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1500 point list
HQ: 1 Death Rain: TL-MP, Positional Relay, Iridium Armor, Stimulant Injectors, 2 Shield Drones
Elite: 3 Fireknife: PR, MP, MT, Team leader: Bonding Knife, 2 Shield Drones
Elite: 1 Heatforge: TL-FG, TA
Elite: 6 Stealth Suits: BC with TA
Troop: 12 Fire Warriors: Pulse Rifles with Devilfish: BC, DP
Troop: Kroot: Kroot Rifles
Troop: Kroot: Kroot Rifles
Fast Attack: 5 Pathinders with EMP Grenades with Devilfish: BC, DP
Heavy Support: Hammerhead: RG, TA, MT, DP
Heavy Support: Broadsides: SMS, TL-RG, ASS, Team leader: SMS, TL-RG, ASS, TL

Updated it and was wondering what people thought of -5 hounds, +1 Pathfinder, and giving the the pathfinders EMP grenades to pack an extra punch from the sides...

ninja tau oh my... XD what exactly is the plan here?

The Idea is to...
1. Only deploy one unit per turn to limit how many KP my opponent can get from me.
2. Only deploy units that are perfect for the job. (Such as the heatforge against a vehicle and fireknife against TMC or TEQS, or Kroot against a devastator squad and tanks that have not moved)
3. Have everyone come on the board 5th turn because the game is rolled off at that point...

In objective missions:
1. keep my troops alive by holding them in reserve.
2. contest every objective the 5th turn by deep striking guys onto the objective while capturing at least one with the firewarriors in a devilfish.

2. contest every objective the 5th turn by deep striking guys onto the objective while capturing at least one with the firewarriors in a devilfish.

When this works out for you, and you don't mishap or get slaughtered by whatever unit is on the objective in cover tell me. Your opponent may have broken a world record on the worlds worst 40k player.

Sarnath666 wrote:2. contest every objective the 5th turn by deep striking guys onto the objective while capturing at least one with the firewarriors in a devilfish.

When this works out for you, and you don't mishap or get slaughtered by whatever unit is on the objective in cover tell me. Your opponent may have broken a world record on the worlds worst 40k player.

Thank you

Tau with no marker lights is just fail. Stealthsuits are a poor choice your reserves tactic just seems a way of feeding your opponent 1 KP a turn for no discernable gain.

If you go 2nd AND the game ends on turn 5 in opbjective games you have a decent chance of drawing through contesting and winning if your opponent is dumb enough not to bother contesting objectives that your FWs can reach...

Otherwise this seems a good way of avoiding getting tabled in order to give up on any realistic chance of vistory.

Which with Tau is probably your best bet granted

Sarnath666 wrote:2. contest every objective the 5th turn by deep striking guys onto the objective while capturing at least one with the firewarriors in a devilfish.

When this works out for you, and you don't mishap or get slaughtered by whatever unit is on the objective in cover tell me. Your opponent may have broken a world record on the worlds worst 40k player.

Remember, I can re-roll the scatter die and I only need to be 4" away IIRC to contest.

How am I going to get slaughtered if the game does not go an extra turn? I recall that I am the last person to have a turn, therefore any action is without reprisal...

FlingitNow wrote:Otherwise this seems a good way of avoiding getting tabled in order to give up on any realistic chance of victory.

You are aware that this is 1500 points... who is going to table me, with what?

FlingitNow wrote:Tau with no marker lights is just fail. Stealthsuits are a poor choice your reserves tactic just seems a way of feeding your opponent 1 KP a turn for no discernable gain.

18 shots that hit on 3+ and wound on 3+ from 24" away (JSJ) leads to 8 wounds to be saved against T4 models... 24" away means you need to roll 8+ on 2d6, which only happens 15/36 times. Are you going to chase my stealth suits around to get closer, if so great! I am distracting you away from something more valuable or spreading your army thin...

Pathfinders have marker lights... I just do not need that many for this list... BS 4 TL hits often enough, and for the fireknife extra BS is great but not required.

FlingitNow wrote:Which with Tau is probably your best bet granted

Remember guys this is 1500 points, not 2000 or 2500. You actually have to think about what you want because you cannot just get everything ala' carte. When you say, I am going to get tabled, I would like to hear what you are going to table me with... If you cannot think of anything, this list must not be bad... so please post on what would table me...

While this list is not very flash like the Space Marines or IG list, it is meant to win the mission. If the mission is KP, then I will be going after your rhinos and TAC squads while avoiding your heavy weaponry... If the mission is objectives then I will try to spread out the objectives as far as possible. I only need to capture 1 objective with 3 troop choices... 2 that outflank and infiltrate.

QuietOrkmi wrote:Remember, I can re-roll the scatter die and I only need to be 4" away IIRC to contest.

3", and you assume that an opponent has not deployed on the objective. putting a ring of 40mm bases around it means you cannot contest as you have to be more than 1" from the opponent, and their bases are 40mm across.

QuietOrkmi wrote:How am I going to get slaughtered if the game does not go an extra turn? I recall that I am the last person to have a turn, therefore any action is without reprisal...

As you have one unit per turn fighting 1500 points of opposing army. And dont forget, there is an extra turn 66.6% of the time.

QuietOrkmi wrote:You are aware that this is 1500 points... who is going to table me, with what?

See above.

As you have one unit per turn fighting 1500 points of opposing army.

I love how people keep bringing this up. My range is about 42" away thanks to JSJ... The Idea of Ninja Tau is to deploy forces so only a fraction of the enemy can retaliate using range and TLOS.

@Xenith,EzeKK,and Flingit-I've watched with great amusement how people can take something like Ninja Tau and screw it up.

Where most players get into trouble is they don't let their opponent deploy first.

Then they get into trouble by dogmatically holding everything in reserve. (Part of being a ninja is knowing when and what to hide and when not to.)

The next area is choosing the wrong units to deploy on a given turn.

And the last is by not keeping an eye on the clock. The only problems I ever had with this tactic was with opponents playing intentionally slow in order to keep the game from reaching turns 4 & 5.

Pretty much anything your opponent does can be countered with a Ninj-esque approach to your deployment and a properly built list.

Is the Army or tactic perfect, no. No army or tactic is. Can the presence of a Posi-relay commander and your bragging about Ninja Tau lead your opponent into fatal errors in deployment. It sure can, and when you put your whole army on the field to exploit his mistake the look you get from him is priceless.

@QuietOrkmi- Catch what I just did?

As to your build, you might want to get 2 more shas'la into your Pathfinders.

I updated the List, rather than making another Thread... Check it out...

@QuietOrkmi-I would like to know if you have been playing these lists. If so, against who and to what result. What problems are you having with the list?

From these I'll have a better idea if you are heading in the right direction for the tactics you want to employ.


I will say that the EMP's while useful may not work the best on a squad whose job is to markerlight until forced to run away. Might work better splitting the FW Team and giving one of the 6 man teams the grenades.

Just an idea, will possibly have better suggestions when you give me an idea of how the list has been working.

Seconded on the EMPs. Hoepfully you should never have to deal with a vehicle that close to pathfinders if they're markerlighting... and if they want to charge something, you have to assume your opponent won't move they're vehicle away when you drop the 'finders off. Interesting tactic but.... too risky in the extremely precise Ninja build.

(Correct me if I'm wrong but this is assuming every stealth team member has a TA) That stealth team is powerful... but it's an ENORMOUS points dump. And fragile, if your opponent can get stuff into range. Even bolters at 24" can cause problems as they'll likely see you and even just 1 failed armor save drops 40some points down the toilet. I would drop the Targetting arrays from the squad. That'll save you 60 points for more Fire warriors, maybe another suit to make sure when they ninja in they kill their target (Lookin' at the FB one) heck, maybe even flesh out your Kroot with hounds and make them into solid outflankers. Did the math, against T4 you only lose 2 wounds by dropping the TAs. 6 wounds from one squad is still great by any standards.

Simple change, yet the ability to add another entire unit to your list from dropping one upgrade is a fair tell on whether you think the upgrade is worth it or not. My opinion? The points could be better spent.

You do know that you MUST roll for reserves every turn (unless using positional relay), Right? Even then it only buys you one turn of reseves delay. Perhaps this would work better in a bigger game where you could have two positional relays...

@Madness!-You can never have two Positional Relays in a normal game of 40K under the current Tau codex.
This is because it is special issue.

There are so many things wrong with this, but here are the glaring ones:

-How are you going to be 42" away on a table 48" inches wide? Is the opponent hugging their board edge and hoping for you to come to them? Not likely, unless they have things like basilisks or other long range stuff, in which case you're dead anyway. They can also deep strike.

-You are automatically resigning yourself to lose in 66% of games even if your plan works perfectly (realistically, you would lose many more games than that). If the game does not end (which is only on a 1 or a 2), then the opponent can shoot/assault/generally wipe out your contesting stuff.

-Any opponent who knows about the reroll scatter gig, and sees that you will deep strike a bunch of things last turn, will likely try to take the devilfish out.

-How are you going to be 42" away on a table 48" inches wide? Is the opponent hugging their board edge and hoping for you to come to them? Not likely, unless they have things like basilisks or other long range stuff, in which case you're dead anyway. They can also deep strike.

You do know that I could be 42" diagonally right?

You are automatically resigning yourself to lose in 66% of games even if your plan works perfectly (realistically, you would lose many more games than that). If the game does not end (which is only on a 1 or a 2), then the opponent can shoot/assault/generally wipe out your contesting stuff.

Deep striking everything is just a tool, not a straight jacket... Using that tool depends on game state... As FocusedFire said, a major mistake that Ninja Tau players make is dogmatically adhere to the tool rather than looking at game state.

Any opponent who knows about the reroll scatter gig, and sees that you will deep strike a bunch of things last turn, will likely try to take the devilfish out.

So I just hide my Devilfish, is my opponent going to chase 1 devil fish with everything?

So I just hide my Devilfish, is my opponent going to chase 1 devil fish with everything?

Hide on a true LoS game board? Good luck, you can't hide well and not for long as you're not fast and he probably is... (or has something that can deep strike or get within LoS).

Plus if you hide it out of view that totally defeats the whole purpose of it without it out in the open you can't get the benefit from it as you need LoS to your drop points from it and he has to have been there the turn before as deepstrikers arrive before any other movement...

Also staying 42" from the enemy is some what optimistic, starting 42" away sure is possible but hugely restictive, staying 42" away just isn't going to happen.

As for the DS "tool" without it you are actually conceding the game because with out it you aren't getting more than 12" on the table and aren't contesting enough (or perhaps even any) objectives...

Your army tactic is based purely it seems on that turn 5 arrival with what amounts to a pathetic alphastrike and bid to contest.

Ninja Tau can work just I can't see this list being that effective nor your turn 5 grab tactic (Ninja Tau work far better with a turn 3-4 arrrival as you don't have Eldar mobility or survivability to rely on the turn 5 contest).

What would you suggest for the list then? I am more than open to suggestions...

*Note: not being sarcastic... I actually want to hear what you would change in the list and to what... As you can guess, I used to play Orks before Tau and I noticed they are complete opposites...

Orks: you can get away with the exact same tactic, regardless of army (baring extreme circumstance). I move vehicles 12", move them again 12" get out and charge...

Tau: you cannot use the same tactic of just "Ninja" against every opponent... some opponents can cope against it better and does not share the same returns...

Hmm, the tactic must work for somebody. It gets props over at AdvancedTauTacitica.com, so it ain't completely half-baked.


For those who believe it *could* work ... QuietOrkmi, I'd toughen up the PFs' Devilfish. Once the opponent figures out the XV8 DeepStrike re-roll is from that thing ... well, I'd add flechettes. I also like a full Warfish. That adds to its Defense by being more Offensive; able to eliminate infantry threats ... well, maybe not *eliminate*, but you get it.

QuietOrkmi wrote:What would you suggest for the list then? I am more than open to suggestions...

Hi Orkmi, From your message I gather that you have found out the Short comings of the Srealthsuits. They are good to really good, but share a FoC slot with the Crisis suits which are great. Many has been the time that I started out with the intention to run Stealthsuits in a list and just had to drop them because all of the Tau's heavy fire power is in the Heavy and elite FoC slots. If Stealthsuits could carry plasma then you would see them used more often.

If I run Stealthsuits then it is as part of a Seeker swarm/Alpha strike build and then only as a team of 3 with 3 Marker Drones a Markerlight, and a couple of Gun Drones.

Now, for suggestions. I held some of these back because I wanted you to get a feel for how the army works. They will make more sense now that you've played the list.


1)Flingitnow has a point about 5th turn vs 3rd-4th turn pushes for the objectives. When I open the valve on the reserves still depends on what is happening on the board but more often than not you will stop using the posi relay on turn 4, sometimes turn 3 if all you have in reserve are redundant units.

2) Solid, heavy anchor. Your commander is the anchor for this strategy and you need to find a way to keep him alive and kicking for 3 turns. Hopefully longer but your objective is 3 turns. I will cover more of how to anchor later, right now I want to get to some fundemental aspects of this tactic and to answer some of the tougher questions that have been posed to you.

3)Mechanized. For the speed to claim and contest objetives you need to run at least a couple of hammerheads and two transports. I like to run two minimum teams of Pathfinders for their transports and depending upon point level/build I will run two Ionheads or two Railheads. This Tactic will call for some occasional tank shocking and flechettes will help to some degree. You will find a small squadron of fusion blaster equipped piranha to be gold in this build.

4)To answer Flings and ssREV's question of how do you keep the D-fish alive?
Two Hints, check the rules for deploying Pathfinders and D-fish seperately and I usually run two teams of pathfinders.

5)Why? This:
At the beginning of the game you have the option of deploying the Pathfinders or putting them in reserve. Same for the Devilfish if you are not deploying the unit inside. If you put them in reserve you have the choice of standard deployment or Outflanking with the Pathfinders but the Devilfish will come in standard. When it comes time to open the flood gates your roll for your empty Devilfish at the start of the turn. Deploy the D-Fish 6" in so that the FW teams can walk right in and embark. Make sure to deploy the Devilfish before the crisis suits deepstrike. This is how you keep your Devilfish alive and in position for accurate deepstrikes.

6)Now for some unorthodox stuff, Your deepstrikers should not be equipped with MP's or Plasma. their job is to crack tanks or clear objectives with Fusion and flamers. This is mainly due to these guys needing be cheap(easy to forget about or dismiis) two-suit units that work on the Isolated units. When they are done toasting the unit they should be all by their lonesome way off in left field in an easy to dismiss/hard to target position.

7)Standard stuff, Units on the table from the get go(Turn 1) should be durable with a strong ranged punch. We are talking MP + Plas equipped commanders(BubbleWrapped)and the Hammerheads.


Now you are running a 1500 point list and what I've just posted will easily fill that up. Think about these ideas/tactics and the "Affordable" way to get the needed units and when purchasing think about how much or little fire power you want to employ in an army that is getting a few less turns to do so.

Also, Think about ways to make a solid anchor for your commander. Let me know what you come up with and then I'll give you a couple of more ideas.

As always, take what you need or want and ignore that which doesn't seem to fit with your style.

Later