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I am planning on going to an ITC tournament in March and not played at one, let alone played in any tournament with Tau, so built what I think is competitive.

Hunter Contingent

Hunter Cadre

Commander
-2x gun drones, cc node, multi-spec. sensor suite, onager, puretide engram, drone controller, stim. injector

Elites

Riptide
- ia, ewo, stim injector

6x crisis suits
-12x gun drones,6x target lock, 4x suits w/ dual plasma, 2x suits with dual fusion

FA

5x pathfinders
4x pathfinders

HS

2x missilesides
-2x ewo

Troops

3x min. units of strike teams

Optimized stealth cadre

Ghostkeel
-cyclic ion, fusion blaster, stim injector

-2x min. unit of stealth suits


Allied FSE det

Farsight

Crisis suit
-2x missile pods, ewo


The idea is to have farsight be my warlord, he and the commander join the 6 man unit of crisis suits to be a farsight bomb, then have the ghostkeel and stealth suits deepstrike in later. Everything else will be deployed to kill as much as possible.

1. What's the Riptide's second gun? I recommend the TL FB.

2.
2a. Cut down on the GunDrones on your Crisis DeathStar (spend those points on #3 below). It makes for far too big a foot print to be caught in assault. I'd have maybe 4 to 6 drones.
2b. Include VRT on somebody, so you have Hit and Run to bail out if they get caught in h2h, using the GunD's higher Init of 4.
2c. Put the C&CN and MSS on a 'Vre and preserve and use the HQ's higher BS for ... dual PlasmaGs? Fusions?. Time and again, I don't understand why players only give the TL/Ignores Cover toys to the guy with better BS when a BS3 Sergeant can carry them.

2d. Put Target Locks only on the FB suits. The others are going to focus all their AP2 love on one unit anyway, so there's no need to spend 20 points on Target Locks you won't use ... freeing 20 points for other things.

3. Missile Sides - get them the full load Missile Drones. Ablative Wounds are good to have as an option, and with the BS bump, the drones will often go to BS3 and you get more Str 7 hits. BKs would be good too.

4. Ghostkeels - I'm a little inexperienced here, but aren't they supposed to have some drones for 2+ in Cover?

The riptide has the smart missile system, but might go fusion blaster as you said.

I probably will cut down on drones to move points around, though I am actually only using a single broadside.

I thought 'vres though could only take 1 relic not 2, that is why I put all on my commander.

The ghostkeel does have those 2 drones, but they are built in with the cost and dont have any guns, so did not add them.

I dunno where the term 'relic' is coming from, but in the Tau Empire Codex, it calls the MSS and C&CN Signature Systems on page 75.

In the Crisis Suit listing, the 'Vre can take up to three items from Ranged Weps, Signature Systems and Support Sys.

I think people generally put them on a commander to stop them being sniped out as easily (for example my list has a few wyverns, and would snipe out the buff shasvre fairly easily, but wouldn't be able to do this to the commander because of his 2+ look out sir roll, and 4 wounds)

With the sig systems present, the extra BS makes all the difference of 0.5 extra FB hits (and none at all if a couple markerlights are being used) - I'd go for the extra defence over this.

So I tweaked my list a little, took some advice

Hunter Contingent

Hunter Cadre

Commander
-c&c node, multi spectrum suite, neuroweb jammer, onager, puretide, drone controller, stim. injector, vrt

Riptide
-ia, sms, ewo, stim

6x crisis suits
-4x w/ dual plasma, 2x w/ dual fusion and TL

6x pathfinders

5x pathfinders

Missileside
-ewo

3x min. strike teams

Optimized stealth

ghostkeel
- cyclic ion, fusion, ewo, stim

2x min units stealth suits

Farsight Cad

Farsight

Crisis suit
-dual missile, ewo

Crisis suit
- dual missile, ewo

Aegis w/ comms relay