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So, recently games workshop posted a preview of new information from the upcoming T'au codex. This preview can be found here. As a T'au player, especially one who loves the idea of a ghost battlesuit team, this makes me very excited. I've been looking at putting together a T'au army optimized for stealth, hoping that early board control will make it easy to lock in a victory, since my local meta centers around very mobile armies that don't do so hot fighting from their deployment areas.

Considering the update, firstly, the Ghostkeel buff that gives enemy units a -2 to hit if the suit is accompanied by stealth drones and the enemy is 6+" away rather than 12+" is very, very nice. This means ghostkeels become untargetable by the bulk of Ork shooting that I've experienced, and makes it hard for most other things. This allows super easy harassment with an iron raker/fusion blaster setup. Secondly, the ability to set up a unit of stealthsuits, do their shooting, and retreat with no problem still able to shoot at the units I was harassing seems excellent. Pair this with Commander Shadowsun, and things get even easier.

Having looked at and considered all of this, I'm cogitating building for stealth control of the board, right from the get go. As of now (on the power rating system), the following is my list.



The railsides allow for artillery and anti-tank support from my backline, with my APCs moving into position (plugging any gaps in terrain that would allow easy access to the backline) and unloading their respective breacher teams. The strike teams move into formation around the railsides, preventing easy deepstrike access and serving as mostly a cushion, while the pathfinders use their vanguard ability to move into cover as quick as possible so they can serve as a markerlight platform for the railsides/warriors. Flamer suits and commanders (save for shadowsun) are in manta hold, waiting for the opportune time to land and go to work. Thus far, my strategy is the same as it always has been. However, the Ghostkeels, Stealth Suits, and Shadowsun are new additions (removing my two old riptides and some dudes). They all take advantage of the infiltrator rules, essentially deepstriking right from the get go already in cover. Then (codex willing) they can make use of jump-shoot-jump or JSJ to deal with enemies as they try to push out of their deployment areas. I don't expect to hang on to any of these guys for long, so the wall of mirrors is used as a stratagem for gaining some additional shooting after the stealth suits inevitably get charged, with the Ghostkeels leveraging the -2 to hit protection and decent weaponry to deal with vehicles and other mid to heavy armor targets. Considering that Ghostkeels are tough enough to take a hit and look pretty big and mean, this is a pretty decent distraction tactic in my opinion (carnifex I think is the term?), but I haven't gotten the chance to try it out. All told, I should be able to execute the enemy army rather quickly. And, assuming we're playing for objective control, I can move my troops into controlling positions extremely fast.

I may have made some mistakes here, as this is my first truly formal list. If I have, feel free to notify me below. Wall of words aside though, if there are any T'au players out there with tips or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

Not a Tau player but here's some basic stuff.

Assuming you're using the Matched Play rules you can only have 1 commander per detachment.

You've only listed 1 detachment so in theory it's not a legal MP list, but you can split it up a bit..

You could break that into an outrider and 2 vanguard detachments - you then can stick with 3 HQ's and still get 6 CPs

Alternatively if you take 1 more HQ you could do a Battalion, an Outrider and a Vanguard for 7CPs total. Maybe not worth it.

So yeah. I don't know what any of the units really do, but in terms of basic list design you need to split that into 3 separate detachments or add another HQ.

Unless you don't play Matched Play, of course


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Also there's a separate forum for army lists

There have been extensive leaks of the Tau book, so check out the news and rumours section if you like. As already mentioned, one of the new rules is that we can only have one commander per detachment. On the plus side, Coldstar commanders can now have any guns that they want – which is great. 3plusplus has a good summary of the changes, with points, stats, stratagems, relics etc. listed.

You could benefit a lot by looking over the last few pages of the tau tactics thread as well. I posted a bunch of stuff looking at the points efficiency of assorted Tau units. One thing I found is that broadsides aren’t very efficient, especially when compared with ion cannon hammerheads. The most efficient units were those with loads of cyclic ion blasters. Basically across the board, ion is the new black. Annoyingly though, I've just spotted that coldstar commanders aren't allowed CIBs - which is bizarre given that you actually get a CIB in the commander set and nowhere else.

Having said all that, the core idea behind your army seems pretty good to me. Ghostkeels occupying midfield and causing mischief while other stuff rains long-range firepower should work pretty well. Ghostkeels can now have cheap shield generators (we think – unless there’s something in the datasheet to prevent it). This would make them even tougher cookies than they already are.

The full book is out on Saturday anyway. I’m at the point now where I’ll wait to have it in my hand (or on my ipad at least) before messing about with any models.