Noob dealing with Tau - limited 3E models

I'm getting back into 40k after more than a decade away.  A few friends will be getting together Friday to play a few 1k point games.  I've read through a bunch of tactical posts and watched all of Skari's DE videos.

I have two challenges.  The first is that one of the players will be using Tau, and I have no idea what tactics I should be using to deal with Tau, particularly in terms of dealing with things like smart missiles

The second is that I'm limited in terms of models, and they're all old school 3e models.  I've got plenty of HQ choices and warriors, along with the following:
7 Grots
8 Incubi
6 Mandrakes
1 Beastmaster w. 6 Warp Beasts
7 Reavers
1 Talos
5 Scourges
2 Raiders
3 sealed box Ravagers which I can easily convert into Raiders

What suggestions do folks have in terms of both army composition and tactics?  About the only thing I can think of is tossing Dissies and Torment Launchers on my Raiders, and having a WWP Archon with Armour of Misery, Phantasm 'nades, and a handful of Grots to soak up wounds.

You lack synergy.

Hellraiser wrote:

You lack synergy.

Can you elaborate?

It will come to you, the more you play.

Tau generally has some of the finest long-ranged weapons in the game. Their tactic is to rain fire on enemies from a distance. Moving sets them off-guard.

What you want to do is to get him to play your game.

Id say 2 ravagers and the talos in your heavy would help a lot otherwise grots are solid aslong as he doesn't use his riptide on them.

Tactics wise you need to eliminate his riptide/broadsides/tank/transport (in that order) as quickly as possible, playing for objectives is possible but not reliable for tau vs de.

im sure someone else will chime in aswell

i wish you luck and if the guy playing tau has any semblance of humanity left he wont bring more than one riptide

Welcome!

I would probably go something like:

Succubus, Glaive
3 Grots, Incl. Abber, Raider
2 x 5 Warriors, Raiders
2 x 3 Reavers, CC
5 x Scourges, 4 x HWB
2 x Triple Lance Ravagers

951, so you have a few points for flavour.

Not the best, but gives you a bit of everything & you have the models with minimal proxying, I think.

I would make your 1st purchase 3 Venoms

So in terms of forcing Tau to play my game, I want to stay back out of range, zipping away whenever they try to catch me, and force them to claim objectives.

And then hammer anything they leave unsupported while biding my time for FNP to queue up.

Does that sound about right?

Secondary question: Am I better off with the Realspace Raiders cover save or Objective Secured from Combined Arms?

Definitely objective secured! No question, hands down. I think Rewind's list idea is pretty good, but I'd tweak it slightly to include your 3rd ravager, like this:

Succubus, Glaive, Haywire Grenade 100
3 Grots in a Raider 160
2 x 5 Warriors, Raiders 190
1 x 3 Reavers, CC 63
5 x Scourges, 3 x HWB 110
3 x Triple Lance Ravagers 375
TOTAL: 998

tegs wrote:

So in terms of forcing Tau to play my game, I want to stay back out of range, zipping away whenever they try to catch me, and force them to claim objectives.

And then hammer anything they leave unsupported while biding my time for FNP to queue up.

Does that sound about right?

While a lot of tau firepower is 30" and you can range them with raiders, ravagers and venoms (buy 3 venoms now) you have to be aggressive and control the table vs tau. Grotesquerie in raiders and MSU reavers are excellent at this.

Kill marker lights ASAP, without marker lights tau aren't that scary. Pressure tau with multiple threats on a flank. Use terrain to hide where possible. If he goes first you may need to reserve to survive and be aware of how interceptor works.

Keep him locked up in his dep zone while you win the mission even if your army gets shot to pieces in the process.

I've thought about adding a grotesquerie and using WWPs to drop them in.  One unit would have an Archon with Nightmare Armour and phantasm 'nades, the Haemi and one of their grots would have liquifiers.  I suspect that would be a very nasty surprise if I managed to address interceptors before they arrive, either by killing them or by creating a useful dead zone they can't see.

There should be time for multiple games tomorrow, so I might give it a try and see what happens.

I've got a Urien model, so I'm tempted to make an army with a Grotesquerie marching up the middle with a Cronos (old Talos model) and Succubi.  Two warrior units with blasters and DL raiders and two units of reavers screened behind the grots to seize objectives and add a little anti-vehicle.  Tau would probably eat it alive, but it might be a lot of fun against other armies.

If I have to grab objectives early, I'd want to place them in cover as much as possible, wouldn't I?

You have a wide array to choose from so it will be interesting to see how you play it out.

painjunky wrote:

While a lot of tau firepower is 30" and you can range them with raiders, ravagers and venoms (buy 3 venoms now) you have to be aggressive and control the table vs tau. Grotesquerie in raiders and MSU reavers are excellent at this.

Kill marker lights ASAP, without marker lights tau aren't that scary. Pressure tau with multiple threats on a flank. Use terrain to hide where possible. If he goes first you may need to reserve to survive and be aware of how interceptor works.

Keep him locked up in his dep zone while you win the mission even if your army gets shot to pieces in the process.

Good point.

It didn't go well. We ended up doing a 2 vs 2.

Turns out said friend has recently invested into a bunch of Grey Knights he chose to play instead of Tau, and 600+ pts of his army was one formation. He DS'd without scatter in the first turn and used psychic powers to give them all 3++ saves and made them invisible. He recast those two spells every single turn and use a gate psychic power to jump all over the board systematically annihilating everything while his teammate grabbed the objectives. When I tried to assault him with grots hoping to tie him up for a round, he insta-gibbed them with force weapons.

So I guess my lesson learned is to always take anti-psycher wargear, and to play with less cheesy friends.

never take anti psyker wargear, and ask them to tone it down a bit

Also wise to read rules if player brings new army. Chances are big he is mistaken somewhere, naturally in his own favor.

Azdrubael wrote:

Also wise to read rules if player brings new army. Chances are big he is mistaken somewhere, naturally in his own favor.

There was a lot of that. This was my first game in almost a decade, and he's far more experienced than I am. Despite having read through the new rules all of once I caught him making significant mistakes in his favour a good six or seven times. The biggest one was insisting that blast weapons were also template weapons, and that they had a bonus to pen rolls on open-topped vehicles in addition to hitting passengers.

This kind of thing was a problem a decade ago, so I'm not really surprised. He's hyper competitive, so he focuses on winning rather than having fun. I think I'm just going to avoid playing him in future.

There is a silver lining; I did very well against the Ultramarine army he was allied with despite not being able to get much past the GKs. I kept moving too close, so she got me in assault and with flamers a few times, but by and large I did a good job of staying behind cover with LOS to a single unit and picking away at her. She also wasted a staggering amount of firepower on a unit of 3 mandrakes, including dropping a S10 AP1 large blast marker which caused her Librarian to lose the power and take a wound due to Perils, while all three made their cover saves. She ended up assaulting them with a Crusader squad because nothing else could get them. :-)

To wrap up, despite the cheese I'm delighted to be playing again. This is causing me to reconnect with another friend of mine I haven't seen in awhile, and I've got a handful of other friends who used to play that I might get in touch with as well.

Thanks for all the help, folks!

Wow. Taking a GK psychic deathstar vs a noob just returning to the game is a complete d-ck move. You don't seem too fazed tho, good for you mate.

You could refuse to play him but thats not the dark eldar way.

Ide recommend you study the core rules, army books and his lists as it seems he doesn't care much about playing fair. Practice against you other friends.

Learn how to play vs deathstars. There are many tactics you can use. You can hit them with the big D, bring a culexus assassin, MSU spread out, ignore it, kill everything else, win the mission.

Come back wiser and stronger and bury him.  

Yeah, ignoring deathstars seems to be something a lot of new players have trouble wrapping their head around. If something is so ridiculous that it'd take a crazy amount to kill it, DON'T PUT A SINGLE RESOURCE INTO KILLING IT!

One of the biggest things deathstars do for an army is absorb fire. Even if it's only for the first turn, while their opponent is "figuring out" that said unit is nigh unkillable. That's basically an entire wasted turn of shooting/whatever.

When I see someone with a unit that seems like it might be a deathstar, I start asking questions before I ever bother trying to attack it: What saves do they have? Do they have FnP? Do they have rerolls or anything wierd? What special rules does the unit have? What psychic powers?

Then, I take all that info, compile it together, and if it seems like a waste of time to shoot at it, I don't. Occasionally, I'll notice a weakness in someone's deathstar, such as being T4 without eternal warrior, making it vulnerable to instant death from darklance weaponry. But if I don't see a weakness, I don't bother with it. I focus on killing everything else, which should be far less than a non-deathstar army could field.

As an example, an Eldar deathstar I tend to run a lot costs about 800 points. That's 800 points worth of army models I CAN'T field. It's actually funny playing against someone else also running a deathstar. Most of the time, our deathstars just avoid each other all game, haha.

Unless it's a highly mobile deathstar, or course. Those are much harder to ignore. Fortunately, most tend to be quite slow.

Jimsolo wrote:

Unless it's a highly mobile deathstar, or course.  Those are much harder to ignore.  Fortunately, most tend to be quite slow.

That's the kind I use. It still tends to get ignored by the best players. It's a 3+ invuln rerollable deathstar with no-scatter gate of infinity.

That's what he was doing. He had a bare bones unit in the back holding an objective, and an assault unit he DS's into our deployment zone first turn. I helped wipe the assault unit off the board, then tried to push the other player off the objectives. The only resources I threw at the death star (love that name for it) was my haemi and grots hoping to lock him I'm combat for a turn, which went poorly. I should have moved them up the field to give him more to waste ammo on.

How does the no scatter GOI thing work? Seems horribly broken to me.

tegs wrote:

How does the no scatter GOI thing work?  Seems horribly broken to me.

There are a couple ways to do it. Off the top of my head, you use either Baharroth or The Dark Angels head guy...Ezekial, I think? I know those 2 work for sure.

Alternatively, space marines have lots of things like homing beacons, formation special rules and such that can probably help.

I can't comment on formation rules or ICs, but homing beacons definitely don't work. The 1st draft FAQ explicitly states that rules that apply to entering play from deep strike do not apply to GOI because GOI isn't actually entering from deep strike, just using deep strike rules.

I believe that Locator Beacons will still work. (Homing Beacons would not.)

Which FAQ draft had the ruling about Gate of Infinity?

It was in the 1st Draft. Quote:
"Q: Does a unit always enter the game from Reserves when Deep Striking? The rules for Deep
Striking seem to imply that being the case, even when a unit is already on the table. As an example,
does a unit of Warp Talons that is using Gate of Infinity trigger its Warpflame Strike each time they
use the psychic power?
A: Not unless explicitly stated – in the example you use, Gate of Infinity has the unit arrive anywhere
on the board using the rules for Deep Strike. This doesn’t mean that it goes into Deep Strike
Reserve, or that you have to make a Reserve Roll for the unit and so on, and it means that you don’t
get to use the Warpflame Strike each time you do this."