The balanced army, How to play adaptable Tau?

[General Stankov]

Well, I have this friend who happens to be a member on another site. I always beat his Tau. I mean ALWAYS! I looked into teh problem.
1. Lack of cash
2. Lack of experience

1. He simply lacks teh funds to build a core army that can beat IG or Black Templars.
2. He's never won, so how does he know what works or not?

I was wondering if you have any general suggestions for him.

Right now, he has...
1 Ethereal
1 Battlesuit Shas'o; plasma rifle, missile pod

3 Stealth suits

20 FWs
8 Gue'vesa

1 Devilfish

8 Pathfinders, 4 with Railrifles.

I play a vastly fluctuating array of forces, in the hopes he'll beat one, but I usaully lend towards assaulty Command Squads, and a lot of tanks.

Thanks ahead!

[Tau-killer]

As for lack of cash, I recommend getting friends and family to buy warhammer 40k models for christmas and birthday presents. In my experience that tends to work pretty well!

As for models....

HQ
I recommend just using the Shas'o for now. I think that when you're inexperienced its best just use one solid HQ model - too many people I've find try to make super invincible models with their HQ with tonnes of points - which never works.

Elites
Stealth suits...They're pretty good units - great in a night fight - but I think that crisis suits are better. They're great units, very mobile, hard to kill and have a variety of great weaponry. Their assault movement can also ensure that they're very hard to pin down in assault.

Troops
Lots of Fire warriors - I like it. Get more if possible. You can never go wrong with fire warriors. You could get four more and have three squads of eight or two squads of 12 - but there's no reason to stop there - how about getting 16 more and having three squads of 12. Fire warriors work extremely well against IG although admittedly they aren't as good against the tougher black templars. However do remember that they do have almost certainly the best basic troop weapon in the whole game.

Fast Attack
Pathfinders are the only unit in the Tau army I don't like. With the compulsory Devilfish, they can easily become a points sink. I say scrap them, and give the devilfish to a fire warrior squad to make them more mobile.

Heavy Support
No heavy support? Ok... Get a hammerhead. The hammerhead is one of the best tanks in 40k - trust me, it is. Like fire warriors, you can't go wrong with a hammerhead.
Broadsides are great too - deploy them at the back of the board and watch them kill. However if you do decide to get broadsides, get a set of three - one on its own is a bit of a waste. Then watch those broadsides take out those tanks!

Hope that helps
TK

[General Stankov]

Thanks for the advice: I'll pass it on.

He's sort of forgetting Tau for now and stocking up on Eldar. He wants at least 2000 points of the Space Elves before moving on to Tau again.

He had a Hammer-head. It saw one game, where I blew it up with a Vanquisher. Two days later, a large bull-mastif named Rudy got his jaws around it. HTere was nothing left...

Tahnsk!
Admin

[Tau-killer]

Well if he wants advice on Eldar - that is my specialiy!

Sorry to hear about the hammerhead. It sounds nasty.....Gameplay wise with all things it takes a bit of experience to use well.