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I play DE, my brother in law plays Tau.

We're entering a friendly doubles game this weekend, we can have 600 points each. Tactically, what will work best? Of course I'll be loading up on wyches and Incubi and going cc heavy, whilst he can handle the firefights and cover my advance, though I'm interested in any thoughts that Dakka may have on tactics we can legally use to benefit both of us.

Ie - can he somehow join his shield drones to my wyches or vehicles, giving me a little more resilience?

Anything?

actually i would go shooty + shooty. let him bring as many rail cannons and fusion gund (on crisis) as he can fit, and you load up on splinter and lance weapons. zip around and use combined dakka power to blast em but good

Shield drones only are available to models that can purchase a Drone Controller, so no drones for DE.

You, as the DE player, should be the CC force. He should bring the shooting to make sure that you're not screwed across the table.

Hammerheads and Broadsides will be your friends.

A hammerhead
A pair (or more) of broadsides
A handful of crisis teams
and at 600pts, a full fire warrior team is capable of doing damage and camping on objectives.

Tau have a very easy time efficiently poping transports. DE are pretty good at singling out a unit and eliminating it while limiting exposure to the rest of their forces. Tau are similarly mobile, so you could just attempt to deploy in a way that they will want to protect their flanks, and then just swoop most of your mobile forces to one side and peel off what parts you can with the least exposure as possible.

Wyches make great tar pits, due to a FNP, high initiative and the doge save, they just don't stand up to shooting or are as cheap as the kroot, but they can certainly tie up something you'd rather not make it close to a gunline very quickly and reliably. Something you'd want to think about.

Some more questions are:
What do ya'll have?
What's the most you can get for 600 points (this will limit your synergy a lot)
Are you allowed to share auras / target allies with friendly bonuses in this tourny!

I can see some crisis suits firing a lot of missile pods, and a heavier shooting option, mixed with some venom spam being really deadly to some armies.

Assuming he'll bring Broadsides, pack Wyches or Beastmasters to keep things off their backs.

He has a battleforce, a couple of extra suits, 2 xv88's... a hell of a lot of drones that hes customised to have dual miniguns.

I have 1 squad of warriors, 1 squad of wyches, 1 raider, 2 venoms, 1 squad of incubi, 1 squad of wracks, 2 squads of mandrakes, 1 haemonculus, 2 archons, 1 succubus, 1 razorwing... still to make up my scourges and talos... I think that's me lot... I can also get hold of the contents of another DE battleforce.

If he has a drone controller, can his shield drones buff me? Ie, I ralise that I can't take them directly, though can he have them within x" of my units, that then benefits my guys while he sits back and shoots?

Shield Drones only Benefit the unit they are in. They take advantage of Wound Allocation to transfer wounds to the Drones which the Drones then try to absorb through their invulnerable saves.

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.

Here's a couple of lists that I'm batting about - seems as dark light weaponry is so damned expensive (and restricted in these low point games) I figured that I'd leave the anti tank to the Tau and I'd mop up the squidgy bits:

List one - 596 points

Archon
- Splinter pistol
- Haywire grenades
- Husk blade
- Combat drugs
- Shadow field

3x Incubi
- Venom with additional SC

5x Wyches
- Venom with additional SC

10x Warriors
- Blaster
- Splinter cannon
- Raider with splinter racks and flickerfield

List two - 599 points

Archon
- Blast pistol
- Agoniser
- Combat drugs
- Shadow field

3x Incubi
- Venom with additional SC

9x Wyches
- Haywire grenades
- Hekatrix with power weapon
- Raider with shock prow, torment grenade launchers, and flickerfield

5x Warriors
- Blaster
- Venom with additional SC

They're both pretty similar, to be honest. List one gives me 15 poisoned shots with 9 re-rolls to hit whilst mounted in the raider (more if in rapid fire range), whereas list 2 gives me 8 standard attacks, + 2 power weapon attacks with de-buffs to the enemies Ld characteristic if I can keep the raider within 6" of combat.

What have I learnt today? Writing out lists for small points games is hard! And I wish I had the models for some DL totting trueborn in there!

Not sure if the mods want to move this to the army list section now I've posted list options.

Cheers


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ah cool - he's just sent his proposed list to me. I don't know the Tau codex at all - what do you guys think to:

Commander Shas El
- Air bursting frag projector
- Burst cannon
- Command and control node

10x Kroot Carnivores

6x Fire Warriors
- Pulse rifles
- Devil fish with smart missile system and sensor spines

1x Crisis Battlesuit (operating independantly)
- TL Missile Pod
- Multi tracker

1x Crisis Battlesuit (operating independantly)
- Fusion blaster
- Plasma rifle
- Multi tracker

1x Broadside battlesuit (operating independantly)
- TL railgun
- TL plasma rifle
- Target lock

1x Broadside battlesuit (operating independantly)
- TL Rail gun
- Smart Missiles
- Target lock

My (uneducated) thoughts are:

Drop the devil fish in order to take a full squad of firewarriors
Take multi tracker off the suits that only have one set of weapons and replace with shield generator or targeting array
Upgrade a crisis suit to a Shas Vre (not sure about what will be the best load out for this)

Whaddya think? For this level of points, how well do you think they'll work together? He has a lot of high strength and long range weaponry, I have speed and accuracy or combat potential,,,?

You are right about the multi trackers, take targeting arrays.

Trim off the ABFP unless it's the only large blast you are going to field. Its not good for anything but crowd control.
The burst cannon should definitely go, Tau have enough S5 without wasting it in hard points. The command and control node is also imo useless, get a targeting array.

Plasma rifle and fusion *melta* gun is an awkward combination, you get good Str but short range and plasma at decent range, I'd drop the melta for a missile pod for synergy.

Drop the sensor spines and take a disruption pod, much better for a lower cost.

Broadside may as well be given the advanced stabilisation for more manoeuvrability or targeting arrays as they have to have an upgrade.

I'd go for cheaper Archons. You don't need the single-shot blast pistol when you have railguns and lances. An gonizer and -perhaps- a phantasm grenade launcher are plenty for him.

If he's taking suits, you may want to try adding some flamers to them to give the combined forces better anti-horde. I play doubles with an ork friend and we exploit the numbers he can bring very efficiently. Some hopping suits with twin-linked flamers can really bring the pain after railguns and lances leave rival forces on foot!

As the CC fource, you don't need any Anti-tank weaponry. Also, I would not expect 3 Incubi to live long at all. Sure, they strike first, but S4 PWs only deal so much damage, and if you're going against Necrons, any of their "dedicated" (because how dedicated can an I2 model be to CC) assault units will shrug off those hits, as you'll be wounding on 5s or facing 3+ invuln saves. Heck, those 3++ saves tend to come with the ability to make your I5 incubi strike last. if it was 3 Wraiths w/ Whip Coils v. 3 Incubi, Wraiths would probably win, mainly because of the fact that their attacks are Rending and that they strike first.

Faced off against Orcs, Chaos, Biker marines and Imperial Guard.

Kicked the crap out of the Chaos marines, reducing them to 3 marines and a lord in terminator armour by turn 2. My archon and Incubi kicked the absolute crap out of everything, wracking up 3 pain tokens in next to no time. They worked especially well when working in sync with the wyches.

Across every game though, the Raider with splinter-warriors went entirely unscathed. It wasn't until the last game that they got taken out (on the last turn, when there was nothing left, by a very cheesy imperial guard force that was loaded out with Stacken command squad, and a leman russ that got 5 RIDICULOUS plasma shots per turn.

I need to re-read the rules on DE transports and max moves though; in 1 game I was told I can move 12" and shoot / disembark, the other it was only 6"... either way for a race that's supposed to pwn the opposition by the end of turn 1, my opponents really seemed to have the upper hand by limiting me to how much I could move and shoot / disembark!

All in all though, really quite happy with how my little force worked out!

12 inches to shoot the vehicle weapons and disembark. Max of 6 inches if firing with embarked troops.

12 inches and I can shoot both splinter cannons, though not the weapons of embarked troops - am I getting that correct?

Thought something was wrong... Cheers Swoop

Thats exactly correct.

Ta very much