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Hi all,

I have just got back into 40k after a long break (have not played since the 2nd edition) and have decided to start a Tau army.

Below is my first go at a Tau army list and would like to know what everyone thinks? And where I could spend the spare 5pts.

+ HQ + (231pts)
* Commander (181pts)
Missile pod, Plasma rifle, Puretide Engram Neurochip, Neuroweb Jammer and Iridium Battlesuit
2x Shield Drone
* Ethereal (50pts)

+ Elites + (195pts)
*3 x XV8 Crisis suits (195pts)
Shas’vre with Command and Control node and Multi-spectrum sensor suite
2 with Fusion blaster and plasma rifle
2 x Shield Drone

+ Troops + (328pts)
* 12 x Fire Warriors (108pts)
* 12 x Fire Warriors (108pts)
* 16 x Kroot (112pts)
Sniper rounds

+ Fast Attack + (110pts)
* 5 x pathfinders (55pts)
* 5 x pathfinders (55pts)

+ Heavy Support + (381pts)
* Hammerhead Gunship (190pts)
Longstrike, Disruption pod, Railgun with submunitions, Twin-linked smart missile system

* 2 x XV88 Broadsides (191pts)
Twin-linked high-yield missile pod, Twin-linked smart missile system
3 x Missle drones

Total 1245 points

My plan would be for ethereal to join one of the fire warrior teams and have a gunline with the other fire warriors, pathfinders and Broadsides. The Commander will join the crisis suits and take out any major threats. The kroots will be used to outflank to either get line breaker or capture an objective.

Welcome back. My recommendation is to spend an afternoon trawling tau related threads both in tactics an army list sections. Get a feel for what an O'Vesastar is, why EWO is so important on Missile sides, what a buffmander means, etc.

Once you've become acquainted with the lingo of 6th ed Tau and have a feel for what playstyle you want, post back in here and we'll dive in. Search function is your friend. Lastly, it's important that you specify whether your goal is friendly, semi-competitive or large tournament level play. Our answers (at least the useful ones) will depend on your goals.

Thank you for your reply.

I was going to use the Shas’vre crisis suit to buffer the squad. This hopefully will not waste the commander bs5. One of the missle sides does have EWO and the other one has velocity tracking, I forgot to add them to the list.

I would like to have a semi-competitive list but nothing too serious.

You have two accounts? Anyway do the following:

Commander
Missile pod, missile pod, iridium armor, shield generator, stim injector.

Crisis team
Team Leader, Multi Spec, Command node, Pure tide
Crisis suit, plasma rifle, plasma rifle, target lock
Crisis Suit, fusion blaster, fusion blaster, target lock.

This way you can destroy a transport, a heavy tank, and put the hurt on a squad of heavy infantry all in one turn. Put the commander on the side closest the enemy and use him to tank hits for the squad. Take out the stim injector and give him a vector tracker if you plan on facing fliers or flying monstrous creatures.

Take only 10 kroot plus a hound for acute senses and rerollable outflank.

Put the Firewarriors into three squads of 8, make that nine if you have the models.

And split up the Broadsided so they represent more targets and make your enemy waist shots hopefully. Don't take missile drones unless you plan on putting a buffmander with them, BS 2 means they will hit nothing. They are a waist on points. Replace them with some more pathfinders and get two squads of six going.