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I wanna ask how you can stop those broadsides.
I mean last time I fougth broadsides they shot my carnifex and wounded him on a 2+
killing him after two turns and then they proceeded and killed my zoanthrope.
leaving me with only two synapse creatures left making it extremely dificult to attack without ending in insictive behavior.

So I'm asking for some sneeky tactics to crush those broadsides.

Try Scuttling genestealers

Arbalest wrote:Try Scuttling genestealers

Nice Idea but there is one drawback my genestealers are a retinue to my broodlord and if I let them infiltrate I might get short on synapse creaures within range of my non synapse critters.

lictor?

Put warriors infront of your MCs. They get a +4 coversave to those railguns. Give the warriors deathspitters and wound the broadsides on +2 and overload them with saves.

Also it gives you more synapse on the board and gaunts can give the warriors a +4 save as well.

With nids you gotta overload the enemy with plenty of targets. Lictors also help but easily can be crushed by suits.

There are probably better synapse options for your little guys than a Broodlord walking across the board. Outflanking genestealers creates a 13-18" threat zone on either side of the board.

Lictors do well vs broadsides... run out of cover and hit them with rending klaws

Except then, after a single shield drone dies to the Lictor's ferocious assault, the Broadsides turn around and pound the Lictor into absolute mush before resuming their relentless bombardment on any Hive Tyrants that they can see.

Little nids
in front of
Medium nids
in front of
Monster nids

Overlapping cover ftw.

The wave concept works well, like has been pointed out. It takes the pressure of you to go as fast as you can after the Broadsides. Instead you can spend your time devouring everything else until you reach the Broadsides. Besides no unit can reach the Broadsides faster than turn 2 at which point you should be close enough to the main Tau battle line anyway.

However, if you really want to take them down as fast as you can try out these options:

1) A large unit of Gargoyles can reach the Broadsides as soon as turn 2. Although the Gargoyles will not kill the Broadsides they will keep them silent for a good time. I wont recommend this unless you are confident that the Broadsides will not get support from a nearby unit of Kroots or other Battle Suits. Also, a large unit of Gargoyles advancing fast towards you opponents battle line will most likely draw attention and be shot to pieces.

2) Raveners posess the speed to move up a flank or to strike from the middle if well protected. A turn 2 charge is perhaps unrealistic but a turn 3 charge is almost given. With that in mind I would rather try to sneak up a flank since it will most likely enhance their survivability. A unit of 4 Raveners should to the trick.

3) My favorite unit are the tooled up Leaping Tyranid Warriors. They are though enough to walk straight up the table (behind a screen of trusty Gaunts, of course) and crush any opposing enemy unit. These will however never reach the Broadsides until turn 3 at best so you might want to mix this tactic with the wave concept.

4) There are alternatives to melee. A group of Carnifexes can blast the Broadsides with Barbed Stranglers and Venom Cannons. Eventually the Battle Suits will fail their save (or the Drones) and then its a test for Pinning and a Moral test. With Ld8 (right?) they will fail some of those tests. This can also be implemented with the wave concept.

When all is said and done I think reaching a well place unit of Broadsides will always be difficult. Just learn to live with the pain and put something else in priority.

Good luck!

sourclams wrote:Except then, after a single shield drone dies to the Lictor's ferocious assault, the Broadsides turn around and pound the Lictor into absolute mush before resuming their relentless bombardment on any Hive Tyrants that they can see.

Little nids
in front of
Medium nids
in front of
Monster nids

Overlapping cover ftw.

I know everything abbout shielddrones, one of them almost killed a gaunt in close combat.

Broadsides are not a problem. They are an expensive though fairly surefire way of taxing you one wound each a turn.

This is not a lot for the points.

Suck it up. Broadside heavy Tau cannot remotely kill enough nids to save themselves and they force the Tau player to play static.

I think you have been suckering yourself, you see the twin linked S10 and see death. For any other army I would agree, but those railguns cannot even kill a warrior outright without concentrated fire.

Methinks you are getting that lot of S5 and S7 fire and not seeing it because you are being blinded by the S10. By focusing on kill-the-broadsides you may not be moving to kill the rest of the Tau army in an optimised way.

Next game think ignore Broadsides, kill fire warriors. You will lose a carnifex or two but dont be fazed by that, just plough through. All your swarm is expensible anyway.

Also dont worry about the lack of sweeping advance. If is enough to just lock Tau in combat, get any of your nids in the line, dont worry about numbers just tie up as many units as possible. If only three gaunts make it into a unit that is fine, you can kill it later, tie it up now.
Where possible slam your units into the gaps between units and assault both.

EDIT: Thanks for the catch Orlanth. Post removed as I misread the OP

That may be so, but when was the last time you saw them in a Tyranid codex.

Please RTQ.

What Orlanth said.

'Tis a beautiful thing to have high priced "look at me!" units that still do a bunch of damage.

Ignore the Broadsides until they are all that's left. Kill his troops and Crisis Suits, they are WAY more dangerous.

Orlanth is in the right area.

I played a game against Tau last weekend, and I see two things that are important to this thread:

1) The Broadsides seem scary, but it's the Fireknife suits that did my Fexes in.

2) You can't really hide, so go get them. I tried to sneak my Fexes around in cover and get saves, and I paid for it. If I had just gone right at the Tau, Fexes along with the little guys, all in a wave, they'd have gotten there and crushed the Tau suits. Instead, he whittled my big guys down with Jump-Shoot-Jump and Broadside fire.

Despite my shoddy play, I narrowly lost the game. Had I just rushed him he'd have killed a Fex or two or even three, then lost, because he had nowhere to run.

Thanks for posting everybody I'l keep these things in mind.
And you know what orlanth you are right it is just one wound per turn unless he has 3 broadsides.