely), and Necrons, well, they have multiple gear items with special tricks, are tuff as hell and are capable of reanimation. Plus, their basic guns glance on 6's. So which of these two xenos do you think would be a great addition ? And how so ? I guess pretty easily that the Eldar have a lot of specialized troops, good psykers and 'Wraiths. Necrons are tough as hell and have a good range (doomsday ark, monolith). What is your opinion and your advices ? Let's say for example I'm doing a 1500 pts list and that I use 1000 pts of Tau, what would you add as allies to this :


Commander : Cyclion Ion, Airbusting, Iridium battlesuit, Shield Gen, Stim Injector

Crisis x3 : TL Flamethrower x3, Missile Pod x3, Stim Injector x3

Crisis x3 : TL Fusion Blaster x3, Missile Pod x3, Stim Injector x3

Fire Warriors x11

Fire Warriors x10

Hammerhead : Ion Cannon, TL Smart Missile system, Disruption Pod, Repair System

Broadside : TL Smart Missile System, TL HYMP, Stim Injectors

Total: 998 / 1500

That leaves us with 502 points to spend either on Eldars or Necrons. What's your advice ?

"Well, I am starting my Tau army (I must have something like 1500+ pts), and first thing that comes to my mind : Not enough high AP" Wait Seriously? i understand you dont feel like using Riptides but there are still suits with lots of doesn't get hot plasmas, and delicious better ranged meltas.

Ether way though, necrons or eldar both make a decent ally but mostly because of there high mobility and ability to score objectives less on super low AP weapons except like the doom scythe for st 10 ap 1 beams.

Edit: Id get me a CCB lord with Warsythe 3++ warriors in a scythe, and a doom scythe because its fun. you will need to kill 1 stim to fit it though i think.

I understand your point. So what would you suggest to me instead ? To get other suits or to get some specific Eldar / Necron units ? How about a Spiritseer plus some wraithguards to add bulk to my force ? Or how about a Fire Prism ?

Not as familiar to Eldar though i could take a look later,

But if i was building a 1500 with roughly what you have.

Commander with Iridium TL, MPs x2 not TL, and a DC and 2 marker drones.
Crisis suit teams with TL missile pods + TL + 2 marker drones each x 2

Crisis suits with plasma + TL plasma x 2
Crisis suits with Fusions + TL Fusions x 2

4 x 6 man squads of Fire warriors

Hammer head if possibe to swtich to Skyray

Missile fists with EWO

+ the above leaves you like 30 points for extra stuff all over.

Commander is attacehd with the other missile crysis + 6 BS 5 markerlights to focus fire or remove cover, DS or jump around the Plasma suit to head hunt Heavy units, DS the fusions to take out important tanks using there 8" melta range.
Hide troops around as they will probably fail LD if they start dieing

Doom scythe is good for elites and tanks alike, the nightscythe is good for putting down wounds or HP, the Barge lord is a distraction unit to push forward and wreck face if its not dealth with.

I would say, for 7th edition, Necrons would make a better ally. We can't benefit from Eldar blessings anymore. But the Necrons do cover our weaknesses well. They have Wraiths+DLords/Barge Lords which cover our HtH deficit (and wraiths are excellent tarpitters!) and they provide better fliers (Night Scythes) and cheap resilient troops.

The question is, how big do you want the Necron element to be?

Not enough high ap?

You do realize tau are the best at spamming AP1/2 weapons right? Ignoring the riptide we have crisis suits that spam the gak out of plasmas or fusions or both, hammerheads, and railsides.

Probably the only unit you can easily bring in an allied formation for high AP would be plasma bikers from either vanilla marines or dark angels, as they tote a lot of twinlinked plasmas on a BS4 model and have outflank.

I don't think that Tau need allies because the solution for any problem(shoot it more) can be solved with more units from the Tau Empire Codex.

I would recommend streamlining your crisis suit builds.
vs. Hordes, 2 missile pods is better than flamers on crisis suits if you are not deepstriking. drop stims.

Next pick whether you want fusion or missiles on the second squad. drop stims.

Consider rearming your CDR. Tau excel at 30-36 firefights.

Consider railhead w/ submuntions instead of ionhead. Still have a large blast and won't risk the overheat.

Add markerlights to increase the effectiveness of AP1/2 weapons you have.

 Warzoner wrote:

Crisis x3 : TL Flamethrower x3, Missile Pod x3, Stim Injector x3

Crisis x3 : TL Fusion Blaster x3, Missile Pod x3, Stim Injector x3

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Crisis suits can only carry 3 slots of equipment. TL weapons count as two slots. So you could have Flamer, Missile Pod, Stim Injector, but not TL the flamers. Same with the Fusion Blasters.

If you need more Anti-armor, I hear the best choice is to run 2 Fusion Blaster, but not TL them. That gives each Crisis suite 2 shots against armor. Markerlights should provide the extra BS you need. (You can always have a few Markerlight Drones too...)

Thanks,
Duncan