Target Priority Against Tau

I wanted to get other people’s opinions on my game yesterday. I suffered a narrow loss against Tau yesterday and,with the benefit of hindsight, think my early game target priority hurt me later in the game.

I got turn one and my initial thought was to try to remove his Broadsides since they put out a crazy amount of missile shots. However, as soon as I targeted them he popped the Tau version of Lightning Fast Reflexes on them and then I still had to get through the four shield drones, my first shots bounced off them so then I switched to targeting his Pathfinders and his Fire Warriors. I never shot at the Broadsides again. At the end of the game, he had his characters, Broadsides, seven fire warriors, a couple of drones, a Riptide, and a Stormsurge left while I just had some characters, two Venoms, three squads of Warriors, and a Farseer left. My question was, was it a mistake not to try and kill the Broadsides later on? They ended up doing a ton of work for thim.

On a related note, is it better to pressure Tau and move up towards them or to try and dance just out of their range and pick at them?

Always kill Marker lights and Drones 1st via shooting, if you can get into melee that helps.

Marker lights and Drones are what makes that army, its why they are not good in competitive play, b.c you can remove those 2 threats turn 1 and now they are limited on buffs. Marker lights provide offensive buffs where drones provide defense ones. You wont be able to kill large suits with multi-damage weapons b.c the 1 drone will eat up 2-6 damage on a 5+ and just ignore all that damage.

After you kill those 2 units, they are at 50% power, no +BS, no ignore cover, no ignore wounds, etc..

Consider that a good Tau player will cover completely their Drones so you will not be able to take off them. In that case you can't think about trading like the other armies, and that's why they still competitive.
So in that case you wanna play on missions (Tau are not so fast for objectives, and who is faster usually doesn't benefit from.Drones) and cut off anything that doesn't benefit from them.
You can bait commanders if you can, just be sure about the trade off.

If you have dmg1 shots feel free to shoot whenever you want: Drones are great by soaking Dmg2+ shots so you is not really a waste by shooting poisons even if he will pass those wonds to the frisbees.


PS: about covering Drones, I mean in two ways: 1) by covers, just keep the Riptide near to a wall and all the Drones behind that wall. You can only see the Riptide, but he will pass wounds to them anyway. 2) By the same way using Hammerhead/Skyray as portable walls. In this case is not bad focus these veichles down).

In short ways, yes, when you can kill of the frisbees! But remember that usually it will not easy to do, so keep in mind a plan B. Play on objectives, you're faster than him and shoot down everything you can.

My usual priority is Markerlights>Drones>Small Suits>Fire Warriors>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Riptide spamming 3++ all game. It hasn't failed me yet but I've had some close games vs Tau

It's much easier to kill his Markerlights first than going for these pesky drones. And this will also cripple his dmg output which is very important.

I didn't have much luck in CC against Tau till now because of this damn for the greater good rule. I guess in one of my next games I will try to deepstrike raiders with our HQs, wyches and grots. Then I will charge directly with the raiders and grots, in best case the raider with the HQs + 5 wyches blows up and they will be able to charge too, while the Tau player already wasted for the greated good on the raiders or grots.

Regarding poison weapons, I would rather target drones directly instead of battlesuits with a better saving throw. Otherwise, he uses the good save of the suit and FnP of the drones.

Don't do that! He will surround your raiders, blow them up and then you'll lose squads at HQs at once! It's a suicidal task.
Just charge him with Raiders before your assault squads. Soak that overwatch

Cerve wrote:

Don't do that! He will surround your raiders, blow them up and then you'll lose squads at HQs at once! It's a suicidal task.
Just charge him with Raiders before your assault squads. Soak that overwatch

True, but last time I tried without deepstriking the raiders and they were shot to pieces before they got close enough for a charge. The terrain wasn't very advantageous though, nearly no LOS block for raiders.

also keep in mind that most competetive tau lists rely only on characters for markerlights
darkstrider and fireblades (HQs) and firesight marksmen (elites) are all characters with one markerlight that hits on a 3+
vexator mask comes to mind and try to pressure his castle
even if riptides are engaged, they have fly and can shoot next turn yet they dont like that because they get a -1 to hit
all hit modifiers are the bane of tau
spam venoms, dissies and grots

How many wounds generally have the markerlight characters? If it's relatively low, hexrifles could do it.

Regarding markerlights, my Tau opponent spread them out across his characters and one in every Fire Warrior squad.

Riptides suffer -1 to hit if they fall out of combat?

Everything in my Army has a negative hit modifier but with the Mon’kaugh(?) his character called allowing all re-rolls to hit for every unit around the character it didn’t make much difference due to weight of fire power.

After reading the comments it seems like my biggest mistake was maybe not so much target priority as it was not pressuring the Tau and just trying to sit back out of rapid fire range and pick them apart.

@dumpeal the hqs (fireblades) have 5 wounds, the firesight marksmen 3
@sweetbacon yes their big guns are all heavy weapons, except if he takes a target lock upgrade for the riptide or the unit it fires at have 3+ markerlights
Mont'ka lets his units within 6" of a Commander advance and shoot as if they remained stationairy, Kayon grants a reroll all to hit rolls aura around the commander but these units cannot move at all.

Solitaire with Anti-overwatch relic as Ynnari kills tau by himself, 12+12+2D6 movement will get you there turn 2 every game no matter what, move 12" turn 1 and then blitz, target the characters, 10 attacks hitting 2+ wounding 4+, with a strat to attack again, and if you kill something attack again. Then if you die you attack again.

Ive seen one attack 4x before, its magically, tho very rare.

Bit late to this thread but just reading up prior to playing T'au for the first time next week. The drones can only soak up wounds inflicted in the shooting and combat phases. We don't have psychic offense, but we do have ways of delivering mortal wounds in the movement and charge phases.
The voidraven bomb, grav talons and eviscerating fly-by stratagem will all put damage directly onto their target and it can't be passed off onto drones. If your voidraven bombs a 3 strong broadside unit, that's a potential of 9 mortals. 12 Red grief reavers could EFB a character, before turning and charging with grav talons to average 6 mortal wounds. Again, nothing the drones can do about it. It's one way of getting damage directly into the model you want to hurt.

Broadside only take 3 mortal wounds as they aren't monsters unfortunately. You could drop a bunch of mandrakes down and hope for mortal wounds though.

Don't they have the vehicle keyword? That's annoying for haywire, but I guess good for poison which has no AP.......

Nah they have battlesuit keyword