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pantsonhead wrote:

 JGrand wrote:

Because smart players are taking a Commander with MSSS, Puretide, and Iridium Armor with their Broadside unit. In addition, 6 missile drones is pretty normal. While expensive, they combine nicely with the Command and Control Node. That unit will put a serious hurt of Wraithknights. Not the best answer ever, but combined with 2 Skyrays and 3 Riptides, Tau can deal with Knights. It isn't easy, but it is possible.

But this sort of unit is actually one reason why Wraithknights are so valuable for Eldar vs many Tau lists. An M3S T5 Commander with Broadsides can make Serpents and War Walkers and whatnot very, very sad. The Commander can tank or LOS on to drones or Broadsides as appropriate, while the whole big unit gets to ignore cover and reroll penetration (and the drones get to reroll hits). The WK, with its S10 AP2 guns, makes it a lot scarier for the Commander to be standing out in front - one failed LOS and he's going to get pasted. But drones in front are easily dispatched by Serpents from range, and once the Broadsides become valid targets they won't last long. The WK's guns are 36" too, so he can just barely clip a Commander in front without risking HYMP fire from the Broadsides (unless they snap fire) and even while denying a lot of drone fire if it's a big unit.

 agnosto wrote:
Grey knight allies. GK libby with terminator troops with swords in the front for 4++ vs. the pitiful few attacks WK's get, followed by hammers. One hammer gets through, fire off the force weapon and down goes the wraithknight in one turn. 720 pts with libby w/stave and LR Crusader ride. Might of titan with libby = S10 hammers. Done it, works well and the unit just moved on to the next target the next turn.

But the WK (and BLs) aren't bad against this. Land Raiders are extremely vulnerable against the sort of firepower Eldar lists often bring. 4 BLs and a Wraithknight are the equivalent of 6 BS4 S10 AP2 shots per turn. The LRC can't approach the WK without getting charged, which probably kills it, and at that point the WK has made its points back and the Terminators are welcome to it. Force weapons without the LRC, just hanging out near the Broadsides or whatever, are reasonable, but you're paying about as much to scare off the WK as the WK is worth, and the WK still gets to shoot you.

This is all true. Taking big expensive stuff to deal with something that is great against big expensive stuff is just not a great strategy.

Now that skyray is actually a pretty good suggestion as with a ML you can dump the whole load in a WK and half kill one. The skyray is actually pretty decent against eldar overall assuming you can get MLs on the eldar stuff.

3 wraithknights sounds more like a hope of preying on the unexpected than a WAAC list. They suck, but are difficult to deal with. An army not prepared to deal with high toughness/wound models probably wont be able to deal with them.

As mentioned by many, Kroot are probably the best. 2 groups with snipers infiltrating would be all i'd bring so i didnt have a tailored list. Those 2 units have a good chance to badly hurt if not kill a WK a turn, so the Eldar is forced to deal with them asap.
I sincerely doubt even the Eldar could take out all marker support turn 1. For starters, Dronesquads can JSJ their markerlights so you can evade sight not just get cover, and ~8man pathfinders shouldnt die to one gun unless insane dice are rolled (even then i doubt it). Tau arent worthless without markerlights or with minimal markerlights, it just hurts us.

 Vineheart01 wrote:

I sincerely doubt even the Eldar could take out all marker support turn 1. For starters, Dronesquads can JSJ their markerlights so you can evade sight not just get cover, and ~8man pathfinders shouldnt die to one gun unless insane dice are rolled (even then i doubt it). Tau arent worthless without markerlights or with minimal markerlights, it just hurts us.

Not just one gun. Taking out the pathfinders in one turn assumes that all Eldar shooting would be turned on them, because they're the highest priority due to the markerlights. So thats about 11-12 shots from each wave serpent plus whatever else in the Eldar army can shoot at them.

Not all the shots ignore cover, but it helps for those shots. Even with cover saves most Eldar armies should have enough firepower to kill (or at least cripple) a unit of 8 pathfinders in one turn, or multiple small units of pathfinders likewise.

I'm admittedly basing that on anecdotal evidence, though, of a game at my club where an Eldar army with 4 serpents firing all guns took out a unit of 8 pathfinders in turn 1 before they got to shoot.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
3 wraithknights sounds more like a hope of preying on the unexpected than a WAAC list. They suck, but are difficult to deal with. An army not prepared to deal with high toughness/wound models probably wont be able to deal with them.

As mentioned by many, Kroot are probably the best. 2 groups with snipers infiltrating would be all i'd bring so i didnt have a tailored list. Those 2 units have a good chance to badly hurt if not kill a WK a turn, so the Eldar is forced to deal with them asap.
I sincerely doubt even the Eldar could take out all marker support turn 1. For starters, Dronesquads can JSJ their markerlights so you can evade sight not just get cover, and ~8man pathfinders shouldnt die to one gun unless insane dice are rolled (even then i doubt it). Tau arent worthless without markerlights or with minimal markerlights, it just hurts us.

I agree that 3 WKs is unlikely to be winning tournaments, but I do think it's pretty vicious against a typical untailored Tau list, except the ones that consist of 3 Riptides and 6 units of Kroot. It's going to suffer against lots of flyers and CC armies that can actually beat the WK in a fight. Venom spam probably beats a list that's so WK-heavy despite how good the rest of the army is at killing Venoms. Horde armies with decent tarpitting abilities are going to crush it. But 2 WKs getting to CC with a typical Tau army are going to wreck it.

You're right that lots of kinds of Markerlights are much harder to kill. As an Eldar player, Tau is one of my harder matchups when they take the right things. But often Tau TAC lists don't take (much of) these things, and perhaps they should adjust to include more. Just glancing over the Army Lists subforum, I see 5 lists on the front page. 4 of them only have Markerlights from PFs, and the one with a Skyray is for some weird 650 point limit army. Fire Warriors are popular Troops choices, they max out at 10 sniper Kroot, the majority of Riptides have IAs, and the majority of Broadsides have HYMPs. A typical mech Eldar list plus a WK can shred these. They often have basically no ability to threaten things beyond 42" other than Riptides tossing out a handful of S7 shots.

Edit2: More data! Two new 1850 lists went up since I posted this, both advertised as hopefully competitive and for tournaments. One is a bunch of FWs, Riptides (2 IA, 1 HBC), and Hammerheads, and one is FWs, 2 IA Riptides and some fusion suits, and a bunch of HYMP Broadsides. Both bring about 20 Markerlights on PFs, though one has Darkstrider as an HQ. To prevent miscommunication, I'm not disagreeing with you, I don't think; I'm pointing out that lots of real Tau players aren't taking your advice about durable Markerlights. The list with Hammerheads is a little scary for Serpents, but the PFs can still be destroyed promptly, and there's really nothing in that list that's going to stop a single WK from going to town on it (without MLs, all 3 Hammerheads would have to fire at 1 WK for 3-4 turns to expect to kill it with no cover and for 5-6 turns with a 5++ cover save, and they're really best used on Serpents that use the Shield anyway).

I think I said this before, but a single Serpent expects to kill 1.67 PFs from 60", 3.7 from 36" assuming 4+ cover, and 4.8 from 24" in 4+ cover (if the Serpent moves under 6" ). 4 Serpents really can blow away the vast majority of PFs in a typical list if they're deployed forward enough to shoot at Eldar units within 36" of other Tau units, and if they're not that far forward then the Eldar can ignore them and shoot up everything else from 36".

 Flavius Infernus wrote:


Not just one gun. Taking out the pathfinders in one turn assumes that all Eldar shooting would be turned on them, because they're the highest priority due to the markerlights. So thats about 11-12 shots from each wave serpent plus whatever else in the Eldar army can shoot at them.

Not all the shots ignore cover, but it helps for those shots. Even with cover saves most Eldar armies should have enough firepower to kill (or at least cripple) a unit of 8 pathfinders in one turn, or multiple small units of pathfinders likewise.

I'm admittedly basing that on anecdotal evidence, though, of a game at my club where an Eldar army with 4 serpents firing all guns took out a unit of 8 pathfinders in turn 1 before they got to shoot.

In my experience, you don't have to kill a Pathfinder unit outright to cripple it.

The Serpent Shield's Pinning rule has worked very well for me against Tau - the Leadership 7 of the Pathfinders is their biggest downfall I find. There is a good chance that they will either be Pinned or outright flee off of the board.

Another counter I've found to Tau is Swooping Hawks and Baharroth; the Large/Small Blasts from both can help deal with Pathfinders and Marker Drones easily and Baharroth's "Sun's Brilliance" rule can really devastate a Tau castle. I see fewer and fewer Suits going about these days so those armies of Firewarriors are ripe to be blinded by their I2.

Iranna.

Ugh, i see now why a "discussion" of tactics can be a pain in the arse as long as i am not interested in one... it always ends in a "i shot you" "But i have a shield" "yeah, but i have shield penetrating rounds" "and i have a anti-shield penerating rounds armor on"....

In actual scenario you will not use the shield on the serpent, you will get the content to their front lines ASAP and shooting only slows you down, and slowing down is NOT what you want against a army that packs the best fire power in the game, so whatever else you have like the jetbikes with warlocks or whatever is most likely going to hunt pathfinders along with war-walker or have at you.

And for a Tau notice: Drone controller does NOT work on missile drones, Marker drones have 4+ instead of the pathfinder 5+, Ethereals are a thing, but they give WPs like mad.

As a Tau vs this list i would most likely have my anti-armor shoot at the transports, and then have my lesser shots shoot at anything close enough, depending on if i start or my pathfinders survived they will most likely focus the closest target and make sure it doesnt have any cover, and make it as high BS as i need to, and its more or less a garanteed kill no matter how many "invisible shields" you might pack on a single truck.

And we have to remember that theres a point limit, so mr. triple WK with serpents shouldnt have much else, but then again we have a 1850-2000 Tau army on the other side of the table and they are not exactly too extatic to get into CC.

So theres 2 outcomes: either the Eldar manage to block out LOS and get in range early enough to not lose essencial killing power and win in CC and close fire-range, or the Tau will utterly devestate transports before they even manage to zoom across the board and shoot down every single WK with a stream of bullets.

I think Eldar still need to eliminate Pathfinders ASAP as the transports are half as durable if they don't kill them and are near enough to be lit up.

I love how this thread has completely derailed into how do Eldar kill Pathfinders....which will apparently then wipe out all sources of markerlights for the Tau player; which therefore = auto lose for the Tau....

Tau work off of "volume of fire" (throwing tons of dice) and "quality of fire" (High Str Low AP). Markerlights help with both, but when you start playing Tau you will realize quickly that you will never have enough markerlights for your entire army to use every single round. This is why volume of fire (HYMP Broadsides, Firewarriors with Ethereal and Fireblade support, and soon you will start to see the new earth caste upgrade riptide hit the tables) is very popular because it is less reliant on having high BS skill (although when you have it its fantastic). Odds are that when you are rolling piles of dice something will eventually get through the to hit/to wound/make a save. This is nothing new...Ork players with Lootas and Eldar with 3x Scatterlaser Warwalkers have been doing this for years.

So, you will eventually learn target priority and how to deploy so that you can focus down the most important threats while doing your best to avoid assaults or providing speed bumps for supporting fire traps and repositioning.

Sniperdrones with Ethereal will make the Wraithknights cringe anything near 24" from the Tau lines. Beyond 24" the Tau don´t care. Markerdrones and HYM in the middle so you can push the Serpent to a corner and finish them off.

If they only fire their shields the Tau will be fine. If they will try to unload their cargo the Tau is even in a better position.

I actually don´t see this army as a problem for Tau at all.
Serpents can´t be within range of the HYM under any condition.
Out of range to the HYM they can only use the shield. Only shield=good for Tau.

The Eldar army has extremly low output for an Eldar army at 2k.

In fact, it's the other way around. Eldar have to remove Pathfinders to stand a chance (with most builds).

Eldar are about removing quality of fire (via cover saves and reducing pens to glances).

The mechanised list works against volume (AV12 is immune to S5), though S7 volume fire is very effective still, but weakened by cover.

While you can still get through and have a game with those two, removing the Eldar cover saves makes it really one-sided in favour of the Tau.