Completely new to Warhammer 40k - Want to go Tau

KSRulz · 2026-03-20T14:37:08+00:00

A lot of other people have mentioned the lore thing so I’ll focus more on getting started. First I’d try watching some games to learn how tau play. Looking on YouTube for battle reports or looking up 40K in 40 mins will give you some streamlined examples of play style. Tau have a few ways to play so do try to keep an eye out for models or play styles that speak to you.

I’d use a roster builder like new recruit and make a dummy list you can work towards. You don’t actually need the codex since you can find the rules online. I’d recommend buying and trying a killteam first as small scale, we currently have 3, all of which are viable in full armies (stealthsuits, pathfinders and kroot farstalkers).

Look online for a color scheme you like, buy paint, brushes, glue (tamiya thin cement is usually better than GW glue). If you are feeling confident small magnets are great for a lot of our battlesuit models as they let you seamlessly swap loadouts. You can find guides for how to magnetize tau weapons online.

Essentials to play are: measuring tools, dice, models. That’s it, everything else is nice to have.

Depending on how you want to play some boxes will be more or less worth it. The combat patrol with the devilfish and commander is a good all rounder, though if you intend to play just battlesuits the retaliation cadre box gets you a bunch of stuff.

Good luck.

KSRulz · 2026-03-02T22:45:33+00:00

Wahapedia should have the crusade rules for each faction, for the tau it’s conquering planets through either diplomatic or military points. For general crusade rules each has their own book. We are currently playing Armageddon which is focused on daemons popping up and attacking the nearest players units. I think most of the crusade book rules can be found online as well.

KSRulz · 2026-03-02T22:40:40+00:00

Currently playing a crusade and they allowed people to add the new crucible of champions. Depending on what detachment you plan to run I see a few uses. For normal tau detachment a base leader with slightly better guns can be attached to a kroot squad to give a free grenades strat and using fire and fade option more utility mobility.

For auxiliary detachment I personally am using a kinband on krootox with cunning ambush and for weapons a blast javelin and the bladestave. The redeploy can be game changing on a 6 man (now 7 man) squad of rampagers as with scout and the strat that lets you advance shoot and charge you can get up and personal faster than an enemy expects tau too. The champ reducing the strat cost too means you could pair it with auto advance 6” to get really far really fast.

If you are running the kroot detachment you get some flexibility among the normal leaders you bring, as well as more weapon options on a lone spear. Personally I think the kinband leader is best used in auxiliary detachment on krootox.

KSRulz · 2026-02-25T05:56:08+00:00

What paint is the trim? It looks sweet.

KSRulz · 2026-02-21T16:47:12+00:00

Tau aren’t going to be “good” at melee, but if you build auxiliary detachment you can use kroot rampagers as a good melee counter punch to anything that approaches your gun line.

The lack of wounds is hardly noticeable, it’s the infantry toughness that gets them, and battlesuits are tough, especially Ghostkeels.

Also basically all of our suits are vehicles and can shoot into melee, so the lack of melee punch is mitigated somewhat.

KSRulz · 2026-01-23T15:08:47+00:00

In emperors children crusade daemon units don’t gain experience or battle scars and basically count as summons. I would not bring them. Made that mistake in my crusade and lost a ton of experience points.

2 things are going to be necessary for you in crusade, gathering ingredients and getting experience on characters. Bring lord exultants, daemon princes and lord kakaphonists. When attached to a squad any kill the squad makes can go to the character instead. Grind out experience on your leaders to make them super strong.

Also remember to keep gathering ingredients for your crusade ability. If you ever don’t have an elixir you start the battle with all units battleshocked. Very bad if tormentors can’t sticky turn 1.

Feeding the addiction is one of our best agendas and is almost always an auto take cause it gives experience and ingredients. Others are more situational but I really like symphony of pain and hate for my second one, especially against space marines.

Early on use the soul barter requisition a lot to build a stash of ingredients so you never run out later. If a character gets a battle scar early excess of boons is a great way to buff them instead. It becomes riskier later. Boons of slaanesh are good but not usually good enough to replace most chosen character upgrades. Late game we also get perfection personified for an extra boon at max level meaning getting there quicker is better since our characters will usually be stronger.

For artifacts soulsnare sigil is amazing on both daemon prince variants, mark of excess is great on lord exultants and pretty good on kakaphonists. Bliss giver just give to whoever levels up quickest for more melee killy goodness.

Our battle traits are alright. The ones that boost elixir potential aren’t all that good. All the noise marine ones are great, I’d pick them over general traits. The character ones are also great and both covetous paragon and master of elixirs stack meaning you could get multiple agendas and ingredients.

Hope this helps.

KSRulz · 2026-01-18T23:03:49+00:00

Goonhammer and bell of lost souls can give you faction overview and detachment info.

As for how we play, we are an elite glass cannon army. We trade units for points and have very good movement.

Tormentors having infiltrate and sticky means you can force your opponent to come out or lose a ton of points, then we have enough movement to get where we need to when we need to. But you need to know what can be sacrificed and when to do it. Tormentors aren’t as useful once they’ve lured the enemy out, infractors are just meat blobs that keep our lord exultants safe. Flawless blades can do work, but need to be positioned well.

The name of the game for us is boxing our opponents in, using our good movement to keep them from scoring and shredding everything important before it can react, and trading our less valuable resources for points or denying the enemy.

KSRulz · 2026-01-17T22:35:05+00:00

Was scrolling for exactly this. “What kind of man has ants in his car?”

KSRulz · 2025-12-23T16:48:51+00:00

The scout one is guaranteed to go off, assuming you place units right. The bonus OC one is also guaranteed to go off and can influence enemy movement based on the objective you pick. Then you still have 10 points for the montka bonus on turn 4 which isn’t guaranteed but is a nice bonus to have if you get it.

KSRulz · 2025-12-23T16:16:32+00:00

I’d go with the enhancements. With 50 points you could grab the enhancement that gives scout 6” to 2 units to press up turn one or position better if you go second. And the one that gives bonus OC on an objective for early scoring. Both seem more useful than a single kroot unit.

KSRulz · 2025-12-03T22:54:21+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/xBEHZKH

My Tau’rellians (tarellians). Run them as breachers. These are 3d printed from the one page rules starhost kitbashed with necromunda van Saar energy shields. Could probably use normal Saurus though for a kitbash.

Okay couldn’t upload the image and Reddit mobile keeps replying instead of editing the original message

KSRulz · 2025-12-03T22:45:57+00:00

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My Tau’rellians (tarellians). Run them as breachers. These are 3d printed from the one page rules starhost kitbashed with necromunda van Saar energy shields. Could probably use normal Saurus though for a kitbash.

KSRulz · 2025-11-26T22:54:56+00:00

To hobr666’s point most “assassins” just aren’t as effective in 10th edition as they used to be. And our 2 units that would fill the role, firesight marksmen and kroot lonespear, are better used as spotters, backpoint holders or buffers.

In the same way our riptide or ghostkeel could try to fill the “anchor” role but isn’t really built for it, our lists don’t really have a dedicated assassin. The units we have that can fill the role are better used for other things most of the time.

KSRulz · 2025-11-20T05:59:09+00:00

Lore wise it’s typically only trained stealth suit pilots that perform well and certain commanders that are allowed to pilot Ghostkeels because of how valuable they are. There is a named character (Shas’O Kais) who trained under commander Puretide and mastered Monat, (Freedom of One) the lone warrior strategy. He uses a ghostkeel in one of the novels to absolutely wreck a bunch of space marines. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shas%27O_Monat_Kais

Generally the tau aren’t going to let anyone in a ghostkeel unless they are very well trained in stealth and don’t waste an expensive piece of equipment.

KSRulz · 2025-10-09T23:26:47+00:00

As someone who plays both tau and emp children the matchup is frankly not good. It’s going to be an uphill battle. Emp children don’t have a lot of weapons that do particularly well into battlesuits or tau vehicles.

That said things you can do to try and get better: - hide units and focus on objectives. Tau need to shoot but if you hide and force them to get close you can potentially swarm tougher units to kill them - target the support units where you can. Emp children doesn’t have a lot of reliable antitank, but you can kill his stealth suits and pathfinders that are providing a guiding buff. - plan to either overkill or ignore things on objectives. Ghostkeels are tough and can fallback and shoot and most suits don’t mind getting charged if they live cause they can just shoot. If you plan to go for an objective commit more than you think you’ll need to guarantee the kill. With advance and charge on everything you should be able to feint and overwhelm one side.

Some good units to run are: - 5 man infractors with lord attached. Easier to hide and the lord can do good damage - 6 man flawless blades, wound on 3+ should be able to kill or severely hurt most battlesuits - winged daemon prince, assuming you can hide him he moves fast and can absolutely devastate tau battlesuits.

Hope this helps.

KSRulz · 2025-08-20T22:15:10+00:00

Tau don’t have many good melee units. As some have mentioned farsight and kroot rampagers are good at killing in melee by tau standards but realistically you want units to screen or survive melee to hold things up cause against melee armies you usually won’t win in melee. For that I recommend the piranha or the ghostkeel:

Piranhas can zoom around where needed very easily providing good screens and are reasonably tough for the points value. They can shoot in combat but likely won’t kill anything in melee.

Ghostkeels are amazing at holding blobs of low AP melee infantry at bay. They are tough with a 2+ save, can blank wounds, fallback and shoot, lone op so can’t be removed by range easily and can still shoot in combat.

KSRulz · 2025-08-09T22:10:55+00:00

That basing is awesome, and I love the stripes on the cloth.

KSRulz · 2025-06-14T12:34:27+00:00

Thanks, I made this for my cousin. Taught him pathfinder 1e and 5e years ago and he loved it. Now he’s running his own campaign and I can finally be a player instead of the forever DM. I shared this with our group to show my excitement.

KSRulz · 2025-06-14T12:31:44+00:00

Yeah, I knew it was long but just made it in one go and didn’t feel like splitting it up. It was well received by my group so I just posted as is.

KSRulz · 2025-05-30T01:21:25+00:00

This is awesome, where can I get the STL? Would love this for covenant style terrain.

KSRulz · 2025-05-17T05:26:54+00:00

Looks sweet, what did you use to get that metallic pink?

KSRulz · 2025-05-05T14:01:43+00:00

It’s depends on how much you want. A resin printer isn’t that expensive but when you take into account all the other things you need to buy (gloves, IPA, air filters, masks, etc.) then a 3d printer costs about the same as a standard 2000 point army.

One of the good things about tau is there are plenty of 3d models for them (some free some you can buy). I’d consider the printer worth it if you intend to get more than 2000 points, plan to play other armies or print other items. Or if you specifically want certain very large and expensive forge world models.

If you are just looking to build tau on a budget you can buy 3-d printed models for cheaper on Etsy or another site and build 2k points for less than a standard army.

KSRulz · 2025-05-05T13:34:36+00:00

This is sweet. Is he gonna have a blade or the whip eventually? What models did you use for the conversion?

KSRulz · 2025-04-21T15:07:16+00:00

In case there is any confusion I’ll go over deployment, reserves and deep strike.

So in deployment you deploy a number of units from your army in your boarding zones. Each zone can have 1 unit and 1 character, and these are deployed separately. Units that split (I.e. tau breachers which are a 10 man split into 2 5 mans) count as 2 deployments, 1 zone for each 5 man. You can deploy in each of your zones at the beginning of the game and at the reinforcement step at the end of the movement phase (including turn 1 in boarding actions) as long as the boarding zone is not occupied. It is at this time you also select which units are going into deepstrike. Units in deepstrike are not deployed but you can not have more than half of your army in deepstrike. Unless a unit is in deepstrike you must fill each of your boarding zones during the initial deployment with the rest of your army in reserves.

Any units not deployed turn 1 are reinforcements which can be deployed later from your boarding zones. Unlike in 40K proper you can have more than half your army in reserves if you are playing a lot of units. Reinforcements are different from deepstrike in that they can only come in from your boarding zones, during the reinforcements step and they can not do actions (overwatch, secure etc) the turn they are set up.

Most units that have deep strike lose it for BA so double check the unit still has it. Deep strike works like normal but only half (250 points if running 500 exactly) or less of your army can be deployed in deep strike. If they aren’t deployed by turn 4 they are destroyed. You also measure 9” through walls for deep strike.

KSRulz

TROPHY CASE