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I'll be picking up a fairly sizeable Tau army soon, and I don't really know much about Tau. Obviously I need the main codex. Is the supplement Farsight Enclave an important book to have for a new Tau player?

Farsight enclave focusses more on battle suits and insertion type armies. If you like the XV8 crisis suits in particular, you'd like the book.

That being said. It is not a particular important book. The general codex is better in terms of strength. It's mainly there for people that fancy the particular style of play the book supports or those who like the story of Farsight and his enclave.

Thank you for the feedback. I don't play on adding a whole lot to the army lot I am buying, so I'll probably hold off on getting the supplement unless I really get into playing Tau.

Some formations are in the FSE book that aren't in the main codex.

There are some really great formations in the FSE book and you don't need to be taking FSE detachments to use them.

Also, crisis suits as troops is pretty interesting.

Here's the army I bought, warts and all. Can I make any of the FSE formations, or am I close to any, with this army?

52 Fire Warriors
48 Kroot
8 Pathfinders
9 Stealth Suits
6 Crisis Suits
4 Broadside Suits
4 Hammerheads
4 Devilfish

Any advice on a good unit or two to add to this army to make it better would be appreciated. I suppose I should be looking at a Riptide. Frustrating...I stopped by my hobby shop after picking this up, but they were out of the codex

A riptide rarely goes astray in any Tau army and would allow you to make a retaliation cadre for either an auxialary in the enclaves or a core choice in farsight or the rapid insertion force from farsight.

A ghostkeel would let you make the Optimised stealth cadre with your existing steal suits.

A skyray would allow you to field the armoured interdiction cadre if you can't turn 1 of those hammerheads into a skyray by swapping the turret. If you can swap the turrets on 3 or more of them, then you can take the skysweep formation from farsight, but the 5+ cover bonus isn't really that amazing to warrant a mandatory devilfish.

A pirahna would let you take the infiltration cadre (though you'd have to choose where you wanted your stealths, here or with the OSC, and the OSC is far, far better)

The ranged support cadre from farsight is also something else you can already do and is useful enough.

You can already make the counterstrike cadre out of farsight, but strike teams and pathfinders don't really get much out of the mandatory devilfish like breachers would and they lose obsec in the bargain.

If I was you, I'd figure out what direction you want to go and then build towards that. Firewarriors and kroot lend themselves to enclaves, crisis towards farsight which generally lets you run more suits overall since it frees up elite slots for riptides (and stealths, but if you're taking them, you're taking the OSC anyway most likely).

Buy what you think looks cool without going down the road of 7 riptides and a drone net and you'll be fine.

Thanks very much for all that info