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Hi guys i was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to get my units across the board and into combat with gunline tau.
The units i have access to are:-
17 slugga boyz nob w/ p klaw boss pole
20 slugga boyz nob w/p klaw boss pole
12 shoota boyz nob w/p klaw boss pole in a trukk with reinforced ram (x4)
2 pain boyz
Mega boss with luckky stikk
Battle waggon w/ 4 big shootas
Mekk guns x5 (any combo)

I had a game yesterday where i had decided to run the green tide formation instead of smaller slugga boyz squads in the hope it would count as a distraction so my trukks could get up the field and charge alowing the horde to be in combat safely a turn later. Of course i was horribly wrong, my opponent took:-
3 12 man fire warrior squads castled up to maximise supporting fire, hymp broadsides, sms crisis suits, remora drones, drones with commander attached, riptide and longstrike with sub rounds. And 2 pathfinder squads

I found my trukks dead when i hid them out of line of sight forgetting massed ignores line of sight as its been a while since I've played tau and my horde would move forward 6" lose 12 (on average sometimes more) a turn so by turn 5 I'd only just got to the halfway mark and when i did get closer 2 6's from support fire from pathfinders ment i lost a further 13My stikk boss was the only thing keeping me in the game but after half the army focusing on his squad he was ledt alone and cover ignored for a rail head to the face.

So how would you guys advise going against tau? I kinda felt from the start I'd be destroyed but hoped the cards would be in my favour (they werent). I kinda like the idea of massed orks and trukk boyz comming from a low mod count xsm army. I believe every army is beatable i had the same problem with my chaos vs tau

The only way I've really found to be effective against Tau is putting the boyz in battle wagons. Everything else just explodes.

Footslogging requires painboys and KFF. A MFF is even better ofc. KFF is very handy with the battlewagon aswell.

As usual with orkz, more or less everything should hit the tau lines simultaneously.

Battlewagons might be the way to go if you can position so they have to shoot your front armour. For all their firepower Tau aren't great against armour 14. Equip them with boarding planks and on a Waaagh! turn you will have a very long charge threat range. Orks also have a couple of units which can out-range Tau in Lootas and Lobbas.

Sorry to ask but what else do you have? Your units seem to be around 900 points while your opponent's seem to be 1300-1400.

I use battlewagons against Tau regularly and it works out great! That really is going to be your best bet.

But yeah I agree your list seems like a lot less points than what he is throwing up.

I've run both trukk rush and battlewagon rush against tau, both are effective, trukk rush is more exciting as half of them tend to explode catastrophically. all that doies is produce a second wave of boys rather than all hitting at once. I'm talking a minimum of 6 trukks though, with KFF cover. I ran it in the old codex (so trukks are more resilient now due to ramshackle but KFF cover is harder to come by) so you'd need a biker mek with KFF to keep 'em safe.

An effective option is to try and cut through his army - use tank shocks to put some trukks into his army, then go after the units on one side of the trukks. the units on the other side will have their line of sight blocked by trukks, and the other side should be overwhelmed quite easily with most of your army falling on them.

Battlewagons are a more difficult one to use, really, as if one goes down it's a real blow to your army, especially if it goes down on turn 1 before you move. otherwise, take 2 guns on each to alleviate weapon destroyed results. In one unit, a warboss in mega armour with the lucky stikk will absorb every bit of overwatch and scream for more with his 2+ rerollable save. add a painboy for more reassurance of his survival.

Looted wagons are a surprisingly efective transport I've found. as they no longer lose their transport capacity when they take a killkannon, they can roll flat-out turn one, then once your guys get out they can pound the squads that you can't get into CC with yet.

one big thing of advice though - Don't underestimate tau's CC ability. they do suck, but they also have 4+ saves and higher initiative, and if you charge a unit of kans in... ...they all have haywire grenades. Don't charge kans in. I once spent a whole game trying to catch the tau with kans, finally did on turn 5, only to get haywired to death before I attacked.

First of all you absolutely need long ranged support to get rid of his infantry - marker drones, crysis suits, firewarriors. Even broadsides will eventually fail saves. I find a squad of lobbas doing the job.

They dont ALL have haywire grenades. Pathfinders can purchase haywire grenades and I haven't seen every tau player buy them. And if you are getting charged by Tau Pathfinders, then you should have been close enough to disembark on the previous turn.

 total0 wrote:
Hi guys i was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to get my units across the board and into combat with gunline tau.
The units i have access to are:-
17 slugga boyz nob w/ p klaw boss pole
20 slugga boyz nob w/p klaw boss pole
12 shoota boyz nob w/p klaw boss pole in a trukk with reinforced ram (x4)
2 pain boyz
Mega boss with luckky stikk
Battle waggon w/ 4 big shootas
Mekk guns x5 (any combo)

I had a game yesterday where i had decided to run the green tide formation instead of smaller slugga boyz squads in the hope it would count as a distraction so my trukks could get up the field and charge alowing the horde to be in combat safely a turn later. Of course i was horribly wrong, my opponent took:-
3 12 man fire warrior squads castled up to maximise supporting fire, hymp broadsides, sms crisis suits, remora drones, drones with commander attached, riptide and longstrike with sub rounds. And 2 pathfinder squads

I found my trukks dead when i hid them out of line of sight forgetting massed ignores line of sight as its been a while since I've played tau and my horde would move forward 6" lose 12 (on average sometimes more) a turn so by turn 5 I'd only just got to the halfway mark and when i did get closer 2 6's from support fire from pathfinders ment i lost a further 13My stikk boss was the only thing keeping me in the game but after half the army focusing on his squad he was ledt alone and cover ignored for a rail head to the face.

So how would you guys advise going against tau? I kinda felt from the start I'd be destroyed but hoped the cards would be in my favour (they werent). I kinda like the idea of massed orks and trukk boyz comming from a low mod count xsm army. I believe every army is beatable i had the same problem with my chaos vs tau

Hard Boy upgrades really help. Tau have a ton of AP 5 weaponry. A 4+ save does not suck against Tau Empire. And as has been said, Battle Wagons are really good, if you have multiples of them in particular. I got hit pretty hard by a Flashgitz unit in a Battle wagon. Pretty cool. I barely pulled that game out but those fellas gave me a pretty hard go of it.

Thanks for the comments guys! I'll have to give the waggon formation a go and see how they fare vs the tau, hopefully splits his armys fire :p

Don't forget to use the wagon's and truck's hulls to deny overwatch and provide blos to boyz. Tau hate it when they have a 300 pt broadside team with blocked los.

 koooaei wrote:
Don't forget to use the wagon's and truck's hulls to deny overwatch and provide blos to boyz. Tau hate it when they have a 300 pt broadside team with blocked los.

also be sure to play on table with lots of cover, also you could play maelstrom of war, tau players is lazy, they cant function on a a bttlefield where they need to actually traverse the battlefield.ya know, like us normal people