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Iam having trouble taking/contesting objectves with my tau any tips?

You have devil fish!
Do it with them!,or just fire at them with supreme fire power

Well what does your army look like?

Tau generally work well when moving and killing things, as opposed to sitting on objectives. Your suits can at least contest on the last turns with their assault move.

The #1 problem with Tau is Tau players overspend on elites and heavy support not leaving enough for troops.

6 units of fire warriors half in squads of 12 and half in squads of 6 is only 540 points. Fire warriors are the same toughness, armor save, and cost as veteran guardsmen in carapace armor. That being said anything short of 6 squads of them isn't likely to last 5 rounds. Go with 6 squads of them.

Buy 3 pathfinder squads, and deploy them outside of their devilfish. With any luck there may be a pathfinder squad that survives the enemy's 1st round of shooting. If things start to get real ugly for a pathfinder squad don't be afraid to go to ground for a 3+ cover save, as pinning is preferable to death.

Take the 3 devilfish from the pathfinder squads and pick up 3 squads of fire warriors and try to have them stay out of trouble. Don't worry about the fire warriors being outside of the devilfish for a turn your opponent won't kill all 6 fire warrior squads in their 1st turn of shooting. Your opponent probably won't even kill a single squad of fire warriors as long as a single pathfinder is alive and those poor SOBs are still soaking up bullets. If any devilfish survive until turn 5 move 24" flat out to take the objectives on turn 5. The 3 remaining fire warrior squads can attempt to statically camp objectives inside or close to the Tau deployment zone. The squads outside of devil fish should probably be full strength, while the ones in devilfish can probably be 6 man squads as they're pretty much dead anyways if their devilfish gets shot down.

schadenfreude wrote:If any devilfish survive until turn 5 move 24" flat out to take the objectives on turn 5.

The Devilfish ain't fast.

With Firewarriors in Devilfish, you do have to start planning early to take objectives. Because they tend to live longer if they're moving, I often use a shuffle to keep the Devilfish moving while always moving towards the next objective.

Outflanking Kroot aren't terrible at taking objectives near table edges, but this typically only works on lightly defended objectives.

schadenfreude wrote:6 units of fire warriors half in squads of 12 and half in squads of 6 is only 540 points. Fire warriors are the same toughness, armor save, and cost as veteran guardsmen in carapace armor. That being said anything short of 6 squads of them isn't likely to last 5 rounds. Go with 6 squads of them.

Except that a veteran guardsman costs less and can take cheaper transports. I don't know about you, but I regularly keep my 2-3 squads of FW's around for the whole game.

schadenfreude wrote:Buy 3 pathfinder squads, and deploy them outside of their devilfish. With any luck there may be a pathfinder squad that survives the enemy's 1st round of shooting. If things start to get real ugly for a pathfinder squad don't be afraid to go to ground for a 3+ cover save, as pinning is preferable to death.

Ridiculous advice, you don't need to take 3 squads of pathfinders unless for some reason you really want those deep striking suits to hit where you need them to. Buy one squad and put it in cover, or two smaller ones if you're really worried. But not 3!

schadenfreude wrote:Take the 3 devilfish from the pathfinder squads and pick up 3 squads of fire warriors and try to have them stay out of trouble. Don't worry about the fire warriors being outside of the devilfish for a turn your opponent won't kill all 6 fire warrior squads in their 1st turn of shooting. Your opponent probably won't even kill a single squad of fire warriors as long as a single pathfinder is alive and those poor SOBs are still soaking up bullets. If any devilfish survive until turn 5 move 24" flat out to take the objectives on turn 5. The 3 remaining fire warrior squads can attempt to statically camp objectives inside or close to the Tau deployment zone. The squads outside of devil fish should probably be full strength, while the ones in devilfish can probably be 6 man squads as they're pretty much dead anyways if their devilfish gets shot down.

First of all, Devilfish are not fast skimmers, so they cannot move flat out. I'm not trying to put you down here, but you need to get the rules straight before giving advice.

If you want to capture objectives better, take 6 FW's in a Devilfish and never disembark them. The thought is you are paying 60 points to make a Devilfish scoring, and they are tough transports with a disruption pod. I would also consider taking a squad of Kroot, as they can sit in cover and go to ground to get a 3+ cover save (2+ if in a forest), and it takes a while to eat through 20 kroot in cover unless they have flamers.

Ooops my bad, forgot devilfish are slow.

Veteran gaurdsmen are 10 points each once they are upgraded to a 4+ armor save.

3 squads of 4 pathfinders is more survivable than 2 squads of 6. A single squad of pathfinders is far more ridiculous than 3 squads of them. At 12 points each they are relatively inexpensive for what they do, it's not the end of the world to spend an actual 200 points on pathfinders (not including the cost of transports)

Pathfinders tend to die. I would be surprised if a single squad survived 1 round of enemy shooting, or if 2 squads lived into round 3. Just look at the bright side, every wasted devilfish that comes with the pathfinders can be recycled and used for fire warriors.

schadenfreude wrote:The #1 problem with Tau is Tau players overspend on elites and heavy support not leaving enough for troops.

The #1 problem with Tau is the troops suck. They can't kill enemy. You pay for them, they don't repay you.

IG Veterans? Are you serious? I can't remember that a unit in TAU's troop selection which could bring 3 meltaguns.

Its a tough one. If you put your fire warriors in devilfish you don't get to use their fabulous pulse rifles, on the other hand they get shot up very quickly. I would advocate going for big units of fire warriors (say 12) and take maybe 3 units to sit on an objective and lay down pulse rifle fire. In concert with pathfinders that can be pretty devastating against most infantry (Plague marines the obvous exception).

Either that or go totally mechanised - but thats a bit boring IMO.

tokugawa wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:The #1 problem with Tau is Tau players overspend on elites and heavy support not leaving enough for troops.

The #1 problem with Tau is the troops suck. They can't kill enemy. You pay for them, they don't repay you.

IG Veterans? Are you serious? I can't remember that a unit in TAU's troop selection which could bring 3 meltaguns.

IG vets are 10 points a pop once their save is upgraded to a 4+, exact same cost, save, and toughness as a fire warrior.

Fire warriors don't need melta guns. The last thing a unit with a 30" range on their str 5 rapid fire guns need is an assault weapon that cracks open vehicles at less than 6", especially within the only 40k army that has railguns.

Every 3 fire warriors=1 heavy bolter, or 2 heavy bolters if in rapid fire range.
Marker lights can make fire warriors very accurate, and able to force a large volume of wounds.

The problem with Tau is their dependence on markerlights. Pathfinders die really easy, and without pathfinders fire warrior accuracy is not reliable.

Don't worry about objectives as Tau until late game, we arent MEQ and can't really sit on objectives. Spend the game killing enemy troops and keeping him away from objectives. Keep a piranha moving around out of LOS, get a really small flight stick for it and its like 2 inches tall. have it pop out ocasionally to pop vehicles but mainly have it ready to flat out and contest last turn. If you get to put any terrain down, which most friendly games I tend to roll off and take turns putting stuff down, put a forest in each opposite corner. This puts woods near both table edges and both outflanking edges so you can get to it no matter what the deployment is. Then place an objective in one when its your turn to place, one in each if you get to place 2 objectives and get kroot into it. you can walk on board to it or outflank into it but either way works. Kroot can go to ground in forests for 2+ cover(4+ cover, +1 cover in forests, +1 from GtG) Theyre hard to shake like that. If you plan on using a team for just such a purpose, add a shaper with no upgrades to boost the ld, and watch out for flamers. Ideally, since you can move in forests unhindered, keep them lined up in the back of the forest and be ready to run out and mellee anything getting too close. Be conscious of enemy outflankers, don't deploy there or make a run for it if the enemy has an outflanker the kroot can't handle.

Tau play the waiting game when it comes to objectives, you can't win by brute force unless you can table your opponent, which tau can do if you want to build them for it, but that's not what this thread is about.

Just keep in mind, come the last turn, all that matters is those objectives. Don't be afraid to use a crisis team to melee a TAC squad with no Pfist to tie them up if it will keep them from flamering a kroot squad on an obj. As long as you control one more than your opponent, everything else on the table is expendable if the gain from it will put you ahead in the overall game. But don't make this sound like i'm advocating being reckless, you have to measure each loss you accept and make sure its worth it, if you play a fast army sometimes its better to let the enemy have an objective and then rush another.

RedFloyd90 wrote:Don't worry about objectives as Tau until late game, we arent MEQ and can't really sit on objectives. Spend the game killing enemy troops and keeping him away from objectives.

This. This. This. This. This.

The other week I played a tau player in an objective game (with my shooty Imperial Fists). He moved up aggressively, and in 4 turns I had tabled him. Fire warriors always need either a devilfish or good cover. My whirlwind paid for itself firing only against the FW squads.

The next game, the same opponent held back and took opportunistic shots at me, never presenting a target to assault or rapid fire into. If we'd had time to finish the game, I probably wouldn't have survived to the last turn.

Very true. Tau players should always play a very mobile game, even in games where taking objectives is key. In addition I would avoid to advice of taking 3 pathfinder squads. Its especially not a good idea when play objective games, since a pathfinder can be a godsend when it comes to contesting an objective on final turn (since unlike the devilfish, it is fast)

I agree with some advice and disagree with others.

First off, my particular advice. Sit a couple squads in fish (whether they are 6 or 12 is up to you) and spend the game taking out weaker troops with that fish. I don't like the whole "stay out of trouble" thing because I feel as if sitting them in a corner is a waste of points. Just don't get real close to units that can really hurt (anything that can kill a tank and does so within 12") and the fish should be safe AND kill off a few troops, too.
Then, long about turn 5 (or 6 if you have faith in the dice) you have two options. If you have last turn, charge the fish into an enemy unit that has an objective, unload FW's, shoot with the fish, and even tank shock if you are able (the later should be done only assuming that the enemy unit doesn't have meltas or something that can really put a hurt on in DoG).
If you don't have last turn, you can just pick an objective last turn and plop your fish with troops on it.

For the first use, I would probably use a larger squad of fw, for the second a smaller 6 man squad since they will never be actually shooting.

Also, if you have a forest on the board, you can infiltrate kroot into it and sit there for the game. the 3+ save they get should give them some good survivability, and in order to kill a squad of 20 off it would take a LOT of concentrated fire from the enemy, which could be going somewhere else. then, last turn run them at an objective if you have the suicide turn or, if not, if there is an objective close-by (within, say, 8 inches) keep half of the kroot in cover and stretch the rest out to get to the objective, that way the kroot keep their save and get to the objective. If using the kroot to just sit in forest, decide whether it is worth it to go to ground. if the enemy is hitting you with long-range fire, go to ground and get a 2+ save. if they are closer stay up and shoot back.

It is so funny that there are still people praise 4+.

It is 2010(!) now.

4+? In shooting, who does not have 4+ today? Coversave is everywhere.

And if your FWs go into combat, they die.

Mad Rabbit wrote:
The other week I played a tau player in an objective game (with my shooty Imperial Fists). He moved up aggressively, and in 4 turns I had tabled him. Fire warriors always need either a devilfish or good cover. My whirlwind paid for itself firing only against the FW squads.

The next game, the same opponent held back and took opportunistic shots at me, never presenting a target to assault or rapid fire into. If we'd had time to finish the game, I probably wouldn't have survived to the last turn.

Yeh, that was foolish of him, if you have fire warriors on foot, something like a whirlwind has to die first turn. As tau you have to be able to deal with threats quickly. I have been taking a crisis team like this lately

Team leader
TL flamer or fusion(whichever will be more useful to your army)
single one of the other weapon
MT 1 or 2 Shield Drones, target lock
Crisis suit 1 TL fusion blaster, flamer
Crisis suit 2 TL flamer, fusion blaster

This gives you a deepstriking unit set up to counter infantry and vehicles. It can fire at 2 different targets, and each model can fire either anti infantry or vehicle. For the leader, if you know what your opponent is playing its an easy choice. 2 TL flamers and a normal flamer can reap some havoc on IG and Orks, and 2 TL fusions and a normal fusion can obliterate 1 or 2 vehicles.

If you plan on using flamers a lot, take 2 drones, place the leader where you DS near an enemy, then put the two drones in the concentric circle directly away from the enemy, and then you can place the 2 other crisis suits on either side, touching each drone. that will give you a line of 3 crisis suits so you can get all 3 templates in.

Alternatively, upgrade the team leader to a shas'vre, give him an airburst frag projector and a TL fusion. That way you can put him down first, and the two flamer suits BtB in front of him, with a drone on either side. That gives you 2 templates up front and a large blast firing over their heads.