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okay i only just started playing 40k a couple of months ago and decide to go with Dark eldar as i really liked the cunning and sheer speed of the dark eldar (not the biggest fan of tourture but not much i can do). But many of my friends and players at the club i went to play tau, and i really like the idea of warriors in venoms and raiders all shooting but from what i've seen of tau im just going to get blasted. So my problem is how to defeat a shooting tau army with a shooting dark eldar? i also have no intension of buying wyches.

like i said at the start i've just started and haven't even built my army (minus a 1 squad of warriors) nor played as dark eldar. so mabye im missing something obvious but i don't know

use your reserves heavilly; expect things do die as soon as they're shot at.

Tau unfortunately is a decently hard counter against DE, but you are going to rape face playing against orks! Against tau you are going to want to close gaps in the fastest way possible (you have fast skimmers, so make your full flat out moves) so that you can get into assault, thats where you have them beat.

Against orks its the opposite, you want to be scooting back, and picking off threats with your reachy poison guns.

Also, get friendly with grenades. DE have the best anti vehicle in the game in the form of slapping them with haywire grenades. Tau mech are the most survivable in the game with the new d-pod rules.

finally, play a bunch of games without expecting to win. Don't netlist yet, just have fun. Paint your models up while your getting smooshed, and by the time you have a nice army, you will have a few wins and be able to describe exactly what you did to win em.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh also, Dark lances are instant death to suits, but there's a very good chance they are going to ping off the jink saves of any skimmers.

thanks for the tips its extremely appreciate the advice.

Suit heavy Tau armies struggle with poison. Shield drones will take one for the team against a Dark Lance or two. But it's the poison that really wrecks a suit army. If he is going for a hybrid of suits and mech, reavers with heat lances are perfect. They can pop tanks and can hold their own against most Tau units in CC. Believe me when I say a Tau commander is going to really hate you when your Reavers turbo boost towards his Broadsides while your venoms take up position. No matter what he does it's going to be rough for him.

In short - Venoms with dual splinter cannons and reavers will go a long way in helping, but so will Vect, his ability to steal on a 4+ against an army that is going to wreck you possibly if they go first is invaluable.

Tau VS DE is a match heavily determined by who goes first. Both armies have a nasty alpha strike, so going first is invaluable. The Baron and vect give you better chances to go first or set the deployment in your favor,and will tear tau apart in CC. The duke will allow you to abuse deep strike and reserves, allowing you to get the first shot with deep strike raiders, ravagers and whatever else.

Tau laugh at DE armor. Missile pods, S5 spam everywhere, S6 plasma and railguns means your skimmers are going to die horrible horrible deaths.

Poison and darklight weapons eat the strongest unit tau can field, the battlesuit. Use poison to dakka through the shield drones, and darklight once the suits are out in the open for the easy instakill.

Dual cannon venoms and anything with a dark lance is nice. Night shields may be of good use, as most tau shooting is also 36" or less, giving you the edge in the gunfight(railguns excluded)

If you want to shoot them dead, take out railguns and anything mobile, using your speed to keep alive. Markerlights can negate cover saves from jink.

Reaver jetbikes can cut up infantry, and get blasters to critical points. A beastpack will mess tau up hard(and can be led by the baron) Keep the khymerae in front to eat the bullets, and then just rip units apart. Focused shooting will kill the pack, but if they draw fire while the rest of your army shoots em up thats good. Wracks are good if you have a hamey in your list.

Air support is a mixed bag. Razorwing is helpful, but broadsides have a decent chance of shooting it down.

 BeefCakeSoup wrote:
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In short - Venoms with dual splinter cannons and reavers will go a long way in helping, but so will Vect, his ability to steal on a 4+ against an army that is going to wreck you possibly if they go first is invaluable.

take the baron, not vect. Vect is expensive, slow and cc beasty. You dont need a CC beast against tau. The baron gives you +1 to go first, is fast, and great support.

Actually, I would suggest something that might sound insane-ignore the broadsides.

between missiles, S5 spam, and cover ripping markerlights, no armor you can bring will survive a single turn anyway, even if the broadsides are taken out. no point to remove a dedicated anti-tank units without any real tanks.

When it comes to random kills-don't bother. Tau are great at gunning stuff down, and Deldar are squishy as it is-focus on the mission, take out his objective holders (tau got weak ones anyway, should be simple) and protect your own.

Kill the stuff that matters, the guys who can deny you from objective or deal extreme amounts of damage.

best tactic that I can think of and this is really pathetic but...you can try ustilizing the 36" range of your nevoms to dakka into some firewarriors, who on the next turn might move up 6" to get into range, IF you survive the shooting you could then disembark some warriors from inside and be able to then get some more shots off than normal.

Otherwise Reavers are awesome

It's not as hard as you might think, as our codex is much more reasonably costed, we are generally bringing more to the table than the tau, however, pretty much everything they have is very dangerous. Going first is critical, then its a target priority and denial game. I prefer to focus on broadsides and XV8/9's first, using the SCs to clear the drones while the lances tear them in half. If they are semi mech I generally leave fish and hammerheads for last, with their frustrating cover saves. A fast unit such as reaver jetbikes is nice to have to tie up things like suits and pathfinders in CC, whittling them down until the end of the game, you can take out force multipliers and threats fairly efficiently this way. The Baron with a beast blob can be nice, as it increases your chances of going first and provides a solid unit to provide cover and soak up fire.

i think a good reaver spam list with 27 reavers all with caltrops could be a tad nasty but in all honesty you have to go first otherwise your boned up down and all around

you could try DS some venoms with retro jets and use them to snipe battlesuits or go the whole 9 yards of just spamming more kabby boats then the tau have bullets

duke could see some good use possibly when going for the gunboat spam

I think you really want the baron. He is the no brains HQ here. Stealth, grenades for him and his unit, hit and run(ok not really so great) and +1 to go first(super important)
He can take out a tank while charging and has the 2++ to tank some shots.

I play Tau, one of my friends plays Dark Eldar, we have had a few combats against each other, and his DE just drive me nuts. If he has a troops unit, it is on a dedicated transport platform. So I have to glance those transports to death before I can even begin to start killing his troops, not to mention everyone on board can fire as they move across the board. It makes me feel like I waste a turn of shooting (minimum!) before I really get to the meat of the army.

As others have said, Tau are a pretty good counter to DE, but DE are also a good counter to Orks/Nids, so it balances out. That said, it's not like there isn't anything you can do, you have plenty of options.

First is target priority: I'd ignore the tanks, at least at first. The tanks are too tough, but they are expensive and their firepower isn't that bad. The best units to take out the tanks when you have to will be Wyches. Assaulting with Haywire grenades doesn't care about their cover. Reavers within 12 inches works too.

Next: take out suits if you can. Not super easy with their JSJ, but take them out if he deploys poorly or has too many to hide. As for Broadsides, use poison to take out drones if they are in front, then Lance them down. Also, if suits are out of LoS to your shooting you can always bladevane them with Reavers first turn (assuming you're smart and have plenty of reavers...)

Lastly: if the suits aren't killable for some reason, just focus down the troops. Yes, S5 Pulse rifles hurt, but from the Tau players perspective the troops have issues. Their leadership sucks, with no good way to fix it (sure theres ethereals... but I said good way). They are also really squishy, so when they get shot at they drop, then have to start taking leadership tests. Tau are one of the few armies left that still worry about leadership tests. (Venoms with nightshields outrange them too.)

And always always always eliminate Pathfinders first. They're a force multiplier (like Farseers for Eldar), but they're squishy. Don't let your opponent have that investment past turn 1.

Tau have no way of increasing chance of first turn, you do, take the Baron. Lady Malys is a good combo with the Baron too, you can really screw with the pre-game with those HQs. Take first turn with Baron (hopefully) deploying in a way that you opponent places suits in JSJ positions, then redeploy a couple units with Malys to get exposed angles on the suits to take them out first turn. Now you can start the game.

Hope it helps.

 Creeping Dementia wrote:
As others have said, Tau are a pretty good counter to DE, but DE are also a good counter to Orks/Nids, so it balances out. That said, it's not like there isn't anything you can do, you have plenty of options.

First is target priority: I'd ignore the tanks, at least at first. The tanks are too tough, but they are expensive and their firepower isn't that bad. The best units to take out the tanks when you have to will be Wyches. Assaulting with Haywire grenades doesn't care about their cover. Reavers within 12 inches works too.

Next: take out suits if you can. Not super easy with their JSJ, but take them out if he deploys poorly or has too many to hide. As for Broadsides, use poison to take out drones if they are in front, then Lance them down. Also, if suits are out of LoS to your shooting you can always bladevane them with Reavers first turn (assuming you're smart and have plenty of reavers...)

Lastly: if the suits aren't killable for some reason, just focus down the troops. Yes, S5 Pulse rifles hurt, but from the Tau players perspective the troops have issues. Their leadership sucks, with no good way to fix it (sure theres ethereals... but I said good way). They are also really squishy, so when they get shot at they drop, then have to start taking leadership tests. Tau are one of the few armies left that still worry about leadership tests. (Venoms with nightshields outrange them too.)

And always always always eliminate Pathfinders first. They're a force multiplier (like Farseers for Eldar), but they're squishy. Don't let your opponent have that investment past turn 1.

Tau have no way of increasing chance of first turn, you do, take the Baron. Lady Malys is a good combo with the Baron too, you can really screw with the pre-game with those HQs. Take first turn with Baron (hopefully) deploying in a way that you opponent places suits in JSJ positions, then redeploy a couple units with Malys to get exposed angles on the suits to take them out first turn. Now you can start the game.

Hope it helps.

Eldrad is better for d3 repositions as he brings a world of psykic power to the table too. Lady Malys isnt so hot by comparison

True, but you also have to buy/bring a pile of Eldar with him, and he's a lot more expensive. IIRC Malys and the Baron are less expensive than Eldrad alone, I'm generaly not one to dump a ton of points into HQs. You don't have to completely redo your army if you go with Malys, and you get to stick with pure DE. I agree that an Eldrad build is strong though, definitely a better tournament build if you want to commit that direction.

I'm not too familiar with DE, but wouldn't the Duke and the Baron make a solid HQ pair in taking on Tau?

 King Pariah wrote:
I'm not too familiar with DE, but wouldn't the Duke and the Baron make a solid HQ pair in taking on Tau?

what does the duke bring?
his best attribute is rerolling combat drugs. DE units dont need combat drugs to beat tau in CC. infact you are likely not going to be taking too many wyches so it is just reavers.
he costs a bunch
he is on foot and has a 6" weapon. likely not going to get to shoot at much
he has posioned attacks(tau have low toughness)
Deep striking isnt that useful as you are going to want everything on the board to deliver the best alphastrike you can
3+ posion isnt all that great either. It is just one unit afterall and the duke has to start the game with them.


Now I am generally not a duke fan, but even that said there are times when he could be nice. This isnt one of them.
The baron is awesome, take him
If you need another HQ take a haemi or an archon with a blaster and a shadowfield. Otherwise, why take an HQ.

I dont really think tau are a hard counter to de, at least not with their current dex, but I've never tried to get into a gun fight with them I always turboboost everything up turn 1. Sure he'll most likely pop a couple vehicles on his turn, but then your in assault next turn which means the game is pretty much already over.

Also wracks are deffinately the way to go against... well pretty much everything in my oppinion, but especially tau. Last game I played against tau I took four ten man squads of them with 2 liquifiers in each. By the end of about turn 3 they had killed almost everything in his army, and I think I only lost like two transports by the time the game was over.

Thanks to all who replied, you've all given lots of good advise and i think i will be picking up some reavers now, hopfully all goes good and i don't get completly creamed.
I wish you luck.

hctim844i wrote:
Thanks to all who replied, you've all given lots of good advise and i think i will be picking up some reavers now, hopfully all goes good and i don't get completly creamed.
I wish you luck.

Of everything mentioned these own Tau the hardest. Simply put, if you did for some reason go all out and brought like 18 reavers with heat lances and maybe a kitted out AC. Your enemy is pretty much done. You can hit him Turn 2, you can assault anything in his army at will, you can pop whatever armor he brought. Worst of all, you can tie up his broadsides or suit HQ in an assault while your army gets into position rather unmolested. If the bikes take heavy fire from his limited, yet damaging shots, they did more than enough for you.