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The big Ork tactics thread seems fairly deeply bogged-down in a discussion about tankbusta bombs at the moment, so I though I'd start a different, more specific thread – hope that's ok! Anyway, I'm just about at the point where I've painted enough Orks to crack into some games of 7th ed. (somewhere in the region of 1,000pts or so). A pal of mine's in the process of putting together a Tau army, and I never got the chance to play against them prior to my hobby hiatus (they were still pretty new back then). So, without spoiling the "surprise" too much, what should I be watching out for, and what's good at taking them down? My knowledge pretty much extends to "they have good guns and they're wetties in CC", so my general plan will probably be along the lines of "get close up as fast as possible and kick their heads in". I guess the trick is not getting shot to bits in the process, right?

depending on what he brings you are literally at the mercy of dice gods outside of battlewagon bash to even get into combat. green tide and trukk spam will lose to volume of medium str fire and unless you take ard boyz they will be ignoring your tshirt saves. if you have pain boys you might be better in green tide thanks to the 5+ fnp but it is only helping. even in battle wagon rush you end up having to survive tau overwatch where they get to fire with pretty much everything at the unit assaulting.

orks are just in a bad place and tau hard counter them

Just try and make sure you have a lot of line of sight blocking terrain, everywhere.

Try to find lanes where he cant fire all his stuff at you.

Think about scouting and flanking and deep striking, so you can decide to enter play where his stuff doesnt hard counter yours.

Lobbas and whatnot stuff that can fire out of sight can help.



His overwatch can be insane i hear, like if you charge one unit, then other units can also fire at you, and i think they can fire at full ballistic skill.

Try to spend his overwatch before you charge with your favorite unit.

Even small squads of boys can win and sweeping advance his infantry.

Place objectives out of sight.

Place objectives closer to his side since you will be rushing over there.


I dont know much about tau either, so my advice is just these kind of things, although you might already know this.

I have had success with spamming Meganobz in gun wagons FW alongside deff koptas to eat overwatch. The av13 is not that easy to get through and when your Meganobz get there anything they touch is dead. I usually run a lot of bikers, but against Tau it's a very bad idea.

Use a Blitz Brigade, the Tau have less option's to deal with high AV. It's OK to bring a bunch of grits along to soak up overwatch. Learn which Tau units have the marker lights. If you can get them then do it. Punish him for putting models too close together by using pie plates, Lobbas being the best choice in more ways then one. Barrage is a nice rule with 5 in the unit.

Blitz brigade, as said before, MANz, and 'ard boyz. Don't try to overwhelm them with numbers because they have too many shots for that. Prioritize markerlights. Riptides are annoying but they should not be the main priority.

 Nazrak wrote:
The big Ork tactics thread seems fairly deeply bogged-down in a discussion about tankbusta bombs at the moment, so I though I'd start a different, more specific thread – hope that's ok! Anyway, I'm just about at the point where I've painted enough Orks to crack into some games of 7th ed. (somewhere in the region of 1,000pts or so). A pal of mine's in the process of putting together a Tau army, and I never got the chance to play against them prior to my hobby hiatus (they were still pretty new back then). So, without spoiling the "surprise" too much, what should I be watching out for, and what's good at taking them down? My knowledge pretty much extends to "they have good guns and they're wetties in CC", so my general plan will probably be along the lines of "get close up as fast as possible and kick their heads in". I guess the trick is not getting shot to bits in the process, right?

The Tau Empire do only one thing. one. Shoot.

Rule one: KNock outtheir Markerlights and fast. Bikers do shooting passably well for Orks. So try that or lootas but make their markerlights a priority. Once they are gone they cant ignore your cover and once they cant ignore your cover its a whole other ball game.

I say this as I play Tau QUITE often but recently played a little ork action also. My understanding of Tau is excellent and I can tell you that the things doing damage do it SO much better with markerlights.

Also: Kommandos with Snikrot. Super fun when you combine it with the Bikers just cause then you can kinda catch them betweeen a rock and a hard place which allows the rest of the ork mob to approach far less molested.

But list specific suggestions aside, the other thing Tau Empire does well is volume of Fire. and thats bad for you. When you select your side, select the side (if you can) that allows you a hiding place midboard. generally in tournaments there is a large LOS blocker i nthe middle to make the battle more dynamic and you need to make sure you can move and run to it in round one to minimize the hits. using terrain is pretty impotant. That volume of fire will make you wither if you cant arrange it that way.

If you dont want t bet on that, just two trukks moving flat out ahead of the herd can do a lot to alleviate your problem. And of course there is the least complicated solution: Ard Boyz. Trucks do more for you though.

In the end the more you can block off lines of sight the better as you come in. the volume of fire is insane. dont let em catch ya in the open!

"The Tau Empire do only one thing. one. Shoot. "

It's 7th ed, so that's all you need to be able to do. Although most Ork units lose a combat to a Riptide, I'd say. I guess it depends if the powerclaw Nob is there or not.

Okay, so the general tactical gist is:

• Take out their marker lights
• Stay in/behind cover
• Smash bastards in the face

Got it.

Any point bringing my mega-armoured Warboss and MANz, or is it complete CC overkill against Tau?

Also, what's the deal with those battlesuit lads? Shoot them with rokkits? Swamp them with boyz? Power klaws? Shokk attack gun? (Please say shokk attack gun. I love a shokk attack gun, me.)

Manz are still amazing when they can avoid all that s8 ap2. And only MANz or dls pk boss can really beat their numerous powerful MC and GMC.

Though, the real way of beating tau is shooting. It might sound odd, but if you have weak shooting component, you'll not get a functional ork list as we have no wizards to buff our durability. What you definitely need is lobbas and lootas. They deal with markerlights and crysis suits. They also clear bauble wraps like kroots and firewarriors. KMK are still great against broadsides, riptides and vehicles. Tankbustas have lost a lot of their utility but a bunch of rokkits and an occasional meltabomb is still good.

 Nazrak wrote:



Also, what's the deal with those battlesuit lads? Shoot them with rokkits? Swamp them with boyz? Power klaws? Shokk attack gun? (Please say shokk attack gun. I love a shokk attack gun, me.)

fire your gretchen thrower at them. great range and great firepower generally. But one thing about Tau: their Pulse carbine hurts you PRECISELY like a Railgun does! Lol. Orks strength is in numbers. Tau Crisis Teams are pretty small so you might be able to nuke them pretty good from a distance with a big huge blast to the face. or two. Ammo runts are recommended.

Ok, how do you reckon this would handle them at 1000pts?

Big mek – KFF, eavy armour, big choppa
Big mek – shokk attack gun

3 MANz, 1 kombo slot ha, trukk w/ ram

12 shoota boyz – eavy armour, big shoota + nob w/big choppa & t/l shoota

20 shoota boyz – 2x big shoota + nob w/ kombi-skorcha

16 slugga boyz + nob w/ big choppa

12 grotz + runtherd

10 grotz + runtherd

Rokkit kopta
Rokkit kopta

5 lootas

Just gonna slap some key units, as others already mentioned.

Battlewagon's (tau struggle on 13+ armor imo)
Meganobz (they sexy, especially with warboss and pain boyt)
Lobbas (eat through markerlights)
Deffkoptas (to eat overwatch and be annoying)
Lootaz (good shooting to deal with mostly anything tau has)
Kommandos (sneaky gitz)

In that order imo

I play against Tau alot and ive found the key is mobility and shooting.

It sounds weird, but Ork shooty units can still klobber any Tau unit in close combat, and the firepower on the way in helps cut down on return fire and lets you survive getting across the board.

Kustom Mega Kannons are great too, they instant kill crisis suits and are handy against the 2+ save big suits.

When facing tau you need to accept several truths before you can start:
1-Heavy losses are inevitable. you have to have a way to coup.
2-There is nothing "too tough" for tau to kill.
3-Markerlights are the bane of your existence, especially if you got low saves.
4-Tau can deny any cover, and buff accuracy to the roof.
5-You don't need to be good at melee, just better than the other guy.
6-No matter how much supporting fire you got, a unit only overwatches once.


How to work with these truths?
1,2-Most Tau lists pack quality fire, and lack the shot count, therefor usually a quantity of units will serve you better than a few units of quality.
3-Get something that can deal with them, quickly. long range indirect fire is a godsend here, so pack some mek gunz if you can.
4-one or the other. you won't get saves, but do try to get into cover if only to make them waste markers on ignoring it.
5-You don't need to tool up your boyz to kill Tau in CC. even the most basic boy is a serius threat if he makes it. when it comes to dealing with MCs, a single clawed nob has a decent chance to take it out, or at least force a moral check (and Tau moral is nothing impressive.)
6-a shard of a unit is still useful. even a single boy is useful, because if he charges they have to either waste overwatch on it, or risk him getting into range and blocking them from overwatching the real threat. therefor, many small teams are probably a bigger threat than you'd expect, if only for screwing the supporting fire bubbles.


So, for example, a "lousy" team of 10 boys, claw boss and a trukk with rokit might not sound much, but it won't cost much-and yuo can spam them around.

And yes, pick rokkits for trukks, its fre, and while it will probably miss, a random hit means a crisis suit down.

So those big units of boyz are a waste of time? Would I be better off reducing the size and freeing up some points for a mob of kommandos, maybe?

Yes, a big unit is a big target and will attract large blasts and "overkill" units.

Remember, a shooting attack that kills 20 boys is no better than one killing 10, if you only has 10 to begin with.

I play both Tau and Orks, and understand both well, there's already been a lot of good points here.

Definitely cut down the unit sizes, against tau having more, smaller units is always preferable to large clumps as their overwatch shooting can get rather brutal. I would also recommend using a good split of 'Ard Boyz and regular Boyz, as even though the 'Ard boys ramp up the cost, they get their save against most Tau weapons, and better yet can give a reliable moving cover save to the weaker boys if you keep them moving in "guard rank" formations for the last few moves before you get into assault.

If you have any fast moving units such as warkoptas or bikers, focus them on their marker-light units such as pathfinders, as long as a few get into combat after overwatch they will usually mulch through them pretty quickly and keep them tied up for a few turns at least. Just maximize the distance they are behind solid cover before assaulting to keep losses to a minimum.

Your heavy hitting units such as nobz, MANz will want to focus primarily on their suits, as they will rip them to pieces in CC. And don't forget about issuing challenges once you're in there, if nothing else for the leadership breaking qualities, as accepting the challenge even for a suit commander often will not end well for them.

I've also heard of Kommando's being effective, though I've not tried this myself, but outflanking/infiltrating into their pathfinders to reduce markerligts seems like the most logical attack.


Hope it helps!

Cheers for all the pointers guys! Going to give this a go and see how I get on, I reckon:

Big mek – KFF, eavy armour, big choppa

Big mek – shokk attack gun

3 MANz, 1 kombi-skorcha, trukk w/ ram

4 kommandos + nob w/big choppa

9 shoota boyz – eavy armour, big shoota + nob w/big choppa & t/l shoota

9 shoota boyz – big shoota + nob w/ kombi-skorcha

9 shoota boyz – big shoota + nob

9 slugga boyz + nob w/ big choppa

10 grotz + runtherd

10 grotz + runtherd

Rokkit kopta
Rokkit kopta

5 lootas

The Big Idea is that the lootas, rokkit koptas and SAG will take care of any marker lights, before switching attention to any suits, the MANz will trukk up and punch any tough threats, then eventually the rest of the tau get a load of boyz rammed down their throats. Hopefully the KFF, judicious use of cover, weight of numbers and eavy armour will keep the boyz alive long enough to cause some damage. The Kommandos basically have the job of making as much of a nuisance of themselves as possible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh yeah, I've still got a spare 14pts kicking about so if anyone wants to make any suggestions about how best to use those, I'm all ears!

There is actually 1 unit that can overwatch multiple times (Longstrike), but it isn't like you have to worry about your opponent taking tanks. . .

Tl;DR.. Imperial armor 8.. and skorchas

Tau's only source of str 10 (in the codex anyways) comes from the hammerhead, and the D str missiles of the stormsurge. The rest of their scary anti tank weaponry is str 8, being broadsides, fusion blasters, and the riptides. Also, the scary range is about 36" where the firewarriors, smart missiles and crises suits get in range.

With this in mind, a gunline ork (strange right) army, supported by some fast units like bikes, trukk boyz or manz missiles can do very well. Lootas, Shokk attakk guns, and lobbas can outrange most of their volume, forcing them to move up to deal with them, bringing them that much closer into the range to your fast shock troops. Anything that gets tau to move is very usefull. Of course, these units will crumple to any resistance, so it is imperative that you have distraction units ready to.. distract to keep the shots away from your gunz.

For best results against Tau, use FW. Imperial armor 8 has amazing things for the orks. 60" Str 9 ap 3 large blast upgrades for your battlewagons, and Big trakks are a Morksend (or are they a Gorksend.. ). 70 points nets you a Big trakk with Big Lobba, 48" str 6 ap 4 large blast barrage, and you can take them in squads of 3 for 1 heavy support slot. These things melt firewarriors and pathfinders. Hide them out of los and bombard the tau, forcing them to either move up, deep strike, or get rekt. Anything template or blast marker really helps to mitigate the orks crappy bs. The awesome thing about the bigtracks is that they are easy to scratch build, and since you are playing orks. scratch build away!

Also, for ultimate cheese, run a Kustom Stompa. Str 10 ap 1 7" blast with 6d6 coaxial gigashoota will ruin the taus day. Especially if you take 2, or 3 on 1 stompa. Put your 2 big meks, one with 4++ and the other with 4+ repair, supported with stock meks, and a squad of burnas with 3 meks inside. I brought this against a 1250 pt tau list and he conceded on the 2nd turn after I killed 6 full squads heh. Was it dirty, yes, but I have been playing my tau friend pretty much exclusively for the last 10 years and it was time for some payback. I have yet to bring that back to a game as I felt like a cheesemongerer.

Everybody expects the orks to run up and get into CC asap, and people will build their lists, or choose their target priorities because of this. The orks have a lot of good shooting options (when you use all of the options.. aka FW with the codex) that can decimate given you have enough "scary" distraction units running up the field to take shots for your gunline.

Also, skorcha buggies are pretty amazing, and seriously underrated. 35pts for Str 5 ap 4 with outflank are very, very useful for killing backfield cover campers. The armour on firewarriors and pathfinders is 4+. 1 Skorcha can kill an entire unit of firewarriors pretty easily if you outflanked in the right place. Dont forget, as fast vehicles, they can move 12" and use their template. The new ork "decurion" allows single units of buggies (and mekgunz) to be taken as aux so spam them!!! I like sushi, but I also like smoked fish

Here is an idea for a fun list for a 1000 point game;
Big mek, Shokk gun, ammo runt ( or take a warboss for the waagh,)
5x 10 man boyz squads
grots
skorcha buggie
skorcha buggie
skorcha buggie
2x big trakks with big lobbas
2x big tracks with big lobbas
BW with supakannon

So basically the plan here is to sit back and out range the tau, grabbing objectives, and only moving into CC once the anti infantry are (mostly) dead and or retreating. Drop pieplates on the pathfinders, firewarriors and crises suits (usually in that order depending on the loadouts of the suits), killing the anti infantry, allowing the boyz to survive. 4 large blasts that ignore the armor of everything but suits (but will wound pretty much everything on a 2+), with the supkannon great for dealing with suits, and 3 ap 4 templates with outflank will cause havoc on gun lines, not to mention 50 boyz is a "scary" threat. Crises suits, broadsides, and hammerheads are a lot less scary when the supporting FW's and pathfinders are dead.

Don't forget that barrage weapons force you to allocate wounds starting from under the "hole" of the marker, essentially allowing you to snipe out threats, great for dealing with the 1 markerlight per sqaud of fw's.

By out ranging the majority of their guns, you will either force the tau to move up, closing the distance that your boyz have to go, or you will get a green light to bombard him every turn while you play for objectives. Depending on the map, resist the urge to move up the boyz first turn, they just need to get in cover. Let your guns soften up the crises and FW squads before you think about running the boyz out of cover.

If you go the warboss route, keep him alive as your waaagh will really help your boyz close the distance. Anything that gets into CC with the tau will either kill them outright or tie them up, so those units will usually get focused down first. Use this to your advantage while the real firepower of the list kills everything.

Keep the skorchas in single units in reserve, ready to outflank and drop their templates. The are going to die the next turn, but they should usually get their points back in 1 shot. Not to mention, anything that shoots at 1 35 point unit is something not shooting at the other threats. Keep the grots, and possibly 1 squad of boyz and the warboss, bubble wrapping the big trakks, as deep-strikers will shred them.

Anyways, there is a lot of stuff here so I hope you find something that will be useful! Melee orks without support will have your game ending like tom cruise in the last samurai, so be careful and use your orky cunning

 Nazrak wrote:
Ok, how do you reckon this would handle them at 1000pts?

Big mek – KFF, eavy armour, big choppa
Big mek – shokk attack gun

3 MANz, 1 kombo slot ha, trukk w/ ram

12 shoota boyz – eavy armour, big shoota + nob w/big choppa & t/l shoota

20 shoota boyz – 2x big shoota + nob w/ kombi-skorcha

16 slugga boyz + nob w/ big choppa

12 grotz + runtherd

10 grotz + runtherd

Rokkit kopta
Rokkit kopta

5 lootas

KFF is a waste. A second shock attack gun would be better. The Tau can ignore cover easily enough.

Koptas for objective stealing are good. Easy to hide. Reasonably tough.

Tau AP is plenty good. and when you're only really challenging their AP wit hthree models? Meh. Meganobz might be a waste of points. normal nobs might be better, points wise.

As a Tau player the best way for orks to beat us is to simply rush us in wagons or on foot, using cover and LoS blocking terrain. And take out our MLs!!!!!

Go for flanks not reinforced by markerlights, sure we have high str and ignore your armor, but without markerlights we have pretty gak shooting. Make sure what little shooting you have is focused on the markerlights. Anything but a Marko-Commander with die quickly to your dakka. Once those are down you will quickly overwhelm his frontlines.


Also when charging tau- yes our supporting fire is nasty, we fire at BS1, but markerlights can be used in overwatch (hit on 6s though) the trick to charging is that you declare your unit charging theirs, they decide to overwatch or not, roll to see if you make it. With this the tau only get 1 overwatch per turn so you can charge with a weaker unit first to either force his overwatch or just tie him up. Also make sure you take advantage of charging multiple units! even 1 group of boys charging 3-4 of our units spells doom for us, just kill 1-2 in each group and they will all be swept in combat (low LD and Initiative)

1PK in each group of boyz does wonders and is well worth the expense vs tau. All you need is him to get to CC and any tau unit (even riptides) just gets shredded

Another thing, try to deploy second and focus everything on 1 side, most tau players like to spread out across their deployment zone, this gives you a few turns of some of his units being out of range or LoS. Also dont forget anything that started on the board can charge turn 1 so if they are careless you can catch them.

Is a deff dread a terrible idea against Tau (i.e. will they immediately blow it up)?

not if you saturate the front lines with other threats FIRST

Orks struggle to saturate BA. They are not going to be able to saturate Tau.

Cheers for the suggestions, everyone!

We've lined up a 500point game in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping 50-odd Orks and gretchin will be enough in the way of Other Threats. Need to get my painting trousers on, mind.

then get on with it will ya? and i want frost blue orks.

I've found that speed works great to help beating Tau. Tau needs turns of successful shooting, but if you rush forward and limit how many turns they get you can assault them. Lets face it Tau suck in hand to hand. You get tau in hand to hand you might as well pick up the tau models.

Personally, when I play tau, I rush forward and use some shooty units to eliminate units that have marker lights. Tau need these markerlights in order to buff the army. If you eliminate these it decreases the effectiveness of tau shooting.

That's true, but it doesn't get much faster than ba and ba still can't pull it off. Also, riptides are brutal in cc for orks and ba. I can sometimes get most of my army in their face turn 1, but they just kill most of it in a single shooting phase.