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I have to admit right off the bat that I'm a new Tau player. That said, I've played two games vs. a friend and his nurgle cheese and I'm getting seriously munched. Both of our fights go like this (1000 pt fights):

My turn one, try to pop his rhinos loaded with nurgle, toughness 5, marines; they're set-up behind cover and my broadsides don't do the job.

His turn one, move everything up 12 inches, drop pie plate on FWs from battle cannon on nurgle crab.

My turn two, actually pop one rhino, nurgle marines fall out and don't take a single wound from the explosion....yeah feel no pain and 5 toughness. I really don't get how a vehicle blows up with you in it and you don't get hurt, but ok. FWs shoot a bunch at the marines that fall out and he maybe, maybe loses one or two, they are fearless so they stand there.

Basically it's all wash, rinse, repeat until they get into hth and wipe me out or his general comes along and turns people into chaos spawn....even my general (great a general with a 4 toughness, he only needs to roll a 5 or 6). Then one of the champions (or chosen or whatever) turns into a greater daemon and the fun really starts. I especially liked how his jump-pack general took out my whole HQ unit and just took 1 wound.

Sarcasm aside; is it possible to fight nurgle as tau or do I just need to give up now?

Well the plan to take out the rhinos is good.

Markerlights to reduce cover saves + Railgun is decent. Missile Pods are great vs. rhinos.
Hell, even random str 5 shooting can get some decent results.

Silence Ranged weapons, or minimize damage keeping away and using cover.
Take away mobility.
And focus fire.
All the while keeping mobile and away from stuff.

Other than that, I don't think there's much you can do, out side of random stuff like a skimmer wall or something like that.

Fusion guns and plasma rifles are not entirely cost effective when spammed, but they do get through FNP and wound a bit easier, though half will get stopped by cover saves.

Which comes back round to markerlights...namely Pathfinders.
Keep them in cover, and preferably high up.

How were you set up? Table edges? Quarters? Quarters can be a little better for Tau.

How many of his vehicles did you neutralize? What were you doing with your Broadsides if you did blow them up?

Did you mount your firewarriors?

What is your army list? Can you describe his better?

You need to be a bit more specific in your post/battle-report.

Last time I played my friend Jason's Nurgle Marines, he got almost on top of me but I tabled him in the end.

Yay for Instant Death negating Feel No Pain.

Yea, instant death negates FNP, but seriously, how many do you have?

Fusion guns and Railguns.
Both are only a single shot.

Then there is the plasma rifle, that gets through FNP due to AP2 rather than instant death.

All three have issues with cover saves as well.

Tau is one of the more difficult armies to play in my opinion, as the assault phase is definately the most powerful phase in 5e and we pretty much suck at it.

However once you get the hang of it, it gets much better. What does your army look like? It took me months to finally hammer out units that worked for me, before that I was just getting taken to the wood shed constantly.

You need AP 2 and AP 1 weapons against the guys your facing, not only do they ignore their armor, they don't allow feel no pain rolls. A unit of pathfinders wouldn't hurt, to help take those cover saves off of the rhinos, and/or a hammerhead to manuver for a clear shot. At 1k points it can be a tight fit for points, it gets better at 1500 and 2k (I always find games over 2k start becoming more difficult again, as the board becomes more crowded and difficult to manuver on).

Aside from that, pop transports with railguns and missile pods, and focus fire on one unit at a time to wear them down (the fastest units first).

You may want to keep your FW inside your transport until you get a good chance to swing up and rapid fire a unit. They are too fragile to survive outside for long.

Sanctjud wrote:Yea, instant death negates FNP, but seriously, how many do you have?

Then there is the plasma rifle, that gets through FNP due to AP2 rather than instant death.

I did run plasma and fusion, oops for not saying so. Your right.

Sanctjud wrote:All three have issues with cover saves as well.

He wasn't terribly great and putting his stuff in cover, there wasn't even much cover. Which was funny because he put terrain on the board.

Back to the OP.

Like Kroot Loops said, I kept my FW out of sight and/or in their fish until his nurgle marines were nigh on top of them. Foot slogging across the board had reduced the squad enough that 2 FW teams were able to rapid fire them to death.

What does your list look like?

A lot of your problem, as with most new Tau players, comes from bringing an ineffective list.

Posting it would help us identify your main problems and how to fix them.

Well shame on the opponent then.
25% terrain and 'creating' cover saves shouldn't be that hard, even then, mass plasma are not that regular, so taking some damage along the way isn't so bad.

Run rules are not very nice for Tau as well.

As for Pathfinders, don't forget a squad of firewarriors can borrow the Pathfinders' ride... you have to buy it anyway, so make the most of it.

My crisis suits were mainly like this:
t/l MP, PR, MT, shield drone

but second game I ran two in the hq unit that had t/l fusion and the general had an AFP and t/l PR along with stim inj. All the suits took shield drones.

I had 2 broadsides in the second game and 2 units of 6 firewarriors. Tried the fish of fury thing and it failed miserably with the chaos crab hit it with the battle cannon.

I have more figs now so I guess I'll try running a pathfinder team; however, I tried 5 times to hit something with markerlights in the second game and none of them hit. I hate how the entire army is completely dependant upon a purchased item/drone that may or may not provide you with a benefit. I think I would rather pay pts for something with BS 4 and be done with it.

I know I need a hammerhead for the submunitions but can't seem to squeeze $50 out of my pocket.

I would suggest taking a fireknife. You'll get the missile pods for the rhinos at long range. Then you just need to play keep away form the marines. You'll be able to be 30" away from him if you mechanize your list up. The hammerheads and broadsides can each take out 1 a turn. The plasmas at 24" range is where you take advantage of him. Concentrate on a single squad. When you move 12" and he has to run to keep up he won't be able to fire at you. Towards the end fly down to an objective with the firewarriors you have in a devilfish and claim objectives.

A PosRelay Ninja Tau list may help bringing in only what you need.

DO NOT play ninja tau

Not only is it bad, but its not fun to play with or against.

Ninja Tau is fun to play if played correctly. If it's played incorrectly then Tau get steam rolled.

If you look up 'One Trick Pony' in the dictionary, you'll find Ninja Tau.

Timmah wrote:
DO NOT play ninja tau

Not only is it bad, but its not fun to play with or against.

Ninja Tau wouldn't have helped me much in this last game anyway since we haven't been playing for victory points for objectives.

I did have a little, very little success deep striking my HQ squad behind the crab-bot thing (name?) and immobilizing it before his general came along and made dinner out of the entire squad. Jump-shoot-jump doesn't seem to work too well when he can jump run jump to catch up.

I'm thinking of tanking the shield drones next time and just take as many suits as possible, just inundate his troops with fire and hope he rolls badly. I can field 9 suits (not sure if that's legal) and two broadsides plus 3 12-man squads of FWs and a 5 man pathfinder unit. 2 devilfish for mobility and just hope for the best.

agnosto wrote:
I did have a little, very little success deep striking my HQ squad behind the crab-bot thing (name?) and immobilizing it before his general came along and made dinner out of the entire squad. Jump-shoot-jump doesn't seem to work too well when he can jump run jump to catch up.

I'm thinking of tanking the shield drones next time and just take as many suits as possible, just inundate his troops with fire and hope he rolls badly. I can field 9 suits (not sure if that's legal) and two broadsides plus 3 12-man squads of FWs and a 5 man pathfinder unit. 2 devilfish for mobility and just hope for the best.

Crab-bot-thing is a defiler. Hit it with a railgun, watch it turn into burning rubble. Basically, its a big target. Its sooooo easy to take that sucker down in the first/second turn, which is why some people don't like taking them. You let them walk around a bit, and they're so worth it. If you blow it in the first turn your opponent will be "well... at least its 1 less railgun at my rhinos?", if you let it walk around, he's going to be cackling in glee.

Seriously its impossible 90% of the time to get a cover save on that horrifically huge...thing. It SHOULD die first turn.

i might be reading this dodgy, but "Jump-shoot-jump doesn't seem to work too well when he can jump run jump to catch up." sounds like someone thinks their Chaos Lord has fleet when he doesn't

Also, don't spread your fire vs a nurgle army. It might take alot of fire to kill 1 unit, but my nurgle armies are expensive pointswise, and thus damnably small. 1 nurgle unit is alot of points, and if his army is all Nurgle-marked, its probably a chunk of it at 1000 points. a unit of plague marines with weaps and sarge and rhino is closing in at 200 points easy. 5 plague marines w/ sarge+2flamer+rhino is 175. Losing a whole unit as nurgle is painful, especially at such low points.

probably wont help, but hitting plague marines with str 8+ or ap2/1 a bunch of time after popping their rhino will make your opponent wonder why he took them, i know its been done to me a bunch of times now

Jihallah wrote:Crab-bot-thing is a defiler. Hit it with a railgun, watch it turn into burning rubble. Basically, its a big target. Its sooooo easy to take that sucker down in the first/second turn, which is why some people don't like taking them. You let them walk around a bit, and they're so worth it. If you blow it in the first turn your opponent will be "well... at least its 1 less railgun at my rhinos?", if you let it walk around, he's going to be cackling in glee.

Seriously its impossible 90% of the time to get a cover save on that horrifically huge...thing. It SHOULD die first turn.

i might be reading this dodgy, but "Jump-shoot-jump doesn't seem to work too well when he can jump run jump to catch up." sounds like someone thinks their Chaos Lord has fleet when he doesn't

Also, don't spread your fire vs a nurgle army. It might take alot of fire to kill 1 unit, but my nurgle armies are expensive pointswise, and thus damnably small. 1 nurgle unit is alot of points, and if his army is all Nurgle-marked, its probably a chunk of it at 1000 points. a unit of plague marines with weaps and sarge and rhino is closing in at 200 points easy. 5 plague marines w/ sarge+2flamer+rhino is 175. Losing a whole unit as nurgle is painful, especially at such low points.

probably wont help, but hitting plague marines with str 8+ or ap2/1 a bunch of time after popping their rhino will make your opponent wonder why he took them, i know its been done to me a bunch of times now

Good advice; thanks. I'm still fresh meat so I don't know if what I described, the whole jump run jump thing, actually happened; it could be that I didn't move as much as I thought I did.

I'm also toying with the idea of crisis squade with t/l plasma rifles and a fusion blaster and just send them around to harass nurgle marine squads. It might be worth it, just to see him sweat from the loadout cause those are 2 of the 3 weapon choices I have that gets over fnp.

Jihallah wrote:
Good advice; thanks. I'm still fresh meat so I don't know if what I described, the whole jump run jump thing, actually happened; it could be that I didn't move as much as I thought I did.

because of run you really need to pay a lot of attention in your movement phase as a tau player. during your opponenet's turn, pay attention to when he is moving, and also when he is measuring. not to call him on it (although it will tell you who is cheating), but rather to develop an eye for distances on board.

i used to run the suicide commander to jump in the back and hit things with a fusion gun, i found it was better to take 2 cheap suits to do the same thing (TL melta and flamer, some people like to make one TL melta and flamer the other TL flamer and melta to make it complex, both are good units if you have an elite slot to use them with), it was about the same number of points, and slightly more survivable. and did more damage.

Jihallah wrote:

agnosto wrote:
I did have a little, very little success deep striking my HQ squad behind the crab-bot thing (name?) and immobilizing it before his general came along and made dinner out of the entire squad. Jump-shoot-jump doesn't seem to work too well when he can jump run jump to catch up.

I'm thinking of tanking the shield drones next time and just take as many suits as possible, just inundate his troops with fire and hope he rolls badly. I can field 9 suits (not sure if that's legal) and two broadsides plus 3 12-man squads of FWs and a 5 man pathfinder unit. 2 devilfish for mobility and just hope for the best.

Also, don't spread your fire vs a nurgle army. It might take alot of fire to kill 1 unit, but my nurgle armies are expensive pointswise, and thus damnably small. 1 nurgle unit is alot of points, and if his army is all Nurgle-marked, its probably a chunk of it at 1000 points. a unit of plague marines with weaps and sarge and rhino is closing in at 200 points easy. 5 plague marines w/ sarge+2flamer+rhino is 175. Losing a whole unit as nurgle is painful, especially at such low points.

Jihalla pretty much has it right. I have a grand total of 27 Models in my PM army, and I lose a squad it's a large chunk gone. From what I got here, almost half of his points are not in troops choices, so he shouldn't have many.

Shoot a squad untill it dies. Focus fire. He can't pass ALL of his saves.

Also, introduce Railgun ammo into the face of the defiler, he REALLY can't hide it.

Good luck

if that doesnt work you could try this guy ^^

Shas'O Tash'var Vera Fali'shir Aun'Ki
Cost: 175 pt
WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
5 5 4 4 4 4 3 10 3+
Special character: O'Vera is a special character. He may be used in any tau army wich does not include Aun'va or commander shadowsun. You may not choose any additional equipment from the armoury.

Equipment: XV8 Crisis battlesuit, multi tracker, plasma rifle, cyclic ion blaster, shield generator & bonding knife.

Special rules:
Clever cowards: O'Vera's forces are renowned for laying well prepared ambushes for their enemies, and then vanishing, as soon as their victims comes to close. Any unit in an army led by O'Vera may break off any time they lose an assault phase, regardless of their morale roll. Crisis suit teams in an army led by O'Vera rolls a D6+6 when determining their break of distance.

Hardened Veterans: Many of O'Vera's followers have been there since his break with the greater good, and are by far more skilled in close, as well as ranged combat, than their loyalist counterparts. Any model in an army led by O'Vera may upgrade their WS,BS,I or T by 1 to a maximum of 5, for two points Pr. model. If one model in the unit does so, then all models in that unit must be similarly upgraded. Any models in a Crisis team, may always be upgraded to the rank of Shas'Vre, and thereby gain all the benefits of such for an additional 10 points per model.

Breakaway faction: O'Vera and his followers has fled to the Farsight enclaves, and now visualise Commander Farsight as their leader, rather than the Ethereals. As such, the Forces that may be included in an army led by O'Vera have been limited to better represent this: No Ethereal, Kroot or Vespid may be included in an army, led by O'Vera.

Independent Character unless accompanied by a bodyguard, O'Vera is an independent character, and follows the independent Characters special rules. If accompanied by drones, he may still join other units.

Note that this profile is “so called” home rules, which means that it has no relations to official games workshop products or rules, and may only be used if your opponent gives you his full acceptance.

Well...he can put the defiler into reserves, so that it gets at least one shot...

So he 'can' hide it one way. In addition, the cover issue is highly dependent on everyone's gaming group.

At 1675 I have 2 DPs, 3 Rhinos, 30 Plague Marines, and 7 obliterators, that to me is pretty intimidating, as I used to play Tau.

I've always been uphappy with making a Tau lists, never satisfied with what I get in the list.

I generally play Tau for looks.
My army is Warfishes and Deathrains mostly, but i don't play past 1000 points though.

Sanctjud wrote:Well...he can put the defiler into reserves, so that it gets at least one shot...

So he 'can' hide it one way. In addition, the cover issue is highly dependent on everyone's gaming group.

At 1675 I have 2 DPs, 3 Rhinos, 30 Plague Marines, and 7 obliterators, that to me is pretty intimidating, as I used to play Tau.

I've always been uphappy with making a Tau lists, never satisfied with what I get in the list.

I generally play Tau for looks.
My army is Warfishes and Deathrains mostly, but i don't play past 1000 points though.

Yeah, I got into Tau because the models look great and then found there's not a whole lot of substance. Of course, I used to play Khorne so......big change in mindset to say the least.

Heh, I like painting Tau... to my surprise.
Though I did end up nurglfying my Crisis Suits...and they are now 'Obliterators'...

Actually, from a converting standpoint (mainly greenstuff) I do run a 'Nurgle' Tau army...

to the OP

What are you doing to block the advancement of your opponents troops. I don't mean bowing them up. Round one, take out the guns with the biggest threat range. Send your piranhas flat out right in front of his rhinos. Now he has to deal with them or ignore them. The idea is that they can't advance until they deat with the piranhas. If they dismount to do it, even better. Meanwhile you have just bought yourself an extra round.

Mechnomancer wrote:to the OP

What are you doing to block the advancement of your opponents troops. I don't mean bowing them up. Round one, take out the guns with the biggest threat range. Send your piranhas flat out right in front of his rhinos. Now he has to deal with them or ignore them. The idea is that they can't advance until they deat with the piranhas. If they dismount to do it, even better. Meanwhile you have just bought yourself an extra round.

Yeah, I'll have to lay out some cash for some Piranha someday soon I guess...they get expensive $$ and pointswise though.

I'm thinking of setting up a gunline to attract his troops and then deep strike my suit squads behind him with fusion blasters next game.

My next list (1202 pts):

HQ
Shas'el with MP, TL PM, HW MT, Stim Inj
BG equipped the same way but with shield drones

Elite:
3x shas'ui with TL FB, MP, Shield drones

Troops:
2 units of 12 FWs with 'ui in each that has markerlight, shield drone, and HW MT

Fast Attack:
pathfinders x 8 and fish with DP and Flachette

Heeavy:
Broadside x 2 with shield drone and MT

That's about all I have the models for right now.

PosRelay with Suicide suits will help you pop the transports in Round 2. Take a squad of crisis suits with twin linked fusion blasters and a target lock on one, shield generator for survivability on the other. You should be able to nail 2 vehicles. The pathfinder devil fish will help make sure you do not scatter. Once the models are out of the transports peg them with AP1 and AP2 weaponry or a large torrent of fire power.

This is what ninja Tau is. You assure yourself of having that unit come into the game on round 2 (unless the dice hate you).

Another idea for you is to load up your Suits with twinlinked plasma. Try to stay at 24" range. Broadsides should pop transports then hit 3 twinlinked plasma shots at the marines. They will hit 75% of the time. With 3 squads you will wear him down and he should prioritize the crisis suits over the firewarriors. Have the firewarriors unload at full range into them. If you are lucky you will get 1 model lost to 10 pulse rilfe shots.

rogueeyes wrote:PosRelay with Suicide suits will help you pop the transports in Round 2. Take a squad of crisis suits with twin linked fusion blasters and a target lock on one, shield generator for survivability on the other. You should be able to nail 2 vehicles. The pathfinder devil fish will help make sure you do not scatter. Once the models are out of the transports peg them with AP1 and AP2 weaponry or a large torrent of fire power.

This is what ninja Tau is. You assure yourself of having that unit come into the game on round 2 (unless the dice hate you).

Another idea for you is to load up your Suits with twinlinked plasma. Try to stay at 24" range. Broadsides should pop transports then hit 3 twinlinked plasma shots at the marines. They will hit 75% of the time. With 3 squads you will wear him down and he should prioritize the crisis suits over the firewarriors. Have the firewarriors unload at full range into them. If you are lucky you will get 1 model lost to 10 pulse rilfe shots.

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking about the pos relay but it would only be used once at this points level. I'm hope to be able to pop his rhinos in the 1st turn with my broadsides..unless the dice hate me. I think I'll try the fof again, my fish got popped last game before I could load up and move out.

Go mech with your Tau. Stick your firewarriors inside some devilfish. This will improve their survivability immensely. With their permanent cover save from more than 12"(always, always buy a disruption pod for every Tau vehicle, barring maybe Piranhas) and AV12 front armor, devilfish can be annoyingly hard to pop, even with lascannons/battlecannons. You can let the firewarriors out once you have dealt with the major threats like defilers and oblits, and once you've popped his rhinos. Or just leave them in the fish to claim objectives.

You have to drop the shield drone from the FWs, but that's a waste of points for a firewarrior squad anyway. Lose the markerlight/HWMT from the FW teams as well, since they are useless inside devilfish.

Read everyones post on my tau vs meq post, I will give ya the skinny, Drop drones, and use piranhas. Its amazing how these gakky drones can take the assault phase away from someone. I will never run without my gun drones every again. Oh and i got really lucky on a charge and got 4 wounds one assault. FROM 2 DRONES. Dont pay for em get em off your vehicles.

btw try using shas'o farsight instead of a normal commander his blade is much more effective when you deep strike him behind the enemy, also his seven battlesuit bodyguard should give you enough firepower to take on anything.
also you need a hammerhead gunship

I dont know Tau so well, but i play against a mate with Orcs and i was as equally frustrated. He used to just run the length of the board, live through my shooting and then wipe me out in CC. The Orc powerklaw guys would shred my vehicles with utter ease (even one nob with PK on the charge, four swings at my tank?!) and id get pissed off. After two identical losses I found the best thing to do was wrap on almost all of my armour and just take guys who are good at fisticuffs themselves, then beat him into the charge. Could you maybe lose some of the armor and take plenty of Kroot and -shapers and maybe beat him at his own game? Vespids are strong in the mellee too right?