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Hey everybody,

I have been playing tau for about a year now and I have had absolutely no luck with them. Most games I am practically out of it by turn 3 and if I get passed that point i usually don't last much longer. Im not throwing all the blame on the codex though, i've made many mistakes along the way. I know that threads similar to this have been posted a lot (as every tau player knows) but I was just wondering if anyone had any tips (new or old) to work with what the codex provides and try to cut down on errors. I have 36 fire warriors, 6 stealth suits, 2 piranhas, 1 crisis suit, some kroot, and a few tanks. Any suggestions would be great, thanks!

A Few questions:

1. How many Kroot?

2. How many drones do you own?

3: Which tanks.

And a comment:

You need Broadsides. Big time. At least three. That would be my very 1st step if I were you and I don't think anyone will argue with me on that fundamental point.

Ok I get a feeling for whats wrong.

Are you getting out shot or assaulted?

If your tanks aren't hammerheads with railguns, you're doing it wrong. Transports work well for the fire warriors, but without any markerlights you can't pump the shots to kill stuff with fire warriors.

Your stealth suits can do wonders, but without knowing the codex well they are tricky to use. Perhaps using them as stealth marker teams will help.

If you're getting assaulted, use your tanks to tank shock enemies away.

Your piranhas need fusion blasters on them, if they don't they are worthless to you.

Make sure every vehicle has disruption pods

If you don't want to spend much, consider getting the hammerhead upgrade sprue for your tanks for the railgun.

I would suggest a missile pod, plasma gun and fusion blaster setup on your single battlesuit, make sure he has 2 shield drones! maybe stim.

Turn 3 sounds like the turn enemy vehicles are on you, if so put targeting arrays on your piranhas and give them flechette launchers as well.

I hate to say it but without a good deal of anti tank, your stealth suits need a fusion gun each. This drastically reduces their effectiveness as they need to get close, but with some gun drones as wound soaks they should be fine, make sure they get a bonding knife.

You need broadsides more crisis suits and root to be successful along with markerlight support. Its going to be difficult with what you have. Id suggest putting your firewarriors as far back as possible with root in front as a screen. Let the kroot take the first blow. Use your piranha to either block tanks in or zoom around getting off melts shots. Use your crisis at range with plasma missile podmulti tracker. Put disruption pods on all ur tanks and keep them moving and shooting or mobile cover for your stealths. Tau are still a decent army if used right. They can handle most of the new codexs as long as you have the right units. Target priority and use of terrain are critical. Best of luck.

Hammerheads with Railguns? No.

You can have TWO TL Railguns from two Broadsides or ONE from a tank, with a submunition you're likely never to fire becaause you need the Railshot to pop tanks/monsters early. So. I'm thinking no.

I'm speaking in terms of supplementing what he has, rather than telling him to buy new stuff.

Any battlesuits can handle lesser armored vehicles, a single broadsides team with a few shield drones tends to be more than enough with the current meta for dealing with vehicles. I advocate having those extra vehicle railguns for two reasons:

They carry submunition, which is amazing at range, allowing the tank to take on two roles
It provides another target for anti tank weapons, the enemy can risk firing at your av 13 tank or your broadsides, either way you will have a 4+ against their fire.

If. like a Broadside. they could take on BOTH roles at the same time, sure. But they can't and are very unlikely to want to fire the submunition until vehicles are dead and they are likely to attract a lot of anti-tank fire which means they will often not be firing. . You'd not want to put your anti tank duties to a Fusion blaster if you can avoid it. because that which means the enemy is REAL close. That's a problem. The enemy needs to be the opposite of close, pretty much always.

I second the suggestion on Markerlights. if you have a lot of Firewarriors, making them accurate is never bad. makes 24 STR 5 shots at rapid fire range sting like hell (20 hits and 13.33 wounds before saves is pretty good for allocation killing and really, just killing in general)

$100 doesn't grow on trees, but his frustration level would drop quite a bit if he put that $100 into getting Broadsides. Turn those tanks he's got into mean spirited transports with 7 BS 4, STR 5 shots and disruption pod. Now you're talking. Make the enemy roll saves early and often before you drop the hammer with the Fire Warriors (assisted by Markerlights). it can only end better for the Fire Warriors in the end. =)

I sub-munition the fools that stay in the remains of their rhino's to great effect. Generally speaking, if your list has markerlight support, anything more than 3 broadsides is overkill when all we really shoot at is av 11 and such.

But that's besides the point, the OP hasn't responded with what his problem is, and if he knows his problem is anti-tank, well it's easy to fix.

Markerlights will help his firewarriors and everything else, but we really don't know what's wrong. I guessed that the transports were on him by turn 2-3, were the contents got out and put the melee hurt on, but that's just a guess.

Maybe he can't kill off TEQ stuff, or perhaps Dreads are crushing him. It could be outflankers, or monsterous creatures, and broadsides are not the best answer for monsterous creatures (unless toughness 5 and not immune to instant death )

Missile pods on crisis suits are great for popping vehicles, while firing submunitions from a railhead are less likely to miss entirely. Also to be honest a railhead is more useful for crowd control rather than pinpoint accuracy.

Yea, pop vehicle, hit the contents with that large blast. Dead stuff ensues. Clumped guys are always wonderful targets, and people forget the railheads can do that often enough.

Hammerheads with railguns and burst cannons are awesome (Multi tracker, disruption pod, target lock). You cruise around 6" a turn, usually enough to avoid what you need to or line up those shots. Then you lay down a hail of anti infantry fire while you shoot at tanks (or blast infantry some more). Having two of these has always served me very well, and AV 13 with a 4+ is a lot more survivable than you might think. A broadside or team compliments these nicely. I personally only own one broadside, and can usually get by, giving it a stabilizer system and letting people shoot at the big ones (tanks) while it walks around sniping, moving around to get better shots or away from enemies.
I have the same problem of the turn 3 cliff, which is usually when the enemy reaches my lines. Having mobile weapons really helps with this. If you are up against a transport heavy army, infiltrating an invisible fusion blaster will make people think twice about getting close. Markerlight support is also a must to make your guns count, anti infantry and anti tank. You really do need a squad of pathfinders here.


In essence, mobility is very important, railheads really are useful as all-rounders and work best when there are two, you need markerlights.

The only support I can offer in dealing with infantry that are close is to tank shock them with devilfishes. There really isn't any other other good way to push them back besides just making a kroot wall to act as a buffer.

actually just laying a less that vital unit in front of the enemy and watching it evaporate works well. It's not the charges that kill you. No no no. It's the multicharges.

What Jancoran said. Big beginner mistake for Tau is to castle up too tight, this results to any sizable enemy unit which gets through getting to multi-assault and wipe out half of your army out for no loss.

Tau needs to play 'gambits', sacrifice a cheapish screen unit with adequately large footprint (Kroot, Gun Drones etc) so your killy units may live for another turn. Tau also need to focus fire, concentrate firepower to most threatening target until it is neutralized.

I have some Articles on tau Deployment from a British 40k blog that helped me a lot.

http://40kintheuk.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/francos-focd-up-40k-tau-deployment-part-2

http://40kintheuk.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/francos-focd-up-40k-tau-deployment-part-iii-dawn-of-war-by-franco-marrufo


There is one more, but I forgot to bookmark it. >.> Anyways, it'll give you a template and a base idea to work with.

Tau win or die on the strength of their shooting; for that, your prime units are going to be Crisis Suits, Hammerheads, and Broadsides. Given the current state of the 5e metagame, use the railguns to pop transports on their way in, Crisis suits harass and destroy isolated units, Fire Warrior gunline downs anyone who gets too close, Kroot screen and give the Fire Warriors space to retreat if necessary. Only major problems would be really speedy assault armies (DE, anyone with Infiltrating or Deep Striking assault units), Kroot tie down the enemy assault troops while the rest of the army redeploys somewhere else.

That's the general plan that my Tau-playing friend can win off of, at least. It may or may not work, depending on what you're facing.

I'm new to both 40k and Tau. I got a lot of good help on the thread I started: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/449107.page
Maybe it will offer some help to you as well.

If you're facing a lot of mech that will transport the enemy to your lines fast, considering not deploying anything except your anti tank with drones to protect them from shooting. Tau win most shooting gallery matches and can neutralize the armor with reltively little loss to themselves save the Broadsides themselves

Some like a Kroot shield so they can defend the Broadsides for that one criticial extra round leaving the enemy open to Broadside plasma Railguns. and that can be a Lot to overcome for any unit. (9 TL STR 6-10 AP 2/1 shots will bounce anyone off the curb pretty much).

It's about 755 points to get 9 Broadsides with MT and TL Plasma. 210 points of kroot to shield them. Another 240 points for token Fire Warriors and 340 for their Devilfish's with Disruption pods and 192 for the 2 Pathfinder units. Add command suit for 100 points the rest of the points into a close defense line Crisis unit as well ( 2 with Plasma+Fusion+MT and one with Plasma and TL Flamer). The Crisis unit reserves and roves the line for where the enemy is needing the biggest head bopping and goes for it. They coupled with the Broadsides can usually kill anything that they want to.

The Fire Warriors reserve until enemy armor is softened or destroyed and the troops inside are weakened. then the FW's come out to play on objectives or as blockers in KP missions and maybe jump out in the last couple rounds to fire on weakened targets.

So there ya' go. One of many fun ways to play Tau (I dont do this but it is definitely a possibility). It's the "scariest" list enemies will see. Storm Ravens dont make it across the board against that. Assault Terminators becom "human" against it, and Drop pods give pause before wanting to show up too close.

You can play with that basic theme a lot of ways too. There's several other options you can go with. I personally think 6 Broadsides is plenty.

Anyways have fun. But get Broadsides.

Thanks a lot guys! ive been trying out some of the tactics that you have given me and i have already improved to a point where i am competitive again! The disruption pods have saved me many times now that i found out how useful they are. I think my biggest problem now is just making sure everything in my army makes up for itself in points. it seems like i have a few units that pull all the weight while the rest just take fire (which i guess could be considered pulling their weight)

yeah key gear for Tau:

TL Plasma on Broadsides. Cheapest you'll find in any codex. Worth it.

Multitrackers on Broadside commanders (at least).

Disruption pods on tanks. Mandatory.

Hounds in Kroot units. If you want Kroot to do ANYTHING other than be a layer, get Hounds.

Other things to think about:

Crisis units: While the debate will ever rage upon which loadout is best, the "HeatWave" pattern Crisis suits are overlooked every time pretty much, BUT... Triple TL Flamers with BS filters (just cause you need a third slot) is incredibly cheap in a Tau list and it comes on a very sturdy platform in comparison to most other armies (6 T4 wounds, 3+ armor and STR 5 if they charge in desperation, can deep strike etc...). 108 points for 3 Crisis Suits that can generate that kind of anti-horde ability? If there's one thing you'll hate as Tau it's hordes. if you have the 108 points to spend, consider this as PART of the overall strategy. It's a fantastic buy. Jump em, blast em and if they are cocky enough to leave someone in charge range, charge 'em. Good line defense against your WORST case matchup.

Positional Relay: Easily the best tool for survival in KP missions for the Tau Empire. There isn't a close second.

Having fought the Tau in more games than I can count (helps when your room mate wants to learn his army playing games from 6pm to 3am) I've learned a few things. You'll want the following.

1. More crisis suits. Max them out if possible.
2. Shield drones on your suits is a good thing.
3. Target lock when able.
4. Broadsides over hammerheads every time. Make sure they have shield drones and always deploy them in cover.
5. Minimal fire warriors. use Crisis Suits more.
6. Twin linked missile pods on Crisis Suits.
7. If not twin linked missile pods then use missile pods with plasma on your suits.
8. If you do use vehicles always spend the 5 points on a disruption pod.
9. Bonding knives. If using Farsight you are set on those. He works. Especially with shield drones.
10. Don't use Kroot or Vespid. They suck ass. Same with Aun'Va.

When my buddy started doing these things I noticed an increase in both his skill and winning ratio against my Imperial Guard. Mind you not strictly mechanized vets, but I did mix it up a lot for him so he had a good spread of experience on things to fight with his list.

Stingwings dont suck ass. I would completely disagree there.

I dont see Bonding Knives as a MUST item even if it is advisable with certain units. not sure it makes the cut of a MUST.

the best thing you can do with tau is take 2 fire warrior squads, and then cram as much points into battle suits and hammerheads

you guys are underestimating Fire Warriors, they're fairly cheap, they're troops, they have excellent guns. I agree with most of the stuff you guys are saying but more Fire warriors

I dont think we're underestimating Fire Warriors. I think we are EStimating the SPEED of enemies now. And one more thing: Feel no Pain.

So long as both factors are brought to bear regularly in a tournament, it makes maxing them out at tournies difficult at best. IN more friendly type games, they are great. At tournies, with Blood Angels and the gamut of other baddies... Speed kills.

I just started playing Tau
I usually play Ork or Nilla Marines
I use 1 hammerhead and 2 2 man units of broadsides
I have used the Large blast shot at least once everygame sometimes it doesnt do much ( bad dice rolls ) the potential for high damage was there

Yeah but potential is vapor. I cannot justify that many points in a tank that costs what it does and gets as little production as it does.

It's just overpriced. A freaking Vindicator which punches tanks and vehicles in the nuts equally well and also has 13 armor is how much? Yeah. Exactly my point! Superior in every way even just as it comes. The Vindicator pricing should be how they pattern the Hammerhead. Should be 100 points or so before upgrades, not 140.