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My friend suddenly found out how to use his tau and I had to cling onto an objective to tie him for the first time. He has 2 crisis suits and his that's the only thing that gets me into trouble. The heavy firepower is annoying to deal with as my SM's, and with my ork forget it since missile launchers slaughter 2 orks on average. His HQ has a weapon that has a large blast marker, it shoots air or something (sorry i forgot the name of it) which is ridiculously annoying and RAPES my ork boyz. The only real way i've found to deal with the battlesuits and his HQ are to tie them up in a melee. He also has one squad of firewarriors which have pulse rifles as well as pulse carbines (i believe they're assault 1 and 18" range) which give me no trouble since they kind of suck @ hitting. He also really enjoys kroot which are pretty easy to beat up, although he has a shaper so they're basically orks..but worse. So, my main question is, what can I do besides tieing up the HQ and Battlesuits, or am I doing the only thing I can really do?

Kroot units are a pain in the ass for orks. When I play my friends tau it is so annoying having to deal with that squad of 20 kroot with the shaper, although slipping in a kombi-skorcha somewhere or finding a burna with their name on it will pretty much toast them in one shot.

As far as taking care of the crisis suits, rokkit launchas and powerklaws that can move fast (i.e. trukkbound, bike, biker boss, stormboys, etc.) chew them up quick.

The best way to beat tau with lots of suits is to corner them so that they can't ballet dance around you shooting you with their girly-guns.

For more specific advice I can't really say much unless you told us a little more about you're list and his list.

HQ

1 Warboss (Cybork, Bosspole, PK)
1 Weirdboy (Warphead Upgrade)

Troops

5 Choppy Nobs
20 Slugga Boys (Nob, PK, bosspole)
20 Shoota Boyz (Nob, PK, bosspole, 2 Big Shoota)
20 Shoota Boyz (Nob, PK, bosspole, 2 Rockitts)

If you need more points add these below:

Fast Attack

1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt
1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt
1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt

Bump (please respond)

Ok, So the first step is to crowbar another unit or two into your army.
The first beardy thought is always going to be : Biker Nobs.
You might look into Lootas to give you a bit of range.
Filling out the Deffkoptas might be useful to you as well.
Fully tricked out Flash Gitz and a looted Wagon will go a long way.

I'm not sure what kind of points level you're playing at (1000?) but...

Deffkoptas with TL rokkits should be able to shoot at crisis suits and do a number on them (or force them to pay attention to the koptas while your boyz march in)

Otherwise, you just need to move your boyz across the table as quickly as possible. You might also try replacing the warpead with a Mek with a KFF for the cover save.

You could also make one of the nobz a painboy (shouldn't be hard to model a surgical mask and a syringe on a nob). This won't kill Crisis suits directly, but it's just another upgrade that will make your guys harder to kill as you march.

Greetings,

I have to come down against the Flash Gitz and the Wagon. Orks can be pretty darn shooty, but Flash Gitz are a fairly pricey option for shooting up something. Generally speaking you'll do better and more affordable with Lootas.

SmoovKriminal gave you the real key. The way to krump Tau is to do what they don't like to do, and that's get stuck in. The problem your list is facing vs. a Tau gunline is lack of mobility, all of your units are basically marching forward slowly to their orkishly brave demise as he sits there and blasts you to pieces with his pansy guns.

The best way to counter this is to get your boyz stuck in fast. 150 points or so will get you a trukk, 11 boyz, and a Nob with a PK and BP. Get two (or more) and just race them as fast as you can (red paint job helps) at the cowardly fish heads. Use your deffkoptas aggressively as well, get them up in there and pumping out rokkit shots, make him have to choose between stopping the rokkits or the trukks (if he's smart he'll pick trucks).

By turn two you probably have a good chance to engage him in H2H. Move the trukk 12 (13 with paint job) disembark up to 2" out, use your Waagh if you need it for an additional 1-6" and then assault for 6". Even without the Waagh if, at the begining of turn 2 your trukks are within 20" or so then you can engage him.

Another excellent option is Bikes, they're fast, have good dakka, and come in Nob or regular varieties, and both varieties can pack a PK to open up a can of tuna when you catch a Crisis Suit.

To sum up briefly - your list is a footsloggin' list, and that is pretty much one of the roughest types of list to try and defeat Tau with. The solution is to mechanize to increase your speed.

Regards,
Thor.

Thanks, I suppose I'll have to get some trukks since everyone is saying orks need 2 move fast to be effective. Also, how does Waaagh! work?

Waaagh! works like this:

turn two or later (only used once, only on turn 2 or later) you yell WAAAAAAGH at the top of your lungs.

Then, all of your squads that have the Waaaagh! special rule get fleet. So now they can move, then run, then assault (as opposed to move then assault, or move then run). Makes them a little quicker on that turn you want to assault.

And yes, footslogging is tough against tau. The footslogging list gets better as you get to larger points values, imo.

Wow, Waaagh is nasty. So turn one I move 13 inches due to a red paint job upgrade. Turn 2 i declare a waaagh, disembark squads from my trukks, move, run, declare assaults and romp some tau/kroot homos before they even get some sick shots off. Correct or incorrect?

Correct. Especially the part about the homos.

haha sorry if that offends anyone, gotta watch what I say sometimes I just get so frustrated with all those damn str 7 shots with ap of 2...not to mention every single gun they have has an ap of 5-4 which kills my boyz.

The new list:

HQ

1 Warboss (Cybork Body, Shoota/Skorcha Combi-Weapon, PK, Bosspole) (100 pts)
1 Weirdboy (Warphead Upgrade) (85 pts)

Troops

5 Choppy Nobz (100 pts)
12 Slugga Boyz (Dedicated Transport, red paint job, Nob, PK, bosspole) (152 pts)
12 Slugga Boyz (Dedicated Transport, red paint job, Nob, PK, bosspole) (152 pts)
12 Shoota Boyz (Dedicated Transport, red paint job, Nob, PK, bosspole, 2 Rockitts) (172 pts)
20 Shoota Boyz (Nob, PK, bosspole, 2 Big Shoota) (170 pts) This squad would be strictly for holding objectives.

Fast Attack

1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt (35 pts)
1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt (35 pts)
1 Deffkopta TL Rockitt (35 pts)

Total: 1036 pts

How does this faster army look? (Comment please)

s1gns wrote:Wow, Waaagh is nasty. So turn one I move 13 inches due to a red paint job upgrade.

13 inches is how far you can move and still assault out of the trukk. On turn one I'd advocate moving flat out and going 18" (19" with RPJ). A trukk is a fast vehicle after all, let it go fast when you're not assaulting.

As far as the trukk cost, I'm fairly certain there are some strict rules about revealing specifics. If you don't have an Ork Codex you should really take some effort to get one, as it will make playing them infinitely easier and also show you some options to make those choppy Nobz better.

As far as your list goes, a few quick thoughts. First, Nobz can also get a dedicated Trukk. Nobz + Warboss + trukk = bad news for fish 'eads. Also, are you putting the weirdboy in with the Nobz and Boss? If not then you might want to drop him in with one of the other trukk mobs, just make sure you have a squad of 11, join the Warphead to them, and Bob's your uncle.

Generally speaking a mob of 12 is too small if they're not in a trukk. Depending on the point value of the game this could vary though. What point value are you guys playing at? A potential option would be to drop one of the trukk boyz mobs, put the Nobz in a trukk, and then use the extra points to beef out the footsloggin' mob to a larger, and more durable, size. Again though, depending on the point value of the game, may not be needed.

It's really just dependent on how much my friend wants to play / how many points he has. How far can a vehicle move total? Can you run a vehicle as well? I have a codex too, I just looked it up and a trukk costs 40 points with a RPJ. I may just get another box of nobs and make a painboy and put my warboss in it. As for the 12 man squad of shootas for objectives, I meant to put 20. I guess i got a little "12" happy on the keyboard

A vehicle's movement is explained in the base rulebook and is dependent upon its vehicle type. Different movement speeds also affect whether passengers can shoot, and how many of its own weapons a vehicle can fire.

Trukks are fast vehicles, allowing them to move up to 18" in one turn (6" if you want your passengers, like that shoota boyz mob, to be able to shoot). The only type of vehicles that run are Walkers (dreadnoughts and the like).

Sweet, this thread has a ton of usefull information for me. Thanks to everyone who helped me out. I have another question though. If my trukk gets toasted while I have troops on it, do I lose the squad that was on the trukk? Cuz that would suck a big one imo.

well because of the ramshackle rule they would all probably live. but as a tau veteran there are a few tricks to battling my kind and sence i will probably never fight you i will tell. one of the biggist things i found is using a battle wagon with deff roller because one time i was play ing my mom aand i killed 7 terminators in that one turn and if it can kill terminators it can kill suits. another thing is get some space marine scout snipers because the battle suits are still infantry. and the large blast gun for a commander is a airbursting fragmentation launceher. but i will tell you if your opponent uses a cyclic ion blaster your nob squad will be dead in one turn with that weapon alone. for me on battleing kroot is you dont want to shoot at them cause there exelent marksmen but the big thing is sence there in groups of 21 ussually use a killacannon or just a regular kannon. maybe some burnas 2. oh yeah one more thing dont kill a etherial cause if you dont the tau wont be able to fail there morale checks keeping them in close combat plus if he dies all tau become better at close combat almost good as kroot. another thinng is kroot are ussually used to smoke out your people or protect you from mele so use the kyoon stratedgy(made by tau commander pure tide) to lure the kroot out of the support of tau guns so if you can slatter them theres nothing between you and some eads. ps i can copy the stats page of my codex for you.

another thing is what i would do is have 2 battle wagons in the front with defrollers then two trucks in the back so the low armour trucks are hidden behind the front armour of the wagons plus because of the deffrollers you could wipe out kroot squads easy by just running over them.

I still love 5th ed for getting rid of the Devilfish strategy... So as not to steal this thread!...

My friend plays with a Biker Warboss and some Nob Bikers. All I know is he gets me on turn two with those PK, wrecks the Dread, Defiler, or kills a whole squad. Doesn't matter that I attack first, he attacks harder. It's always painful. My suggestion to any ork player is get some Nob Bikers.

Get some more deffkoptas in their. They are a pain in the but to kill if you're a Tau player. I've played against them and they are so hard to kill! They are also really good at taking out suits with the rokkit luanchers. If you really have issues with Battlesuits, just get lots and lots.

Also, the Kroots greatest weakness is getting shot at. They have a horrible save (actually, none). So your cheap slugga-boys can have a party shooting them up.

Actually the kroot have a pretty good save because of their fieldcraft special rule. There is a ton of forest on the game board.

Aah. On my usual gameboard, we have about two small forests.

Yah, the fieldcraft can be a pain. In that case, your best bet is just to charge them. Then they don't get any save, and you get a ton of attacks. The only problem is that you will probably lose some guys as well.

I don't know how well this would work, but a unit of nobs with a painboy might be more effective for the job.

Dude stop fielding the Weirdboy, one HQ is enough... And the Nobs on foot, they're free kills and wasted points. Give em a Trukk at least.

I only have a Warboss and Weirdboy.

How are Nobs wasted points as well. What if you have a painboy in the squad, the board I play on has a lot of 4+ cover. With a fearless, FNP squad of Nobs and a Warboss attached, how exactly is it wasted?


*Sigh...sorry about the double post. I thought I hit edit but posted a 2nd reply like a fool.*

I don't think it is wasted. They are really tough, and they also have 2 wounds. They will get 2 4+ saves most of the times, thuse quartering the hits they will take. What's not to like?

Yeah, plus FNP is good.

FNP FTW

Except when you're a Tau player, then it is very bad. The already semi-annoying nobs get more annoying.