Are Tau an automatic loss?

Oh Tau, how I hate you, let me count the ways....

I faced my friends Tau today (first game with new codex) with a combined army of standard formation and coven (1750 points). I won't go into list details since this is more of a philosophical question. I Will however give you a few points to consider:

1) I had made a Good list and played it well (we both agreed on this)
2) I was insanely lucky with my FnP rolls. Seriously, I must have made more than 70% of Them
3) he was really unlucky in his shooting fase and would often make a lot less wounds than the statestics described

In spite of all this I lost. At the end of 5th round I had a draw, and was almost tabled. He still had tanks, broadsides, pathfinders and the occasional suit left. Alas the dice wanted us to play to additional turns and he tables me winning an astounding 11 points to 0.

Don't get me wrong, I love playing with him and we had alot of fun as always, but I just Got to wonder: If i play so strongly against Tau that are not having their Best Day, what are our chances really against them? I know we still beat them from time to time, but would a bookmaker even handle the odds ;-)

I Think the main problem is: Their is not ONE tau unit that isn't a mortal danger against Every single unit we are able to field. It's simply impossible to cover our a** from everything so suddently we just die in droves. (And Then of course the markerlight that is the bane of our existence)

So what do you Think? Do you consider a Tau fight an automatic loss or do the fishpeople still have a reservation in the obliettes of the haemonculi?

P.S. I Think the new codexes are very good and holds alot of potential

P.P.S Sorry for any autocorrect that I Might have missed

If you want advice, posting your list might help. Cover ignoring Riptides and similar are the bane of everyone though.

Though I think serpent spam is way worse for anyone at T3 that wants cover saves.

They aren't an auto lose, just really good. ALWAYS kill markerlights first. If he had pathfinders left that late in the game it's no wonder you lost in all honesty. Harder to do than to say against a good tau player but we have all the tools we need to kill them, mainly wwp with templates do wonders. Both court and grotz do that well.
Fun trick
Archon with armor of misery wwp and PGL with a homunculus with archangel of pain in a raider with torment grenade launchers with 4grotz from the coven supplement for the -1 leadership can gut an entire tau army in one turn.

I played against Tau last night and won while having pure dark elder for the first time since the new tau codex. He plays a competitive list and I tabled him turn 5. I used the arch angel artifact and the armor of misery on archon and succubus with grotesques escort and caused so many devastating losses. Also caused the rip tide to run a moral check twice and then off the board. The scourges and lances took out the vehicles and kept him jinking and the bomber dropped his bomb and fired all of his templates when he came on taking out even more troops.

I was basically going to make the same points about the various leadership bombs we can muster up (Tau Ld is so weak, exploit that!) and killing markerlights first.
I find with Tau it's easier to give them first turn, and counter his deployment so he has nothing to shoot at turn 1. Then hit him all up one side.

Have a look at Mushkilla and Barking Agatha battle reports, they're good at killing Tau.

So basically I just suck ;-)

Well , you do not suck. Not everyone uses armour of misery and archangel combo. Now I use a Aun'Va in my Tau list and a lot of interceptor. So it kind of ameliorates those artifacts. That said Tau is a tough match up. And really it about range when playing Tau. Can that raider get in range before you destroy with those artifacts - can you survive a drop when hit by units with interceptor? How much is the Tau player reserving? I would null deploy if I saw those artifacts.

Jehoel wrote:

So basically I just suck ;-)

I'm going to tell you the same thing everyone else told me when I first came here struggling against Imperial Guard. Study the codex the Rulebook and your opponent's codex. Know those things inside and out then you will be on the path to victory.

egorey wrote:

Well , you do not suck. Not everyone uses armour of misery and archangel combo. Now I use a Aun'Va in my Tau list and a lot of interceptor. So it kind of ameliorates those artifacts. That said Tau is a tough match up. And really it about range when playing Tau. Can that raider get in range before you destroy with those artifacts - can you survive a drop when hit by units with interceptor? How much is the Tau player reserving? I would null deploy if I saw those artifacts.    

Not sure how Aun'va helps at all against crucible/phantasm bomb... it would help with fear checks, but does that even matter with tau really? It would help against pinning... but we have nothing with pinning in the book. It would help with moral checks from casualties true.. but that's it really..
I don't really think null deployment is something I'd be scared of facing playing DE against tau. They are just so slow..
With tau the archangel bomb is really about making them spread out so they can't use supporting fire as effectively. That's how I see it anyway!

You may want assault units against Tau. And contrary to the meme, you can get into close combat.

Or you could also avoid close combat altogether and use the Tau's low Ld values to good effect by stacking Ld deductions and play the tankshock game.

Has anyone else considered that Venom spam with Chain snares is a great way to eliminate units, but not via shooting attacks?

Remember that if a unit can't fallback, even from a tankshock, they are destroyed.

Granted, Marine units are not susceptible to this maneuver but Tau...

Also, your situation matters. Have you built a TAC list for a tournament, and then come up against a tau player? Hard luck, difficult but doable.
On the other hand, is your Tau buddy after a game? Now you know you're facing Tau, you shouldn't be afraid at all. Build that list.

What are people's thoughts on trying to use the fear bomb/TGLs vs a Farsight crisis suit deathstar list?

I'm worried trying to pack enough raiders with TGLs in won't work, since Farsight deathstar has enough target lock to take out everything.

I don't think I could run the fear bomb against the farsight bomb and reliably expect success. Even if you drop his leadership down 4 points, he still has a little under a 50% chance to pass that. I can never bring myself to count on something unless you get the odds down to more like 10% chance of failure.

As far as Tau being an autoloss is concerned, I think it's an army you have to adjust your playstyle against more than anyone else. You have to find out if he's running a lot of early warning override for example, and if he is then you shouldn't run much in the way of deepstriking.

If he doesn't have many rail rifles, I'd play the range game and make sure no more than one or two units can shoot at you. Some of the heaviest hitters in the tau army like missilesides only have a 36" range on one weapon and 30" on the other and they are not relentless so they can't move and shoot very well (despite everything being twinlinked). Go second, outdeploy him, and make sure even if he moves up he can't shoot you, then dismantle him one unit at a time.

If you go up against a lot of farsight bombs, I'd advocate the WWP and medusae unit. You can drop them on the side that avoids his iridium 2+ save and roast most of the unit.

biggest thing i don't think anyone has mentioned yet is playing with a decent amount of terrain on it. a lot of the boards in our meta are ridiculously sparse which can be a total death trap for DE.
Your job of dealing with Tau will be much easier when you have decent LOS blocking buildings on it. they can't shoot you if you can't be seen after all!

csjarrat wrote:

they can't shoot you if you can't be seen after all!

*cough Smart Missile Systems cough*

still needs someone in their army to get LOF on them, they can't just randomly nominate any unit on the board last i heard

Go read the "Homing" special rule in the Tau codex.   The only restriction is the 30 inch range.

wow, fair enough. if you can just pick any target within range then yeah, carry on, that is pretty broken

Exactly. This is my biggest problem with the Tau codex. A cheap 10 point upgrade is a hard counter to our entire army. And it can be taken by almost all of the units that most Tau players bring multiples of.

When I play against Tau I go for a real horde list and it works well. As said before, take out markerlights and neutralise smart missiles.

A list maximising units in transports, reavers and perhaps some taloi/chronos to distract and take some wounds. Keep it all together and utilise the flanks. Negate the shooting of as much of his army as possible and saturate what ever is in range. I find that the most effective may to beat Tau, is to fight with double the points as they have! If you can minimise what can actually hit you, you can weather some of the storm. Think like an Ork, and get good at rolling FnP!

Oh smart missiles how I hate you. I wouldn't call this tactic exactly competitive but after suffering many defeats at the hands of Tau, generally losing the range game, thanks to ignore cover, I used to turboboost right in the face of his markerlight units and kind of dare him to blow them up, they get caught in the explosion too, and I've negated the range. Against Tau even Kabalites make pretty decent assault units. Haha.

Again, not the best strategy, but boy did it relieve the frustration.

I think the change to Night Shields really hurt us against SMS, as reducing their range to 24 inches guaranteed at least 1-2 turns of being out of their range for our vehicles.  The GW design team member who wrote the rule for the new Night Shields is obviously a Tau player.

I´ve always just charged everything up their face, sure you may lose half the army the first 2 turns  but after that you whip their ass in melee.  Although overwatch really hurts  especially now that PGL do not give densive grenades.  As long as I don't fail Ld of the first units that get into CC they are usually frak .


If the table actually have good terrain though you can pick them apart piece  by piece while only  facing  a part of their army with all of yours.  But  yeah  Cheese missiles.................

Yeah overwatch is a big problem with the assault plan.
A bigger problem, in my experience, is again the Farsight bomb. With Vectored Retro Thrusters, they can just Hit and Run out of combat on your turn then shoot you to death, and shoot you AGAIN when you charge the next time.