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Fledgling Warhammer 40k/Tau player here.

I have been working on an army for a local tournament. The rules are the following:

• 1500 point limit
• No Lords of War
• FW Allowed (But I have no FW units at the moment)
• No Allies (CAD Only)
• No Formations
• Supplements (such as Farsight Enclave) are allowed

With the above in mind I have created the following Farsight Enclave list:


1x Commander with Iridium/C&CN/M3S/Jammer/Talisman/Gauntlet/Relay/VTR --- 187₧
1x Riptide w/ Ion Accel. + Stim & EWO --- 226₧
2x Squads of 3 Crisis Suits with Missile/Plasma + 1 shield drone --- 342₧
2x Squads of 3 Crisis Suits with dual Fusion Blasters + 1 shield drone --- 342₧
2x Squads of 2 HYMP Broadsides with SMS + 2 Shield Drones --- 312₧
1x Singular Railside with SMS + 2 Shield Drones --- 90₧
________________________________________________________________________

Total: 1499₧

The grand majority of the opponents are various SM flavors with at least one Eldar and one Necron player as far as I have been informed.


I currently have Three worries with this army:

1. A complete lack of Markerlight Support in a Tau army is a big, big downside.
2. Very few non-drone units (19) in a 1500 list is very low.
3. The commander is extremely expensive for a unit that has exactly 0 firepower

Shield Drones were taken over marker drones to attempt to allow my army to add to the survivability of my units as I am not sure how much cover is going to be on the field for my Crisis Suits.

The general idea of this list I'm sure is pretty basic. Both squads of FB suits deep strike in on the biggest things on the field to remove them.
Ideally these units then scoot to cover to be a continuing problem after taking out their initial target. The reason for the amount of shield drones I purchased for this list was to cover for the low unit count I mentioned in my second point above.

Commander will join a plasma/Missile Crisis squad and do everything he can to try and make everything go great for me and horrible for the enemy and issue challenges whenever someone he can gib with the gauntlet gets unavoidably close. Ideally the game plan is break transport with FBs/Riptide/Railside -> send in Plasma/Missile suits to clean up and scoot away.

I completely understand that a sizable portion of this game is luck but I wanted to include part of my game plan to give some insight as to what I was trying to accomplish.

My hope is that the sheer firepower of this army compensates properly for the shortcomings I listed but as a new player I am 100% open to suggestions and I'm certain there's hundreds of things I'm not factoring in properly.

Edit: Spelling

Could you include something like a stealth team for markerlight support? I was quite worried about a list I was making and read that stealth teams can work alright (if not optimal) for markerlights.

The buffmander for 3 guys(you can put squads as big as 9) just as a waste especially since there weapons are mixed. I would take 2 single fusions, and rest of crisis in the buff mander squad to make him worth it:-) also take a single load with target lock on 3/4 members so they can fire at different units if you want.

Also take missle drones on xv88 you want yo have extra shots rather then a save since they are suppose to be cover anyway! also try to squize in small pathfinder/markomander(2 ml drones, 4 fast attack) and drone controls if you want him to shoot(bs5 is awesome) give him pods.(jinking eldar, necrons and bikes can be removed by ml)

Also ghostkeels seems like lots of fun for your meta!

Just me thoughts

meowmix wrote:Could you include something like a stealth team for markerlight support? I was quite worried about a list I was making and read that stealth teams can work alright (if not optimal) for markerlights.

Are you referring to XV25s or another type of stealth team? I was not aware that they had access to Markerlights.

arthorn wrote:The buffmander for 3 guys(you can put squads as big as 9) just as a waste especially since there weapons are mixed. I would take 2 single fusions, and rest of crisis in the buff mander squad to make him worth it:-) also take a single load with target lock on 3/4 members so they can fire at different units if you want.

Also take missle drones on xv88 you want yo have extra shots rather then a save since they are suppose to be cover anyway! also try to squize in small pathfinder/markomander(2 ml drones, 4 fast attack) and drone controls if you want him to shoot(bs5 is awesome) give him pods.(jinking eldar, necrons and bikes can be removed by ml)

Also ghostkeels seems like lots of fun for your meta!

Just me thoughts

The reason that I left the squads small is so it would be easier to not get stuck in dangerous terrain when jumping over terrain with MSM and also to alleviate the need for Target Lock since I was running low on points. That said I'm not opposed to making the group larger to add value to the buffmander- I'll just have to move some stuff around.

I've swapped the Shield Drones for Missile Drones on all VX88s

To avoid the Farsight Tax I was thinking if I were to pick up Markerlights it would be through Marker Drones and a Drone Controller and drop M3S (since ML don't need to worry about cover saves).

I am 100% on board with getting a Ghostkeel- it's just out of my budget at this time. It is actually next on my to-buy list. To my understanding most tournaments allow formations, and the OSC looks amazing.







Automatically Appended Next Post:
Additionally if I'm switching my commander from being attached to an XV8 squad to ML Drones would you suggest dropping M3S + Talisman? Just those two is almost the cost of a squad of ML Drones. Additionally would switching to an XV84 (from Iridium) be a good idea for this setup? I have not actually used any FW units up to this point or even done much research that doesn't have to do with XV9/R'Varna Suits.

Hi, I'd suggest dropping the talisman, gauntlet and relay on the commander. Add a drone controller. Stick him in a large squad of crisis suits with dual missile pods,target locks and marker drones. Drop all the shield drones in your army. The marker drones can light up a target whilst the crisis suits in this unit split fire. The commander tanks for the unit and if needs be, looks out sir to the drones.

Run the fusion suit units in squads of 2, more then that is overkill. I'd make the railside a hymp and move him into one of the squads. Give them all early warning override.