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Been playing around with all the factions I own and I am starting to think my terrible foot based tau gun line is now awesome. Maybe too awesome. This setup makes 288 S5 shots, rerolling 1s to hit a turn at 36 inches. 432 at 18 inches. It has some small Kroot and Pathfinder squads to scout forwards and screen out T1 charges and can easily make sure there is no 9" gap in their own deployment zone whilst still maintaining all benefits, additionally, the grav-inhibitor drones make those long charges very tough.

With just the pulse rifles at maximum range, they are taking half the wounds off a Knight per turn. They wipe out 50+ marines, nuke land raiders, kill over 100 orcs/stealers/etc. And then they still have 32 S7 AP-1 shots that do d3 wounds. Also, they have a 4+/6++ followed by a 6+ to ignore any wounds they suffer, making them pretty durable for a 1 wound guy and you need to kill a lot of them to drop their effectiveness. Sure it relies heavily on the characters to work correctly, but it can protect them from snipers with shield drones long enough for the torrent of fire to remove the snipers.

So what are the major weaknesses of this army I missed?

Battallion Detachment (860pts)

HQ (88 pts)

Ethereal 46 Pts
Equalisers

Cadre Fire Blade 42 Pts

Troops (772 Pts)

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 114 Pts
Marker Drone, Guardian Drone

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 114 Pts
Marker Drone, Guardian Drone

Battallion Detachment (860 pts)

HQ (88 pts)

Ethereal 46 Pts
Equalisers

Cadre Fire Blade 42 Pts

Troops (772 Pts)

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 136 Pts
2 Missile Pod Turrets

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 114 Pts
Marker Drone, Guardian Drone

12 Strike Team Firewarriors 114 Pts
Marker Drone, Guardian Drone

Outrider Detachment (280 pts)

HQ (92 pts)

Ethereal 46 Pts
Equalisers

Ethereal 46 Pts
Equalisers

Fast Attack (188 Pts)

5 Pathfinders 78 Pts
Pulse Accelerator Drone, Grav Inhibitor Drone, 2 Shield Drones

5 Pathfinders 78 Pts
Pulse Accelerator Drone, Grav Inhibitor Drone, 2 Shield Drones

4 Kroot Hounds 16 Pts

4 Kroot Hounds 16 Pts

Do you already own the 144 fire warriors needed for that list? That would be pretty impressive!

A good counter would be a similar list, but with fewer units overall, just to get first turn.

I own 120 ish. To be fair it's a pretty heavily themed force and about half are Auxiliaries, but they are all armed as Firewarriors and wearing Tau armour pieces mixed with their Guards parts so I don't think anyone would mind. Another 24 would not be a big investment. It's weird that my fluff list seems to be so effective. And, yes it will never go first unless it seizes. I think it has the durability to still be very very deadly on its turn though. That's why I wanted the extra Ethereals to allow the 6+ Fnp. Its quite possible with this army to set up kroot and pathfinders, one of your ethereals and a Cadre Fireblade and then refuse a flank and still get all the benefits by bunching up with your remaining characters. Quite nasty if you can force half the enemy army to slog across the board whilst you eliminate the other half.

The mirror would be down to who went first or, sometimes, who deployed better. If one player sets up their firebase while the other deploys chaff then the second sets up in range of part, but not all of the enemy firebase they are probably going to win. So deployment is very very important in a mirror match.

How are you getting 2 turrets per squad. I didn't see a way to do that.