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Hello. This is my first post on this forum so please excuse any errors. I recently acquired the Tau and blood angels starter sets for my sister and I to play with. I play the Tau. We just play for fun and only try to kill each others units. No objective stuff. Anyways, the problem is this. Every time we play I get destroyed. This drives me crazy because I have been reading my brains out on strategies for both sides and I do every thing I can to win but to no avail. My sister on the other hand doesnt even charge into combat, she just stays back and shoots(she isnt all that much into wh40k and i made her army list for her) . My crisis suits get mowed down by the baal predator before they can even get two wounds on it. Then the strike does alright until the baal turns on them. What am I doing wrong. The lists are this

Tau:
Strike team with two gun drones and guardian turret
Crisis suits 1. Two fusion blasters and multi tracker 2. Two plasma rifles and ATS 3. One fusion and one plasma and a missile pod. Two shield drones
Three marker drones and one gun drone
487 points if it was added right

Blood angels:
Tactical squad with one heavy flamer and plasma gun. Sargent has inferno pistol and power sword
Captain in terminator armor with storm bolted and thunder hammer
Baal has twin assult cannon and heavy bolters
457 points

Am I just bad at Warhammer? What can I do to improve

Tau have a handful of issues.

1. They die in close combat, you may throw some dice and think uou are doing something, you are wrong. Tau just die. Xv8's can move out of combat, don't stay in combat.

2. Xv8 crisis suits are over costed, weapons are fair but the suits do not perform for the cost. You need to use the drones to shrug wounds off the xv8's.

3. You need marker lights. No marker lights you are failing. Break your strike team into two 5 man squads, add a marker light on the squad leader.

Your list
Xv8 with missles is not optimal. Fusion are over costed, due to the performance of an xv8. The a pair of ion or plasma with a flamer or ats. The double fusion works if you are using manta stike but it is FAR better on the commander, and you really wsnt to go triple fusion or quad fora commander.

Side note for later Because the xv8's were the OG commander you can base swap upto a 60mm base and use them as a commander. But you will most likely get called out at a tournament for this cheeky move. So base size is critical.

Use marker lights over gun drones. If you can fit in more shield drones after you rearm you xv8 do so. The more wounds you shrug off the better

Thanks for the reply. I just had the fusions because I wanted to kill the baal, but it never works.

Drones are good, commanders are good, fire warriors are reasonably coated. Crisis suits are okay if you give them plasma cyclic ion blasters of flamers. They suck otherwise.

Honestly just get commanders, everything else that isn’t one or a drone is either bad or slightly below average. Also, build your tau list with the intention of not needing markerlights. Markerlights are trash this edition.

Thanks. I dont know if I want to go and purchase commanders just for the sake of getting them. I would also rather not declare my crisis suits as commanders because I am already ahead of my sister in terms of points. I just feel like I am doing something wrong. What tactics could I use to beat blood angels?

Just to confirm: are you using the 8th edition rulebook, codex and index respectively?

If so, let me start by saying you've added it up wrong or missed something in your description, your list as described adds up to 426 points for the Tau, and 465 for the blood angels (assuming Codex points costs). Furthermore, while the blood angels could be run as a Patrol detachment, your Tau army appears to lack an HQ.

Using the models you've described, I suggest you try an alternate list:

Crisis Commander - 3x Fusion, Multi-Tracker, 2x Shield Drones
Crisis Commander - 3x Plasma, Done Controller, 2x Gun Drone

Ethereal - Honour blade, Hover Drone

Strike Team - 10x Fire Warriors w/ Pulse Rifle (hopefully!), Tactical Support Turret

Tactical Drones - 1x Gun Drone, 3x Marker Drones

In principal you want to hole up in a defensive position and force her to bring her army to you. The pulse rifles have a range advantage on the bolter and it should, hopefully, allow you to keep some distance as she moves in to get into shooting range, you move back and can still shoot. Make sure if she wants to shoot you she has to move her guys to get in range. The Ethereal sticks with them, using Sense of Stone or Calm Tides help them whether fire if she focuses on shooting them.

The Crisis Commanders are your offensive weapon. Deep strike them in a way that splits her attention. The one armed with fusions should drop behind the predator, hopefully so it can't move towards the fire warriors and deal with the suit at the same time, you can't get in double-tap range the moment you deep strike, so feel free to drop him closer to 15 inches away, you can make up the difference easily if they both survive this turn. Have him whether the hit and use saviour protocols to have the shield drone soak up the damage (remember that a shield drone has a 5+ chance to ignore that wound) you will find that the commander's natural BS 2+ will synergize a lot better with the fusion blaster and the MT.

The other commander should focus on the tacticals, and should optimally drop in outside of range of the predator entirely if he can. Ideally you want him to engage the tactical marines and dazzle them with the amount of damage he can do, convincing them to engage with him instead of the fire warriors. Meanwhile the fire warriors keep in that 30" sweet spot and continue to plink away from a distance where it's safe.

It's still not easy though. Since you're new to the hobby and the Tau have it a bit rough right now, I don't think you should feel bad about proxying the commanders for now, once the codex drops for them their playstyle may change quite drastically.

That said: the commander is a good kit, and will probably still be useful.

That Baal Predator is just made to kill Tau stuff. You need to alpha strike it to death ASAP, and that probably means more Fusion Blasters. Mixed Crisis Suit weapons is generally a bad idea in smaller squads.

Hopefully the Codex will bring some buffs and points discounts to make life easier!

 Captain Joystick wrote:
Just to confirm: are you using the 8th edition rulebook, codex and index respectively?

If so, let me start by saying you've added it up wrong or missed something in your description, your list as described adds up to 426 points for the Tau, and 465 for the blood angels (assuming Codex points costs). Furthermore, while the blood angels could be run as a Patrol detachment, your Tau army appears to lack an HQ.

Using the models you've described, I suggest you try an alternate list:

Crisis Commander - 3x Fusion, Multi-Tracker, 2x Shield Drones
Crisis Commander - 3x Plasma, Done Controller, 2x Gun Drone

Ethereal - Honour blade, Hover Drone

Strike Team - 10x Fire Warriors w/ Pulse Rifle (hopefully!), Tactical Support Turret

Tactical Drones - 1x Gun Drone, 3x Marker Drones

In principal you want to hole up in a defensive position and force her to bring her army to you. The pulse rifles have a range advantage on the bolter and it should, hopefully, allow you to keep some distance as she moves in to get into shooting range, you move back and can still shoot. Make sure if she wants to shoot you she has to move her guys to get in range. The Ethereal sticks with them, using Sense of Stone or Calm Tides help them whether fire if she focuses on shooting them.

The Crisis Commanders are your offensive weapon. Deep strike them in a way that splits her attention. The one armed with fusions should drop behind the predator, hopefully so it can't move towards the fire warriors and deal with the suit at the same time, you can't get in double-tap range the moment you deep strike, so feel free to drop him closer to 15 inches away, you can make up the difference easily if they both survive this turn. Have him whether the hit and use saviour protocols to have the shield drone soak up the damage (remember that a shield drone has a 5+ chance to ignore that wound) you will find that the commander's natural BS 2+ will synergize a lot better with the fusion blaster and the MT.

The other commander should focus on the tacticals, and should optimally drop in outside of range of the predator entirely if he can. Ideally you want him to engage the tactical marines and dazzle them with the amount of damage he can do, convincing them to engage with him instead of the fire warriors. Meanwhile the fire warriors keep in that 30" sweet spot and continue to plink away from a distance where it's safe.

It's still not easy though. Since you're new to the hobby and the Tau have it a bit rough right now, I don't think you should feel bad about proxying the commanders for now, once the codex drops for them their playstyle may change quite drastically.

That said: the commander is a good kit, and will probably still be useful.

Thanks a lot. I have no idea what I did when I added up the points. I will definatly use this strategy

Edit: to answer you first question, I do not have the codex yet, but I do have the indexes

Edit 2: I forgot to add the ethereal to the list