Email in: 1750 Tau

"Kirby

Some list advice please.

I went to the July Throne of Skulls in the UK. I took 1500pts of Tau and did reasonably well (Best Tau General). The list I took was

Shasel, PR, MP, MT and body guard with PR, MP, TA HWMT x2

Crisis Suit TLMP, flamer, and another one with TLMP, BSF x3


6 Fire Warriors

10 kroot x2

6 Pathfinders

Dumb fish

Broadsides, TA, HWDC, 2 shield drones

Railhead, Burst Cannons, Multitracker x2


I'm going to the October TofS. This one (for the first time!) is 1750pts, and I'm trying to decide on how to spend my additional points.

Now in July this list did fine. It put out a horrible amount of fire power, and I was able to table 2 of my opponents (more or less). However, there were 2 things it lacked - scoring units, and plasma.

I found that in objective based missions, it was relatively easy for my opponent to kill my kroot (that's what they are there for after all), and if my FW's were killed (or the DFish shot out from under them), game over. I'm thinking that at the higher point level, there will be even more shooting and my troops will die even quicker. As for the plasma, what I found is that I struggled to put down power armour when I really needed to - i.e. when it was in my lines. 3 of the 5 armies I played were grey knights - putting down paladins and terminators was pretty hard.

So with these points in mind I'm thinking that I would upgrade 3 of the deathrains to fire knifes, making them team leaders with targeting arrays (more accurate plasma), and add in 2 piranhas. I know this does not increase the troops, but it adds in 2 fast skimmers for distraction, blocking and last turn contesting. The alternative is swap out the piranhas for 6 more FWarriors and a fish.

What do you think?

D"

The most obvious things for this list are PR/MP suits and fleshing out your Kroot squads with some Hounds. Scoring is always going to be an issue with Tau with the focus mainly on getting rid of your opponent's scoring with your superior shooting and keeping your Fire Warriors alive. In this case reserving them is obviously going to be a big help and having larger Kroot squads as well. The Kroot will die more often than not but having larger squads can prevent this to some extent. You could take a 2nd Fire Warrior squad as well but that's a lot of points (including Devilfish) without much firepower impact.

Otherwise getting PR/MP suits in your Elites (I'd probably drop the bodyguard PR/MP for more suits and keeping IC status on the commander) will give you the firepower necessary to drop lots of Marines. How many Broadsides are you running as well? Minimum of two I hope!