Hmm, this is a difficult task to prepare for both Necrons and Orks. Personally, I've never had much luck as tau vs orks.
Here are some ideas.
bump the kroot squads up to 10 hounds if youre going to take them, that gives you I5 for sweeping advance. Yeh, its a little overkill for I2 armies, but you need to be damn sure that you will sweep when they fall back. Orks are ok if they fall back and you don't sweep, they definately won't be regrouping. But necrons, you want to take them out so they cant port the fleeing squad away to a monolith and regroup.
Another reason to bump up the hounds is that a 16 man kroot squad isnt going to go toe to toe with a 30 man ork mob. Theyre still T4 even with 6+ armor, thats going to weaken you a lot. Here's some math.
10 carnivores and 10 hounds attacking before the orks
60 attacks, 4+ to hit, 30 hits, 4+ to wound, 15 wounds, 2 save, 13 die
orks hit back(assuming slugga's) 17 orks, 51 attacks, 4+ to hit, 25 hits, 4+ to wound, 12 dead kroot.
even with a 20 man squad, you're most likely going to lose melee next turn.
As much as I hate to say this, broadsides might actually be better than a hammerhead. Normally I take 2 hammerheads and then if there's room(1500+) I take broadsides. But against necrons you have several railguns for monoliths, lords, destroyers, etc. against orks you have the smart missiles.
I would consider dropping the kroot for more fire warriors, and adding some more pathfinders. Fire Warriors are great against both orks and necrons if you do it right.
BS 5 fire warriors from markerlights rape orks.
If you have to plan against both armies with only one list, I would drop all the crisis suits you have, take a commander attacked to a squad of 3 that have PR
FB's, and then a squad of stealthsuits.
The main problem is that tau are not designed to fight orks. Tau go for quality of shots over quantity. A 1000 point Ork army will most likely have 100+ models on the board, theres no way you can get that many shots off.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Dashofpepper wrote:
To combat lack of survivability, people put firewarriors into devilfish and even take them in smaller units to try giving them survivability until the end of the game. Personally, I put 36-48 firewarriors on the table, and do my best to keep them in cover; I also abuse them to protect my flanks. Having a 4+ cover save is great for survivability, and my goal as Tau is to be 100% firepower, all the time. I don't understand why some people keep part of their army in reserve; that's less guns firing from the get-go.
Yeh, keeping part of a tau army in reserve is usually a bad idea unless you are playing a reserve army like ninja tau. The only way to win as tau is to go all out on the offense, and keep basic common sense defense, like keeping infantry in cover, dont run that crisis suit in front of a lascannon, stuff like that.
Another misconception is that Fire Warriors have terrible survivability. they are slightly more survivable than average. The only reason they seem really fragile is because so many people are obsessed with
MEQ armies. Eldar, Dark Eldar,
IG, Orks, Chaos Deamons, Tyranids, Tau, and
SoB are all either T3 or very bad armor, or in the case of
IG and Dark Eldar, both. for
MEQ you have 6 space marine armies, chaos marines, and necrons. Half of the game has its basic unit be fragile. 4+ armor isnt bad either, much much better than 5. not many armies have a surplus of 4
AP guns. Most basic weapons are 5
AP or worse , bolter, guass rifle, pulse rifle, shoota, lasgun, tyranid buggy guns, etc.
For what amounts to a 5 point model with a 5 point gun,
FW are good for their cost.
I won't tell you what to do, but here's a few things to consider:
Tau Empire ~3.5k 26W 6T 18L,
(Sisters with IG) ~ 1000 2W 1T 1L points