Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Tau (section)

===Elite===
*'''[[Battlesuit#XV8_Crisis_Battlesuit|XV8 Crisis Battlesuit]]:'''God's First Gift To Tau. Your mainstay, these guys will fill up your elites slots. Crisis suits are famous for the Jump-Shoot-Jump tactic - moving out of cover, shooting, and jumping back into cover, denying return fire and annoying the enemy, an excellent tactic. They have 3 hardpoints which they can fill with any combination of weapons or systems you want, but filling all 3 isn't mandatory. Typically a Crisis suit will have two weapons and a support system, but the occasional third weapon to be competent against a variety of targets isn't unheard of. Or you could twin-link a weapon, there's your third slot (it may be a good idea to mount TL pair on one hardpoint to make it more WYSIWYG). It only helps that Crisis suits (and other large suits) come with Multitracker and Blacksun filters pre-installed so you can choose that extra system you've always wanted.  Probably one of the most passed-by improvements, yet comforting additions to 6th; Shas'Vre come in at Leadership 9, meaning if you lose a couple of expendable wounds (for instance in the form of bin lids) you don't panic, forget you're in a huge powered gundam wing and run off the board! However, you should be painfully aware that Crisis suits are T4, which means they suffer heavily from rocket sniping. If you value your suits, take at least two drones to absorb the inevitable S8 AP3 shot. Everything in the damn game has some version of a "fuck your Crisis suit" weapon. As all drones have the same price, consider carefully what type you want for your Crisis suits:
**'''Shield drones''' are just ablative wounds, that are slightly better at being ablative wounds. 4++ could help them to survive twice as long against heavy fire, but against AP5 or higher they would go down as fast as other drone type, as they lost their 3+/2+ mimicked armor save from previous codex, and you cannot allocate only those wounds you want on them. Take them if you expect the enemy to pack a lot of S8 and/or low AP weaponry.
**'''Gun drones''' are not only T4 Sv4+ cold expendable wounds for your Crisis suits, but also TL pulse carbines, which pack considerable firepower in 7e, and may even pin shit if you get lucky (don't count on it, though). BS2 is not a big problem, as with twinlink they have 55% chance of hitting something (think of it as BS 3.5) without markerlight support.  With a suit equipped with a drone controller, they become BS3, and with a Commander with drone controller, [[Troll|BS5]]. Being twin-linked, they tend to deal more hits on overwatch or when snapfiring at flyers/fmc's. Definitely worth it when combined with infantry hunting Crisis teams (flamers, burstcannons), and even on more heavily armed teams could be fine if combined with target locks (they are fairly cheap after all).  Group of 3-5 gun drones on targetlocked team could reliably blow [[Dark Eldar|AV10 vehicles]], or those with AV10 on the rear (read: almost all of them) with some smart maneuvering, and with some luck could even glance to death [[METAL BOXES|AV11]]. If you're planning to jump around heavy cover or include Shassera to your Crisis team, Gun drones would benefit from 4+ cover (or up to 2+ with Shassera in cover), becoming as survivable as Shield drones, while retaining their firepower. Overall the best option.
**'''Marker drones''' are tricky ones. BS2 with no twinlink or networking seems useless, but they are designed to CHAIN markerlights when focus firing a target - you're spending 2 markerlight tokens to give your Crisis team awesome BS5, and 2-3 marker drones at BS4 could reliably regain those tokens to be used on the next Crisis team and so on. Or you could use Target locks like with Gun drones - They're longer-lasting, faster Pathfinders that can keep up with your Crisis suits for just 1 more point, plus the very convenient Drone controller (a serious consideration for the Enclaves, actually). Aside from it, they could be used as emergency markerlight source if your main markers was destroyed or tied, and of course, as ablative wounds, like all other drones.
**One unexpected result of 6th ed was the Rambo Crisis Squads (aka Monats). With Crisis suits now costing 22 points, it's now a perfectly viable option to take your Cheap as Chips naked Crisis squad (or naked plus flamer) and use them for GLORIOUS COMBAT. ''Why?'' Because 3 Crisis suits naked costs 66 points! If one was to compare them with Assault Marines, you're looking at higher Str, [[What|''more'' base attacks]], double wounds for about the same price, at the expense of lower In, WS, and lack of Hammer of Wrath. Still, unless you have the misfortune of fighting Grey Knights or Daemons you're going to hit most things on a 4+ anyway. In effect you have a unreasonably durable tarpit unit on a super budget, best used against assault threats to your fire warriors (needless to say, anything with a large quantity of power weapons is to be avoided, but that marine squad? Fuck yeah). Of course, given the fact that you're expending an entire precious elite choice won't sit well with many. Unless you play Enclaves, where you won't care. You might be tempted to whack a Shas'vre in there and add lots of CC items, but the main value of this squad is exactly how cheap it is. Do not forget, your Crisis suits have 2 base attacks and S5 - charging AV-10 rear tanks with your Crises could be a good move. Tying up shooty squads with poor melee (Centurions, Devastators, Fire Dragons, etc.) is also an option if you have retro thrusters, as it ties them up AND allows your Crisis suits to escape enemy fire and then jump right out melee at the end of his turn and then vaporize the poor fuckers. Just make sure their characters have no power weapons. Use careful positioning to allocate the few wounds you're taking to the drones. 
**Another fun tactic for crisis suits. Take 3 in a squad, give them all 2 fusion blasters (156 pts). 6 melta shots is completely overkill for removing a tank squadron from the table, especially at AP1! So why not give one vectored retro thrusters to avoid being locked in combat for too long. This platform is perfect for turning super heavies into swiss cheese and entire tank formations into tatters. Oh and if you have the spare points target lock wouldn't go amiss on the other 2 suits.
*'''Crisis Bodyguard:''' Crisis Suits that can auto-pass Look Out Sir! for their Commander. Now they're forced to eat a FOC slot, but you can have up to 9 per squad. They have Shas'vre stats and cost: Ld9 and an extra attack (although they shouldn't be in melee to begin with), at the price of being 10 points more expensive than the regular Crisis Team. But their best characteristic is that Signature Systems don't use a hardpoint. Take them if you want, but their place is alongside a Commander.
*'''[[Battlesuit#XV25_Stealthsuit|XV25 Stealth Suits]]:''' First, the good bits: they have [[Pauldrons|3+ armour saves]], a burst cannon, stealth, shrouded ''and'' they can infiltrate. Now the bad: their BS is average to the rest of the army but their biggest weakness comes in comparison to other entries in the Elites section - they're not as tough or versatile as Crisis or Riptide Suits. Arguably, Kroot do the whole infiltration/sniper thingie better now but Stealth Suits have an ace in the hole: they can take a homing beacon. You're taking a shitload of suits, right? You know they deepstrike, right? Oh sure, Pathfinders can take beacons, but they need several turns to get in position, by which time it's already too late and you've lost the advantage. With their myriad of deployment options (Infiltrate, Outflank or Deepstrike themselves), you can get your deepstrikers striking deep (''see what I did there'') into enemy territory, safely and FAST. Everything else is just icing on top of the cake, from their fusion blaster per every three models to the marker light/target lock the Shas'vre can take (worthwhile to take because, unlike other Battlesuit teams, you only get up to 2 Drones per squad, and you'd end up with a very fragile Shas'vre if you try to use a Drone Controller instead of Stims or the Shield). Build this squad in a way it can survive long enough to guide your deep-strikers to their destiny. Just don't overspend on upgrades, though. Stealths are T3 so a lot of things deny FNP, and have a 4+ cover save on the open, making the shield generator a redundancy (letting power swords reach them is Failing, don't [[Fail]]). They can play jump-shoot-jump shenanigans even better than Crisis Suits, courtesy of their smaller model bases and 2+ cover save in, y'know, cover.
**'''Stealth Team Shadowtide (Burning Dawn):''' Three Stealth suits, one with Fusion Blaster, and a Marker Drone.  They benefit from Supporting Fire, Infiltrate, and Precision Shots, plus the Bonding Knife Ritual.
*'''[[Battlesuit#XV104_Riptide_Battlesuit|XV104 Riptide]]:''' [[Asmodeus|Devil's]] gift to Tau. Designed to troll. It's a Jetpack monstrous creature with a big statline (S/T6, 5 wounds, 2+/5++) to accompany its big guns: the mother of all Gatlings, the Heavy Burst Cannon (eight S6 shots) or the anti-everything Ion Accelerator (S7 Heavy 3 or S8 large blast overcharge, all that at [[Rape|AP2]]). Because that's not enough dakka, it also has a secondary twin-linked gun. It's also one of the few sources of Shielded Missile Drones, which are awesome. Even with terrible, Tau trademark WS/I2 it still can, and will, smash tanks in close combat if needed. Then there's its Nova Reactor, which can give it a special power at the beginning of movement on a 3+, but on 1 or 2 you lose a wound with no saves allowed (you can still FNP). Nova reactor bonuses are nice and sexy and they are:
**A 3++ save: Ideal when you're in the sight of multiple anti-tank guns with no cover or BLOS to jump behind.
**A 4D6" thrust move: Grants you a mobility only matched by flyers, FMCs and teleporting Dreadknights, great for jumping out of melee range. Invaluable for scoring or denying key objectives early in the game. 
**Firing its secondary weapons twice, without sacrificing main gun shooting: This isn't mere additional same-type dakka (e.g.: SMS complementing HBC), but allows a Riptide with different kinds of guns to be competent against anything. Eg: normally it'd make no sense to grab a Fusion blaster alongside a HBC, 1 shot never being enough to reliably take on tanks. But 2 shots are worth considering.
**Unlocking alternate main weapon profile:
***Heavy Burst Cannon becomes Heavy 12 with Rending: Great for annihilating infantry without power armor or medium vehicles. Gets hot may seem dangerous, but it isn't -  you have 2+ armor to save against it.
***Ion Accelerator overcharge becomes S9 Ordnance: Your response against heavy armour, it has a chance to pop that Land Raider open from safe distance like a railgun, although with only a +1 for damage results compared to the railgun's +2.
**While cool and deadly, remember they rely heavily on markerlight support - Heavy Burst Cannon really shines when most of its dakka actually hits the target, and ion blasts are much more effective when they ignore cover and don't scatter much. You'd think Riptides melt with poisoned shots, but thanks to its 2+ save it takes 90 BS4 poison shots to take down one Riptide, even more if it has FnP. In that time, the rest of your army can work unhindered. What we're saying is, don't worry about it, 4+ poison ain't all that hot shit. However, anything that can fight back in melee is going to either tarpit the Riptide till the end of the game or rip it to shreds, and you cannot take VRTs to jump out of melee. Speaking of Support systems, they can take two. Stims for that Nova charge abuse, Advanced targeting to snipe low special weapons with a huge Gatling gun, EWO to punish deepstrikers with AP2 large blasts, etc., you name it.
**Do note, as awesome as Riptides are, they are a bit too powerful for their cost. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRvmjS06yKE Take one, they'll get mad. Take two, how could you. Take three, you're officially] [[That Guy]]. Consider yourself warned. This includes FW Riptide variants! With the new codex, Riptides can be taken in squads of 3 and they now have the Fire Team rule, making them BS 4 when taken in 3s, because GW wants all your monies. Have they gone too far? Is this madness? And then there's the Riptide wing formation...I guess 2015 was the Year of [[That Guy]].
*'''[[Battlesuit#XV95|XV95 Ghostkeel Battlesuits]]:''' What a Riptide is to a Crisis suit, the Ghostkeel is to Stealth suits - a durable and shooty jet pack monster. Much like the Stealth team it's evolved from it has Stealth and Shrouded, but the way it gains these rules is a bit schizophrenic. You see, the Ghostkeel Suit only has Stealth by default, but its drones grant stealth to all models in their squad, and Shrouded to all that already have Stealth. While technically only the suits gain Shrouded, that rule affects all models in a squad, so the drones too gain 4+ cover in the open. The obvious downside of this convoluted web of rules is that a Ghostkeel that loses all of its drones would lose a good chunk of its survivability as well, making it the odd Battlesuit that wants to tank shots for its drones. Unlike its smaller brethren, it can't infiltrate (you'd need some sort of tactical genius for that), but instead gets the Fire Team rule, which grants it BS 4 when there are 3 '''suits''' in the squad.
**The Electrowarfare suite that the XV-95 carries in the left hand further adds to its stealthiness, doubling cover bonuses from Stealth/Shrouded for pretty much guaranteed 2+ cover against all dakka ''from outside 12" range'', but the way it's worded makes only the suits to get this bonus. Furthermore, once per game the Ghostkeel can pretty much auto-blind one enemy unit that fires at it, forcing it to only fire snap-shots, so launching an alpha-strike against it isn't an option, especially with Blast & Template weapons which won't get to fire at all. To further this squad's survivability, the drones lower their average save to 4+, meaning the grav-weapons those marine players tend to spam out of their asses nowadays aren't nearly as effective against it. It's not like the XV95 is particularly squishy that it needs all those defensive measures so desperately, with four T5 Sv3+ wounds and two T5 Sv4+ drones it's more than capable of taking the fire even from cover-ignoring weapons. On the offense in packs a set of twin-linked flamers, burst cannons or fusion blasters on it's shoulders and either a Fusion Collider (fusion gun with small blast) or an Ion Raker (24" 6-shot Ion Rifle with a large blast overcharge). Seeing as both main guns are either anti-tank or anti-light vehicle/medium infantry, blasters are the preferable shoulder weapons, although if you find yourself constantly fighting Orks and DE, flamers would ruin their day. Not enough stuff? Good, because they can take up to 2 Support systems. EWO to double fuck deep strikers (both primaries are blast), Advanced targeting coupled with Burst cannons and Ion Rakers to snipe special weapons, or Stims so it truly never, ''ever'' dies. Never give it a Shield, it's too expensive.
**Durability-wise, the Ghostkeel is even more resistant to long-range shooting with big anti-tank guns than the Riptide (with the slight exception of suffering ID from S10 or Destroyer shots) thanks to its ridiculous cover save shenanigans, however it's four times more vulnerable than a Riptide against bolters and gauss flayers up close, and considerably easier to kill in assault. Accordingly, when combined with its short weapons range, it tends to attract rather less rage than the Riptide does, while still scratching that "big durable robot" itch. Watch out, though, these guys graduate to full-on cheesy BS when taken on formations, especially the Optimized Stealth cadre.