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Hey gang,

So I have finally (after years of resistance) decided to give 40K a try. To that end I have acquired some Tau minis. However, I would like some advice. First, I may have a place where I can play a 500 point battle (about all I can support right now.) So I need to put an army together.

Second, I know I need more units. What would people recommend next? Again, I have some ideas, but I am curious what others suggest.

Here are the figures I have.

34 Fire Warriors with pulse rifle
6 Fire Warriors with pulse carbine
9 Pathfinders with pulse carbine
2 Pathfinders with Rail rifles
1 Piranha with a fusion gun
1 Devilfish (has a seeker missile mounted on it too.)
27 Gun Drones

Note that I don't really have an HQ unit. I was planning to use a Fire Warrior as a Cadre Fireblade for now.

Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks,
Duncan

Your pretty hindered by what you have, but for 500 I would go with the fireblade, 2 units of 12 fire warriors, a devilfish a la carte, a piranha with a fusion blaster, and some pathfinders.

Generally take pulse rifles over carbines, and pathfinders are mostly for markerlight support.

For your next additions, you need anti tank weapons and units. A riptide, a crisis team, a hammerhead/skyray, or broadsides are all great choices. An ethereal works if you are going to have a lot of warriors/broadsides in a gunline. A squad of kroot with a hound and maybe sniper rounds provide a lot of utility as you scale up. You should have enough fire warriors, drones and pathfinders.

You can get 750 with what you have.

Oh fun stuff. It is not an ideal list but this one should be fun to run:

Fire blade 60
Fire blade 60

12 FW,BK 120
12 FW, BK 120

4 pathfinders 44
4 pathfinders 44
1 Piranha w/fb 50


This list will have issues with heavy armor. But should be able to put out enough shots (78) at potentially BS5 ignore cover or up to bs7. So you should be able to drowned a target in fire. Piranha will give you something to threaten the heavy stuff with.

Dude that's gonna be tough, Though you picked the right army your piranha is the only highly manoeuvrable unit and you don't have any truly heavy weps.

OK, I picked up 6 Crisis suits and a 3 man stealth suit team too. I still want more pathfinders and also a broadside if I can get one cheap. Any revised suggestions for armies now? Still looking for 500 points, but I think 1000 is now viable.

Thanks,
Duncan

Trust me for 1000 you're going to definitely make use of those new crisis suits. More pathfinders are almost always nice, though a singular broadside is pretty much outclassed by a hammerhead, which is good with either railgun or ion cannon. And from my experience, never underestimate stealth suits and sniper drone teams. They can be very nice when applied properly.