This is just a quick heads up to what I've been working with for the tau and my thoughts. The codex presents on two levels; one very basic massed shooting and another in tricky play and what I can describe only as no gimmick tricks.
My most recent evolution of the list is as follows:
Ethereal
Fire cadre
Rip tide- fusion blaster, ion cannon, early warning system
Rip tide- fusion blaster, ion cannon, early warning system
12 fire warriors
12 fire warriors
12 fire warriors
12 fire warriors
19 kroot with sniper rounds and hound
19 kroot with sniper rounds and hound
8 pathfinders with shas'u
8 pathfinders with shas'u
8 pathfinders with shas'u
Skyray SMS point defense targeting relay, BSF
Skyray SMS point defense targeting relay, BSF
Skyray SMS point defense targeting relay, BSF
I started out with no Cadre with 5 fire warrior squads and 1 kroot sniper squad, 2 Rail gun broadsides, 2 skyrays, SMS on the rip tides, and 6 man pathfinders with a shield drone.
The changes came from play and theroycraft.
Riptides are nice with interceptor to take an easy, cheap pot shot at a flier, drop a template on a deep striking unit, or even explode marbo if he shows up. The burst cannon is great but I feel like I'd want to Nova Charge too much to be really effective. Plus, the rest of the army is good saturation fire at strength 5 and strength 6 of the burst gun just isn't exciting.
The kroot got hounds because its basically paying 5 points for acute senses and having the extra squad put a bigger outflank pressure on the opponent for cheap. A lot of people want to outflank with an ethereal for evocation of fire but I can't risk the two ethereals giving up the extra VP.
Putting the Cadre in take the STWL focus off the ethereal and reduces his target priority from the opponent as well as makes up for loosing the fifth fire warrior squad in a little way. The Ethereal was a huge kill target because he gave up an extra vp just in general, gives up STWL because he was my only HQ, takes away the ld 10 bubble on my leaderless fire warrior squads and shut down my fire warrior base. With all that he was a target to be hunted down and killed like a dog in the street and the cadre at least takes one reason off that list.
The pathfinders are a big target as well. The shield drone often just ate dirt and for its cost I'd rather just have another marker. Usually once the pathfinders are targeted they just turn to dust, shield drone or not. And obviously the more marker lights the merrier.
And lastly Broadside rail guns just suck. For the points I'd easily rather have a skyray. It's nice to have the Broadsides to reach out and snag first blood but I think that many skyrays can handle it too once they start firing marker lit seekers. Also, throwing another skyray in gives another set of marker lights giving the list six marker units, 3 of which have sky fire.
Overall I really like the codex. I feel it has two layers to it like a lot of the 6th Ed releases where it's easy for anyone to pick up and make a list that will take them so far but for others they can build some mean stuff out of it. For now I'm learning the basics and then I'll build on that.
As always feel free to post questions and comments, and share what you've been doing and why!