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Iv been having a tough time beating my friend a Tau player with Eldar.  Im used to playing Chaos: Word Bearers and did a far share of wins vs. loss on him but switching out to the Eldar its just not working out well.  So far the only thing I know he is afraid of is HtH contact of any sort which he easily evades with all the transports that he uses to screen his troops, and if assault is coming he just picks them up in Devilfish and flys them away to drop them and rapid fire the hell out of me. 

Im tempted to try a squad of Swooping Hawks to jump in the middle of his Firewarriors, but my luck with the dice on Deep Strike is not so hot.  Last time I did that my Obliterators landed in the middle of a squad and went poof. 

We have another game this weekend at 1500.  Any suggestions at all would be helpful....

Rough list(s) would be pretty helpful, you know?

Greets
Schepp himself

HQ:
Farseer (Jetbike, Spirit Stones, Eldrich Storm, Fortune, Singing Spear)
Warlocks x3 (Jetbikes, Singing Spears, Destructor x2, Embolden)

Troops:
Pathfinder Squad (5 Elf Squad) x2
Guardian Defender Squads (10 Elf Squad, Weapon Platform - Scatterlasers) x2

Fast Attack:
Warp Spiders x9
Exarch w/ Power Blades, Deathspinner x2, Withdraw

Heavy:
Wraithlord x2 (Missile, Brightlance)
Fire Prism (Holo Field, Spirit Stones)

1499 Total

it appears that you are trying to outshoot one of the shootiest armies around. Eldar can be shooty at mid range but Tau definitely have the reach and strength on you.
Do you have any banshees? I would throw a 10 man squad in there with Warshout and Mirrorswords in a serpent w/ vectored engines.

Forget about the fire warriors--you want to kill his tanks. That's where all the points and mobility are. It seems like your wraithlords and prism should be able to shake and knock down his skimmer tanks reliably from long range--the psykerbikes if they get closer. Why is that not working?

Warp spiders seem like they would be less effective than other eldar against mobile tau--range too short and too much AR12-13 on the skimmers. Deepstriking hawks are a really bad idea, though: they'll land, get their measly str3 shots, then get wiped out by Tau rifle fire before they even get to move close to a tank.

I find vibrocannons to be an effective strategic tool against mobile Tau. They shoot into the spots where he wants to put foot troops, but if he wants to take them out, he has to close to smart missile range (where your bikes can zoom up and get him).

Of course, a couple of falcons full of fire dragons would solve all your problems, but maybe you don't want to go that way.

Flavius Infernus has the right of it. i play mech tau and the only armies i realy have trouble with are necrons, IWs and IG armored companies-because they have LOTS of anti-tank and i don't have enough.

i love people with assault armies against my tau because i have fletchettes on all my fish which means i win almost every CC assault i force my opponant to make on them.

FOF or a crisis suit army are the best ways to play tau but by comparison FOF/mech tau have less anti-tank then they are anti-troop. by comparison eldar may have less overall shots in an aldar mech force and hit on 4s instead of 3s for tau vehicles(with targeting array), but they can put some anti-tank in almost every mechanized unit.

 

against FOF who are only AV12. some falcons of your own mounting  BLs or war walkers can throw out some serious tank killing fire. then of course you can stick those fire dragon guys in a serpent and roll up on him with a squad filled with melta weapons for more anti-tank

The hawks are a very potent anti-tank mechanism. 19" charge range, when used in conjunction with other units to limit the mobility, combined with lots of auto-glances and easy-hits with the haywire grenades means they can pin a skimmer, hopefully blow it up during the tau turn, and then fly away so they don't get shot....

Posted By der Wiskinator on 03/13/2007 3:39 PM
The hawks are a very potent anti-tank mechanism. 19" charge range, when used in conjunction with other units to limit the mobility, combined with lots of auto-glances and easy-hits with the haywire grenades means they can pin a skimmer, hopefully blow it up during the tau turn, and then fly away so they don't get shot....

How do the hawks destroy the skimmer during the tau turn, you arn't locked in combat with it from your turn and can't assault it?

I would say Dark reapers or Wraithguards. Mailnly because I've played with those models for a long time now.

Dark  reapers massive amount of fire will probably kill a fish or atleast cripple it. But the downside is that they're a bit too expensive.

Wraithguards then. The pulse rifle relies on wounding on 3+. If they dont, the Firewarrior quickly lose efficiency. Now, with the new Eldar codex, they wound these walking mini-tanks on 5+. A quick numbecrunch tells me that an average of 90 shots is required to take 5 of them out (BS3 S5 AP4+). Those shots will in the meantime NOT kill your other models. You dont even need to give the warlock Enhance to make them a CC-unit against Tau (Yes, I use my wraithguards as CC-units, all 20 of them).

Other, cheaper tricks can be used aswell. The classic Vyper is one. I have a vyper with a scatterlaser, and that is a cheap way of saying 'fly 12", shoot the back, should end up with an average of 1 glansing hit'. Not much, but always something. I do believe that a fish only have AV10 in the back and against that I would use the scatterlaser.

I had to read up on the Vibrocanon to reply on that. I had 2 of these before bacause of the glansing hits. They never worked for me
But at a low points cost, it might be worth to try them again.

Reapers and Wraithguard wont do anything to a tau player.
Reapers are str 5 vs av12 and guys out of sight.
Wraithguard are to slow and will drop to crisis plasma rifles

The things that give me the most trouble are other skimmers, spiders (they murder AV12) and bike squads with attached farseer (2 str 9 throws will stunn a skimmer)
Hawks arent bad but they can die really fast when they charge.

But the best of all are the vibro cannons. Man those things are annoying.