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We know what composes a Marine company, and there re some good guidelines about an Imperial Guard regiment, but what does a full Tau cadre look like, should someone want to assemble one?

Sounds like a silly question I know, but, I'm not as familiar with them as I'd like and I'm not at all sure on this one.

I'd be ever so thankful if you'd share your knowledge on this!

The cadre is a catch all term for various platoon/company sized units in the tau military. Usually a cadre is formed for a specific mission such as anti-air, breakthrough, infiltration or ambush and so on. The hunter cadre is the most common cadre in use and is designed to manage most kinds of operations adequately and probably what is closest to a marine company. However, it is still quite flexible and open to the whims of the commanders leading it.

A hunter cadre would probably have a set up along the lines of:

Commander
XV8 bodyguard team
2 teams of XV8 battlesuits
6 teams of fire warriors usually with devilfishes
3 teams of pathfinders, one with special weapons
1 team of piranhas
3 hammerheads
3 broadsides

Kroots and vespids are usually only loosely attached, stealth suits and ghostkeels are organised into various stealth and infiltration cadres, riptides are too uncommon for deployment into line units and fliers are attached to the air caste.

*jots this down*

Hrm. I'd guessed about right on the Commander and Fire Warrior ratio, but I was having *far* more support in there. Interesting!

This is mostly my own opinion, but a cadre isn't supposed to fight independently but rather as a part of a greater whole and so is designed to perform a particular task. The hunter cadre above is supposed to take and hold ground and is therefore based around lots of infantry. The next level up, the contingent, is where the magic starts to happen and various specialised cadres are formed into a greater whole that can function independently.

I like to think that marines, representing a truly elite force, can manage to work independently on the company level. The imperial guard requires regiments since neither the single soldier nor the officers are very skilled. The tau fit somewhere in between, working on the battalion level, since their tactical skill and technology can in large parts compensate for the skill of their soldiers.

And as I said, this is in large parts my own speculation and reasoning, albeit firmly based on what little background there is on the subject.

The tau 7th ed codex has formations for many of the most common cadres, but at least to my mind the hunter cadre is much to liberal in what is allowed and is built more for a gamers perspective

The IA Taros book has a selection of hunter cadres ranging from 3 battlesuits, 2 squads of meched up fire warriors and 36 foot slogging pathfinders all the way up to 9 Crisis suits, 6 broadsides, 6 hammerheads with only 2 full squads of meched fire warriors. It also has an air cadre with 2 Mantas, 4 tiger sharks and 10 barracudas.

So as Dantioch says, a Hunter cadre is basically a combiuned arms battlegroup at the platoon to company size consisting of whatever you like

Bleah. I mean, HANDY, but a goal that was laid out would have been better.

Still, I'm running with a Roman Legion in mind, so, 144 Fire Warriors, which will form the core of a force, akin to 100 Marines are the core of a Marine company.

How many will be in suits or piloting Pirhana, however, could change that up a bit.