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I was once again tabled by the tau army. I have yet to beat him and all of the games have been pretty decisive. How is it that I can beat him?

Tau are probably the worst army at CC. If it comes to it, charge all your grey hunters and blood claws at firewarrior squads. Put em all in drop pods.

The only problem with that is his supporting fire. Every time I charge I get a face full of shots. There aren't enough men on the field on my part in order to make it into cc alive

What sort of tau list is your opponent running, and at what point level?

Generally it is at 1250. But his army consists of a few squads of 10 fire warriors, an ethereal, 2 squads of 5 pathfinders, a squad of kroot, a commander with 2 body guards plasma rifles fusion blasters, and another squad of suits, also 5 stealth suits and of course a riptide. On occasion he will substitute hammerheads in. He never uses broadsides or vehicles other than hammerheads.


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The crisis suits and commander almost never start on the board

Whirlwinds to kill the pathfinders and break up the firewarriors. Try and drop the barage large blast markers right on the Ethereal's head (barrage means wounds are allocated from the centre of the marker). S5 AP4 large blast will break the units up pretty fast.

HQ take runepriests with Jaws of the World Wolf. Riptides hate it, as do most Tau.

Then just heaps of Grey Hunters with melta/wolf standard. Chuck a few of the units in drop pods to get the hammerheads/drop behind your opponent's lines after the firewarriors have been tenderised.

Would you recommend long fangs as well or does the whirlwind take their place

Njtrent59 wrote:
Would you recommend long fangs as well or does the whirlwind take their place

Well... you've only got 1250 points. I'm not that big a fan of Long Fangs against Tau. The missile launchers aren't super effective... Heavy Bolters would be good, but you'd effectively just be paying more to achieve what a whirlwind would be doing anyway. Just make sure to take anti-tank in your Grey Hunter units, or those hammerheads could have free run of the place (very bad against marines).

These are just my opinions though, I'm no expert :-)

Probably more of an expert than I am haha. He doesn't use anything to counteract the drop pods so they would definitely work. The rune priests goal is to jaws the crap out of stuff and the pod is the best way for that, but after his drop, he's going to draw alot of fire, would it be smart to take 2 or is that just going overboard

Drop pods

Take one wolf guard unit with several combi plasmas and drop them down onto his crisis suits. Fire and forget, he most likely wont have them in cover because they have to make dangerous terrain checks when they move out of it.

Take one grey hunter squad with two flamers and drop them down onto his pathfinders. Wounding on a 3+ with no cover or armor saves makes pathfinders cry.

The rest is just a straight up shooting free for all in which you should win due to better BS and armor saves. Especially once the pathfinders are gone.

I'd take a long fang squad as cheaply as possible and actually use them for bait. Most tau players can't resist dropping suits right by them to remove them. Then just return the favor.

A drop podding SW list is still very dangerious when played right. Also overwatch doesn't do squat if the other guy doesn't charge, why play their game? SW can do the short range fire fight very well.

I have found deathwind drop pods work against tau. They don;t expect pie plates coming from space marines they get the armour save from bolters anyways so you can really rack up the wounds on warrior squads and it forces them out of the cover, spreads them out and makes them deal with the pod if they don't come out and play.

Also does supporting fire still have the limit of 1 overwatch per squad? Use multiple assaults on units within 6", the range of supporting fire.

Wolf standard helps survive overwatch nicely.

Drop pods.

If you're getting shredded by overwatch fire, try charging the same tau squad with two space wolf squads, sacrifice your less valuable squad by charging them into the tau first, they can only overwatch once!

Have you tried a big squad of wolf scouts? a squad of them appearing behind the gunline can mess tau up.

As others have said - Drop Pods, Wolf Scouts, and Wolf Priest w/ Saga of the Hunter outflanking will win you the day.

Mess up his synergy, break up his gunline and go to town - once his mutual fire support between units is starting to break down you'll be on the path to victory. And drinking beer out of Tau skulls whilst shouting honourable things about pride and the Godfather and that.

 CaptainRavenclaw wrote:
Drop pods.

If you're getting shredded by overwatch fire, try charging the same tau squad with two space wolf squads, sacrifice your less valuable squad by charging them into the tau first, they can only overwatch once!

That is the tactic I use with Daemons. I bring some beasts of nurgle for general tarpitting and soaking fire. A Beast will declare the charge against a huge blob of tau. Supporting fire + rapid fire = lots of pain. I assume the beast will die, if he doesnt, bonus. Then my Hounds, or whatever else will assault.

Drop pod and JTWW the out of him.

The crisis suits and commander almost never start on the board

Less to kill first turn

Does he run an aegis wall?

How does he deploy. I have made several Tau units run off the board from shooting attacks, they only have ld 7-8 normally. unless boosted by an IC

7 man grey hunter squads with wolf priest and TDAWG, that gives you preferred enemy infantry and a 2+ armour soak in a drop pod.

He doesn't run a defense line but we play with plenty of terrain. He has an ethereal with the bubble so it is generally pretty difficult to make him run off the board

Drop jaws seems very good then.

drop in a few and aim for ethereal and riptides.

 DexKivuli wrote:


HQ take runepriests with Jaws of the World Wolf. Riptides hate it, as do most Tau. ]

I've had a bit of a rule conflict with another Tau player. Since the specific unit types affected by Jaws are specified in the codex and Jetpack units aren't listed, are Jetpack units not affected?

Jet packs are non immune.

A Riptide is still an MC, so Jaws should work (assuming that it works against MC, don't have the codex).

You have to be willing to sacrifice some of your troops to accomplish your goal(s).

With Tau, you want to get into close combat. They are not good at it and it takes away their biggest strength: shooting.

Tau Overwatch, what with Markerlights and Supporting Fire, is deadly. If he's a strong competitor, he'll have all his units strung out in weird ways to have the maximum number of units be able to provide Supporting Fire (only a single model from a unit needs to be within 6" of the Tau unit getting charged in order to shoot).

But they can only shoot Overwatch once, even with Supporting Fire (if you disagree, re-read the Supporting Fire rule in the Tau Codex more carefully). If a unit of Pathfinders lights up one of your units via Supporting Fire, they can't do it to another one of your units in the same Phase since they already fired Overwatch. So use the Assault Phase rules to your advantage:

1. Declare Charge
2. Resolve Overwatch
3. Charge Move
4. Declare Next Charge

So be willing to sacrifice that one unit to make your charge. Transports, be they Rhinos or Drop Pods, will likewise be a must to shield you from enemy fire for as long as possible.

Edit: Forgot to put proper emphasis on launching multiple assaults on the same turn, preferably against as many of his units as possible.

 Desubot wrote:
Drop jaws seems very good then.

drop in a few and aim for ethereal and riptides.

this 1000%, drop pod rune priests or even footslogging for jaws are the bane of low int tau. You would need higher points value but I've been thinking about allying dark angels for dark talon stasis bomb and bike gernade launcher which would lower their init to one and anything hit would auto fail and be removed. Easiest way to kill riptides.

Exalbaru wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Drop jaws seems very good then.

drop in a few and aim for ethereal and riptides.

this 1000%, drop pod rune priests or even footslogging for jaws are the bane of low int tau. You would need higher points value but I've been thinking about allying dark angels for dark talon stasis bomb and bike gernade launcher which would lower their init to one and anything hit would auto fail and be removed. Easiest way to kill riptides.

Well not auto-fail, he'd still be able to roll a 1 to pass... and I think MCs get a +1 bonus to Init vs Jaws, so wouldn't it be a 2/3 chance of insta-killing it? Still good, but not a guarantee.

Ah, you're right just double checked and equal to works so could still make it but still pretty effective.

Standard Pod Wolves should do alright. He can only intercept once with each interceptor, and he can only over-watch once as well. So you drop your Pods, you shoot the crap out of him, and then you dual assault.

Seems to me you are overestimating over-watch on regular guns as well. It shouldn't be a problem unless for some reason you only have like 20 guys in which case you will have problems against most competent lists, not just Tau.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Standard Pod Wolves should do alright. He can only intercept once with each interceptor, and he can only over-watch once as well. So you drop your Pods, you shoot the crap out of him, and then you dual assault.

Seems to me you are overestimating over-watch on regular guns as well. It shouldn't be a problem unless for some reason you only have like 20 guys in which case you will have problems against most competent lists, not just Tau.

unless they supporting fire with their markerlight pathfinders or in squads first and spend each marker to make the overwatches hit on 4s or 5s instead of 6s

Exalbaru wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Standard Pod Wolves should do alright. He can only intercept once with each interceptor, and he can only over-watch once as well. So you drop your Pods, you shoot the crap out of him, and then you dual assault.

Seems to me you are overestimating over-watch on regular guns as well. It shouldn't be a problem unless for some reason you only have like 20 guys in which case you will have problems against most competent lists, not just Tau.

unless they supporting fire with their markerlight pathfinders or in squads first and spend each marker to make the overwatches hit on 4s or 5s instead of 6s

Still isn't that brutal if you have the sort of numbers that 6th edition almost begs you to have these days. 10 Fire Warriors over-watching on 4's, 20 shots, hit 10, wound 7-8, 2-3 Marines die. In return 10 Fire Warriors die. That's a decent trade-off.

But as for the Pathfinders, you do what everyone does, kill them first.

I've had a bit of a rule conflict with another Tau player. Since the specific unit types affected by Jaws are specified in the codex and Jetpack units aren't listed, are Jetpack units not affected?

Jetpack and Jump are a sub-type of unit, as in Jet pack INFANTRY

so he can stick that up his greater good

A riptide will fail JTWW 50% of the time (needs a 3)

A trick i like too is instead of 1 marine shooting his bolt gun, 2 shots at AP 5, throw a krak grenade, 1 shot at ap 4. He doesn't get an armour save, mwah ha ha ha ha.(usually is a lord with 2 CCW)

wolf priest in hunters works well too, with preferred enemy infantry, re-roll all those 1's to hit and wound.

Also, multi assault them! 1 squad of 7-10 grey hunters will tear up 2 fire warrior squads. And guess what happens if they don't? You end up with 2 squads tied up in melee not shooting at you next turn. Even if you have to sacrifice one unit to get shot up by overwatch and not make an overly effective assault you can then assault them with another squad that hits them fully and will destroy em.