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My friend recently started a Tau army, and he's been getting frustrated at his inability to beat my orks. I usually run the following setup:

Warboss w/ tricked out nobz in a trukk
Burnas in a wagon
3 Deffkoptaz
3 biker Nobz
Lootas
Big Mek with shokk attack gun
one or two mobs of boyz.

My deffkoptaz are in melee on turn one, and the bikers and trukk nobz are in melee on turn 2. By turn 2, he's basically screwed as the Nobz go from unit to unit breaking everything. It takes his whole army to kill my 300-400 pts of nobz and boss. What are his options?

Railguns make mincemeat of my Nobz when they have a commanding position (instant deathy badness). I hate those Broadside Battle Suits. Crisis Jumpsuits can usually bounce around out of charge range unless I pick the perfect time to Waagh (I don't have good spatial awareness, so have Waaghed prematurely many a time as my Eldar playing 'friend' puts it).

And if your opponent isn't blowing up that Trukk with the nobz in on turn 1 then he's not thinking straight. Having the Warboss walking across the battlefield is a good way to make him waste a lot of time, and time is kill points!

If your armor is making across the board intact he is doing it wrong. Railguns kill armor dead.

Railgun from broadsides to the battlewagon, fireknifes pop the trukk, railhead submunitions kill the lootas, and fireknives kill the nob bikers.

By the time your boys get across the table they should be all that is left. JsJ will make short work of them with railhead submunitions dropping on their head.

I have played both orks and tau for many years (and most other armies...) and tau are very good against orks. Railheads and broadsides w/ ass are critical to the success of the tau list vs orks.

Against super-fast assault armies like yours, he's better off starting everything in Reserve (read the Reserves rule; it's something that people tend to overlook). He can bring in his stuff where he needs it, and he'll get a turn of shooting on your fastest stuff guaranteed.

Krall wrote:My friend recently started a Tau army, and he's been getting frustrated at his inability to beat my orks. I usually run the following setup:

Warboss w/ tricked out nobz in a trukk
Burnas in a wagon
3 Deffkoptaz
3 biker Nobz
Lootas
Big Mek with shokk attack gun
one or two mobs of boyz.

My deffkoptaz are in melee on turn one, and the bikers and trukk nobz are in melee on turn 2. By turn 2, he's basically screwed as the Nobz go from unit to unit breaking everything. It takes his whole army to kill my 300-400 pts of nobz and boss. What are his options?

Deffkoptas and Bikernobz can be nasty against Tau, but overall your list should be beatable by Tau (no KFF, for example). What is he running? If the initial Deffkopta assault manages to screw him, he has not enough redundancy in his list.

* Edited *
I would think his best chances are to mech up, and to take down your deffkoptas on the first round of fire. The rest of your army has a hard time hitting skimmers.

labmouse42 wrote:* Edited *
I would think his best chances are to mech up, and to take down your deffkoptas on the first round of fire. The rest of your army has a hard time hitting skimmers.

Indeed. Mech up, take flechette dischargers, use devilfish to block assaults, railgun/missile pod the crap outta transports, and shoot fire warriors underneath the devilfish.

Then he may have a chance.

Hammerhead with multi-tracker and disruption pod; you get a 4+ cover save from greater than 12" in shooting and any assaults need 6's to hit; meanwhile you're popping truks or dropping pie-plates on the orks.

I've had broadsides last a whole game against orks because they lack low AP weaponry and the broadsides have a 2+ save.

Barring anything else, a cheap crisis unit with tl flamers that assaults the boyz squad can wreak havok even with a 3 ws because you'll kill quite a few with the flamers and then you take away their bonuses that they get on the charge and each suit has a 5 str and 2 attacks.

He can always take a farsight army if he want's to cheese you because then the whole army will have preferred enemy ork and farsight's bodyguard will eat boyz units like candy and farsight will kill nobz dead.

Disruption pods don't make you hit on 6's in assault (unfortunately) but would provide protection from your shooting which is a big boon as the most dangerous ork shooting for tau is lootas so you'll be getting cover. What does your freind have by the way?

If he has pathfinders then he can get them to go in front of his army (pushing back your scout turbo-boosting) then after you scouted to yust over 12" away he scouts back 6" and your out of combat 1st turn (requires him to win the scout roll though). I might try this tactic if I face an opponent trying to get 1st turn charge (only just thought of it). That way he can have more units shooting turn 1 and gives him a chance to wipe you out before the charge. Also what do you do if he gets 1st turn.

If I were fighting your list in particular as Tau, I'd castle up in a corner.

Static gunline, with several ranks of firewarriors or kroot serving as a meatshield to each other, a couple of broadsides in the rear, and since you're a nob fan, Helios suits - Fusion/Plasma with one or two twin-linked flamer suits for deep-striking onto the Lootas.

Your assaults in any given turn would only be able to hit a single unit or kroot/firewarriors across your army, leaving me with a whole shooting phase of free shooting at rapid fire range before you assault the next unit in the castle wall. I'd pack a lone devilfish to give myself pathfinder support, and since you're running understrength units and have horrendous leadership, I'd actually use my markerlights to influence your morale tests.

Example: tricked out nobs in a trukk - turn2, pathfinder devilfish meets them in the middle of the field with a Helios team - they eat broadsides to disembark them, followed by 8 pathfinders dropping markerlights on them, followed by the Helios team dropping STR8 AP1 and STR6AP2 rapid fire death into them. Cause three deaths, and have you take leadership minus markerlights - and then have my devilfish escort your warboss and nobs off the board.

If you're bouncing from unit to unit, they he's deploying badly to fight against you.

I thought that Markerlights only affected Pinning Tests, leadership-wise...

Lorek wrote:I thought that Markerlights only affected Pinning Tests, leadership-wise...

Nope. They can be used to do that, raise BS, lower cover saves, fire seeker missiles from Tau vehicles, and ignore night fighting.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll definitely pass them along. He hasn't gotten many railguns yet, so I guess that's the major weakness he has atm. My deffkoptas usually tie up his big vehicle killing units so it's easier for me to get into range with him. He doesn't have a lot of devilfish either, just the one. He has a lot of fire warriors and usually tries to saturate my boyz or nobz with rapid fire attacks, but I can sometimes multi-assault his units, which really messes that up.

Culler wrote:

Lorek wrote:I thought that Markerlights only affected Pinning Tests, leadership-wise...

Nope. They can be used to do that, raise BS, lower cover saves, fire seeker missiles from Tau vehicles, and ignore night fighting.

Sorry, I meant that they could only lower leadership in regards to pinning tests, not Morale checks. My sentence structure was a bit unusual, but that's what the ", leadership-wise" means.

Morale and leadership are different. A pinning test is a morale test, not a leadership test.

I might not have done a very good job explaining myself. ><

Get some Piranhas. A squadron of 3 or four can block a lot of lanes his wagons and trucks need to advance in. Add flachettes and they won't want to assault it with anything. Devilfish with smart missile can shoot around the wall while hammerheads blast the lootahs. Marker light the lootahs in cover or koptas if the turbo scout in close. Helios suits can insta kill them. Don't forget that you can reroll deepstrikes with the pathfinder fish, so you can land your Deathrains (with flamers) near lootas to free up your railheads. Use kroot as a rear guard for kommandos. (edit: which i'm suprised the OP isn't using, yet)Tau have lots of options against Orks. It's one army I can consistantly beat.

Yeah, I don't have the book in front of me, and four versions of 40k have confused my terms.

What I meant is that I didn't think that Markerlight hits to reduce leadership for a "you took 25% casualties, so take a morale check at the end of the phase" thing. Whatever that's called.

I just thought that the only leadership-reducing effect of Markerlights is for Pinning checks.

O'shovah wrote:Disruption pods don't make you hit on 6's in assault (unfortunately) but would provide protection from your shooting which is a big boon as the most dangerous ork shooting for tau is lootas so you'll be getting cover. What does your freind have by the way?

If he has pathfinders then he can get them to go in front of his army (pushing back your scout turbo-boosting) then after you scouted to yust over 12" away he scouts back 6" and your out of combat 1st turn (requires him to win the scout roll though). I might try this tactic if I face an opponent trying to get 1st turn charge (only just thought of it). That way he can have more units shooting turn 1 and gives him a chance to wipe you out before the charge. Also what do you do if he gets 1st turn.

Moving 12" results in 6's being needed. Multi-tracker on a tau vehicle means your vehicle counts as "fast" which means you can move 12" and fire 1 weapon.

Dashofpepper wrote:I'd actually use my markerlights to influence your morale tests.

Example: tricked out nobs in a trukk - turn2, pathfinder devilfish meets them in the middle of the field with a Helios team - they eat broadsides to disembark them, followed by 8 pathfinders dropping markerlights on them, followed by the Helios team dropping STR8 AP1 and STR6AP2 rapid fire death into them. Cause three deaths, and have you take leadership minus markerlights - and then have my devilfish escort your warboss and nobs off the board.

You are giving the wrong advice here. You cant modify their leadership using markerlights here... It does not involve pinning. Time to read your codex again.

Orkish wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:I'd actually use my markerlights to influence your morale tests.

Example: tricked out nobs in a trukk - turn2, pathfinder devilfish meets them in the middle of the field with a Helios team - they eat broadsides to disembark them, followed by 8 pathfinders dropping markerlights on them, followed by the Helios team dropping STR8 AP1 and STR6AP2 rapid fire death into them. Cause three deaths, and have you take leadership minus markerlights - and then have my devilfish escort your warboss and nobs off the board.

You are giving the wrong advice here. You cant modify their leadership using markerlights here... It does not involve pinning. Time to read your codex again.

Uh...yes you can. Last note on the markerlight chart is that you can influence pinning tests (morale) via markerlights - IE, if I drop 4 markerlights on your unit, then hit them with snipers and cause a casualty...bam - take a pinning check at leadership minus 4.

I realize that you can't influence leadership tests for breaking (different than morale for pinning) but I explained that in my last post, if you would just read up a bit.

Obviously, your post said nothing about pinning weapons (which was why Lorek got puzzled), I saw only Helios being mentioned. Unless you thought Fusion / plasma can cause pinning

How exactly do you escort a unit off the board as a result of a failed pinning test?

Also, sloppy use of terminology. Pinning tests are not morale tests.

Yes yes....I already said that I did a crappy job explaining a single sentence there - let that bit go, I was hammered.

Dash, you're right. I removed my remark.

To add further anti-Ork tactics, taking two squads of 16 Kroot can also really help you out if you use them to screen your more valuable units. On the charge, Kroot can really do some damage to Ork Boyz, and as a screen they can cheaply eat a charge and leave your more valuable units alive for another round of shooting. Painting Kroot is rather easy with Devlin Mud Wash as well.

Lorek wrote:To add further anti-Ork tactics, taking two squads of 16 Kroot can also really help you out if you use them to screen your more valuable units. On the charge, Kroot can really do some damage to Ork Boyz, and as a screen they can cheaply eat a charge and leave your more valuable units alive for another round of shooting. Painting Kroot is rather easy with Devlin Mud Wash as well.

I agree; in one game, I scouted with a kroot unit (with shaper) and got the charge on a stormboy unit; the result was I tarpitted the unit for 2 turns and ended up destroying it.

Don't let the Ork player get the charge on you.

agnosto wrote:

Don't let the Ork player get the charge on you.

Let me temper that advice with something else. Its not always bad to let the ork player have the charge if you are directing the flow of the battle and their charge. IE...if you castle up and can enforce the entire ork charge meeting a single unit of yours...let them have it, so that you have a full turn following of rapid-fire, short range death before you offer up another unit to the meat-grinder.

I think that beating orks is less about your list and more about your deployment. If you approach it with the mentality that you are GOING to have to sacrifice units to the meat-grinder to protect the integrity of the whole, you'll do well.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Let me temper that advice with something else. Its not always bad to let the ork player have the charge if you are directing the flow of the battle and their charge. IE...if you castle up and can enforce the entire ork charge meeting a single unit of yours...let them have it, so that you have a full turn following of rapid-fire, short range death before you offer up another unit to the meat-grinder.

I think that beating orks is less about your list and more about your deployment. If you approach it with the mentality that you are GOING to have to sacrifice units to the meat-grinder to protect the integrity of the whole, you'll do well.

Good advice and that's what Kroot are for.

@ the OP How are you assaulting with deffcoptas on turn 1? are your tables 24" wide? if you turboboost you can't assault


orks can beat t'au bad, but t'au can beat orks too. they are almost perfect opposits. the t'au player needs moar dakka. in smaller games and against orks Hammerheads are great buys, smallergames because they're cheap, orks because of submunitions. Broadsides are more effective anti-armor because of TL, but hammerheads are more mobile and that is important against orks. submunitions are awsome against swarms.

otherwise he needs to mech up like everyone else said

Fish of Fury is a great tactic with mech T'au. it involves moving up, unloading the FW behind the DF and rapidfiring underneath the skimmer, hopping back in, moving back and repeating as often as needed. it works best with 2 or more teams so they don't get flanked as easily. Flachette dischargers are a mandatorty upgrade for FoF devilfish because you will get charged. the enemy will need 4s or 6s to hit though and you can back up because you're a vehicle.

people say FoF got nerfed with true line of sight, but FW can still see underneath.

Grey Templar wrote:@ the OP How are you assaulting with deffcoptas on turn 1? are your tables 24" wide? if you turboboost you can't assault

Deffkoptas get a Scout Move.

Mechnomancer wrote:Get some Piranhas. A squadron of 3 or four can block a lot of lanes his wagons and trucks need to advance in. Add flachettes and they won't want to assault it with anything. Devilfish with smart missile can shoot around the wall while hammerheads blast the lootahs. Marker light the lootahs in cover or koptas if the turbo scout in close. Helios suits can insta kill them. Don't forget that you can reroll deepstrikes with the pathfinder fish, so you can land your Deathrains (with flamers) near lootas to free up your railheads. Use kroot as a rear guard for kommandos. (edit: which i'm suprised the OP isn't using, yet)Tau have lots of options against Orks. It's one army I can consistantly beat.

Maybe it's me, but I'm just not that afraid of flechette. Is it really that scary when I'm assaulting with a 4+ save and possibly FNP? My army relies pretty heavily on my nobz, koptaz, and bikerz atm. Basically, my nobz trundle through his entire army, and withstand stupid amounts of fire. Plus, he seems to have terrible luck with the dice when he actually tries to put wounds on me. He consistently rolls ones when hitting my nobz with meltas, and I save about 80% of wounds. It's truly outrageous. Granted, you can't account for bad dice rolling when developing strategy, it just has him really frustrated.

The point is, my really tough multi-wound models are doing most of the killing, and his army seems to die before my BW with burnas can even arrive. The point about the Piranhas blocking the path for my truck seems pretty good, since I'd have to jump out to deal with them, then jump back in next turn. I could theoretically use a boarding plank, but I like keeping my trukk(s) cheap with just RPJ.

Is there any hard counter to nobz besides str 8 or higher weapons? I really feel like the Tau should have some kind of walker that's decent in CC. Something that really expands on the Crisis Suit and turns it into a really tough beast. I dunno, maybe that's not even necessary.