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How do I get across the board. The new castled triptide seems impenetrable. I can't even make it across the table with a single unit?

Battlewagons with Custom Force Field Meks I have seen work pretty well. You get Armor 14 and the ability to move and shoot along with a ward save, friend at my FLGS does this and has beaten Tau Gunlines with it.

Drop storm boyz and commandos in behind them.

Use deffcoptas.

If they are castled, they are probably clumped, so you can drop arty on them from big gunz.

ALWAYS take advantage of terrain to block line of sight; if he can't see you, he can't shoot at you.

@ maceria: seeker missiles don't need LOS.
@ gmaleron: most riptide / broadside load outs ignore cover


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I have been considering DS stormboyz and zagstruck.

Seeker missiles don't need LoS only if someone else has marker lighted the unit first.
A competitive tau list will most likely only have 2 sources of marker lights/ignore cover. Anything more tends to eat too much into actual killy power.

I'm not saying its a good match up. Its still an uphill cliff battle for the poor ork player.


Use the lobbaz to snipe the guy's ethereal. If you can kill that linch pin, the rest of the tau army will have serious moral problems. I can't tell you how many times I've had critical troop units flee the table because of Tau's piss poor leadership.

But yes, as others touched here, your best bets are battlewagons and/or lobbaz. Tau, unless its a wierd list filled with hammerheads, can't really deal with AV 14 on turn 1. They tend to die rather quickly on turn two if crisis teams arrive to plan, however.

So what do you do with your wagonz? Don't play the tau's game. He wants you to mass charge him. He's got more than enough firepower to wipe every last boyz squad off the table before you'll ever touch a single kroot.

if you want to win, you're going to play the most boring, unfun game of 40k ever. You're going to do your best to stay out of 30-36 inch range, hide your boyz and wagonz, and sit on objectives.

Tau really have problem getting objectives. They have to outflank kroot or wipe you off said objectives. If you've got half or more of the objectives in your deployment, sit on them. You're going to spend the next 5-6 turns pick up boyz, but if you play smart and minimize your losses as best as possible, you'll still have boyz on objectives on turn 7.

Remember, Tau Smart Missiles are only 30 inches. These are the ones that ignore cover/LoS. They only come on riptides, broadsides, and devilfish variants. Broadsides are most dangerous because they can bring the most SMS. Don't get me wrong, riptides are super dangerous too, but this is for the purposes of hiding out of LoS/in cover and praying not to die.

Second, play timid with your wagons. Hide them, bubble wrap them, and be ready for the inevitable deep strike by suits. If they are properly protected, they will survive the deep strike, and will rumble forward after this threat has passed. Remember, outside hammerheads, Tau don't really have the mass STR 9 shooting needed to pop a AV 14 vehicle at long range. Even after you're ready to move your wagons out, remember, DON'T CHARGE HIM. He wants that. You're playing an objective game at this point. Use your wagons to grab hard to get objectives etc.


Oh, and if you're playing Kill Points, God have mercy on your soul. Sorry, thems the breaks when you play a 4th edition codex against one of the best armies in 6th edition.

Yes, but if he is firing a seeker missile out of LOS then he needs to have LOS from markerlights to tag your unit, and then if a model is firing seeker missiles, all their other shooting must be at the same target, which means he's wasting an entire units shooting for a couple S8AP3 shots, which shouldn't really Orks.

Seeker missiles are also an extremely limited resource in a Tau army.

Seeker Missiles require a markerlight in order to have the ignores cover and no LOS needed bonus. Also, its S8 it can only glance your battlewagons unless it has a side angle somehow. Aside from Skyrays i dont even know anyone that brings seekermissiles, which is sad because i want to badly lol.

That being said i really dont know what would be a valid tactic outside luck. I play both orks and tau, never fielded either against either army before. But i match the codexes and go "Hmm...orks be fethed if i cant pass bikernobz saves to hell and back"

I have a feeling with the new dex coming out orks are either going to 1) completely change how they survive to no longer require as much cover (since its so easy to ignore these days) or 2) they are going to become so bloody cheap we dont care about cover lol.

I use 30 Lootas, Boyz, BikerNobz and Lobbas. The Lobbas and Lootas out range most of Tau shooting, so I keep back my NobBikerz until turn 3 or more, time is on our side. The Riptides usually move up (from boredom I guess) and then my Bikerz and boyz move up at Shoota them to death. I've never loss to Tau.

Just ignore all Riptides with your Loota and Lobba fire. Lobbas are great Precision/Ignore intervening terrain weapons. Go for all his troops and such.

@pipe: you've never lost to tau playing Orks? I will fly to your home town where you can tech me sen-sei. I pledge fealty!

@Goresaw: I'm considering a total "try hard" list at 1999+1 that is 8 deffrolla wagons. If I charge in, I can tank shock without suffering the massed overwatch fire.

Do you guys have an order of importance for target priority w Tau? Start w ethereal?

Playing against Tau was what got me to stop playing my newly aquired Ork army a couple of months ago.
I would simply move forward with everything (buggies, trukks, BW's, deffkoptas) turn one to get in range. Then I would loose half my army in his shooting phase. I would then move up with the scraps of my army (now out of their transports) in the hope of getting in range, and then he would simply shoot the rest off the board.

I then switched back to IG, since the only way to play in 6th edition with just a slightly old army, is to do a gunline.

 PipeAlley wrote:
I use 30 Lootas, Boyz, BikerNobz and Lobbas. The Lobbas and Lootas out range most of Tau shooting, so I keep back my NobBikerz until turn 3 or more, time is on our side. The Riptides usually move up (from boredom I guess) and then my Bikerz and boyz move up at Shoota them to death. I've never loss to Tau.

Just ignore all Riptides with your Loota and Lobba fire. Lobbas are great Precision/Ignore intervening terrain weapons. Go for all his troops and such.

Are you a wizard? No seriously, are you some kind of secret superhuman creature with control over probability and reality itself?

 doktor_g wrote:
How do I get across the board. The new castled triptide seems impenetrable. I can't even make it across the table with a single unit?

I honestly think you need to wait until next year when the new 'dex arrives for the orks. My guess is that now that GW has made a kabillion bucks from selling riptides and broadsides the orks are going to, somehow, break the meta. Don't know how but some how assault will be viable for them.

As it stands even if you could get across the board and manage to get into assault you'll be dealing with a ton of over watch from all of the supporting fire which everyone has except the kroot. Deep strike is not really viable as most suits will be equipped with early waning so what ever shows up will get pie plated by the riptides before you even get to shoot.

I'd say your best bet for at least getting there are trukks. Lots and lots of trukks. You may get lucky and have a few ramshackle in the right direction

I'm also waiting for the new Ork Codex untill I dare taking on Tau again. That also gives me some time to paint up more of the army.

I played an Ork gun line last week and wreaked havoc on my buddies MC Eldar. Thread here. I can't wait to try 3X15 Lootas in BWs or 2 and a Big Gun battery on a Quad Gun (or even Icarus Lascannon) behind an ADL against Tau. Trukk Boyz/Grots in reserves to hide a few rounds and then roll out to grab objectives. Maybe even Snikrot to deliver a Bike Boss or 2 with Skorchas and 2 Burna Boyz to the far side of the table. Does your local store play with Forge World? Ally in an Imperial Amour 8 Dread Mob Pain Boss with Snikrot to make the unit even more survivable. Hit them on the end of their line to limit the number of shots they can get off and just roll up the flank.

 Bonde wrote:
I'm also waiting for the new Ork Codex untill I dare taking on Tau again. That also gives me some time to paint up more of the army.

After what I went through with my crons and tau I wouldn't buy anything new for Orks. The only thing that survived in my cron army were the warriors and scarabs. Wraiths and spiders got new models and the top tier toys like night scythes had to be purchased. My destroyers got nerfed to the point where they are rarely included. Same with tau really. Had to replace my old braodsides and buy three riptides which comprise the bulk of my list (not counting the troop units). Therefore I'm confident GW will come up with a couple of new 'gotta have' ork models and make some of the worst ork models that no one bought the best through new rules

 Vineheart01 wrote:

I have a feeling with the new dex coming out orks are either going to 1) completely change how they survive to no longer require as much cover (since its so easy to ignore these days) or 2) they are going to become so bloody cheap we dont care about cover lol.

I'm silently rooting for the Kustom Force Field to grant an Invulnerable Save instead of a Cover Save for this exact reason. With all the cover-denying spam, and the changes to Assault, Orks just can't cut it anymore.

Turtling up in Battlewagons is our only way to keep Boyz alive anymore.


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 necron99 wrote:
Had to replace my old braodsides and buy three riptides which comprise the bulk of my list (not counting the troop units).

 Ghenghis Jon wrote:


I played an Ork gun line last week and wreaked havoc on my buddies MC Eldar. Thread here. I can't wait to try 3X15 Lootas in BWs or 2 and a Big Gun battery on a Quad Gun (or even Icarus Lascannon) behind an ADL against Tau. Trukk Boyz/Grots in reserves to hide a few rounds and then roll out to grab objectives. Maybe even Snikrot to deliver a Bike Boss or 2 with Skorchas and 2 Burna Boyz to the far side of the table. Does your local store play with Forge World? Ally in an Imperial Amour 8 Dread Mob Pain Boss with Snikrot to make the unit even more survivable. Hit them on the end of their line to limit the number of shots they can get off and just roll up the flank.

Unfortunately, I haven't really talked them into using FW units yet. I have been working on them for some time, since I already own a few FW models for my IG army and 4-5 IA books. We use a very strict army selection system, that disallows any kind of spam everytime we play, so I can't really take duplicates of Biker bosses, though I am allowed to have two battlewagons and two trukks at 1650 points. I would absolutely love to have a Mega Dread, though.

I don't want to buy a lot of the most powerful units (like lootas), since the army might change completely when we get a new codex, and I haven't got any lootas to begin with. I started my own Ork army in anticipation for the new codex, it just took a bit longer than I expected to be released.

 necron99 wrote:

 Bonde wrote:
I'm also waiting for the new Ork Codex untill I dare taking on Tau again. That also gives me some time to paint up more of the army.

After what I went through with my crons and tau I wouldn't buy anything new for Orks. The only thing that survived in my cron army were the warriors and scarabs. Wraiths and spiders got new models and the top tier toys like night scythes had to be purchased. My destroyers got nerfed to the point where they are rarely included. Same with tau really. Had to replace my old braodsides and buy three riptides which comprise the bulk of my list (not counting the troop units). Therefore I'm confident GW will come up with a couple of new 'gotta have' ork models and make some of the worst ork models that no one bought the best through new rules

I have aquired quite a few Ork units by now, but 'm trying to keep my army somewhat diverse, while still focusing on everything that goes fast, since we don't know what will be good in the new codex. The main reason why I started an Ork army (besides the fact that they are awesome) was because I wanted them to be a tru Kult of Speed.