What to do against an Imperial Knight playing Tau?

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**Brother Lem**

So next meeting of my local club our SM player will have the clubs first Imperial Knight....So my question is how do I as a Tau player combat that? I was thinking a rail gun line with heavy support and a heap of marker lights on units for max hits and hopefully some wounds.

Advice?

**generalchaos34**

Deep strike double fusion suits with markerlight support.

**Co'tor Shas**

It may sound ridiculous but, fire warriors. EMP grenades can kill knights. Railgun hammerheads are effective, although you want to have al least two and spread them out so the ion shield can't catch both shots. deepstrikeing melta suits are also quite effective

**Perfect Organism**

A suicide-strike with Fusion Blaster Crisis Suits is probably your best hope of finishing it off quickly. There's really no such thing as overkill when you are facing something like that, so bring as many FB as you can.

If the knight gets a chance to shoot at your Crisis Suits, they will die. So try to take it out before it has a chance to fire at them. Three Crisis Suits, each with a TL FB and another FB will probably take about half it's Hull Points in one turn of shooting, so try to get two units like that within 9" in the same turn. A Comms Relay will help a lot in managing reserve rolls, so you don't end up getting one unit killed before it's friends can arrive.

Hammerheads should be able to take out an equal points value of Knights eventually and probably have better odds of survival than crisis suits, but they will take too long to settle the issue, in my opinion. You don't want something with that firepower messing up your forces any longer than absolutely necessary. A combination of Rail-Heads and Fusion-Suits may be necessary to deal with multiple Knights.

**schadenfreude**

Fusion suits sound better than rail heads because they would force it to change it's shield faving to rear.

Tank hunters even on mp is dangerous to av13. 12 hits will generate 5 glances

**generalchaos34**

schadenfreude wrote:
Fusion suits sound better than rail heads because they would force it to change it's shield faving to rear.

Tank hunters even on mp is dangerous to av13. 12 hits will generate 5 glances

getting it to change its facing with FB crisis suits means you can then go to town on the front side with rail guns.

**Nilok**

Perfect Organism wrote:
Three Crisis Suits, each with a TL FB and another FB will probably take about half it's Hull Points in one turn of shooting, so try to get two units like that within 9" in the same turn.

I wouldn't take both TL FB and a FB, just take two FB on all the suits so you can spread the extra points around. If you have marker support the extra TL shot isn't as good and can get a bit expensive. Other than that, its spot on.

EDIT: If you can spare the points though, since they are going to be in the middle of the enemy forces, put a Neuroweb System Jammer on one of them so you can throw Gets Hot on a high volume of fire unit before they get gunned down.

**Peregrine**

Railshark.

/thread

**Orlanth**

I can't see Tau having too many problems, you can surround the knight at melta range, it can shield one side only.

**DanielBeaver**

I'm sure a couple of hammerheads with markerlight support could peck the knight to death. If you spread them out, you can reliably land a hit on an unshielded side. The Knight's weapons are scary, but Hammerhead can get 3+ or 2+ cover saves with Disruption Pods and good positioning. Granted, it would probably take an entire game worth of shooting (during which time the Knight might just ignore the HHs and tear up the rest of the field).

**Therion**

Peregrine wrote:
Railshark.

/thread

Railshark is such a points inefficient purchase for any TAC Tau armies that I couldn't recommend it. It's kinda obvious it beats a Knight since the Knight can't hurt flyers, but it's still pretty bad advice. Tau are nothing but screwed in 7th edition unless all their superheavies get a massive points deduction or power buff.

**BoomWolf**

The orca doesnt need a point drop, just to loose the "LoW classification.
300 points for a super-transport is rather fair.

That being said, the tigersharks and manta are horridly overpriced.

Back to knights, the fire warriors with EMP advice? horrible. they will die before even getting to hit.

Deep strike fusion suits, and railheads are the key (longstrike will add an extra punch to it), rear missile pods can also be effective.

**Co'tor Shas**

BoomWolf wrote:
The orca doesnt need a point drop, just to loose the "LoW classification.
300 points for a super-transport is rather fair.

That being said, the tigersharks and manta are horridly overpriced.

Back to knights, the fire warriors with EMP advice? horrible. they will die before even getting to hit.

Deep strike fusion suits, and railheads are the key (longstrike will add an extra punch to it), rear missile pods can also be effective.

Well TBF, stomps are at I1 so the knight can take maximum of of 4(?) dead FWs. I mostly do it, not because it's good, but because it's incredibly entertaining.

**blaktoof**

Razorsharks could be nice.

2 Razorsharks with missiles is 6 Str 7 shots a turn, plus they have 2 seekers each, so one turn of firing would be 12 str 7 shots and potentially 4 str 8 shots.

If you had say 6 marker light hits on the knight you could fire the four missiles plus buff the BS to 4, giving you:

8 str 7 hits, and 4 str 8 hits which on side armor is on average is exactly 6 hps...

Plus knights have a hard time hitting fliers

Othe then that, riptides with HBC are okay

Crisis suits with twin fusion/fusion, or crisis suits with twin missile pods / missile pod [3 of these puts out 12 str7 shots a turn, half are twin linked and is cheaper than a riptide]

broadisides are okay, you could do HYMP+seeker on 3 suits but thats about 220 points for really the same damage output as the above unit+ 3 1 shot missiles.

Firewarriors with emp grenades in a fish would be okay, but your WS is lower than the knights, and at 1 attack each you will hurt a knight, maybe kill a hurt one. If the knight lives its stomp attacks will finish the unit off most likely.

**Co'tor Shas**

Barracudas could do quite well being able to DS behind the knight and hit it's back armour with the ion cannon and missile pods.

**lambsandlions**

I am not too worried about the knights for my tau. I have a full unit of broadsides with missile drones. If my pen-chip commander jumps in that unit and we get a little marker light support that should do all 6 hull points right there. I also run farsight with three crisis suits, (2 w/ 2 plasma, 1 w/ 2 fusion) if knights start giving me a problem I can just replace the 4 plasma with 4 fusion. 6 melta shots in the back armor should kill a knight. Really we will have to see how big of an impact these knights have before I decide how much to devote to get rid of them. But right now they don't bother me at all.

**wtnind**

Against Tau I'd probably just charge the Knight right them. 12" movement and S D melee attacks would really help out against riptide spam etc especially since the shooting will be largely ineffective given disruption pods, aegis lines etc.

To be fair just about everything in the tau Codex is effective at whittling down knights so just avoid too much list tailoring and make some tactical descisions about when/if to fire at it. DS fusion is unlikely to be effective since a smart opponent will either reserver it or bubble wrap it.

What is your opponents main army? the biggest problem for Tau would probably be white scars to bubble wrap it right up till assault time or IG with Creed to out flank it or something.