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Hello Dakka masters, I have a question that my friend has been asking me. He plays a Tau army and right now he is trying to find a ally army that can cover for weaknesses he sees in the Tau codex, CC and anti-air. Right now, he is looking into Space Wolves to cover for CC though he is wondering about anti-air. I've been telling him, regarding anti-air, that the IG have some decent anti-air from Vendettas and Hydra Flak Tanks and he could use IG platoons as a meat shield for his Fire Warriors and such from the CC units.

Do you guys have any better suggestions for allies that can do either job better?

With the new codex the eldar crimson hunter has become a great anti-air platform and has many solid CC options. The dark eldar have a lot of great CC units but lack a real air deterrent, though a ravager with disintegrators does alright in that role for low AV fliers. Those are the two armies I have significant experience with. In the end I would advocate for the battle brother elves.

However, weren't broadsides advocated as one of the better anti-flyer units in the game?

I love Captain Lysander and some Terminators.

Tau don't really need allies, but if I was going to take some I would go with necron warriors in a nightscythe to make up for the Tau's lack of offensive objective grabbing power.

Being bad in CC isn't as bad as it could be, so unless you really want a counter charge unit you don't need to worry about that so much...and anyone who thinks tau are bad at anti-air should re-read the codex (seriously, tau codex severely hurt most of the popular flier lists purely because of its ability do make fliers go away)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Airmailed in from another thread:

 IHateNids wrote:
if you want 2 Overlords, you are talking 2K+, as you can only take 1 HQ in an allies list.

What I would bring in this scenario is:

Overlord (WS SW PS RO MSS) - 205
PulseTek - 55
10 Warriors - 130
Night Scythe - 100

Total is 490 points, a fairly low number, but what you have is:

a guaranteed Nightfight for a turn, pop on turn 2 if you roll NF at the start of the game
a Decent Flyer
some durable troops
a model that will wreck most things in CC

Why on earth would you go to anything else in the game for anti air?? If you want a dedicated unit for it, give 3 railsides skyfire. 3 misslesides will take down just about any flyer with or without skyfire, give them interceptor and you have a good chance of taking them down without them getting a chance to shoot!

Tau weaknesses are CC and durable troops, '

logan with some termies(or whichever termwing that you prefer) gives you some CC and some durable troops. Though, you may need to do it through the vanilla dex to get troops that actually count as troops(battle brothers) but im not 100% on that because im not a fan of using allies.

Also, nob bikers with a warboss are pretty sweet!

As stated above, Tau are the go-to allies for every army that can have it for their anti-air capability. What they need are sturdy and/or fast scoring units and counter-charge ability.

Look no further than Eldar for all of it. Farseer on a jetbike, one squad of 6 WRJ with 2 Shuriken Cannons and a Warlock and a stock Wraithknight. Or you can make it 2 squads of 3 WRJ with no warlocks and keep them in reserve.

All this is about 500 points. So not too shabby.