DE vs. the new Tau

Yeah, if you took krootox in the old codex you could infiltrate.

Oh and they costed a Wych in price...


Honestly I reckon it may be time to dust of the Flickerfield Raiders and Ravagers with the increasing access to Ignores Cover shooting across more armies with Markerlights really just taking it and running wild.

Agreed. Flickerfields are looking more appealing by the minute. On another note I can imagine markerlights hard countering harlistar pretty hard now that it only takes two tokens to ignore cover.

Well, you can always take both.

Surely, it's expensive, but that's the way we adapt. We pay for something we didn't need before.

Atleast we DO HAVE a save against Ignore Cover Markerlight Madness. Not many armies can grab invulnerable saves on their vehicles, i name CSM and DA (for them that's unique wargear which also have disadvantages of giving invulnerable save to their opponents in close combat).

To be honest though against tau I don't think they are going to bother wasting markerlight on vehicles for ignore cover. A 5+ is not a big deal on a AV10-11 vehicle, especially with the vollumes of S5-7 Tau can put out in a game. In the game I just had the only reason markerlights were used to ignore cover on a single ravager was because the drones got lucky and rolled four hits! All the other raiders and ravagers got their 5+ cover save, and it didn't make a difference. I guess it depends how many markerlights they have.

On another note I wonder what allies the tau will use?

They hardly need any, maybe eldar for seer's psychic defence (they suffer from space wolf drop pod JoWW nearly as hard as Necrons) and divination (one more source for increased accuracy and ignoring cover) or SM to provide them with some close combat goodness and droppod meltagunners who are more likely to destroy their opponents' heavy armour then stealth suits.

Well, crazy tactic it might be, but with markerlights our troops wouldn't have their cover if tau want it dead anyway.

Just put it out, in maximal dispersed formation, frontline to the Tau. Those will reduce their infiltration range and, actually, our warriors would be more likely to survive, because railgun subminition ignoring cover wouldn't demolish whole squad.

Such an approach could allow Reavers to be fielded on turn one, out of range of hurricane small arms fire.

What about the new Riptide suit? No one is mentioning it, and although I may be a new DE player but that thing is concerning. Sure the toughness 6 is not worth mentioning but that heavy burst cannon can chew through anything in our 'dex without batting an eyelash. And splinter weapons or not it still has equivalent durability to 6 terminators, which is still significant, although it is likely to shoot itself in the foot with its nova reactor at least 1-2 game. It's other weapons/reactor combos hurt a lot, especially with markerlight support. Double firing it's missile pods will put a raider/venom in the ground lightning quick. Not to mention it can jump in and out of cover and pack extra shielded missile drones for extra BOOM! headshot factor. Do we even have a hard counter to this thing outside of venom spamming it?

Pathfinders also have the ability to crap on charges with their drone that reduces charge distance, and the pathfinder HQ (name escaping me) allows them to consolidate after over-watching meaning they can easily move beyond 12" range.

On the bright side, space pope is going to die like crazy versus splinter fire. A 5+ save equivalent is not enough to survive a barrage of 5-10 wounds/turn

Tau would probably take Ion Accelerator anyway. Large blast with 8-2 profile and 72" range is neat. They can even take Interceptor on top of it

and it has default profile, like 1.5 autocannons with AP2.

GorlanVance wrote:

What about the new Riptide suit?... Do we even have a hard counter to this thing outside of venom spamming it?

Well... a group of wyches with shardnets could keep it busy for a while and even get a few hits in, IF they can get into close combat with it reasonably whole, which is a big if.

How are we rethinking our all-comers list building to include Tau? My 1500 points and below lists are all shooty with my strongest CC unit being my Reavers. It seems if we can't out shoot them we need to include combat troops in our tourney lists. Has anyone made Amy changes to their lists in the face of our new opponent?

Hard to tell how it would change, especially with my inexperience in such matters. But Incubi are obviously out against tau, with wyches being multi-charge and vehicle threats up close only. Suits die like crazy to ravagers, but everybody runs dark lances anyway so that's not much of an issue. Same goes with Fire Warriors and Kroot dying to splinter fire. They destroy flyers with little effort so running those in numbers is far less viable.

Reavers become even more glass canon-y then they were before: a couple of markerlights and suddenly a 6 man reaver squad will get insta-gibbed by a half-dozen fire warriors, since it ignores their armor and cover with ML. On the flipside reavers obviously eat fire warriors for breakfast and can tie up suits in melee very rapidly if required.

If we add melee against them it seems best suited as wracks/haemonculi units, who have the durability and strength to rip them to pieces. Even then small units are best so that we stay locked in during their assault phase.

Still concerned about Riptide spam. At 750pts you can field a pair of these bad boys with fire warriors and a fireblade to upgun them. If you wanted to min your squads you might even be able to fit three in, and I know that would spank my CSM at that point value pretty hard.

GorlanVance wrote:

What about the new Riptide suit?... Do we even have a hard counter to this thing outside of venom spamming it?

Grotesques or Wracks with Flesh Gauntlet, Urien, and/or Taloi (with or without Ichor Injector) will eat it for breakfast...again, if they can get there. Maybe webway shenanigans can make the magic happen. Cluster caltrop mass can pose a significant danger. Dissie loaded Ravager will take it to town too, if it's foolish enough to be in range.

My plan is just to run the reavers in reserve (really increases their survivability as they can often get a pain token coming in) and run some heavy coven foot troops (grots) so my forces can't be cleared from the board. At least that's the plan.

EDIT: On another note Supporting overwatch affects whole units within 6" not just models:

Quote :

When an enemy unit declares a charge, all friendly models with this special rule in units within 6" of the charging unit's target can choose to fire Overwatch as if they were also targets of the charge. Remember that a unit can still onlyfire Overwatch once each phase

So basically if a unit is within 6" all friendly models in that unit can fire supporting overwatch (as long as they have the special rule), as far as I understand.

I smell the birth of warp, sorry, crap over that thing. It already starts to show itself on RU dedicated warhammer forums, but more likely coz our community is obsessed with pointless holywars.

What should be early conclusion of the council of us mighty archons about new threat? Only that we should inculde more CC-oriented units?

Wracks with twin liquifiers could be interesting, btw. Their close combat goodnes, being not impressive at all, still enough to kill neraly any T'au squad, and they suffer less to overwatch due to being T4 and built-in FNP.
But they are hardly tough enough to survive shooty focus, and multiple close combat units wouldn't fare well against several armies.

Mush, it is interesting that the German and English version are worded so differently. In the German version it's still iffy and open to interpretation, but the conclusion we came to was that it states models in a unit that have this special rule and are at the same time within 6". I reworded it for clarity's sake here.

Why couldn't GW just write that units within 6" of another attacked unit may overwatch that unit. Note that models that do not have this special rule are exempt from that. Ta-da. Problem solved.

Agreed they definitely worded it this way to prevent say a fireblade giving supporting overwatch to units like kroot, but it's leads to a lot of confusion (I can imagine even more so in different languages, like you said).

I would imagine that a WWP would be very useful against Tau (If you can survive the initial onslaught) 3x 6 man squads of Reavers coming out of a portal to turbo boost over some Tau units is going to do a lot of damage. Ignore cover costs 2 marker lights...so they cannot deny cover to many, especially if you use your turbo boosting to go over their pathfinders, then it becomes even easier. (the WWP is to get a better angle for the turbo boosting)

I played a game against the new Tau yesterday, and managed to win. Granted, that had a lot to do with luck. I managed to wipe out the Pathfinders quickly (tho not before they markerlight my Reaver squad which got blown up by pulse fire) and my Venoms and Ravagers somehow passed every single 5++ save on the first turn. On the second turn Farsigh and 6 suits dropped in and blew up three Venoms, but got charged by 2 Wytch units from the crashed Venoms and the Archon and his unit (Wytches going first of course to take the overwatch shots). After that it was mostly a matter of lancing down the Riptide and moving my surviving Venom and Warriors to hold objectives.

Had a slightly more successful rematch against the Tau if anyone is interested (pictures as usual):

BR22: The Black Buzzards VS Tau (Rematch) - 1500pts

tbh I dont fear Tau much after reading the new Codex. Its not poor or anything I just think my ususal competitive list will handle it fine. Also I think the people who will play tau will drop troops and use all their points on the big guys, so if you play the mission you will win 9/10 anyway.

Darklight wrote:

tbh I dont fear Tau much after reading the new Codex. Its not poor or anything I just think my ususal competitive list will handle it fine. Also I think the people who will play tau will drop troops and use all their points on the big guys, so if you play the mission you will win 9/10 anyway.

What is your normal competitive list?

It's strange that you think people will be dropping all their troops for more suits. Crisis suits remain largely unchanged, broadsides got a hell of a lot more versatile, stealth suits are pretty feeble now and the Riptide is a beast...but Fire Warriors are so good now. Rapid Fire is great, particularly with Overwatch/Snap Fire, and no basic choice runs around with a more powerful one than FW. Add that to being incredibly buffed by markerlights and you have the most effective anti-infantry unit in the codex point for point. Pathfinders are now much more dangerous when firing, being more dangerous than the fire warriors albeit with a shorter range.

If anything I can armies fielding a lot less crisis suits than was once the case, as you don't really need many of them anymore. Broadsides with all missile loadouts are excellent against flyers and infantry whilst riptide are more survivable most of the time.

My prediction is a fairly balanced and flexible spread of suits, supported by fire warriors for anti-infantry and pathfinders/marker drones for lighting targets, with railheads/railsides for anti-vehicle duty.

A good meta thing however is that most tau lists will be ion-light, which is great for us since those are truly lethal to our vehicles, and the new overcharge profile allows them to do pretty well against vehicles as well.

mug7703 wrote:

Darklight wrote:

tbh I dont fear Tau much after reading the new Codex. Its not poor or anything I just think my ususal competitive list will handle it fine. Also I think the people who will play tau will drop troops and use all their points on the big guys, so if you play the mission you will win 9/10 anyway.

What is your normal competitive list?

If you check out my signature you can see the list I play in turnaments, small changes after which points level they are at, but its basically the same.

GorlanVance wrote:

It's strange that you think people will be dropping all their troops for more suits. Crisis suits remain largely unchanged, broadsides got a hell of a lot more versatile, stealth suits are pretty feeble now and the Riptide is a beast...but Fire Warriors are so good now. Rapid Fire is great, particularly with Overwatch/Snap Fire, and no basic choice runs around with a more powerful one than FW. Add that to being incredibly buffed by markerlights and you have the most effective anti-infantry unit in the codex point for point. Pathfinders are now much more dangerous when firing, being more dangerous than the fire warriors albeit with a shorter range.

If anything I can armies fielding a lot less crisis suits than was once the case, as you don't really need many of them anymore. Broadsides with all missile loadouts are excellent against flyers and infantry whilst riptide are more survivable most of the time.

My prediction is a fairly balanced and flexible spread of suits, supported by fire warriors for anti-infantry and pathfinders/marker drones for lighting targets, with railheads/railsides for anti-vehicle duty.

A good meta thing however is that most tau lists will be ion-light, which is great for us since those are truly lethal to our vehicles, and the new overcharge profile allows them to do pretty well against vehicles as well.

I've been looking at some of the lists posted on Dakkadakka (as I dont know any tau forum). Since well, I want to know what I will be meeting in turnements to come, aswell as I am looking on building a Tau force myself.

Now I cant understand why I havnt seen one list yet with more than 4 troop choices. If that is how they are planning to come to a competitive setting, then well... there wont be hard to take them at all. Also I see way to few Pathfinders... I would imagine any competitive Tau list would need 6 troope choices and 3 groups of Pathfinders, and then start filling the points, or am I missing something here?

I just know that I havnt seen someone play in a turnement and finish top 5 yet without 5-6 troops.

Darklight wrote:

I've been looking at some of the lists posted on Dakkadakka (as I dont know any tau forum).

Google "advance tau tactica" it's the only dedicated tau forum I can think of and it's quite active.

Darklight wrote:

3 groups of Pathfinders, and then start filling the points, or am I missing something here?

You won't see pathfinders (at least not for markerlights), even at BS2 most tau players would take marker drones over them, relentless, JSJ, T4 and a 4+ save make them well worth it. The great thing with jump shoot jump is it really draws your opponent in as they will have a hard time taking the drones out at range (unlike pathfinders who are static). Besides with the Pathfinders now only having a 5+ save they are going to be firing at BS1 most of the time anyway as they will probably being going to ground more often that not.

At least that's how I see it.