Editing Warhammer 40,000/5th Edition Tactics/Tau (section)

===Troops===
*'''Fire Warriors:''' Yes, they have the best basic infantry gun in the game. Yes, they will go down like a sack of wet shit if properly targeted or assaulted. You want to keep these guys either in [[Devilfish]] or camped in cover. Devilfish give Fire Warriors much needed mobility, and safety from assault. After all, the second ANYTHING gets into close combat with a Fire Warrior squad, the Fire Warriors will lose. Even if it's other Fire Warriors or even fucking Grots and Rippers. With abysmal WS and mediocre BS, if these guys are firing, use markerlights to up their hit chances, although other units may make better use the markerlight tokens.

*'''[[Devilfish]] Troop Carrier:''' These allow your Fire Warriors to be exactly where you need them to be. With the ability to gain a 4+ cover save through the Disruption Pod wargear, and skimmer speed, think of this as the eggshell that you need to crack to get to the delicious omelette inside. Thanks to the FAQ, the drones only count as a kill point if you take them off of the Devilfish. These are almost necessary for a good army.

*'''[[Gue'vesa]] Human Auxiliaries (Games Workshop Website only):''' Cheaper than your average fire warrior, with lower armor and higher WS. Essentially identical to Guardsmen. They can be equipped with some Tau weaponry and grenades, but their main advantage is obvious - they cost extremely little and have decent range, so they're the Tau counterpart to Conscripts. The most damning thing here is the Traitors rule - any other Imperium faction hits them on a 3+ in close combat. Unless you ''need'' the numbers for cost these dudes provide, a suicide grenade unit, or a joke unit, you should generally pass on these guys. If you ''know'' you're not going against any other Imperial factions (lolwhat), then the Traitors rule doesn't apply, and you can enjoy your Guard squad.
**Gue'vesa are, admittedly, good for rounding out a troops payload; for a relatively small amount of points, you can get a shooty unit that helps toss some ammo downrange and can help bulk up your forces with some numbers. When set up alongside a Fire Warrior or Pathfinder unit, they make a good screening squad that can keep things away from your more-critical units, and which are expendable enough to toss into the fray if it comes to that.

*'''Kroot:''' If you take Kroot as a combat unit they will disappoint you badly. They can take Orks in h2h and... Well that's about it. Even vs Guardsmen or Gaunts they'll probably tie on the charge and then either get worn down for a round or two or cleaned up in combat resolution (they'll handle conscripts, grots, or termagaunts pretty well, but anyone who gives a shit about losing some of those three units is retarded any way). The main strengths about Kroot are that they're resilient to ranged fire while in cover, they Infiltrate, and cost 7 points base. They're fuckin cheap and they can take up a fuckload of space. For around 200 points you can flood the board with almost 30 bases and while that may not seem like a lot the way people tend to line up their troops, if you push for that 2" coherency you can stretch those fuckers pretty damn far and thanks to infiltrate you have a huge amount of freedom in how you want to deploy them. What's this get you?
**Area denial. A bigass block of worthless flesh your opponent has to chew through to get to the units that are actually worth a shit. He can't just step over them, and most importantly, they push the front lines farther towards your opponent's side of the board away from yours.
**Say you're facing an army that likes to Deep Strike. Castle up your Tau wherever the you want and deploy the Kroot in a broad fan out from the forces you actually care about. The result? You've just cut off a huge section of the board that your opponent wants to be able to deploy in and forced him into dropping farther away than he wants to. That's fucking money.
In really big apocalypse games like 7500pointers, a blob of 150 kroot will be exceedingly difficult to get rid of without calling in a lot of template weapons (or a few weapons with very big templates) while only costing you 1000 points.

*'''Remote Sensor Towers (Forgeworld Only):''' To take these means you have the mental aptitude of a kindergartner. While cheap, armed with a markerlight, and grant a free target lock to one unit, they are immobile, die to anything, and cannot score. While flavorful, they are absolutely useless.
** +++update+++ They now let a unit with 6" count it's weapons as twin-linked, so they are no longer terribad, just meh. Might be worthwhile in a dedicated defensive scenario where the Tau have to hold a fortified position against attackers, otherwise probably not worth it.  

*'''Baggage Knarlocs (Forgeworld Only):''' A Knarloc in the troops choice sounds awesome at first, until you realize you need to take Kroot Carnivores first, he needs babysitters, and he has nothing going for him in terms of ranged weaponry or assault ability. Never even LOOK at these guys. They exist for flavor or special scenarios and nothing else.