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So, I'm trying to think of how to expand my Tau as I want to build up a good sized army (Maybe 2500 points or something) I was thinking maybe a Hammerhead as my next purchase.. But what else should I get? What I have so far is
6 Crisis Suits
38 Fire Warriors
8 Pathfinders
1 Devilfish
3 Broadsides
12 Gun Drones
26 Kroot
Aun'Shi
Aun'Va with his bodyguards
1 Piranha
1 Riptide (Not arrived yet, Will get it on wensday)

Deffinatly a hammerhead. Maybe a skyray aswell for lots of flyer killage

Vespids. Buy lots of Vespids. And be sure to use all them every game.

Conveniently, a skyray and a hammerhead are not mutually exclusive, and you can build both turrets easily, and alternate them as you need.

I'd recommend some marker drones, i almost never run a commander without a pair of them. More pathfinders would not hurt either.

Don't forget to use Darkstrider and Aun'shi in one list either.



Lucarikx

Go for the hammerhead and magnetize if possible so that it can be a devilfish.

Two more Riptides... its the only way Martel will be able to cry himself to sleep at night but its Wave Serpents that give him the Nightmares.

In all seriousness. You've got a good list of models, the only things you are really missing are a hammerhead and a skyray. You've gotten good advice about those. Otherwise, where do you want your list to go? What units do you enjoy playing more? Do you have a competitive inclination? Those answers will alter your choices.

Get a couple extra Crisis Suits and make them all fancy like so you got some Commanders (avoid the actual model. it may look cooler but its crapcast and considerably more expensive so feth that). Another alternative is This Guy which im about to get once my bank fixes my damn credit card info - he IS a bit more expensive, and needs a rebase if youre using him as a normal commander, but especially for Iridium Armor commanders he looks fething sweeeet.

Hammerhead will be useful, the new kit comes with the bits to make a Railhead, Ionhead, or a Skyray. Since theyre all literally just a swap of the turret, you dont need to magnetize anything unless you want to make it modular for Devilfish too (it comes with the pieces to make the little 180" Burst turret too that Devilfish have). If you want you can find a way to cleanly chop off the burst from the Devilfish you already got and use it too so you can field both a skyray and a hammerhead with 1 kit purchase.

Another riptide IS viable as two of them amplify their threat a LOT, but that depends on how "that guy" you want to be as a lot of people despise riptide spams. I never go more than 2 for the reason that its unfun to play against AND use (personally, since i have no fun if i steamroll you) until i go huge game levels.

Get a little dinky no-gear Ethereal. 50pts for an insane boost to that big blob of firewarriors or even the broadside trio (which is what i like to do). Aun'Va is pretty crap since he isnt an IC so hes easily sniped out. If he still had the....what was it SIX body guards before? then he might be useful. His staff is considered a cover save, and theres a ton of ignores cover now days.

Dont get vespids. That guy is trolling you theyre THE worst unit in the codex lol (and probably the only one that should be 100% ignored, as even the fliers are better than them by a landslide lol)

At least 2-3 more Riptides. Riptides are how Tau win games.

I dont want any more Riptides, One is enough, I dont want to go all cheesy as I want my friends to still want to play against me. I tend to run Aun'Shi as a normal Ethereal to buff the Fire Warriors, Keeping 3 max sized groups of Fire Warriors close to eachother and him.

I dont realy know what kind of list I wanna build, Something balanced and not too cheesy, I only play friendly games against friends. So I dont realy care for super competetive lists.

So I counted a bit on how many points I got and running it as I normaly run it, 1 Ethereal, 1 Commander with bodyguards, All crisis suits having 2 missile pods each, Proxying the Devilfish as a Hammerhead, I have about 1640 points.. So I still got a way to go..


Hmm... Maybe Shadowsun, And Stealth Suits, and more Kroot, and a few more Piranhas, and Sniper Drones for a scout type army aswell..

Merellin wrote:
So, I'm trying to think of how to expand my Tau as I want to build up a good sized army (Maybe 2500 points or something) I was thinking maybe a Hammerhead as my next purchase.. But what else should I get? What I have so far is
6 Crisis Suits
38 Fire Warriors
8 Pathfinders
1 Devilfish
3 Broadsides
12 Gun Drones
26 Kroot
Aun'Shi
Aun'Va with his bodyguards
1 Piranha
1 Riptide (Not arrived yet, Will get it on wensday)

Things I would personally recommend:

1) Crisis Suit Commander (For all the systems)
2) More Pathfinders. I personally have 20
3) Hammerhead with Longstrike
4) Second Riptide
5) Perhaps some Tetras (I need some of these myself)
6) Remora Drones (I have two and I really like them)

Options 5 & 6 are Forge World. I don't know if you play Forge World or not.

On another note I own 8 Broadsides in total all armed with HYMP & SMS and I can testify that these things are really nasty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Merellin wrote:
I dont want any more Riptides, One is enough, I dont want to go all cheesy as I want my friends to still want to play against me. I tend to run Aun'Shi as a normal Ethereal to buff the Fire Warriors, Keeping 3 max sized groups of Fire Warriors close to eachother and him.

I dont realy know what kind of list I wanna build, Something balanced and not too cheesy, I only play friendly games against friends. So I dont realy care for super competetive lists.

So I counted a bit on how many points I got and running it as I normaly run it, 1 Ethereal, 1 Commander with bodyguards, All crisis suits having 2 missile pods each, Proxying the Devilfish as a Hammerhead, I have about 1640 points.. So I still got a way to go..


Hmm... Maybe Shadowsun, And Stealth Suits, and more Kroot, and a few more Piranhas, and Sniper Drones for a scout type army aswell..

If you don't want to cheese your list out then I would stick with the Hammerhead/Skyray as your next purchase. One squad of Broadsides with HYMP & SMS will be enough. Pathifnders or tetras to boost your markerlight support a notch and finally a commander in a crisi suit with some systems. This will see you good without being the most unlikeable person in your store.

One of my Crisis Suits got the sword from the old Farsight model and I normaly run that one as my commander. Much better then a finecast suit.. Hehe ^_^ I did write up a fun little "scout" force using things I thought might be used for scouting out areas and it came up to 2167 points (Contains almost nothing of my stuff though.. XD)

Merellin wrote:
One of my Crisis Suits got the sword from the old Farsight model and I normaly run that one as my commander. Much better then a finecast suit.. Hehe ^_^ I did write up a fun little "scout" force using things I thought might be used for scouting out areas and it came up to 2167 points (Contains almost nothing of my stuff though.. XD)

Nice one. You could use the Onager Gauntlet to represent the sword gameplay wise.

I think you're good to go with a direction from what everyone has suggested in this thread. One Riptide should be enough for you as you mentioned you didn't want to go overboard. So That leaves the Hammerhead/Skyray and some Markerlight support.

For flyers, I like the Remora Drones. They are only 90pts, so don't use up a lot of pts in your list but can do a decent job as they come armed with a twin linked six shot Burst Cannon and two seeker missiles. They work well in tandom with the Skyray due to the seeker missiles. Also I play Apoc and they are absolutely wiked for capturing objectives since flyers are allowed to capture objectives in apoc.

atleast 3 more broadsides.
Hammerheads are not worth it really. They look cool, but just go with a skyray. The missles are not important, but the skyfire Marklerlighs ARE

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
atleast 3 more broadsides.
Hammerheads are not worth it really. They look cool, but just go with a skyray. The missles are not important, but the skyfire Marklerlighs ARE

Hammerhead with Longstrike is wicked cool. Honestly he only needs one more Broadside and run them in two teams of two. The points for the 3rd one can be spent better elsewhere.

As a very successful competitive and casual tau player, I can tell you this: there is a lot of differing views on what to get (other than the vespid...that was funny).

This is because the dex is amazing and supports a lot of builds.
Sure, some folks are going riptide spam - but eventually people will learn how to play against that, and it will settle back into just good playing.

Proxy some units, and see how you like them, a few units that I have found to be a lot of fun, or good depending on the build are;
* Sniper drones - another great source of markerlights, and nice fire output. I have seen some builds do very well with them.
* more pathfinders - get some Railrifle guys, use the drone, and have fun in the backfield
* remoras - from forgeworld - these things look good, are decent and a lot off fun to play
* barracuda from forgeworld - this thing looks just awesome, and is actually decent to boot!
* Skyrays - this kit can be either a hammerhead, skyray or fish if you build it right (its easy). The skyray is an amazing unit - almost as big a fire magnet as a riptide.
* Stealth suits - yeah, stealth suits. These guys are not valuable for what they kill, they are valuable for what fire and units they attract. I have lured more players into a merry chase across the backfield trying to kill these things....of course, when they should have been killing firewarriors.
* markerdrones and shield drones - this will give you more options which equals fun and good.
* A razorshark - no seriously, this is possibly, the best fighter in the game....(ok, the eldar one is better) but most people have no idea why. Play it a few times...when it hits you, it will be amazing. Most players will dismiss it....a big advantage.

If you will be playing a lot of very terrain heavy games, or a lot of apoc (where you can waste points) get some vespid....while perhaps the worst unit in the dex, they are still ok. They just need cover so they can get in range without being killed off.

best of luck and have fun!

Hammerhead with Longstrike is also wicked expensive and unless hes against IG he isnt THAT powerful for 45pt upgrade (on top of an already ~141pt tank). Honestly his preferred enemy should be general not against IG. The Hammerhead suffers from only being a single non-twinlinked shot, and thats why if i have one its usually an Ionhead. If it were either 1) cheaper and the same thing or 2) had twinlinked and something to help pen high armor (not tank hunter but maybe something unique to reroll failed Pens of 1 against vehicles) and costed as it ddoes now, i'd field them.

Old dex they were outclassed by broadsides not only because of cost but because of twinlink. Now they technically outclass railsides purely because of the railside nerf, but thats not much of a boon to me.

That being said they still work, as giving them the pi plate shot makes them more versatile since now they can hunt infantry too. Its just not my cup of tea, despite loving the look of it.

EDIT: Sniper drones are a unique approach. Almost noone uses them (saw a guy yesterday using them and i was shocked lol). But this isnt because theyre bad, its beause they compete for broadsides and skyrays. You only NEED one of the spotters, and he can splitfire a BS5 markerlight to boost a dronesquad or pathfinders to mass markerlight that target while his drones snipe big creatures at 48" lol.
I kinda wish they kept the old rule on them where you could take 3 units and count it as 1 FOC choice, but only once (so you could technically have 5 units of sniper drones in single FOC games). But i imagine with the numbers increase that might be a bit....broken lol