DE vs. Tau Tactics

Dear Archons,

I played against tau 3 times in the past. I won 2 and lost 1. But despite the fact that I won twice I'm not very happy with how the games turned out. The two times I won was because my opponent made some heavy mistakes, and I'm sure that I won't be that lucky the next time I'm up against him or somebody who knows how to deal with dark eldar.

One of the main reasons I find playing against tau so hard, is that I couldn't find a reliable way to deal with this 5+ overwatch and that units in 6" can shoot overwatch. Also, shield drones are a pain in the arse.

I heard splinter and dissie spam helps against shield drones, but what about the overwatch? I really don't want to battle tau with a pure kabal shooting army, because if I don't get the first turn I will probably loose.

How are you dealing with this?

What are you charging them with as a pure Kabal army? Your options for dealing with overwatch are;
Don't charge them
Vexator Mask on Haemonculus
Howling Banshees
Jain Zar
Autarch Skyrunner with Banshee Mask
Harlequin with Starmist Raiment

Tau have a really hard time dealing with negative hit modifiers, in my experience. Venom spam and liberal usage of Lightning Fast Reactions makes for a very frustrating game for the Tau player.

Gizamaluke wrote:

What are you charging them with as a pure Kabal army? Your options for dealing with overwatch are;
Don't charge them
Vexator Mask on Haemonculus
Howling Banshees
Jain Zar
Autarch Skyrunner with Banshee Mask
Harlequin with Starmist Raiment

^^
No, not with a pure kabal army. The first time I tried to use reavers. But the terrain didn't provide good LOS block, so they had a really hard time surviving the charges because so many of his units could shoot overwatch.
The second time I tried with coven Talos / Wracks. But the talos' where too slow. Only arrived in turn 3. The wracks soaked some shooting from the fire warriors in turn 1 and then I used black cornucopians to place them in front of him. But only few survived the overwatch.
In both cases I also used a venom to bring my HQs (including Haemi with Vexator Mask) and sslyth into cc range.

But what remained after the charges was always too little to cause serious damage.

Your hints are very good. Howling Banshees seem to be crazy good for this. but sadly I play DE only.

I also agree that venoms, fighters ... (-1 to hit) is great against tau, but he equips as many of his battlesuits as possible with some targeting stuff that gives +1 to hit against units with fly. This alleviates the effect. And I also don't own that many venoms to build a 1.5k or even 2k list. But I'm working on this.

An idea I had yesterday, that would also work with the models I have, is to put 2x3 grots + vexator haemi + 2 x archon + sslyth in a tantalus (maybe flayed skull). Then I deploy the tantalus as hidden as possible or use screaming jets. By the end of turn 2 the tantalus should be in front of his army. I also use black cornucopians on a unit of 10 wracks to get them close + 5 mandrakes from DS. The tantalus gets a round of shooting but will for sure die in his next shooting phase, but with lightning fast reactions it will still soak some firepower. When the tantalus then pops the grots and wracks provide a meatshield for the HQs for the remainder of the shooting phase and the next charge phase. Do you think this could work?

Just to make sure, your opponent is only using the greater good once per turn right? So you should be able to crash a vehicle into a unit and make him use up GG before charging your valuable units

Yeah, he is just using it once per turn per unit.

That could work nicely if I manage to get close enough. Maybe a raider with wyches. I somehow would like to use wyches because they can prevent his fire warriors from retreating and allow me to consolidate into the next unit, not taking overwatch once I'm in.

But he is already clever enough to focus my transports. That's why I considered using coven units.

EDIT: What could work is using screaming jets on 3 raiders, charge directly with them after DS.

Take this with a grain of salt as I haven't played much against experienced tau players. I actually found a combination of huge hellion units and transports charging did just about enough to lock down the gunline. Like you I am a pure dark Eldar player so I try to set up a high number of charging units so I know some of them will stick and through declaring multi charges and piling in/consolidating well I can hopefully do enough damage or lock down enough stuff. But I think it will always be a close run thing

Sounds not too bad. The reason I took reavers was that with +1T drug they have 5T and fire warriors will only wound on a 4+ instead of 3+. And they are also faster. But their dmg output is ...

But I just want to tackle his fire warriors to kill his marker light sources. And for this the reavers' toughness and bladevanes looked more promising, although they have fewer attacks (models/unit).

Pretty much every single game against Tau I've played I kill the path finders with shooting, screen the Coldstars from my ravagers/Tantalus with venoms, ignore the riptides whilst they have a 3++ And just work my way through them. May be more interesting games with tau getting cheaper but yeah.

Gizamaluke wrote:

Pretty much every single game against Tau I've played I kill the path finders with shooting, screen the Coldstars from my ravagers/Tantalus with venoms, ignore the riptides whilst they have a 3++ And just work my way through them. May be more interesting games with tau getting cheaper but yeah.

I guess you have the standard BH spearhead with ravagers and/or a tantalus.
Is the rest just venom spam + blaster warrior spam? Or do you have any CC units too?

I switch my list up every game, but I often run;

Blackheart Batallion
2 Archon, 3x5 blaster kabalites, 2/3 ravager, may be some scourges 4 venoms

Cult of Strife Batallion
Lelith, succubus, 3×5 wych, Tantalus

Prophets of Flesh spearhead
Vexator haemonculus, 2×2 talos, 1 Cronos

Something like that but I run absolutely everything in the codex except Beasts(masters) and Medusae/Ur Ghul.

Yeah marker lights absolutely have to die against tau! A really good way to get rid of Tau stuff is the void mines or the eviscerating fly by - sadly it doesn't work on battle suits! But it does flush out pathfinders and fire warriors pretty well.

if your opponent uses firesight marksman, you can ignore the pahtfinders too, as he will get enough markerlights anyways
as already mentioned: negative hit modiferes + overwatch cancelling, shoot the drones with anti infantry weapons first, then the suits

Last two times he had 2 firesight marksmen with him.

To get the most out of his "for the greater good" he always deploys his units very close to each other. I guess next time I will deepstrike with 3 raiders having 20 wyches, HQs and court on them. Then charge immediately with the raiders. In best case he shoots all his overwatch on the raiders an one of them blows up. Then the CC units can disembark and charge in the same turn too. Fire Warriors, Pathfinders and Firesight are all infantry, thats why I will use wyches with shardnet and impaler.