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Been unable to find out a lot of details on how a tide wall functions in 8th Edition.

Wondering if It's good for an army. Also what other units should I combine with it?

*Disclaimer: I have yet to try out the Tidewall due to not having enough game time to have tried out everything yet, though I intend to break out the rampart soon enough, so this is going strictly by reading the index and not by table experience*

Simply put, the Tidewall fortifications as a whole are pretty good.

Starting with the Tidewall Shieldline. For 70 points, I can't complain about this thing. Don't think about it as a fortification so much as an open-topped transport, because in 8th that's what it is. At T6, W10, and a 4+ save, it's not nearly as durable as the Devilfish is, but the tradeoff in survivability is made up for in the lower cost and the fact that it's open-topped. Load up a Strike Team or Pathfinders inside and have them hunker down in the backfield with 10 T6 wounds between them and enemy fire. Or, a much better option IMO and what I will be using it for, is Breachers. Load it up with Breachers and just keep moving up the board. This lets you get your Breachers nice and close for the Pulse Blasters to say hi while keeping them safe. Cheaper and more aggressive than a Devilfish, but slower and less survivable. And lets not forget that on a save roll of 6, the attacking unit suffers a mortal wound. Having only a 4+ means that heavy firepower will negate this by taking away your save entirely, but any unit shooting at you with worse than AP -3 runs the risk of taking some serious hurt for their trouble. Certainly has a place in 8th Tau, though you will have to choose between cost and durability. I'm looking forward to trying this guy.

Tidewall Droneport: Now this one is interesting, and probably the best choice for us from the Tidewall. Similar to the Shieldline (though lacking the shot reflection rule), but comes with 4 drones of your choosing. They start attached to the Droneport, but at the start of any turn in which a unit is embarked on the Droneport, you can detach the drones, making them a separate unit. And the best part? Those drones use the BS of whatever the embarked unit is. The obvious combo here is a Droneport with 4 Marker Drones with a Cadre Fireblade embarked. This is the only way Tau can get Markerlights hitting on a 2+ like the days of old. Quite powerful, but it's still only 4 drones and they will die quite easily once detached. You're paying about 150 points for 4 Markerlights (plus the Fireblade's since the Droneport is open-topped) that will hit on a 2+ and a little bunker for your Fireblade. Is it worth it? That's for you to decide, but the Droneport offers us easily our most accurate source of Markerlights outside of characters. Far from a bad pick, all things considered.

Tidewall Gunrig: I'm less than impressed with this one, all things considered. The problem is that while the Supremacy Railgun is a good weapon, it only hits on a 5+. The Gunrig has a rule saying that unless a unit is embarked on it, the Railgun can only target the closest enemy unit. So embarking on it lets you target whatever you want, but that's it. Nothing about using the embarkee's BS like the Droneport. If we could use a Fireblade's BS of 2+ on this thing I would say absolutely take it, but unless I missed something somewhere saying otherwise, this guy is not worth it. Not much else to say really, it's one special rule away from being good, but without that special rule it has no place on the table outside of fluffiness.

Overall, not a bad selection for Tau, especially given how lackluster the rest of our army is. Nothing is auto-include or anything like that, but we have some neat tricks we can run (Breachers on a Shieldline, Fireblade on a Marker Droneport, etc.). I look forward to trying them out myself, but don't take my word for any of this, try them out for yourself. Hopefully some of this helped!

I like them in concept but haven't had the opportunity to use them outside of personal practice. The shieldline looks useless as you need to roll 6+ to get the reflection and that's hard to do when you are rolling d6 to d6-4 and vehicles are all but impossible to get into cover.

Droneport like mentioned above is 5 markerlights hitting on 2+. I might consider putting an understaffed pair of pathfinders in it with 6 rail rifles and 3 carbines (8points wasted) so you have some backup ML and a good strong punch inside the open top.

Gunrig gets two shots at 5+ while Longstrike gets 1 shot at 2+. Broadsides get two shots at 4+ and support systems/drones. Feeling lucky?

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I like them in concept but haven't had the opportunity to use them outside of personal practice. The shieldline looks useless as you need to roll 6+ to get the reflection and that's hard to do when you are rolling d6 to d6-4 and vehicles are all but impossible to get into cover.

Droneport like mentioned above is 5 markerlights hitting on 2+. I might consider putting an understaffed pair of pathfinders in it with 6 rail rifles and 3 carbines (8points wasted) so you have some backup ML and a good strong punch inside the open top.

Gunrig gets two shots at 5+ while Longstrike gets 1 shot at 2+. Broadsides get two shots at 4+ and support systems/drones. Feeling lucky?

Any number of characters... but only 1 squad

Also, the Mortal Wound on the 6+ on Saves is the MOST AMAZING part of the Shield Line.
Not only do you get the Save, but you also get to laugh at your opponent taking a Mortal Wound?!

A cheaper alternative to a Fireblade is the Firesight, only BS3 but also only 24.