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So

So need some help, on a weekly basis I play my friend's 1000pt Nid army of Hive Tyrant with Tyrant Guard, Tervigon, 4 Zoanthropes, with as many gaunts and hormogaunts that will fit. As a tau player he enjoys ripping my lines to shreds. Ive tried everything from 5 broadsides in an army list to all battlesuits! I'm limited t 1,000pts due to time but other then that I don't care what I use. I did start winning with fish of fury in 5th edition but ive been told that got nerfed. (also check out my Farsight-gallery)
[url] http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-83848-39571_Cranky341.html

Nids are easy lol. You focus fire on their synapse source. Everything crumbles. Btw, tell us what sort of tau models do you have.You may want to ally in with eldar.

Step one take an Aegis Defense Line.
Step two place it in one corner before deployment.
Step three deploy second.
Step four watch your opponent deploy his whole army directly across from your phony fortification.
Step five deploy in the opposite corner and laugh a little to yourself.
Step six profit from making your opponent run 36-64 inches to your lines.

Oh and skyrays + pathfinders = one dead nid army. Team that up with some Firewarriors using storm of fire, and you win.

 Pellegrino wrote:
Nids are easy lol. You focus fire on their synapse source. Everything crumbles. Btw, tell us what sort of tau models do you have.You may want to ally in with eldar.

'Nids are easy lol'
Thanks for the tip.

Also, it may be a little hard focussing fire on their synapse source when there are several of them that can get to your lines and sometimes in combat, in turn two. He also doesn't have Eldar and isn't prepared to buy them so he can list tailor to beat a friend in a game.
(I'm his friend in real life so yeah)

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Pellegrino wrote:
Nids are easy lol. You focus fire on their synapse source. Everything crumbles. Btw, tell us what sort of tau models do you have.You may want to ally in with eldar.

'Nids are easy lol'
Thanks for the tip.

Also, it may be a little hard focussing fire on their synapse source when there are several of them that can get to your lines and sometimes in combat, in turn two. He also doesn't have Eldar and isn't prepared to buy them so he can list tailor to beat a friend in a game.
(I'm his friend in real life so yeah)

Heh easy kid. Bringing Eldar allies with Tau is hardly list tailoring, its practically mandatory. But yeah a couple wave serpents might ruin your day.

Again, include a skyray or two, a couple squads of pathfinders, maybe two squads of six. Add in four squads of nine or firewarriors with an ethereal who invokes storm of fire every turn, and you win.

I don't really judge paint jobs but by the Rule of Cool, Your Farsight looks pretty bomb you should run a Farsight Bomb. It's fun and interesting and can make mincemeat of everything that's not the Flyrant, which you can solve with HYMP Broadsides or IA Riptide with VT.

Also a Mark'O with Missile Pods and his swarm of Marker Drones would go a long way to make your army a lot more accurate.

I would pretty much stick to a Farsight Enclave list with kroot and suits cause Firewarriors, even well supported, won't do too well against Assault-y Nids.

Nice paint job there on your Farsight. I like the Green & Blue.

Ideas for Tau against Nids?
What kind of units can you bring?

The Storm of Tides as previously suggested is a fantastic ability which is effortlessly provided to us by our Ethereals (though he is worth an extra victory point)

Large blasts do well against these guys and both of our tanks have good options for this. They also have great strength in their normal shots so I would suggest taking one or two tanks(if you can)

Riptides of course and you would do well with either build really... The Heavy Burst Cannon would help you against flyers and the Ion Accelerator would melt most of the things walking at you.

Broadsides with HYMPs will do wonders as well. Sure the Heavy Rail Rifle will guarantee a wound on something like a Carnifex but when the little ones get in close you're going to want more shots.

Also take advantage of Tau tech. Marker lights and equipment that allows ignores cover or re-rolls. Smart Missile Systems are always worth it - I know it was suggested to take gun drones but personally they don't compare to SMS.

Anyways I hope some of this helps, I'm in a bittersweet crossroads playing either of these armies. I'm weary helping Tau players because I know two brand new chaps at my local store who've loaded up on so many Riptides and Broadsides to a scary degree. I know what they do. I'm not happy about it.

 bocatt wrote:
I don't really judge paint jobs but by the Rule of Cool, Your Farsight looks pretty bomb you should run a Farsight Bomb. It's fun and interesting and can make mincemeat of everything that's not the Flyrant, which you can solve with HYMP Broadsides or IA Riptide with VT.

Also a Mark'O with Missile Pods and his swarm of Marker Drones would go a long way to make your army a lot more accurate.

I would pretty much stick to a Farsight Enclave list with kroot and suits cause Firewarriors, even well supported, won't do too well against Assault-y Nids.

The worst thing is, he does run a Farsight bomb.. (grumble grumble)
IIRC Farsight Enclave can't take Kroot?

your problem seems to be that your opponent is just too damned awesome to beat

but honestly, Id suggest more high strength, high AP firepower as all synapse creatures are vulnerable to it.
Also, try firing your ion accelerator with the 3 shot mode instead of over charging it and shooting the blast, its a good MC killer, especially with a plasma or fusion secondary weapon system.

 hive fleet fabulous wrote:
your problem seems to be that your opponent is just too damned awesome to beat

but honestly, Id suggest more high strength, high AP firepower as all synapse creatures are vulnerable to it.
Also, try firing your ion accelerator with the 3 shot mode instead of over charging it and shooting the blast, its a good MC killer, especially with a plasma or fusion secondary weapon system.

Agreed on this one.. On both accounts
HURRHURR
Tau get owned by bad Codex
But anyway, agreed with the Ion Accelerator, and try to pick some High Yield Missile Pods onto your Broadsides, I hear they kick ass..

My apologies, been moving house. Anyway first of all I concure with BrotherOfBones note on killing synapse though id like to add the fact that their 6 wounds monsterous creatures mean its VERY hard to kill all the synapse in one turn. As for Eldar I am not buying a seprate army to kill my friend! As for what I've got, every tau model in the codex with the exception of sniper drones and either of the flyers though we have a no flyers house rule in 1,000pt. I only have 1 ripetide. skyray and vespid squad. Other then that I have 2+.Thanks for the note on ion accelerators and the general advice from digital-animal and bocatt.

Consider running Crises suites with flamers. Gaunts cease to be a problem instantly. Deep strike them if you want.

Your opponent is waaay overloaded with Synapse. So targeting the Synapse is kinda pointless. Target the tarpits, and get rid of them first.

The only exception to the above statement is the Tervigon. When you kill it, nearby gaunts die.

Target priority like this: Gargoyles / Raveners / Shrikes, HGaunts, Tervigon, Devourer TGaunts, TGaunts, Tyrant.

ZThropes can be defeated by taking the commander that gives you 4 Deny the Witch rolls. At that point, just ignore them until everything else is dead.

cranky-341 wrote:
My apologies, been moving house. Anyway first of all I concure with BrotherOfBones note on killing synapse though id like to add the fact that their 6 wounds monsterous creatures mean its VERY hard to kill all the synapse in one turn. As for Eldar I am not buying a seprate army to kill my friend! As for what I've got, every tau model in the codex with the exception of sniper drones and either of the flyers though we have a no flyers house rule in 1,000pt. I only have 1 ripetide. skyray and vespid squad. Other then that I have 2+.Thanks for the note on ion accelerators and the general advice from digital-animal and bocatt.

Being a nid player and facing Tau, I can tell you it is pretty easy to hammer down the one 6 wound synapse creature in our codex. As far as your oppenent's synapse go looking at what you posted, here is what I would expect to see a Tau do:

FW Storm of Fire the Zoanthrope. The S5 weapons will wound on 3s so volume will get by the 3++

If any Zoanthrope a left after the FW, Missilesides to finish them off, then target to the Tyrant.

IF Tyrant is still up, Riptide/Sr/Hammer head in to the Tyrant.

By the end of Turn 1, the Zoanthropes are gone, and the Tyrant is about dead if not dead. All non-synapse creatures are crowding around the Tervie, which means when it dies the Termiguants get caught in a boom. Turn 2 FW start on anything with a potential charge range, missile sides finish the Tyrant, and Riptide/SR/HH kill the Trevigon.


Actually Stingwings are a pain for the MC's with the S5 ap3 gun.

okay thanks for the advice, particularly barnowl and tag8833 with the tervigon, I didn't know that. Though the hive tyrant comes with a hive guard so it would take a good turn of shooting to kill him. as for the second turn! pfft doesn't exist (im really bad at getting the first turn) therefore he's in combat before my second turn starts. Also more importantly there is only 1/6 chances of getting kill points so how do I set about an objectives match?

cranky-341 wrote:
okay thanks for the advice, particularly barnowl and tag8833 with the tervigon, I didn't know that. Though the hive tyrant comes with a hive guard so it would take a good turn of shooting to kill him. as for the second turn! pfft doesn't exist (im really bad at getting the first turn) therefore he's in combat before my second turn starts. Also more importantly there is only 1/6 chances of getting kill points so how do I set about an objectives match?

barnowl and I disagree pretty strongly on how high a target priority the Tyrant and Zoeys should be. I think that a Tyrant with a Tyrant guard is a very low priority because it is so slow. I think you should try to figure out how much damage (including tarpitting) the Tyrant is actually doing to you vs the other units, and make your decision based on that.

Here is the rule where the Tervigon kills Gaunts:

Synaptic Backlash: If a Tervigon is slain, roll 3D6 before removing the model as a casualty. Each friendly unit of Termagants within 12" of the Tervigon immediately suffers a number of Strength 3 AP- hits equal to the result. Cover saves may not be taken against these hits and Wounds are allocated as per shooting, with the Tervigon as the firer. After all Termagant casualties have been resolved (if any), remove the Tervigon from play.

A question. How does your tyranid opponent get to you so fast? You should generally be deploying in the back corner of the board with your Tau gunline. It should take him 3 turns to close, not 2. Are you playing on a full sized board?

Its relatively simple, he doesn't deploy in one corner of the board. the rules state that you're opponent has to remain 24" away from you at the start of the game. our board size is 48" by 72". Therefore if he deploys first he spaces his units evenly across the board meaning that at least 1 unit of hormogaunts will get into combat by the second turn. therefore I only get one turn to shoot down 40 hormogaunts. Though it takes until the 3rd turn for the rest of his stuff to get into combat. As for his hive tyrant generally speaking he has 5 psychic power between his tervigon and hive tyrant. Therefore usually one of them will receive proxism. On that basis his tyrant is bloody annoying though not really very dangerous until its in combat though by that point it is generally way too late to try and kill it.

Between the hive tyrant and tervigon there's only 3 psychic powers, but the zoanthropes get one each too. the FWs shooting the zoans would work, but it means theyre ignoring the hormagaunts, and its unlikely youll be able to kill both other synapse creatures in the same turn, if one, meaning you haven't done that much damage to the synapse and now have a full horde of gaunts baring down upon you. meaning if you go second youre dead.