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I threw this together hoping it will work against my friend's various Tau lists. Please feel free to pick it apart and throw in any and all tips you've got. Thanks!

HQ:
Pedro 175
Chaplain powerfist, jump pack 130

TROOP:
Scouts 100
Tact 185 plasma gun, plasma cannon
Tact 185 meltagun, las

ELITE:
Termies 400

FAST ATTACK:
speeder squad 200
multi melta/assault cannon
multi melta/missiles

assault squad, captain w/powerfist 215

HEAVY SUPPORT:
Predator 130
bolter sponsons
lascannon turret

I plan to deep strike my speeders and assault squad. I want to attach my Chaplain to the assault squad for good measure. The termies will deep strike as well, maybe later in the game. I'm going to infiltrate my scouts in the "hopeful" deepstrike area to hopefully create a bottleneck. And I'm going to keep Kantor, the Tact squads and the Predator together.

you spend 345 points for a assaultsquad with chaplain. If you deepstrike them in front of a battlecannon the can all die in one turn. Its better to have a thunderhammer/stormshield terminator unit. The 3+ inv save does the trick. A little dull but its better...

Maybe its better to put a tactical squad with Pedro in a droppod. This way you can get really close to Tau units and the dont like that. If your droppod has a teleport beacon you can deepstrike you termies close and get a +1Attack from Pedro.

Why do you got a Plasma cannon? I think that your Terminators should kill all the 2+ save units. If you want to stay back and shoot, get a lascannon.

I think that speeders are to expensive and to fragile(also kill points) for what the do. For about 100p you got a twin linked lascannon Predator.


Its not a bad list but you should think about what you want to do with your units/army.

200 points for a speeder squadron? that seams like a lot. When they're in one squadron, any immobilized counts as destroyed you know. Better to break them up since it looks like you have a fast attack slot to spare. IMO, just give them the multimeltas, the range for tau disruption pods(their vehicle thingy) is conveniently the same range as the melta special rule; 12"s. Go tank hunting!

Your predator is a sitting duck, tau railguns will eat it alive, strength 10 vs. Armour 13, it's a waste of points. to attempt to out shoot tau at range is hard for space marines, but you can out maneuver them with scouts, drop pods and rhinos. Get in their face, they don't like that! IF you do take a devastator squad, i would suggest 4 heavy bolters in a 10 man squad.

Scouts; they are troops(scoring units), infiltrate, and are still better at close combat than firewariors, use this to your advantage. Sniper rifiles are the bane of battlesuits.

take some teleport homers, in as many squads as you can (can scouts have them?), so that your Terminators show up where you want/need them, but i wouldn't get attached to them. You don't need them to live (they're not troops), you just need them to KILL!

an interesting tactic (i haven't tried this, so i make no guarantees) would be to load up on scout squads, and use them to attack/assault the tau from all directions. park your tac squads on objectives close to your own deployment zone and just have them defend. Everyone always expects power armor space marines, and takes weapons to kill power armor, throw off the tau by having a different army selection then what he would normally expect, and then play it differently. Just a thought.

I'm rocking the plasma cannon because this guy likes to run Piranha's as troop hunters. I hope to pop them real quick.

I will break up the speeders, that's too risky leaving them as a group.

He's only running one railgun, and I'm hoping to have my termies or scouts pop it asap.

I'd throw Pedro in a pod, but I use his orbital bombardment on the first turn.

How to teleport homers work?

And I do have roughly 30 points left to work with, I could throw in the pod and see how that works for me. Though I'm wondering, should I drop a squad to add a Dread? And would a Dev squad benefit me at all?

Dreads work well, as do massed Scouts. However, the one time i tried a Scout themed list, we rolled Spearhead deployment. Result: One very tight Tau firebase, and a lot of dead scouts. I pulled a tie out, but it was a near run thing. YMMV.

Hmmm, there are a couple things with your list I see. First, if you intend to be hunting Piranhas, why plasma cannon? Take a Missile Launcher, save the points, pen easier, and don't worry about scatter.

Second: Why a PF on the Chappie? It's nice for the Instant Death, but he already comes with a free power weapon. If you need to trim points for anything, I'd look here first.

Third: Pedro. Not impressive, especially as you have no sternguard. 3+ doesn't quite cut it for a high priced IC, especially against Tau plasma rifles. Are you running Crimson Fists? If not, ditch him, take a Captain/Master (if you really, really, absolutely have to have the Orb. Bombardment), give him a Jump Pack, Relic blade, Storm shield, and Artificer Armor. For slightly more than Pedro (I think, memory's foggy right now), you now have a 2+/3++, Str.6, 4 A (on charge) monster. Will definitely add some oomph to your assault squad.

Four: Why DS? Have you had some problems moving 12+D6 across the board? Terrain should alleviate some of the shooting. I much prefer charging across the board to getting shot to bits after DS.

Five: More Assault! Redundancy is excellent, and 2 Assault squads gives him quite a bit more to shoot at. I'd get the points from the Pred, reducing a speeder to just a multi-melta, and ditching the other speeder. Give Teleport Homers to the Assault Squads and Scout Squad, and you won't have to worry about Termies scattering. Oh, and putting your lone speeder in reserve, then DS'ing it next to a vehicle is a very nice way to one shot the target. You may lose a cheap speeder, but a Hammerhead is worth a lot more.

good but maby specilise pred and dev

good but maby specilise pred and dev

smreferee wrote:Dreads work well, as do massed Scouts. However, the one time i tried a Scout themed list, we rolled Spearhead deployment. Result: One very tight Tau firebase, and a lot of dead scouts. I pulled a tie out, but it was a near run thing. YMMV.

Hmmm, there are a couple things with your list I see. First, if you intend to be hunting Piranhas, why plasma cannon? Take a Missile Launcher, save the points, pen easier, and don't worry about scatter.

Second: Why a PF on the Chappie? It's nice for the Instant Death, but he already comes with a free power weapon. If you need to trim points for anything, I'd look here first.

Third: Pedro. Not impressive, especially as you have no sternguard. 3+ doesn't quite cut it for a high priced IC, especially against Tau plasma rifles. Are you running Crimson Fists? If not, ditch him, take a Captain/Master (if you really, really, absolutely have to have the Orb. Bombardment), give him a Jump Pack, Relic blade, Storm shield, and Artificer Armor. For slightly more than Pedro (I think, memory's foggy right now), you now have a 2+/3++, Str.6, 4 A (on charge) monster. Will definitely add some oomph to your assault squad.

Four: Why DS? Have you had some problems moving 12+D6 across the board? Terrain should alleviate some of the shooting. I much prefer charging across the board to getting shot to bits after DS.

Five: More Assault! Redundancy is excellent, and 2 Assault squads gives him quite a bit more to shoot at. I'd get the points from the Pred, reducing a speeder to just a multi-melta, and ditching the other speeder. Give Teleport Homers to the Assault Squads and Scout Squad, and you won't have to worry about Termies scattering. Oh, and putting your lone speeder in reserve, then DS'ing it next to a vehicle is a very nice way to one shot the target. You may lose a cheap speeder, but a Hammerhead is worth a lot more.

I'll downgrade to missiles. No big loss there

Powerfist on the Chaplain... Well... It looks neat, and I loves me some power fist. But if the better way to go would be to drop the fist and throw on a bolter or something, then I'll probably just go that way.

I love deep strike. Deviation can be a , but how freaked out will you get if all of a sudden you're fighting marines in front of you, then suddenly you're in the middle of a marine sandwich. Good fun...

A 10 man Assault Squad and 5 termies isn't enough assault? I suppose not... I'm honestly not really sure

I'm not sure what to really do with the speeders at this point... They've been good to me in the past, so I'm not sure.

And would specializing the Pred really be effective? The way I'm looking at it right now, I've got a good tank hunter that can pick off troops that may get too close.

The PF isn't a big deal, it's just if you need to trim something, look there first. PFs do do well against suits.

DS can work quite well, especially if you get those scout squads with the homers up front. It might be interesting to completely ditch your tactical squads, take 3 maxed out Scout squads instead.
I've had bad experiences with Termies and AP2 weapons, which most Tau players have an abundance of. I'm mainly worried that your nice 400pt squad will go up in smoke after one massive round of shooting. I think I was originally implying to ditch the Termies, and use those points on more Assault guys. Cheaper, faster, and you can sweeping advance. Always good.

Yes, it is most definitely worth it to just go Autocannon/HB on the Pred. 85 points for 8 shots? Yes please! The Lascannon can be useful, but it's too expensive. The TOF is much better.

A plan survives until your units get into contact with the enemy.
First, I'd drop the mediocre Assault Marine squad including the Chaplain.
This allows you to add 2 Predators or 2 Vindicators.
SM are better played in a counter-strike fashion.

Post the army list that you take the next time you play tau, and tell us what each unit did during the game and how it worked out (ie a battle report) I would to hear how things turned out.

I ended up playing a 3 person free for all that required holding objectives instead of kill points. I was thrown in the middle of the table, Tau on one side, Space Marines on the other. I ended up sandwiched and fought a two front battle. I came in second place, which wasn't so bad I guess.

I'll post a battle report when I play the above list or a variant of the list once I play for kill points.

Thanks!

When you play a normal game post your list and how each unit did.

Ug, if they put you in the middle, I hope that they gave you double the points to work with. Otherwise it sounds a little unfair. I find that "king of the hill" works best for 3 people battles. And limit each side to 1500, just to keep things moving.

In the 3 man match, we all played a 1500 point army. So I was screwed, but I had fun, so it isn't a big deal

Tonight I played a 1750 game with a fairly successful list. I won, which is good. We went off of how many unit points were killed.

I ran:

HQ:
Chaplin w/jump pack 130
Chapter Master w/storm bolter+power fist 130ish...

Troop:
Tact Squad flamer/missile 170
Tact Squad flamer/missile 170
5 man scout squad w/missile and cameo cloaks+teleport homer 100

Heavy:
Whirlwind 85
Predator w/las+sponson bolters 130
Dev squad, 6 men, las, plasma, missile, multimelta 196

Elite:
Dread w/multimelta+missiles 115
Dread w/multimelta+storm bolter/ccw 105
10 Termies w/assault cannon 430

Total cost(roughly) 1759, though I think I may have added more here than was on the field. I'm going off of memory.

One tact squad and a dread stayed with my Predator. The Pred instant killed their HQ battlesuit, then was wiped out. The tact squad was brought down to one man on the last turn in cc with some Kroot. My first dread was wrecked, but took one of two crisis suits with him.

I kept my whirlwind, Chaplain, tact squad #2, and chapter master together. The whirlwind did a lot of damage throughout the game, wrecking kroot and a fire warrior squad. The tact squad w/chappy and chapter master swept up the remains, and the second Dread worked at a Devilfish that dumped the fire warrior squad near by.

I infiltrated my scouts a bit too far back, but they brought in my termies which took out a Piranha and some fire warriors. My scouts managed to destroy a weapon and immobilize the enemy's only hammerhead.

Over all, it was a good game. I played rather defensively and I feel like this is a decent list to keep working with.

edit:
Please forgive any typos! I typed this up on the crapper