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 Thaylen wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 Thaylen wrote:


Bike lists have low body count. Our S5 pulse weapons counter the bikes T5 fairly well.

A harder bike list for the tau to face would be a dakka banner lists. The banner is a weakpoint in the list, but distance from the tau firing lines will lessen the impact of pulse fire on the bike list.

I think you're dismissing them too quickly yet in the same breathe pointing out why the bike army IS good. Lol. I have been on the receiving end and it was impressive both times. Dakka banner, 4 outflankers, two Skimmer units... It was a metric ton of shots on TOUGH chassis. I respect the Banner bike build like this and think it is a very good answer to the question: how can I beat up on some Tau.

The General still has to SHOW UP or all bets are off. obviously.

The point was that without a dakka banner, bike lists can't match tau firepower from long range. And when they get closer, tau firepower improves dramatically.

My point was, why would you not take the banner anyways?

 Jancoran wrote:

 Thaylen wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 Thaylen wrote:


Bike lists have low body count. Our S5 pulse weapons counter the bikes T5 fairly well.

A harder bike list for the tau to face would be a dakka banner lists. The banner is a weakpoint in the list, but distance from the tau firing lines will lessen the impact of pulse fire on the bike list.

I think you're dismissing them too quickly yet in the same breathe pointing out why the bike army IS good. Lol. I have been on the receiving end and it was impressive both times. Dakka banner, 4 outflankers, two Skimmer units... It was a metric ton of shots on TOUGH chassis. I respect the Banner bike build like this and think it is a very good answer to the question: how can I beat up on some Tau.

The General still has to SHOW UP or all bets are off. obviously.

The point was that without a dakka banner, bike lists can't match tau firepower from long range. And when they get closer, tau firepower improves dramatically.

My point was, why would you not take the banner anyways?

Not every bike list has access to a dakka banner (I run a vanilla marines bike list).

Every bike army I was talking about does.

Space marine Bike armies ARE inferior to Ravenwing bike armies. I can't change that. I can say that even a space marine army can bring the pressure I am talking about, albeit not as much firepower from the bikes themselves. You CAN bring it from other quarters though.

 Jancoran wrote:
Every bike army I was talking about does.

Space marine Bike armies ARE inferior to Ravenwing bike armies. I can't change that. I can say that even a space marine army can bring the pressure I am talking about, albeit not as much firepower from the bikes themselves. You CAN bring it from other quarters though.

Marine bikes are 2 points cheaper, and have combat tactics and larger squad sizes. Dark angels squads have a hard time getting big enough to protect the special weapons they carry (at max size the squad is 6 strong, leaving only 3 ablative wounds, 4 if you consider the sergeant expendable). Add in that Dark angels struggle to bring down aircraft and your list runs into problems.

But we digress, this is getting off topic.

I play the IG and I kick the Tau's butt 2 different ways.

Mob them with as many foot sloggers as possible. (armed to the teeth with special weapons like melta guns, snipers, or plasma rifles)

Sacrifice a few squads to make room for 6 deathstrike missiles. Put them so deep into cover he has so slog through your troops to even get line of sight on them. Pop smoke, and watch his Tau go frantic on turn 4.... the last turn any of them will be alive.

 DemetriDominov wrote:
I play the IG and I kick the Tau's butt 2 different ways.

Mob them with as many foot sloggers as possible. (armed to the teeth with special weapons like melta guns, snipers, or plasma rifles)

Sacrifice a few squads to make room for 6 deathstrike missiles. Put them so deep into cover he has so slog through your troops to even get line of sight on them. Pop smoke, and watch his Tau go frantic on turn 4.... the last turn any of them will be alive.

er.... 6 deathstrike missiles? doesn't that blow out the FOC?

anyways, agree with this, doing it Damocles crusade style other than that, the key is to break the Tau's coherency. I'd like to think of Tau as a force that rely's on its counterparts to draw together to defeat the enemy - by destroying those with concentrated fire you can break up the greater good's efficiency. I suggest targeting vehicles first with high power fire (vanquishers!) and then mopping up with autocannons and your footsloggers.


GA

A sinlge ethereal is rather easy to protect, with the 12" bubble for his abilities, you have a lot of play on exactly where you can hide the little bugger. Sticking him on the back end of a firewarrior squad (behind ADL) or a riptide are good ways to hide him. Additionally he doesn't need LOS to give his buffs so he can easily be hidden inside of a ruin behind a wall. The first floor of 2 story ruins are a good place to hide him if you are worried about your opponent using barrage weapons to snipe him out.

The biggest problem with ethereal hunting is that if you are dopping shots on him/ his squad, you aren't shooting the move vulnerable elements of the tau army, pathfinders and suits without iridium armor commanders.

Can the ethereal give his abilities while in a transport (to units outside transport)?

General Annoyance wrote:

 DemetriDominov wrote:
I play the IG and I kick the Tau's butt 2 different ways.

Mob them with as many foot sloggers as possible. (armed to the teeth with special weapons like melta guns, snipers, or plasma rifles)

Sacrifice a few squads to make room for 6 deathstrike missiles. Put them so deep into cover he has so slog through your troops to even get line of sight on them. Pop smoke, and watch his Tau go frantic on turn 4.... the last turn any of them will be alive.

er.... 6 deathstrike missiles? doesn't that blow out the FOC?

anyways, agree with this, doing it Damocles crusade style other than that, the key is to break the Tau's coherency. I'd like to think of Tau as a force that rely's on its counterparts to draw together to defeat the enemy - by destroying those with concentrated fire you can break up the greater good's efficiency. I suggest targeting vehicles first with high power fire (vanquishers!) and then mopping up with autocannons and your footsloggers.


GA

Double FOC is a thing you know. No matter how many people will do anything to avoid playing it.

dual FOC blows. 1850 is a tourney standard in a ton of places for a reason. Lol.

Best way to win against Tau is threat saturation

they may be good at erasing a squad or two a turn but not else much after that.

Drop pods, av14, flamers for pathfinders, in multiple combination ruins a taus day.

at least that's my experience as a tau player.

I'm curious about the advice of kill pathfinders 1st.
People have argued that pathfinds allowing units to ignore cover gives a significant boost the heavy hitters. So you target the units that boost the shooting, to reduce the shooting.

Doesn't it make more sense to kill the shooters first, so that they have less shots to take at you?

My very limit experience is that it's as easy to wipe out a crisis team as it is a full path finder team.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I'm curious about the advice of kill pathfinders 1st.
People have argued that pathfinds allowing units to ignore cover gives a significant boost the heavy hitters. So you target the units that boost the shooting, to reduce the shooting.

Doesn't it make more sense to kill the shooters first, so that they have less shots to take at you?

My very limit experience is that it's as easy to wipe out a crisis team as it is a full path finder team.

"Shoot the medic/buffer first". If you kill them then killing the shooters is much easier, or at least surviving them is easier. And in Tau lists, shooty units are often fairly expendable, while their marketlight providers are usually less so.

you have to choose which option you are going for...either cripple the shooters, or take out the Pathfinders. You generally can't do both.

Killing the pathfinders means that most of there shooty stuff will only hit 50% of the time (BS3)

Its well worth removing asap if possible unless your able to remove 100% of the enemy shooting before hand.

When it comes to fighting Tau, I've got a couple rules of thumb.

1. Kill the markerlights. Since I play Salamanders in Drop Pods, a single flamer can usually wipe a whole squad of Pathfinders, so this might be a case of easier said than done, where I don't realize how difficult it is for other people. Nevertheless, there you go.
2. As far as I know, Overwatch still requires Line of Sight. When I pod in, I set my charges up so that as few units as possible are able to draw LOS to the charging unit. Since shooty armies like to use terrain as cover, this is often pretty easy to pull off.
3. Riptides, and indeed, all the monstrous creatures of 6th edition, go down pretty easy to a squad of assault terminators with thunder hammers and storm shields.

I haven't lost a game to the new Tau yet, but I'm assuming that that's more good luck on my part than good tactical sense.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I'm curious about the advice of kill pathfinders 1st.
People have argued that pathfinds allowing units to ignore cover gives a significant boost the heavy hitters. So you target the units that boost the shooting, to reduce the shooting.

Doesn't it make more sense to kill the shooters first, so that they have less shots to take at you?

My very limit experience is that it's as easy to wipe out a crisis team as it is a full path finder team.

The thing is though, that Tau rely on a mediocre volume of good guns on mediocre shooters. The use of markerlights alleviates this problem by making what volume of shooters Tau do have into individually some of the most accurate and powerful guns in the game.

That is why you shoot the pathfinders first.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I'm curious about the advice of kill pathfinders 1st.
People have argued that pathfinds allowing units to ignore cover gives a significant boost the heavy hitters. So you target the units that boost the shooting, to reduce the shooting.

Doesn't it make more sense to kill the shooters first, so that they have less shots to take at you?

My very limit experience is that it's as easy to wipe out a crisis team as it is a full path finder team.

I think it makes sense to kill my shooters first. I mean the accuracy is an EXPENSIVE point sync which becomes useless if you kill the actual main threats. For example, it hurts like hell when you get hit by a Riptide dead on after being blown from a Rhino. Ouch. But whose to say the accuracy upgrade it used was even NECESSARY? some of the time, the hit would have done as much (a hit or minor scatter) so in the grnd scheme, the Tau player (me) HOPES that the accuracy will payt off but sometimes the dice, on their own, give me a present!

So Im not advocating that you leave things up to the dice. I am just saying that killing the killas may do more for your chances unless the silly Pathfinders leave themselves dead sexy in the open.

 Jimsolo wrote:

2. As far as I know, Overwatch still requires Line of Sight. When I pod in, I set my charges up so that as few units as possible are able to draw LOS to the charging unit. Since shooty armies like to use terrain as cover, this is often pretty easy to pull off.

Careful how you do this because assaulting also requires LOS. If you don't have any models that can physically see the models your assaulting, you can't declare the charge. As well as, if you only have 1 model that can see the enemy and they overwatch and kill that model, the charge is failed. I don't see how you can get around overwatch with this method.

Most of the time, you can still arrange yourself so that while your charging squad has LOS to their targets, fewer (to none) of the OTHER Tau can see you, especially if there are buildings in play. Sorry, should have specified.

Saythings wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:

2. As far as I know, Overwatch still requires Line of Sight. When I pod in, I set my charges up so that as few units as possible are able to draw LOS to the charging unit. Since shooty armies like to use terrain as cover, this is often pretty easy to pull off.

Careful how you do this because assaulting also requires LOS. If you don't have any models that can physically see the models your assaulting, you can't declare the charge. As well as, if you only have 1 model that can see the enemy and they overwatch and kill that model, the charge is failed. I don't see how you can get around overwatch with this method.

By sticking the IC at the front and passing wounds backwards; This is also how you avoid losing any distance when you take overwatch casualties.

 Jancoran wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I'm curious about the advice of kill pathfinders 1st.
People have argued that pathfinds allowing units to ignore cover gives a significant boost the heavy hitters. So you target the units that boost the shooting, to reduce the shooting.

Doesn't it make more sense to kill the shooters first, so that they have less shots to take at you?

My very limit experience is that it's as easy to wipe out a crisis team as it is a full path finder team.

I think it makes sense to kill my shooters first. I mean the accuracy is an EXPENSIVE point sync which becomes useless if you kill the actual main threats. For example, it hurts like hell when you get hit by a Riptide dead on after being blown from a Rhino. Ouch. But whose to say the accuracy upgrade it used was even NECESSARY? some of the time, the hit would have done as much (a hit or minor scatter) so in the grnd scheme, the Tau player (me) HOPES that the accuracy will payt off but sometimes the dice, on their own, give me a present!

So Im not advocating that you leave things up to the dice. I am just saying that killing the killas may do more for your chances unless the silly Pathfinders leave themselves dead sexy in the open.

drop podding in 10 sternguard onto a position where you got ur pathfinders, and another unit with in 15 inches will work just fine, combat squad on way out of pod, one team using dragonfire rounds to negate any cover they have and the second team using the best rounds for the unit they are shooting, i caught a tournament pro out doing this as he did not expect me to drop pod 4 inches from his board edge, killed a whole team of fire warriors and all his pathfinders turn 1 and the libby and his vets killed his commanders body guard turn 1 immediately... worse for him being this was kill points to determin the win, i took first blood and 3 primary objective points with my opening volleys

I faced 2 tau in a recent tournie. I was playing sisters.
Exorcists love Tau, str 8 ap 1 kills anything in that list. twin linked melta and melta in general were great. My conclave and celestine steamrolled troops left right and centre. It did require me running rhinos in a bit of a chain.
Ignore riptides and hammerheads to late game. Both games riptides did at least 2 wounds to themselves by turn 3. You must be aggressive is my advice for most armies, target marker light removal and shield drones then go to town any shooting is effective at that point in countering them.

I normally play horde orks and I've only had to play Tau twice in tournaments and (thankfully) they were both objective games. I won both games. I my normal tourney list I bring an Aegis line and push it up about 18" from my board edge. The boyz run up and get behind the line. In one game, Tau did go first and killed boyz but not enough, I was still able to park boyz behind the line after turn one of movement. We sit there and wait for turn three or four (depending on time), the boyz don't go rushing up the board screaming and all that nonsense. By the way, the boyz are not arranged in random blobs, think of multiple mobz of boyz in approximate rectangles across the board. This way we can threaten as many objectives as possible when they start the push. Also, the boyz bring big shootas. These add some dakka and help targeting markerlights.

In the backfield, Lootas and Lobbas (with ammo runts) focus fire on markerlights, whether they be from pathfinder or those drones running around with the Tau commander. Honestly, that large drone squad was pretty easy for the Lobbas to annihilate.

While Lobbas and Lootas work on markerlights, followed by firewarriors (I didn't target the suits because they were armed with plasma and fusion). The boyz start rushing objectives on turn three or four. No shooting, just move and run. That's two turns to rush objectives with the Kustom force fields saving what they can. In both games I was able to eliminate the markerlights after two rounds of shooting. Even without the markerlights, lots of boyz died when the tau focused fire but there were enough boyz on objectives and threatening objectives. I failed every charge I tried late in the game due to the overwhelming amount of firepower but the Tau opponents so far have been too conservative with moving upfield with firewarriors and Kroot.

I haven't played Tau in a Kill Point mission with my groundpounders yet and I'm thankful for it but I think I could give them a run for their money if I tried. The amount of firepower they put out is amazing.

Chris Lysander wrote:

drop podding in 10 sternguard onto a position where you got ur pathfinders, and another unit with in 15 inches will work just fine, combat squad on way out of pod, one team using dragonfire rounds to negate any cover they have and the second team using the best rounds for the unit they are shooting, i caught a tournament pro out doing this as he did not expect me to drop pod 4 inches from his board edge, killed a whole team of fire warriors and all his pathfinders turn 1 and the libby and his vets killed his commanders body guard turn 1 immediately... worse for him being this was kill points to determin the win, i took first blood and 3 primary objective points with my opening volleys

I endorse drop pods as a good way to limit a Tau army. I fought some Space Wolves and they were never scarier than when committing to a total Drop army sort of theme. Truly, the firepower and melee ability, and at such short range is kinda awesome. I mean Normal Marines can actually do it too, but the Space Pupies were just really good at whipping on the Kroot. I had to play cat and mouse to win but then...when dont I? Lol.

I really like the Drop idea for getting to Tau. Furioso's with Frag Cannons in Blood angel Armies are positively terrifying.

How are you guys murdering tau with drop pods? With kroot bubble wrap (I run 2 squads sized 16+1 and 20+1) and Intercepting riptides, how are you doing anything but murdering kroot on turn 1? An enemy will land, burn kroot, and then be in triple tap range with no cover to protect from riptide and ionhead blasts.

A good thing I've played before is having a weaker unit declare the charge fist to soak up all the overwatch. Then wade in with the heavy-hitters because each unit can only overwatch once a phase.

Also LR lists work well if you can deal with Hammerheads/Riptides/Suits to a lesser degree quickly. They're about the only thing you need to worry about in LR spam.

People have said it before but a good rule of thumb is Get up close and personal. If nothing else, it'll make 'em sweat...

 The Crusader wrote:
A good thing I've played before is having a weaker unit declare the charge fist to soak up all the overwatch. Then wade in with the heavy-hitters because each unit can only overwatch once a phase.

Also LR lists work well if you can deal with Hammerheads/Riptides/Suits to a lesser degree quickly. They're about the only thing you need to worry about in LR spam.

People have said it before but a good rule of thumb is Get up close and personal. If nothing else, it'll make 'em sweat...

I dunno who you are playing, but I would not have overwatched with anything but the first squad if you tried to feed me bait like that.

redacted due to re reading rules.

 Thaylen wrote:
How are you guys murdering tau with drop pods? With kroot bubble wrap (I run 2 squads sized 16+1 and 20+1) and Intercepting riptides, how are you doing anything but murdering kroot on turn 1? An enemy will land, burn kroot, and then be in triple tap range with no cover to protect from riptide and ionhead blasts.

Turn one, the pod units aren't charing, just tearing away the wraps where necesary...or just not focusing on those. Key is to remove the enemy units from 6" support fire range, make them move and then hit em on the other side while you charge wuith your remnants. One half takes it in the face kidna the other half is attacking without much resistence.

Just is a more patient approach, but the pods are basically a Wolves way of saying: its way too easy for Tau to stay at Rapid fire range for too long. Im gonna concede that for a round, use the pod for cover and come out swinging with my best punch. Time is the enemy for any Marine army with its low tolerance for attrition.

Vindicare Assasin has worked very well for me, Its so much fun.