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I'd like to put up a fight vs. my friends Tau army. I'm looking for advice from CSM and Tau players. I'm fairly new to the game, though I've been collecting, painting, and modeling for quite a while.
2000 points
He fields
2 or 3 Riptides
Suits and pods with ignores cover missiles, or more suits with guns. (Sorry unfamiliar with the Tau book)
The commander in the suit
Fire Warriors with markerlights

He also runs a tank/double riptide list, but very rarely.

I have every unit (multiples of most) in the CSM and Daemon books. I also have a fire raptor gunship, but he won't allow it, which is a bummer because its my favorite model.

The only thing he can't kill at will is a Land Raider, everything else he just shoots off the table. His tactic is to castle up in cover, positioned to maximize overwatch/intercept. If I even make it to assault range.

Please halp

CSM lack long range firepower in sufficient quantities to deal with a turtled Tau. You really need to be aggressive your first 2 turns to get into assault with them. Then the Tau will just melt.

1-2 Land Raiders with dedicated CC units and dirge casters should put a dent in his lines. Focus fire down his broadsides / suits with their lascannons.

If you ally daemons deepstriking large numbers of assault units near him will buy you some time, and they run the chance of getting into assault if they survive.

Riptides are just ridiculous. CSM have a very hard time dealing with them in general. A sorcerer with a force weapon would be ideal to instant death him out. If he's using 3 riptides, I'd use the fire raptor. He has no right to pick and choose what you can use (Fire Raptor doesn't look to be cheese to me) while he uses a cheesey Tau list.

You need fast units. You DO NOT want to get close to tau without being able to assault. If any of your units get caught close to a gunline and aren't able to assault they are as good as gone.
For dealing with riptides specifically a good cheap option would be to tarpit it with cultists. The riptide is nothing special in cc and cultist will hold it up well for at least a few turns. Lots of people make the mistake of trying to focus down the riptides first, but you don't need to. Most other tau units will buckle under a bit of fire. Just get them stuck in assault so they cant shoot and theyve effectively become a waste of piints for the tau player.
A defiler would do pretty nasty things to those suits and fire warriors.

Fast stuff behind a bunch of rhinos with dirge casters and destroyer blades will ruin his day. Spawn, bikes, raptors, and accompanying lords hiding behind the rhinos, everything goes full out. If he's blowing up rhinos he's not hurting your dudes, if he's shooting dudes the rhinos reach his lines and there goes his overwatch.

Also, are you playing anything besides killpoints? I know Tau love their gunlines, but the new maelstrom of war missions will force him to do more than just sit across the board and shoot if he wants to win. I know my local Tau players hate playing anything but killpoints for that very reason.

I will suggest something, but hear me out on it.

Bloddletters with the Bloodreaper Champion wielding an Axe of Khorne for 10 points, inside a Chaos Land Raider. Give it a Dirge Caster. 350 points. These things have served me so bloody well it's disgusting.

They mop up the gunlines, Crisis Suits and anything that isn't the Riptides. For those buggers, Focus the Lascannons at them whenever possible.

Your very FIRST priority however, is getting rid of the Markerlights. Tau are heavily dependent on them for raising BS and removing cover. Removal of these are your number 1 objective.

If you want to be competitive, you should be running Daemons Primary, even unbound, with the LRs just simply taken. The whole point of Daemons at this point in 7th is to summon more Daemons as your troop choices to score objectives. Speaking of which, DON'T play the old missions. Objective Missions force gunline armies to actually play the game. Which was a fantastic addition to the realm of 40k.

As your friend won't allow you to take your Fire Raptor (Jerk! - especially since he's running the toughest MC in the game currently to deal with) Take Blight Drones if you have them. They work wonders as well, and arguable, function better than the Heldrake in most cases. If you get near him with enough scary CC units, all you'll have to do is clean the mess off your Melee weapons. Ignore the Riptides if you CAN. Run for his gunlines with your Land Raiders. Pour out the Bloodletters and just slaughter everything 1 or 2 big multi-assaults.

I LOVED doing this to my Tau friend. Most tau players tend to NOT take the str 10 Railguns on their Hammerheads simply because they prefer the other options for wiping out models via larger amounts of shots and TL goodness, so your LRs should be relatively safe until they get their cargo to the front lines.

I play CMS vs Tau aswell and the best thing I ever fielded against riptide was a sorcerer on a bike with MON spawns.

Sorcerer should take 3 things (at least, other things are personal taste):
- Spell familiar
- Force axe
- Psychic shriek from the Telepathy table

Psychic shriek is kind of a hit or miss but most of the time you are able to knock of 1 or 2 wounds. If you're lucky enough to throw a 15+, then you really get the Tau player sweating, especially if he didn't hold on to the nova-charge.

Another thing to bring is at least one Heldrake. Yes he might have some easy and relatively cheap anti-air options but that thing burns fire warriors to a crisp.

The new Helbrute formation, although not very competitive is also fun because if you can deepstrike 3 Helbrutes in enemy line, he's bound to be scared.

Friendly Tau player here;
Durge casters - take them. Don't get killed by overwatch.
Might try the helbrute dataslate?
Nurgle Bikers?
Khorne Berzerkers?
Landraiders help

A Defiler? Seems appropriate as well - large blast those pathfinders/suits

Ok thanks for the advice everyone.
I'm going to throw bikes, spawn, plague drones, a bike lord, a bike sorcerer, and a couple squads of plague marines in land raiders - with an accompanying herald of nurgle - at his line. I'll field a heldrake and fill out the rest of my list with a few squads of cultists. If there are any points left I'll just grab more cheap, fast units. Hopefully I'll roll invis with my sorcerer to offer some protection as I cross the board. I don't think the harald can cast invis from inside a LR, so I'm not sure what I'll give him for psychic powers. Wish me luck!

He runs a trip tide but won't let you take a raptor? He's no friend .
Daemon Prince of Nurgle still gets 2+ cover so I would take a couple of those and use terrify as much as you can.

A fusion suit can end a land raiders fun quickly.

The 3 deepstriking hellbrutes might be fun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If he has any markerlights make them your priority. Kill them and he will be immensely less effective.

Here's what the list looks like, 2000 points.

Sorcerer- bike, ML 3, combimelta, force weapon, sigil
Lord- bike, MoN, combimelta, powerfist, sigil

Cultists x10
Cultists x10

Plague Marines x7 - rhino, dirgecaster
Plague Marines x5 (in Land Raider)

Baledrake
Spawn x4
Bikers x8 - MoN, 2 meltaguns, combimelta, meltabombs

Land Raider - dirgecaster

Herald of Nurgle - ML 2, Locus of Fecundity (FnP), Exalted Reward

Nurglings x3

Plague Drones x3 - venom sting
Plague Drones x3 - venom sting

Only hesitation is the baledrake, he always shoots it down before it can do anything. C+C welcome, I feel like making the kits leaner and dropping the drake might be a good idea.

You know your list is unbound yeah? Seems like you tried to keep it battle-forged but the two squads of plague drones are illegal in an allied detachment.

 jay170788 wrote:
You know your list is unbound yeah? Seems like you tried to keep it battle-forged but the two squads of plague drones are illegal in an allied detachment.

Damn you're right.
I could put another squad of plague marines in a rhino, or some raptors with MoN. That wouldn't affect my strategy much, though losing their poison attacks hurts a little.

After editing the list, I dropped the 2nd squad of drones and made the remaining squad 4 drones.
Then I added an additional squad of plague marines in a rhino, but all three PM squads are now 5 man, with combi bolters on the champs.

I have good experiences with Abaddon + 4 Termis in a Land Raider. A Maulerfiend and a Defiler gave the Tau other targets to think about and if they still focus the LR they will have to deal with a Maulerfiend ripping them up while the Defiler will shoot unharmed. When the LR comes into range Abaddon will rip the Tau a new one. Also the Maulerfiend can be used to attract overwatch. Many Tau players are so used to turtling that I managed to get into multiple assaults with Abaddon. Experiment with the combi bolters, I am still not sure if I prefer flamers or plasma. Depends a bit on the meta, against Tyranids combi-melta even worked nicely, making a kill against an important MC even more likely.

Note: against other armies deep striking Aba+Termis (and taking more to make up for this) works better than the LR, but against Tau the LR approach worked better since it forces him to focus or split his fire from turn one. Deep striking allows Tau too often to shoot one thing after another, especially if you mess up reserve rolls. I might try this again with a comms relay, but I'm not too positive this will work.

I agree with the sentiment of bringing Land Raiders. Tau really have trouble dealing with these since they have minimal access to S10 weaponry. Keep a few other vehicles (your rhinos?) around it to keep the Fusion DS crisis suits away and you're golden.

Also, I agree that your "friend" playing 2-3 Riptides but not allowing you to play a Fire Raptor (Why not, exactly? They're good but not OP) is a jerk move on his part. If you can't play the fire raptor, tell him he can't field more than one riptide.
And if/when he fields riptides, definitely don't bother shooting them unless you have to. They're scary, but blobs of suits or fire warriors put out more shots and are always easier to kill. Maulerfiends > Riptide in CC too.

Definitely kill the markerlights first!!!

I've been kicking butt against Tau recently using CC-oriented CSM lists, while playing the new Maelstrom objective-based missions. Not only are the missions more challenging and fun, but as mentioned above they shut down campers while still letting gunline-style armies have their place. Biggest thing I've noticed is that my CSM army tends to spread around the board claiming objectives and VPs while the Tau can be blocked in since they're generally less mobile and will rarely - if ever - spread out before you do!

With the list you've written, I would say if you can find the points give the Spawn squad MoN and the Plague Marines some special weapons. They'll be a bigger threat to suit squads that way, and Nurgle Spawn are just a hassle for anyone to deal with.

Basically, don't cater to the tyrant's demands and listen to the advice of everyone on this thread. GLHF, brother!

Even though the Riptides are Monstrous creatures...they are not Fearless. You know how Fear in general is sort of a useless USR against most 40k armies (you know, loyalist space marines with ATSKNF, and Fearless armies)? Well, Tau are vulnerable. I use the Crimson Slaughter supplement-if you aren't a fan of the Daemon Weapons, you might like it too. Possessed with a different table as troops, and you can't put Veterans of the Long war on anything that isn't Cult troops (Beserkers, Ksons, Plague Marines, etc)

Regarding the Mark of Nurgle in general: Tau don't really care if you're +1 toughness (toughness 5...or even 6) and have stealth and shrouded. Unless you got Invisibility on your guys-You Can't Hide. They will wound you on a 4+ at worst, and hit your T6 stuff with s6+ shooting. Charging an embeded Tau line is...tricky because you can get a face full of shooting from the entire army.

Spawn lines and Maulerfiends followed closely by Rhinos with Mandatory Dirge Casters.

Don't spread out-that's playing his game. Pick a flank-and punch everything right up into his face. Keep some stuff in reserves-Termicide 3 man terminator units with combi plasma or melta is nice-and if they survive the reprisal they can get stuck in.

The Mayhem (deep striking Helbrutes) dataslate lets you drop some nasty distractions in his midst. I like double powerfists with heavy flamers to root out some cover camping trash.

If you DO favor the Standard CSM book and rules, put the Black Mace and Axe of Blind fury onto two separate princes. yes, it's going to be expensive. No, you aren't going to be flying them. They're going to be 'gliding' (jump pack) behind some rhinos, Landraiders, predators, etc. (all with dirge casters) and when they get close enough, they surge forward and start making the tau lines crumple.

Now here is a Key thing: You do NOT want to punk a single unit in assault. That means-unfortunately, you are going to have to give up most of the bonuses that come with MoK-and charging in general, by making mass Multiple Charges. You probably will not kill him in close combat-the first round-and if he's got lots of Firewarriors anyways, you aren't going to get the +1 attack for charging because of their Defensive grenades, so set up to crap in his corn flakes and kick him while he's down.

But he can't shoot you while you are in Close combat, and is ws2 i2 across the board. He may get a few models-Crisis suits hit on 4s generally, and wound on 3s. But the only power weapon in the army is on Farsight, and the Riptide attacks (ap2).

^ What he said. Exactly.
I've scared Riptides off the board via them failing morale tests in CC because a unit of whatever multiple-assaulted the Riptide and Fire Warriors multiple times.
Always hilarious.