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Okay, so I just got worked badly by the local Tau guy. And I mean worked. 1530, and I had no idea what he was bringing. I knew pretty much what he was bringing because I know which models he has but I wasn't really ready for a Riptide and 7 crisis suits, plus all the fixin's. I don't like to proxy very much so I brought a pretty basic fast attack list built out of what I have, knowing that I don't have the firepower to slug it out across the board. My Predator got popped first shot, my Helbrute second and my Rhino exploded under a hail of missiles the very next round. So there goes my ability to damage the Riptide and any of his suits really, plus losing the Rhino after it had only moved 12 inches across the board meant that once I did get into charge range I'd be looking at a million overwatch shots since then I'd have no dirge caster! I managed to get lucky with my Sorc and I forced one unit of Pathfinders off the board in turn 3 but then by turn 4 all I had left were some Havocs with autocannons who had no LoS, a bunch of cultists and one measly bike with a meltagun sitting three feet away from anything. So I need help building a decent list out of what I have.

I hate losing, and even more so when I lose badly, well not really but I like to be dramatic, grim and dark even. I think I lost because I built a pretty poor list and because my opponent suddenly had a lifetime of bad luck reverse itself over the course of one single shooting phase. In his defense though, he brought a nice little army and played it pretty okay. It wasn't just luck. If I could have kept my metal boxes there was an opportunity to tank shock his entire force off the table, being Tau, he had clumped his troops all into one tiny corner of the table. That's how I manged to rout a dozen Pathfinders with just one spell!

Anyways without any further battle talk here is the forces at my disposal. Like I said, I hate to proxy stuff so keep that in mind. No one in our group minds weapon proxies or small stuff like that so that is okay, and also this list is for stomping Tau, specifically the suits.

HQ's
1 Daemon Prince
1 Lord Kranon (CL from Dv set)
1 Chaos Lord with jump pack
1 Sorcerer with jump pack
1 Abbadon
1 Huron
1 Dark Apostle

Troops
1 Chaos Space Marines, 10 models
1 Cultist Squad, 20 models

Elites
1 Helbrute
1 Khorne Berzerkers, 10 models
2 Chosen, 5 models

Fast
1 Bikers, 4 models
1 Raptors, 5 models

Heavy
1 Predator tank OR
1 Rhino

Now you see what my problem is. I just don't have the armour to do it that way, so I have to use my Marines, but what do you all think is the best way to go about it?

darkcloak wrote:
and I had no idea what he was bringing. I knew pretty much what he was bringing

...What?

Anyway, youre losing because in all honesty your list is terrible. It has nor eal focus, and your troops section is lacking. Id recommend more regular marines, but as a further recommendation, modify your current ones into noise marines, and then buy a squad or two more of them.
HQ wise dont ever pay for a daemon prince, its nice to have the model on hand if apotheosis comes up (It inevitably will). A chaos lord with MoS is compulsory if you're going to go slaanesh but from there, a slaanesh sorceror is pretty good.
Expanding out your cultists is a must. That few of them will achieve nothing of them. A unit of 30 to 40 of them with CCW can hold a unit in close combat for the rest of the game, and make for good diversions.
Against tau, position your noise marines/regular marines so they dont get shot first by the battlesuits. If he deep strikes them, you need them in cover. If you can increase your raptor count and have them jumping into the gunline and slowly assaulting his army down is always handy. If he has kroot dont do that though.

One other thing is a Red corsairs list. Take huron as your HQ and use regular marines equiped with plasma guns and autocannons (IIRC they can take them?) and use them to shoot the battlesuits down, taking like 2 or so units in a rhino.
Hopefully this is ok advice

I have to agree, you have no troops and that is a huge handicap. Also NM are the tau's worst nightmare pretty much due to ignoring cover saves. infiltrate chosen/ CSM with PG will take down riptide/crisis suits

Chosen are typically the unit that excels versus tau...

Either Chosen w/PG (nurgle or khorne)
5x chosen in a rhino 4 w/ plasma guns (slaanesh)
A LC will wreck the suits, but they are expensive (mos)

I play slaanesh so the Noise Marines fair well, but if you can't get the weight of firepower on them it is tough

Yeah, lol my "army" consists of a set of hand me down Zerkers, a battleforce, and the Dark Vengeance set. The above post was just a list of assets. I know I need more troops but xmas is coming soon, so hopefully!

I'll run down the list I used so you know what all I'm talking about. Maybe you can kinda see where I was going with this, at any rate it didn't work! lol

Hq1 - Jump Lord w/Murdersword
Hq2 - Jump Sorc of Tzeentch

Tr1 - Cultists, 20 man blob
Tr2 - CSM's, 5 man, w/ plasgun
Tr3 - CsM's, 5 man, w/ CCWs

Fa1 - Bikes, 4 man, w/ flamer, melta
Fa2 - Raptors, 5 man w/ flamer, melta

Elite - Helbute w/ TL Lascan & H. Flamer

Hs1 - Predator, w/ TL Lascan, Havoc Launcher and Dirge caster
Hs2 & 3 - Havocs, 5 man, w/ autocannons and las

And What the heck do you mean don't ever pay for a Demon Prince? Especially don't pay for one to take the Axe of Blind Fury then! Yesterday I marched/ flew one right across a table full of Space Wolves, and every combat the DP went first, hit 90% of the time (thanks VotLW!) and everything he wounded died instantly. 5 turns of nothing but bits of blood and fur. Demon Prince got put back on the shelf with only 1 wound. Self inflicted I might add, he was standing too close to Failbaddon in the very last combat and dropped the Axe on his toe... Against Tau, yeah I can see why you wouldn't want to take a DP...

edit: That is good advice though, from both posters. I had initially thought infiltrating Huron might be risky, but it would pay off better than what I tried I think. Also, what about the squad sizes? I wanted to try several smaller squads to try and hide in that cover better, also to maybe outflank him a little. I know he doesn't want to mix it up hand to hand so by placing many smaller units around him I thought I could herd him into one spot. Turns out he turtled anyways, lol.

Personally, I think DP's are pretty good against tau, fear causing flying MC's that suit armies cannot ID! The only thing that can is a smash attack from a riptide! And then things have gone very wrong! An axe of blind fury on a flying DP with a mark of Khorne can get up to 13 attacks on the charge at strength 8! Suits are toughness 4 - you are wiping them off the table! Just a thought.

If you take the DP you can do 2 mastery levels (unless khorne). first one is the discipline, the second one could be Psychic Shriek- could be very good against a riptide.

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
Personally, I think DP's are pretty good against tau, fear causing flying MC's that suit armies cannot ID! The only thing that can is a smash attack from a riptide! And then things have gone very wrong! An axe of blind fury on a flying DP with a mark of Khorne can get up to 13 attacks on the charge at strength 8! Suits are toughness 4 - you are wiping them off the table! Just a thought.

This went completely overlooked by myself. If I would have just gone downstairs and grabbed my codex! lol What is a good way to get him into that combat though? Tau has to see that coming a mile away...

Unfortunately they do, I play at 2k points, and run 2 winged DP's, 2 land raiders with zerkers and 2 mauler fiends at him as fast as poss!

It depends on how many points he spends on velocity tracks and counter fire defence! If he hasn't bought much of that to the table, then a winged DP is the future. Fly him forward turn one, if he doesn't have sky fire then you're relatively safe and can vector strike. Turn two, land and charge! Farsight armies of suits, aren't always good with over watch. They don't have as many shots as FW's, and still only hit on 6's. Also, nothing in a suit army is S10, so he has NOTHING that can ID him!

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
Fly him forward turn one, if he doesn't have sky fire then you're relatively safe and can vector strike.

So my swooping DP requires skyfire to be hit? That is something I will remember! Although I do know that Tau guy's brother is a Deldar player and his 1500 pt army runs 2 Razorwings so skyfire is a possibility. I'll make up a better list tonight and post it here and we'll see how iy goes tomorrow...

Read the rules on flying MC's mate, there are 2 types of flight mode - swooping and gliding. You declare each at the beginning of a movement phase. Swooping is essentially flying, and gliding is moving like jump infantry. If you swoop turn one, you can move 12 - 24" in a straight line. Remember - whilst swooping you can vector strike! But as you are swooping you are up high, and the enemy has to have sky fire to hit you at full BS. otherwise it's snap shots only. Be warned, he can shoot you down! Every time you take a hit (doesn't have to be a wound) you take a grounded test (3+) if you pass he keeps in swooping, if you fail he lands, and then the enemy can open up on you!

Provided you stay in the air turn one, you should land turn 2. You then move like jump infantry, so move 12" then charge 2D6, then boom, turn 2 you're in combat - hopefully unscathed! That's a two turn range of 48" - should be able to reach ANYTHING on the board! But if you're playing tau be careful! Unless you take BL supplement you can make your DP EW with the skull, but if you don't have that and you somehow fail to kill a riptide he will smash attack you to instant death! I've fallen foul of that!

So pick your kit carefully! I take 2 DP's. A BL one and a normal CSM one. Rarely I'll run 3 with two from the normal dex! Kit to take if you want combat DP's are - axe of blind fury - is awesome on a Khorne daemon, can potentially generate 13 attacks on the charge at S8, and will annihilate riptides. Black mace - possibly THE BEST weapon to put on a DP. Actually has the ability to deal with very large squads, and for BL I take the skull for EW and the spineshiver. The spineshiver doesn't help all that much, but it's a daemon weapon - means all 3 daemons have + D6 attacks!

Just some food for thought! I love CSM daemon princes, even if daemons DP's are better!

CSM vs Tau 1500

His List

1 Riptide, some low cost variant
1 Farsight + 4 bodygaurd & drones
1 Darkstrider + Pathfinders
1 Broadside w/ drone
3 12 man fire warrior teams
2 crisis suit teams
1 stealth suit team

My List

Demon Prince, wings, axe of blind fury
Dark Apostle, Disc, BBoS
1 CSM's, shooty
1 Cultists, ccw blob
2 Noise Marines, 10 man, 244 points, kitted right out
2 rhinos, w havocs n dirges
1 biker unit, 3 guys, MoN

I spent a few points on GoM's and got lucky with the Biker Champ, giving him 3 good ones, the DA got some anti- psyker ability, and put MoN wherever I could. I put everyone out except the DP, and of course the Tau get to go first. I always, but always get screwed on initiative. I know the DA isn't a solid choice but I wanted something cheap that my opponent would waste fire on, a cheap bike squad that is fearless fits the bill. I went out on a limb and proxied in some NMs and it didn't take long for them to die under a hail of str5 firepower, their fancy sonic weapons either out of range or scattering too far. Sure I nailed a few FWs and even manged to smoke a 3 man team of Crisis Suits with the blastmasters but ultimately the Noise Marines couldn't stand up to the Tau, especially when they get pinned. Lol.
The Riptide was a major pain in the butt, I think it needs to be balanced, or just nerfed from orbit. 5 wounds, the wrong unit type and more goddamn options than my whole codex, not to mention that technically it's weapon counts as ap2 in CC, thanks for being a Monstrous Creature you shiny metal battlesuit you! But whatever, they're expensive so I guess they have to be awesome, if I owned one I'd probably love using it. Every time I have to face Tau player the Riptide is there. I've learned to either ignore it completely or build my list exclusively around killing it. I figured the Demon Prince would do just fine, but really it was like a one shot cannon. The DP flew out there, didn't take a scratch, because the Tau guy just didn't care by that point, it was more profitable for him to shoot the Noise Marines. DP engaged the Riptide and then spent the rest of the game playing shot for shot. Except no one took any wounds. It was like watching a slap fight.

The only thing that really did anything was the Dark Apostle and the bikes.

So what's the deal? How can I beat this guy with my army? Or rather what else do I need to buy, ha!

How on earth did your DP not obliterate hiss riptide? The axe makes him S8 and has +D6 attacks? Also he's an MC, so ap2! That's a potential 11 attacks without charging at S8 up to 13 at S9 on the charge! Hitting on 3's, wounding on 2's and ignoring armour. He shoulda taken 2 turns to kill it maximum.

Heck I had Kharn kill one today! All you need to do is take 1 or 2 wounds more than he hits you with, so he fails his leadership and you sweeping advance the hell out of him.

Can't comment on noise marines, never use them. What did your havocs have? Hopefully 4 auto cannons in each squad, and then they should've obliterated the FW's thanks to their ridiculous strength and far superior range.

Nurgle bikers aren't bad. Need meltas though.

And DA's are absolutely dreadful and a waste of points. Coulda taken a lord for much less points with a MoS to make the NM's troops. Or with a MoN, to take plague marines with plasmas as troops and give him a bike to join the bikers.

I'm sorry but there are a few things wrong with this list:

How did the NM get pinned?- they're fearless. (Did I read this wrong?)

The DP should have destroyed the Riptide like khaine said (think about using the black mace instead- will wound on a 2+).

The dark apostle can't take the disc of tzeentch- not points effective in this list

Make those NM troops! (Lucius or MoS Lord)
(typical builds are :4 man bolter & 1 man BM, large squad with sonics, 7 man squad with bolters CCW and a doom siren, or be like me and just do a combination of sonic blasters and blastmasters and a doom siren-generally frowned upon)

DAMN IT! I forgot the mace wounds on a 2+ today....

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
DAMN IT! I forgot the mace wounds on a 2+ today....

NOOOOOOOOOO, you still won didn't you? lol

The NMs are fearless, something we both forgot. Still though the str5 Tau weapons made a mess of them, especially when the Pathfinders marker lighted them. And the Rhinos were a complete waste. They shot nothing, took minimal effort to kill and they even cost me some very pricey NMs.

The Riptide, well... what can I say. You need 5 wounds on it, and it's got a fair chance to wound you back. The DP has 4 wounds sure, but there is always the potential to fail the DW roll and then it's free shots for the Riptide. I'll admit the Riptide got lucky, but by that point the game was already decided. My gunline had no range or LOS, my melee units didn't perform. The ONLY thing that worked as planned was the Bike squad and Dark Apostle. I don't know. Buy a Defiler I guess...

Rhino's main objective is not to shoot at things, its transport and as an obstacle/ LOS. -unless you're camping the rhino in the back with a blastmaster shooting out of it

Your DP should be DoK since you're using the axe. You shouldn't be using smash since you'll be hitting at str 8 vs his t6= wounds on 2+ and you should be hitting on 3+ with 9-13 attacks... At the very minimum you should be causing 5 wounds that he doesn't have a save against in the first turn of assault...

NM you have tons of firepower (output of shots), ignore cover which is what tau depends on. If you have a blast master and you get a wound, they will probably get pinned and then are in heaps of trouble against you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Defiler is a horrible investment in my opinion and the Dark apostle set up doesn't work (isn't legal)

You need to play with three DP with wings or a truck load of
Heldrake to cook up those fire warriors and watch the tears.

If your not taking three daemon princes then take a nurgle (PM) or a sleneesh (NM) wizard because the buffs in the codex are so good.

If you are not playing with the BL supplement then you can ally with IG and get you some medusas to ignore cover and ap3 or basalisks for range of board.

under this sign is extreme amounts of cheese

You ally with guard take a Primaris psyker an psyker battle squad in a chimera you use weaken resolve on what ever is a pain in the but within 36" you deepstrike a Chaos wizard of any flavor and three terminators (or by himself) within 12" of the unit affected and you psykic scream the living #%^^#%
out of what ever you want with 3 D6 - LD of 2 min of 1 max of 16 ignore armour and cover wound.

 Arbiter wrote:
You need to play with three DP with wings or a truck load of
Heldrake to cook up those fire warriors and watch the tears.

If your not taking three daemon princes then take a nurgle (PM) or a sleneesh (NM) wizard because the buffs in the codex are so good.

If you are not playing with the BL supplement then you can ally with IG and get you some medusas to ignore cover and ap3 or basalisks for range of board.

under this sign is extreme amounts of cheese

You ally with guard take a Primaris psyker an psyker battle squad in a chimera you use weaken resolve on what ever is a pain in the but within 36" you deepstrike a Chaos wizard of any flavor and three terminators (or by himself) within 12" of the unit affected and you psykic scream the living #%^^#%
out of what ever you want with 3 D6 - LD of 2 min of 1 max of 16 ignore armour and cover wound.

MoN sorcerers and MoS sorcerers do not unlock PM and NM as troop choices. I do agree Psychic Scream works well against riptides

Okay... Round 3!

So my Tau buddy is actually a long time Chaos player as well and he has tons of models to pick from, a 2000+ point Typhus army! I didn't want to use any of his models though, trying to work with what I have, but I said muck it! So here it is...

1500 points.

hq1 - Huron
hq2 - Khorne Lord on Juggernaut, LC, PF, BBoS, SoC

Elite - Noise Marines, 9 models, 3 sonics
DT - Rhino

Tr1 - CSM, 6 models, plas, combi-plas, MoN
tr2 - CSM, same as above

fs1 - Bikers, 4 models, 2x melta, LC, MoN
fs2 - Raptors, 6 models, 2x melta, combimelta, MoN

hs1 - Predator 1, TL Las, bolter sponsons
hs2 - Predator 2, same as above
hs3 - Havocs, 6 models, 4x autocans, MoN or MoT? Points cost above is for MoN.

The idea is to infiltrate Huron and the NMs in the Rhino, maybe get to shoot first and do some salvo fire. Or disembark and fire 3 sonics at salvo 2? We'll see. The Preds I like, cuz they're cheap and FA 13. If I get lucky the troops will infiltrate too. The Jugger and the Bikes will go together and BBoS the hell out of everything. Dig the Havocs in somewhere nice and plonk away at infantry. Deepstrike the Raptors so they can fire their meltas that turn. The idea is to have a few options for dealing with the Riptide, while not losing infantry/suit stopping power. The Demon Prince gets to sit this one out, or I could do the following...

replace the Chaos Lord and Bike unit with a Demon Prince (wings, pa, demonwep) and a single Mutilator with MoN. Also add 1 Havoc model, bringing the list to 1504, which is allowable. His list is actually 1503... This brings the deepstrike capabilities of my army up, but increases risks....

What do you think?

Deep striking against tau is a terrible idea....especially with raptors with 2 meltas! A terrible unit!

Personally I'd swap 2 x preds for 2 x vindicators. Having said that, you seem to be trying to out gun tau - in which case, you will lose again.

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
Deep striking against tau is a terrible idea....especially with raptors with 2 meltas! A terrible unit!

Personally I'd swap 2 x preds for 2 x vindicators. Having said that, you seem to be trying to out gun tau - in which case, you will lose again.

Actually everything went just as planned... I gotta be honest here guys. Not any of the advice I got here was really any good. 3 Demon Princes? 3 Heldrakes? In a 1500pt list? 5 man squads of NMs with blastmasters? Deepstriking against Tau a bad idea? Vindicators against Tau? Are we even playing the same game?

That last list worked just fine, the only changes I made was to take one model out of the Raptor Unit, nix the Havoc Launcher and then put a Power Fist on the Bike Champ.

Thanks though!

darkcloak wrote:

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
Deep striking against tau is a terrible idea....especially with raptors with 2 meltas! A terrible unit!

Personally I'd swap 2 x preds for 2 x vindicators. Having said that, you seem to be trying to out gun tau - in which case, you will lose again.

Actually everything went just as planned... I gotta be honest here guys. Not any of the advice I got here was really any good. 3 Demon Princes? 3 Heldrakes? In a 1500pt list? 5 man squads of NMs with blastmasters? Deepstriking against Tau a bad idea? Vindicators against Tau? Are we even playing the same game?

That last list worked just fine, the only changes I made was to take one model out of the Raptor Unit, nix the Havoc Launcher and then put a Power Fist on the Bike Champ.

Thanks though!

Clearly not. A good tau player would've tabled your list any day of the week.

I'd imagine you got very lucky.

That being said, if you won - congrats! Just don't expect it to be a habit with this list as is.

Considering my opponent has been playing since 4th edition I'm sure he's just fine at doing what he does. And what is so weak about this list? I run very similar lists against the other players in my group and it works fine.

edit: Which, ya know really, the advice posted wasn't necessarily bad. It just wasn't what I had asked for at all. I had listed what I had for an army and asked for advice on how to win with what models I owned. No one had any advice that was even relevant. I didn't ask for a competitive list, I asked for help using mine. Granted yes, winning required borrowing a couple tanks and pretending some KBs were NMs, but that gave me a better idea of what I actually want to spend money on.

Also, the inference that a better player would have beaten me is pretty of insulting to my opponent, and to me. Our models are insulted too, and will now roll to hit...

 Khaine's Wrath wrote:
Deep striking against tau is a terrible idea....especially with raptors with 2 meltas! A terrible unit!

Personally I'd swap 2 x preds for 2 x vindicators. Having said that, you seem to be trying to out gun tau - in which case, you will lose again.

Given the likelihood of a Riptide w/interceptor and an Ion Accelerator, deep striking the wrong spot on a Tau line can quickly be a completely fatal mistake. So I agree with this assessment. Tau can pack a lot of Interceptor into their lists for not a lot of points, generally on weapons that will hurt quite a bit.

So if you are going to deep strike against a Tau player, either come in force to have some ablative wounds to sop up the firepower, do it sneaky (so that they cannot draw lines of fire to the ds'ing unit), or be willing to get blasted in the face by something that will eat said face.

darkcloak wrote:
Considering my opponent has been playing since 4th edition I'm sure he's just fine at doing what he does. And what is so weak about this list? I run very similar lists against the other players in my group and it works fine.

edit: Which, ya know really, the advice posted wasn't necessarily bad. It just wasn't what I had asked for at all. I had listed what I had for an army and asked for advice on how to win with what models I owned. No one had any advice that was even relevant. I didn't ask for a competitive list, I asked for help using mine. Granted yes, winning required borrowing a couple tanks and pretending some KBs were NMs, but that gave me a better idea of what I actually want to spend money on.

Also, the inference that a better player would have beaten me is pretty of insulting to my opponent, and to me. Our models are insulted too, and will now roll to hit...

Haha. Apologies. I hope my saving throw is good enough. I meant no offence. Just genuinely can't believe this list will perform that well. I guess it's different meta's. I know if I ran a list similar to that, I'll regularly get tabled. But hey, it's your list. If you enjoy it then fair one. And on that - I must've misread or misunderstood your post and not fully comprehended exactly what you required. Personally is still make changes. Like I said though, our metas must be different!

Either way, if your beating tau players with it, then the dark gods will be pleased! So roll on the boon table....