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Do they (the tau) have to worry about strength of attacks or the number?

strength is usually the issue. They get pummelled first, they take a lot of hits and wounds botyh and their retrun attacks aren't awesome, especially when charged (which is nearly all the time if in combat at all).

Yeah, they are that bad.

As a CSM player, my strategy against Tau is usually to get into cc early using large bike squads. I usually bring at least two, counting on one getting shot up before he gets there.

I have had games where very small units have made it into cc with Tau and wiped out unit after unit. You really do have to rely on shooting with Tau.

A drop pod list or 6 grav centurion,ironclad,stormraven deathstar will prob destroy tau armies

If you know you are playing Tau best to make your army quick to get accross the board. Some shooting support as well can be taken.

1) Bikes are a good idea.

2) A Landriader might make it across unless your opponent takes three hammerheads with rail guns.

3) Drop podding in some sternguard is a good idea but try to stay out of LOS from any interceptor units

4) If there are no interceptor units then drop podding with flamers is also a good idea. Especially to take out the 4+ save units like fire warriors and pathfinders.

5) A plasma cannon devastator squad is good against Broadside units. I imagine grav guns will be as well.

6) Grav guns will probably be good against Riptides.

So in essence, a good list that I would be worried about would probably look like this.

HQ - Chapter Master Beatstick ~ 250pts

Two Troops squads ~ 350pts

Terminator Unit ~ 225pts

Landraider ~ 250pts

Devastator Unit ~ 180pts

Bike Squad ~ 200pts

sternguard with drop pod ~ 220pts

So for about between 1650-1750pts, you could run a list like this.

Not even kroon do good, 3 ork boyz and a power claw nob can handle 20 kroot if the Orks charge

They're gak.

Even my gants kill Tau in cc.

Tau in CC....

While in theory, even an equally-numbered group of grots would probably beat non-suit units, mine tend to work out well there, riflebutting people in the head and making them flee...

On a slightly more serious note, most everything tau dies horribly in assault. kroot can take on Geq, a crisis suit can take a marine, but that's practically it.
Until you reach riptides or HQ.
Riptides can take quite a beating, and with being an MC they can also kill a few guys if they manage to actually hit anything.
Farsight and Rmy'r fare quite well in assault, and will beat non-assault squads with relative ease.
A properly equipped commander can also get the job done against units who are not designed for assault.
Anu'shi, if you ever run into him, also works decently in assault. except he costs too much for a mere ethereal that is "ok" at assault. ditto anu'va guards.

Man tell all that to the unit of fire warrior that some how poked out the eyes of 4 of my 5 terminators in one assault ><

Dice happen but yeah they are terrible for the most part.

Tell that to the bezerker drone who swept an entire IG blob after his suit was killed in a flurry of bayonets.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Tau in CC....

While in theory, even an equally-numbered group of grots would probably beat non-suit units, mine tend to work out well there, riflebutting people in the head and making them flee...

The fact that grots compare to tau in cc just blows my mind. Grots couldn't stab a fish if it was 8' by 4' , nailed to a board, and, oh yeah, dead.

Yeah but those grots wouldn't let that stop em from trying. Cause the orks will eat em if they dont.

 Jancoran wrote:
Yeah but those grots wouldn't let that stop em from trying. Cause the orks will eat em if they dont.

Yeah you got that right.

I have seen Fire Warriors lose to naked IG. Neither squad was full and the fight lasted 4-5 rounds.

Combat is bad for tau but it is not impossible. Firewarriors and pathfinders stand no chance, but crisis suits, riptides, commanders and farsight do really well. Crisis suits can usually take out anything under a meq. Against non-cc units the riptide can usually smash its way into things, but it can also get tar pitted easily. Commander in iridium armor can be really good at contesting objective.

Farsight is the only real cc unit for tau. WS5 S5 I5 A4, He can not take on a real CC HQ but he has no problem tearing apart whats left of a marine squad. Because you have to take farsight if you want O'vesa I was thinking about farsight with a crisis team of two 2xplasma + flamer and one 2xplasma + vector thrusters. They can deep strike without scattering to pump out 14 s6 ap2 shots or 10 s6 ap2 shots and 2 flamers. This should kill just about any unit it drops next to. Once it is down it can start going around shooting units, weakening them and then assaulting to finish it up. Between the farsight, the flamers and the vector thrusters this is a really risky team to assault.

Talking about dice and low numbers, a little while back my fathers SM scout squad assaulted my pathfinders and paid the price in cc (after all Overwatch missed), and then his termies died after assaulting my XV8's.

Talk about awful luck (for him).

Also cadre fireblades are pretty nifty for holding the line, for slightly more than an ethereal, you can double your volume of fire, have 19 wounds in a squad (maybe some invulns too), ws4 and ld 9. It's not great and you only increase volume of fire in your shooting phase but for holding the line against cc it seems to be good enough to work for me.

But it really says something about your army's melee capability when your specifically melee auxiliaries are used for shooting more than melee...

They are the worst CC army in the game, by design. They are supposed to be that bad to help balance their shooting. Doesn't really work though. 6th edition being shooty and all.

They are intended to be the worst army in cc, and for the most part they are.
However simply stating they are the worst doesn't provide any comparative insight.

Sure Tau have the lowest WS of most units, but then again with the (imo) poorly designed WS table, they are still hitting most non-dedicated cc units on 4's. They are still hitting a Daemon prince on 5's, which is the same as a WS4 marine.
The WS table does not provided enough pros/cons to combats involving units with a large disparity between their weapon skills. Because of this, whilst WS2 is still poor, it is not completely useless.

The base toughness of 3 and 4 for most tau units are the same as most units from other codices, so they are no more fragile than other armies in this regard.

Their armour saves are pretty decent tbh, The 4+ save of a firewarrior puts it ahead of non-cc eldar and IG squads in terms of survivability, the battlsuits are basically marines.

Initiative is the biggest weakness. Being struck first by most combatants, who win combat due to having more attacks, and then being swept easily because of it is the biggest weakness of tau imo. Almost everything, from basic Firewarrior sqauds up to the mighty riptide is vulnerable to this. In some situations part of this issue can be mitigated, using cover vs enemies without grenades, or equipping firewarriors with defensive grenades can help with keep combat as close to a draw as possible, however in many cases it can not, and the tau will suffer because of it.

So, are tau so terrible in cc that charging your IG guardsman squad into them will ensure an easy win? I would say no. (In this situation, attack per attack, a guardsman has the same chance of killing a firewarrior, as a firewarrior does of killing a guardsman, at around 16.5%)

However if the tau are beaten in cc, and then fail their morale, then they are the worst at cc in the game, as their low I will in most cases cause them to be swept.

I would go as far as to say that two units in the Tau dex that are not bad at all at cc. These would be:
A 3 man crisis suit team, with no weapons for a little over 60 points, is better value for points than a base SM assault squad when it comes to cc. It has str 5 attacks, 1 more wound, jetpack movement as well as costing 15 points less.
The Riptide, because nothing sucks more than having your Daemon prince 1hit KO by a smash attack, not that I'm bitter or anything.

As other people have said earlier, a lot of these issue never come to light, as to get into cc you first have to get past a turn or two of tau shooting, and then face a potentially horrifying number of overwatch shots.

Tau are so bad at CC, they'd lose to another Tau.

Another thing people don't seem to remember is they are so bad im CC, they're great.

10 man squad of FW gets charged by anything remotely nasty in CC and they will either get wiped or run away... leaving that nasty CC unit sat right in the middle of your army, usually out of cover, ready to be torn a new one.

 AngelGrinder wrote:
Another thing people don't seem to remember is they are so bad im CC, they're great.

10 man squad of FW gets charged by anything remotely nasty in CC and they will either get wiped or run away... leaving that nasty CC unit sat right in the middle of your army, usually out of cover, ready to be torn a new one.

Mmm... my experience with Fire Warriors is a little different from that.

My CSM bikers do annihilate FW squads when they catch up to them. Tau players tend to move their other troops away once this happens, creating issues for themselves trying to shoot said bikers.

I might lose a biker or two to focus fire after eating some Tau unit, but generally don't get wiped out. Once you are close enough for assaults, the game changes.

Having had a squad of 5 scout snipers tie up a squad of 3 crisis suits (they had come down the side of the board to where my snipers were camped to try and get side armour shots on some of my units) for 4 turns and finally kill them all, I have to say that yeah, everyone above has the right of it.

Unless you offered a serious sacrifice to the dice gods or use one of the 3-4 melee useful units you do NOT want to be in close combat with anyone.

 Gideon999 wrote:
Having had a squad of 5 scout snipers tie up a squad of 3 crisis suits (they had come down the side of the board to where my snipers were camped to try and get side armour shots on some of my units) for 4 turns and finally kill them all, I have to say that yeah, everyone above has the right of it.

Unless you offered a serious sacrifice to the dice gods or use one of the 3-4 melee useful units you do NOT want to be in close combat with anyone.

This example seems more like good luck on your part tbh.
The scouts need 3+ to hit, 4+ to wound, and the crisis have a 3+ save, that's about 11% chance to take a wound per attack.
The crisis suits need 4+ to hit, 3+ to wound, and then the scouts have a 4+ save, which comes in at 16.5% chance per attack.
The scouts have less wounds and less attacks than the crisis team, though do strike first. Statistically I'd still put my money on the crisis team, even if they are tau.

Tau are probably one of the best units in close combat. Althougth they only hit on 6's(sometimes 5s) they get so many attacks each and go first, even before hammer of wrath. With a high strength and a significant AP value it is really difficult to win against tau in assault. It is almost like you are fighting half the army when you charge.

Seriously one of my friends has built into his list for his Farsight allies a unit of 3 crisis suits with double flamers. They are scoring troops that get 6d3 flamer hits on overwatch as well as with supporting fire. He hides them out of LOS but within 6 of his major units. Royal pain in the ass.

 Leth wrote:
Tau are probably one of the best units in close combat. Althougth they only hit on 6's(sometimes 5s) they get so many attacks each and go first, even before hammer of wrath. With a high strength and a significant AP value it is really difficult to win against tau in assault. It is almost like you are fighting half the army when you charge.

Seriously one of my friends has built into his list for his Farsight allies a unit of 3 crisis suits with double flamers. They are scoring troops that get 6d3 flamer hits on overwatch as well as with supporting fire. He hides them out of LOS but within 6 of his major units. Royal pain in the ass.

Unless it has been FAQ'd no unit needs a 6 to hit unless there are special rules at play. Even WS1 attacking a WS10 model only needs a 5+.
Also crisis suits only get overwatch on 1 weapon, they cannot fire both, so that would be 3d3 auto-hits. They only get to fire 2 weapons in the shooting phase.

Beyond this I would agree, crisis suits, if kept cheap, are not bad at cc.

Edit: Ok I guess you mean overwatch with the first part of your post, not cc. Sorry about that.

Is there a tactic to make tau better at close combat? Ex: Cut down the combat units and charge them for the extra attack?

 frankofranko wrote:
Is there a tactic to make tau better at close combat? Ex: Cut down the combat units and charge them for the extra attack?

Allies? Outside of that there is not really anything in the tau book that would really make a solid CC unit for the points.

If it werent for leadership issues crisis suits with hit and run would be a pretty decent way to tie em up, but you cant risk losing the assault and getting swept.

 frankofranko wrote:
Is there a tactic to make tau better at close combat?

Nothing you can do with Tau will ever let them compete with real assault units, the most you can possibly do is hope to maybe have a 50/50 shot at killing a squad of guardsmen or a single surviving tactical marine. Usually "better close combat" means you fail by a small enough margin to stay locked in combat and protect the enemy unit from your real threats. You want to get your squad killed as efficiently as possible, which means things like reducing the number of incoming attacks are actually penalties.

Also, don't forget that Tau have two categories of units: infantry with rapid fire weapons that can't charge after they shoot (and you always shoot instead of charging) and JSJ suits that always JSJ away from combat instead of into it. You will rarely, if ever, find yourself in a situation where charging the enemy is better than shooting them.

 Peregrine wrote:

 frankofranko wrote:
Is there a tactic to make tau better at close combat?

Nothing you can do with Tau will ever let them compete with real assault units, the most you can possibly do is hope to maybe have a 50/50 shot at killing a squad of guardsmen or a single surviving tactical marine. Usually "better close combat" means you fail by a small enough margin to stay locked in combat and protect the enemy unit from your real threats. You want to get your squad killed as efficiently as possible, which means things like reducing the number of incoming attacks are actually penalties.

Also, don't forget that Tau have two categories of units: infantry with rapid fire weapons that can't charge after they shoot (and you always shoot instead of charging) and JSJ suits that always JSJ away from combat instead of into it. You will rarely, if ever, find yourself in a situation where charging the enemy is better than shooting them.

Not quite true, the do have 4 Assault Weapon units, that can shoot and charge, but outside of a Gundrone squad, I done see this really happening much.