Help! Railguns, and lots of them!

Ive been playing the dark eldar a while now, mainly won, Grey Knights sorted, not a problem, space marines of various chapters mainly Howling Griffons and Razerwings can deal with, eldar (used to play myself so know all the tricks) not a problem, Daemons and Orks no issue, necrons no issue but, never though I would say this... The tau are my biggest concern! Ive played them 4 times won 2 lost 2, doesn't seem to bad, and it is often great dice rolls that save him (as always) but he always seems to go first and as he runs 2 hammerheads and a squad of 3 broadsides that can all shoot independently as standard and doesn't ever move my transports and ravagers get wrecked first turn unless by some fluke i get my flickerfield 5+ save and get a shot on his which will inevitably pass their 4+ shield only to get destroyed again! Nightshields are useless against a 72" range and the strength 10 ap 1 rounds just punch through my rice-paper clad ships only for them to explode killing most of the people inside! Once im in range/assault or get the talos into a few its not a problem but getting there is! Any tips/tactics would be very helpful- cover would be obvious but when were placing he seems to like as little as possible!

Well, your first mistake is letting your opponent set up terrain. Tau excel on boards with minimal cover, especially if there isn't any cover to block LOS with.

I will agree that Tau are troublesome to say the least; my mortal nemesis plays Tau, and he's very good at finding flaws in my plans and lists and exploiting them (it doesn't help that he knows his codex inside and out).

What you want to do is to take out his Broadsides first; they are your biggest threat as they are a relatively small target, tough as nails and pack a twin-linked railgun that, with support from Markerlights, can get up to BS 5 with little trouble. Fortunately for you, both darklights and splinter weapons are effective against these guys (just be sure to use the splinters first to knock off any drones they might have attached). Your other targets at this point in the game are going to be the Hammerheads, Fire Warriors and anything with a markerlight, but his Broadsides are your priority target.

Now, this is going to sound odd, but you really shouldn't be so worried about his railguns. Why, do you ask? It's because they only get one shot per turn, and their army is full of weapons that can easily bring your skimmers down. No, the three weapons you should be most worried about are burst cannons, missile pods and the good old fashioned pulse rifle. What these weapons have in common are good range, 5+ strength and multiple shots per turn, plus Tau can field a lot of them. Really, the best way to avoid getting taken down by these manifold threats is to make sure that they're not shooting at you in the first place. Suppress his tanks and slaughter, pin or assault his infantry; that's the best way to deal with these guys.

Something you might want to consider is screening your Ravagers with your Raiders, preferably empty ones. Force your opponent to decide between the 60-point skimmer or the lance-spam gunboat with a 4+ cover save could very well save your Ravagers from dying right away to enemy fire.

Another possibility is taking Lady Malys. Her redeploy ability might be helpful in tricking your opponent into deploying to face one threat that suddenly isn't there anymore.

Hope you found this helpful!

Quote :

Well, your first mistake is letting your opponent set up terrain.

+100
Try and set up terrain according to rulebook, wich is like 25% of board(even more-its fun) and you will have your victory. Playing against Tau on desert is suicide.....our army needs cover like non other to fight.

cheers that's really helpful! And I do agree with the pulse rifles and missile pods they can be a pain, however he does have a habit of deep striking his crisis teams or infiltrating his stealth teams in no man's land which is why I usually don't worry to much about them. Thing is the 2+ armour save on the broadsides does make them very hard to kill especially with the incredible wound allocations they get, I tend to rely on the classic dark lance spam-(which actually today took out 2 due to instant death rules 2nd turn) to deal with them but on a normal day and below average rolls (not an excuse) more often then not the 4+ inv on each of them tends to help them a lot. Also regarding the burst cannons etc I very much rely on "Distraction units e.g/ the talos and the ravager" who absorb a lot of the fire from those due to them performing incredible feats in other games such as killing 9 terminators in 1 round of shooting with disintergrators (very very very lucky) or the instant death Ichor injector of the talos on a high points cost model, and allow good use of the nightshields which does occasionally give me a bit of flexibility and gives the raiders a chance, but I do agree with both of you, against most/all armies dark eldar need a lot of cover to keep out of line of sight but that's not always the case unfortunately!
With regards to the use of raiders to screen the ravagers I see where your coming from but In my current army (quite new to it so only around 1500) I rely heavily on speed to get my bloodbrides and HQ into combat early on to start charging them up with tokens and giving the warriors some protection from templates as well as getting them into range. So I guess if worst case scenario then good idea but ideally (and certainly against other armies i've played) It leaves me stranded and the bloodbrides and warriors just get tore to pieces by templates

Now I'm going to suggest another tactic for you in addition to the making sure you get some decent terrain. If he gets first turn reserve everything this means you'll always get the important first shot with your vehicles and allows you to use allsorts of mean tricks (refused flanks, pincers etc), yes you will come in piecemeal and for many armies that can be a problem but from my experience DE suffer less (usually down to having lots of unit redundancy or just a lot of units). I also swear by nightshields (and I know others will fight me on this) ok they aint much good vs railguns but they make all his other weapons less scary (pulse rifles only 24" range, 6" if he moves).

It's strange but like you out of all the opponents I have fought with DE it is the Tau that give me some of the toughest matches.

If you go all reserve against Tau, you should also consider having aether sails on all raiders.
No tau player likes to have three+ raiders with incubi and wyches deploying on top of them on the first "real" game turn.
And at the same time having a couple of ravagers focusing on their broadsides...

I do like the idea of keeping reserves, at the moment we've started playing 2v2 (DE+Chaos vs Tau + Razorwing dark angels) and as the chaos deep strike half of their army first turn it would seem unfair to leave them alone but on 1 on 1s i can see it working. Considering my army is effectivly troops and elites in raiders with a ravager would it be better to give them the deep strike rule or is it just suicide as you can't assault that turn?

Im a big fan of deploying everything in reserves if i get second turn vs anyone. You have to be flexible tho. If you dont get good reserves rolls turn 2 you must hide until the rest come on turn 3 and you can attack in force.

Against tau overwhelm them on one end of their battleline then roll up the line charging into combat wherever possible to pin them and create cover (wyches with haywires excel at this). IG (the other army that can consistently wipe us out at range) can fill their whole deployment zone with shooty death. Tau are less numerous you can use this. "Do not attack where the enemy are, attack where they are not."

Try out hellions a large unit(15-20) or a couple of smaller ones(10ish) all bombing down into his back field, I do this and they make nice distractions for tau shooting, they also put out a lot of shots at average range and are no slouches in combat (agoniser/venom blade points depending).
Target saturation I find is key, taking more units than they can shoot at forcing target priority choices on him and be prepared to exploit any mistakes he makes.
Yes others will disagree with hellions but I like them (even better with the baron). Alternatively try no vehicles and have your AT in lance squads(yes it's an old tactic and not so good this edition) and scourges then all his rail guns can kill is one guy per turn, it makes a nice change running pure foot bodies over bullets. It's not competitive but fun.

I had a similar problem, (although not the terrain thing) and I then decided to use a sliscus list just for fun. ( I use a lot of warriors btw). Deepsriking in can get you inside that 12" cover save band, and let you get those shots that count, while also letting your warriors (or w/e) get out and shoot some stuff.

Sorry what's the '12" cover save band'? But I am liking the deepstrike idea however I have a feeling that it could go horribly wrong!

It's the disruption pod, it makes, that all vehicles, that have one, count as obscured, when shot at, from farther away, than 12".

Oh right the tau shield thing, thought there was something I had missed in the DE codex!