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Hey,
I'm brand new to 40k after my friends got me into the hobby. I read up most of the fluff on a majority of the armies and fell in love with the Tau. I thoroughly enjoy the idea of creating my first army list as a Farsight Enclave Army list, but I'm extremely confused at where to start and how to proceed building the army. At first I thought I should get what I thought looked the most enjoyable and what I'd have fun playing, whilst enjoying the lore behind it. However, I like the look and lore behind almost all the units / armies the Tau have.

The friends and members of the local gaming store primary use Necrons and Tyranids, essentially what I'm now trying to build is a Strong and effective 1500 point army that is relatively versatile so that it can easily get me started in my Warhammer 40K campaign. Any help would be much appreciated. Sorry for being so vague in advance.

I would've put this in the army list thread but as I don't have an actually army list I thought it was redundant.

(P.s - sorry for the cringey introduction I'm very new to all this)

Hey first off welcome to the community and to the hobby! Its great to have new players and Tau are definitely an awesome army to start out with! I play mostly Space Marines Admech and AM but Ive dabbled in Tau so Ill help any way I can! First and foremost the new Get Started! Boxes are great value and save a lot of money off the bat. If youre brand new to the game id suggest starting with a CAD which is just 1 hq 2 troops and filling it in with a lot of stuff you like. You can play tau a lot of different ways, using a lot of fire warriors, kroot, drones, or giant mechs depending on what playstyle you like and if you want to build a friendly or competative list. Some of their most powerful units are the ghostkeel, riptides and stormsurge but those can be on the hyper competitive side, which isnt bad! Broadside battlesuits, hammerheads and fire warriors with drone support are a more friendly version. You can also look at other lists in the army list section to see what formations and units work well together! Good luck and happy playing!

100% fully agree with SplinteredShield's post! He just forgot one, very crucial statement.....

eBay! eBay! eBay!

I cannot stress that enough. You can save so much money on expanding your army beyond the starter sets.
The only downside to this is that sometimes people sell models that are already painted or are not up to date with the current models that are sold at your local games store.

Also welcome to the forum!

If you love battlesuits and tau armour check out the enclave. Farsight is a badass and has some pretty cool lore.
There's nothing wrong with anything second hand and painted. Nothing a little nail polish remover won't fix

Nail polish remover probably isn't the best thing to use for paint stripping. Acetone will melt plastic if I'm not mistaken.

If your interested in farsight I'd avoid it until you're playing big games. It's never really worth it to run farsight at low levels, and you pay a premium on cheaper troops, which really hurts.

I'd say get some fire warriors, broadsides and some crisis suits. Suits are your rapid response units, and broadsides/fire warriors are your firepower. You can use crisis suits for fire support, but I think they work better as units that bring something to patch a hole in the army. I think that fusion suits and plasma rifle crisis suits are the best at filling holes that other units don't fill well for cheap. Cyclic ion blaster suits are decent as well.

Riptides are always good, but depending on your meta, some people will give you sideways glances for running them. I'd suggest also running a drone net or the broadside+pathfinder formations for markerlight support. A good amount of markerlights is always helpful.

Things to avoid IMO would be vespid and rail-broadsides, as well as hammerheads (though long strike is OK). Kroot are bleh and are only good if you know exactly how to use them. Stealth suits are meh too.

I like MSU spammy Tau whereever possible. Having 3 broadside units of 1 side is better than 1 small unit of 3 that runs after one drops. Same goes for crisis suits, and fire warriors and pathfinders.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Nail polish remover probably isn't the best thing to use for paint stripping. Acetone will melt plastic if I'm not mistaken.

Acetone free that is.

P4rk3r wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
Nail polish remover probably isn't the best thing to use for paint stripping. Acetone will melt plastic if I'm not mistaken.

Acetone free that is.

Dettol (Brown stuff) works amazingly and does not harm plastic or FW resin at all. GW resin though it weakens ( be warned) but plastic ? Strips it to the bone ! So good !

As for the OP :

I agree with the Start collecting box , the Tau one is particularly good value since the new Battlesuit box's cost significantly more ( and fire warriors, now I think about it ). The CAD Suggestion is quite a solid one and picking up either another box of fire warriors (eBay as mentioned is good, since the older fire warrior boxs are still kicking about , just lacking 1 new drone which is amazing but can be converted up) will set you up !

From my experience you really cant go wrong with many of the Tau units - Fire warriors form a very scary gunline and there are plenty of units to support this.
Crisis Battlesuits are amazing and by far some of the most versatile units I've ever seen simply because you can kit them out to fulfil just about any role from Anti Armour to Hoard clensing

Even if you stick to more friendly lists you should have very little trouble doing well in games, just remember - marker lights ! Bread and butter of your army now

Best of luck on your journey and have fun !