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Hello all,
I play tau (awesome), and I have some friends and family that play 40k. 3 are space marines, 2 are crons, 1 is orks, and 1 is also tau.

I can easily wipe crons, orks, and tau off the board, but the space marines are giving me trouble. What are some good tactics for tau against space marines? Please no completly obvious once like blast the out of 'em.

The most annoying unit of their armies is their termies. The bane of my existance. I just can't seem to kill them. Help

Shooty terminators or assaulty ones? With assault terminators, you're only option is blast the feth out of them. With shooty terminators, standard Fireknife suits should put out the pain.

Well, first we're going to need to see your list/model selection.

However, for anti-termie try plasma/fusion blaster crisis HQs. Termies get roasted by them. 6 plasma, 3 melta shots per turn, at an assumed BS5 from markerlights, kill lots of termies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RustyKnight wrote:Fireknife

*slap*
WE DO NOT USE THAT WORD HERE.
BAD, BAD RUSTYKNIGHT.

For the shooty/ assualty termies: One will methotically move up, scaring the out of me and one will deep strike and try to slam into my fw.

My list:

HQ:
Special Character Ethereal

Suit with frag progecter and plasma rifle
bodyguards with plasma rifles and burst cannons

Elites:

2 suits, tl fusion blasters and missle pod

6 stealths, 2 with fusion blasters

Troops:

2x 14 kroot w/ 2 kroot hounds and shaper

2x 12 fw squad with pulse rifles

Fast Attack:
6 pathfinders with devilfish

Heavy Support
2 X88s with 2 shield drones

1 hammerhead

Against the deep striking termies I tend to spread out my army so if he deep strikes near one, he can wipe them out and get into CC with another unit. With the normally placed termies I send my stealths to harass and annoy them while my railguns blow up his vehicles and dreadnoughts. The stealths do a decent job in holding them up but only kill 1-2 termies per turn. Idk why, my stealths are good at everything except killing those termies! If you're wondering why I don't use my suits against them this is my answer. My HQ suit is going after the mainstay of their army and their commander. The tl suits are my tank busters and are usually deep-struck near some juicy rear armor and do work.

Canonness Rory wrote:
*slap*
WE DO NOT USE THAT WORD HERE.
BAD, BAD RUSTYKNIGHT.

Eeeek. Am I to understand that zee Fireknife is no longer the IT build?

RustyKnight wrote:Eeeek. Am I to understand that zee Fireknife is no longer the IT build?

Yeah, A lot of people are starting to not like the fireknife as much, because while it is versatile, it is not good at any job. The Plasma gun, at 24" max, doesn't help it's ranged AT very much, and the missile pod wastes 36" of range and doesn't deny terminators their save. It is also very expensive. Deathrains, for significantly cheaper, at much better anti-tank. The plasma/fusion is much better anti-terminator, and can kill land raiders and stuff if push comes to shove.

Hey! I saw fireknives do great once!

Granted they were commander bodyguards/wound buckets...and there wasn't any cover on that board....but hey, what they shot at, didn't live! (IIRC though there was only one 'fireknife' suit in that squad, the rest were different Edit: Reason for this being Tau player forgot half his models...but he still managed to win!)

(The best way, really, is massed shots. Shooting burst cannons (I know, lol right?) from five or six different units into a squad of marines, they won't be able to make every single save, throw some kroot/fire warrior shooting on them too and they will fold eventually.)

20 rapid-firing kroot wreck stuff.

Vespid, if you KNOW you're going to be fighting marines, might be a good investment. Dont use them against anything else though.

I just now noticed that space pope is in his list

The rifle+burstcannon is good for standard marines....terminators are odd, for assault terminators just shoot them to death and pray they don't get to you. As for regular terminators you have two options, the one rory mentioned (Fusion+Plasma) sounds like it would do the trick. If that fails, drop railgun rounds into them if your afraid they might get too close. (that is desperation though...but hey, could work)

Never underestimate a spacmarines fear of AP2 and 3.
Also, fodder. Space marines love to shoot+assult, but they're points heavy. Other armies often have more units on the board. Take a particularly cheep group of somthing-a-rather and just stick 'em in the way and ignore them untill you can shoot them again (aka, once they're out of combat)
In chaos, Spawn are good for this. In Tau, i dont know. Remember, SM's have krak grenades automatically, so DONT use a walker.

Plasma + Fusion on your suits. None of this Missile-pod, Burst Cannon, Frag Projector nonsense against terminators - you get AP 2 and AP 1 on everything you can.

It might help to split your firewarriors into 3 squads of 8 just so less of your army dies once his terminators charge.

Dropping the Kroot shapers for some extra points for your suits wouldn't be the worst thing in the world either.

Whats this about fireknives not being good?

They are the best suit available by far.
You should max them out in any list. At 1750 and up I run 9.

Also they kill non-th/ss terminators really really easily.

They suit bodyguard squad is not for termies. As for the frag projecter, I have found many uses for it. But when I have some extra cash I'm planning to buy another squad of of 3 suits, so plasma and fusion sounds good to me.

Timmah wrote:Whats this about fireknives not being good?

They are the best suit available by far.
You should max them out in any list. At 1750 and up I run 9.

Also they kill non-th/ss terminators really really easily.

*slap*
BAD TIMMAH.

uh ok...

Your tau army is not mechanized
Neither are your suits focused. Shooting has changed dramatically in fifth, its unlikely you will get more then 2-3 rounds off at range, and 1 up close. So I prefer my pure shooty units to be focused, designed to kill one thing. The problem with say burst cannon/fusion blaster suits is they do a half assed job at killing terminators and hordes.

I recommend running one unit with say missile pod and fusion blaster and another with burst cannon and missile launcher. Gives you anti everything and some good range, but the suits are more focused.

I also recommend devilfish, overcosted as they are.

Now hangon. Fireknife/deathrain suits might be useful in another way.

If he used them to pop transports, then had two Ionheads, he could pop vehicles with his suits, and lay into the targets that pile out with the ion cannon. (The only problem is the cannon is only AP3, so you still need some AP2 somewhere in the list, and the suits are a great place for it)

Still, I think the above build is suboptimal (I mean ionheads). It might work against regular mech-marines hiding in metal boxes, but against large groups of terminators it will fail.

And i am entirely against the idea of true list tailoring. I feel it makes the game easy. Now realized he has a terminator problem and throwing in two or three ap2 guns is fine, but I would never recommend adding in two things like ionheads.

90% of the time someone is losing to army x its because their playstyle is wrong. I still feel he needs some fish for those fire warriors.

Hey OP, how about you describe to us how you counter his units, how you deploy, how he plays stuff like that. Im willing to bet you are making playing mistakes, not list mistakes.

Just when I thought the community was coming around and realizing fireknives are the best suits, kroot are good, firewarriors/devilfish are bad. This thread pops up and makes me cry.

Fireknives are decent, but I wouldn't say 'best'.
Deathrains are good at what they do, Fireknives at what they do.

Kroot are always a mixed bag.

FW/DF depends on what kind of list you are running.

Timmah wrote:Whats this about fireknives not being good?

They are the best suit available by far.
You should max them out in any list. At 1750 and up I run 9.

Also they kill non-th/ss terminators really really easily.

Timmah is right. Burst cannons are crap since those who normally would get covers will and force you to be in 18 inches rather than 24 for the plasmarifle. Having a mobile autocannon also works nicely for tau to take on light vehicles.

It would be great if there was another answer to marines, but the codex isn't that flexible.

You need multiple shot ap2 weapons to beat marines. Thats not really a point of contention.

There is only one unit that can do that, and its the crisis team with plasma rifles.

Depending on how much other light vehicle kill or heavy vehicle kill you have. Give your crisis suits either a missile pod or a fusion blaster.

Due to tau's depressing lack of strength 8 and strength 7, my guess is that you'll need the missile pods. Due to Tau's impressive access to strength 10 ap1, I'm guessing you won't need fusion blasters.

If you plan to have markerlight support, the crisis suits can take multi-trackers, if you don't have any markerlight support your crisis suits can take targeting arrays.

Those plasma rifles will certainly help you out immediately. Deterring your opponents from closing in. Which is exactly what you want.

First off ... an ethereal? How's that working out for you?

Anyways ....
My answer? More railguns. Hitting them hard from far away and denying the saves is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Overall though you need to play keep away with terminators and blast away at them. Fireknife is a great build. It does not specialize but when you do not know what you are going to be up against it fills the roles of various things quite nicely.

Basically you need to redo your tactics. You have a static gunline. Grab another group of pathfinders and you end up with a second devilfish. This gives you mobility for your Firewarriors who you want to survive. While this helps you also need to realize that your Kroot squads are too small. You would be better off with a single squad of 20 Kroot and 4 hounds. Outflank these guys and assault the terminators. The sheer amount of attacks you have will ensure you take out your opponents.

On the note of the IT build ... there is not IT build for crisis suits. They can be tooled towards an army but overall there is no exact build to take on everything. Deathrains excel at anti-vehicle fire. Fireknives are good all around providing multiple roles but suffer from generalization. Fusion and Plasma (Helios I believe) is great at anti-terminator but suffers from short range.

Drop the Space Pope. Winning to follow.

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Drop the Space Pope. Winning to follow.

QFT. Until new rules come out or you can take two of them the Space Pope is not battle worthy.

Okay you asked me what I was doing against the terminators before. I would deter them with my stealth suits and when they get kited in, I blast them to bits with my broadsides/hammerhead. Before all of this, I have my 2 squads of fw a good 30 inches back in los of his basic marines. They hold their own and ties up the marines for my kroot, if not killing them. As for the kroot, I outflank them if it is a smaller board and infliltrate if it is a bigger one. In the last few games I've played they have done well at what they do, CC. My fusion blaster suits deep strike behind the enemy heavys if there not dead yet by the broadsides and the hammerhead. They make the enemy look at them and gives me an extra turn of shooting while they're distracted

I AM planning on getting 2 more devilfish for my fw and starting to go more mech tau.

Oh and, fusion blasters on stealths are effective.

As for the ethereal question. Just fine. He's a special character and I had it aproved here. He's got a nice ap 3 attack and once, when he got in CC, he killed my enemy's space marine commander. I like him and he's very effective.

And a unit of crisis suits has tl fusion blaster and missle pod. I have a lot of markerlights and my suits have multi-trackers.

Fireknives are a fine build for a Crisis suit. Until I see a lot of evidence to the contrary, they're the first loadout I'd recommend, and the one I'd take if I could only take one.

That said, people are ignoring the fact that it's about building an army. You don't just take Fireknives, or Deathrains, or whatever the build with Plasma/Fusion is called.

The fact is, Crisis suits LOVE hard cover. While Jump-Shoot-Jump is pretty nerfed in 5e, there are still times you can find enough cover to make use of it.

These opportunities are usually few and far between on the table, so you can't expect to load up on Fireknives, and then find convenient walls to pop in and out of, exactly 28 inches away from Terminators...

Instead you need to have a unit of Deathrains who can sit in the back behind the best piece of "far away" cover, and do their thing.

Then the Fireknives use the choice piece in the middle.

And the Plas/Fusion guys Deep Strike and try to smoke a Land Raider or Predator, or jump on a Terminator squad.

There are various range "bands" on the table, and there's a Crisis suit for each...

Oh, and none of those Suits have a Burst Cannon. Is S5AP5 seriously a rare commodity in a Tau list? No.

If its assault termies, I say nail their transport TOP PRIORITY, since most list field them in LR's and then if you manage to kill it early, just ignore them, they are slowww. Reg termies, depends where they deploy them, walk them forward, DS, needs to know/....

If there's an assault transport you should not be using crisis suits to attack it. Broadsides are suppose to be taking those out. Crisis can deal with what's inside. Stay at max range and fire away with whatever you have. As they get closer move back farther. If you're at 24" and fire then jump back to 30" the closest they can get is 18" with running. Then if you jump back fire at 24"" and jump back again you are at 30". Now if they have jump packs this becomes a bit trickier since they have an extra 6". Missile pods give you the 36" firing range and 42" total end of move range. You can lose up to 6" a turn with the squad running at you. Plasma rifles you reduce the total ranges by 12".

The problem with kiting is that:
1. the board is only so big, you can move back only so much.
2. close to board edge means morale tests are more critical than usual.

And it's not just the rhino's coming at them.
There is a high possibility of Infiltrators, Outflankers, Deepstrikers, and Drop Pods.