DE vs. tau and chaos marines

I am newer to DE and am having trouble getting tactics down right when facing tau and chaos marines. any advice would be very much welcome. right now I'm running a squad of ten kabalites, a squad of whyches and a haemonculus with a raider transport. if any of that is pertinent.

I would add a ravager, another squad of kabalites (possibly in a raider or a 20 man squad), for heldrakes you'll want a razorwing w/ 2 dark lances. Scourges are cool for anti tank but against tau I find a squad of 6 reavers with cautops or whatev is nice by turbo boasting over them.

It would help to have an idea of the size of the game and what your opponents are running or what you have trouble with in particular. If what you list is all of your army, then it sounds like a very small game. Are you up against tanks? Heldrake? Riptide?

the size is at 500 right now, but we are planning to increase that soon. the only armor I'm up against is a chaos walker. the tau's "jump shoot jump" ability tears holes in my strategy of waiting for the enemy to come to me.

1 monc 50
5 warriors in venom extra cannon x2 220
Ravager night shields x2 230

Warriors stay out of venoms and focus on securing objectives... FNP from monc + go to ground on objective

Ravagers will crush the walker and crisis suits.. just approach carefully and premeasure! Keep venoms away from crisis suits and walker and max range on the other units then pepper him with poison and they will go down.. I find the tau die very fast and you can use ravagers on the marines when walker dead so they get no armor save

500 points is tricky, since it doesn't give you a lot of options. I'd drop the Wyches though - their best use is hunting tanks with HWGs and from the sound of it you're not up against any tanks. Even our Warriors should beat Tau in CC.

If you're playing small games on a small board (4x4) then the Talos is pretty useful, since its lack of speed is less of a factor.

okay, thanks for the help. i will definitely try these ideas and see how it works. any more suggestions would be welcome.

How big is your board and does it have much line of sight blocking terrain ..high enough for our skimmers and reavers

Vanzahn wrote:

the tau's "jump shoot jump" ability tears holes in my strategy of waiting for the enemy to come to me.

That's a strange strategy for Dark Eldar - we live (and kill) by our manouvrability. Get more transports, use them to frustrate your enemy by getting where he doesn't want you, keeping out of his line of sight and ganging up on isolated parts of his line.

And you can't go far wrong by adding a Ravager - even at 500 points you should be able to squeeze one into your list.

the board we have just recently started using is 60" by 60". and as far as my strategy i do more than just sit and wait, but when the enemy is approaching my troops i try to keep them out of line of sight until i am able to charge. that's what i meant by that waiting for the enemy, sorry for any confusion.

Thing is, as a Tau player, I would never approach your troops. I would sit at max range and pick you off with pulse weapons or jump-shoot-jump battlesuits. You are never going to out-shoot Tau, so you need transports to get close to him to stop him doing this.

okay, thanks for the advice.

I'm a fairly new player too but have just started getting some wins. The key was mobility and that means getting lots of cheap vehicles.

The enemy will never come to you, you are evil space elves and everyone is scared silly of you - and rightly so.

Reavers are great for first blood, contesting late game, and getting line breaker, but one of the best things about DE is that there are so many different ways to play and win. Try reading some of the batreps in this forum and you will get some great ideas