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What's the best way to start Tau? I just bought some Fire Warriors, and built them with Pulse Rifles, the SMS, and may add the Bonding Knife if it's good. After that I was thinking to buy another box, a Crisis Team, the Battlesuit Commander, and a Ghostkeel. Is that a good start? I think it takes me to 750-ish, with upgrades. Is it good enough to stand up to other pretty casual lists? Or is it crap and I should rethink it all? Please C+C these ideas.

If this is the wrong forum mods please move this.

Bonding knives are redundant for units that have ICs joined to them when they break and are less useful the closer you are to the board edge when it happens. They can be useful in certain situations and depending on whether you want to rune enclaves or not may be required.

You're probably going to be hurting for upgrades by trying to squeeze that ghostkeel in there though.

To start tau you must first select a playstyle, for we have many that are radically different.

There is the classic "tau fortress" gunline army.
You have "fish of fury" aggressive mechanised infantry lists.
The classic "battlesuit spearhead" elite forces.
There are many more.

As for your unit list, rifle warriors are decent, but forget the knife, it's pure tax.
Crisis commander is the classic tau HQ choice for a reason, flexible and useful.
Crisis suits are workhorses, equipped to do anything you need from horde clearing to zone control to suicide anti tank. Make sure to magazine the weapons.
Ghostkneel is new, so there isn't much info on his performance in game, but early results are promising. A good general purpose unit with the ion raker/fusion secondary setup.
Overall decent choices, not too focused towards a long term build, but they all work on their own right and carry their weight while being flexible enough to answer your needs. With goid gun choices for crisis suit (local meta dependant) you should fayre well against mossy things in this point range.

ITau has a lot of good stuff, so it's easier to warn you of what you shouldn't care much about:

- Vespids
- Both planes
- Aun'Shi

Everything else can find some use in your lists (personally, I don't like Stealth Suits or Aun'Va that much).

You can build either via CAD or via our both Decurion-like detachments - Hunter Contingent (in Codex and Kauyon books) and Dawn Blade (Mont'ka book). The Hunter Contingent simulates a very synergic army (you get bonuses for firing at the same target with more than 1 unit), while Dawn Blade likes to focus on one enemy unit at a time.

As you're starting, I'd suggest a CAD until you get our entire model line. Slowly add formations (from the 3 aforementioned books) to get a grasp of them as well.
Oh, and Kauyon has some neat Fortifications.