Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As a Necron player i'm all for the advances in power that the Tau have recieved with the advent of 6th edition, especially since my chosen army benefits from a lot of them as well.

That said, i'm having a lot of trouble maneuvering around huge vehicles that appear more or less impervious to harm from anything other than assaults. (and can easily move away from those and still do their thing more or less at will)

The Necron 'dex lacks much in the way of 'ignores cover' weaponry so i'm wondering; does anyone have any viable tactics or advice to deal with pretty much always having a 3+ or lower cover save on your opponents' vehicles?

As Necrons?

Assault it.
Wraiths, scarabs and assault overlords on a command barge are the best and most commonly used units in that department.
Spiders and shards can also do the trick if you run them, but not as good at it, or better off doing something else.

The Tau tanks are hilariously hard to kill by shooting unless you got assess to cover-ignoring anti-tank fire, and not only these weapons are rare, they are mostly mounted on the very targets the Tau find easy to kill in return.

Like anything the Tau does-the right answer is to get up close and personal.

If you DO insist on shooting it, Doomsday arks or Doom scythes are the only things that are remotely viable at that job, and both are juicy targets of the Tau railguns in return.

Doom scythes are what I find to work the best. If you remember the disruption pods only grant the save from shots OVER 12 inches so with the flyer you can move 36 inches right at them and BOOM.

Doomscythes and assault eh? cool.

The problems i'm running to in assaulting them with anything but a full wraith-wing is that they are just as fast as whatever it is you want to move into base-to-base, so they just jink backwards or sideways and continue shooting comfortably out of reasonable assault range.

Will definately have to try that doomscythe approach i think since they (fliers) are a notable weakness for the tau army to begin with and the str-10 ap-1 is more or less designed to wreck vehicles.

Thanks for the tips!

Do note, fliers are NOT a as much of an issue for tau as some would have you believe (with the "no skyfire weapons" thing)

Even without skyfire, the Tau broadsides do a short work out of doom scythes, so you need to alpha strike or have them otherwise occupied. even with flying status they got slightly over 30% to hit with each broadside, being S10AP1 a hit on the mere AV value of 11 means its likely to go down or be rendered harmless, and they cost about the same for a triplet with some upgrades.

Plus, they can run nasty quad gun shenanigans if they see you run fliers on a regular basis. not as nasty as telion character sniping, but nasty indeed. (broadside powered alongside the built-in railgun for a basic example.)

As for the doom scythe's own shooting-while he has an easy time scoring the hit, his chances to blow it up are not THAT great, still hitting on AV12 or 13 most times (a good tau player will block the rear with table edges) and have a jink save, plus with the fact you need to measure distance from gun to hull you have to be pretty much on top of it to nullifiy the height distance and ignore the Dpod, making it hard to position yourself.

As for not catching up with assault-if you got a good bulk of units, you can attempt to press them into a corner where the speed and mobility will cease to help due to the table running out, but that's only if you got a good mass of bodies to actually block off escape with.

You have the option to run 3 doom scythes (which are pretty effective and draw lots of fire from the rest of your army)

A single quad gun is good but isnt going to stop more than 1. Obviouslt hitting an armor 11 flyer with a rail gun will kill it... Go figure.

The discussion isnt what will kill necron flyers its what are good options at killing tau vehicles.

Also 3 broadsides cost more than 1 doomscythe and I would love them to shoot at it instead of my ground vechicles.

You could also just assualt the broadsides with the wraiths then shoot them.

Hey i'd prefer a 70% success rate to what has happened in most of my games thus far; I generally end up trying to run my wraith squad in six different directions at once or tied up chewing on one less important squad while railgun fire has a field day with my arks and other support vehicles.

Not to say i don't occasionally pull off a win, but i haven't yet come up a tactic i'm confident in relying on.

Hi, never said the scythes are a bad idea, they are a good one.

But these ARE the thing he should be wary of while using them. broadsides WILL give them serious punishment, and deathrains WILL put a dent on them.

People often look at units only in their offensive capability and completely overlook at what can hurt their own units in return, working from the (false) assumption that Tau will have an irregularly hard time to handle scythes will lead to using them wrong, they give a great damage output but should be used with caution and tactical thinking while targeting Tau, as they are still very vulnerable to railguns.

It's not your out-of-the-mold SM army that got a few S8 and a few melta running around as his main AT platforms, this is Tau, who are likely to have quite a few railguns around, and even the most basic troop can glance AV11. caution is required.

BTW-a scythe costs was a mistake on my part, donno why but for some reason I was under the drawn-from-memory impression the scythe was 225 points.
Wonder where that number came from?

You could run that space magic haywire staff and deepstrike veil. that should be effective against what will usually be hammerheads or devilfishes.

that >12" everyone seems to forget about.

Oh, totally forgot about that combo.

Crypteks are amazing.

A scarab farm flanking the Wraithwing is tough combo to deal with as they are good at herding Tau and both very fast across the board.