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We've been playing a beginners tourny at my local gaming club between 4 of us, so far Tau have completely panned Space Marines, Space Wolves and now I'm next wih Blood Angels and don't want to go the same way!

The other two got shoot to shreds advancing towards the Tau, then when they got close enough to assault, overwatch came into play and finished the job!

My friend typically goes with (600 pt game):
3 x crisis suits
Hammerhead (I think)
2 x firewarrior squads

My typical tactics are simple being a beginer and I go with, if it's shooty, assault it and if its assaulty, shoot it! So I need to close fast!

The game we are playing is to destroy the opponents army so its a straight up scrap, any ideas hints or tips would be great for this so far unbeaten Tau army!

Well in a straight up brawl tau are pretty much going to beat most things. They'll just sit on the far side of the table and shoot at you all day unless you have some weird list like artillery spam guard or something. Also 600 points is pretty nasty for most armies.

I'm sorry, but the only advice I can give is try to get into assault, and if you can get into assault then charge with everything at once so he has to split his overwatch up.

Pretty much whats happened each time, he's set a gun line up and camped.

What I was thinking of taking was:

Librarian with jump pack
10 man assault squad with 2 flamers

Sang Priest with jump pack
10 man asaault squad with 1 melta gun

50% will have to start on the table and take the pain, the other I was going to deep strike in to try and take his attention while the other advances.

Looking at that advice maybe I should advance both up the table?

Interesting about the overwatch, I take it another unit shooting (not the one being attacked), can only shoot once per assault phase.

How would he handle a drop pod furioso?

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
How would he handle a drop pod furioso?

Railgun it with the hammer head or use fusion guns on the crisis suits I'd imagine.

A droppod Furioso with blood talons would wreck his FW squads.

600 pts is hard, because the other thing that really would mess with him would be TH/SS terminators, but you're not going to be able to fit a squad in that low, you'd need a 1k army.

PS:The Hammerhead has a huge gun on it, take a look at a picture on GW's site to verify if it's a Hammerhead or another tank.

My advice would be to hide your entire army out of LoS and go for a draw or if you can deep strike a unit on the last turn and ensure that it survives if the game goes on, then do it for Linebreaker and winning by 1 VP.

You might think it's cheap, but playing against MEQ with Tau at 600 points is even cheaper, let alone using kill points only.

I don't know what you have available, but if you know you're playing tau, then you can do a little list tailoring. Tau struggle against AV14, so a LR will help, and its TW-LC will ID his suits.

If you don't have that, you can outshoot Tau, you just have to stay past 30". Devestators work well, especially with 4 missle launchers. The point it is, if you try to close with him, especially at this small point level, he's gonna wipe you out before you get close to him, especially if he gets to go 1st. Beat him at his own game, and outshoot him past 30" Anything that can shoot 48" will work, and he will not want to come to you, and most Tau players I have played like to stay back. Sounds crazy to try to outshoot Tau, but as you said, marines get shot up if you try to get near them.

Below 1500 is hard for marine armies... Most of your points are eaten up by units with a fairly low damage output.

I'd say your best bet is to DS the 2xflamer squad with the Libby. Hope for a good strike to roast the FW. Take the blood lance & shield of sanguinius spells. Blood lance for some ranged damage output that can hit multiple squads & the shield for use in their turn to protect against fancy shots... It maxes the value from that lv. 1 Libby having it cast twice per game round.

The problem with playing against tau at 600 points is the size of the game favors the tau. 1850 is usually played on a 6 by 4 foot table.. The right scale for a 600 point game would be a 2 foot by 4 foot table with 25% of the table covered by terrain.

 schadenfreude wrote:
The problem with playing against tau at 600 points is the size of the game favors the tau. 1850 is usually played on a 6 by 4 foot table.. The right scale for a 600 point game would be a 2 foot by 4 foot table with 25% of the table covered by terrain.

Props from me for actually doing equivalent area instead of just dividing the edge lengths. And your deployment zone would be 6 inches long.

Thanks for the advice.

I'm liking the idea of a dev squad with 4 ML coupled with a assault squad.

Big gun, then it's a hammer head.

The table is 4 x 4 with 5 pieces of terrain set up by an independent player.

Off the top of my head a aegis defense line is 50pts so I could go with:

Libby with jump pack
10 man Assault squad with 2 flamers

Aegis defense line
5 man Dev squad with 4 ML
6 man Scout squad with 5 sniper and 1 ML

I could swap out out some of the ML for heavy bolters. My idea would be to camp the devs and scouts in the aegis and then DS in with the libby and assaults.

You might've had a better chance if it was a normal mission rather than jump a face punching match, as Tau can have trouble getting their troops around.

Your list seems pretty solid for the point level but low point levels can hurt Marines, especially BA due to the cost of troops.

Just a side note, when you start getting bigger armies get some attack bikes, they're cheap, durable and usually effective.

D

From my games against Tau, you really want to go ahead an multi assault when you get the chance. However, I've having a problem with just losing too many BA on the approach to claim to have a good plan. The Tau and Eldar are just murder for shooting BA ASM now. The poor model count of BA is really killing us at this point.

I don't like tailoring lists, but if you are going to tailor for Tau, the ML is one of the last weapons I would take. But then, I never take ML anyway because I think they suck in 6th ed.