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I have just been wondering what are some of the competive tactics that tau have as they are one of the oldest codexs.

Tau don't really have any competitive tactics. They have nothing to stop from getting assaulted insanely quickly anymore, and all of their anti-vehicle is in heavy support.

The most competitive thing you can do is count them as Dark Eldar with Devilfish as Raiders, Piranhas as Venoms, and Hammerheads as Ravagers. Kroot make nice Wyches, and Fire Warriors/Pathfinders make nice Kabalites.

Tau capitalize on the idea of "sacrifice for the greater good" in other words using expendable units such as kroot and piranhas to tarpit enemies while your xv8s, broadsides and tanks blast away at them from afar. This would be the "footslogger" list of the tau. It involves a lot of kroot to screen our meaty units to delay assault for as long as possible.

Another way to play tau is mech by using a minimum of 3 devilfish and tanks to form a tank wall so the crisis suits can jsj behind them.

Someone else will probably go more in depth into these tactics but those are the basic two play styles to go with tau. The main idea with tau though is to deny assault for as long as possible. If you think along those lines coming up with a list should be easy.

Tau can't delay an assault, it is inevitable. What you can do though is limit the damage. Feed the enemy units you can afford to lose. And make sure you don't get multi-assaulted.

Or just go crazy with skimmers, last-minute objective grabs and contests with Devilfishes and Piranhas.

Emperor awfulness wrote:Tau don't really have any competitive tactics. They have nothing to stop from getting assaulted insanely quickly anymore, and all of their anti-vehicle is in heavy support.

The most competitive thing you can do is count them as Dark Eldar with Devilfish as Raiders, Piranhas as Venoms, and Hammerheads as Ravagers. Kroot make nice Wyches, and Fire Warriors/Pathfinders make nice Kabalites.

You, my friend, have not encountered the right Tau player. If you play it right, what is going to get assaulted? Your kroot? That's what they're for... and that's one of the ways a good Tau player plays unless you're assuming everyone plays a couple of specific armies that can get a quick assault...


Anyway, for Tau it's all about two things, in my experience... mobility and blocking. Mobility is simple, you use your battlesuits to JSJ from behind terrain, or if terrain is lacking, from behind your own vehicles. This also gives them a decent turn of speed, which can help keep them out of range of nasty enemies... vehicles need to take disruption pods as standard, and shooting vehicles need a multi-tracker so they can shoot as a fast vehicle, letting you keep them mobile as well

Blocking is the much more interesting part you need to use Kroot to either prevent deep strikes or block assaults on your more valuable units, such as broadside battlesuits. People refer to this as 'bubble-wrapping', and it's the perfect counter to those quick assault armies just let them chop apart your kroot and eat them up with shooting next turn... you can also deploy drones from your vehicles for the same result, particularly piranhas who will likely be getting close to the enemy. Let them waste their time on your 2 man drone squads and kroot, shoot the hell out of them next turn... although the drone thing can come back to bite in kill point games.

Basics to remember are you pack as many battlesuits as possible, and if you want any troops to live through the game and be useful they've got to be 6 man fire warrior squads kept inside a devilfish. Avoid letting them out unless there's an opportunity you can't pass up those are your objective grabbers.

That's pretty much the basics... I've not played as much as I should lately, so YMMV, but yeah... and of course you just have to ignore the nay-sayers. Just because Tau aren't as completely freaking easy to play as your average Spehss Muhreen army doesn't mean they're bad. They're just more of a challenge to get right.

I agree with Beregond that the basics are mobility and blocking. I think another very important part is the crisis suit configerations. There are alot of options and some are alot less efficent than others. The most common five are Helios, Firestorm, Deathrain, Fireknife and Bladestorm and out of those the last two i find to have pretty big flaws. However alot of players start by using Fireknife just cause missile pods and plasma both look good.

Another thing with Tau i think is you need to be a very good tactician. In some ways i think you have to think almost two turns ahead. Only piranhas can move more than 12' a turn (and cannot tank shock) and barely anything in the army can fight in combat, so you need to know exactly where you need to be and how your going to get there. Also always keep the mission objectives in mind.

I personally use Farsight(no bodyguard), no kroot and a Skyray and i win most of my games (against tournament players). The current metagame plays to a lot of our strengths. Long fangs and deep strike armies will always be tricky but i find tau can still be very powerful.

Beregond wrote:

Emperor awfulness wrote:Tau don't really have any competitive tactics. They have nothing to stop from getting assaulted insanely quickly anymore, and all of their anti-vehicle is in heavy support.

The most competitive thing you can do is count them as Dark Eldar with Devilfish as Raiders, Piranhas as Venoms, and Hammerheads as Ravagers. Kroot make nice Wyches, and Fire Warriors/Pathfinders make nice Kabalites.

You, my friend, have not encountered the right Tau player. If you play it right, what is going to get assaulted? Your kroot? That's what they're for... and that's one of the ways a good Tau player plays unless you're assuming everyone plays a couple of specific armies that can get a quick assault...


Anyway, for Tau it's all about two things, in my experience... mobility and blocking. Mobility is simple, you use your battlesuits to JSJ from behind terrain, or if terrain is lacking, from behind your own vehicles. This also gives them a decent turn of speed, which can help keep them out of range of nasty enemies... vehicles need to take disruption pods as standard, and shooting vehicles need a multi-tracker so they can shoot as a fast vehicle, letting you keep them mobile as well

Blocking is the much more interesting part you need to use Kroot to either prevent deep strikes or block assaults on your more valuable units, such as broadside battlesuits. People refer to this as 'bubble-wrapping', and it's the perfect counter to those quick assault armies just let them chop apart your kroot and eat them up with shooting next turn... you can also deploy drones from your vehicles for the same result, particularly piranhas who will likely be getting close to the enemy. Let them waste their time on your 2 man drone squads and kroot, shoot the hell out of them next turn... although the drone thing can come back to bite in kill point games.

Basics to remember are you pack as many battlesuits as possible, and if you want any troops to live through the game and be useful they've got to be 6 man fire warrior squads kept inside a devilfish. Avoid letting them out unless there's an opportunity you can't pass up those are your objective grabbers.

That's pretty much the basics... I've not played as much as I should lately, so YMMV, but yeah... and of course you just have to ignore the nay-sayers. Just because Tau aren't as completely freaking easy to play as your average Spehss Muhreen army doesn't mean they're bad. They're just more of a challenge to get right.

+1 To this. I much the same thing w/ my tau. I use piranhas w/ fusion blasters to draw fire early game (no player in their right mind is going to let a squadron of 3 melta toting skimmers chill in front of their tanks). The piranhas can block and if you have any left after your opponents turn you can count on them to slag a tank or two. My piranhas usually buy me at least one turn of extra shooting.

The next layer of defense in a tau list as beregond has mentioned is kroot. While they may struggle point for point compared to SM squads, a 20+ mob in cover can take a bit of shooting (shooting that isn't hitting your valuable suits or pathfinders) to kill. And if your opponent is something like guard, which shouldn't be knocking on your door looking for close combat, outflank or infiltrate them. Guardsmen are one of the few things kroot can reliably bully.

Pathfinders are another valuable asset to any tau army. For less than 100 points (you were just going to buy that devilfish for the firewarriors anyhow right), you get a unit that draws fire from suits (you should be seeing a pattern here). The markerlight tokens they generate can double the effectiveness of any unit's firing. Cover is very prevalent in 5th ed and the ability to remove it can make your opponent begin to fear your shooting. Some units like turbo boosting scarabs (3 wounds a piece w/ 2+ cover save) are nearly impossible for the tau to even hope to stop without them. Also, broadsides are WAY taller than these guys, so use them as bubble wrap for the broadsides (they big guys are tall enough that they can draw line of sight to an enemy w/o passing between any of the pathfinders). And pathfinders are either shooting markerlights which don't allow coversaves, or pulse carbines, which don't tend to get through armor anyhow. so firing through other units won't hurt them in the least.

Mechanization bring at least 2-3 tanks. Devilfish/hammerheads are some of the most resilient transports in 40k. AV12 and disruption pods make them excellent cover for crisis suits. And I've had my hide saved more than a few times with a well placed submunition shot from a hammerhead. Most people are willing to gamble a single missile against av12-13 with cover before they lob it at a crisis squad w/ a shield drone or two.

Shield drones. These guys are lifesavers for suits. You only usually need one on a squad to stop most people from even thinking about shooting your suit teams. The trick is you put wounds that don't inflict instant death on the suits first, saving the drones for the stuff that will insta splat a suit or anything that hits your suits after you've maxed out the wounds on your suits..

Fire warriors. these guys usually spend most of my games inside their transports. I don't usually take them out unless I have a target that needs fire saturation and must die in one turn. I tend to run them 9 strong but I think most would disagree with me. I feel 9 gives them enough shooting that it makes it worth it to shoot (especially if I have a spare markerlight token or two left over after boosting my suits) and resilient enough to handle a small amount of return fire. But not way too expensive as to keep me from taking something better.

Devilfish. (I know I already mentioned this in mech) I prefer the warfish (SMS/D-pod/Multi-tracker/targetting array) this allows me to keep a decent amount of S5 firepower laying around to help handle anything that gets too close to my lines. And if you have the joy of facing something not wearing power armor, SMS systems will make mincemeat out of guardsmen, vets and guardians that dare stray from the smoking crater of their vehicles.

Broadsides. These guys do the heavy lifting of the tau against vehicles. I usually run 2 teams of 2. The leader having target lock and a shield drone. for a support system I run targetting array, this makes them less reliant on markerlights (I only use them if I have to get past one of those pesky cover saves).

Hammerheads, one of these in a list is usually plenty (though you can run two if you make sure to pick up a team of 3 broadsides so you have enough railguns). I run them with d-pods/dual burst cannons/ multi-tracker/ target lock. The railgun can shoot vehicles and the two burst cannons can discourage infantry from approaching your lines. If I don't need the hull to help protect my firebase, I send this guy off to get side shots on the enemy and draw units away from my suits.

There is a Forum called Advanced Tau Tactica, Read every article they have. They also have a PDF that pretty much tells you how to play Tau.


We could post all day long about what works for us, but our local meta could be different( and prolly is) from yours. It's best to go straight to the source of Knowledge and read up until you can stand no more.

Backfire wrote:Tau can't delay an assault, it is inevitable. What you can do though is limit the damage. Feed the enemy units you can afford to lose. And make sure you don't get multi-assaulted.

Or just go crazy with skimmers, last-minute objective grabs and contests with Devilfishes and Piranhas.

Kroot can 'delay' an assault. Not prevent it. Delay does not mean prevent.