Real first name: Charles

Age and gender: 24 M

Location: Houston, Tx

Occupation: Student

How did you get into wargaming? Just walked into GW store one day

How did you get into Tau? Dawn of War games

What would be your second piece of advice (after "read the freakin' rules") to a new Tau player? Come visit ATT

What is your Tau color scheme? Undecided

How did you find this site/the old site, and how long have you been a member? Google

What are the origins of your ATT username? I have used drunkenvash for about 10 years now on various different sites. Vash is from Trigun

Have you reviewed the ATT Member Primers? yes

Where and how often do you usually play? once every 2 weeks

Do you have any other armies, for 40K or another system? Death-wing currently selling my space marine models

What is your favorite and least favorite army to play against? orks and grey knights

What is your best and worst 40K moment? killed Maphiston with thunder-hammers in a 2000 pt game and warp sphere killed 2 of my land-raiders

What is your favorite band? If I had to only choose one artist, it would be Jason Mraz

Since I can only post here for now, might as well start typing under my own profile.

I am just starting a Tau army, I come from a Death-wing/Dark Angel army.
I currently am setting my goal to be a 600 points army. I already bought a rail-head and a crisis suit. I used tiny magnets for the rail-gun and the missile pod so I can switch them later if needed. I picked the rail-head because it's just too cool to pass by, even though I heard from other GW players that the better option is a broadside squad.
I'm planning on getting 12 fire warriors and a devil-fish transport to make exactly 600 points.

However there's a lack of versatility in this, so I'm thinking about putting in a drone sniper team to maybe outflank incoming light vehicles if I put it in a different angle than my rail-head...

What do you guys think?

Since I'm writing this on my phone, I'll keep it brief.

As for what comes to your selections, present and upcoming, I can only say these things from a competitive player's perspective.

What you want to do is keep minimum FW squads, riding in Devilfishes. Never in the open, never without a Devilfish. Heavy support is only Broadsides, nothing else. No Hammerheads, and definitely no Sniper Drones. Skyray is not even an option.

Max out Elite choices with Fireknife-configuration XV-8 suits, with a dash of Deathrain if you prefer.

For example, I'm attending a 1850pts tournament the next weekend, and my army consists of 9 Broadsides (buy the Forge World versions :), 8 Fireknife XV-8's, two 6-man squads of FW with one Devilfish, and the other one coming from minimum squad of Pathfinders for DS accuracy if ever needed. Not forgetting the Commander, but he is also just the 50pt variant with Fireknife-config who joins the 2-man Crisis Fireknife squad. Everything protected with shield drones on team leaders of course.

Awe, no sniper drones or hammer-heads? They are so cool though!


I didn't know they let Forge World stuff in tournaments; I thought it has to be GW stuff.

I get the fireknife-configs all my crisis suits will be outfitted with those. Also I am keeping it to a min. of 2x6-man FW squads
However, with 600 points I can't take a pathfinder squad, because then I would go over my point values. I am thinking about the drone sniper team, because of the mark-light, pinning ability, and decent vs rhinos. I do see your point though.

The tournaments will allow FW models as long as they are representing normal codex units, and comply with WYS/WYG. For example I just ran XV81 FW models as deathrains. They look cool, and comply with WYS/WYG.


Thurgen

First off, welcome! As far as my experience with Tau goes, play with what you like and what you think is cool and persevere. I, for example, also love hammerheads and always take as many as I can. Sure, it's a struggle but I compensate by using the mobility of the hammerhead to flank and hit weaker side armour so each shot counts. The key thing to remember is that Tau are by no means the easiest army to play in 40k at the moment, you have to think really carefully and avoid mistakes but if you keep going and learn from those mistakes, things will click and you'll suddenly find yourself winning games on a fairly regular basis.
Retha'la

There was this one tournament at this one Games Workshop that if your model wasn't 40% Games Workshop's product then it wasn't allowed, ha-ha.

Thanks for the welcome! I know the basics like don't get close, move and flank and priority targeting, however I just like cool units that are also competitive unlike my old Death-wing (great fluff and concept of a all terminator army, but terrible compared to many other choices). I try to play my pieces like chess.

Well, that does happen from time to time, not much you can do about that.


Thurgen

Please remember that ATT does not do "Army Lists".

Shas'O

Sorry, my intention was more of a unit preference and others opinion on a strategy that includes 1 Drone Sniper Team and 1 Rail-head.