Email in: 1700 competative Tau! (yay)

"Sup Will (or VT2 if you pass the article to him),

To make a medium length story short: I'm going to build and play with Tau on quite some larger tournements this year. At least that's the plan, might school and work permit it at least. So I did some thorough research already and at the moment came to this list:

HQ
Shas'el; fireknife 87

Elite
2x Crisis suit; fireknife 124
3x Crisis suit; fireknife 186
3x Crisis suit; fireknife 186

Troops
10 Kroot 70
10 Kroot 70
10 Kroot 70
6 FW's 60

Fast Attack
8 Pathfinders 96
Defilfish; deluxe 120
Piranha; TA + FB 70
Piranha; TA + FB 70

Heavy Support
2 Broadsides; TA, leader with lock 170
2 Broadsides; ASS, leader with lock 160
2 Broadsides; ASS, leader with lock 160

Total: 1699.

Seems solid enough, but it is hard to decide on the details. Especially considering the heavy KP missions we apparantly have here sometimes; I'm thinking about dropping a Kroot unit and getting 5 hounds for the other 2 Kroot squad. Then squadroning the Piranhas and giving them a disruption pod and Target lock. Would this hurt the list a lot? It does save some easy KP's...
Still in doubt about the Broadsides too. TA is amazing, but so is ASS. What combination do you advice, or does it come down to *cough* playstyle *cough*?
And then we have the Fish. I could take him with just disruption pods instead and spend the 35 points on something else...
Twin-linking the Shas'el his MP for just 6 points seems very tempting too, along with a target lock. Oh yes, I can't really seem to fit in Shield drones for the Broadsides either, but they don't really seem all that necessary to me.

So many options it seems, give your best shot please ^^

Cheers, Jacob Auke"

Your changes are all good suggestions and I'd go ASS on Broadsides. With any extra points, look to get more PR/MP Suits. You should be able to get at least one more which effectively gives you 10 PR/MP Suits + 6 Broadsides. So here are the changes:

• combine the Kroot squads so you have 2x17 w/Hounds
• dumb down the Fish
• combine the Piranhas (2x blocking units is nice but squadrons gives you a wider front, more likely to shoot a FB, etc.)
• make all Broadsides ASS, TL w/TL

All of this should take you to 1708 points! Someone did some math wrong. The Broadsides should all be 170 points (ASS = 10 points, TL w/TL = 10 points) so we'll drop 3 Hounds from one squad and then add a Blacksun filter to each of the Broadside team leaders. We haven't gained any PR/MP suits but our list is streamlined and our Broadsides are capable of use during Dawn of War which is huge. Not much mech and rather close to a pure suit list which means your Crisis can be vulnerable early on to ranged shooting but you've got a lot of firepower available to you.

The one issue the list has is the lack of drones on the Broadsides but it becomes a case of firepower or defense? If you want you could fit in some but you're going to have to drop something such as Crisis suits which I'd rather not do. You could drop more Hounds/upgrades and give the Commander 2 shield drones and a Target Lock so he can play with the Broadsides and give them some defenses.