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Hello,
I need help beating Tau. I have played multiple games and nothing seems to work. Cover gets ignored and when I get close enough to shoot, everything gets killed by high AP rapid fire/twinlinked weapons. I don't want to say they are broken, but being basically tabled each time is making me think so.

I have tried deep striking, terminators, bikes, with no avail.

Honestly there really isn't a lot you can do with vanilla marines. Tau have trouble with other armies, but they are perfect for tearing apart marines.

The key to Tau (most of them anyway) is Markerlights. Kill them and kill them quickly. Tau have BS 3 across the board, save Crisis Commanders, Longstrike and Fireblades. Once the lights go out, your oppenent is left with reletively mediocre shooting and won't be able to ignore your cover as easily. Twenty Fire Warriors rapid firing sounds scary, but half of them are missing, of those that hit, only 2/3rds wound and those that wound only 1/3 actually kill anything. This tends to be my experience, but bear in mind, my Fire Warriors tend to drink heavily before every engagement.

Thunderfire Cannons make Pathfinders cry (at least mine tend to vapourize fairly quickly). Krak missiles and Melta will ID Crisis Suits and Vindicators have that lovely template that will ID anything short of a Riptide.

Sternguard with Melta/Combi-Melta in Drop Pods can be nasty and bend Broadsides over like it's nobody's business. Careful though. If your opponent is fielding a Riptide it probably has intercepter so you can expect a pie plate as soon as you disembark. But at BS 3 and no marker support the shot "might" get hot and misfire or scatter.

Bikes can play "keep away" with Crisis Suits and if they're scoring can grab you an objective or two late game. Oh and it's funny to see a Master of the Forge, on a Bike with a Conversion Beamer out "Railgun" the Tau .

Other than that, play the mission. He still has to capture objectives and chances are, he'll be footslogging his Fire Warriors (Fire Warriors in a Devilfish are Fire Warriors not shooting, so bonus. And if he's using a Fireblade, that's another squad of Warriors not moving so...) and either Outflanking/Infiltrating his Kroot. Fire Warriors are slow and Kroot fall apart in a strong breeze.

Everything warmaster Horace said.

1) Thunderfire easiest way to clear out pathfinders early

2) Combat squad! don't leave your squads in groups of 10, move them to squads of 5 so those markerlights aren't hitting as many of your marines.

3) never ever be afraid of kroot, a stiff breeze makes them run

try drop pods. heres why:

they ignore your cover anyway, so dont bother with it. when you pod in, you get a 6" disembark. use that to get nice and close with key units like broadsides, riptides, and pathfinders.

each tac squad can take a special weapon, and meltas are dirt cheap. you also get a free missile. 6 tac squads podding down puts 6 melta shots out, plus all your bolter fire. that should make pretty much any tau unit go away right quick.

sterngaurd have acsess to combi weapons and more straight up plasma and melta. take as many as possible. pod in, move up to what needs to die, and unload.

dreads can also pod - and get plasma cannons or multimeltas. again, GREAT for dealing with just about anything, and a dread or 3 can tie up that riptide in CC for a few turns and drop it, (or at least keep it from shooting you)

also, by podding in - you deny the tau alpha strike. you get to pod in half your army immediatly into their desired range without worrying about mishap, then unload your weapons at whatever you need to. the tau then have a choice: GTFO and redeploy wich can really hurt the fire output from troops. or stand and try to wipe you out before your reinforcments come in and do the same thing.

you will take MASSIVE losses, unless the tau throw some bad dice, but 80% of the tau game is keeping you at range to snipe at you. take that away... and your odds are much better. focus on units that markerlight as well. loosing those hurts tau pretty good, and once they are gone you can freely make use of cover while hurting the offensive output.

 DarthSpader wrote:
try drop pods.

Be careful of this. Most Tau lists I see (and run) are heavy in EWO (interceptor.) A squad of missilesides with interceptor will ruin your day if you drop within 30 inches. Also, most riptides will come with EWO as well. In fact my 2k list loves deep strikers.

1) Pinning. Everything is Ld7 except commanders. A couple Barrage or Sniper weapons leaves you set.

2) AV13/14. Tau's only REAL answer are Fusion Guns. 18" range, 9" melta. Flamestorm Cannons on a Landraider are godsend. So are Vindicators.

3) MSU. Combat Squad your units so that the Sergeant and Heavy Weapon are in one at the back, and the Melta is in the other moving up.

4) Don't reserve. Alpha strike is important. Get First Turn, kill the Riptides or Ionheads.

Lots of marines in droppods plus whirlwinds or thunder fire cannon work. Combat squad when disembarking and as an earlier post noted get up close to the Tau units to really crimp the EWO units. You'll lose a combat squad or two to missilessides, but if you have enough they work. Flamers are great for kroot snipers and bolters kill firewarriors plenty well. Melta and plasma hurt suits bad. Also despite what everyone tells you riptides while scary aren't your first priority. A crisis suit kitted out with dual plasma will generally hurt worse. If you tie the riptide up (Lysander is awesome for this) you can win combat. A power armor squad with a power fist also works here as they can catch and sweep the lower I riptide.

Imma have to disagree with Marcus up there; a riptide with EWO will pop your drop pods, and everyone in them, with amazing consistency :c

S8 Ap2 LBlast hurts more than 4 S6 AP2 shots.

 chrisrawr wrote:
Imma have to disagree with Marcus up there; a riptide with EWO will pop your drop pods, and everyone in them, with amazing consistency :c

S8 Ap2 LBlast hurts more than 4 S6 AP2 shots.

Combat squad and 6' disembark means should be practically impossible for the blast to get them all, especially if you get up close to some of his squads. He marker lights a battle suit squad with 2x plasma and that is 12 plasma shots one definite dead squad. Both str 8 and 6 wound on twos so it comes down to how many wounds they can inflict.

How do you get markerlight interceptors? For 5 points, the Riptide gets to take them out from across the table before they get to shoot anything. For 15 points, 3 crisis suits might be able to get 2 or 3 kills from 24".

Not talking simply about interceptor, more about the whole game. Think about it this way...

If the riptide intercepts, first it has a chance to get hot, then a high likelihood of scatter. If I deploy my drop pods close and then disembark in the gun lines face it s even harder to get good template placement. So everything works great for the tau and the shot goes off and is paced well, should still be next to impossible to kill the squad, and even if it is killed that is one of two disembarking from the drop pod out of hopefully many drop pods. More importantly one of the few long range shooting units now can't fire next turn at the thunderfire cannons killing off the firewarriors or kroot.

Similarly the crisis suits probably won't have EWO, but they will fire next turn. The riptide won't as it will have used the ewo shot, so I'd rather know down my incoming fire for next tau shooting phase when they do benefit from marker lights.

Marcus Scipio wrote:

Combat squad and 6' disembark means should be practically impossible for the blast to get them all, especially if you get up close to some of his squads. He marker lights a battle suit squad with 2x plasma and that is 12 plasma shots one definite dead squad. Both str 8 and 6 wound on twos so it comes down to how many wounds they can inflict.

 chrisrawr wrote:
How do you get markerlight interceptors? For 5 points, the Riptide gets to take them out from across the table before they get to shoot anything. For 15 points, 3 crisis suits might be able to get 2 or 3 kills from 24".

I think Marcus is referring to the general threat of the two units. Being a squad of Dual-Plasma Crisis Suits can be a bigger threat than a single Riptide.

As far as Interceptor goes, I'd be more worried about a squad of Bladestorms (PR/BC/EWO) as, in my experience, they eat marines for breakfast through weight of fire alone. Dual-Plasmas with EWO are more effective (and more expensive), if the pod is within rapid fire range however...

The problem with the Riptide is if it Intercepts it can't Nova Charge and can't make use of Markerlights. So it's stuck at BS 3, has to risk "gets hot", and will most likely scatter. If you position your pod and newly arrived, combat squadded marines, next to some juicy Broadsides, the Tau player is just as likely to wipe out one combat squad as he is to wipe out his own units with an unfortunate scatter roll.

Of course, if he doesn't miss you're screwed...

:edit: Damn, too slow.

Like I said, Riptides have been remarkably consistent for me in getting rid of any and all reserves coming onto the board, from Space Marines to HellTurkeys. Novacharge is unneeded, as S8 AP2 is the same as S9 AP2 to space marines.

make sure the tau player isn't list tailoring because otherwise you're just going to lose

I´ve made the experience that Tau got problems to pop LRC quickly. Put something nasty inside and make a move inside their gunline.

The Riptide could use a smash attack to deal with a land raider. That is one of my fears with rushing into a group of riptides.

Kill their Pathfinders / other Markerlights if you can. The first turn or two is going to be rough, but if you can manage to off a large amount of his markerlights, you should be in pretty good shape.

Kill their scoring units. And hope your AV13 lasts long enough that he ignores your scoring units. . Riptides are scary, yes, but they are Elite, so never score. I won a game against T'au who had all of his suits left because I managed to kill off his three squads of 12 Fire Warriors (at 1500, so he takes more troops than your average tau). At that point, it was "can he get across the board and past my aegis line" since his markerlights were dead.

Also, if you have anything that can ignore cover at range, you'll pretty much obliterate fire warriors and anything not in a suit.

Remember to play the mission and that troops are very important. Your troops are T4 and 3+ save except for scouts. Go for the Tau troops and kill as many as you can. The Tau's biggest weakness is the leadership issue, if you can kill command units and force morale checks you will starrt to see his units running. If you drop pod a full squad them you need to combat squad them and move your full move with each part, if you have attack bikes, a unit of two or three together is a good choice too. I play Codex Marines and also Tau and against the same as well so I see this from both sides. I can not tell you how many times I have had units fail morale and fall back from a good position to an exposed one.

Good luck my Brother.

beat them at their own game or deep strike assualt untits and drop pods are useful too