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I have never managed to do any more than claim a tie against tau with the iG. I tended to play drop guard with basilisks in the last codex, or drop with LR demolishers. But that was the last book.
Even using the new guard dex I have not managed to find a workable strategy against the didgy buggers.
Does anyone have some advice against tau? Preferably using the 5th ed IG book.

Under the current dex I am trying to utilize (this part is good) The max'd out al raheem platoon with power swords and comissar, veteran squads (demolitions) and 2x astros and MoF's. that's the core I'm working with anyways...

Get up close with meltas. Tau rely on their tanks and suits so turn them to slag. The infantry are overcosted and you should be able to overwhelm them. A vendetta or two should help against the armour as well. Hell, outflanking rough riders using Creed might work well against Tau too.

Post deleted by the Modquisition.

Aftersong wrote:if you can't figure out how to beat Tau with the new IG codex maybe you need to turn in your 40k models and buy heroscape or something

Not very helpful, man...

But for the OP, what point range do you play at and what is the usual build of your Tau enemies? With the new codex, you now have a lot of options to deal with heavy tanks and 4+ armor.

Using Creed to outflank 3 Hellhounds or Devil Dogs would ruin any Tau general's day.

Reverse your normal firing pattern when dealing with suits equipped with drones. Use your small arms fire to remove the inv saves/shield drones before you bring on the pain with the battlecannons.

Unit equevalent Close combat. Troops vs Troops and command squads vs elites and command squads. Did I mention use your small arms fire to remove the drones before doing this.

You might want to bring in a psychic choir and one lone deepstriking storm unit would definitely ruffle any Tau battle plan.

Just some ideas.

Psychic choir and weaken resolve is all you need. Take two and watch the tau run off the table.

1. Use Rough Riders.
2. Use Creed.
3. Use Creed's scout rule.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!

@ Aftersong: Tits or gtfo

Some good ideas. I always play in the 1500-2250 range, barring team games.

My issue with tau in the past has been the fact that I run mechanized everything. (grenadiers w/chimeras, russes, etc and then the drop troops)

The tau forces I usually face are pretty strong. typically 2 broadside teams with all the shield drones they can take, a hammerhead, pathfinders: sometimes 2 squads, 2 firewarrior squads & 2 kroot squads. Hmm.. yeah that sounds like the local flavor of tau allright.

My armylists typically lack the lasgun spam to re-prioritize shooting drills with but I'll give it a wack.

yeah, creed & RR's = Profit. I could not agree moar.

I play against IG alot, and i'm Tau. I've never lost a match to IG yet, but that was all before the new dex. The strategy that worked best against me was my opponent kept everything in reserved and marched them on with some flanks after i had already come a distance across the table. Also deep strike, seep strike, deep strike. That's my biggest fear usually. if you get a meltagun behind my warfish or hammerhead i get nervous.

Kungfuhustler wrote:@ Aftersong: Tits or gtfo

To make a comparison to boxing:

Tau are like the tall, lanky-limbed boxer; effective at longer ranges, and taking every opportunity to deny you the chance to get inside. Chances are, on a 4x6 or larger table, that they are going to outrange you and try to keep you out of your most effective range, which, unlike most matchups for the Guard, is going to be INSIDE that 11"-23" where you can start shining your flashlights at them.

You need to take away their advantage. You've got orders that allow you an extra shot for all your lasguns. Sure, it's only S3 AP-, but if you're breaking all their units due to sheer volume of fire, then you're likely going to find that your opponent is going to start losing ground. Given that, statistically, you're looking at 66% of your games being objective based, the more they have to catch up in turns 4 on up, the better the outcome is for you.

Having an issue with their tanks? Mount up with a handful of sentenels, hold them in reserve, and outflank those suckers to get your shots where they need to be: punching that tasty rear armor so full of holes that they're forced to ignore the big guns for a turn or 2 in order to deal with the more immediate threat posed by the smaller, less important targets.

Press them into a situation where turtling works to their disadvantage, and hold them at that nice middle ground where you're tagging them with more shots than they know how to deal with.

But that's just my thoughts on it.

Fully Mechanized Tau, is the worst matchup even for new guard IMHO, but they are by no meant unbeatable.

Foot Tau now has almost no chance due to Weaken Resolve. Two Psyker squads in chims backed up by 3 vendettas and few PRuss teams ( 1 Pruss, 1 naked russ to eat the railgun shots with smoke cover saves ) and you should have no trouble at all with suits and broadsides. Firewarriors will simply desolve to any of the new IG artillery toys.

Against fully Mech Tau you just have to outplay them as its a pretty even matchup on paper, but the fact that your vendettas are fast, and that he will only have 2 or 3 Railheads should give you a good chance.

This is sadly only theoretical though as I have not had the opportunity to Punch In against Tau with my new guard yet.

Would Pie-Plate spam work? 6-9 Medusas would be a nightmare for Tau.

Of you could send a lot of Sentinels after them. They have Scout and Multilasers or Autocannons seem good on their side armor. Plus they could charge and tie up infantry.

The problem is that it seems you are not using very many tanks against tau.

They have S10, whatever. Kill their anti-tank and they are screwed.

I purposely messed up playing tau to give him a chance and still wiped him out.

Just use those tanks to your advantage, especially the ap2 stuff which your tanks should supply.

Even the Punisher with Pask in it would be pretty deadly to tau, 26 S6 shots can get through their armor if i recall correctly.

lol. My tanks always go boom really early and then I'm usually left with an unsupported force of mooks trying desperately not to get to get killed.
The last time I was killed by tau I actually had a gun drone ppenetrate the rear armor of a chimera, roll a 6, and kill 6 frenadiers who were pinned by the blast to top it all off!
The guy actuallt painted that drone bronze later that night.

Well that is just sad lol that must have really sucked.

A tau player can kill 3 tanks a turn, max. since they have only three squads of railguns.

So, you field more than that and position yourself in your favour, behind cover.

Just concentrate fire on the railguns then let your infantry handle everything else.

I do not know, I have never had a had time with Tau.

Even their railguns have a hard time taking out AV14 in cover. And their crisis suits have a real hard time staying out of LOS in 5ed.

But I admit, I do not think any of the Tau players in my area are high caliber.

How many tanks do you have available? At your point level, you can put down 6+ Russes and still have room to customize the army.

Like everyone stated, most of their anti-tank is in their Heavy Support. If you flood them with armor, they will have issues. Also, the psychic squad should really help against broadsides.

Nenya97 wrote:A tau player can kill 3 tanks a turn, max. since they have only three squads of railguns.

They can deep strike a squad of Burst Cannon/Missile pod suits behind a squad of russes, which will light them up like a christmas tree (especially with two marker light hits, 9 S5 BS5 shots with 6 s7 bs5 shots will do a LOT of damage to rear armor).

Missle pod units are also very good at killing transports.

Thinking that the flashy railguns are the only AT tool available to Tau is a mistake.

Liquidwulfe wrote:

Nenya97 wrote:A tau player can kill 3 tanks a turn, max. since they have only three squads of railguns.

They can deep strike a squad of Burst Cannon/Missile pod suits behind a squad of russes, which will light them up like a christmas tree (especially with two marker light hits, 9 S5 BS5 shots with 6 s7 bs5 shots will do a LOT of damage to rear armor).

Missle pod units are also very good at killing transports.

Thinking that the flashy railguns are the only AT tool available to Tau is a mistake.

Deepstriking/infiltrarting fusion blasters come to mind. my list has so much anti-armour an armoured list is hopeless against it. Thats because i play agianst people who like armour though.

And why does everyone bash gun drones shooting so much? sure they're BS 2, but they are twin linked, and i tend to get 4 or 5 hits a turn with my 7-drone squad. plus they are pinning. which is nice for stopping assault units in their tracks. add in JSJ, and you have a very effective yet cheap fast attack unit.

Nenya97 wrote:Well that is just sad lol that must have really sucked.

A tau player can kill 3 tanks a turn, max. since they have only three squads of railguns.

So, you field more than that and position yourself in your favour, behind cover.

Just concentrate fire on the railguns then let your infantry handle everything else.

This is misleading. One broadside squad alone, properly equipped, can engage 3 targets. Three broadside squads can engage up to 9 tanks, with a reasonable chance of killing or severely damaging each. An efficient broadside squad with shield drones can still engage 2 targets, at the least, with the usual fitting. Not to mention deep-striking Crisis Suit squads equipped with all variants of weaponry, from Fusion Blasters to Missile Pods and Burst Cannons.

Cover is effective; however, the Tau have can reduce cover saves through marker lights, though cover is still useful, even if you don't do much more than force the Tau to waste marker lights de-covering your tanks and not targeting your other units.

As to the OP's question:

You absolutely need a combined-arms approach to defeating Tau. Just targeting their railguns alone will leave you vulnerable to the other units the Tau player will assuredly bring, and if he's any good, just like an IG player, he'll have multiple ways of handling each sort of target he'll have to destroy. Ultimately, his Crisis Suits, Stealth Suits, Heavy Support options, and anything with Marker Lights will be your biggest problem and worry. Fire Warriors are decent, though Kroot are marginally more effective - Keep in mind the type of force the Tau has. If he has Mech Tau, he'll likely keep his Fire Warriors inside his Devilfish until the last absolute moment. Use your autocannons and the like to take out his D-fish, your heavier weapons against his Broadsides first, Hammerheads second. Be aware any Tau player with a set of brains will have given his vehicles Disruption Pods, giving them a 4+ cover save against your fire over 12 inches. Meltaguns will make him miserable (If you can get them close enough), and assaulting troops with krak or meltabombs as well. One thing that could be effective would be barrage weapons, like the Basilisk, Medusa, or Manticore

An Inquisitor with Mystics would be brutally effective against dissuading and preventing the inevitable deep-striking Crisis team.

Just a few options to throw out there.

Liquidwulfe wrote:
They can deep strike a squad of Burst Cannon/Missile pod suits behind a squad of russes, which will light them up like a christmas tree (especially with two marker light hits, 9 S5 BS5 shots with 6 s7 bs5 shots will do a LOT of damage to rear armor).

Missle pod units are also very good at killing transports.

Thinking that the flashy railguns are the only AT tool available to Tau is a mistake.

You just described my problems, BUT i have a win against tau now! woot for me!

Using creed to outflank a squadron of hellhounds, an al-raheem CC amoeba platoon and a valkyrie outflanked on turns 2 and 3 while a battle psyker squad in a camo chimera, rr's and camo vets advancing through cover providing lure I managed to win 8-4 in annihalation! Deployment type: spearhead. Okay so maybe the deployment type helped a bit but I'm still a happy camper with the result.

Did the order on enemy's turn help with your IG these days? ( since your local game club accepted it )

It looks like he did what Tau are weakest against...being overwhelmed by extreme numbers.

It would be easier to help with army lists. What do you have available and what does your opponent run.

LunaHound wrote:Did the order on enemy's turn help with your IG these days? ( since your local game club accepted it )

lol, no. I'm not playing by orders on any phase. The rules say I can, and anyone with 1/2 a brain can see that they do but I'm not using it until GW comes forward and states that it's WAI as I beleive it may be. As opponents turn orders arei not a generally accepted rule I am not playing with it as It could negatively impact my tactics.

@liquid: My #'s were not that much greater than my opponents, the trick was to divide his shooting. the good old: Do you want to be killed by a or b thing.

@whitedragon. I play regularly against several tau players (my lgs has about 6 tau playing regulars) but my problem is that I like to play balanced lists. finding a list that provides the necessary support to deal with dual lash, nob bikers, green tides, bike eldar, and elite tau is a tricky problem. It's funny that the tau are the only ones that give me heartburn like the dual jetbike seer councils. fortunately I am playing in a map campaign (on the chaos team, as a radical guard/inq force and pwning all comers for 3 months now) that allows list tayloring so I ran the list that I mentioned above.

I am not looking to discern how to beat tau in a pickup match when I can taylor a list but to find suggestions on tactics and a few units to bolster the core of my list with to help me defeat tau w/o going crazy anti tau. I think the hellhound is a part of this list, but it will take more playtesting. Any suggestions along these lines?

As a Tau and IG player, I believe I can offer some insight here.

Hellhounds would make me gak myself as a Tau Commander. They're going to cut down all non battlesuit Tau infantry (read: scoring troop choices) like grass. Strength 6 is instant death to a FW, so all you have to do is wound one with the Inferno Cannon, which is AP 4. Kill his Pathfinders in a similar fashion.

Also, as an IG commander, you have a shiny new outflanking toy called a Vendetta that will pretty much rain all over his parade. Tau vehicle armor is not great on the front (AV 13 at the highest) and if you hit it from its flank, the highest you will see is 12 on those Railheads you want to kill. Even if the Vendetta doesn't kill a Railhead, he now has something else to worry about. Tau have only so many effective long-range vehicle killers. His Crisis Suits and his Railguns can only shoot at so many things.

For your Valk/Vendis and anything with an armor value of 12 or lower, you can't forget about the Missile Pods on the Crisis Suits. Those are pretty effective at destroying light to medium armored vehicles and transports.

As for deep-striking Monats with TL FB, the best way to deal with that is as someone mentioned earlier, Inquisitor with two mystics. The Tau player won't invest that much in him as far as survivability goes, and in all likely hood he will die under the weight of the fire of whatever you bring to bear.

Again, between your flying machines, battle tanks, and hellhounds, the anti-tank of the tau player will be very divided. While he's trying to kill all your big shiny toys, advance with your infantry platoons and get in his face with the flashlights, the flamers, the meltaguns, and the plasma guns. His attention will be very divided. He can't kill everything, but you can. Pulse Rifles are scary at 30", but BS 3 and making good use of cover as you advance means you'll only lose two or three Guardsmen at turn. (That's not math hammer, thats just usually want happened to me . YMMV) Trust me, with First Rank Second Rank, FWs will wilt and die. Then those tanks, who were worried about Vendis and Leman Russes, now have Melta wielding infantry in their faces.

Once the Railguns are gone, Tau fall apart really fast. Crisis and Stealth teams have to focus on tanks as well as other infantry and light vehicles, and they become overwhelemed.

A problem with Tau that I frequently come up against, which has been 1 battle in each tourny for the last 2 months, I've gone against the same Tau player, and albeit to say his tactics change rarely, I've made him worried at times, and at this next tourny, I plan to make him even more so.

They rely on cover, We have anti-cover weaponry.
They rely on jumping about the field like little robot fairies, We have long range cannons.
They have rapid-fire plasma weapons that don't get hot, We have plasma tanks, or even just plasma sponsons that don't get hot.
They have multi-targeting weapons, We have....bigger guns(tanks)

Lascannons are one of IG's best friends. as was previously mentioned, take out the railguns first, because their crisis suits don't do too much to tank(the most I suffered from 2 full squads of them shooting on my demolisher was a weapon destroyed) so don't be too awfully worried about them getting in CC. shouldn't even be worried about Kroot, if the Tau fields them, because one volley of rapidfire+FRFSRF, will, and I mean WILL eliminate that squad of kroot, more than likely. But yes, target all your Lascannons at the Railguns, target your pies toward Crisis Suits, lay down the HB's and AC's on the ligher-infantry, or crisis suits.

But yes, if you can destroy their tank(s), you're good as gold.