Puscifer wrote:

 krootman. wrote:

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Loosing 2 mcs a turn is really really bad when you only have 8 and the majority of your killing power is tied up in 2 4 wound flyrants.

God I wish it was that easy. Now keep in mind I was the top ranked bug player at nova (7-1) and I ended up Co winning bracket 3 with fennel (I got downpaired by mistake) so I had my fare share of success against tau. So I feel like I know how to play bugs in a competitive setting. Now I'm far from a perfect player but I can hold my own with the big boys.

That said I pretty much got tabled by tau in kill points. Keep in mind this tau player was a pretty new player as well. That is how bad the tau bug match up can be (especially in kill points.

I know not everyone plays nova format, and west coast gts play out much different then east coast gts, but look at the amount of nid players before and after adeotacon, and you can see what tau did to bugs..

Sorry, I don't know the Nova format, can you please tell me what it is?

I'd love to see your Nid list if possible please? I'm just starting out with them and would like some insight.

As for the Tau, I have no doubt they are powerful, but I believe that the three Tau players in my Metas are not great pilots or even list builders.

My results and wins may be skewed due to this, but as it stands, both my DW and Orks never had big trouble with Tau. Tough games, yes, but never one sided.

DarthOvious wrote:

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:


I agree with this. After their marker lights go down you're looking at a shooting based army that is primarily BS3.

I would argue that the thing that makes riptides and missilesides so popular is that their more survivable than most Tau units. Like I said previously, you'll struggle to just shoot down a riptide.

Tau are a chain of units that allow a player to win. If you know which link to take out first, the chain quickly falls apart.

There is another reason why Riptides and Missilesides are so popular. Their shooting isn't as inaccurate as people think they are. They have a tendency to look at them and go "Bah, they're only BS3" but they forget that Missilesides are twin linked and thus actually hit roughly 75% of the time and they also forget that the riptide has a blast weapon which use the scatter dice, so a third of the time you directly hit anyway and an extra +1" to your scatter compared to BS 4 isn't a lot either, not to mention that the Riptides second weapon is also twin linked.

People need to get out of the frame of mind where they say "Bah, its only BS3" and recognise that means nothing when the extras along with those units make a big difference in whether they hit or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 En Excelsis wrote:
Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

This isn't true. Tau are not all about pathfinders. Have a look at Owens Tau army over at Miniwargaming and you will see he has no pathfinders in his list at all. None whatsoever. The list isn't a bad one either, so its not like he is handicapping himself. There are things in a Tau army you can do to avoid taking Pathfinders in your list if you don't want them.

1) Different source of markerlights (markerdrones, Tetra's, Skyray, Remora Drones, etc, etc.
2) Command & Control Node for twin linked weapons
3) Units with twin linked guns (Missiliesides)
4) Riptides with blast weapons. Other blast weapons in general
5) Hammerheads (BS4), even take Longstrike upgrade for BS5
6) Commanders with drone controllers to make drones within units BS5

Those little bits there make a very large difference to the effectiveness of a Tau army and its shooting without having to solely rely on markerlights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jackal wrote:
Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

Sir, I exalted your post. A good explanation all round. I should point out though that I don't always sit back with my Tau. I use crisis suits with fusions in suicide deep strike fashion into the enemys zone. I also have a habit of jumping my Riptide up as well throughout the game in order to try and get line breaker but this one depends on who I'm playing and whether it is safe to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Speaking of, I find the hypocracy amusing when people state from one hand that "taudar rule the meta" and from the other hand that the TFC and land raiders are "not competitive" when they are the very things the so called "ruler of the meta" cant really handle when used properly.

as a great man once said "A dumb move is not dumb when it works."
Sure LR and TFC were subpar in the 5th meta of power armor spam and melta all over the place, but now that melta has gotten rare and 4+/5+ infantry ruin your day? these two will crush thier way to the top.

I use a bit of melta in my list and I use it for this exact reason, Landraiders. When building my list and seeing my lack of anti AV14 I had, I put some into it. I use Broadsides you see, so I only have one hammerhead tank with Longstrike in it and if he just so happens to miss or get blown up then I need a second option. So Crisis Suits with Fusions and the Riptide will take up that role if Longstrike bites the dust.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 necron99 wrote:
I just started playing Tau and have to deal with daemon players who like to play 4 FMCs running around the board so do tell...how do I kill 1 FMC a turn? A Riptide nova charging his heavy burst cannon would give him 12 rending shots (that get hot!). Attached to commander Buffy the Riptide would become TL, monster hunter and ignore cover. In most cases the MC has iron arm so will almost always be t7+ which means you will need to hit and wound on 6's, right?

When I was at Nova this year there were a ton of people playing daemons with multiple MCs and dogs running around. My first two games were against that type of build so I can only assume the Tau players (and there were a sh*t load of them) had to deal with the daemon MC lists and Tau almost always seemed to come out on top...

These lists are one of the lists that Tau will find more difficult. High toughness monsterous creactures seems to be one of our biggest weaknesses. I had trouble the other week with this very thing when I came up against a daemon player with 4 of them in an apocalypse game. I'm also now having to think about how I go about taking out a Hierophant Bio-Titan. The player down at the store who brought in his Reaver Titan has now stopped bringing that in and brings the Hirophant instead.

 krootman. wrote:
Actually mc heavy lists are pretty easy for tau to deal with, broadsides with a chip comander should have no problem icing a mc per turn. Markerlights cause grounding checks, and if you can strip cover, skyrays, sniper drones, and riptides have no problem killing mcs.

 DarthOvious wrote:
However I need to have a look at a copy of the Daemons codex sometime because he had a unit of Bloodletters which he gave a 2++ save to and I've been told by some other people that he can't do that to the Bloodletters, he can only do it to one of his MCs, since it is only a +1 onto an invulnerable save.

 DarthOvious wrote:

 krootman. wrote:
Actually mc heavy lists are pretty easy for tau to deal with, broadsides with a chip comander should have no problem icing a mc per turn. Markerlights cause grounding checks, and if you can strip cover, skyrays, sniper drones, and riptides have no problem killing mcs.

Its more along the lines of MCs with Ironarm on them or just with a really high toughness value. So talking about a T8 to T10 Great Unclean One for example. I shot a whole Farsight bomb unit with 16 Fusion blasters at this GUC at T9, using Monster Hunter from the Puretide Chip and I didn't even cause a single wound. Granted I was a bit unlucky because my opponent rolled well for his Invulnerable Save and FNP.

However I need to have a look at a copy of the Daemons codex sometime because he had a unit of Bloodletters which he gave a 2++ save to and I've been told by some other people that he can't do that to the Bloodletters, he can only do it to one of his MCs, since it is only a +1 onto an invulnerable save.

In all it wouldn't win tournaments because you don't always effectively roll Ironarm, but when you do roll it those MCs can be tough for a Tau player to deal with.

 krootman. wrote:

Id just play the mission and kill the troops, and wait until he fails iron arm.

The other way he could give blood letters a 2++ is if he cast forewarning on them and then grim them.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

 IHateNids wrote:
My only local Tau player (outside of tournies) only uses a single squad of Pathfinders, and uses their weapons more than their Markers. The Markers are usually to enable multiple units to gain Skyfire. BS3 TL Railsides + a BS4 Hammerhead both into the sky makes my Night Scythes a little nervous to fly in.

Less nervous when flying into a HBC Riptide with re-roll to hit, tank hunter and ignores cover?

 DarthOvious wrote:

 krootman. wrote:

Id just play the mission and kill the troops, and wait until he fails iron arm.

It was an apocalypse game and we did try to knick as many objectives as we could. However we went first and in the last turn they we were able to claim back objectives we took and won the game. My partner in this game even had a royal air force with him and we still couldn't hang onto to those objectives with his flyers.

The other way he could give blood letters a 2++ is if he cast forewarning on them and then grim them.

This sounds like the deal. I was sure he was using psychic powers to do it. I thought that Forewarning was only a 4+ though? Is this correct or am I wrong? I was also told that grimnoire only boosted it by 1.

In other words, I really need to learn how Daemons work.

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

 krootman. wrote:

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

I bet that never gets old

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

BoomWolf wrote:Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

Naw wrote:
There is a reason why Tau in one form or other are on the top of every major tournament. I don't expect Space Marines to make a huge impact there, but I do expect to see SM allied with Tau, e.g.

SM:
Khan on bike
Fully tooled up Chapter master on a bike taking hits
3-4 Grav-gun bike teams with assault bike (MM)
2 TFC's and a Stormtalon

Tau:
Buffmander without guns
Kroot bubblewrap
Missileside team with missl drones
.

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

labmouse42 wrote:

BoomWolf wrote:Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

What makes the Tau overwatch phase so good are the markerlights. Each markerlight can increase the BS of the shooter by one, so if you hit with 2 markerlights, the rest of the overwatch shots are at BS3, for example.
This is how you can get an 'extra turn of shooting'.

You are correct. Its not a true extra turn, as you cannot control what your going to be shooting at -- but whatever you do shoot at is going to be dead as a doorknob unless its has something like a rerollable 2+ save.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Naw wrote:
There is a reason why Tau in one form or other are on the top of every major tournament. I don't expect Space Marines to make a huge impact there, but I do expect to see SM allied with Tau, e.g.

SM:
Khan on bike
Fully tooled up Chapter master on a bike taking hits
3-4 Grav-gun bike teams with assault bike (MM)
2 TFC's and a Stormtalon

Tau:
Buffmander without guns
Kroot bubblewrap
Missileside team with missl drones
.

This is very much like the army I am currently building. I'm not going with kroot, however. They don't bring anything to the table that 30 scouting, outflanking bikes cannot do better. Instead I think fire warriors supporting backfield objectives are better.

I also don't think the chapter master is needed. Those points can be better spent on a riptide and storm talon.

Inigo Montoya wrote:

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Umm - what???!?!?!?!?!?!!!!?!!?
Nids DON'T beat Tau - not if the Tau general know what he is doing. Nids struggle to beat 2nd and some 3rd tier armies at this point.
One of two things is going on here: The Tau players you play against have no idea how to run their army or you are a master troll of biblical proportions.