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This came up on a forum, I havent been to the local store lately but there apparently is a WAAC player fielding three wraithknights and three waveserpeants with wraithguard, theres a spirit seer somewhere. As a tau player how would they counter this? I came up with a tialored list with Hazard suits and crisis fusion spam, with remaining points in broadsides but I despise tailored lists, almost as much as I despise fun sucking WAAC lists.

Furthermore, would a TAC list of marines or Legion be able to counter successfully? I have a Legion Orbital Assault list I am working on as a take all comers and I am scratching my head, I dont think it has a chance in hell against it. It just doesnt put out that much high strength hits. I could sink the serpeants yes but the knights are just brutal. My armored fist marine list is in a similar situation, I have a lot of melta guns, but not that many.

Any suggestions?

I am curious to hear what people say about this topic. Apparently Eldar have become something like a "Tau counter", although I still don't know if this is accurate, or we just haven't figured out how to beat them yet.

I haven't played against eldar myself, but I would think ion riptides would eat wraithguard/blades/whatever the kids are calling them these days for breakfast, the trick is getting them out of their transports. Their big deal is apparently amazing wave serpents, but unless I am shown mathematical evidence to the contrary I would assume that massed missile broadside/missile drone fire will kill them dead just by amount of shots fired if nothing else.

After reading your post I want to get the forgeworld book even more now. I knew hazard suits have some kind of "super fusion blaster" but I never really applied it to wraithknights. (side note, I still think that hazard suits were an amazing opportunity that FW goofed on. They should have been an option for your commander/bodyguard!)

Sadly, the best thing I can think of in our arsenal (not including FW since I haven't read it) to take them out is seeker missiles, and you won't have enough of them to deal with 3 knights, even 3 skyrays wouldn't do it, and with wave serpents in the list that is a bad idea.

Tau are the Eldar counter.

The Eldar strengths and tricks are generally negated by Tau such as ignoring cover, or range negating mobility with LOS ignoring attacks.

Remember with 3 WK, his firepower is low as the WK is an endurance model not a firepower model. It's shooting can only be geared for AV only or AI only and never both (unless it takes Wraithcannon and AI secondary guns, but it pays a lot of points for the extra guns and can't fire them along with the Wraithcannon, and even with them it's firepower is equal to a single War Walker), and point for point other things do more damage in both those areas.

Serpents are a bigger worry, but Broadsides / Missile Drones supported by Pathfinders (to strip cover) kill them easily with S7 missile spam. Removing the cover makes them basically twice as easy to kill, as they will generally have a 4+ like Tau skimmers do.

Remember that the Tau basic infantry gun can wound Wraithknights as well, which most other factions can't.

Not going to lie, I just punched some numbers into battlescribe. And here I thought Tau had it bad on the "expensive transports" front...that wave serpent is kicking dangerously close to 150 points the way I imagine most people are fitting it (scatter laser, cannon, holofield).

Also 3 squads of minimum wraithguard with the flamers (and wave serpents as above), 3 fully loaded knights, and a spirit seer with no upgrades comes out to 1975 points. I don't think I'd field a 2000 point list with 19 models and 3 vehicles, even if 3 of them are hulking giant monsters.

If you castle properly, the Wraithknights should never be able to assault anything but Kroot screens. PEN chip + Broadsides should help force a large volume of saves, and iontides can clean up the remaining wounds. And if you're running sniper rounds on your Kroot, Wraithknights are inconsequential.

Outflanking sniper Kroot laugh at Wraithknights and they are one of our cheapest units. I find Units of 14 with a hound to be a nice size unit, but min squads work too.

A Skyray can alpha strike a Wraithknight off the board for almost half the cost.

Crisis teams with dual fusion blasters is 6 shots that wound on a 4+ with no armor save vs. wraithknights for about the same cost. depending on if you add any other upgrades. If you go farsight enclave you take these units as troops.

Deepstrike plasma/fusion crisis suits behind his wave serpents and wreck them in the rear armor behind the force field. Same unit will clean up the wraithguard who fall out of the wreck.

Ionheads plus markerlights are great for clearing off objective campers.

Wave serpents don't ignore invulnerable saves (only cover saves). If you like taking things on foot get a skyshield landing pad to protect your firewarriors and pathfinders.


Don't give up! This is a dice game after all and WAAC players can be beaten...

Remember sniper ammo is Heavy, so the turn they come on from outflank is one where they can't hit very well.

 D6Damager wrote:
A Skyray can alpha strike a Wraithknight off the board for almost half the cost.

While the Skyray does a good job hurting Wraithknights, the likelihood that a single Skyray will hit and wound with all six missiles (3+ then 4+) is extremely unlikely. Realistically, they can be counted upon to inflict 2-3 wounds.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Their big deal is apparently amazing wave serpents, but unless I am shown mathematical evidence to the contrary I would assume that massed missile broadside/missile drone fire will kill them dead just by amount of shots fired if nothing else.

Here's your math:

60" (range of serpent field) > 42" (range of missile pods with JSJ)

Broadsides go down, even in cover, to shuriken bladestorm fire and/or massed str6. War walkers, because they have battle focus, can stand off from missilesides just outside of 36, move into range in the movement phase, shoot, and then scoot back out of range in the shooting phase.

Pathfinders with their new 5+ armor are the first targets for the cover-ignoring serpent fields. Seen a couple of battle reports where good Eldar players made pathfinders the first target for serpent beams, followed by the crisis suits (which are really the only mobile firepower in a Tau foot-castle list).

Riptide suits are kind of unimpressive in terms of firepower. They can mostly be ignored until they toast themselves with nova overloads.

It's a shootout vs. rail rifles, but because the serpents are approaching from the direction that they want to, they can concentrate multiple serpents &/or war walkers on a single broadside unit at a time and get localized superiorty to chew through the castle from one side to the other.

What's the armor of Waveserpents? I honestly prefer HRR Broadsides against light armor because of the AP1 has better odds to cripple/destroy especially when factoring in the increased range.

Still, it's not something that I'd really be worried about as a Tau player.
We have high strength weapons that can ignore cover and armor and can field insane amounts of them.
Pathfinders are vulnerable, which is why I prefer JSJ markerdrones.
Kroot spam can do a number on low model count units that pay a hefty price for high toughness units.

Wave serpents are AR12 front and sides with a 5+ or 4+ cover save if they move, depending on wargear.

A unit of 2 broadsides with rail rifles can probably reliably shoot down a wave serpent every turn, especially with drones, and especially with the ignore cover item, and probably even if the serpent is using the shield as a shield rather than as a weapon.

But I'm not seeing where more than one unit can get the cover-ignoring gizmo? Maybe I'm missing it. If not, then that's the first unit to get the massed firepower treatment.

It's relatively easy for a wave serpent or war walker to avoid max range on missilesides or crisis missile pods while still dealing plenty of damage.

HRR broadsides are good against eldar. The HRR disincentivizes the serpents from using their shields due to AP1 and range. This is 100% necessary since HYMP is danced around by serpents.

I think that the HRR is probably going to be required if you plan on having a shot at winning an event now that the eldar going to be out in force.

The Tau only get one item to ignore cover and that forces the equipped unit to give up its shooting for the turn. But they do have markerlights, which remove cover for two tokens.

...and IMHO I think a pure mech build for Eldar is a better counter to Tau gunlines than a wraithspam army anyway.

But this thread is about wraithspam, which is going to be necessarily weaker than pure mech against Tau since the most serpents you can fit in at 1850 is only about 3-4.

WAAC is majorly overused term. A 3 wraithknight list is not a WAAC list it is an extremely unbalanced list that only works on people not prepared to tarpit or kill MC. For your situation people have already given the Tau answer, ie sniper kroot or mass bubble wrap kroot. If you don't want kroot then feel free to charge the WK with your riptide. You have a fair chance to actually beat the WK in CC as long as you get your nova reactor 3++ off. I would just ignore and tarpit it though.

For SM this is an easy question if you planned to take lots of sternguard. DP sternguard are excellent against WK/WG. Just remember to combat squad in case bad luck doesn't kill the target. This way you will have half of them remain alive to finish the job.

Serpents need either DS fusion/melta to the rear or lots of S7 shots to glance them to death. Just remember if this list is staying at ~60" then they are doing almost no damage as they will only have 2 serpent shields to fire.

Unfortunately my legion list has only a single melta support squad and a missile launcher squad with combi meltas spread throughout and they dont combat squad.

My marines ride in rhinos and land raiders. But on the bright side the eldar list has no dedicated AA so the Talon might do a bit of damage along with speeders. Been considering using the two sternguard I have.

 ansacs wrote:
If you don't want kroot then feel free to charge the WK with your riptide. You have a fair chance to actually beat the WK in CC as long as you get your nova reactor 3++ off. I would just ignore and tarpit it though. .

How is it going to win? It needs to smash to wound it. It then only has 2 attacks, one of which misses. It might fail to wound, it might get blinded by the 5++. In any event it is going to be a while before it can get through all 6 wounds?
On the other hand the wraithknight is going to hit and wound more often than not. Even with a 3++ some wounds will get through. If the WK wins any round, the tide has to take a breaktest where it could get run down.


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 Savageconvoy wrote:
What's the armor of Waveserpents? I honestly prefer HRR Broadsides against light armor because of the AP1 has better odds to cripple/destroy especially when factoring in the increased range.

I would not use the HRR. Str8 has a fairly good chance to pen AV12 but then the serpant sheild ignores pens on 2+ so you are best just glancing them to death. Now if you have HRR the eldar player is going to want to keep his shields, which might be good but I would rather glance them down with more shots.

 Exergy wrote:




I would not use the HRR. Str8 has a fairly good chance to pen AV12 but then the serpant sheild ignores pens on 2+ so you are best just glancing them to death. Now if you have HRR the eldar player is going to want to keep his shields, which might be good but I would rather glance them down with more shots.

Not quite right, as it makes a pen a glance on a 2+. A wrecked WS is almost as good as an exploded one.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

 Exergy wrote:




I would not use the HRR. Str8 has a fairly good chance to pen AV12 but then the serpant sheild ignores pens on 2+ so you are best just glancing them to death. Now if you have HRR the eldar player is going to want to keep his shields, which might be good but I would rather glance them down with more shots.

Not quite right, as it makes a pen a glance on a 2+. A wrecked WS is almost as good as an exploded one.

yes, but it ignores the damage table, in which case your AP1 is just as good as AP- but more shots is better

The reason the HRR is good is because it prevents the serpents from dancing around your HYMP and blasting with its shield.

This is not so much about damage output but tactical options. HYMP is better from a pure output perspective, but the AP1 and longer range on the HRR force the engagement and really add a cost to using the shield offensively.

HYMP broadsides really do not do well against serpents simply due to range.

Honestly I can't see a Tau TAC list having a problem with that list. Wave Serpents rely mostly on cover to be as good as they are, and you an negate that easily with Markerlights. Your standard heavy set-up of Longstrike, Skyray and Broadside squad should be able to deal with that. Going second would help you a lot however.

The Wraithknights could be an issue to take out albeit, however they also aren't putting out much hurt against Tau due to their low RoF, and so will probably try and assault which puts them in double tap range of your Plasma suits etc.

 Exergy wrote:

 ansacs wrote:
If you don't want kroot then feel free to charge the WK with your riptide. You have a fair chance to actually beat the WK in CC as long as you get your nova reactor 3++ off. I would just ignore and tarpit it though. .

How is it going to win? It needs to smash to wound it. It then only has 2 attacks, one of which misses. It might fail to wound, it might get blinded by the 5++. In any event it is going to be a while before it can get through all 6 wounds?
On the other hand the wraithknight is going to hit and wound more often than not. Even with a 3++ some wounds will get through. If the WK wins any round, the tide has to take a breaktest where it could get run down.

First off if the eldar player did you the favor of taking the suncannon/shield orglaive/shield setup you should just cheer and ignore the pesky thing as it barely contributes at all. Even so lets look at the odds;

WK 4 attacks, hit on a 3+ (2.7 hits), 2+ to wound (2.25 wounds), and 3++ save (0.75 unsaved wounds) so you may not even take a wound but will average 1.5 wounds every game turn

Riptide 2 attacks, hit on 4+ (1 hit), 2+ to wound (0.83 wounds), and 5++ or - (0.55 unsaved wounds or 0.83 unsaved wounds) so assuming your nova reactor stays up the best WK loadout will loose combat to you on average over time or the shield version will just barely beat you.

Now if you bothered taking something to improve your leadership (ie you are tarpitting the unit nearby your ethereal led gunline) then you will hold the WK up for an entire battle. Therefore you can tarpit the majority of the other player's points once it gets close enough to charge your gunline. Really WK are better off having a standoff gunfight with a riptide as they are significantly more expensive and have the chance to ID the riptide (with the stock loadout).

@OP
Are you talking about a horus heresy army?

I would have to see the rest of your list but have you not been having a tough time with your SM force against other armies? Rhine/LR forces tend to be in a rough spot with 6ed rules as the rhinos are no longer the mobile bunkers they once were they are just transports to get the goods inside closer to where it needs to be.

The second part is yes. My legion list is orbital assault and would have less issues I think than my regular list which admittingly is under review and reorg.

Thanks for the numbers on the waveserpent math. If I ever start seeing eldar in my play area I'll drop back to my secondary plan of taking rail rifle broadsides with missile drones. I've actually always liked rail rifles and been secretly wanting an excuse to take them, so it wouldn't be all that bad.

Also, crisis/stealth/riptide/broadside suits are immune to blind. Says so in the Blacksun Filter equipment description and all suits get that wargear for free (ha, that random useless bit of information is finally good for something).

So I used to run my tau commander with two plasma rifles as it makes a very reliable killer. But I have since switched to two missile pods because of eldar. The reason being with two missile pods I can put the commander in a unit of broadsides (he normally goes with my crisis suits) and all of a sudden the eldar serpents start dropping like flys. 3 boardsides, 6 missile drones, a commander and a quad gun with tank hunter puts the hurt on any wave serpent shenanigans. The commander is also amazing at tanking wounds to keep the broadsides around longer, which is important as they are best unit against eldar and you you don't want them dying or running off the board. After the waver serpents are dead the broadsides can then get monster hunter to take down the wraithknights. Just remember when using your makerlights to remove cover from the serpents before trying to increase bs. Your small arms (firewarriors and kroot) should be trying to peck away at wraithgaurd as they pop out of their transport. Use your riptide as back up to finish off anything that the broadside unit doesn't kill.

 ansacs wrote:

WK 4 attacks, hit on a 3+ (2.7 hits), 2+ to wound (2.25 wounds), and 3++ save (0.75 unsaved wounds) so you may not even take a wound but will average 1.5 wounds every game turn

Riptide 2 attacks, hit on 4+ (1 hit), 2+ to wound (0.83 wounds), and 5++ or - (0.55 unsaved wounds or 0.83 unsaved wounds) so assuming your nova reactor stays up the best WK loadout will loose combat to you on average over time or the shield version will just barely beat you.

Now if you bothered taking something to improve your leadership (ie you are tarpitting the unit nearby your ethereal led gunline) then you will hold the WK up for an entire battle. Therefore you can tarpit the majority of the other player's points once it gets close enough to charge your gunline. Really WK are better off having a standoff gunfight with a riptide as they are significantly more expensive and have the chance to ID the riptide (with the stock loadout).

I think you've underestimated the WK here by ignoring the chance of the nova reactor failing and by assuming that it's easy to have an Ethereal close by. Your Riptide has to be within 12" of your Ethereal and in front of him, otherwise the WK is going to charge something else. The WK can threaten a charge from about 18" whereas the Riptide can only threaten a charge from about 12", so you basically need to have very little besides Riptides in front of your Ethereal.

But either way, we can simulate this out. We'll assume a stock WK shoots and charges a Riptide which is trying for its 3++ every turn. Both start with full wounds. WK gets its 2 shots and then 5 S10 WS4 attacks on the charge and 4 every round thereafter. Riptide overwatches with 3 S7 and 1 S8 shot which ignore the WK's save and gets 2 S10 WS2 attacks every round provided it passes its Fear test. Provided I coded that right, the WK kills the Riptide 89% of the time in an average of 3 rounds of combat. The Riptide wins 9% of the time in an average of 5 rounds of combat. The Riptide successfully runs away in 2% of combats.

When the Riptide is within 12" of an Ethereal and so is Ld10, the WK wins 88% of the time and the Riptide wins 10.5% of the time.

When the Riptide is Ld10 and Stubborn, the WK wins 88% of the time and the Riptide wins 11% of the time.

So none of this is making a huge difference. The Riptide expects to tie up the WK for a game turn, but it expects to go down doing it. The WK drops the Riptide on the round it charges in about 26% of games, kills the Riptide in the Tau player's turn 15% of the time, and kills it in the next Eldar turn 17% of the time.

Edit: To expand on this a little, what's going on here is that a failed nova reactor attempt is devastating. You note that with a 3++ a Riptide only expects to take 1.5 wounds per game turn in a fight with a WK. But every game turn it has a 1/3 chance of failing its nova reactor, which doubles the number of wounds it takes from the WK and adds 1 on top of that. So 1/3 of the time you take 4 wounds per game turn. On average you take 2.33 wounds per game turn and you last an average of 2.14 game turns. But the average is misleading here, since if you fail your nova charge on any given turn you're likely already dead. The WK's powerful shooting and its extra attack for charging also help it bring the Riptide's life expectancy down, and if the Riptide fails its nova charge on the same turn that the WK charges it's likely to get obliterated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is all probably even less feasible when your opponent has multiple WKs and can focus down one Riptide at a time, at range or in CC.

I don't think there's a great answer in the Tau list besides Kroot and maybe Sniper Drones. Stubborn Kroot can hold a WK up for a long time, and sniper weapons are great against the WK in general. Sniper Drones can JSJ and get 2 shots at 24". An Ethereal bumps that to 3.

It's been said already, but I'll say it again - Kroot are the answer. Not just to snipe at the WKs, but in order to goad them into charging. I'm presuming that the Wave Serpents will be deployed in front of, or at the very most to the side of, the WKs - which allows the Wraithguard inside to get up close and personal quickly, they aren't long range units.

This can be used to your advantage. Outflank the Kroot so that they come on slightly behind but close to the WK (say, 12" to 15"). Close enough to present a threat but not close enough to absolutely guarantee being charged. By this point the Wave Serpents will have either disgorged their contents, or be on the cusp of it - so turning the Wraithguard around is either not an option or would be too disruptive. This forces the WKs to either backtrack to deal with the Kroot or ignore them.

If they choose to ignore them they will be severely punished by the Sniper fire. Use the rest of your force to concentrate on the Guard then the Serpents to knock out any chances of objectives being taken, before joining the Kroot in taking the WKs down. On the other hand, if the WKs turn around they won't be engaging the rest of your force, and the Kroot should be able to hold them up. If they do leg it (most likely if you get two or three WKs joined in the same combat), you've still cost it a couple of turns during which you should be mopping up the rest of the Eldar and hence are more than ready to face it.

Lastly, I'll echo the thoughts on glancing down the Serpents rather than relying on single powerful shots, but it shouldn't really be a problem. What with the Kroot turning up for the WKs and everything else being embarked, you should be firing at them and them alone on turn 1 and possibly 2 anyway.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Honestly I can't see a Tau TAC list having a problem with that list. Wave Serpents rely mostly on cover to be as good as they are, and you an negate that easily with Markerlights. Your standard heavy set-up of Longstrike, Skyray and Broadside squad should be able to deal with that. Going second would help you a lot however.

The Wraithknights could be an issue to take out albeit, however they also aren't putting out much hurt against Tau due to their low RoF, and so will probably try and assault which puts them in double tap range of your Plasma suits etc.

Well, I battled Tau with my Serpent Eldar army recently. The first target must be the Pathfinders and I took them down in first turn. Broadsides can do some damage against Serpents and so they were the 2nd target on my list. No Crisis showing up. The Riptide can be ignored for the most part. Funny enough one FD unit went against the Riptide and Tau had no time to shoot them. I rolled bad at the beginning. But nova overloading and meltas took it down.

 Super Ready wrote:


Outflank the Kroot so that they come on slightly behind but close to the WK (say, 12" to 15"). Close enough to present a threat but not close enough to absolutely guarantee being charged. By this point the Wave Serpents will have either disgorged their contents, or be on the cusp of it - so turning the Wraithguard around is either not an option or would be too disruptive. This forces the WKs to either backtrack to deal with the Kroot or ignore them.

Hmmm, remember that the serpent shield fires d6+1 str7 shots that ignore cover. Sounds like an ideal weapon for wiping out swaths of kroot while the wraithknights move on to deal with other things.

Also the kroot sniper gun is only 24" and heavy, so the kroot can't move & shoot (except snapfire). A wraithknight is a jump MC--can easily move out of range.

Tau missile spam? 100+ missiles surely can do some damage to his wraiths?