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The time has come for the return of the hammerheads.... enough said

It is a very good unit but it has numerous weaknesses to exploit.

Tau players are going to have to get used to something IG players know well. Using cheap unit as speed bumps. That unit of firewarriors is not just goot at shooting it can also keep a knight from charging your buffmander O'Vesa star for a turn. If you give them emp grenades they will even strip a couple HP from the knight. They will also give you a free turn of shooting called overwatch against the kight.

I would not recommend going for explosions with single shot expensive weapons. You are much better off with tank hunter + large numbers of Str7 shots from a missile side+drone unit. This unit has an excellent chance to strip a knight of all 6HP given even 2 markerlights...that is with the shield up. The battle cannon sounds great until you realize that it is AP3 large blast. A tanking buffmander, drones to absorb the Str 8, cover saves (ADL is 50 pts or stonghold assault has barricades for 10 pts), and skyshield landing pads are all great answers to mitigate damage.

The knight has 12" movement but rolls 3d6 take highest for movement through difficult terrain. There are currently ways to buy difficult terrain in stronghold assault and it is not difficult to setup so the knight has to either walk around terrain or walk through it and sacrifice the majority of it's movement.

gatling riptides with buffmander support will put down ~3.5 HP on knights. They are also very difficult to catch for knights if the O'Vesa star player has any idea what they are doing. Jetpack units can use terrain and even speed bump units to slow the knights down and give them time.

Crisis suits with melta will do excellent work against them as well. 6 melta to the butt will average 4 HP. That is a lot when compare the crisis suits to the price of a knight.

Keep in mind that the knights need to be the primary detachment to be scoring. Your one or two non scoring knights are an interesting hiccup in the meta and can be ignored, tarpitted (very easily by any semi cheap Sv3+ unit or horde unit that can get the majority of models in b2b). The D weapon will kill vehicles and MC with relative ease but it only hits with 2 attacks on an average charge, the stomps cannot cover the knights own base and will usually have an AP of 4, and finally the HoW has no AP.

 DarkWind wrote:
The time has come for the return of the hammerheads.... enough said

wrote: Hammerheads would be terrible against Knights. 1 BS4 S10 shot does less than a HP per turn... 1 shot, 0.66 hit, 0.44 pen/glance, 0.22 get through the 4++. It's going to take over 10 game turns for 3 Hammerheads to kill 1 Knight.

Also keep in mind Knights can get 5+ cover sides on their other facing from area terrain easily.

Please do fill you heavy support slot with Hammer Heads, I'm sure you will be flattening Knights in no time at all!

Yeah... hammerheads which can be one shot with the thermal cannon.

4 hammer heads, assuming enclave ally.
4 shots, 2.67 hits, 1.33 pens, .67 unsaved, and 0.33 explodes.

So... Yeah... One Knight out of an entire army gets bothered by the combined strength of 4 heavy support tanks.

Zande4 wrote:

 DarkWind wrote:
The time has come for the return of the hammerheads.... enough said

wrote: Hammerheads would be terrible against Knights. 1 BS4 S10 shot does less than a HP per turn... 1 shot, 0.66 hit, 0.44 pen/glance, 0.22 get through the 4++. It's going to take over 10 game turns for 3 Hammerheads to kill 1 Knight.

Also keep in mind Knights can get 5+ cover sides on their other facing from area terrain easily.

Please do fill you heavy support slot with Hammer Heads, I'm sure you will be flattening Knights in no time at all!

The knight is a vehicle so area terrain does give cover saves only 25+% obscured does.

 ansacs wrote:
Funnily enough the Tau have a formation that was almost purpose built for killing an IK. Against front armour 13 and the ion shield the 3 missile sides and 6 drones with 2 markerlights for support will put an average of 5 HP on a knight...if you get the side armour 12 then it is 8 HP. So in the worst possible conditions the Tau almost kill a knight in a single turn with less pts than the knight...ouch.

I'm surprised more people have ignored the Tau fire base support formation. That formation is a god send if tau go first, and backed by skyrays that can delete SM biker squads a turn due to seekers ignoring cover, and being ap3.

Am I saying its gonna be easy? No but tau can fight back.

Though after having a few drinks and playing around on battlescribe I came up with a 1500pt list I want to play, I would like someone to critique it for me and make it more efficient.

HQ: IG CCS minimum equipment

Troops: Vet squad plasma
Troops: Vet squad plasma
ADL las cannon

Superheavy: Banehammer

Allies: 2 imperial knights

1478

 Gitsmasher wrote:

 ansacs wrote:
Funnily enough the Tau have a formation that was almost purpose built for killing an IK. Against front armour 13 and the ion shield the 3 missile sides and 6 drones with 2 markerlights for support will put an average of 5 HP on a knight...if you get the side armour 12 then it is 8 HP. So in the worst possible conditions the Tau almost kill a knight in a single turn with less pts than the knight...ouch.

I'm surprised more people have ignored the Tau fire base support formation. That formation is a god send if tau go first, and backed by skyrays that can delete SM biker squads a turn due to seekers ignoring cover, and being ap3.

Am I saying its gonna be easy? No but tau can fight back.

Though after having a few drinks and playing around on battlescribe I came up with a 1500pt list I want to play, I would like someone to critique it for me and make it more efficient.

HQ: IG CCS minimum equipment

Troops: Vet squad plasma
Troops: Vet squad plasma
ADL las cannon

Superheavy: Banehammer

Allies: 2 imperial knights

1478

Is one ADL las cannon enough anti flyer?

Well, you have to remove the marker lights asap.
Eldar Serpents with the shield can do that, dito for TFC.

Sadly no, but in my area flier heavy list aren't very common. Though I thought tweaking the list and dropping the doom hammer for a stormlord so my troops can have a mobile bunker to do drive-by's in lol.

Can ya help me fit that in?

I'm confused as to why you'd want such limited troops as primary with 3 super heavies in the list. Isn't there a way to mix things up so you can have the knights as scoring too? Or are you intentionally taking them as a separate formation to lower their target priority?

I mean baneblades are cool and all but could you swap 1BB+2non scoring knights for 3 scoring knights? I'm sat in a waiting room at the moment and my books are in paper form at home so I can't run thru costs to work things out properly myself.

I dont see a single knight being an issue for Tau. However 2 or 3 become a bit more troublesome.

I've already got myself a list ready to take on knights although at ~1000 points it would be a struggle.

2 words, Farsight Bomb.
Drop a farsight bomb (5 suits) with all meltas on a corner of the knight (armour value wise) and melta away, it can only 4++ one side then JSJ to spreadout.
Yes it's a few points but i have a fair bit more army to play with.
In my 1850 list i have:
Farsight
5 man team 4x TLfusions, 1 buff suit, 5x gun drones.
2 riptide IA, TLFB, EWO (1 from dataslate)
4x 6man FW teams
15man Kroot with snipes and hound
2x 5man pathfinders
3man team Broads HYMP/SMS EWO (dataslate)
3man team Broads HRR/SMS (dataslate)

Just as an example.

Although I am in agreement about Pirhanas. I think they will need to start showing up in my lists more often.

Boniface wrote:
I dont see a single knight being an issue for Tau. However 2 or 3 become a bit more troublesome.

I've already got myself a list ready to take on knights although at ~1000 points it would be a struggle.

2 words, Farsight Bomb.
Drop a farsight bomb (5 suits) with all meltas on a corner of the knight (armour value wise) and melta away, it can only 4++ one side then JSJ to spreadout.
Yes it's a few points but i have a fair bit more army to play with.
In my 1850 list i have:
Farsight
5 man team 4x TLfusions, 1 buff suit, 5x gun drones.
2 riptide IA, TLFB, EWO (1 from dataslate)
4x 6man FW teams
15man Kroot with snipes and hound
2x 5man pathfinders
3man team Broads HYMP/SMS EWO (dataslate)
3man team Broads HRR/SMS (dataslate)

Just as an example.

Although I am in agreement about Pirhanas. I think they will need to start showing up in my lists more often.

The problem is, in a tourney you don't know what you're facing.

Is the suggested list not TAC enough?

I thought i had all bases covered.
I did fail to mention the Aegis with re-roll reserves.

sand.zzz wrote:
Tau are probably the least concerned with Imperial Knights.
Depending on the mission/deployment - an Imperial Knight will probably only ever get 1 turn of shooting vs. Tau. The firepower Tau bring to the table is gamebreakingly stupid, not sure where you've been op.

And what about 5? You can kill them all in 1 turn?

kingleir wrote:

sand.zzz wrote:
Tau are probably the least concerned with Imperial Knights.
Depending on the mission/deployment - an Imperial Knight will probably only ever get 1 turn of shooting vs. Tau. The firepower Tau bring to the table is gamebreakingly stupid, not sure where you've been op.

And what about 5? You can kill them all in 1 turn?

Exactly, they're simply too much armor saturation.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

kingleir wrote:

sand.zzz wrote:
Tau are probably the least concerned with Imperial Knights.
Depending on the mission/deployment - an Imperial Knight will probably only ever get 1 turn of shooting vs. Tau. The firepower Tau bring to the table is gamebreakingly stupid, not sure where you've been op.

And what about 5? You can kill them all in 1 turn?

Exactly, they're simply too much armor saturation.

5 knights is 1875 pts that does nothing to flyers and will gets slaughtered by a number of upper teir armies, notably jetseer council. Also the Tau player can mitigate the shooting fairly easily, see my post above.

The problem is that you cannot compare an unbalanced 1900 pts army to a TAC 1500 pts army and expect the comparison to work. The same can be said of any unbalanced list. The 9 nightscythe list is brutal against the knight list for example and the 9 dakkafex list will roll over some lists but they are all very hard countered by other lists and can be beaten by canny play.