playing against Tau

Any advice?? Just a 1250 point game.

Kill markerlights first. Don't charge them if they're bunched up as they can all overwatch you.

Kill the markerlights. Then kill the crisis suits.

Don't worry too much about the Riptide(s), drown them in poison.

And if you can manage all of that, please tell me how you did it!

And do not, ever, charge them unless they're isolated.

If they're twin flamer crisis suits, or the forgeworld rotating ion cannon thing, just don't charge them at all. Remember, combat is a weakness, so the army list is written to allow a shrewd player to address it.

It really depends of his list.
Everything with Markerlight is a high priority, especially the Sky Ray.
If he has Broadside with missile, that's your second highess priority, then the Crisis Suits.  Crisis often jump shoot jump so you may have trouble getting LOS on them.
If you need to kill the Riptide ASAP, dark lances works much better than poison (a Venom average 0,7 unsaved wound on Riptide)
Like everyone said, never charge them if they have support fire, especially marker light since they will make him overwatch ou on 5 or even 4+.

Edit : Also, infantry heavy Tau are not really mobile so try to deploy objectives away from them, force them to move out in the open, it will help you. If he plays mechanized, criple his mobility by targeting his transports. But if he does that, chances are he won't have much supporting fire and then assault becomes interesting.

Dirty trick : Multiassault a Riptide and a weak squad (like fire warrior). Assign as many attacks as possible on the fire warrior. He should lose combat and his Riptide has a fait chance to break and get swept.

Also, if you are thinking of charging, watch out for 'Darkstrider', one of their special characters. He gets to overwatch at you (counting your whole unit as -1 Toughness) and then fall back before you measure to see if you get in combat!

Be sure to make note if his suits have the T5 upgrade. If not....dark light weapons will double tough them out. It catch's them off guard honestly. They aren't use generally to so Mich strength 8 shots. Also, marker lights as said. Kill them. Drown them. Path Finders have little to no armor. Splinter actually ignores their armor. So cannons and route them. Rwmeber they have low leadership. Don't be upset with not whipping the sqaud. You may still make them break if you caused 2-3 deaths. Expect them to hug cover. Expect reserves to get blasted on the way in.

If your opponent does bunker down somewhere and you do need to charge him do so with multiple units. Units can only fire overwatch once.

Webway deep strike is a good way to get flamers into position.

Or just get a gun boat into position to destroy the big threats. I.E crisis suits, marker light generators.

Your greater mobility can mitigate/negate supporting fire. Remember that even when using supporting fire, all units still use range and Line of Sight, so it's possible to avoid some of the damage, or reduce which weapons will be able to hit you.

Fleet on most of our units lets us charge from further back with a greater degree of safety, as well.

My friend plays tau, we had a match yesterday.
He took, a riptide, hammerhead, two squads of fire warriors a ethereal, a squad of parthfinders and a squad of broadsides
I took the covenite fleshcorps formation, allied with archon in a venom, five warriors in a venom and 5 mandrakes.
Torment grenade launchers on all raiders and archon had phantasm grenade launcher. I had first turn, mandrakes infiltrated and delt with parthfinders straight away. Leadership shenanigans and some good shooting ment broadsides and a squad of warriors on the run first turn. And the venoms put wounds on the riptide. Torment grenade launchers worked well. Tabled him by turn four. Eventually only hammerhead left and mandrakes destroyed that in combat.
Have to see if you know your up against tua, leadership shenanigans work well.

Nice! Mandrakes doing work! As stated above kill the Pathfinders and then go after the broadsides. Also a unit hanging around 18" up the board sort of mid-field assault unit just waiting for deepstrikers is always nice. Beastpacks while they aren't what they were are actually quite good for snagging deepstrikers and pulling them out of the shooting phase. Especially Crisis Teams with all their shenanigans.

It's very possible to tailor a list to beat Tau but at my FLGS, it's frowned upon to do so and let's be honest, who takes that many TGL/PGL when they're going to fight marines?

It's true than Mandrakes are pretty good for that sort of things. I always try to fit a 3 man squad (5 if I ahev enough points) in any TAC list, if only to prevent my opponent to scout his whole army in my face.

When attacking, plan for the long game. He has three units lined up in a nice gunline. Shoot the middle. If they are spread out then once that middle unit is gone, they won't be in 106 inches for the over watch. If they are pick off some from one of the other units, then charge. Simple plan but hard to do with
Hen they have other units doing stuff.

Hi,

I know most people here advice against charging Tau. However, as a Tau player there are two things that I have learned to fear: 1) Fast assaulters 2) Massed infantry more durable than MEQ (TEQ, MEQ w/ Feel No Pain, etc.). Tau leadership is also low but no one has taken use of that against me.

Since option 2 is not very likely to be achieved with DE my natural strategy would be to go for option 1... BUT have more units assaulting than Tau has units overwatching. If Tau gets to overwatch with 2 units and you are assaulting with 3 (tiny) units at least one of them will stay unharmed. Go multi-FOC and take lone beastmeasters and 5 man units of whatever (or other small units). When they overwatch your 5 man units to horrible/wonderful death you can freely assault with those beastmasters. And if they shoot at the beastmasters during their turn they're wasting firepower. Using markerlights in overwatch means they will be shooting at one (ore more) less of your units.

In my experience it doesn't matter much how good the assault units actually are in assault. Tau don't really kill anyone in close combat and will flee rather easily. So you can use anything you have.

Battlesuits geared to overwatch (flamers, counterfire defense system, ...) or otherwise survive charges (Hit & Run etc.) could be a bit more problematic. These I would shoot. Or just assault everything else and let them jump around frustrated in not being able to shoot anyone yet not wishing to enter close combat with their comrades.

Also, Tau need to fire the right gun at the right target (preferably with markerlight support) to do well. If you can present the wrong kind of targets they become ineffective. For example, if all your tough guys are hacking someone in melee then Crisis suits with dual plasma will have to shoot at your lowly kabalites. All that expensive plasma wasted on cheap troops... If you succeed in this you might not need to worry about the markerlights too much either. If you DON'T then kill those markerlights turn 1 or 2. Spamming certain armor save can also work to make many guns less useful.


I haven't started DE yet so I might be horribly wrong but IMO this kind of stuff has lost me many games as Tau against Eldar, Nids, Marines, Orks, Daemons, and CSM.