Making Tau unkillable...almost

This is a comment I made over on Zorcon's Word.

He has trouble keeping his suits alive long enough to tear things up.

This is my suggestion...

"I would consider scrapping the two elite teams.

Take one Shas'o HQ suits with a bodyguard.

For 301 points you have a 3 suit team with 14 wounds and 4+ invulnerable save.

Loadout is as follows;

Shas'o; with TL plasma rifles, HW Drone controller, Target Lock, Shield Drone, Gun Drone.

Bodyguard suit; TL Fusion Blasters, HW Drone controller, Targeting Array, 2x Gun Drones

Bodyguard suit; TL Missile Pods, HW Drone controller, Targeting Array, 2x Gun Drones

The gun drones are great for attempting pinning tests, but they mostly exist for ablative wounds. Each bodyguard suit has 2 wounds and the Shas'o has 4 wounds. That means you can absorb 10 wounds (x5 gun drones, x1 wound from each bodyguard suit, 3 wounds from the Shas'o suit) before you lose your 4+ invulnerable save by sacrificing the shield drone on the 11th wound.

After that you will lose one suit for each wound taken, for the remaining three wounds.

The twin-linking allows you to almost never miss and the weapons loadout gives you a mix of long to short ranged firepower.

Granted, you are giving up numbers in exchange for survivability. As it stands your two elite suit teams only have a total of 12 wounds between both of them. In this instance you free up two force organization slots, gain two more wounds overall (14 vs. 12) while only giving up four suits overall (7 vs. 3). Looking at your list and removing your two elite and one HQ selection (416 points); replacing it with the HQ as outlined above (301 points); saves you 115 points that can be sunk into another unit.

Try it. I think you will be surprised by the amount of energy your opponent will have to devote to destroying those three suits while your Broadsides and HQ rip him apart."