Joining the Tau Empire: The Battleforce

Starting a new army is one of the many joys of the Warhammer hobby. For those of you who are just starting out and have chosen to fight for the Tau'Va (greater good), a great start is getting the Tau Battleforce for 90 bucks. Its a good value for what you get.

I'll give you a couple options for setting up a small yet viable force with this set. We're going to first start with a 500 point list so you can start playing some games right away. In the next installment we'll talk about your next addition to your Tau force and lay out some basic battle plans.

The Battleforce

In it you will find parts to build 1 XV8 Crisis Suit with 2 Drones, a Stealth Team of 3 XV25s, 1 Marker Drone, 12 Fire Warriors, 1 Devilfish and 12 Kroot. It’s an OK start. Stealth Suit XV25s leave a little to be desired but hey, at least they look cool, right? What to build with this stuff?

The Firewarriors should all be assembled with Pulse Rifles and mounted in the Devilfish. You may prefer pulse carbines and you can mix them up however you want I suggest going all out, its either all rifles or all carbines. Rifles are good for their range and the fact that they can rapid fire at 12 inches. Pulse Carbines offer a range of 18 inches and also cause pinning if the unit takes any casualties. As the majority of 40k armies either have high leadership or fearless, I find that pulse rifles are more useful.

Now move on to your Devilfish sprues. On the Devilfish set, you should notice a missile is included. But where to put it? My answer: don’t bother gluing on the seeker missile to the Devilfish. Magnetize it if you know how but otherwise leave it off. I’ve played around with seeker missiles enough to know that they are no good on Devilfish and only sort-of-good on Tau Piranhas. Assemble your Devilfish and drones but don't glue the drones in. You'll need to drones to drop off during games to protect your soldiers. Assemble the flying bases for your drones as well, but don't glue them to it. Base and flock as normal.

There are only one upgrades the Devilfish really needs: the Disruption Pod, giving it a 4+ cover save against shooting attacks fired from more than 12 inches away. At higher points levels, give it either Sensor Spines or the Multitracker. You Devilfish should never cost 95 points and you should leave it at that. Any more points sunk into this model is a waste of points that could be spent on more Battlesuits.

Moving on to your Kroot. You are required to have two troops choices in your army so adding Kroot will fill up that required slot. Kroot are very important in a Tau Cadre because they are cheap troops that will flesh out your army and provide a good skirmish line for your Battlesuits to hide behind. Plus they come in the Battleforce so might as well put them together.

In your list, I do not recommend giving them the upgrade character, the Kroot Shaper. He’s expensive and doesn’t add much to this unit. So 12 Kroot with Kroot Rifles. Simple. They get 3 attacks each on the charge and have OK rifles. Plus they have field-craft and infiltrate, allowing them to outflank and giving them a 3+ cover save when occupying forests (now go out and get some trees so can bring a forest along when you play).

Now its over to your stealth team-wait, um, where'd they go? Oh, hold on, here they are. :)

These guys seem really cool when you start off but after playing a few games with them, they will begin to disappoint you. Especially when you only have three of them. However, we're not going to use them in an attack role. Upgrade one XV25 to a teamleader, purchase a markerlight for him and 2 marker drones. Then the team becomes a stealthy support team. NICE! Now your Fire Warriors can actually hit something.

Now on to your XV8 Crisis Suit. In your first couple games, this model is going to be your commander as you are required to field one in every game. It's very important to equip your Crisis Suits in the appropriate way as this is where a good chunk of your fire power is going to come from.

In comparison to the HQ choices of other armies, the Shas'el or Shas'O Commander is not a force multipler like Astrorath the Grim, Logan Grimnar or Hive Tyrants. He has no effects that boost the effectiveness of nearby models or units. He grants no leadership benefits like the Space Marine Commander's Rites of Battle.  He is simply one beefed up Crisis Suit. He's one model, that's it. This is why he needs to cheap.

It's tempting to equip him with all the fancy upgrades like the stimulant ejector, iridium armor and an ejection system but these upgrades have little effect on the game as a whole and simply increase his points cost.

There are three configurations that I would recommend

Shas’el Fire Knife: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Targeting Array, Hard-Wired Multitracker. 97 points. Slightly expensive but comes with accurate mid-strength fire power.

Shas'El Deathrain: Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Flamer, Hard-Wired Target Lock. 77 points. Cheap with highly accurate long-range Missile Pods that can penetrate enemy Rhinos, Chimeras, and other transports. An added benefit is that he can join squads to boost their leadership to 9, and still fire at his own targets.

Shas'El Heatwave: Twin-linked Flamers, Missile Pod, Hard-Wired Target Lock. 73 points. Very Cheap with semi-accurate long range fire and a last ditch suicide attack with his twin-linked flamers.

The Army List
For your first couple games, here's a list you can run with only the contents of the battleforce.

Shas'El Deathrain - Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Flamer, Hard-Wired Target Lock. 77 points.

Stealth Team - 3 Stealth Suits, 1 Team leader with Markerlight and 1 Marker Drone. 135 points

12 Fire Warriors with Pulse Rifles. 100 points
Devilfish with Disruption Pod. 85 points

12 Kroot. 84 Points

501 Points

This list will be a difficult on to field if your opponent brings any heavy armor to the table. The basic plan would be to set up a fire base with your Kroot out in front, creating a skirmish line. As the enemy approaches, the Stealth Teams mark targets for the Fire Warriors to shoot at. Kroot hang out in front and rapid fire anything that gets close. The Commander should be targetting any transports, so should Fire Warriors as strength 5 weapons can with some luck, damage and immobilize Rhinos and any else that is Armor 11 or less. You'll have trouble with any AV 12 vehicles but that's what you get in the battleforce. Your next purchase should be build in some anti-tank weapons.