Army List: 2k Tau

This past Saturday, Loki and I had a fun pick up game of 40k, my Tau vs his Imperial Guard.  What a total blood bath!  While we were not able to use a camera at the time to create a proper report, I can share the army list and give some insight into how I feel the Tau need to play against the filthy humans!

"Who's whistling?!?  Stop whistling!"- Fire Warrior before mortar impact.

The Imperial mortars always make a big old mess of my little blue men, that mortar tank they have is especially brutal.  Fortunately for me I was able to steal the initiative giving me some nice shots on the first turn.  To help out further I was able to make all but two of my deep strike rolls on my second turn, I find these units to be invaluable against the Imperial Guard as they tend to have high priority tank targets, and long rage fire support that I need to close the gap with to silence.  It came down to a series of 6 or so armor saves and morale checks in a row that would decide the game.  Unfortunately for the blue guys, the Imperial fire support was able to clear my objective of Fire Warriors making the last turn score 1 - 0 in favor of the grubby Imperials!
Here is the Tau list I fielded:

1 Shas'El, Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod, Multi Tracker, 2 Shield Drones
1 Bodyguard, with the same gear lay out, and a Bonding Knife

4 Stealth Suits
2 Crisis Suits, with Fusion Blasters, Missile Pods, and Multi Trackers
2 Crisis Suits, with Burst Cannons, Flamers, and Multi Trackers

9 Fire Warriors with a Shas' Ui, and a Bonding Knife
9 Fire Warriors with a Shas' Ui, and a Bonding Knife
9 Fire Warriors with a Shas' Ui, and a Bonding Knife
9 Fire Warriors with a Shas' Ui, and a Bonding Knife
10 Kroot with a Shaper

6 Pathfinders with a Shas' Ui, Bonding Knife
-Devil Fish with Targeting array, Smart Missiles, Disruption Pod
6 Pathfinders with a Shas' Ui, Bonding Knife
-Devil Fish with Targeting array, Smart Missiles, Disruption Pod
1 XV-9 with 2 Fusion Cascades, and Shield Generator

2 Broadside, with Targetting Arrays
1 Broadside with Targeting Array
1 Hammer Head, with Rail Gun, Burst Cannons, Multi Tracker, Disruption Pod

All of the suits deep struck, along with the Kroot on out flanking duty, this was able to drop in some serious melta type weaponry along with the Stealth and Flamer teams, right into the heart of the enemy.  With hind sight I should have trimmed down my HQ unit and just made a second HQ, also the XV-9 should have shield drones instead of a shield generator as 1 costs the same and adds a wound.  Alternately I could have used the points for additional Kroot outflanking.

While my deep strike gave me a fair shot at winning the game, it has its draw backs, my HQ was destroyed due to a mishap, and my stealth team came in a turn later, and this was on a fairly good set of rolls.  With this in mind I do want to reduce the cost of the HQ unit and instead spread it out over 2 units, or maybe add a bonded team leader to the stealth team.  Also as a tip to anyone wanting to have significant deep strike Tau, make sure you bring Pathfinders, their Devilfish get a free upgrade that allows you to re-roll your scatter dice, while you can't always re-roll if your dropping behind a tank, the ability to often re-roll is excellent protection.

This may represent some difficulty for Tau.

After trying many configurations with my troop choices I think this is the configuration I am most happy with.  I may squeeze in the points for a second kroot squad as their outflank makes them excellent at reaching objectives as a scoring unit after my forces have had a turn or two to remove some threats.  With many of my squads some may say I waste too many points, but in my experience taking your army from Ld7 to Ld8 is crucial.  Without it I fail far too many pinning and panic tests.  Furthermore the bonding,  has proven to be critical to keeping a scoring units around time and again.  Finally I enjoy the 9 man squads because they aren't so large as to not fit in some of the smaller cover pieces, and still require 3 deaths to induce a panic test.

As for my Crisis teams and the XV-9 I think it is pretty obvious that over the last few games my list has become built around deep striking to remove weapons teams, and get in melta range on Imperial armor.  While I do find the Broadsides to be an important anti-tank unit, the Imperial 14 front side armor can often withstand quite a few punches.  To really get the tanks off my back I have to get to the rear armor, additionally this frees up my Broadsides to wreck havoc on my enemies transports and walkers, slowing his advance towards my objectives considerably.

Got a whole lotta love!

 If you have the time to, please drop a comment on what you think of the list!

All in all it was a blast to play, and I really look forward to getting our Tau vs IG planet strike campaign underway.  Look in the 40k page soon for us building our Imperial Strong Point box set, and starting our campaign shortly after.

If your interested in joining us in building this set and playing alongside our campaign try picking up the set from below, its quite a value in my opinion, although we are splitting the cost amongst our group.

Warhammer 40K - Planetstrike Terrain: Imperial Strongpoint