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After listening to people talk about the lists they wish to run in town and reading some online lists im really in a pickle as to way to do vs Tau with Nids.
Almost everything can take interceptor which negates doom and the packs of ygmarl im running plus 2 turns of long range shooting followed by markerlight stacking using support fire or w/e its called would in my mind own almost all the pressure i could apply to tau. I guess my only thoughts would be that i would have to give them to many little critters to shoot at and overwhelm them? I could go back to running HG and Zoan's which would help relieve some of the frustration however i really this list more because of its aggression.

Flyrants are pretty good against TAU, especially 2 of them. They should do enough damage and/or be sufficiently destracting to bring up the rest of your army. Don't shy away from hive guard either, they instant kill crisis suits.

don't underestimate w6, T6. just keep moving them forward, and flyrants all the way.

you could give your guys FnP with a tervigon.

The Doom and podding Zoeys with Psychic Scream can really hurt Tau, with their Low LD.

Tau can present some pretty big problems. If they get to go first and deny you psychic shenanigans it could be a very painful first turn, or one you end up hiding as much as possible to avoid all shooting. Both outcomes are bad, as one increases the amount of ground you need to cover and the other means you likely give up First Blood and end up slightly gimped from the get-go.

The maligned Kroot snipers will do well in this matchup because they can ignore IA and can do it very cheaply.

Tyranids still do well against Tau.

Flyrants are pretty ubiquitous these days and any panic check Tau are forced to take at -1 LD they are sure to fail (barring Ethereal leadership). The devourers give -1 LD to panic checks.

I think zoanthropes are going to be pretty important in 6th because they each get 2 psychic powers (from a lore of their choice) for 65 points. Imagine a unit of 30 gargoyles with 5+ FNP from biomancy, 5+ cover saves, and that 5+ invulnerable save from telepathy.

Fast units are the way Tyranids need to go in 6th Edition. Gargoyles, ygmarls, and flyrants are going to be good. Even units like biovores are going to see a comeback. Against Tau, my only recommendations would be to prioritize your targets, multi-assault whenever possible (same overwatch reaction) and use whatever shooting you have to split his army up.

Priorities should be:
Ethereal support (if any)
Killing troops
Chasing down battle suits
Any targets of opportunity that present themselves

I'm still waiting to see how popular the interceptor upgrade will be. I expect it on every Riptide, and on Railgun Broadsides. Im not sure how much it costs, but I doubt it'll be popular on Crisis suits. Not sure what else can take it. Something of note though, the "plasma hatcher" Mycetic Spore models should block LoS to a standard Zoanthrope, or Doom.

 jifel wrote:
I'm still waiting to see how popular the interceptor upgrade will be. I expect it on every Riptide, and on Railgun Broadsides. Im not sure how much it costs, but I doubt it'll be popular on Crisis suits. Not sure what else can take it. Something of note though, the "plasma hatcher" Mycetic Spore models should block LoS to a standard Zoanthrope, or Doom.

Broadsides can have interceptor OR skyfire, so I imagine skyfire to be the more popular upgrade there, especially when paired with missile pods and drones for glance wrecking flyers with S7 spam.

Riptides can have both, but skyfire is pricey, and it's weapon doesn't really lend itself to firing at aircraft (S7 AP3, heavy3, overcharged to S8 or 9 AP2 large blast) so I imagine the cheaper interceptor here.

So between them, I don't really see doom being overly threatened unless he's running 3 riptides or interceptor on the broadsides. In which case just use the pod to block LOS or drop somewhere they cannot see you.

my question is when something intercepts, does it shoot at the spore (the actual dedicated transport) or the contents of the spore (DoM, Zoanthropes, etc.) ????

 Adamantium wrote:
my question is when something intercepts, does it shoot at the spore (the actual dedicated transport) or the contents of the spore (DoM, Zoanthropes, etc.) ????

Reading the rule on Interceptor, I would have to say you can shoot at either since it only says units arriving from reserve. You choose at the end of your opponents movement. You could have a group of nids pop out of a spore and then they get blasted by a Riptide's overcharged Ion Accelerator.

As a Tau player I'm going to take Interceptor on my broadsides with missiles.
It's a lot cheaper than skyfire, and broadsides with 3 lots of missiles is going to get a few hits on flyers even when needing 6's (4 S7 and 4 S5 TL shots each = 7 hits from a unit of 3 broadsides). Riptides I imagine will be likely to get Interceptor and Feel No Pain upgrades.

Personally I find Nids to be one of the easier matchups for Tau We have a ton of high strength decent AP shooting which works just as well against MC's as it does against terminators or vehicles. You're also going to see a lot more tau players fielding Ion Cannon which are true MC killers. I tend to be able to drop at least one tervigon per turn with the old codex; I think I'll be doing even better this edition. Tau are also putting out a bunch more S5AP5 firepower (cheaper firewarriors and better burst cannons/drones), and a lot more blast markers from Ion weapons.

I think its funny that you are most worried about tau when as a tau player tyranids is one of the two armies that worry me the most. With all the skyfire options necron paper airplanes don't bother me too much. We have so much ap2/3 that marines don't worry me, not event he chaos ones. But Tyranids to make me shudder. The doom can get out of hand fast and with us not having a mass of s10 shots insta killin it is going to be tough. Two flyrants with biomancy might be too much for us to focus and if they hit our back line they will be taking out a unit a turn. We can't kill all your monsters before they touch us and once they touch us it is game over.

 lambsandlions wrote:
I think its funny that you are most worried about tau when as a tau player tyranids is one of the two armies that worry me the most. With all the skyfire options necron paper airplanes don't bother me too much. We have so much ap2/3 that marines don't worry me, not event he chaos ones. But Tyranids to make me shudder. The doom can get out of hand fast and with us not having a mass of s10 shots insta killin it is going to be tough. Two flyrants with biomancy might be too much for us to focus and if they hit our back line they will be taking out a unit a turn. We can't kill all your monsters before they touch us and once they touch us it is game over.

I thought Tau had heaps of Strength 8, the Doom is only Toughness 4 so instakilling it shouldn't be that hard. Plus all the access to Skyfire (and markerlights increasing BS for snap shots) makes Flyrants much easier to deal with. On top of that, interceptor weapons can potentially take out things arriving from reserve before they even get a chance to do anything. Tau have got me quite nervous as a Tyranid player, I don't think my usual tactics against gunline armies will work against them.

I think I would play Ymgarls everywhere against Tau. Then the usual list after that. If you know you're going against them, get them where they are weak, up close.

Ymgarls vs tau could suffer to overwatch vs certain units. Don't they have a rule that any unit within 6" can also fire overwatch? Also, marker lights can make overwatch even better. On average you are taking roughly 7 ymgarls in a unit so quite a few could suffer losses before assault even happens. Once in assault though they will murder. Correct me if I'm wrong here but expensive ymgarls would be a risk reward sort of tactic with a lot of points invested in them.

I like flyrants big time vs tau. Most of the time you are going to see their troops behind a defense line but the -1 leadership check should do the trick a fair amount of times.

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 lambsandlions wrote:
I think its funny that you are most worried about tau when as a tau player tyranids is one of the two armies that worry me the most. With all the skyfire options necron paper airplanes don't bother me too much. We have so much ap2/3 that marines don't worry me, not event he chaos ones. But Tyranids to make me shudder. The doom can get out of hand fast and with us not having a mass of s10 shots insta killin it is going to be tough. Two flyrants with biomancy might be too much for us to focus and if they hit our back line they will be taking out a unit a turn. We can't kill all your monsters before they touch us and once they touch us it is game over.

I thought Tau had heaps of Strength 8, the Doom is only Toughness 4 so instakilling it shouldn't be that hard. Plus all the access to Skyfire (and markerlights increasing BS for snap shots) makes Flyrants much easier to deal with. On top of that, interceptor weapons can potentially take out things arriving from reserve before they even get a chance to do anything. Tau have got me quite nervous as a Tyranid player, I don't think my usual tactics against gunline armies will work against them.

With the new broadside nerf people are taking high yield missile pods over rail guns so a lot of our s10 is gone. Our s8 comes from overcharged ion weapons which are blasts, while the doom has a 3++ save so only 1/3 of the shots blasts have a chance of instant death (not counting rolls to hit and wound) Even with skyfire a biomancied flyrant is trouble. We only have a turn or two to kill it before it touches us and if there are two this can be very difficult.

Hm, so Zoanthropes with Psychic Shriek and the Doom in Mycetic Spores, Flyrants and Biovores seem like the key units to deal with the new Tau... I might have to get some Biovores.

 lambsandlions wrote:
I thought Tau had heaps of Strength 8, the Doom is only Toughness 4 so instakilling it shouldn't be that hard. Plus all the access to Skyfire (and markerlights increasing BS for snap shots) makes Flyrants much easier to deal with. On top of that, interceptor weapons can potentially take out things arriving from reserve before they even get a chance to do anything. Tau have got me quite nervous as a Tyranid player, I don't think my usual tactics against gunline armies will work against them.

With the new broadside nerf people are taking high yield missile pods over rail guns so a lot of our s10 is gone. Our s8 comes from overcharged ion weapons which are blasts, while the doom has a 3++ save so only 1/3 of the shots blasts have a chance of instant death (not counting rolls to hit and wound) Even with skyfire a biomancied flyrant is trouble. We only have a turn or two to kill it before it touches us and if there are two this can be very difficult.

Trasvi wrote:


The Tau army seems to be built around weight of firepower. High strength, high BS, not fantastic AP, just weight. You *will* fail your 3++ saves if I make you take enough of them. Mwahaha.

Actually now that I look at it doom might not be as bad as I thought. In the old codex our firewarriors were ld7 so we lost on average 4 warriors a turn to the Doom (not counting its blast attack) This would leave us with very few models to fight it and it would slowly drain the life from our group. Now we are much more likely to have an ethereal or fireblade in our group. This means we only lose 1 or 2 firewarriors and can shoot 3 times at the doom. But even that isn't going to cause too much damage. Say we have 10 firewarriors, they shoot 3 times for 30 shots. Half of those shots miss because of bs3, so 15 hits, two thirds of those shots wound so 10 wounds and then one third of them get through the invul save, so about 3.3 wounds total, which is not enough to kill it.

ive yet to do it (but gotten close) but i'd laugh to see Tau paste or knock off enough wounds on the Intercept to deal with the Doom. Its test starts at shooting phases, intercept is still in the movement phase so it doesnt go off yet. Love to see the look on my friend's face if i plastered his Doom before anything happened.