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As Tau is at present probably the most limited/underpowered faction in Kill Team, I thought I'd throw together a little guide to avoiding the pitfalls a player might fall into using Tau and have a successful campaign with them. Hopefully in future more satisfying rules will be added for Tau, but until then, we have to make do.

The Core Tenets of Kill Team Tau:

1. No Basic Infantry

Fire Warriors, Breachers, and Pathfinders (the basic trooper version) are all worthless compared to Our Lord and Savior The Drone. We'll explain that more in detail later.

2. Follow The Drone Order of Priority

Drone #1 is a Recon Drone. Drone #2 is a Grav-Drone. Drone #3 is an SMS turret drone. All additional drones are Gun Drones. Freely skip step 3 if you have no breachers or fire warriors in your team, you should never skip step 1/2 because you should never not have at least one Pathfinder Gunner. Shield drones lack their 5+ wound shrug from 40k so they're pointless, Guardian drones are similarly not worthwhile, and Marker drones violate Tenet 4.

3. Get A Level 2 Scout

There is a mission called "take prisoners" which will appear 14% of the time that Tau essentially can not win (it requires killing enemies in melee to score points). A level 2 scout allows you to automatically avoid this result. Get one. I recommend a Stealth Suit, possibly with a Fusion Gun if you're feeling spicy (burst cannon is pretty much always better though). Bonus points if you use the level 1 Scout Tactic with him to reroll the dice when advancing with your model that, at level one, passively rerolls advance rolls. Double reroll all across the sky!!!

4. Only One Markerlight

You might be tempted to bring some markerlight support, because it is the unique tau mechanic and you think you have to stack them up. You do not.


Wait, no infantry?

Yeah. Sadly, for the low, low price of minus one point, instead of any kind of tau infantryman you could have a Gun Drone. T4 5+ is pretty much a wash with T3 4+, 4 shots at BS5+ is better than 2 shots at BS4+ because it's kill team and you'll be hitting on 6s most of the time anyway. It flies, it moves 8", it takes mortal wounds for your specialists, and generally just does everything better than a basic non-specialist infantryman. Some of them even do awesome gak like letting your snipers always have the first AND second markerlight level passively (see: Why only one Markerlight? below). If you must have a Fire Team because you want to play with all the other kids and their leveling up infantry, take basic Fire Warriors with rifles. They don't have the clusterfeth of a gun that is the Pulse Blaster, they don't have that "I'm half a gun drone smell" of a pulse carbine, and they don't flail wildly trying to hit markerlight shots on 5s and 6s while your enemy uses his first three activations plunking bullets into your valuable squishy tau bodies.

Only One Markerlight?

A single breacher Shas'ui with the Comms specialism and a Markerlight in addition to his backup gun is all the markerlightyness you'll need - one shot that can hit on 3s by buffing himself with the Comms trait, light up the priority target that you want your Drones to blow away, then use the Uplinked Light tactic to make it D3+1. And if there's nothing good to mark or you want to move him, just use the Comms trait on a nearby Sniper or Stealth Suit. Markerlights fired by regular pathfinders only hit AT BEST on a 4, they waste a vital early in the shooting phase activation, and even if they roll perfectly they grant bonuses that are incredibly easy to get with basic specialist levels (hello sniper specialists that get rerolls of 1 to hit passively).

Ok, wise guy, then what models do I take?

Here's your optimized Tau kill team:

Leader: Stealth Suit Shas'vre. Give him all the buffing traits, because you're guaranteed to have at least drones hanging around him and drones suck at morale. Mentor is also pretty awesome. You can do the same thing with a Fire Warrior shasui or Pathfinder shasui, but they're pretty much 100% worse versions of the stealth suit.

3 Pathfinder Gunners: all sniper specialists, mix of ion rifles/rail rifles. I'd say go for 2 Ion 1 Rail. Rail Rifle gunner can freely be a Scout if you don't want to bring a second stealth suit, but Sniper is pretty much best for all of them. All these guys need a drone nearby at all times - no exceptions! They will get focus fired down otherwise.

Additional Stealth Suits: Scout is priority 1, Fire Team for the rest. There should probably be two of these guys in your kill team normally, because they can take charges on the chin and fall back/shoot. Essentially they're the melee bouncers that Breachers try to be and fail. Along with their trusty assistants the gun drones they'll keep your pathfinder snipers safe from melee predation.

Breacher/Fire Warrior Shasui with markerlight: Comms specialist. Shoots a markerlight at BS3+ to light up a priority target, or just boosts a nearby sniper up. Also unlocks the Little Drone Turret That Could - SMS drone! 2 points less than a gun drone and it just parks behind a wall and pumps out 30" range shots at whatever vox caster, leader, Scout or whatever squishy trooper your opponent is trying to hide behind a rock. Unfortunately though it can't tank wounds for your boys.

And...that's it. That's really all you need to have on your Campaign Roster. Just Add Drones from here.

An example of a 98pt list:

Leader 20
Stealth Suit 20 (Fireteam)
Breacher Shasui 8 (Comms)
Pathfinder Gunner with Ion Rifle 10 (sniper)
Pathfinder Gunner with Rail Rifle 12 (sniper)
Recon Drone 7
Grav Drone 7
Gun Drone 7
Gun Drone 7

Each Real Boy gets a Drone buddy, with the stealth suits and their gun drone homies taking up crowd control duty on the frontlines and the snipers in the back picking up priority targets that the Shasui marks up.

You can run variations on this list with the Stealth Suit as a Scout specialist and the Breacher swapped for another drone, you can drop the stealth suit in favor of 2 more gun drones and a DS8 turret, you can bring a shooty version of the list with no stealth suit or Breacher and a third Sniper and a few more gun drones.

"But, scotsman, this looks lame and boring, I want to have fire teams that level up like the other members of my group!"

Fair enough. I recommend Fire Warriors and Pathfinders in that instance. You will be a 100% worse version of Skitarii, but as long as you're OK with that, you can run them. Keep your recon drone and at least 2 Sniper specialists, put your markerlight on a Shas'ui with Comms, make your leader the other Shas'ui and run Fire Warriors with pulse rifles as your basic troops.

"How do I level up my Stealth Suit fireteam?"

Easy enough. Wait for a battle where you're facing Orks, Nids, or some other swarmy lightly armored opponent, and run:

Stealth Suit Shas'vre (leader)
Stealth Suit (fireteam)
Stealth Suit (fireteam)
Gun Drone
Gun Drone
Gun Drone
Gun Drone
Gun Drone

Especially hilarious if you've gotten your leader to the "reroll 1s within 3" trait.

I don't believe you can have more than one of each type of specialist, no?

Pretty sure @cephalobeard is right. You can only have one of each specialist type.

Otherwise a great article. Much appreciated.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
I don't believe you can have more than one of each type of specialist, no?

You're correct. And that makes matters even worse, since we are denied a Heavy specialist that might be handy for a second ion rifle. Looking over what's available, it seems like going for either a rail rifle with Demoman just for the wound rerolls or a rail rifle with Veteran would be a good choice. I don't know about bringing a second ion rifle without reroll 1s to hit.

stealth suits are real dumb to play against in Killteam.

Why use gun drones over more recon drones?

They both seem to have 4 shots at the same strength, and given that you can split fire multi attack weapons onto units within 2" it would seem having more recon drones would allow more units to ignore obscured penalties.

What do you think?

 gkos wrote:
Why use gun drones over more recon drones?

They both seem to have 4 shots at the same strength, and given that you can split fire multi attack weapons onto units within 2" it would seem having more recon drones would allow more units to ignore obscured penalties.

What do you think?

"if any members of your kill team are pathfinders, one gun drone may instead be a recon drone"

thats why.

One gun drone.

Otherwise...yeah, theyd all be recon drones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

stratigo wrote:
stealth suits are real dumb to play against in Killteam.

They are if you're a horde, that's for sure. high ballistic skill specialist armies with 2 damage weapons can whack them, they just have to get through all the drones first.

the biggest reason I think a balance between stealths and pathfinder gunners has to be struck is with the stealths you've got just one BS4+ melta gun to kill elites with, and then you're just piddling at them with S5 Ap- 1 damage weapons and hoping they fail a 3+ at some point.

ignore that.. only one recon drone allowed!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quick question re Tau - Markerlights and snipers.

If the sniper shoots on a target with 1 markerlight, do they get to re-roll 1's twice due to their inate sniper ability and then again due to the markerlight?

 gkos wrote:
ignore that.. only one recon drone allowed!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quick question re Tau - Markerlights and snipers.

If the sniper shoots on a target with 1 markerlight, do they get to re-roll 1's twice due to their inate sniper ability and then again due to the markerlight?

Doubt it
KT =/= Standard 40k, but big GW rule, you can only re-roll something 1ce ever. no matter how many sources of re-roll "to hit" or the like you have, you only ever get to re roll "to hit" 1ce.

 gkos wrote:
ignore that.. only one recon drone allowed!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Quick question re Tau - Markerlights and snipers.

If the sniper shoots on a target with 1 markerlight, do they get to re-roll 1's twice due to their inate sniper ability and then again due to the markerlight?

Nope. Nor do you benefit from the second markerlight effect at all if you use the passive ability of a recon drone.

Of course, you can only have one sniper specialist, so it can be useful for other members of kill teams. but the gulf in efficiency between

-Must first hit with a markerlight, giving up at least one model's shooting

-opponent guaranteed to get to take at least one combat action in response

-must then spend a CP to make the markerlight worth it at all

-THEN you get to attack and benefit from the markerlight

vs

-Sniper specialist standing next to the recon drone just takes the shot, benefitting from 2/3 of the good markerlight results passively, and giving up no other model's shooting to do so

...That's a great illustration as to why markerlights just do not work in this game. You can also get the reroll 1s within 3 leader trait, though unfortunately it's most likely going to be your level 4 advance because autopass nerve tests for models around the leader is so very, very important.

Also. Something goofy I just noticed. Because models are always within their own auras, the level 2 leader trait Inspiring ALSO GIVES THE LEADER IMMUNITY TO NERVE TESTS. It's just the same ability as Bold...but with an extra aura effect... because it doesn't say "friendly models other than the leader". That's gonna be FAQ'd lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So, for tau, here's how I would rank specialisms:

First Priority:

-Sniper, Assassin, Deadeye. Most of the sniper tree stuff is good, but you 100% always should have a sniper specialist pathfinder gunner in your team unless you're running against a total mook horde. And even then, sniping the leader is really important. I'd actually go for the Ion rifle on him over the Rail rifle, because you get to overcharge every turn without much risk and it synergizes nicely with Triangulator. The rail rifle can just be a regular fireteam joe or possibly a Veteran specialist, because he doesn't 100% need to reroll 1s always.

-Scout, Pathfinder. Get some kind of specialist with this. I'd advise a stealth suit, because they're broadly useful and occasionally have a need to Advance. Helps you avoid the Take Prisoners mission, which you must avoid at all costs.

-Comms, Static Shriek, Triangulator. I like this on the shas'ui with the marker light. Very broadly useful for Tau because if you count as being within 2" with Rousing Transmission you ALSO benefit from Bonding Knife Ritual, gaining double benefit. New Intelligence is also super useful for making sure your gunners are always readied even when they had to reposition. I like running Breacher shas'uis over Fire Warrior shas'uis because if I'm shooting with my comms specialist instead of markering with him, it's because there's a tyranid in my face I want to blast, and I want the breacher for that.

Also somewhat useful specialisms:

Veteran, Practiced, One Man Army. This one is actually amazing, IF you're feeling ballsy enough to leave the Scout at home and take the chance on getting Take Prisoners. I'd put this on a Rail Rifle second gunner in a heartbeat.

It seems like the biggest advantage to tau is the fact that Savior Protocols allows you to stack way more eggs into the Pathfinder Gunner basket than any other army, because you know they can't just get shot. Revolve your strategy around buffing the crap out of them - give them Comms buffs, recon drones, markerlights, Mentor ability on your leader, use your Tactics to buff them up, give them the selfish specialisms, and have those Ion Rifles and Rail Rifles making multiple damage injury rolls every turn you can. Everything else in the list should be dedicated to running interference and spitting out as much anti-chaff S5 AP- firepower as possible.

Don't models get to fire the weapons they have at once?
So a Striker Shas'ui can fire it's marker light and pulse rifle from the same activation.

 King Pyrrhus wrote:
Don't models get to fire the weapons they have at once?
So a Striker Shas'ui can fire it's marker light and pulse rifle from the same activation.

Just like in 40k, Markerlights feature a special restriction requiring you to EITHER fire markerlights OR fire your regular gun.

I can see this being actually balanced in two ways:

1) you can fire Markerlights in addition to other weapons. This would make pathfinders, but not marker drones, usable in the game.

2) Markerlights are either auto-hit weapons, meaning the only cost to using them is giving up the action of the firer, or they receive a significant boost to accuracy. I'd grant them a base +2 to hit so a Pathfinder is hitting with one on a 2+ against a target in short range/the open, and a drone is hitting on a 3+. Since they're still Heavy 1, Range mods and Obscurement exist, this would make 3+/4+ rolls pretty common still with Pathfinders and 4+/5+ with drones

Just thought I would report back on a game where I took the scotsmans advice on Tau.

After being soundly thrashed during my first couple of games of Kill Team my Tau won the third.

list was like this :
xv25 (leader)
FW Breacher (comms)
PF rail gunner (demolition)
PF ion gunner (sniper)
1 recon drone
6 gun drones

saviour protocols and spending CP on 5+ fnp when needed meant I ended the game with no drones on the table but all my dudes standing (1 with a flesh wound).

I didn't fire a single marker light, most of the buffs they would give are already granted by the specialist skills or the recon drone without having to attempt to shoot.

Oppo (Necron) had two guys standing both wounded badly and ready for tabling.

Scotsman, remind me to buy you a drink if ever I find myself north of the border.

Does anyone have any idea what the point of shield drones are? My guess is that in 40k proper they sit in front of characters and must be shot first, and so have the invuln but what role do they play in kill team??





Automatically Appended Next Post:
p.s. I have never played Tau in 40k, just thought they might be good in Kill Team and I had some models.

 gkos wrote:
Just thought I would report back on a game where I took the scotsmans advice on Tau.

After being soundly thrashed during my first couple of games of Kill Team my Tau won the third.

list was like this :
xv25 (leader)
FW Breacher (comms)
PF rail gunner (demolition)
PF ion gunner (sniper)
1 recon drone
6 gun drones

saviour protocols and spending CP on 5+ fnp when needed meant I ended the game with no drones on the table but all my dudes standing (1 with a flesh wound).

I didn't fire a single marker light, most of the buffs they would give are already granted by the specialist skills or the recon drone without having to attempt to shoot.

Oppo (Necron) had two guys standing both wounded badly and ready for tabling.

Scotsman, remind me to buy you a drink if ever I find myself north of the border.

Does anyone have any idea what the point of shield drones are? My guess is that in 40k proper they sit in front of characters and must be shot first, and so have the invuln but what role do they play in kill team??





Automatically Appended Next Post:
p.s. I have never played Tau in 40k, just thought they might be good in Kill Team and I had some models.

Nice!

In 8th ed, Shield drones have a 5+ save versus mortal wounds, which means theyre the only drones that dont get insta-popped when you use Savior protocols. They do not have that in KT, so yeah, they're totally pointless.

Demolitions is definitely the specialist role I would go with on your second gunner for a matched play game, but if you're in a campaign definitely consider Veteran, while the first level isn't as good the second level Practiced will be quite strong and Well-Drilled and Adaptive Tactics are really good for keeping your rail rifle in the 15" sweet spot and not giving up action priority. Since most of the rail rifles' shots will wound on 2s anyway, the only really useful aspect of Demolitions is the basic passive reroll 1s. The level 2 of Demolitions by contrast is almost universally worthless in my opinion, and the tree really only synergizes with a couple of weird fringe exceptions, where it's REALLY broken (like on a Skitarii with an Arquebus)

For the Tactical Support Turret Fire Warriors get if the Fire Warrior that's required to be within 2" of the turret is killed, does the turret also get removed from play at the same time since it's no longer within 2"?

the_scotsman wrote:

An example of a 98pt list:

Leader 20
Stealth Suit 20 (Fireteam)
Breacher Shasui 8 (Comms)
Pathfinder Gunner with Ion Rifle 10 (sniper)
Pathfinder Gunner with Rail Rifle 12 (sniper)
Recon Drone 7
Grav Drone 7
Gun Drone 7
Gun Drone 7

Isn't the Recon Drone 12 points?

All drones are 7 points each regardless of flavour

"Welcome to 40k, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter."

I actually think Pathfinders are pretty decent for 6 points. Drones are probably better but you can have a bunch of pathfinders and they can do useful stuff.

For example you could take a team of 5 pathfinders including a shas’ui and a gunner with ion rifle, plus 3 stealths with a fusion blaster. Maybe drop the fusion blaster and make the shas’ui a second gunner, with rail rifle. I think you’d have a good mix of weapons and a mobile force that way.

I guess it probably makes sense to bring fewer pathfinders so you can have some drones, and there’s a case for a fire warrior to bring a turret. There seem to be quite a lot of good options really.

Fire warriors are going to have quite a lot of situations where they are at short range and the other guys are at long range. That should really help with their non-awesome BS. Skitarii rangers do seem an awful lot better for just +1 point, though the S5 gun is far from irrelevant.

Overall I think it looks like Tau are kind of decent. They are certainly an interesting team, with lots of quite different options for you to take. Stealths seem straightforwardly great.

I wanna start a Tau - KT. What should i buy? as i understand, i need a lot of drones, at least 2 Stealthsuits and Pathfinders?


Where do i get the Recon drone? Pathfinder Box?

Sorry, but how can take drones damage for other Tau units?

NVM found it in the rules

@BluthustenMade

You can get drones in 2 pack blisters (LINKY), or almost every other T'AU box comes with 2 or more drones.
So probably, if you're just buying for killteam, a box of pathfinders, a box of stealth suits, then buy whatever extra drone packs you need.

j33v3s wrote:
@BluthustenMade

You can get drones in 2 pack blisters (LINKY), or almost every other T'AU box comes with 2 or more drones.
So probably, if you're just buying for killteam, a box of pathfinders, a box of stealth suits, then buy whatever extra drone packs you need.

You'll get more than you most likely need with a kit of stealths and a kit of Pathfinders. Iirc the stealths come with 2 gun drones and the Pathfinders you can make 1 gun 1 grav and 1 recon. Thats more thwn enough for pretty much any 100pt team youd care to build. That'll give you your gunners, your stealths and your drones as well as Pathfinders if he ever decide to make markers or infanryy in general worthwhile.

Just my 2 cents shield drones are beast mode tarpits for 7 points.

They fly so can make stupid charges (true for all drones) technically drones are our second best melee option and t4 with that invuln save is juicy for making it difficult to kill locking down the enemies scary targets until youre ready to erase them with guns. Protip, charge a target so youre parked on the opposite side of a wall from them that takes more than 3" to wrap around now they get -1 to hit and technically the drone wouldn't since the wording for intervening terrain is "any terrain that stops the model from being in base contact" (though I could see them ruling against this part of it) because the drone can fly its not impossible for him to move in base-to-base youre just choosing not to where the other model cannot do that. Either way it makes your drone more survivable.


Everyone I talk to is looking at the killing potential of each individual unit but some armies are designed around a small amount of killy units and fodder. The trick is using the fodder effectively.

the_scotsman wrote:
As Tau is at present probably the most limited/underpowered faction in Kill Team, I thought I'd throw together a little guide to avoiding the pitfalls a player might fall into using Tau and have a successful campaign with them. Hopefully in future more satisfying rules will be added for Tau, but until then, we have to make do.

I think you jumped the gun there as Tau are at present probable one of the most powerful kill Team Factions. Tau are deadly and really hard to kill. Railguns walk though marines and from what I have seen most people haven’t realised how powerful drones are. When a drone intercepts a shot and saves another model it is now longer automatically taken off the board. If its obscured it also gets -1 to the flash wound roll for that mortal wound. Meaning its very, very hard to kill those evil railguns and other key units. We can turn that 6 damage into 1 mortal wound and then that mortal wound into a flash round on a 1,2,3,4 dice roll.

Unlike 40k, pistols! take pistol on everything you can.

Pottsey wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
As Tau is at present probably the most limited/underpowered faction in Kill Team, I thought I'd throw together a little guide to avoiding the pitfalls a player might fall into using Tau and have a successful campaign with them. Hopefully in future more satisfying rules will be added for Tau, but until then, we have to make do.

I think you jumped the gun there as Tau are at present probable one of the most powerful kill Team Factions. Tau are deadly and really hard to kill. Railguns walk though marines and from what I have seen most people haven’t realised how powerful drones are. When a drone intercepts a shot and saves another model it is now longer automatically taken off the board. If its obscured it also gets -1 to the flash wound roll for that mortal wound. Meaning its very, very hard to kill those evil railguns and other key units. We can turn that 6 damage into 1 mortal wound and then that mortal wound into a flash round on a 1,2,3,4 dice roll.

Unlike 40k, pistols! take pistol on everything you can.

I don't have the KT book, by flash round i assume you meant Flesh Wound? and when a rail gun hits it's deadly, but spending your drones to flippantly will lead to -1 to hit for 1/2 team be dead soon too.

Pottsey wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
As Tau is at present probably the most limited/underpowered faction in Kill Team, I thought I'd throw together a little guide to avoiding the pitfalls a player might fall into using Tau and have a successful campaign with them. Hopefully in future more satisfying rules will be added for Tau, but until then, we have to make do.

I think you jumped the gun there as Tau are at present probable one of the most powerful kill Team Factions. Tau are deadly and really hard to kill. Railguns walk though marines and from what I have seen most people haven’t realised how powerful drones are. When a drone intercepts a shot and saves another model it is now longer automatically taken off the board. If its obscured it also gets -1 to the flash wound roll for that mortal wound. Meaning its very, very hard to kill those evil railguns and other key units. We can turn that 6 damage into 1 mortal wound and then that mortal wound into a flash round on a 1,2,3,4 dice roll.

Unlike 40k, pistols! take pistol on everything you can.

couple things here.

1) Drones have to intercept a wound (not an unsaved wound) and then it immediately gets translated into a mortal wound to the drone. That means a shot that would have had to go through a 4+ or 3+ save THEN an injury roll instead goes straight to an injury roll. It's great for high powered weaponry, but highly inefficient for intercepting basic weapons fire and you will lose drones very quickly if you rely on savior protocols (i.e. pathfinder gunners) too much.

2) the railgun's mortal wound seems great until you realize that after one damage roll has been made, any excess wounds OR MORTAL WOUNDS are lost. This makes the "does a mortal wound on X" rule pretty OK for basic sniper rifles (where the enemy is likely to make their save) but pretty poor for AP-4 D3D rail rifles, where if you wound the enemy at all, unless they're packing an invuln save (extremely rare in KT) they will fail their save and take an equal or higher damage wound roll from the basic shot. I would advise against you ever trying to stack up wound mods to get mortals off a railgun. You nearly always want to be stacking HIT modifiers, in order to improve your poor BS4+.

3) pistols? I mean I guess they're free. I've played several games with Tau and I have never fired a pistol.

Overall, i think that you're missing the point of the thread. Some drones, Pathfinder Gunners and Stealth Suits are quite good. However, over half the tau roster, and all the fire warrior variants, as well as the entire marker light system, is very, very bad. There is no other list where you will be at a bigger disadvantage if you take a random assortment of the available models than tau, and no list with more "noob traps" - Breachers, trying to use marker lights, Pulse Carbines on fire warriors, two-pistol shasuis, etc.

the_scotsman wrote:

Pottsey wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
As Tau is at present probably the most limited/underpowered faction in Kill Team, I thought I'd throw together a little guide to avoiding the pitfalls a player might fall into using Tau and have a successful campaign with them. Hopefully in future more satisfying rules will be added for Tau, but until then, we have to make do.

I think you jumped the gun there as Tau are at present probable one of the most powerful kill Team Factions. Tau are deadly and really hard to kill. Railguns walk though marines and from what I have seen most people haven’t realised how powerful drones are. When a drone intercepts a shot and saves another model it is now longer automatically taken off the board. If its obscured it also gets -1 to the flash wound roll for that mortal wound. Meaning its very, very hard to kill those evil railguns and other key units. We can turn that 6 damage into 1 mortal wound and then that mortal wound into a flash round on a 1,2,3,4 dice roll.

Unlike 40k, pistols! take pistol on everything you can.

couple things here.

1) Drones have to intercept a wound (not an unsaved wound) and then it immediately gets translated into a mortal wound to the drone. That means a shot that would have had to go through a 4+ or 3+ save THEN an injury roll instead goes straight to an injury roll. It's great for high powered weaponry, but highly inefficient for intercepting basic weapons fire and you will lose drones very quickly if you rely on savior protocols (i.e. pathfinder gunners) too much.

2) the railgun's mortal wound seems great until you realize that after one damage roll has been made, any excess wounds OR MORTAL WOUNDS are lost. This makes the "does a mortal wound on X" rule pretty OK for basic sniper rifles (where the enemy is likely to make their save) but pretty poor for AP-4 D3D rail rifles, where if you wound the enemy at all, unless they're packing an invuln save (extremely rare in KT) they will fail their save and take an equal or higher damage wound roll from the basic shot. I would advise against you ever trying to stack up wound mods to get mortals off a railgun. You nearly always want to be stacking HIT modifiers, in order to improve your poor BS4+.

3) pistols? I mean I guess they're free. I've played several games with Tau and I have never fired a pistol.

Overall, i think that you're missing the point of the thread. Some drones, Pathfinder Gunners and Stealth Suits are quite good. However, over half the tau roster, and all the fire warrior variants, as well as the entire marker light system, is very, very bad. There is no other list where you will be at a bigger disadvantage if you take a random assortment of the available models than tau, and no list with more "noob traps" - Breachers, trying to use marker lights, Pulse Carbines on fire warriors, two-pistol shasuis, etc.

1. Drones are 7 point models that can take wounds for 21 point stealth suits or 12 point pathfinders with railguns who are generally you're specialists. Especially with high damage big AP weapons (which almost every kill team has at leaet one of) they are worth taking for saviour protocols.

2) Agree on stacking hit modifiers but the motal wound is useful insurance against multi wound models (tyranid warriors etc) and models with invul saves.

3) I don't understand why everone is so down on markerlights, in kill team you fire all of your weapons. So your pathfinders are shooting with a 36" range markerlight, followed by their carbines. With cheap troops to spam them easily and the uplinked markerlight stratergem you can easily focus your fire and get 4 markerlights.

I've found Tau to be very competitive in kill team (winning the vast majority of games I use them in) and whilst breachers need an FAQ for multiple profiles and long range, everything else works well together. They're mobile, cheap enough to have a few bodies and pack a massive punch.

 small_gods wrote:
3) I don't understand why everone is so down on markerlights, in kill team you fire all of your weapons.

Not true, unfortunately. Just like in 40k, if you want to use a markerlight, you can't fire anything else. Check out the "markerlight" rules on page 169.

If you get their rules wrong, yes, Pathfinders are very good. However again I'm going to ask you to reread my last paragraph: a list of stealth suits and Pathfinder gunners is quite good, but over half the Tau roster is made up of noob traps.

-breachers
-fire warriors (purely because they are just an inferior gun drones)
-basic Pathfinders
-marker drones
-shield drones
-pulse accel drones

Sure, some other factions have a noob trap unit or two, which is either a flatly inferior version of another unit or a weapon choice that's just bad. But none have as many as Tau. Not even close.