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Hi all

Just wondering what strategies people have used succesfully to do this??

Rhinos just seem to get instakilled, giving away first the blood point.

I like the look of Scouts with teleport homer to pull in a bunch of Terminators and get into assault asap, but I havent used this.

Really look forward to your responses.

I think what you are looking for is drop pods

Get in there with a few and wreck some face.
Take 3 so two comes in first with some heavy hitters like stern guard then turn two come in with some troops to sweep up.

Take a bunch with teleport homers then reinforce them turn two.

Etc

The reason i do not like scouts is that Tau will have anti cover in general.

What people seems to miss, is that to take tau in CC, you dont need fancy CC units.
You need to soften them up before a regular guy shows up to bitchslap them.

Tacticals do just fine with a thunderfire/whirlwind or two lobbing blasts for a bit before you move in.


And I'm talking as a tau, the way to assault us is regular dudes with backup blasts, preferably ones that ignore cover.

Drop pod with dreadnought with TL HF, and HF. Kill some seriouse important infantry.

Maybe multiple of these.

If your going dreads, probably should carefully place them to avoid EWO Broadsides, probably ironclads are good.

Drop Pods with stern guard or some similar flamy unit, they have a better chance to survive then a dred

 BoomWolf wrote:

Tacticals do just fine with a thunderfire/whirlwind or two lobbing blasts for a bit before you move in.


And I'm talking as a tau, the way to assault us is regular dudes with backup blasts, preferably ones that ignore cover.

I really can't agree more. Normal units will generally do fine against Tau with no combat upgrades because 1.) You'll be doing the charging 98% of the time so you decide when the unit is softened up 2.) You're removing enemy models before they ever get a chance to hit back and 3.) All you need to do is hit them a bit to make them break and then run them down.

Tau have a hard time dealing with massed drop pods, since the majority of Tau's answer to elite infantry is large blasts that scatter.

MSU spam also works really well and it's really annoying to give a large blast the ability to ignore cover on a small 5 man squad and having it scatter on to the other combat squaded 5 man unit and still get their cover saves.

For the Tau players.

What about combat squaded assault marines?

If a 5 man assault marine squad gets into combat with 15 fire warriors you are still going to kill them all right?

Make sure to lob allot of shots at the units behind what you wanna assault, and if you can take advantage of focus fire to widen the gap between what you want to assault, and the rest of the army.

Likewise, if you can drop barrage smack on the head of an ethereal in the back field, this is a good thing.

I ran into this this weekend. Here is the issue I see currently, Tau allied with GK with Cortez. A few of the big suits equiped with intercept and skyfire, broadsides equipped the same, and Cortez with a Storm squad. They have the long range fire power to pummel your longe range fire power. Even if you get a hit or two on the dangerous suits, they could care less since they are MCs not vehicles like you own dreadnought who can die in one hit. Land near them and now you deal with the Storm squad ability or Cortez having the squad shoot anything that comes down nearby.

Even a full Drop pod list you have what, maybe 4 pods on the first turn, three pods get shot up by one each of the three tau, and all four by Cortez squad. This doesnt even take into account the rest of the army, this is just the castled fire base.

bodazoka wrote:
For the Tau players.

What about combat squaded assault marines?

If a 5 man assault marine squad gets into combat with 15 fire warriors you are still going to kill them all right?

The answer is never assault marines. They'll just get destroyed extremely quick, and they really aren't much faster since you can't use the jump pack in movement and assault phases. You'll end up failing a difficult terrain test and getting shot.

Just use flamers and other ignore cover weapons.

Raven guard assault marines then :-P

 BoomWolf wrote:
Raven guard assault marines then :-P

Above rule still applies, the answer is still never assault marines :p There are so many threads on why they are completely awful, ravenguard ones might be slightly better but still no where near useful.

Col. Dash wrote:
I ran into this this weekend. Here is the issue I see currently, Tau allied with GK with Cortez. A few of the big suits equiped with intercept and skyfire, broadsides equipped the same, and Cortez with a Storm squad. They have the long range fire power to pummel your longe range fire power. Even if you get a hit or two on the dangerous suits, they could care less since they are MCs not vehicles like you own dreadnought who can die in one hit. Land near them and now you deal with the Storm squad ability or Cortez having the squad shoot anything that comes down nearby.

Even a full Drop pod list you have what, maybe 4 pods on the first turn, three pods get shot up by one each of the three tau, and all four by Cortez squad. This doesnt even take into account the rest of the army, this is just the castled fire base.

If his broadsides were equipped this way, he was cheating.

Drop Pods. It has already been stated before but it should be stated again.

Flying Toaster wrote:
Drop Pods. It has already been stated before but it should be stated again.

Unfortunately most balanced tau lists will counter this very easily. While there are certain holes in using a riptide to intercept pod units, Tau have access to kroot. They can provide a large amount of bubblewrap with the kroot bodies (remember they don't need to completely fill the area they intend to bubble wrap, they can leave drop pod sized holes in their formation for pods to scatter into, if a pod lands inside this 'trap' the unit will be unable to disembark and destroyed). Your pods will not land in flamer/melta range of any of my core units, you will murder a hundred or so points of kroot and then loose half your army to being within 15' of an ethereal buffed tau gunline.

Pods were the answer to tau last edition (I had many a nightmare facing such lists) but the new codex has given the tau many quality counters to pods.

Col. Dash wrote:
I ran into this this weekend. Here is the issue I see currently, Tau allied with GK with Cortez. A few of the big suits equiped with intercept and skyfire, broadsides equipped the same, and Cortez with a Storm squad. They have the long range fire power to pummel your longe range fire power. Even if you get a hit or two on the dangerous suits, they could care less since they are MCs not vehicles like you own dreadnought who can die in one hit. Land near them and now you deal with the Storm squad ability or Cortez having the squad shoot anything that comes down nearby.

Even a full Drop pod list you have what, maybe 4 pods on the first turn, three pods get shot up by one each of the three tau, and all four by Cortez squad. This doesnt even take into account the rest of the army, this is just the castled fire base.

You have summed it up perfectly.

Even if they dont have GK ally they can tarpit you with Kroot.

I was looking at going ally with IG to get the heavy artillery. But even that can be shot up easily, there is only so much cover to hide behind.

Wait for like 6 days, then take a look at the new options available to marines. Speeders are supposed to get weapons with the blind USR

scommy wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
I ran into this this weekend. Here is the issue I see currently, Tau allied with GK with Cortez. A few of the big suits equiped with intercept and skyfire, broadsides equipped the same, and Cortez with a Storm squad. They have the long range fire power to pummel your longe range fire power. Even if you get a hit or two on the dangerous suits, they could care less since they are MCs not vehicles like you own dreadnought who can die in one hit. Land near them and now you deal with the Storm squad ability or Cortez having the squad shoot anything that comes down nearby.

Even a full Drop pod list you have what, maybe 4 pods on the first turn, three pods get shot up by one each of the three tau, and all four by Cortez squad. This doesnt even take into account the rest of the army, this is just the castled fire base.

You have summed it up perfectly.

Even if they dont have GK ally they can tarpit you with Kroot.

I was looking at going ally with IG to get the heavy artillery. But even that can be shot up easily, there is only so much cover to hide behind.

How can kroot possibly tarpit marines?!
They got no armor to speak of and hardly any assault power of their own-meaning they WILL lose combat, and with low Ld, they will also brake from it, and with low I will get run down to boot.
Kroot cannot really fight anything in combat unless it has 5+ armor or worse.


Also, as said, there is NO way to get broadsides with both skyfire and interceptor. at all. ever. with any shenanigans.

I usually play IG and Orks, but I have had major issues with 6th edition Tau, so I was thinking about something like an allied BA force (I have a few units already) to deal with those pesky suits, tanks and warriors hanging back on the edge of the table.

The new SM release got me thinking that I have always wanted a Sternguard squad, so what about the following in a drop pod:
10 Sternguard
3 w. combi-meltas, 1 w. heavy flamer, sergeant w. PF.

I can't remember the points cost, as I don't have my BA codex with me right now, but it's about 260 points in total right?

They do something that my IG and Orks have a hard time doing: taking out multiwound 2+ save suits (or a hammerhead if it presents itself a target) and lots of Firewarriors in cover. The fist is to deal with a Riptide or other suits.
Remember that this unit has to be very TAC to fit my TAC army. My meta is very diverse, and I never know what army, or even what type of army I am going to face in advance, so this unit should be able to take out Tyranids, DA, BT, Eldar, DE or Daemons.

 Bonde wrote:
I usually play IG and Orks, but I have had major issues with 6th edition Tau, so I was thinking about something like an allied BA force (I have a few units already) to deal with those pesky suits, tanks and warriors hanging back on the edge of the table.

The new SM release got me thinking that I have always wanted a Sternguard squad, so what about the following in a drop pod:
10 Sternguard
3 w. combi-meltas, 1 w. heavy flamer, sergeant w. PF.

I can't remember the points cost, as I don't have my BA codex with me right now, but it's about 260 points in total right?

They do something that my IG and Orks have a hard time doing: taking out multiwound 2+ save suits (or a hammerhead if it presents itself a target) and lots of Firewarriors in cover. The fist is to deal with a Riptide or other suits.
Remember that this unit has to be very TAC to fit my TAC army. My meta is very diverse, and I never know what army, or even what type of army I am going to face in advance, so this unit should be able to take out Tyranids, DA, BT, Eldar, DE or Daemons.

Sternguard seems like a good idea to me. You wanting to saturate the suits with wounds from hellfire or just melta them?

Col. Dash wrote:
Even a full Drop pod list you have what, maybe 4 pods on the first turn, three pods get shot up by one each of the three tau, and all four by Cortez squad. This doesnt even take into account the rest of the army, this is just the castled fire base.

That's a little bit exaggerated, no? Why would someone drop 4 pods within 12 inches of Coteaz?

If you want to assault Tau, you do it with your entire army, not with a few units.

Tau are made to eradicate a few units trying to get at them. They are not built to destroy an entire army coming together at them.

It doesn't take awesome things to outpunch a Tau. Your generic Marines will do just fine when they get there. But you have to commit to it as an army wide effort.

scommy wrote:

 Bonde wrote:
I usually play IG and Orks, but I have had major issues with 6th edition Tau, so I was thinking about something like an allied BA force (I have a few units already) to deal with those pesky suits, tanks and warriors hanging back on the edge of the table.

The new SM release got me thinking that I have always wanted a Sternguard squad, so what about the following in a drop pod:
10 Sternguard
3 w. combi-meltas, 1 w. heavy flamer, sergeant w. PF.

I can't remember the points cost, as I don't have my BA codex with me right now, but it's about 260 points in total right?

They do something that my IG and Orks have a hard time doing: taking out multiwound 2+ save suits (or a hammerhead if it presents itself a target) and lots of Firewarriors in cover. The fist is to deal with a Riptide or other suits.
Remember that this unit has to be very TAC to fit my TAC army. My meta is very diverse, and I never know what army, or even what type of army I am going to face in advance, so this unit should be able to take out Tyranids, DA, BT, Eldar, DE or Daemons.

Sternguard seems like a good idea to me. You wanting to saturate the suits with wounds from hellfire or just melta them?

Both if I can. If the opponent doesn't have tanks, the meltaguns are going to shoot suits. Granted, the unit is better at taking on fire warriors, but the poison 2+ ammo should stack up plenty of wounds with the flamer. I really like Sternguard as they are very all around, 300 points for a squad without drop pod is just very expensive to me as an IG player.

I'd say we need to see exactly how the new rules turn out, but if 5 man combat squads can take pods, you might be able to simply overwhelm them with an iron rain.

Assuming a huge Kroot buble wrap and drop pods on 5 man squads: On the first turn just drop a few pods worth of combat squads. They will decimate any kroot bubble wrap with simple rapid fire bolter rounds, maybe throw in a flamer for some BBQ fun, then laugh as they run.

Hopefully you will be close enough to prevent them from using their big scatter templates, and if you have to go to ground and use cover if you can. Don't worry about losing some of these squads, as they are sacrificial, and chances are one squad will survive to contest an objective

I usually run 2x TFC, so will use these to soften up any units that that might still be in the way and to hopefully send some tau units to ground (also to draw fire).

Then, drop your heavy hitting pods wherever you want on subsequent turns

We'll have to see how the rules shape up in a few days, but this might be one way of overcoming this.

You are correct. It is a bit exaggerated but in the situation I was in, 2 Riptides(skyfire intercept), Cortez(also intercept on crack) and his storm squad(intercept on crack) and 3 HVM Broadsides(intercept) in one piece of cover(or at least part of the base). And the entire center of the board was locked up along with the objective 12" in front of them(relic). So yes I could get close without being in that 12" but any amount of drifting that direction and boom, or any drifting away and now my meltas arent in range.

By the way, this idea of dropping all over the Tau is great, but how TAC is it? What happens when you bring this list against Tyranids or even BA? I feel that this is tailoring for Tau, and tailoring is not usually an option for many players.

You can chose not to pod in with them and instead use them as walls.

Martel732 wrote:
By the way, this idea of dropping all over the Tau is great, but how TAC is it? What happens when you bring this list against Tyranids or even BA? I feel that this is tailoring for Tau, and tailoring is not usually an option for many players.

The nice thing about the pod army is that you don't have to use the pod if you don't want to

Against any army like nids or BA, simply deploy your marines on the board and use the empty pods to harass / control the movement of the enemy.

You can block line of sight with pods to ensure that your vulnerable units have more protection, or to shut down their long range fire support.

That way you can deny the enemy a good approach / or funnel them into overlapping fire lanes to get maximal effect from your units in a choke point.

In the case of the iron rain scenario (5 man combat squads w/ pods) some of those units could be used as a fire brake to slow the nids in particular, to ensure that your gunline has more time to deal out the long range pain.

This works especially well if at least one or two of your pods have beacons on them.

I am reticent to give this advice since the new SM Codex is only a week away from being in player's hands and I can't say what changes have been made. Nonetheless I would like to remind people that Vanguard Vets are a very real option. If you discount the Dark Eldar, almost nothing in the game can assault on the turn in which it arrives. Properly equipped Veterans cost a fortune in points, but nothing says "Greetings from the IoM" quite like a squad of these guys dropping into the thick of it and slicing you to ribbons with power weapons.