How to use speed

Hi all, this is my first post. I've been playing with the Wych Cult for the past few months. Needless to say I have faired off badly in all the battles of been in against tau, eldar and chaos mainly. I've never really considered using speed as an advantage, my main units are 2x10 man wych units on raiders, 1xkabalite unit and small unit of scourges led by a succubus. My next move is to consider venoms and jet bikes but how can I use speed and cover to its best advantage, especially against the pesky tau my main rivals.

Would be grateful for any tips/ideas that would help wipe the stupid smile of my brothers face :-)

Tau are actually a pretty vulnerable army to us, but it requires the appropriate application of force in the right way.

"Using" terrain is tough to explain really. Against Tau the main purpose of terrain is blocking terrain - you want terrain that prevents his ability to see your army.

The prime weakness of the Tau army is that they rely on mid range shooting supported by markerlights. Our primary goal versus them is to snipe the markerlights and then have a lot of our army hit a smaller portion of his army. Between nightsheilds and your army being easier to move around you should be able to move to one side of the board or the other away from a lot of his firepower and shoot up part of his army while a lot of it is unable to come and hurt you in return. Then, after you have sawn apart parts of it, you can bum rush the rest with greater success - that's using your maneuverability and speed to your advantage. The Tau are actually a pretty static and slow army despite what the Codex and players would like you to believe.

Your Succubus + Scourge unit doesn't seem to make any sense to me, do you actually stick a jump pack unit with an infantry unit? Doesn't that invalidate the entire concept of the Scourges since it makes them slower?

Ok cheers, that would make sense. I suppose I should use the cover available a lot more. I find the marker lights to be a real pain.

Tbh I may drop the scourges, I brought them cos I thought they looked cool but they have proven to be little more than a distraction so the wyches could survive one more round. 2 units of jet bikes are next on my list.

I can't count how many times I've screwed myself over trying to blunt the speartip rather than using the speed of the army to escape it and break the shaft instead. I completely agree with Thor that our strength is being able to rush to the enemy's weakest point of the army, destroy that, then redeploy.

I feel you on Scourges - I bought mine for the same reason, unfortunately I have a very hard time placing them in my lists.

I love my scourges, but they have been lack luster in 6th. I tend to jump them to a good vantage point with cover and use two HWBs as anti-armor or the three shard carbines on infantry that get to close.

I mostly play at Warhammer World (Nottingham) on the big per-made tables (Fort Pain etc etc).I'm still learning but I've managed to beat DA and CM 3 out of 4 times by seizing cover to hide my kabalites in and then hammering Wyches into exposed flanks as my more ponderous foes slowly move around terrain.

After tons of playtesting with them I have found scourges to be excellent mop up units with HWB. They have just enough firepower and range to finish off a tank or infantry unit. They're fairly tough for DE too. Not saying that justifies using them, but it might help you consider how to use them best. I never deepstrike them anymore though. I get burned way too often when I do.

If your opponent brings plenty of ignores cover weapons, then reavers are certainly a liability. Until that point, however, they are quite a lot tougher than Scourges, especially when you turbo boost. They're also way faster and more versatile, and with the possibility of a good combat drug roll, could even be quite strong in combat or beginning with a pain token.

If even 1 survives, he can basically reach the other side of the table in one turn to hide and deny a killpoint.

They can't use haywires like Scourges though, and they end up being a very expensive unit so you have to maximise their use.

You can use reavers to lock a unit up that you don't want to shoot at you.

But thor665 is right, many weapons im the Tau arsenal are set at 36 inches or less. This allows you to pop in at 36 with might shields, drop a bunch of poison shots, and remain at a safe distance. The only units that could beat this are missile equipped crisis suits, both Riptide variants, both hammerhead variants, heavy rail gun broadsides, and the bomber. Just wail into those units in the first turn, then focus on everything else later. With a little luck, you xan beat tau at their own game.