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so i guess it really comes down to "if you are WYSIWYG" or not, but since he is running the blackreach warboss as old zoggy, im assuming you are not. My suggestion would be this, Take a Crisis Suit commander with a Missle pod or Plasma rifle and a Airbursting frag. Hold him in reserve, and deepstrike him in. drop the kroot. Kroot are horrible, and die quick to anything in combat really (no armour saves is the devil) so relying on them against an assualty army is bad. Zogwart gives his unit Cyberork bodies or at least the options for such, if IRCC, as well as some other nifty things, and i think his "Curse" has a range. by holding you're HQ in reserve, you give him nothing to curse right away, as well as you can try to position the airbursting in the right place and the Commander is a pretty good hitter. Firewarrior gun line, 10 warriors, one team leader, 2 gun drones = bliss, pulse rifles for 30 inch range, and the carbines from the twin linked drones means you still have pinning in the unit, i generally run two of these units, and give at least one a devil fish as a transport, to move them quickly. (kinda important if he is getting a bit to close ya know) Stealth suits can be good, but not really against orks, fusion blasters are death to nobs, but burst cannons are not.

Fire Warriors x2 (10 warriors 2 gun drones)
Crisis commander
devilfish
Crisis suits
Hammerhead

those are always a good awesome thing to have an any tau army. hammerheads rule.


anyhow, with two groups of Firewarriors, should be able to eat threw a group of 20 boys quick, or even the nobs as 5 are not "huge" problems. but i would suggest getting a hammerhead at least. make it sooo much better

I'm pretty sure you can't give Kroot Pulse Carbines, but it's been awhile since I looked. It also comes out about the same, the kroot rifles give them +1 attack in CC, the carbines would lose that.

Kroot aren't terrible against orks as a counter charge unit. as long as you get the charge, you go before boys, and at the same time as a nob without a PK. Hit on 4+, wound on 4+. You'll probably still lose combat, but you get to drop 30 attacks on their head before they get to swing back at you, and they'll have done their job if they can weaken the Orks and tie them up a bit to reposition your guns. But yes, if you're expanding your army, make sure to pick up some kroot hounds for your kroot squad, they are very handy. The two most common kroot squads you'll see are 10 kroot and 5 kroot hounds, or 10 kroot and 10 kroot hounds.

Kroot are a key unit to success as Tau. Yes, they die horribly, but it's what they're supposed to do. You use them as a sacrifice at a key time to delay the opponent one more turn then they would have taken, then after they fight the kroot, you shoot the remnants to death, as the kroot will likely have done some alright damage to the bad guys.

Nick wrote:I probably will get a Hammerhead

Don't buy the Hammerhead or the Devilfish. Buy the Skyray instead because it comes with the parts to be all three

i agree on the skyray thing. and kroot can have a kroot rifle, pulse carbine or pulse rifle (the tau weaponry are 5 points extra).

my sugesstion is if your planning on doing bigger games, get at least 1 skyray/hammerhead. maybe 2 for swarmie armies, and broadsides to make solid pimp smacks against MEQ armies. 3 railgun shots comin in is sure to put the smackdown on any1's army (so long as you can keep them alive long enough)

This actually sounds like a rather easily fixed problem. Your stealth suits are where you should be doing the most damage. Burst cannons should be able to tear through large groups of boyz, so how many do you have? do they each have one, or two? All you have to do is JSJ around the boyz, side-stepping and whatnot. I'd reccomend using your kroot to screen off your Crisis Suits from a boyz assault, (and if they get too close, charge them for good measure. You do [b]NOT[b/] want orks to get the charge. If you do get the charge, I'd only give your kroot a turn or two of survival before they're completely annihilated or run off the board. If he's using strictly the black reach set, then I'd reccomend using them to tie up the boyz, which should distract more than half of his army.

IIRC, you can target his ICs even if they're in a squad. The pirahna.... I don't know what you'd do with that in this army. It seems rather useless, but I don't play Tau except with my friend's pieces. I'd reccomend a Tau heavy support instead. (If your friend is nice, he'll let you proxy one out of the piranha.) I'd reccommend you use your standard Tau for suppressive fire, mostly to keep their heads down. Put them in cover, not to protect them necessarily, but rather to keep them from charging so easily.

Good luck in your games.

At 30+ points each, the three shots that each stealth suit gets are not very efficient at killing orks. With 5+ cover, you're looking at 2/3 of a dead (6pt!) ork. With 4+ cover it's only half a dead ork per stealth suit. Each suit has to kill 5+ orks to prevent the Tau from being completely over-run over the course of a game. For a suit to kill 5 orks it takes more turns than the game has in it, on average rolls.

I happen to agree on trying to get a bigger sized point game with your army. Im not saying take max everything, as thats just a suicide. Im talking, you need to get some more things. Because Orks in smaller point games are REALLY hard to kill. In a 500pt game, Orks can easily just over run pretty much any list lol.

And the best way to counter Orks, is get them to start taking their saves. Anywhere you can drop in large templates is a good thing. Id disagree on using a cyclic ion blaster.....thing. Simply because its STR3 vs T4. Meaning youll have to roll a 5 or 6 for wounds. Thats kind of counter productive IMO

in the blasters defense, if you roll a 6 it becomes an AP1, which means it has the potential to thin some numbers, and aside from that, it's only 15 points compared to a definite kill of 20....hmmm....5 shots vs a maximum of 2...against orks, i'd take the 5, until trucks and other vehicles come into the equation....but by then he should have some more crisis suits....


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and i was talking about the plasma rifle, fyi

Also remember that when you give your commander drones he loses his independent character status and should no longer be target-able by Zog's curse. As far as models to get in the future crisis suits will (until a new codex comes out) be your bread and butter kill everything button.

For hordes the Heatwave build of suits is just devastating (t/l flamer missile pod) and it's incredibly cheap at only 33 pts a pop. Also I'm a big fan of the Airburst Frag Projector, I've killed dozens of poor save models with it and with a large blast it can still kill a few MEQs.

Hammerheads are awesome, give them burst cannons, multi-trackers, and disruption pods and you can move 12 every turn and shoot with your railgun.

I've never actually used Kroot so I can't really comment but a 7 ppm meat shield for your suits is hard to pass up when the suits are 30-50 ppm (unless you're a lot more mobile than the armies you're facing).

Im totally down with the air fragmentation projector. Im almost thinking about taking it (I play alot of SM, but this spring/summer we are getting a good size nods/eldar armies in the group) so it will REALLY be worth me taking. Though a large blast, all those saves even a SM will fail from time to time

Sorry i was gona for a while, i had a game with him. His new army is

Zoggy

Nobz(cyborg body and PainBoy) Uh oh D: 4 nobz, 1 boy

Boyz x20

Scorcha

The results were less devastating thanks to some cheap tactics (using drones and impassable terrain to block him). He had 3 boyz with 1 Wound Zoggy. 3 Nobz and a pain boy all have perfect health. Our board is 2x3

Get a bigger board, it's pretty much impossible to beat an assault army with a shooting army if they start the game on top of you.

4x4 is the lowest you should ever be playing on for standard 40k. Anything above 1000 points should be on a 6x4.

Kroot are very good against orks. They won't chewed them up (kroot hounds are an exception - these guys can give you a chance to equal out the combat), however they are very good at giving you time. Block the orks with kroots and flee for another firing position. For the ork player that will be really annoying. Also if you want to take Zog out quickly... Charge the mob he's in and throw all attacks at him. He'll most definately go down.

Well i can use the kroot to hold them off but what would be the point?

At turn 2 im already at the edge of my side of the board

Im trying to block him early on with my Drones because they have Jet Packs and get 6'' in the assault phase but thats only good for 1 turn.


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Check out my 1k List against the Ork and Eldar player C&C is wanted. To see it Either go to the Army List Section of 40k or Go to my Account Profile and go to the Topics started by me

I'm no Tau player, though I do play orks and I tell you that all you need to do is generally kite them. When they are being denied their charge everything starts falling apart.
If on turn 2 you have nowhere to run than the size of the board doesn't seem right. You said you were playing 1000 or 500 pts? Either way you should be able to take 2 turns easily while holding your ground, before you have to retreat.

you can use whfb chaos beasts as hounds to keep the costs down.

willydstyle wrote:Tau aren't really at a disadvantage, but Battleforce Tau are definitely at a disadvantage. You need to restructure your army greatly and use very different units than what you have now.

Tau aren't even placing in national tournaments. When all armies are played to their utmost, Tau are rapidly edged out. Love their playstyle though.

seriously, try to get more suits. and the commander is still an independent character even with the drones.

Ok, how about this?

HQ:
XV8 35
TL Missile Pods 18
iridium armor 20
airbursting frag 20
stimulent injector 10

103

XV25 Stealth Suits x3 90
burst cannons free
stealth suits free
90

firewarriors x12 w/devilfish 200
pulse rifles free
burst cannons (devilfish) free
SMS (devilfish) 20
flechette dischargers 10
230

kroot 84
kroot rifles free
84

pirhanna 60
burst cannons free
flechette dischargers 10
70

gun drones (pirhanna) x2 24
pulse carbines free
24

Total 601

Drop the fire warriors down to 6, increase the kroot (add some hounds) and put a melta gun on the piranha.

Drop the stealth suits for some real suits.

Lol i never realized that stealth suits and xv8's were only 5 points away. Ok i'll do that

Well, I believe the XV8 doesn't come with any weapons. I'd drop iridium armor and stimulant injectors from your boss to upgrade some XV8s. More suits is better than more upgrades, especially in lower points games.

and get a hammerhead, ion cannon with burstcannons best defence against a close combat army

shas'o vera wrote:and get a hammerhead, ion cannon with burstcannons best defence against a close combat army

If you do this, you'll probably want to spend the extra points on Flechette Dischargers as well.

also, if you can, you can borrow the rules for the shard cannon i modeled for my devilfish

ummm......i don't see anywhere in the tau empire codex that says an independent character loses his status when accompinied by drones....

How about you guys stop saying "get a bigger board" or "get more stuff"?

If you guys are playing 'as is' and not buying extra stuff, it's kind of hard. I, personally, think the Tau battleforce is the best buy you can get against the others.

Straight up out of the Battleforce, you got a smackload of drones. I haven't seen a post yet regarding these guys. At what you have, I would probably go gun-line action. Keep your Firewarriors in gunline action. Have your Devilfish shoot the mobz and equipped with the flechette just in case. Have your Stealth Suits utilize the burst cannons and JSJ'ing until the WAAAGH gets to your main force. The Drone's are there to HOPEFULLY pin the large mob down while your FW's kill them off.

Kroot shoot and charge the orks. Any survivors? FW's rapid fire orks to death.

Your Commander, of course, is JSJ'ing all the way back to his battleline.

Doombot001 wrote:How about you guys stop saying "get a bigger board" or "get more stuff"?

If you guys are playing 'as is' and not buying extra stuff, it's kind of hard. I, personally, think the Tau battleforce is the best buy you can get against the others.

Sorry? He's a new player with an array of mismatched units, playing on a field that puts him at a huge disadvantage. What other advice should he be given?
WYSIWYG doesn't concern us here either. After all, his opponent is using a generic Warboss as Zogwort.

It doesn't look like your opponent has a legal list. 20 boys is still only one troop choice, and he needs 2 to field a legal list.