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So, there is this bloke in our area who brings super friends to all the casual tournaments even when they've no real prizes. Frankly, it's getting annoying as I've brushed against him on the table before and I've simply been tables easily by his super friends. The only army I've at the moment is tau, so I'd love some advice on how to stop a super friends/invisible wolf list using tau.

I would say,

Riptide wing, with 2 hbc and 1 ion
Drone net with at least 12 markers
And a car that hold 2 stormsurges

But if you don't have that then the Hunter contingent support by drone net so you can share those markers between all units if need be.

This wont be enough. Superfriends (Iron Priests TWC, Raveguard Command, Conclave on Bikes) is a hard counter for Tau.

They get Invisibility and Rerolls and FNP. Scout. T2 multi assault. H&R = Mathematic improbability. Wont matter if all your shots hit and wound.

The Rock to your Scissors.

Pyrania drone factory. Surround them with a ton of drones. Kill other stuff with your superior shootin.

I'm pretty convinced that competitive Tau need a Culexus these days. It's no secret that psychic powers are out of control,and you've got to have something to defend against them. Even if you have to suicide your assassin into the fray to buy yourself a useful turn of shooting, it's better than just getting swamped by teleporting, invisible, sanctuary'd bikers/thunderwolves/wolves and auto-losing. Without psychic buffs, superfriends wither under Tau firepower.

I have fought superfriend and won a local competitive tournament.

If you go first than there is a huge chance that their superfriend strenght will die before the librarian can cast invisible. If the they put them in reserve than better for you since your whole army can intercept them at huge range.

A few advices if you are going second:

1) Take at least 24 marker light drones or pathfinders. Preferably with buffmander that can reroll make drones twin linked and overwatch at bs2.

2) Take the hunter contingent, being able to share marker light is a must. If you take riptide wing you will not have enough marker light counter. All your army should be part of the contingent.

3) Shoot the superfriend with the drones (minimum 6) in the commander unit. With reroll to hit, you are likely to get 1 or 2 hits. Then you shoot the the rest of the marker units using the existing marker counter to increase bs. This serves to greatly amplify your marker hits. After this you should at least get 5-7 marker on them. Use two to eliminate cover safe if they have any, and the rest to increase BS. Share the markerlight to your entire army. First resolve the lowest ap and strenght weapons. If they allocate wound to lesser model than its great for you, if not then they might lose a couple of good models. Their formation may slightly weaken, exposing more vulnerable or critical units. Remember that lookout sir is not perfect and they are limited by distance. As you resolve higher ap attack, they will loose more models.

4) On your first turn, you should be moving the fire warrior as far towards the death star as possible. This will get them to go to rapid fire range and maybe hinder their movements forcing them to shoot at the fire warrior first. note, fire warrior should be MSU, containing no more than five per unit. You should also deploy units in layers, having the most important units to the back and less important ones to the front. Your unit should be structure to maximize MSU. Try not to deploy multiple models in a unit.

5) by second turn, depending on how well you an your opponent roll the dice, he might lose 1/4 to 1/3 of his force. On his turn he will either charge at the fire warrior or attempt to maneuver around them. Either way you will buy yourself another round of shooting. Repeat step three and four and you should be able to reduce his force significantly that may result in him attempting to charge at your MSU with his single unit or you get lucky and killed his critical units such as the librarians. If he manage to charge, remeber that all your unit can support fire, including your marker drones. This will result in the same amount of marker hits as your shooting phase. But unlike your shooting phase, your army can't share the marker light, so use wisely on units that can potentially hit the most e.g. nova charged burst tide. This will further reduce their forces.

6) Remember since you take MSU, they will need to charge you many times to significantly destroy you or they will need to split their death star in which case they will not be as powerful.

In my 1750 pts tournament game, my opponent was not able to charge me till turn three by which time he only had his librarians and one other model left. He retreated to salvage some points and he never charged my units. I had multi layer and spread out MSU. He knew he could not finish my army with his deminished forces in a couple of turn. Remember that one turn with out charging is devastating for them. I use hunter contingent with one ss, three riptides, three broadsides and fire warriors. It is more than enough to make their unit innefective by turn three.

Side note, my ss was able to fire at the non invisible unit and absolutely devastate them with two large s10 ap 2 pie plates thining out his marines and scouts quickly. Hunter contingent is truly a deaths star killer if you use your deployment and shooting order right.

The toughest opponent i faced in the tournament is 3 IK + 1 WK + 3 eldar jetbikes units that went first before me. This is much tougher to beat than superfriends for tau. I tabled the opponent on turn six, but lost over half of my army. I won because i was able to use riptides to flnal shooting at the knight side armour and destroying his jet bikes. The other factor is deployment where i split my forces in two and make him choose to focus on one side.

Playing tau hunter contingent is mostly about shooting prioritization, shooting order and deployments.

Celexus and piranaha wing.

If you could find the points to combine the strategies of the above gentlemen, I think you'd have superfriends superfethed.

It would be tight in 1750 but it's doable. Throwing the Cullexus in there forces your superpal to hyper focus on it, leaving less of your units in the maw. Then let the hunter cadre do its thing.

Turtlesoup wrote:
I have fought superfriend and won a local competitive tournament.

If you go first than there is a huge chance that their superfriend strenght will die before the librarian can cast invisible. If the they put them in reserve than better for you since your whole army can intercept them at huge range.

A few advices if you are going second:

1) Take at least 24 marker light drones or pathfinders. Preferably with buffmander that can reroll make drones twin linked and overwatch at bs2.

2) Take the hunter contingent, being able to share marker light is a must. If you take riptide wing you will not have enough marker light counter. All your army should be part of the contingent.

3) Shoot the superfriend with the drones (minimum 6) in the commander unit. With reroll to hit, you are likely to get 1 or 2 hits. Then you shoot the the rest of the marker units using the existing marker counter to increase bs. This serves to greatly amplify your marker hits. After this you should at least get 5-7 marker on them. Use two to eliminate cover safe if they have any, and the rest to increase BS. Share the markerlight to your entire army. First resolve the lowest ap and strenght weapons. If they allocate wound to lesser model than its great for you, if not then they might lose a couple of good models. Their formation may slightly weaken, exposing more vulnerable or critical units. Remember that lookout sir is not perfect and they are limited by distance. As you resolve higher ap attack, they will loose more models.

4) On your first turn, you should be moving the fire warrior as far towards the death star as possible. This will get them to go to rapid fire range and maybe hinder their movements forcing them to shoot at the fire warrior first. note, fire warrior should be MSU, containing no more than five per unit. You should also deploy units in layers, having the most important units to the back and less important ones to the front. Your unit should be structure to maximize MSU. Try not to deploy multiple models in a unit.

5) by second turn, depending on how well you an your opponent roll the dice, he might lose 1/4 to 1/3 of his force. On his turn he will either charge at the fire warrior or attempt to maneuver around them. Either way you will buy yourself another round of shooting. Repeat step three and four and you should be able to reduce his force significantly that may result in him attempting to charge at your MSU with his single unit or you get lucky and killed his critical units such as the librarians. If he manage to charge, remeber that all your unit can support fire, including your marker drones. This will result in the same amount of marker hits as your shooting phase. But unlike your shooting phase, your army can't share the marker light, so use wisely on units that can potentially hit the most e.g. nova charged burst tide. This will further reduce their forces.

6) Remember since you take MSU, they will need to charge you many times to significantly destroy you or they will need to split their death star in which case they will not be as powerful.

In my 1750 pts tournament game, my opponent was not able to charge me till turn three by which time he only had his librarians and one other model left. He retreated to salvage some points and he never charged my units. I had multi layer and spread out MSU. He knew he could not finish my army with his deminished forces in a couple of turn. Remember that one turn with out charging is devastating for them. I use hunter contingent with one ss, three riptides, three broadsides and fire warriors. It is more than enough to make their unit innefective by turn three.

Side note, my ss was able to fire at the non invisible unit and absolutely devastate them with two large s10 ap 2 pie plates thining out his marines and scouts quickly. Hunter contingent is truly a deaths star killer if you use your deployment and shooting order right.

The toughest opponent i faced in the tournament is 3 IK + 1 WK + 3 eldar jetbikes units that went first before me. This is much tougher to beat than superfriends for tau. I tabled the opponent on turn six, but lost over half of my army. I won because i was able to use riptides to flnal shooting at the knight side armour and destroying his jet bikes. The other factor is deployment where i split my forces in two and make him choose to focus on one side.

Playing tau hunter contingent is mostly about shooting prioritization, shooting order and deployments.

1. Your opponent must be very in-experience to deployed within marker light range knowing he goes 2nd.

2. The table you played on probably lack much LOS blocking terrains.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:

Turtlesoup wrote:
I have fought superfriend and won a local competitive tournament.

If you go first than there is a huge chance that their superfriend strenght will die before the librarian can cast invisible. If the they put them in reserve than better for you since your whole army can intercept them at huge range.

A few advices if you are going second:

1) Take at least 24 marker light drones or pathfinders. Preferably with buffmander that can reroll make drones twin linked and overwatch at bs2.

2) Take the hunter contingent, being able to share marker light is a must. If you take riptide wing you will not have enough marker light counter. All your army should be part of the contingent.

3) Shoot the superfriend with the drones (minimum 6) in the commander unit. With reroll to hit, you are likely to get 1 or 2 hits. Then you shoot the the rest of the marker units using the existing marker counter to increase bs. This serves to greatly amplify your marker hits. After this you should at least get 5-7 marker on them. Use two to eliminate cover safe if they have any, and the rest to increase BS. Share the markerlight to your entire army. First resolve the lowest ap and strenght weapons. If they allocate wound to lesser model than its great for you, if not then they might lose a couple of good models. Their formation may slightly weaken, exposing more vulnerable or critical units. Remember that lookout sir is not perfect and they are limited by distance. As you resolve higher ap attack, they will loose more models.

4) On your first turn, you should be moving the fire warrior as far towards the death star as possible. This will get them to go to rapid fire range and maybe hinder their movements forcing them to shoot at the fire warrior first. note, fire warrior should be MSU, containing no more than five per unit. You should also deploy units in layers, having the most important units to the back and less important ones to the front. Your unit should be structure to maximize MSU. Try not to deploy multiple models in a unit.

5) by second turn, depending on how well you an your opponent roll the dice, he might lose 1/4 to 1/3 of his force. On his turn he will either charge at the fire warrior or attempt to maneuver around them. Either way you will buy yourself another round of shooting. Repeat step three and four and you should be able to reduce his force significantly that may result in him attempting to charge at your MSU with his single unit or you get lucky and killed his critical units such as the librarians. If he manage to charge, remeber that all your unit can support fire, including your marker drones. This will result in the same amount of marker hits as your shooting phase. But unlike your shooting phase, your army can't share the marker light, so use wisely on units that can potentially hit the most e.g. nova charged burst tide. This will further reduce their forces.

6) Remember since you take MSU, they will need to charge you many times to significantly destroy you or they will need to split their death star in which case they will not be as powerful.

In my 1750 pts tournament game, my opponent was not able to charge me till turn three by which time he only had his librarians and one other model left. He retreated to salvage some points and he never charged my units. I had multi layer and spread out MSU. He knew he could not finish my army with his deminished forces in a couple of turn. Remember that one turn with out charging is devastating for them. I use hunter contingent with one ss, three riptides, three broadsides and fire warriors. It is more than enough to make their unit innefective by turn three.

Side note, my ss was able to fire at the non invisible unit and absolutely devastate them with two large s10 ap 2 pie plates thining out his marines and scouts quickly. Hunter contingent is truly a deaths star killer if you use your deployment and shooting order right.

The toughest opponent i faced in the tournament is 3 IK + 1 WK + 3 eldar jetbikes units that went first before me. This is much tougher to beat than superfriends for tau. I tabled the opponent on turn six, but lost over half of my army. I won because i was able to use riptides to flnal shooting at the knight side armour and destroying his jet bikes. The other factor is deployment where i split my forces in two and make him choose to focus on one side.

Playing tau hunter contingent is mostly about shooting prioritization, shooting order and deployments.

1. Your opponent must be very in-experience to deployed within marker light range knowing he goes 2nd.

2. The table you played on probably lack much LOS blocking terrains.

1. He is very experienced competitive player playing against me on the tournament final. He went first and i went second, so marker light distance was never the issue. If i go first then it would be all over by second turn.

2. There is a fair amount of los terrains which he use to deploy his scouts to grab objectives, but superfriend is a huge unit and there is no way he can put all of them behind los cover. Superfriends is meant to charge straight into enemy line. If he use los he would have delayed his charge to third turn for sure and that would be a disaster for super friend.

I was assuming he went 2nd base on your post.

So I guess the tourney was ITC format, if he went first and casted invis you shouldn't be able to hit him with templates. And marker lights would of only hit on 6s. Not sure what kind of deathstar he is running if he got crippled after turn 1 shooting.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
I was assuming he went 2nd base on your post.

So I guess the tourney was ITC format, if he went first and casted invis you shouldn't be able to hit him with templates. And marker lights would of only hit on 6s. Not sure what kind of deathstar he is running if he got crippled after turn 1 shooting.

The tournament was RAW format not ITC. He went invisible on his first turn and i have to snap fire my first wave of marker light. I got 2 hits due to buffmander giving re-rolling to hit and i use the marker counter to amplify the rest of the marker light which net me around 5 marker counter. This is enough to get me BS 4 shooting without cover save. I have to take his cover out because he has 2+++ cover re-rollable due to his DA units. Fired all my units into it, even the d-missiles of my stormsurge. The d missile was not d-strength because i don't have spare marker counter to make it a d weapon. S8 ap 1 is good enough to kill much of his units. At first, many of the shot bounce off due to his 2+ armor and 3++ invulnerable, but once a couple of them are dead, his death toll starts to rise quickly. The only shot not directed at the unit is the s10 ap 2 large blast from the storm surge pulse driver. That pie plate went to his scouts camping at the objectives.

If i went first on that game then his death star would have been at around 50% strength on his turn.

Mark'o rerolling? That sounds pretty awesome.