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I play SW and I've been having one hell of a time dealing with tau crisis suits and those jet packs. I've tried everything I can think of to get them in CC (since thats where i'm strongest) and lock them down but they always manage to worm their way out. Here's what keeps happening...

If I take a foot slog list I'm trying to run down a jet pack unit that has 9 shots of AP1 and AP2 shots at my MEQ per turn as well as a ton of fire warrior rounds. failed.

If i take rhinos to try and zoom up the field to get them quickly and trying and pin them down, then I just get exploded by those 9 AP1/2 shots as well as the hammerhead and broadsides in the back. I'm lucky to have my rhinos live 1 turn before exploding and killing some of their occupants. failed.

I tried ignoring them with CC and just aiming all of my longfangs and bolter fire I have available at them. The 3+/4++ and the 2+ LOS with 2 bodyguards and 6 shield drones I ended up having to expend all my long fang fire on just that one unit for the whole game to take it down. This left the firewarrior spam and heavy supports free to blast me. As well as those 9 AP1/2 shots again for all those turns it took to chew through the drones. 14 wound squad is hard to take down with shooting. semi-failed.

The only sort of reliable method I found of blasting them is with a plasma cannon. This was expensive though and I had to worry about gets hot! rolls as well as scatter. He also just ended up targeting the plasma cannon right away.

So I cant seem to catch these jet packers, I can't seem to shoot them apart reliably and I can't survive the amount of AP shots they put out. He's also only using 1 squad of them so far (1000 points games).

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with these little buggers?

I didn't think Crisis Suits had too much long range AP1/2 firepower...

What's the actual list?

I don;'t know much about what his units can take but he says he has a fusion blaster (i think is melta) and a twinlinked plasma gun on each guy. He says crisis suits can shoot both weapons and since jet pack units are relentless they can rapid fire the plasma. so 1 fusion(melta) shot and 2 rapid fired plasma shots from 3 suits is 3x melta 6x plasma a turn. then 2D6 jump away. I wouldn't call it long range, he's just very good at sitting at that 12" rapid fire/melta range and then jumping away or behind terrain.

The rest of his stuff is a hammerhead with railgun and 2 broadsides in the back with I think 2 squads of fire warriors. No idea what upgrades he takes.

Shenannigans?

Well when you buy two of them for a battle suit they count as Twinlinked so his plasma folly for 1 suit is incorrect , he can take 3 Weapon systems per the tau codex so mad thats 3 AP 1,2 Shots for 1 battle suit , and if hes running 3 that would be 9 shots but if hes bringing 9 Battlesuits ect, thats were he could get 21 but not out of 3 . , so if hes running 9 Battles suits for his elite choices and an HQ with 2 body guards he can reasonably do it , its only 25 for a base battlesuit ... And yes he can Jetpack as long as he dosn't take iridium armor but like you said 1 squad can only throw 9 shots not 21

And it does not give him Relentless it simpliy lets him roll 2D6 during the assualt phase in movment

Sadly for you not shenanigans. As long as it's a bodyguard unit for his commander, they will select three weapons, which they did, and each buy a hardwired Multitracker to fire each, with the Twin Plasma rifles counting as a single weapon. Also yes the Fusion blaster is essentially a straight up melta. This is what the Tau do. I find as a Tau player this relies a lot on having good terrain to take advantage of. With out that we cant function well at all. any Deep strikers on your side you could surprise him with? A single drop pod might go a long way.

My apologies, I meant he has 3x melta shots and 6xplasma shots total. one melta from each suit and 2 plasma from each. He only takes the 1 squad of suits. his HQ and 2 bodyguards. So since he can take 3....one fusion blaster and 2 plasmas (becomes twinlinked) on each suit thats legal right?

As for relentless, in the rulebook under jet pack units it says special rules: bulky deep strike and relentless. So that's where I got that part from.
He doesn't take the irridium armor so he has the 3+/4++ with shield drones.

Actually BRB makes any Jet pack Unit Relentless, Look under their unit type. Also Irridium armor only reduces the assault phase thrust move to a single d6.



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Apparently I type slow. Wasn't trying to be redundant. Lol



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And yes that is legal. Body guards are allowed acccess to the Wargear list for the necessary Multi tracker, Elite force choices do not have this and will have to buy a multitrack in place of one of their three weapon choices.

@knucklewolf
I find he doesnt even really need the terrain at all. He jumps far enough away that I can;t rapid fire him and even being completely in the open doesn't hurt him much. the 3+/5++ and 2+ LOS with 4 wounds on HQ 2 bodyguards with 2 wounds each and 6 shield drone wounds to stick in front / LOS onto means shooting at him depressingly pathetic.

I have tried the 1 drop pod thing too. Once again all I can do is shoot him when I get out of the pod and all those wounds and allocation means I dont really accomplish much. Then Its his turn and that squad eats all those shots they dont get saves from. Any survivors of that get lit of by rapid fire firewarrriors (since I almost always have to drop into his end to get at the suits) and his suits just continue on like nothing happened. Meanwhile I'm down an entire squad and usually a drop pod as well. Sad day.

nanaki658 wrote:
My apologies, I meant he has 3x melta shots and 6xplasma shots total. one melta from each suit and 2 plasma from each. He only takes the 1 squad of suits. his HQ and 2 bodyguards. So since he can take 3....one fusion blaster and 2 plasmas (becomes twinlinked) on each suit thats legal right?

As for relentless, in the rulebook under jet pack units it says special rules: bulky deep strike and relentless. So that's where I got that part from.
He doesn't take the irridium armor so he has the 3+/4++ with shield drones.

Yes that is perfectly legal , and with the Tau , their battlesuits can take Sheild Generators which give them a 4++ and their infantry can take sheild Drones which does the same thing ( but only for wound allocation so place it at the front of the unit )

Well if hes dropping 90 points into his shield drone pool like a troll, don't think there's much you can say about it. That's just the way it is. I'm going to assume you have tried using the run option in the shooting phase to chase him down too right? Not that this will help overly much of course. By my count it is a 476point HQ unit. The heavy supports are ~250. How many dudes to a firewarrior team?

uhh.. 12 I think in the Fire warriors teams. With a sergeant. No other upgrades I think. none that I;ve run into anyway. Hes also obsessed with that night vision thingy. So I;d assume he takes it on all his units.


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Yes indeed I have tried running in shooting phase. All is seems to do is make me kill less of his things while dying just as much and still not catching those damn suits.

I deal with them by krumpin' 'em good.

Having at least 3 drop pods helps a lot, but if you can't manage to get into CC with them, have you tried blowing up everything else? He can't win 5/6 missions if you kill his Fire Warriors, which you should be able to do assuming he only runs 12-24 scoring units.

At his best, he should only be getting 3+ and if you have AP3 or better it's 4+ so you can always just shoot at them a lot. I know you shouldn't try outshooting Tau with MEQ but his Crisis Suits should not be manhandling you that badly. Committing to the advance means he only gets one "free" round of shooting before you can slug it out with him every turn, unless he keeps rolling 12 for backward assault thrusts.

thats 120 a Unit for the firewarrios so 476 +250 + 240

966 and if he has hte Sergeants then thats up by like 20 points so yeah what hes doing is perfectly legal

Well thanks to night vision sharing with everyone in the unit, it could only take up to 17pts to give it to the entire army. And 12 per squad makes 240pts, 260 if they have sergeants. So it doesn't sound like a list math error. I'm sorry bro, I got nothing else to offer.



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Again I type too slow. I'm getting to old for this internet. LOL

six drop pods with lots of plasma and some thunder wolves cavalry with storm shields should ruin his day.

You might try a small unit of suicide TDA Wolf Guard with combi-meltas in a drop pod. Put them in the backfield by his Hammerhead and blow it up first thing turn one. He will have to turn around and deal with them immediately or risk losing Broadside suits or his Fire Warriors, which gives you time to move up your Grey Hunter squads into objectives (and hopefully some cover).

You could also consider putting Njal (in runic TDA) with the Wolf Guard in the drop pod to wreak some more havoc with his psychic powers; Jaws of the World Wolf makes large-based low-initiative models (i.e., battlesuits) cry, and you can snipe individual models with it to get around those pesky shield drones.

Here's a sample list at 1,000 points:

Njal; Runic TDA
3 x Wolf Guard; TDA, power sword, combi-melta, melta-bombs
Drop Pod

10 x Grey Hunters; melta gun, plasma gun
10 x Grey Hunters; melta gun, plasma gun
5 x Grey Hunters; melta gun
Razorback; TL heavy bolters

5 x Long Fangs; 2 missile launchers, 2 plasma cannons, squad leader

I've always hated bikes when fighting with my Tau army. They can close you down so fast! To catch them you need to be able to herd them into a corner, either the board corner, or into some difficult terrain to slow them down. Also give them multiple things to worry about. If he only has 1 crisis squad, give them 2 things to shoot at and they won't be able to do enough damage to prevent the upcoming combat.

You need range or you need speed. Fotslogging will not cut it.

PS: Why do you not shoot him with a bolter? You can move and shoot 24"?

Where are your ML Longfangs?

They ignore his armor and cause ID. So he's hoping he passes 4++ invulns or lose a suit with each fail.

Tau are harder to catch this edition, although remember he could only roll a three or 4 for his jump move and then he's hung out to dry.


Jump Packs, Thunder Wolf Cavelry, or Bikes will all easily catch those Suits. Move of 12" and assault of 2D6 is faster then move 6" and jump 2D6. Average of 19" threat vs an average 13" move.

I think you shouldn't force close-combat. In 6th ed shooting>>>>>>>close-combat, so you should really gear up for some long/medium-range firefights. Also, since Tau shooting is pretty crappy without dedicated support (I know, sounds unbelievable, but it is true), so once you hova the firepower, you should win against that army.

Example army:
Rune Priest w/ Mastery Level 2, !!!Divination Discipline!!! and maybe a terminator armour
Some Grey Hunters, like 3x5 in Razorbacks
3x6 Long Fangs full with Missile Launchers

Yes, as a general rule shooting>close combat in 6th.

However, Tau strength is shooting. And in melee they fall over to limp noodles.

The first rule of warfare is to engage your enemy on his weaknesses, not his strengths.


Space Wolf shooting vs Tau shooting is an even fight. Space Wolf melee vs Tau melee is not. Why would you choose a fair fight?

 Grey Templar wrote:

However, Tau strength is shooting.

With 9 Tetras, 9 Broadsides and full MP Crisis Suits it is. Otherwise, even Chaos Space Marines outshoot them easily. Nowadays, Tau strength is support and synergy.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

However, Tau strength is shooting.

With 9 Tetras, 9 Broadsides and full MP Crisis Suits it is. Otherwise, even Chaos Space Marines outshoot them easily. Nowadays, Tau strength is support and synergy.

In the simplistic context of melee vs shooting, yes it is.

The Tau codex is a shooting codex. The fact they don't shoot very well is a seperate issue. They shoot better then they melee, which isn't saying much.

 Grey Templar wrote:

The Tau codex is a shooting codex. The fact they don't shoot very well is a seperate issue. They shoot better then they melee, which isn't saying much.

Yup. And as you said, they don't shoot very well. A good SW army can easily outshoot them. You don't play against their advatange, because shooting is their natural way to do things and not their advantage. But if you go melee, then you are just crippling yourself because you forgo the advantageous aspect of the current edition what is shooting. And since the OP already has some bad experiences with melee...

Tau are fairly underwhelming in terms of the prowess of individual units. They have some really funky toys, but for the points, the number of shots (even if they are powerful) is quite limited. The General Tau strategy is to focus fire individual units down, and then move onto the next unit. they will use their superior mobility to achieve this.
As a Tau player, i have the most success when i am presented with threats one at a time. this allows me to eliminate it before it can do me some damage, and use the jetpacks to reposition into cover, or at the very least, away from the next enemy unit.

A single unit of MEQ i can quickly deal with, even TEQ arent a much tougher nut to crack, but throw 3 or more full units right at me, using rhinos to get close straight away, and you will seriously put pressure on a Tau army. They CAN get out of such a sticky situation, but its not a sure thing, and while Crisis suits are not slouches in combat as some will tell you (except versus dedicated assault units) its a losing proposition if you start fighting in melee since your movement options are removed entirely.

My personal worst nightmare armies are those with lots of transports to get the enemy up close from the start of the game. sure you can quickly dispatch transports, BUT they can start the game out of LOS and quickly move up. throw in drop pods and deepstrikers, and you will seriously put the pressure on a tau army. Until you box him in, you can count on losing a squad a turn to concentrated shooting, but throw 3-4 units at him at the same time, and a tau player will start having fits.

You will also find that most Tau armies are best at the 12-30 inch range, a tau army has very little that is long ranged, Railguns aren't too numerous, even if they are very powerful, so its fairly easy to bring more long range support than he can. Tau are also lacking when it comes to template and blast weapons, so you can bunch up in cover with little to worry about in that regard, and the blast weapons they do have are quite underwhelming, submunitions are great versus hordes, but not that good versus MEQ

Just a quick question on the saves being taken. Is he using the 4++ on the suits or only on the drones. It sounded to me like everyone got the 4++ when really only the models with the Sheild Generators (ie the drones) should.

Have you considered running a squeeze play on him? Drop a deepstriking unit on the other side of his Jet Pack team and limit the options as to what direction he can run away in.

 Grey Templar wrote:

However, Tau strength is shooting. And in melee they fall over to limp noodles.

While this is true as a general rule, do note that the HQ unit is not THAT bad of a melee unit.
Just a few days ago I had my shas'o take down the enemy khrone chaos lord in melee combat (after he assaulted! lucky for me his "have to challenge" rule made his beserkers not hit me as well, that would have ended badly if they did. luck was on my side, but it IS possible to lose to one.)

When you try to melee down his HQ squad, take care not to get there with too little power-as the S5 hits, paired with the decent punch number of the HQ ones can be pretty effective.
Make sure you either got an AP3 weapon (he will rarely pack a shield generator), lots of guys, or a character with much better combat stats or you will risk yourself.


Now, I dont know the SW codex, but in order to get rid of crisis suits you need to have one of the following:
1-something FAST (thunderwolves, assault marines, bikers, land speeders)
2-something that can ignore LoS and ahs decent range (not sure if SW got any other then the WW, and as I heard it sucks.)
3-Masses to throw at them (not the SW list of abilities, but the concept is to just move to them until they run out of places to run to while taking advantage of the mass of bodies-does NOT work against anti-horde suit setups, they will just butcher your massed infantry)

nanaki658 wrote:
I play SW and I've been having one hell of a time dealing with tau crisis suits and those jet packs. I've tried everything I can think of to get them in CC (since thats where i'm strongest) and lock them down but they always manage to worm their way out. Here's what keeps happening...

If I take a foot slog list I'm trying to run down a jet pack unit that has 9 shots of AP1 and AP2 shots at my MEQ per turn as well as a ton of fire warrior rounds. failed.

If i take rhinos to try and zoom up the field to get them quickly and trying and pin them down, then I just get exploded by those 9 AP1/2 shots as well as the hammerhead and broadsides in the back. I'm lucky to have my rhinos live 1 turn before exploding and killing some of their occupants. failed.

I tried ignoring them with CC and just aiming all of my longfangs and bolter fire I have available at them. The 3+/4++ and the 2+ LOS with 2 bodyguards and 6 shield drones I ended up having to expend all my long fang fire on just that one unit for the whole game to take it down. This left the firewarrior spam and heavy supports free to blast me. As well as those 9 AP1/2 shots again for all those turns it took to chew through the drones. 14 wound squad is hard to take down with shooting. semi-failed.

The only sort of reliable method I found of blasting them is with a plasma cannon. This was expensive though and I had to worry about gets hot! rolls as well as scatter. He also just ended up targeting the plasma cannon right away.

So I cant seem to catch these jet packers, I can't seem to shoot them apart reliably and I can't survive the amount of AP shots they put out. He's also only using 1 squad of them so far (1000 points games).

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with these little buggers?

The Crisis HQs aren't ICs when attached to their bodyguards, so its 4+ LOS.

 Niiai wrote:
You need range or you need speed.

This. I'd focus on range, CC isn't as strong as it used to be.

 BoomWolf wrote:

Now, I dont know the SW codex, but in order to get rid of crisis suits you need to have one of the following:
1-something FAST (thunderwolves, assault marines, bikers, land speeders)
2-something that can ignore LoS and ahs decent range (not sure if SW got any other then the WW, and as I heard it sucks.)
3-Masses to throw at them (not the SW list of abilities, but the concept is to just move to them until they run out of places to run to while taking advantage of the mass of bodies-does NOT work against anti-horde suit setups, they will just butcher your massed infantry)

Yeah, this.

I play Chaos and have gotten trashed by Tau several times in this edition. The only success I have had against Crisis Suits is with infiltrated bikers who charged them on turn 2.