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One of my most requested videos is advice on playing Tau armies. I go over some tactics I personally use to beat the blue menace!

Please, tell me before i spend 30 min - is this video about how to counter tau with a dreadknight spam?

Not a bad video.

He gives a run down of the army and how to use them. If you're a newer player/ new to tau, then this might not be a bad video to watch

A Tau weakness is mobility? We are pretty mobile with our Devilfish and even Crisis Suits can be pretty mobile with the JSJ move. Not trying to step on your toes, just something I felt I should clarify. I play a Pure Suit Farsight Enclave Army and some things have come to fear:

-Drop Pod Armies: Really scary even if I have Interceptor on my Riptides, they can do a lot of damage to my army.

-Grey Knights: Similar they can Deep Strike Turn 1 in my face and wreck me with shooting and psychic powers.

-Blast Templates: Hurt the Castling up early on and depending on the weapon can instant kill/wound my Crisis Suits.

-Bike/Beast Heavy Armies: Generally only get 1 turn of shooting before they are within charge range.

Just a few thoughts to contribute

 gmaleron wrote:
A Tau weakness is mobility? We are pretty mobile with our Devilfish and even Crisis Suits can be pretty mobile with the JSJ move. Not trying to step on your toes, just something I felt I should clarify. I play a Pure Suit Farsight Enclave Army and some things have come to fear:

-Drop Pod Armies: Really scary even if I have Interceptor on my Riptides, they can do a lot of damage to my army.

-Grey Knights: Similar they can Deep Strike Turn 1 in my face and wreck me with shooting and psychic powers.

-Blast Templates: Hurt the Castling up early on and depending on the weapon can instant kill/wound my Crisis Suits.

-Bike/Beast Heavy Armies: Generally only get 1 turn of shooting before they are within charge range.

Just a few thoughts to contribute

Thanks for the ideas!
Though I do already go over a few ways to counter a crisis suits JSJ and deep strike, as well as kroot outflanking. I also use examples of blast templates against castling, drop pods, and teleporting maneuvers against Tau.


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DaKKaLAnce wrote:
Not a bad video.

He gives a run down of the army and how to use them. If you're a newer player/ new to tau, then this might not be a bad video to watch

I really appreciate that, thanks! I have a lot of GK tactica, and how to beat Tau was my #1 requested video so I decided to give it a shot. This is my first ever "how to beat X army video", so any comments are appreciated.


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 koooaei wrote:
Please, tell me before i spend 30 min - is this video about how to counter tau with a dreadknight spam?

I appreciate the thought about me being able to talk about Dreadknights for 30 minutes, I do love them! I try to go over a wide variety of tactics, then apply them to Grey Knights with a few examples from other armies as well.

Yeah, this is in line with just about everything I do to fight Tau. Really good job!

So the OP played Taudar and wondered why no one wanted to play against him?

 carldooley wrote:
So the OP played Taudar and wondered why no one wanted to play against him?

I stated I played taudar when they both had weak 4th edition codexes, and my sole reason for playing the 4th edition tau codex during 5th edition is because they were considered the weakest army in the game.

I also say almost immediately after the games weren't fun for either player and people hated playing efficient shooting armies. I did not wonder for even a second why people didn't want to play. I even say later in the video I didn't have my Riptides anymore for some of the examples because I traded them away.

If you play an army for the sole purpose of having a challenge, and you get a new book, should you just never play it and quit life? I played the new book because I played the old book. I wonder if you even watched the video and why you are so hostile?


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 techsoldaten wrote:
Yeah, this is in line with just about everything I do to fight Tau. Really good job!

Thanks man! Glad to hear you enjoyed it and already have some efficient tactics, great minds think alike.

Somehow I knew it was going to be a grey knight teleport strike force. Yes. Deploying where the tau can't shoot you, and then suddenly being in their faces with no damage is actually a very bad tau matchup. (It's also a bad matchup for a lot of armies.). Still some nice reminders in there for people, such as combat squad-ing.

That's a nice video, actually.

However, tau definitely have no problems with mobility unless they spam broadsides. On the opposite, it's really hard to catch up with 2d6 assault move of the suits. I can tell you that for sure as i'm a footslogging ork player. It's not as frustrating for faster stuff but it still causes problem.

I might give an advice for footsloggas and something like rhino rush tacticals. Your main aim is to controle the midfield long enough to generate more points. Throw distractions, block los with what you have, shoot the markers asap if there are killable markers, shoot crysis suits, firewarriors and broadsides, if you're capable of downing them with your range support (ap2 or rof), if not - concentrate on stuff you can kill. But don't go balls-out offensive. It will result in you loosing too many guyz and even if you somehow reach the tau lines, it most likely won't be enough. You pretty much have to play to your strengths and avoid weaknesses. And your main strength is mid-board controle and bodies. Your weaknesses are mobility and deaths of the closest. This pretty much makes riptides, fast long-ranged vehicles and long-ranged crysis suits an uncatchable-unevitable evil. If the tau player is not careful enough or not lucky and somehow ends his move within your more or less reliable charge range ,and you see that it's not a trap to misdirect you from what's more important or murderize you with supporting fire, tie them up in mellee.

All in all, you must press for board controle and area denial but do it carefully not to loose too much. Cripple his ranged capabilities with your own ranged support.

OP has covered the killing part and objective parts great but there are also some tricks for armies that can't catch and outshoot tau but can pull a few tricks that will work with a threshhold of 5-7 turns and maelstorm missions.

Artillery is vital to killing tau, as well as solid assault vehicles andmagic. Tau can't fight magic, they can't fight artillery support without compromising their wagon circling playstyle, and when you cab reliably bring cc to them with a delivery mechanism like say a land raider achillies or a storm wolf the tau are stuffed. The second their basic infantry units and light suits are gone their bigger toys go with them.

In reality the tau only have one good unit in their dex and that's the crisis suit. As its the only unit that can operate relatively normally when the other facets of their army start falling apart.

If I was to list build against tau as an sm player id bring tfc's, flyers with troops in them, magic hq's, and I would bring two squads of bikes with plasmas to hunt down ad kill the cowardly crisis suits that would run for the hills when plan a fell apart.

 ionusx wrote:
Artillery is vital to killing tau, as well as solid assault vehicles andmagic. Tau can't fight magic, they can't fight artillery support without compromising their wagon circling playstyle, and when you cab reliably bring cc to them with a delivery mechanism like say a land raider achillies or a storm wolf the tau are stuffed. The second their basic infantry units and light suits are gone their bigger toys go with them.

In reality the tau only have one good unit in their dex and that's the crisis suit. As its the only unit that can operate relatively normally when the other facets of their army start falling apart.

If I was to list build against tau as an sm player id bring tfc's, flyers with troops in them, magic hq's, and I would bring two squads of bikes with plasmas to hunt down ad kill the cowardly crisis suits that would run for the hills when plan a fell apart.

I agree! Any template/ blast weapon with longer than 36" range is strong versus tau castling up, especially artillery you can hide out of LoS. Tau have weak psychic defense too outside of a farsight relic, so psyker powera are more reliable and a good choice. AV14 is surprisingly good versus Tau as well. I always equipped my riptides with the fusion blaster to cover that weakness, but a lot of players use the SMS. I think crisis suits as troops are a very strong unit, but riptides, broadsides, skyrays, and a tau commander are all very competitive units.

You sound like you have some great tactics! I appreciate the input.