DE vs. the new Tau

I had my first game against the new tau last week. Fortunatly he had only brough 4 markerlight drones and their bs kept him from using them successfully. However they did manage a double hit, removing the cover save of my ravager, reducing its lifespan considerably.

The new 18' range of their fusion blaster really grinds my gears. He had a small unit of stealth suits that really bugged my raider and ravagers. A jetpack move and an 18'' range fusion shot gives them a huge danger radius! This might be the most dangerous change to the new tau!

I tried grotesques with a haemonculus for the first time, and they worked very well (He unloaded what he had at them but due to some extremely Lucky saves on my part they survived to destroy both hammerheads and a unit of pathfinders)

The moment of the match was when my Allied Ork Big Mek made a hit with his Shock attack gun directly on top of his totally uninjured tooled up Shas'o HQ, and proceeded to roll a double 6 :-D

I played my first three games against Tau yesterday.

Smart missiles - anyone running MSU builds is screwed, no line of sight needed, ignores cover and kills our stuff on 2s...
Didn't find the Riptide too impressive.

Sky Serpent wrote:

I played my first three games against Tau yesterday.

How did they go?

I've now played alongside them, but not yet against them. A few thoughts...

They're really encouraged to bunch together now. However, that creates a lot of space that their basic troops can't really effect, and blast weapons provide a real problem for them. That's not terribly helpful for us, unless taking allies, but the bit about space is really useful.

Either they can spread, allowing us to devestate their army piecemeal as they lose out on a lot of their synergistic buffs and silly overwatch, or they can bunch up, in which case we need to use the remaining ground carefully to start peeling bits off of them.

Also - and this might be overly optimistic - but some of our bigger fears might not materialise, or at least not in every battle. There's never enough points for everything, and even accounting for "make them roll saves" and "Plan to kill AV12" as common doctrines, there's still enough MEQs and the like to ensure all comer list don't just consist of S7 spam. Hopefully.

I have ha few games against them as well, all at 1000pts and I had a few points to add myself from my experiences:

Sky Serpent is 100% right about Smart Missiles: those things are absolutely deadly to smaller units. They explode just by being in proximity

People were correct about the markerlights and point expenditure; there does not seem to be any more markerlights going around then before. Target dispersal and selection are so very important.

Missile Broadsides are very powerful on two levels:
1) Because our flyers are thin skinned, they can reliably blow them to kingdom come.
2) Smart Missiles are very dangerous to small units and our even our transports, and a pair of broadsides firing some TL smart missiles is going to kill more vehicles than you expect.

The lack of speed is accentuated on so many levels:
1) Fire Warriors and a few select other benefit from their shared overwatch, so they will generally clump
2) Vehicles cannot fire more than one weapon effectively on the move anymore, so stationary it is for many of them (hammerhead is a notable exception)
3) Broadsides are no longer relentless, thus they cannot move and fire their fancy guns very well (except against flyers obviously)

Last but not least the Fireblade is a great HQ in low point value games, although against us the Etheral seems like an Achilles heel rather than a very useful unit.

Quick shoutout to Mushkilla as well, tried Reavers on your intangible suggestion, loved every minute of it. Those things are assault trains/killing machines/automatic linebreakers/40k trolls.

Ive had a few games now and it seems that they can be one of the top codex's

-The riptide is almost useless VS our poison/darklight
-Pathfinders utterly destroy you with - to cover or + to BS
-you cannot assault them with 6" overwatch

My game went pretty well until turn 4-5 when I started loosing vehicles and at the end of the day it was 10-10 (draw)

TL SMS is the best thing in their entire dex. I'm converting up 2 beast packs of 3 bm's 6 rw flocks just for tau.

GorlanVance wrote:

Quick shoutout to Mushkilla as well, tried Reavers on your intangible suggestion, loved every minute of it. Those things are assault trains/killing machines/automatic linebreakers/40k trolls.

Thanks. If you look after them, they look after you. It's surprising how reasonable they perform in assault now that every army is geared to be shooty. Their mobility is a fantastic "crutch" for our army.

Godreas wrote:

The riptide is almost useless VS our poison/darklight

They can still take a beating if they have FNP, and draw a lot of fire away from other targets. If they nova charge to double fire their smart missile system they can be quite intimidating to our T3 cover dependant units.

Godreas wrote:

you cannot assault them with 6" overwatch

Just multi-charge the two units that are supporting each other (if it's possible as multi-charging is more complex this edition). It's only when a marker light unit can over-watch that things get scary. That and the Tau players haven't discovered the power house that is:

6 Stealth suits, burst cannons, counter-fire defence system, shas'vre, marker/targetlock - 225

In my own experiments with tau. I have been using a two squads of these to make forward infiltrating kroot really hard to get rid of. B2 supporting overwatch wherever you need it on a resilient/mobile platform with a BS2 markerlight is a huge force multiplier. One unit of these on average inflicts about 6 wounds on T3 and 5 wounds on T4 (during overwatch), add the overwatch from the unit being charged (potentially at BS2 if the markerlight hits) and the chances are the charging unit will fail their charge (or be wiped out). Thankfully I have yet to see any tau player consider this because it involves not taking fusion blasters on stealth suits.

Brom wrote:

TL SMS is the best thing in their entire dex.

This.

I've got my first game against them this coming Sunday. Time to put theory into practice.

Secret tech: Warp Spiders.

I played my first game with them last night and only lost in the bottom of the 6th when a Devilfish I blew up wiped a unit of my troops that was holding an objective. I was ahead on points until then.

Anyways I found that a large unit of Grotesques can take on all of their overwatch and their shooting for multiple turns without dying while the rest of your army maneuvers around and snipes out their key units.

With their marker-light, twin-linked, BS 5, ignores-cover bullshit they will hit most everything they shoot at. Key is High Toughness multi-wound units and Flickerfields on your vehicles.

I think your dead on Balisong although for me night Shields over FFs. I've been running grots and incubi but I'll likely be dropping the incubi so I can squeeze 2 beast packs. The other option is to bring back my second grot unit but I think some diversity in that department is preferred.

Right now my biggest dilemma is khymera or just more flocks. If it wasn't for the new suit faq it would probably be flocks.. Well that and anni barges but cover and gtg is at least an option there. Obviously the common build is a better all rounder, in a points vacuum that is. On the flip side going all flocks is cheaper maybe better against S5 or less, I believe, and assuming proper terrain.
Any thoughts on this?

Edit- did some quick math, I see why theres a standard build for BMPs. I'll still be tinkering with it slightly though since many things factor in.

Yes, Nightshields are great as well, but against some of the Tau builds that have a longer range not as useful as the flickerfields.

I ran a pack of 3 Beastmasters with Sathonyx vs the Tau as well, and they never got close enough to engage in melee.

It consisted of 5 Khymera, 2 Razorwings, and a Clawed Fiend.

The razorwings were instagibbed due to their poor save and toughness 3. The Khymera and Clawed fiend survived longer, but failed a morale check and lasted another round round. Neither made it into melee...

I have removed the beasts from my anti-tau lists due to this. If I were to run them again I would do so either entirely with Khymera due to their 4++, decent Str and 3 attacks or all Clawed Fiends due to their multi-wounds and difficulty to Instagib.

Are crisis suits still get ID by Lances?

Yes and No...

Crisis Shas'ui: Yes
Crisis Shas'vre: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour
Crisis BodyGuard: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour
Crisis Commander: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour

Iridium gives them +1 toughness (5) and a 2+ Armour Save.

FYI: My Archon wiped 3 bodyguards in 1 round with his Huskblade... Then the Commander Hit and Ran!

Ya crisis suits still drop to S8+ but not the HQ, I was speaking mostly of the ease with which they can now get 3 seperate weapons (2 plas 1 fusion) probably one of the nastier builds.

On beast packs Ive been considering a few builds for all comers but specifically keeping tau in mind (didnt used to have any tau players around here). Anyway heres what im thinking:

2 bm, 10 khymera 144
Throws the most attacks when charging but loses attacks more quickly with each wound suffered. khymera are resilient to everything and dont need cover or GtG. Could include flocks to soak small arms. Most expensive build im messing with.

3 bm, 6 flocks 126
33 wounds against non ID weapons and dirt cheap. No invulns but cover solves that except against tau and select weaponry. Really leaning this direction atm.

2 bm, 5 khymera, 2 flocks 114
Cheapest build that I fancy. Seems to lack to pro's of either of the ones above though.

Anyway Ive been proxying these units so far since I didnt want to order anything without testing. Hope this didnt derail the thread too far but I see the topic as related to anti tau strategy.

FYI: These are the Tau Weapons that outrange the usefulness of Nightshields. A good general will load up on these.

Ion accelerator
- Standard 72"
- Overcharge 72"
- Nova-charge* 72"

Heavy rail rifle 60"

Ion cannon
- Standard 60"
- Overcharge 60"

Kroot gun 48"

Longshot pulse rifle 48 '

Railgun
- Solid shot 72"
- Submunition* 72"

Seeker missile 72"

Also, most of these are also Str 7-10 and AP 1-2. And will ignore cover.

So forget about staying out of range and relying on your armour...

Cardboard Boxes...

(Except for the Tantalus which is Plywood...)

PS: The Beastmasters Unit was heavily damaged vs the Railgun Submunition which is S 7, AP 4 Large Blast.

Balisong wrote:

Yes and No...

Crisis Shas'ui: Yes
Crisis Shas'vre: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour
Crisis BodyGuard: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour
Crisis Commander: No if upgraded with the Iridium Armour

Iridium gives them +1 toughness (5) and a 2+ Armour Save.

Remember though that Iridium Armour is a Signature System and limited to one per army.

Has anyone tried loading up on Splinter Cannon warriors/Trueborn? With the amount of Riptides that I'm seeing in army list I was wondering if they are counting this guy with tons of poisoned shots. I'm nervous for my first game with them, one of my friends play Tau regularly so all the Battle reports have me wondering what I'm going to do to him.

My thoughts are:

Hitting his gun line with as much wyches as I can dish out.
Archon with small Incubi retinue.
Ravager, Ravager and Voidraven for heavy.
Flickerfields, on everything that can take it.
Blaster reavers, max squads

What do you guys think good plan?

MasterofPuppets wrote:

Hitting his gun line with as much wyches as I can dish out.

Personally I'd avoid doing that. Tau have amazing overwatch fire and the absolute last thing that Wyches want to do is charge a unit with amazing overwatch!

Count Adhemar wrote:

MasterofPuppets wrote:

Hitting his gun line with as much wyches as I can dish out.

Personally I'd avoid doing that. Tau have amazing overwatch fire and the absolute last thing that Wyches want to do is charge a unit with amazing overwatch!

Even with throwing 2 squads at one unit? I used that tactic in my last game where one squad was just used to soak up the overwatch and the other made it unmolested.

MasterofPuppets wrote:

Even with throwing 2 squads at one unit? I used that tactic in my last game where one squad was just used to soak up the overwatch and the other made it unmolested.

The unit firing supporting overwatch doesn't have to shoot the unit designed to soak up overwatch, they can just elect to shoot the fragile unit when it charges, regardless of the target of the charge being locked in combat already or not.

Good point, but either way if you maneuver your units right then they are both going to make it. One is going to get shot up a little bit, although it has been my experience that the opponent always shoots the first squad he gets charged with first.

MasterofPuppets wrote:

Good point, but either way if you maneuver your units right then they are both going to make it. One is going to get shot up a little bit, although it has been my experience that the opponent always shoots the first squad he gets charged with first.

I have been playing a lot of tau recently (as tau). I run a squad of stealth suits with 6 burst cannons and counter fire defence systems. I set up a load of infiltrating kroot and harass the hell out of my opponent scoring troops. If he shoots at the kroot they go to ground (for 2-3+ saves). So he has to assault them, that's where the stealth team comes in. 24 S5 BS2 overwatch shots is hilarious it's like a second shooting phase. Even if one of the enemy units doesn't fail the charge because of a combination of difficult terrain and over-watch casualties. The expendable 60pt kroot unit will lose combat and run. leaving the assault unit high and dry for another round of burst cannons shots, this time at BS3. The suits will then jump behind another sacrificial kroot unit and rinse repeat. What is even more potent about this combo is the Shas'vre has a markerlight that over watches at BS2, so 1/3 times the victim of the charge will get to over watch at BS2 as well thanks to the markerlight.

Supporting fire is something that you can really abuse if you plan it right, especially if you buy upgrades to enhance it. That stealth team on average will kill six wyches during overwatch (if they don't have a cover save). If they do they are going to be less likely to make the charge. Even then the stealth team is likely to kill four wyches (5+ cover). The PGL won't help them as the stealth team just needs one model within 6" of the victim of the charge to be able to overwatch and they will almost alway be further away from the wyches than 8" meaning the PGL doesn't come into play.

Thankfully the idea of spending points to enhance overwatch seems an uncommon trend amongst Tau players. So far all the tau players in my area have laughed at me for running counter fire defence systems and not giving my stealth teams fusion blasters. Ohh well their loss. Our gain.

Quote :

FYI: These are the Tau Weapons that outrange the usefulness of Nightshields. A good general will load up on these.

Ion accelerator
- Standard 72"
- Overcharge 72"
- Nova-charge* 72"

Heavy rail rifle 60"

Ion cannon
- Standard 60"
- Overcharge 60"

Kroot gun 48"

Longshot pulse rifle 48 '

Railgun
- Solid shot 72"
- Submunition* 72"

Seeker missile 72"

Also, most of these are also Str 7-10 and AP 1-2. And will ignore cover.

So forget about staying out of range and relying on your armour...

Cardboard Boxes...

(Except for the Tantalus which is Plywood...)

That’s a laundry list of weapons, however we wont be seeing anywhere near that amount on the table but ill get to that later.

First, heres my pitch for night shields:
-TL SMS is the nastiest weapon they have against us. It has essentially already received the benefits of 4 marker counters (i.e. BS 4.5 and ignores cover) plus it doesn’t need LoS. Brutal.

-Marker lights essentially make EVERY weapon into TL SMS, from pulse to plasma to ion to hymp.

-TL SMS, pulse, plasma, ion rifles, hymp, missile drones, marker lights etc are all range < 36” (most < 30”) so the majority of their firepower.

-Of the aforementioned weapons, TL SMS hymp missile drones and marker lights are all heavy weapons on mostly non relentless carriers.

Night shields screws them all for some portion of the game.

Night shields also take the majority of markerlight support away from their ‘true’ long ranged weaponry so those weapons stay BS 3 and don’t ignore cover.

In short NS bring tau back to fair from broken, from a whole army of what is essentially anti tank fire as far as we are concerned, to only ‘dedicated AT’ without markerlight buffs. Thats a big difference.



Regarding their dedicated long ranged weaponry:
Most of tau's true long ranged weaponry resides in HS/elites which are both very hotly contested now.

Within HS broadsides and sky rays are the standout options IMO, honorable mention to HHs with snipers left in the cold except for smaller pts games.

Railsides got nerfed hard while podsides have become the new brokenness. I really doubt many tau players will be opting for the one S8 shot over 4 S7 twin linked shots.

The rails strength nerf has in turn shifted the dedicated AT duty to fusion in the form of crisis and stealths which compete with riptides. HHs can do this too but 1 S10 shot for 140 pts (dp) is not as appealing compared to multiple (now 18") meltas. Sky rays are really good for their pts however, hands down better than HHs in a varied meta, but again they compete with the uber podsides for slots although as AA I believe these are one of the go-to options.

Meanwhile in elites riptides are insanely expensive when compared to crisis teams. I believe one will likely become a staple, but the super efficient crisis teams and the desire for infiltrating stealths really limits the spamming of riptides IMO.

Kroot otoh have been kicked around on the web a little due to the combat nerf, but honestly I feel they became strictly better, especially with the changes to other units such as railsides.
Infiltrating autocannons help tau out quite a bit by freeing up (and even encouraging) HS/elites to spam missiles and take fusion/plasma to address av13+ and TEQ. Crisis do pretty much everything cheaper and better, even AA although stealths definitely have their place due to infiltrate and 2++.

Anyway TLDR I feel the new face of tau is missile spam, and it is powerful. However the all-comers build will have weaknesses that we can exploit with NS and dedicated combat elements. With this approach the most problematic long ranged tau units should be mitigated to an iontide, maybe 2, a skyray maybe 2, and possibly the token kroot unit(s). We need to retain the first strike potential as far as the majority of fire is concerned and I feel night shields along with the nature of tau's FOC forwards this plan.

Quote :

PS: The Beastmasters Unit was heavily damaged vs the Railgun Submunition which is S 7, AP 4 Large Blast.

Good to know brother. I have very limited experience with beastpacks at this point so im interested in every bit of in-game experience I can absorb on them. Their function is pretty straight forward but the unit build can change things quite a bit. Its expensive but im actually thinking 10 khymera with 2 flocks for ablatives might be the better build now.

Actually it really depends on the list. A smart Tau player facing us would load up on Broadsides, Skyrays, Hammerheads, Sniper Drones, Kroot, Sun Sharks, etc.

I think we will see the Broadsides a lot as well as the Hammerheads. Those do damage to us...