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Hey mates. With a tournament coming around the corner soon and me switching out to run a GK list since I dont have the models to run my Henchman one, I have been play-testing them to see what I can do when I decided to play my friends new Tau. Long story short: He shot me off the table. Now I understand that shooting is Tau's things, but to be honest, I'm shocked by how much they get and its to the point of being kinda ridiculous. They get so much shots out that I can't do anything and there Marker Lights are insanely good, and for an assaulting army like mine (run Gk's but hope to get a Blood Angel army in the future), I cant get close as GW in there wisdom nerfed the assault phase of 40k. Anyways, how do you fight these guys? Because at the moment I'm at a loss on what I can do against them at this point.

Stay further than 15 inches and shoot them off the table.

All of your troops have Storm bolters or Psycannons, so you get 20 shots out of a 10 man squad, while the Tau get 10 shots out of a 10 man squad.

And at the cost of this 10 man squad the Tau player throws in over twice as many troops (over four times as many troops if you are using terminators), and that's the less lethal method they work at.

Trying to spam out-shoot tau is a serious mistake with low model count armies. they will shoot first (more range), shoot hard, and will afford to just walk up to you and shoot even more because your kill rate will be nowhere near enough against basic troops, and your death rate will be too high against suits.

If you want to get to assault you only got one option-a high number of fast moving units, or multiple dreadknights.
Anything else is doomed to die in the way.
(though if you have 2-3 dread-knights with the flamers drawing away attention, the rest can follow in their path and will be mostly unchallenged until the knights fall, and they eventually will with half-decent rolls on the tau side)

now, if you want to attempt to out-shoot with high quality fire, that might work for you, but attempting to beat them with storm bolters is pretty much the worst strategy possible.

Interceptors and Strikes are your best friend.
- Shunt over your combat squad-ed interceptors and blow up the 2 vehicles with large blast plasma cannons for first blood and line breaker or shunt over behind some terrain and then assault some fire warriors or his warlord unit the following turn

deepstrike the rest of your army on a flank to deprive him of shooting at you with his entire army (Blocking LoS)
(This is obviously under the presumption your running strikes)

shoot the crap out his fire warriors first, F the pathfinders your interceptors can handle them if they are still alive.
Then dependent on whether you are runnind NDK's or Palis or Termis rush the crap out of his line. NDK are probably best as they will burn the crap out his army and then if the NDK gets into assault with any unit ,auto-win for that assault as there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

If you have the 45 points or so to spare you could take an ordo zenos inquisitor with the plasma siphon thingy, get in close quickly with him in a metal box or something then laugh as he can't hit you

Here's what you do:

Toss out your silly Grey Knight playthings.
Get the Chaos Codex
Dirge Casters on Land Raiders
?????
PROFIT

Alternatively, just get a few empty Rhinos with Dirge Casters to run ahead and soak up shots. As long as one survives to the Tau's gunline, boom, Blood for the Blood God.

 xSPYXEx wrote:
Here's what you do:

Toss out your silly Grey Knight playthings.
Get the Chaos Codex
Dirge Casters on Land Raiders
?????
PROFIT

Alternatively, just get a few empty Rhinos with Dirge Casters to run ahead and soak up shots. As long as one survives to the Tau's gunline, boom, Blood for the Blood God.

Yes, thank you for this very helpful advice, you really added to the discussion.


As a tau player, fast things scare me the most. Get as many assault marines (what ever the grey knight version is) as you can, dreadknights to screen the other guys, and stormravens for delivering terminators. The faster you can close to combat, the worse off I will be.

How about Land Raiders?

Tau have some serious problems dealing with AV14 now with only one source for S10 left and it would even get you into cc nearly unharmed.

TBH, the best thing to do is drop his markerlights first... and its not as hard as it sounds, especially for GK.

Tau will run markerlights in one of three ways:

1. Disco Commander - Tau Commander with Marker Drones
2. Multiple Units of Pathfinders
3. Each Firewarrior squad comes with 2 marker drones

1. Easiest to counter: Take Dread Knights with Heavy incinerator and shunt to the side of the commander's unit and roast the entire squad... except for the commander.

2. Moderately Hard to counter: Again, Dread Knights are your friend here. But you can use standard units as well as Markerlights are Heavy so have to be relatively close to be effective. T3 and at best a 4+ cover is all they are going to get as you ignore their armor of 5+

3. Hard to Directly counter: As the Marker Drones are all spread out its harder to kill them in one fell swoop... but its harder for the tau player to get them going as well as they will have to start hitting on BS2.

Remember to play strategically, Dread Knights are expendable in the right situation. And destroying the backbone of your opponent is a very good reason.

SaganGree wrote:
TBH, the best thing to do is drop his markerlights first... and its not as hard as it sounds, especially for GK.

Tau will run markerlights in one of three ways:

1. Disco Commander - Tau Commander with Marker Drones
2. Multiple Units of Pathfinders
3. Each Firewarrior squad comes with 2 marker drones

1. Easiest to counter: Take Dread Knights with Heavy incinerator and shunt to the side of the commander's unit and roast the entire squad... except for the commander.

2. Moderately Hard to counter: Again, Dread Knights are your friend here. But you can use standard units as well as Markerlights are Heavy so have to be relatively close to be effective. T3 and at best a 4+ cover is all they are going to get as you ignore their armor of 5+

3. Hard to Directly counter: As the Marker Drones are all spread out its harder to kill them in one fell swoop... but its harder for the tau player to get them going as well as they will have to start hitting on BS2.

Remember to play strategically, Dread Knights are expendable in the right situation. And destroying the backbone of your opponent is a very good reason.

This really.

The Markerlights help...one unit.

So if you throw away a DreadKnight to accomplish this, while the kill is good ANYWAYS, you're really just kind of hlping the unit that would have been Markerlit a LITTLE bit because the Tau may hit with or withoutthe Markerlights. Increased chance? No argument so dont take this as one. But dice happen. So you've lost the DreadKnight and potntially NOT killed any damage dealing ability the enemy force has!

Do I think killing the Drones is a terrible idea? Nope. obviously not. But I am not as certain that the sacrifice is justified, points-wise nor impact-wise. I'll admit, I was upset the first time the Drones went down in a battle, but then... I killed the problem... And then I killed another problem. And then I felt better.

My point is that you might wanna' focus on what's DOING the damage, cause even if the Lights are silenced, they aren't.

I think Grey Knight Psycannons at 21" is perfect. That way none of the Tau can step into Rapid Fire range. Concentrate firepower and END units at a time.

 Shadox wrote:
How about Land Raiders?

Tau have some serious problems dealing with AV14 now with only one source for S10 left and it would even get you into cc nearly unharmed.

maybe not, if you end up with a guy who brings a few stealth units in and he brings some fusion blasters with him and infiltrates into cover you might very well be in trouble even with av 14. 18"FB shot with 2 D6 pen at 9" enough shots and 2d6 it will likely hurt it and if hes in cover hes getting a 2+ cover save.......

as both a tau and Blood Angels player i can say assault troops are going to be good, bikes as well. basically move and move fast or Drop pod and hope he doesnt have interceptor upgrades. Not going to lie tau got really tricky this book, many units that can infiltrate and lay down a lot of fire in your face and riptides and battle suits that can sit back and lay down long range fire with FWs controlling objectives, units that placed right are hard to charge with supporting fire laying tons of overwatch.

 PraetorDave wrote:
Yes, thank you for this very helpful advice, you really added to the discussion.

You're welcome.

One thing I've found to be helpful sans Chaos is Sniper Scout Marines and Assault Marines (Or Interceptors, for Grey Knights). Sniper scouts are great for hunting Markerlights, due to precision shots. Jump units can hop towards the Tau gunline quickly, either getting to the front line and hitting them or drawing enough fire to let your other units slip in behind. Bikes are even better, due to being able to go Flat Out and being +1 toughness.

The few games I've played as Loyalists against new Tau, I've always been pleased with the results of both those units. If you're lucky with Sniper Scouts, they can do some serious damage by either blowing up markerlight drones or punching holes in anyone carrying one, and usually stay out of range of the majority of the Tau's weapons. Smart Missiles can be problematic, but that's the price you pay.

Land Raiders are also very, very effective. Since Broadsides aren't as likely to punch holes in them, you only really have to worry about Hammerheads, which if you plan well enough you can mitigate any issues with a few Predators or Lazerbacks (Lazerbacks preferably ferrying your units closer to the damn fishies) and Infiltrating Stealth Suits, which are a bit harder to deal with. The best way is to drive away and PotMS a Hurricane Bolter behind you.

 DeathReaper wrote:
Stay further than 15 inches and shoot them off the table.

All of your troops have Storm bolters or Psycannons, so you get 20 shots out of a 10 man squad, while the Tau get 10 shots out of a 10 man squad.

Bull. the pulse carbine is assault 2 18'' can be bumped to 24'' and assault 3''

That's how far you have to be

Grey Knights are small elite infantry.

Tau excel at killing elite infantry.