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I have a friend who is having constant difficulty dealing with a towered up defensive tau suit list. The sort with every suit having 12" bubble against deepstrikes, broadsides, crisis suits, ghostkeel led by Farsight all keeping close together to kill Orks enmass when they approach.

As it is, I have been unable to help him deal with this sort of list and I am looking for some sort of tactica to help deal with this sort of flying fast, fallback list.

Maelstorm. You can't beat defensive tau with most ork lists but you can try to outscore them.

One of a few effective lists would be battlewagon spam. Hard case to lower the impact of missiles and meltas. Something choppy inside. eat overwatch with a wagon or if placing allows, charge from behind a wagon - you can charge a target you can't see while he can't shoot you.

I wonder how well Deffkoptas and ork flyers would work against Battlesuits?

You need to reach his lines ASAP. This edition made Tau mode gunliner than ever (as Frankie from FLG said: 'Tau is the new Guard!' ); lines and lines of infantry screening for the heavy duty behind.

Da Jump and transports really help.

yup using Da Jump with a large squad, followed up by other fast moving threats will be a big help.

Take some trucks. T6 10 wounds 4+ with a pseudo fell no pain. For 82 points i think is the best deal for a tough vehicle. Take the trucks and ram them knee deep down the tau throat, and then follow up with a few charges from your orcs.

I know it seems im possible but with horde armies you can actualy lock tau into combat they can run from. They need a place to land that is 1" from other models. Which isn't too hard to accomplish, or at the least you can force them to back into a corner until thier is no escape.

That's the army and the skills you'll want to take on tau with orks.

I'm hoping to find someone who plays this kind of army in my local area as I'm also a big fan of foot Orks. Sadly I don't think Maelstrom Missions are going to be the tournament standard, they're way too random. The other missions only score at the end which is a huge design flaw compared to AoS where you score as the game goes, forcing you to not castle up. However, it is what it is.

Weirdboyz are probably the answer, Da Jump is effective but all of their Overwatch WILL hurt, however if you get a Choppa unit in you should brutalize them. Just have to make sure you can get through the screen first, likely Kroot or Firewarriors, and a Warpath probably wouldn't hurt. Anything that survives the Combat will just Fly away. Smite Spam is also viable, of course Suits often have Drone but if you take enough Weirdboyz it won't matter.

Deployment is also important for the Tau, if they castle up they get big Overwatches but with our numbers it can be very hard to actually escape once we start swarming. If they split then there's room to run but less Overwatch and you can dictate matchups a bit more. Warbosses on Bikes are necessary to counter the Flamers, typical setup seems to be 2x Missile Pods and 1x Flamer. This is decent for Orks since they can roll the 8 to escape a Flamer Overwatch better than most armies and we also have durable Characters to soak it up. Missile Pods are also crap against Green Tide, each suit averages two Hits and 0.66 Wounds before you add in possible Painboy/KFF, Markerlights not withstanding.

I'd be more comfortable with Green Tide or Kan Wall into that sort of list than Mechanized, they have a lot of guns that work well against Battlewagons unless you have all 'Ard Cases, which is rare. I am assuming all comer list vs. all comer list and any other conversation is largely worthless, you can list snipe anything.

Boyz and trukks are great this edition, but much less so against Tau Battlesuits. To defeat a suit line you need Ghazgkull in a hardtop battlewagon with deffrolla, a weirdboy with warpath, a painboy, and the rest boyz with choppas. Back this up with lots of zzap guns. Lots. Just assaulting them with boyz, nobz and bikers will not work as you will be shot up in overwatch, then you fight, then the suits will just fall back AND shoot, and then you need to assault again while getting shot up in overwatch. The only things that can deal enough damage on the first charge is Ghazkgull and Deff dreads, and deff dreads will never make it into combat.

And dont forget the zzap guns.

Traktor Kannons do d6 damage against any model that can fly, so that might be pretty good against Tau suits.

 The Prince of Excess wrote:
Sadly I don't think Maelstrom Missions are going to be the tournament standard, they're way too random.

Well, than i don't think you can win without extreme list-tailoring. And even so, there are no plain counters.