Newby Facing Tau for first time, NEED HELP/ADVISE

I'm facing Tau for my 4th game ever this edition, hadn't played since 3rd ed and alot has changed. Its a 2000 pt game. I was 1 win 2 losses against space wolves in my first 3 games. Got my clock cleaned last game, having to concede end of turn 4 . Can I please get some ideas on direction to go with roster build and what to expect in fighting Tau. Tau didn't even exist in 3rd ed to my memory.

Please use the edit function to add to a previous post and avoid double-posts. Gob.

Here's what I have to work with: 3 ravagers, 4 raiders, 1 venom; 20 trueborn (4 blaster, 2 DL, 2 slintr cannon, 6 carbines) 20 bloodbrides (4 gauntlet, 3 rzrflail, 2 net &impale), 8 Incubi, 10 mandrakes(1 kheradruakh convert), 10 wracks (w/2 liquif guns, 1 scissorhand), 50 K-warriors w/neede spec wpns, 20 wyches w/2 nets, 12 reaver jetbikes (1 heat lance, 3 blasters), 12 hellions (1 Baron convert, 1 stun claw), 15 scourges (3 haywire blast, 2 heat lance, 2 blaster, 2 splintr cannon, 6 carbines)..........Don't have grotesques, Harlequins, pain engines or flyers.

okay, first of all i, we have a common enemy as my usual opponent fields tau all the time and we have done 10 plus battles. what i have gathered up from fighting him and adapting is that tau are terrible at close combat except for the battle suits. if you can get witches in close to shred the fire warriors. try to avoid being in the open as his units will obliterate any units not in cover as tau have greater range. for the battle suits i personally would send in incubi and mandrakes. the vehicles will be a major threat too if he/she has broadsides and/or hammerheads. try to send in reavers and get dark lances at the rear armor of all vehicles for an almost guaranteed kill. mostly close combat will be your best friend if you can get his/her troops out in areas where you have a charge advantage. the reavers with meltas and the scourges can easily take out the vehicles. also think about using the terrain to your advantage by deep striking wherever you can hide and use hit and run tactics easily. the helions can harass his firewarriors too. the ravagers will be good to absorb shots from the heavier weapons as the ravagers are slower and easier to hit than the reavers. not to mention the ravagers have 3 dark lances each and you have 3 so they are going to be a target. if you need more advice send me a message.

Please take care with the grammar and and punctuation. Gob.

Get in his face as soon as possible we cant win a shoot out with tau. So that means incubi and wyches with haywire in transports hellions and reavers . ALSO Grostesques with an hemy being screened by a beast pack make fore very threatnig team

Keep it wiggly
-wiggly

MANDRAKES! AND THE BIG K!

You have to use the mandrakes, you think you have a choice, you dont. Infaltrate drakes into cover behing tau lines if possible, close to it if not. So if he shoots at the drakes with 3+ cover he isnt shooting at your army that just boosted into his face. The key to killing tau is to get into assult, even your warriors will murder tau. a single haemonculus will murder an entire tau unit. So if he doesnt kill ALL your assult elements in a single shooting phase then you can go to town, multi-charging everything. Boost all wyches behind his tank elements, and multi-charge with haywires with surviving wyches and those tanks WILL go down. Oh, and get mandrakes to charge, then have them....shoot? mandrakes have a great shooting attack and pinning the tau could be very useful.

Use dark lances to pop battle suits but it will be decided in bloody assult, and no one does that better then us.

This thread should help:

Tactics vs Tau

Utilize cover as best you can to avoid getting shot by rail guns. Remember, they are direct fire so if he can't see you he can't shoot you. Get in close combat ASAP with any footsloggers he has. Even Kroot are not that great in CC. Think of battlesuits as Space Marines with 2 wounds. Try to target them with all Disintegrator cannons. Tau don't have great ballistic skill. If he's only got a few markerlights, take them out and it will lower the amount of hits he scores on you. Use Haywire grenades and reavers with heat lances to pop his vehicles, he has jink and disruptor field particle whatever thingys to protect him from anything ranged.

Do you know if you opponent fields forgeworld items? A few tetras can really help out that accuracy. They are basically mobile markerlights.

For Archon of the Shadow: My buddy doesn't have any forge world stuff, so that's some pressure off me.
For Seggy: Aware I need to hug cover, but unsure which targets to prioritize in shooting: markerlight stuff, tanks/skimmers, or battlesuits.
For alexwellace: I planned on the 10 mandrakes, deployed 8 inches out in cover; then move/run a haemonculus to them on turn 1 (or disembark from blasterborn venom). Then the drakes have their S4/AP4 shots on turn 1, 16 inches away from fire warrior rifles, so he can't rapid fire (at 15 inches). I think my Incubi klaivex will use the template wpn for the first time.
For wiggly noodle: Was wishing I had some grotesques or Sslyth when I started thinking of a roster. Am considering Baron & hellions, buffed by Duke....so wyches and reavers get buffed too.
For Mushkilla: thanks for the reference on tactics for Tau. Was going to ask if there was any reference to it on this site.
Thanks to all.

Prioritize any heavy weapons and markerlight units Sathonyx. Beware what your buddy may do in the future if you have more battles because tetras are tempting if he realizes what they can do. Also you may want to consider that the allies rule in 6th edition allows you to bring some back up. I used a mix of Eldar with my Dark Eldar. I used Eldar rangers to add some long range to my DE.

The last time I played Tau I ran 2 units of 6 reavers and turbo boosted them right into his face and threw his whole game plan out. He then spent 2-3 turns trying to kill the reavers. Left enough time for my wyches to make it across the battlefield and wreck 2 devilish in assault. They than quickly died to rapid fire from fire warriors and ran away, but at least he wasn't shooting at my boats as both my ravagers survived the game and most of my venoms. Target saturation is key!

Truely good example. Keep in mind though that if the tau player is a friend of yours and you fight him frequently that he will most likely look up tactics for fighting DE and may look at DE tactics against tau. My friend does that and it gets under the skin.

Lots of advice here, and a fair shake of it I feel is a bit debatable as to its applicability. I feel some of the list advice points are edging into list tailoring, and list tailoring is anathema to me. A good well balance TAC (take all comers) DE list should have no problem with Tau. Indeed, in disagreement with some of the advice I've seen, I actually think Tau are a very EASY matchup for the DE.

So, looking at this thread, I think the things you really need to understand is the basic concept of what makes Tau good, and then the basic idea of how DE take those good things, drag them into a back room, and do stuff to them that make their mothers cry.

Why are Tau any good at all?

Tau are pretty lackluster in the current game (though, sadly, probably a touch better off than they were in 5th - egads!) Here's what they're good at;

- Lots of High strength Shooting
- Ignoring cover saves and boosting their BS via Markerlights
- Mobile shooting platforms that hop around and hide (Crisis Suits)
- Pretty decent and mobile vehicles that are tough to wreck at range

I really think that covers everything good about the Tau. Now let's consider what they are bad at;

- Low BS on average not counting Markerlight adjustments
- I can't think of an army worse in assault than them. Heck, their elite assault units are basically about as good in assault as most armies average Troop choice.
- Overall fragile units

Okay, so now we know that a good way to stomp their faces in is assault, and also that they tend to be on the weedy side. Now if we look at their strengths we see that their power is hanging back and shooting, and being fairly mobile.

Sound familiar?

Basically they are DE who suck at assault and trade torrent shooting for high quality single shots. Also they are slower than us.
In other words - they are suckier DE. So, yeah, as I said, we can kill them easy.

Okay, so knowing they suck, how do I kill them?

Speed and assault is the core answer.
Your turns should be focused on closing the distance with the Tau lines and getting stuck in with your units. Frankly, even a squad of regular warriors can kick some solid Tau backside in assault, so getting into assault is important, and that means not dorking around with all this 'hide behind cover' advice you're getting. As long as we're visible to them they can use Markerlights to rob us of cover saves - and if they don't, as long as we're moving then we have a cover save. So just push forward aggressively and force them to deal with your wave of vehicles. You'll have more than they can shoot out of the sky, especially if you punch some holes in them with your own shooting (because it's not like DE are bad at shooting. Frankly, I think we *can* outshoot Tau, but why play to their game? We can assuredly out assault them

So your goal is to move up, be aggressive, and get in the Tau's face.

Now, as you're doing that, what are you shooting? Here's my target priority opinions;

1. Broadsides - kill these with fire! (or, y'know, lances and/or poison shooting, both will work quite well. Broadsides arre kind of like the original Long Fangs, do you hate to see Long Fangs across the board? Then hate these guys too. They'll split fire and punch meaty holes in your transports, and you need transports to help force your way into assault. Kill these asap! They drop down to about a #3 once they lose the ability to split fire, but until then, they are an assured #1.

2. Crisis Suits - by far the second biggest threat. Usually these guys are packing a silly amount of firepower. Now, that said, one of the best ways to kill them is just in assault, because they're glorified Space Marines. Also, most Tau players with half a brain will have these guys hidden half the time and just bounce them out to shoot you and then run and hide again. Shoot them up with some darkmatter or poison shots if you can, otherwise just consider them a top assault choice - you may need a semi-sacrificial initial assault option if you lack PGLs though.

2. Pathfinders - Yes, this list has two #2 options - sue me. Pathfnders (and, really what this entry means by that is *Markerlights*) are a core aspect of the Tau battle plan. Frankly, their shooting without markerlights is a little pathetic. Therefore most Tau players will have themselves a handful of these things lurking around. Kill them dead, just spray them with some splinter fire until they stop moving - you'll thank yourself for it later.

3. Piranha - Yeah, I just listed Piranha, wanna make something of it? Look, have you played Space Marine Landspeeders? Do you like the idea of your enemy having a gun platform that is as fast as yours and is really able to blast you apart? Also, these things are bone fragile, a single Lance hit or two ought to deal with it. Just kill them, kill them fairly early, it will be helpful. Thankfully most Tau don't field these, but, y'know, if they do - kill them.

4. Devilfish - Yes, the Devilfish is actually an issue for us. usually there are troops hiding in them (and Troops claim objectives) also, the Devilfish is usually packing a surprising amount of shooting with decent strength, and that can rip holes in your squads if left alone.

5. Hammerhead - This is really not a big deal unit. It's a single high strength shot, generally our cover saves or flickerfields or jinks should handle it. Also, as the game goes on it becomes less and less dangerous as your vehicles matter less and less because you should already be in the Tau gunline stabbing him in the face. That said, it's still a big honkin' tank, and isn't a bad kill.

6. Basically everything else - At this point there isn't likely much. Yeah, Stealth Suits with Drone blobs are annoying deathstars. Yes, Kroot can be a little dangerous. Yes, large squads of Firewarriors can inflict some impressive damage on anything they double-tap. But, all of that depends on what is there and what can challenge your units. Kill it as needed.

What are the best DE units to deal with Tau?

In my opinion - everything that's good at killing other armies.
Lots of darklight and poison shooting is good.
Assault units are good.
Minimized HWG Wyches are good.
Archons w. PGLs leading Incubi are good.
You don't need to try to custom build your force - just bring stuff that is good at killing lots of stuff, Tau have no hidden surprises that you need special strategies for other than raw DE speed, good shooting, and a semi-decent assault core.

My thoughts,
Thor.

Thor, you are forgetting about the railgun submunition. It's a pieplate that breaks our armor and instakills toughness 3, which is everything not Haemonculi. Say goodbye to that FNP you just nabbed for wiping out a squad of fire warriors. IMO Hammerheads are just as much a threat as Broadsides.

A Str 6 large pieplate certainly has threat ratio to it. But, if you have that as a major problem to your infantry once you are already inside the Tau lines then I submit something really strange is going on though. I could see arguing a shift up to #4 for that fear - certainly not a shift to around #1 unless you're running large Beastmaster/Hellion forces, in which case you're banking on your cover save anyway, so the loss of FNP (if you have it) is less of a deal regardless.

Beating Tau without Tetras is a walk in the park. Beating Tau with Tetras is another story altogether.

As a player of both Tau and Dark Eldar, I think that Thor665 has the subject pretty much buttoned up. Kill the broadsides first (any way you can), assault the Crisis suits, and take out his markerlights (pathfinders or tetras). Then mop up the rest in close combat.

Mushkilla wrote:

Beating Tau with Tetras is another story altogether.

Oh, posh. If they're bringing Forgeworld then that means you can bring all the deadly Forgeworld DE options like the Tant...oh, wait, no, you can bring the Reav...wait, or maybe the Rave...oh.

Well then...awkward.

In other news - you can always just shot the Tetra with some darklight, that usually works, in many ways it's easier to kill than Pathfinders, it's advantage is that it's harder to outmanuver. But usually if the Tau general has the brains gawd gave grasshoppers he's hard to outmanuver from his Pathfinder shots too.

Edit: And, actually, remembering who I'm talking to, now I realize why you find Tetras harder to off than Pathfinders. i bet RJBs eat Pathfinders for breakfast.

Thor665 wrote:

In other news - you can always just shot the Tetra with some darklight, that usually works, in many ways it's easier to kill than Pathfinders, it's advantage is that it's harder to outmanuver. But usually if the Tau general has the brains gawd gave grasshoppers he's hard to outmanuver from his Pathfinder shots too.

Shooting them off the board isn't as much of an option in 6th, their 3+ cover save just for moving or 2+ cover save for being in ruins makes them very hard to take out (disruption pod confers shrouded), meaning your opponent is winning either way as those are darklight shots that are not being targeted at his hammerheads. Combine this with their cost and you have a real problem on your hands. It takes around 13 dark light shots to inflict one penetrating hit on a tetra in ruins (2+ cover) and around 6 dark light shots to inflict a penetrating hit on a tetra that just moved (jink 3+ cover). So they are considerably more survivable than pathfinders this edition.

Thor665 wrote:

Edit: And, actually, remembering who I'm talking to, now I realize why you find Tetras harder to off than Pathfinders. i bet RJBs eat Pathfinders for breakfast.

Pathfinders... free pain tokens YUM!

Decent point, I suppose the easy vehicle smash assault option is now the better solution for them.

Thanks guys. Another buddy couldn't remember the name of the Tau munition someone mentioned above as "pieplate DE instakill". I assume its large blast, S6 or so, with AP4 or better? The more I've learned about Tau, it seems they have a lot of cheesy/broken stuff compared to us......the glass hammers

I think the official name is submunition.

It's Str 6, Large Blast. I forget the AP, honestly.

Tau are not cheesy - people who play with Tau and play well nd win are good players and deserving of respect, not calls of cheese. They are using an outdated codex, with an army that is mostly overpriced. Their only saving grace is that (shock) 6th went more to shooting based combat (kind of like 4th was, before 5th went more assault focused...any wild predictions to what 7th will be )

Sathonyx wrote:

The more I've learned about Tau, it seems they have a lot of cheesy/broken stuff compared to us......the glass hammers

Tau are far from cheesy and broken. They've got just about the oldest codex out there, and they crumble in any assault. Like DE, they are fragile, mobile (not quite as much as us), and difficult to play well. It's just a case of learning how to neutralise his strengths so you can stamp on him in close combat.

[Edit: Oops, didn't see Thor's post at the end of the thread. Please forgive the repetition ]

Thanks for the advise on target priorities as it is MOST NEEDED. This is only my 4th game in 6th ed and hadn't played since mid 90's (3rd Ed) when Tau didn't even exist. My first 3 games were against Space Wolves, going 1 win 2 losses. Drop Pods in d-zone on turn one were my problem there. This'll be a 2000 point game (I have lots of the OLD DE models).
I'm taking Slicus as my general and considering if I lose the "go 1st roll", to just hold a bunch in reserve to use his orbit raid rule. If I'm not going 1st, would this be smart vs Tau shooting.....or gamble "castle up in corner"?

Thor665 wrote:

I think the official name is submunition.

It's Str 6, Large Blast. I forget the AP, honestly.

Tau are not cheesy - people who play with Tau and play well nd win are good players and deserving of respect, not calls of cheese. They are using an outdated codex, with an army that is mostly overpriced. Their only saving grace is that (shock) 6th went more to shooting based combat (kind of like 4th was, before 5th went more assault focused...any wild predictions to what 7th will be )

Lets not forget while they are super over priced points wise per model, their equipment keeps getting better as the editions change (ex distruption pods going from obscured in 4th to a 4+ coversave at all time in 5th to now +2 to coversave to their 5+ from jink (so a 3+ overall) Oh and lets not forget blacksun filters that went from decent to ungodly... and oh you only need 1 per squad for everyone to have it )

But yes, while I can say I do call cheese on those few changes, overall their dex needs some life... although allies makes a really decent book out of them (ATKNF fire warriors anyone???)

So I wasn't sure if I should start a new topic or not, but last night I played a game against my mates Tau and needless to say it didn't go well!

It was a 2000 pt game, and he only likes to play purge the alien... To be honest I'm not a big fan of kill point missions as I find I generally run too many kill points in my list, anyways... He ran 3 hammerheads (2 rail gun, 1 ion cannon), 3 devilish filled with 12 fire warriors( each squad had bonding knives, emp grenades and some other grenade), an aegis defence line with quadgun manned by a squad of pathfinders with 3 snipers, and some HQ choice that had 2 melta guns with 3 drones. Everything had disruption pods and some upgrade that allowed them to fire like fast vehicles and shoot at two different units?

He basically deployed first and castled up in the centre of his deployment zone behind the aegis defence line (which was spread out in a big L shape) there was basically only 2 big rock formations blocking line of sight, one at each deployment zone and a couple of line of sight blocking trees.

I ran 3 ravagers, talos, 3 raiders filled with 8 wyches + haemy, 5 warriors in venom with blaster, 2 squads of 6 reavers with 2 heatlances and a kitted out archon with 4 incubi in a venom. I managed to steal initiative and fired 3 ravagers at one hammerhead, needless to say I caused 1 glance, which he promptly saved...

My predicament is (besides my run of bad dice rolling), I can't outshoot the mechanised Tau, and there isn't an abundance of BLOS terrain, how should I play this?

Sorry for the long post...