1500 point Tau All-Comers

HQ
Shas'O - Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Shield Generator; Iridium Armour; Hard Wired Blacksun Filter; Hard-Wired
Drone Controller; 2x Sheild Drones = 180

Elites
Crisis Team x3 - TL Missile Pods; Blacksun Filters = 138

Crisis Team x3 - TL Missile Pods; Blacksun Filters = 138

Crisis Team x3 - TL Plasma Rifles; Flamers = 177 *Shas'O rolls with these

Troops
Fire Warrior Teamx 8 = 80

Fire Warrior Teamx 8 = 80

Fire Warrior Teamx 8 = 80

Fire Warrior Team x8 = 80

Fast Attack
Pathfinders x8 = 96
Devilfish APC = 80

Heavy Support
Broadside Team x3 - SMS; Blacksun Filters = 234

Skyray - Targeting Array = 135

Total = 1498

Was mulling this over after looking at Loreweaver's Kan ork list and some of the experiance I have have versus Necrons. I think my standard Fireknife suits (Missile Pod & Plasma Rifle) are to split in their role to get good use out of them. They have to fly close to use the plasma rifle but don't get the survivability of the range on the Missile Pod. Not to mention their targets (things with 2+ saves) ignore the Missles most of the time anyway. This way i get more Missle pod shots and just a small reduction in Plasma while adding some redundancy. I have just enough fire warriors that i guess i will be able to hold 2 objectives and maybe have enough left to contest a 3rd with the Devilfish APC. The skyray is there to add a little bit of Markerlight support and to allow the Pathfinders to be used very offensivly for a turn if I need them to via seeker missles (str 8 ap 3). Nobody seems to shoot my Broadsides anyways so the drones came off to save some points.

If you dropped a unit of Fire Warriors, could you drone-up some of the suits and upgrade the sky-ray to a hammer head?

Fire warriors are kinda... not so good. Although, Rapid Fire weapons got a big boost this edition.

I think if i drop a unit of fire warriors i wont be able to reliably hold any near objectives let alone contest mid-field ones. In most of my games my fire warriors end up being mostly shot off the board. only vs Tyson did any full squads make it to the end of the game.

I deliberatly want a skyray over a hammerhead since the hammerhead doesnt have any marklights and never seems to earn its weight. i generally miss/dont pen vs tanks and scatter/oppenent spreads out with the template.

I could drone up some of the crisis teams, but im hoping that the only ones that will be shot are the ones with the shas'o. due to 36" range and the 2d6" assault jet the Missile pod ones shouldnt draw to much incoming fire. Unless i flub my deployment/movement.

Id change the count of the warriors as well. At 8.. You can take two losses before checkng for morale. Three units of 10 will help out and maybe free up some points?

Ive never played tau.. But ive played against them alot with chaos. My plan is usually pretty simple against the
.try to get a few guys alive going across the field to break the warriors on combat.. And hope everything shoots at those guys and ignores the rest.. Warriors are generally my first target unless theres a big unit of suits or i have sme heavy armour the broadsides can mess up

Also... Fire Warriors in Fishies are nice, you put them in reserve and start rolling them towards objectives in the mid-late game in the comfort of the Armour 12, 3HP skimmer.

Secure with the suits, late-game hold with the rest. Blow the other guy to crap with the TL Missile Pods and Broadsides :-)

I think fishies are good now // again.

Other Tom is building the Hammer Head / Fish of Fury list, which seems pretty good to me. Basically Negates S5 and less shooting. (bah... glancing on sixes is for n00bs and 'crons)

Edit: MSU Firewarriors in reserve to hold back field objectives is good. When you place objectives, just put 'em within 6" of a board edge.

I wonder how that list will play out. Right now i think 'fishes are to overcosted to make them particularly effective. I do think i might either need more staying power with higher squad sizes or more transports though. What i would do though (and what i did to Tyson with pretty good effect) is just demolish crisis suits until the small MSU fire warriors show up and then shoot them. Crisis suits are only T4 and 3+ with 2W. Since they are limited to 3 models in a unit it is just like killing a unit of 6 space marines only S8 weapons kill two models.

by the end of turn 3 i had worked through his one crisis unit, killed one broadside and put a wound on just about every model of farsights unit while killing the shas'o.

Out of Tyson's 4 units of fire warrios one was at 6 and one was at 2, the other two were completly wiped out at turn 5. If we had gone for a another turn i was fairly confident i could kill the squad with 2 and possibly wipe the squad at 6.

Are you planning to assault with your commander? because if not you can take a Shas'el with targetting array for +10 points and saves you 15 points (little things help!). Also iridium armor is cool but keep in mind then you only move d6" in the assault phase instead of 2d6" unless you are assaulting, also you proly dont need the shield generator if you have 2 drones (they have 4+ invulns and you can 2+ look out sir insta gib wounds onto them). So that would save you 55 points.

Also i dont know if you gave blacksun filters to all the guys in the squads but in the faq black sun filters give night vision to the model. And night vision rules are "A unit that contains atleast one model with this special rule ignores the night fighting special rule" so you only need one per squad which would free up some more points there (best 3pt upgrade in the book imo).

So i think you could have your 4x 10 man fire warriors or close to anyways.

Anyways not to pick apart your list (it is a very good list i find) just trying to tweak it to optimize it a little. lemme know what you think of the changes, im very influenced by my Eldar so it affects how i see my tau quite a bit.

The iridium armor comes in incredibly handy for tanking shots on the crisis teams. all of a sudden anything with ap 3 isnt going to hurt them nearly as bad. It also applies to the armor saves on his shield drones as well. So for 20 points you gain 2+ saves on a total of 6 wounds (with the shas'o). Which is particularly handy in the games i have played. That would be the other reason i upgrade him to the shas'o is for the extra wound on his profile. The shield generator is just a failsafe after the drones go down. That unit tends to suck up a lot of fire and with the "Slay the Warlord" bonus point i dont think my shas'el has survived a game lol.

As of yet the blacksun filters hasnt been that much of a boon with fire warriors. I dont think i have played enough varied opponents to make it worth the points (you first have to upgrade a warrior to a shas'ui for 10 points and then its another 3 for the filter). Almost all my 6th games have been against necrons so it might be coloring my list building a bit. Hence no burst cannons etc. I have a much more rounded list that I have been playtesting with and would love to play some more varied opponents. I can post or pm you a copy of that if you are interested.