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Ok so I'm wanting to start 40k and start with a Tau army.

But there's some things I'm unsure of; The tau army looks really cool, but I'm not sure what I should be buying, and If the main Tactic of Tau is just Heavy Support and hardly any troops, as I enjoy the idea of Troops/Snipers etc, but I like a mixture of Vehicles and Infantry.

At first I'll be buying a 1000pt army so I just need to know what i should be buying thats a good place to start

Tau Firewarriors are far better now than they were when most of the advice for how to play Tau was made and codified.

I won't suggest a horde of infantry, but it doesn't hurt to have a bunch of them, especially supported by Devilfish transports.

My recommendation is buy a mix, the Tau require synergy and balance to be effective. This synergy and balance is slightly different for each player and his local play environment. Find the mix that works for you.

Appreciate the reply.

I'm wanting to start buying sometime this week, hopefully. But I wouldn't really know what a good mix would be, and by me liking troops i ment the previous videos/images ive seen of Tau, seem to have basically no infantry.

Tau Infantry was basically viewed as a joke, even by Tau players, for the last edition or so.

However the change in editions this summer went heavily in favour of the Tau. The lessons of all of this are still being absorbed, but basic Tau Mechanized Infantry units are doing much better than they used to.

Baisc building blocks you need:

Fire warriors plus Devilfish transports with Disruption Pods. This is your scoring unit and your basic firepower against anything that isn't a tank or monstrous creature.

Crisis Suits and Stealth Suits. These are your elites (and one Crisis suit is also your commander) each has their own way to play so customize to fit your style, but generally they can be configured to kill MCs, provide supplimental anti-tank firepower or provide harrassing fre.

Pathfinders or Tetras. Tetras are a forgeworld unit, but I highly recommend them if your local players are cool with them. Otherwise it's going to be Pathfinders. In either case these are Marker units. As a non-psychic race the Tau need other ways to improve the capabilities of their forces and the markerlights are those. Shine markerlights at the target you want to die, then spend the resulting markerlight tokens on boosting the firepower of the units that fire at the target.

Broadsides or Hammerheads. This is the heavy firepower of the Tau. The broadsides provide more firepower, the hammerheads are more mobile and provide better anti-infantry firepower. Mix these in as you feel best fits the way you want to play and the gaps in your list.

Finally you want Kroot or Vespid or Gun Drones or Piranha. Some sort of unit that you can get between an assaulter and something you don't want assaulted to keep your shooting units in shooting condition a turn or two longer.

Big thing to remember with Tau is that each unit is really only good at a select list of targets and woefully inadequate at anything else. So plan your build carefully to include units for all possibilities.

That helped me out a lot, thankyou.

Personally, I love Firewarriors, they're not half as bad as people make out.. xD

Personally, I think that to start, buying The Codex, 2 Battleforces 1-2 Skyray kits, and 2 Broadsides will give you a great base to work from, with a solid core of Troops, the vital Broadsides and Hammerheads for Heavy Support, some Battlesuits for a HQ unit and an Elites choice, and 1-2 squads of Stealth Suits (which are good now!)

For the Broadsides and Hammerheads thing - Broadsides are great anti-tank, but once the vehicles are gone, they're a lot less effective against everything.

2-3 Broadsides + 2 Hammerheads is the best way to go, as early game you get 4-5 Railguns to pop vehicles with, then late game you can drop Large Blasts on things, with 2-3 standard shots to snipe 'large targets'. (I did the math before and can find it if you want xD)

Rambling help away!

Devilfish are very expensive, contain mediocre troops, and have very little in the way of firepower. They are only useful for being a mobile LOS blocker but are too expensive for that and require them to get closer to losing their D. Pod shrouding.

Stealthsuits are expensive and weak. They have little firepower to offer in return. They have a 2+ save in cover, true. However unless you really need a denial unit, I'd save your points.

Don't use Vespid, Kroot, or Gun drone squads. They are just so silly its bad.

I have to second Jeffar.

The back bone is going to be elites and heavies with big blocks of Firewarriors. Though honestly I tend to sit back and shoot so I forgo kroot and the like. I speed bump with vehicles and just shooting to keep guys away. I always use suits for more of the JSJ harassing and taking out the real nasty squads since broadsides can't bring down hordes of nasty units. Can't go wrong with suits, fire warriors, devilfish and Broadsides.

Ben

You say expensive and weak - but their task these days is precision strikes and obscene roadblocking.

6 Stealthsuits with 12 Gun Drones, while a massive unit (and a reasonable amount of points) is that it's 18 wounds, with a 3+ save in an open field, a 2+ save in any cover making it incredibly resilient, and has 30 Str5 shots (12 of which are twin-linked), that can deploy in the middle of the field and sit pretty.

It's a squad that people wet themselves over and go after heavily, focusing large amounts of firepower at it while paying a lot less attention to the rest of your army.

But yeah, Suits, Firewarriors, Hammerheads and Broadsides xD

Fire warriors and disruption pods are very strong. I know I'm in the minority, but I have had great success with infiltrating a squad or two of kroot into terrain near objectives.

I have found all the FA tau options to be overcosted.

Both broadsides and hammerheads are awesome

Fireknife Crisis suits are a must.

What weapons do Battlesuits come with?

And I'm stuck between DA and Tau, DA being it would be a lot cheaper, and could start playing within the month, but Tau just because I think they look awesome and have some really nice paint schemes.

Which is more fun to play?

buy skyray last time i checked they had bits for hammer heads in there as-well will give you some extra bits and maybe save some money, make sure to get lots of battle suits and get some broad sides kits, pathfinders are a must but you can just convert some fire warriors to pathfinders easy, avoid kroot while your starting out i personaly love them but in the begining there not much use best to keep with fw instead.

as far as tactics marker light up any thing that needs to die asap with pathfinders stay out of the mele. sorry if i make no sense but its late and im going to bed before i go full on incoherent!

I would say dark angels, but thats becasue I hate the look of them. If you like that then go for them.

They are hard to play with though.

And yeah, skyray has the sprues to build hammerhead too

or! if you want to do a bit of conversion work, use the skyray turret to make a Remora Drone! that's what i did

The standard for tau is to take battlesuits with missile pods, plasma rifles and multi-trackers, then an HQ suit with bodyguard all rocking plasma and fusion guns, a collection of fire warriors, a broadside team and generally two sources of markerlights.

Above all else, tell apply overwhelming firepower and then try to out manuver their enemy.

Both DA and tau have different play styles. DA would be easier for a new player, and thus help you start playing and learning faster. Even though DA are getting a new book soon, you can start buying DA models from the starter kit to begin fleshing out your DA army.

Also, tau are due for an update soon. Their battlesuits will be getting re-done, so buying battlesuits now will lead to disapointment down the road.

At the end of the day - the new Battlesuits will be shiny, I'll probably pick one or two up.

BUT, guaranteed they'll be significantly more, and there's nothing saying it'll be dissapointing, I still like the old Battlesuits.

But I mean retail wise, we're already at £23.50 a Commander, £15.50 a Battlesuit and £24.50 a Broadside.

For what's at the end of the day, effectively slightly larger Terminator-like models. It should be 3 for £28-30 for basic suits or something, not £46.50.

Last I remember hearing, there was a rumor that the Crisis suits would get reworked and put into a 3-pack like they did for Oblits.

And the standard suit load out, What I've seen at least, is Elites are always twin-linked missile pods, flamers for overwatch, and a team leader with BSF. This unit can do a lot because of the high volume and highly accurate high strength fire.

HQ and bodyguard are usually run as Plasma rifle, Missile pod, Target array for Body guards, and H/w multitracker. This way the entire unit is BS4 but costs significantly more for it.

and Stealthsuits are one thing that I can't imagine any player would dedicate that much time and effort to make it worthwhile.
Pros:
2+ save
High number of shots
Cons:
Expensive
T3 and 1W means a lot of wounds to save
S5 shots at crap range do little damage
Everything else can do this better in every way.

To put it in perspective (I may be off on points by a little)
But an elite squad of Crisis suits with Twin-linked Burst Cannons and Drone controllers with 6 drones comes in at about 170 and you're getting T4 suits with 2W, twin-linked everything. The stealth suits can only boast a 2+ save and saving about 20 points.

The suits however can also be equiped in various loadouts for various jobs. The stealth suit is limited to 1 job. Unload a crap ton of mid S, innaccurate shots at something and hope it won't make it's saves.
Maybe if you're going against an IG or Ork blob, the idea of stealthsuits infiltrating out of sight, jumping over terrain, and opening fire onto a squad might be terrifying. Everyone else will just blow the squad to bits.

This has shaken what I was gonna buy haha

Im not sure at all what I should be buying now.

 Joel1 wrote:
This has shaken what I was gonna buy haha

Im not sure at all what I should be buying now.

Well you needn't worry much. Only the battlesuits are getting a total makeover, were as the stealth suits are getting more options (maybe).

If you buy anything else, it will be fine for the next book. It's really just me saying don't buy many battlesuits, otherwise you will be spending more money within a few months.

If you get the tau battleforce, maybe two of them, and then sprinkle in a few other choices, you will have a good start to the army for cheap.

Hmm when will they be ready by?

Nobody knows. The rumors put it in that Tau would be coming out any time between January 2012-November 2013.

The rumours have been saying Tau will be redone for years.
When I started my Tau last September / October, people said ' NO! Don't get Tau, they're about to be redone!'
Instead, I got my models and have enjoyed a year of Tau goodness (especially with 6th ed, with myself using it more than my Dark Eldar!)

We can hope early next year, but I'm really not holding my breath.

I have lost all optimism towards them getting a new codex anytime in the future. If I had to guess, I'd say June-July there might be an opening.

on the other hand there has been no rumors on Tau since one guy came out and admitted to fabricating rumors. Since then nobody has really bothered mentioning them. That and they've been mentioning rumors for Black Templar, Dark Angels, Eldar, and Deamons. So purchase in moderation. Play the point values that you can, don't try and purchase unneccesary gear to try and get up to the point values you can't support.

Information points to first or second quarter 2013 for tau, though this is not concrete.