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So my friend has been playing Tau since the previous edition, and in this edition I think I've seen him lose twice. Usually my games amount to a turn of losing most of everything I have and then uselessly trying to make something out of the scraps of my army, to lose the rest or concede the following turn. I have rewritten a new list that I think is more to the point and have not yet played him with it, so in this thread I'd like to talk about general tactics for fighting Tau. Everyone I've talked to is at a loss.

Generally you hear "they're weak in cqc." This is all and well, but there are two issues. One, how does one reach them for that purpose? He can mow down meq or elite assault units before they reach. Whatever makes it through has the second issue, the massive overwatch. An additional issue arises in that whatever survives will probably be killed the following turn by fire. Considering the wealth of high strength and good ap in the army, I do not see how an assault can go effectively against the extremely cost effective gun line.

On the other hand, you can attempt to out shoot them. Ignoring the riptide - which is really just a massive target - there are the crisis suits and broadsides. The broadsides come tough with 2+ armor, so I imagine one could sink lascannons into them. However with the jump shoot jump with the crisis suits they generally end up jumping straight up and then back down, removing them as a viable target. And, on the earlier note, if one ignores the riptide it is indeed threatening enough to wipe infantry squads or vehicles.

So, generally speaking, the options eem to be assault and be wiped out on the charge, or try to outshoot their more threatening units only to be outshot. Granted, I am entirely open to the idea I am just doing it wrong. So does any one have advice for beating Tau in 6th?

For guidance, the guy in question generally runs Farsight Enclave with crisis suits spread between plasma and the gatling cannon thing. He runs farsight and a commander that gives ignores cover and +1 to ballistic skill in a squad of markerlight drones, a riptide, and broadsides with missile pods and missile drones. Recently he also added a hammerhead with the missiles to the mix. Any advice here is appreciated.

The other question I had was tactices for running grey knight strike squads. I want to run GK as allies for IG. A friend suggested adding veterans in chimeras for mobile assault infantry, and I figured I could use GK in Rhinos for a hardier, fluffier for my purposes, option. The issue is I have no idea how to run them effectively. Generally the rhino goes turn two or so leaving 10 t4 3+ guys legging it towards a Tau gunline - assured suicide. So any advice here is also greatly appreciated.

There are a great number of tactica and tau complaint threads with more than enough information on how to beat them.

But some tips.

Though they are weaker in CC that doesn't automatically mean you should focus your army to do so. great shooting will kill them ether way considering for the most part (though not really in farsight enclave) they are T3.

Crisis suits can JSJ but its not always reliable. make sure your opponent is taking dangerous checks if he goes into terrain. as well Broadsides DO NOT have JSJ (if i read your post correctly). as well Really read up on Interceptor, as if you bait it you can force them to waste almost 2 turns of shooting.

Is he running the actual farsight book or C:tau?

Ether way he is investing a TON of points into his suits.

Really Tau are weak against target saturation and AV14.

They work best at focusing 1 unit at a time and will generally kill 1 unit at a time.

Try to kill Pathfinders first if possible, otherwise if he is using a buffmander, only 1 unit will ever benefit.

What models do you have to work with?

Sorry, I clearly didn't look hard enough for other threads. The couple I had seen either were advice built off of problems with specific lists the player asking the questions was using, or one from right when the codex came out that came down to "things will balance out once people get used to them."

Right, I have basically given up on using cc on Tau. My most recent list is ordinance heavy - 3 basilisks and 2 russes. I bubble up my infantry around that with around 7 lascannons and 10 ratlings. I haven't played him with tis yet but I suspect the ordinance will be enough to do serious damage, however he also often likes to run deep striking suicide suits with melta or plasma and I wonder how well my 4 tanks - really the core of my effectiveness - will fair against that. Granted I think he only brings one and it won't survive longer than a turn where it will prolly kill one of my four tanks. Granted I could always drop the ratlings and some other things for more tanks, but I'm trying to avoid going full mechanized.

He does do the dangerous terrain for the JSJ but that's never a problem. Granted I don't need to be able to see him to hit him with my tanks. He is also not JSJing with his broadsides, I may have miscommunicated that. It's just that they're tough and put out a LOT of firepower.

Also the interceptor idea is a good one, at 2000 I'll consider bringing a Valkyrie and some vets. Though I would be too worried that the Riptide / broadsides might take it out, and that's a very, very expensive distraction. Also as far as I understand if he intercepts he just can't shoot the next turn, but can overwatch? Is this correct?

He is actually using the farsight book with Tau allies. Also, I'm not sure if i understand target saturation. Does that mean to bring as many viable threats as possible so he has too much to shoot at? On the note of markerlights, he does not actually use pathfinders, just a buffmander running in a squad of markerlight drones. So killing them requires getting through a 2+ buffmander which will run for its life and attach to the riptide when it is close to death, sit behind its 2+ save and give it ignores cover.

Otherwise you make a good point on the fact that Tau can generally kill one target a turn, however this is excepting his Riptide which tends to be separate from that.

This is some very good advice though, I will definitely focus on getting rip of the buffmander / markerlights.

Ok from the top.

Barrage type weapons is a good start so long as you have some nice BLOS Terrain to use. As well if your taking a nice infantry bubble wrap, and dont mind getting it, Coteaz from Codex inquisition is a great addition. as Iv been expecting you in a big blob with las cannons will generally scare off most DS attempts as well Divination and seize initiative shenanigans.

The ratings are Meh.

Interceptor makes it so you cannot shoot that weapon until the end of the FOLLOWING Turn.
AKA if on T1 and you go first, and drop pod in and he intercepts, it wont be allowed to shoot at all T2, and T3 he can intercept again. food for thought.

Be mindful that broadsides have a 36" range and generally wont move. you will need to out deploy him. as well you could actually threaten them with demolisher russ with av 14 facing front. though with the additional Hammerhead perhaps its a bit risky.

(speaking of which it would be funny to CREEEED the russis in from the side depending on the deployment.)

Tau are vulnerable to psykers. Last game i played a fun chaos list including 9 marines [2xplazmaguns] + champ [combi-melta] in a rhino, 8 ccw marines [1 melta, icon of Excess - yep, they were marines with mark of slaanesh - best for cc imo] + champ [combi-melta] + sorcerror [ml3, spell familliar] in a landraider, a few bikes and cultists - exactly 1k points, while Tau player had 2 10-strong squads of firewarriors, pathfinders, crysis commander with crysis retinue, missile broadsides, min stealth suit team and a hammerhead with submunition. I advanced cautiously and hid a rhino and bikes behind a landraider and some blos so that he had no effective shooting with tauwarriors for the first 2 turns at all and a landraider was lucky enough to endure s10 ap1 shots that just stripped 2 hullpoints and din't kaboom it - though it's pure luck but i think chances for that were 50/50 so it's oki. The game ended when marines got into rapid fire range to pathfinders and sorc that had rolled Dominate, Invisibility and Puppet mastery sucksessfuly manipulated a hammerhead's crew to make a submunition shot at firewarriors that wiped all 10 of them so that disembarked marines with sorc could remain unharmed!
Sure there are many IF's but tau have issues with puppet mastery - espetially on riptides and hammerheads and things like Terrify or Dominate cause generally their ld ain't that high.
So as ig you have allies that can provide all those tools. Also, a divination platoon ain't afraid of deepstrikers. I think Tigurius can bolster u'r ranks to the point of being competitive vs tau.

As at Tau player enjoying several editions, honestly it is nice to finally win a few. Seeing him win so often, especially if he played last edition is probably a bit shocking, but I am guess you stomped him just as much as he is you now. XD

That said, as a Tau player, drop pod lists are scary. Anything that puts you too close too soon scares the crap out of Tau players, especially if you drop outside of our interceptor's LOS. Bait the interceptor shot, and then drop the rest.

While they have scary things such as the Riptide, the Achilles heel is the scoring units. The Tau scoring units are really fragile. A plain flamer will send any Kroot packing, if not dead, and a heavy flamer will break any Fire Warriors. If hes not paying for Shas'ui upgrades on all his Fire Warriors, you are looking at an easy leadership 7 to run off. Scoring units for Tau really are glass cannons with nice range. Bolters hit on 3s and wound on 2s, forcing tons of 4+ armor or cover saves. Heavy bolters destroy Fire Warriors.

As far as dealing with Riptides, Sternguard or massed fire.
Now as far as his battlesuits, they will surprise you in melee with STR 5, but if you have any AP3 power weapons you can destroy them. They are only 3 man units, plus drones, but overwatch hits on 6s. In addition, they are only permitted to fire 1 weapon on overwatch, as the multitracker special rule says they can fire 2 weapons ONLY during the shooting phase. So 3 units, with half the amount of overwatch, hitting on 6's.

While I know you cannot assault on the turn you deep strike, my friend caught me utterly off guard by using a 10 man space marine unit, drop podded, broke into combat squads, then threw krak grenades at my back armor of my Hammerhead, while the other ate my Kroot up with a flamer and bolters.

If you can break his scoring units, start focusing down the rest.
Remember, he cant fire 2 weapons on overwatch, missile drones do not benefit from the drone controller, battlesuits are only toughness 4, so you can instant death them with lascannons or meltas. Melt one and they are taking a morale test. Same for broadsides. You can instant death them with lascannons and meltas.

Tau suffer from mediocre shooting skill, mid to low armor on scoring troops, and fewer scoring troops the more toys you take. The iconic battlesuits suffer from low toughness and small unit size, meaning any causality starts them panicking. When the do hit, Tau hurt. They also tend to suffer from mid to low leadership. Troops falling back are considered destroyed at the end of a game, so you do not really need a full kill to get the kill point, just run him off. If he buys the bonding knife, they can always regroup, keep that in mind.

Again, many things Tau players overlook or do not realize is only one weapon on a battlesuit can fire overwatch, only 2 in the shooting phase, missile drones are for broadsides only and do not benefit from drone controller, and how easily it is to instant death battlesuits. I remember the first lucky multi-melta snapshot my friend got on my commander who didnt have the special armor. Instant death? Grrrr. Needless to say, I am a sailor, and I gave a small display of the sailors colorful dialect to honor my forgetfulness about that little rule.

As always, good luck, have fun.