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Hello dakka, I played my very first game of 40k today against a friend who plays Tau, I was using:
HQ:
- 1 Commander, 1 Medic, 1 Master Vox and 2 veterans
Troops: A Platoon consisting of:
- Platoon Command squad with 1 Officer, 1 melta, 1 vox and 2 veterans
- Veteran squad with 1 sniper, 1 Lascannon and demo charges
- Infantry squad with 1 sniper, 1 melta and a lascannon
Heavy Support:
- Basilisk with extra armour, smoke launchers, heavy bolter, storm bolter twin linked and dozer blade

His force structure as far as i can tell went as follows:
HQ:
- Commander Shadowsun with two shield drones and a command link drone
Troops:
- Pathfinder team of 4 with two rail rifles, a pulse accelerator drone and a recon drone
- Firewarrior squad of 10 including 2 carbines and two drones that i don't recall
Heavy Support:
- Skyray gunship with 2 markerlights and 2 burst cannons

From what I remember he had roughly 6 markerlights spread out amongst his force which caused a lot of trouble for my vet squad when he was able to remove their cover saves. He was also using his shield drones as a meat shield in front of shadowsun. We were playing on a 48"x48" board which meant that my basilisk was only able to fire it's earth-shaker cannon in the first turn and thanks to some bad dice rolls it wasn't able to do any damage despite covering 10 infantry units that were bunched together. These bad dice rolls continued for the rest of the game which resulted in not a single one of my units hitting anything in the second turn however i did manage to get pretty close to the objective which was short lived by the rail rifles and skyray burst cannons mowing down my two squads anywhere near the objective. The game ended after 3 turns and needless to say it was a horrific defeat, the only thing i managed to kill all game was one shield drone.

Does anyone have any hints and tips for me in the future against his tau? The army i used isn't all of my army, i also have some storm troopers, a valkyrie, a leman russ and some more infantry.

What kind of Leman Russ you got? Tau in general is terrified of things hitting our marker units, and we hug cover. With the artillery, you got to know what you're fighting. If you're playing on a 4x4 board, you should be using medusas, not basilisks. Not enough room for the big gun to shoot. Kill our markerlight units, then we'll have a much harder time hitting you with things other than massed pulse rifle fire.

Edit: Didn't think much of it, but that's also an illegal list he has. Pathfinder teams are Fast Attack, not troops.

 Gyrtop wrote:
With the artillery, you got to know what you're fighting. If you're playing on a 4x4 board, you should be using medusas, not basilisks. Not enough room for the big gun to shoot. Kill our markerlight units, then we'll have a much harder time hitting you with things other than massed pulse rifle fire.

Be wary of the medusa. It cannot fire indirectly, has a short range, costs more, and a standard fire warrior can pen its side armor. Also against tau there's no need for the extra AP.

which meant that my basilisk was only able to fire it's earth-shaker cannon in the first turn

You can fire within 36", it just has to be indirect fire (p. 34 of the BRB). I imagine that hurt you, since if it only fired once and did no damage it was 150 pts down the drain. Also, I don't think giving Basilisks any extra equipment is useful. They (theoretically) shouldn't even get fired at, since they should be sitting in your back having a lovely time dropping ordninance on unsuspecting MEQ's.

Continuing on the rule stickler track, Infantry Platoons need at least 2 infantry squads, the second of which would really help you. I have a friend who plays tau and the most effective lesson I've learned is to not try and save soldiers, they will die whatever you do. That being said, if you have enough squads that there are just physically too many units on the field to take out, that really pisses them off.

Looking at your list as it stands now, my tactic would be:
- Hide the basilisk behind a mountain or equally nice cover, shoot it at the pathfinder team (if the firewarrior team is a ways away from your troops). It seems like he has a decent number of points invested in this small squad. Plus, they increase the range of all their little tau buddies by 6".
- You could also shoot the basilisk at the firewarrior team. It's a huge squishy threat to your soldiers that you can make run off the board.
- Concentrate the IS and VS on the skyray, then commander shadowsun. I say this because the skyray has two markerlights, which, as you said, can be devestating to the rest of your army. Shadowsun on the other hand is a vehicle killer. Face her with guardsmen and she doesn't have the sheer volume of fire to handle them efficiently.
- ???
- Profit.

It really looks like the tau player doesn't have anything that would threaten your standard soldier too badly except for the firewarriors.

Use things that ignore cover like colossus and heavy flamers. to own there Marker lights then troops.

Thank you for the feedback.
I was using the basilisk for indirect fire behind a building all the way through, so I really should have fired within the 36" every turn rather than just the first. When i did fire the Earthshaker it was at the sergeant of the firewarrior team, but also managed to hit shadowsun and 1 or 2 pathfinders, unfortunately it killed none of them. Just beginners bad luck i guess.
My Leman Russ has a battle cannon, heavy stubber, lascannon, heavy flamer, two heavy bolter sponsons and smoke launchers.
I have a full army list here http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/544974.page are there any units from there that you would advise using against the tau?

Hellhounds, I have found that using Hellhounds allows to get rid of the markerlights which make the tau a lot less scary.

Manticore all the way vs Tau. The large, high strength, ap4, possible multiple blasts will absolutely destroy any fire warriors (or similar infantry) it hits and it also does a good job against Tau vehicles being strength 10, rolling 2 dice and picking the highest and it hitting against their side armour, which is 12 I believe for their battle hammerheads.

Also try not to spend too many points on one thing as mentioned before, it will probably die, especially if it's infantry. I tend to only give upgrades to things that are tough or intend to sit back such as a LRBT and my company command squad, both of which rarely leave my table half.

Just my 2 cents so to speak, hope it helps and good luck fighting the foul xenos next time.

1-kill the pathfinders ASAP, in order to do this, any kind of template weapons would do.
2-destroy the riptides if he has any, vendetta or plasmavets would do this pretty well.
3-skyrays are pretty annoying, but since you got lascannons and command squad, use order "fire on my target" can force him to reroll his jink save.. shouldn`t be too much of a problem
4-if all the above targets are eliminated, you are pretty much winning. shadowsun can be taken down by a mass amount of small arm fire, firewarriors won`t do much without heavy supports

I would recommend freeing up a bunch of points by not getting upgrades that you will not likely use, and make sure that all weapons/upgrades in each squad can be used on similar targets. For example, snipers and lascanons are not likely to hit the same target.

So I would change the following (use points as you feel):
* HQ - Drop medic, move all snipers here.
* Platoon 1, CS - Drop melta, optionally add flamers.
* Platoon 1, IS 1 & 2 - Drop meltas, drop snipers, add lascannons, combine squads. Optionally move lascannons into a HWS.
* Veteran squad - Add all 3 meltas here, drop sniper, drop lascannon, drop demo charges.
* Basilisk - Drop extra armour, drop smoke launchers, drop storm bolter, drop dozer blade.

Then you can use the extra points to either get chimeras or a LR for your infantry to march behind (so they don't get torn up before they are in range).

If you run a Leman russ remember that according to the FAQ russes dont have lumbering behemoth and are heavy now so if they fire an ordnance gun like the battle cannon or the demolisher cannon all other weapons have to snap fire. So if you run the battle tank or the demolisher then run them with no upgrades. Maybe cammo nets for the LRBT as it should be sitting back using its range to fire at opponents but otherwise upgrades arent needed on them.

Tau are a very hard army for guard to beat, they basically out range our standard troops but our tanks and artillery still can hit them, they have turn 1 night fight advantage and can effectively hit use before we hit them. Best advice I could give is if they run marker lights take those out as they will truly take out anything in cover. Next to that is take out their scoring units. If you can take out their scouring units you can tie the game if they kill yours.

 watchamacarcess wrote:
Manticore all the way vs Tau. The large, high strength, ap4, possible multiple blasts will absolutely destroy any fire warriors (or similar infantry) it hits and it also does a good job against Tau vehicles being strength 10, rolling 2 dice and picking the highest and it hitting against their side armour, which is 12 I believe for their battle hammerheads.

Also try not to spend too many points on one thing as mentioned before, it will probably die, especially if it's infantry. I tend to only give upgrades to things that are tough or intend to sit back such as a LRBT and my company command squad, both of which rarely leave my table half.

Just my 2 cents so to speak, hope it helps and good luck fighting the foul xenos next time.

I agree with your post. Tau are the absolute kings of medium-long ranfe firepower, but guard still has the extreme range/artillery advantage, so you can out gunline us if you do it right. Also I just wanted to say your avatar is awesome.

 tankboy145 wrote:
If you run a Leman russ remember that according to the FAQ russes dont have lumbering behemoth and are heavy now so if they fire an ordnance gun like the battle cannon or the demolisher cannon all other weapons have to snap fire. So if you run the battle tank or the demolisher then run them with no upgrades.

**sigh** this is when I wish I had made my sponsons magnetic... my poor russes got so much worse...

As people have said, you can fire artillery within minimum range. It just has to happen indirectly so no subtracting your BS from the scatter. That can make it hard to hit when you're not hitting dead on.

Although the guard don't have the same medium range fire power as the Tau, you can still out range them. Sit back at 40 inches and hope for some direct artillery hits. For the most part, you don't really need a bassilisk's AP-3 shots or the battle cannon AP-3 shots from the Russ. Take a griffon instead, it's shots are twin linked so you have a higher chance of hitting and it still goes through firewarrior and pathfinder armor. For the Russ you can take the eradicator and ignore the pathfinder cover.

I'm not sure the direction you friend is going. Looks like its infantry heavy which is how my friend plays. My favorite "tau killer" is the sound of 9 autocannons pounding away his troops. I'm not sure how your platoon is but its illegal the way it is. It need a minimum of 2 infantry squad. So you need more guard. I do blob guard so I got crazy and have like 70 infantry man. I do a 50 man squad with a lord commissar and give them first rank second rank and you can overkill units. I am a Leman Russ over Manticore man and I bomb the f*** out of his fire warriors. I saw on the other thing you have a Valkyrie. I like those for tau killing. Multiple rocket pod the f*** out of his troops and multi-laser any reminders. My anti-tank is lascannons and autocannons but you could use a suicide melta squad in a flyer and drop them in.