Tau Army Review - Intro

A little project for me over the next month or so, will be to do a series of posts reviewing the Tau Army units.

I will go through each unit in turn, commenting on how effective I think they are, what equipment combinations are useful, and what my experiences have been with them.

To the right of my blog will be a section showing all of the sections I intend to cover, and links to each article. Rather than just putting out theory-hammer I will stick to my own experiences of using units, therefore unfortunately there will not be a review of Vespids, Sniper Drone teams, or Skyrays. On occassion the review will refer to a forum discussion that either supports or gives an alternative view to my own.

So before I start my review I'll give a brief history of my Tau playing career.

I started back in 3rd edition. I had a fully painted Dark Eldar army, and wanted another challenge. In my area no-one really played Tau, and there was a lot of trash talk against the Tau, particularly the Fire Warriors. I've always liked being the underdog, and I'm was confident that a army made up of lots of Fire Warriors could work. So I started out with a heavy fire warrior army, supported by an Etheral to hold the army together, supported by crisis suits & stealths.

When 4th edition came round I still used many fire warriors, but as people came more and more wise to my army I started to add more mobility into my army with hammerheads and more crisis suits.

By the time 5th edition started I was using what was probably a pretty standard tournament army, few troops, with more crisis suits, hammerheads and broadsides. I even won my first tournament, a 35-40ish person tournament that is held at the Colours Convention in Newbury each year. After coming 2nd and 3rd with my Dark Eldar it was nice to finally win it. However the tournament was the first I went to in 5th edition, and it was lots of 4th edition armies trying to come to terms with 5th edition.

As people got more and more used to 5th edition I've found it harder to win games, especially against my mates tournament armies (Mech Eldar, Twin-Lash Chaos & Mech Guard), which has led to more experimentation in army list structure, unit composition and weapon loadouts.

And so I enter 2010 with the intention to make my Tau more competitive with regard to the list I use and my use of them. I look back at the list I used for the tournament I won, and think how much stronger my list is now, and how much better I know how to use the Tau. It just goes to show how much 40k has moved on with stronger armies (Marines, Orks & Guard particularly) and they way people have learnt to adapt to 5th edition.

If there's anything in particular you'd like to see in the Army Review, just leave a comment, and I'll try and incorporate it.

Rathstar

Picture Credit: I found the picture at the top of this post on google. It shows Adam's (also known as Darkseer on many forums) Tau army at Warhammer World on some wonderful Tau terrain. To see more of Adam's army and his read his experiences with them please see his blog, Warhammer Tau