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Still pretty new to 40k with Tau as my main army. My current list favors mobility ( 2 hammer heads, 3 suit teams, 3 fire warrior teams one mounted in a Dfish).

I have recently come up against 3 deepstrike heavy armies. Tyranids in spores, marines in drop pods and the new Deathwing.

If i castle up for deployment, I tend to get pinned in. If I spread out or move before the deep strike starts I just make pockets for the opponent to pop into.

Tips and strategies to help out a new guy not get smeared by deep striking armies?

Hi. I tried to Deep Strike in a couple of times with Blood Angel Terminators and got shot up pretty well by an Aegis Defense line with a Quad Gun that had the Skyfire special rule. I also think that the general tactic that works against Deep Striking stuff (though Tyranids might be different) like Terminators is Plasma guns and/or Melta weapons. There aren't going to be very many of them, so killing a couple is going to hurt a lot. Even massed fire by your Fire Warriors might work if they fail a couple of saves.

I don't know that you can prevent them from finding "holes" to strike into, but if you can create some fields of fire for when they DO get there, they might wish they had stayed up on their Battle Barge.

pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Hi. I tried to Deep Strike in a couple of times with Blood Angel Terminators and got shot up pretty well by an Aegis Defense line with a Quad Gun that had the Skyfire special rule. .

a) I think you mean the interceptor rule

b) How? You must have rolled abysmally for your saves

If you want to defend against Deep Striking armies, your two classic defenses are castling and avoidance. Keep your vehicles with their rear armor facings unattainable for shooting attacks from Deep Strikers, overlap your firing zones, and protect your more valuable (vulnerable) units with cheaper, more numerous ones. You can experiment, too, with keeping some of your units in reserve, which can really screw Deep Strikers, especially Pods or Daemons. This allows you to respond with your arriving units where they are needed to break the lines of attack so you don't wind up penned in or pinned down. You can keep your vehicles off the table if you like, as a Tau player, since that will prevent your opponent from being able to get first turn and catching them with their pants down and without a Jink roll. Keep in mind that Deep Striking units treat difficult terrain as dangerous terrain, so use that to your advantage if you can. Don't be afraid to deploy your vehicles with their rears backed right up to the table edge if necessary.

In any event, I hope this was of some help, and good luck in the future.

 motyak wrote:

pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Hi. I tried to Deep Strike in a couple of times with Blood Angel Terminators and got shot up pretty well by an Aegis Defense line with a Quad Gun that had the Skyfire special rule. .

a) I think you mean the interceptor rule

b) How? You must have rolled abysmally for your saves

REPLY:

a) Yeah...totally new; could they have had "Tank Hunters" on that Quad Gun too?

b) Yep. Terrible. Also, I failed to mention that the Eldar player I was fighting also had some Fire Dragons right there...I was trying to get close enough to smash them and instead they just blasted me. On a positive note, I DID end up getting there with the (only survivor) Sergeant, who won combat resolution, the Fire Dragons ran off the board (they were hiding like the Xeno Scum cowards they were right by the edge of the board) and then he grabbed the Quad Gun the next turn and blasted the Guardians hiding behind the Aegis defense line! Actually it had almost no effect on the outcome of the battle, but it felt good.

Mecha_buddha wrote:
Still pretty new to 40k with Tau as my main army. My current list favors mobility ( 2 hammer heads, 3 suit teams, 3 fire warrior teams one mounted in a Dfish).

I have recently come up against 3 deepstrike heavy armies. Tyranids in spores, marines in drop pods and the new Deathwing.

If i castle up for deployment, I tend to get pinned in. If I spread out or move before the deep strike starts I just make pockets for the opponent to pop into.

Tips and strategies to help out a new guy not get smeared by deep striking armies?

Use your firewarriors and terrain to protect the hammer heads and the suits. Put some of the suits in reserve to respond to where the opponent lands and (if possible) make your opponent go first. The range on the fire warriors and the mobility of everything else lets you rapidly concentrate on one unit and move away from others. The big weakness in pod armies is that once they land, generally all mobility is gone.

Use kroot to bubble wrap anything useful They gotta get through the kroot to get at your broadsides ect ect. Plus you can tie anything up in assault if you can't shoot it to death first