Tau 2000pt Competitive and Fun

[Thompvancity]

First time picking up my Tau in a few years and I've overhauled with the new codex.

You comments and critical feedback are welcomed and appreciated!!

HQ
Commander Warlord
Iridium armour, pure tide chip, shield generator, fusion blaster, TL Plasmarifle, 2xshield drones

Ethereal
Honor Blade

Cadre Fireblade

TROOPS
Fire warriors x12

Fire warriors x12

Fire warriors x6

Fire warriors x6

ELITES
XV8 Crisis Team x3
Shas'vre and team all w/ bonding, counter fire defence, fusion blaster, Plasmarifle and 6x shield drones

XV8 Crisis Team x3
Shas'vre and team all w/ bonding, counter fire defence, fusion blaster, Plasmarifle and 6x shield drones

XV104 Riptide
Ion accelerator, TL Fusion blaster, early warning override, stimulant injector

FAST ATTACK
Pathfinder x5
Rail rifle

Pathfinder x5
Rail rifle

Pathfinder x5

HEAVY
Hammerhead
Longstrike, Smart missile system, decoy launchers

XV88 Broadsides x2
Heavy rail rifles, velocity tracker

[Thompvancity]

If anyone who is currently playing with or against tau lists, please feel free to provide some feedback on whether you would enjoy playing the list above, or be utterly perturbed by it.

I want to have an army that is competitive, but is still enjoyable to play against.

Thanks in advance!
-thomp

[Coyote81]

Hi there, I'll give you some comments/critisim

First, shield drone are really overrated with the new rulles with them being squad members. Just take gundrones or markerdrones.

HQ: What is your plan with him, he's not built with a very specific plan in mind. If your taking iridium armor, you must be tanking for something, Broadsides? Crisis? If your taking puretide your looking to use it for anti tank mostly, rare monsterhunter, must also be for broadsides, since plasmarifles are very more against vehicles. So in general we've deteremined your tanking for broasides, if taht is true, your weapon loadout is very poor. Plasma rifles are just too short of a range for that., Missilepods would be better. Shield generator would be better. not often your goign to get shot by AP2 shots that ignore coversaves. And in those moments you LOS to gundrones/markerdrones. TL is also a waste one a BS5 guy. for best bang for your buck in that position, try take 2 sets of missilepods, a targetlock and stim injector. you can keep the shield drones there if you want, since they'll be out of range to target most units, or even better drop them and give them to the broadsides to purchase missiledrones.

Other HQs are personal choices imo, just trying to help you maximize what you currently have.

Elites: Make your crisissuit focus on the job they do. Don't mix there weapons, take two of the same instead of two different ones. Also, taking counterdefence is just asking yourself to risk them getting chraged in the first place. It's a rather bad upgrade imo when you could be giving them something in to increase their effectiveness instead. Options: Targetlocks so they can shoot at different targets and kill more targets (especially good with double fusion blaster suits), Drone controller (only need one) makes your gundrones/markerdrones that you should be taking BS3, increasing your overall firepower by a lot, vectored thursters (onyl need one) could save your day if you let the drones get killed in combat, and you don't actually get wipeout by I tests, and finally Shas'vre specific upgrades, like Multi-spectrum suite, command and control node. All these other upgrades increase your effectiveness far mroe then hoping to hit on 5's on overwatch.

Recommendation:
XV8 Crisis Team x3
Shas'vre and team all w/ bonding, 1x drone controller, 2x targetlocks, , fusion blaster, fusion blaster and 6x gundrones (unit can now shoot one fusion and all gundrones at one target, and 2 fusions at two other targets.
XV8 Crisis Team x3
Shas'vre and team all w/ bonding, 2x targetlocks, shas'vre upgraded with MSS, C&C node and drone controller Plasmarifle, Plasmarifle and 6x markerdrones (unit can now shoot 6 markerlights at BS3 at one target and 4 plasmarifles at another target, all with rerolls to hit and ignore coversaves.) This would allow you to leave one unit of patherfinders at home.

Riptide is perfect imo.

Troops are up to you. Looks fine to me, especially with Ethreal/Cadre Fireblade HQs.

Fast attack: I think your pathfinders need to focus on what they are going to do. the army needs markerlights, and if your going to be shooting markerlights all game, those railrifles are a waste of points. If you want to take railrifles, bring a unit 4man with 3 railrifles and outflank them into a goodspot. Otherwise focus on Markerlights, the make the Tau world go round. Or in this case, your opponenets tears go down.

Heavy: As much as I like longstrike, I just don't feel like he's needed. If you really want to take a hammerhead, thats fine. But just take a Dpod and call it a day. Use those extra points to get the much needed missile drones for your broadsides. They made only hit on 5's but they serve dual purpose. Super cheap missle source and protection from lascannons and such. As for the Heavy railrifles. Thats also to each his own, but I think the highyield missiles are better. Especially with the Commander setup we discussed, they're very effective.

Sorry if any of it sounds mean, just trying to give you honest advice. For the most part you have a solid list, just needs some tweaks. Goodluck!