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How can I beat top-tier Eldar and Daemons lists with Tau? What do you think would be good strategies, models to run, and anything else.

Well, i alwyas have trouble with massed missile suits. But thats me.

Thats true, but when you have Be'Lakor running up you hiney, it makes it hard to kill him especially when he is buffed. What else do people think?

I would go with a more traditionalist list with more boots on the ground. The more units you have shooting, the better your chances are at grounding them.

This is a list that one of my opponents run and it always give me a hard time.

Tau Buff Commander
Farseer on Jetbike

3x Riptides - HBC's Skyfire, Interceptor

2 units of Fire Warriors in Devilfish
1-2 units of kroots
1-2 3x Windrider Jetbikes

2 units of Pathfinders

3x2 Missile-sides w/some missile drones

That's a lot of firepower from different sources that can help to ground a FMC, not to mention the 3 Burstides are just nasty against FMC's.

As for seer council eldar, it's really tough but do-able. You may have to consider adding some AP2 guns in your list, especially on the suits. 1 build that can do well against the seer council is the Farsight-bomb with massed plasmas. That's another very strong Tau deathstar build and the good thing is, it'll probably also do fairly well in games of Escalation.

I don't think Jetseer will be around for long between the impending rise of Tyranids (and Shadow in the Warp) and the prevailing comp rules that are hitting the tournament scene; though we are yet to hear from MVBrandt as to the fate of comp among the NOVA tree events.

I digress, Go for a list that can beat the general Eldar goodies, not necessarily Jetseer. You'll need to be able to kill Wave Serpents, Jetbikes and Wraithknights.

Wave Serpents: Missile Pods; both regular and high-yield. You'll be engaging these at range, and 36" is decent enough reach, especially when mounted on a relentless platform like Crisis suits. Don't worry too much about penetrating these as that can be fickle if they don't shoot off their shields. Just glance them to death. They're got 3 hull points; shoot one until it's wrecked and move on. If you want to be daring, solo-suits with double fusion and some marker-light support can do the trick; aim for the rear armor which in addition to being softer is unprotected by shields.

Jetbikes = SMS. You don't need LOS to kill them with this, which is good because you'll rarely have it.

Wraithknights = Plasma, Missile Pods, Kroot snipers + PENchip. You need to be able to re-roll to wound against these things. They'll fail 3+'s like anything else would, but you've gotta get past that toughness. All 3 of these can do the job. Also, don't be afraid to just tarpit them.

As for general tactics, Always remember that they can ignore cover too. They are faster than you. Between serpents, WKs, jetbikes and warp spiders and battle focus, they will run circles around even Enclave lists. Concentrate your firepower, and always pick second turn if you have the choice. If you go first in an objective mission, killing those jetbikes is imperative or you are almost certain to lose on a 36" turbo-boost on bottom turn.

What about dealing with screamer stars and khorne dog rushes?

Like Jetseer, Screamerstar is also likely to go the way of the dodo pretty soon. Grimoire is likely to be on any ban list that's starting to become in vogue.

In any case, you've got to ignore it and kill their scoring. Tarpitting it is best if you can. But because Tau lack Fearless, an allied Wraithknight would be a great idea. Same solution for Khornedogs.

Without something to tarpit it, you'll need proper bubble wrapping, and you'll need to spread your army such that one multi-charge doesn't sink your ship.

Again, concentrate on eliminating their scoring and shoot to win on secondaries or holding a single objective with something like a deepstriking Enclave suit.

I digress, Go for a list that can beat the general Eldar goodies, not necessarily Jetseer. You'll need to be able to kill Wave Serpents, Jetbikes and Wraithknights.

That's the point. Against Serpents, you need cover ignoring weapons. However, a smart Eldar player will try to remove your Pathfinders asap (in turn 1). The same holds for Jetbikes.
Wraithknights are also not easy to stop. However, Tau has the weapons to do so.

I don't understand what everyone is having trouble with. I use 80 sniper kroot, 1 group of FW with fish, 2 rapetides, 3 railsides with plasma an drones plus shadowsun, 3 groups of pathfunders and an ethereal. Never had a problem with anything except massed heavy armor.

If all you are trying to to is mass riptides, or battlesuits, or whatever, it's not a good idea. You have to have a nice mix, though sadly tau currently lack their great ranged anti-tank of old.

Serpent Spam loves killing squishy pathfinders. However, the list has a LOT of problems dealing with 2+ saves. Guess what, tau has the cheapest source of 2+ save wounds outside the inquisition codex (and its not T3) in the commander with iridium. Grab that and a drone controller, grab a bunch of marker drones (who are bs5), and serpent spam has real problems dealing with it. The wraithknight's cannons can be LoS'd or covered as thats about the only thing you should have problems with. A clever player i saw used an Icarus on an ADL to give the commander a BS5 lascannon to shoot. You could also use a bastion and put broadsides inside.

After that, 2 5-man pathfinder squads, 2 riptides, 4 fire warrior squads (or some kroot if you like them), and whatever is left thrown into HYMP broadsides/allies. Keep the fire warriors out of sight and the pathfinders in corners (while serpent shields are 60" range, if they dont have TL they arent nearly as impressive). Pop vehicles 1 by 1, dont spread out damage. Also, try to get your Riptides into melee with WS. Yes, melee. Most people think of riptides as shooting only, but 3 S10 smashes that ignore serpent shields will take out a serpent quite quick. Eldar dont have anything that can melee a riptide either (unless they bring harlequins, but those shouldnt be on the board past turn 1).

Demon screamer star is probably dead in the majority of settings by now. Most tourneys are taking up ban lists to help mitigate the stupidity of GW and the grimorie is normally #1 on that list.

Be'lakor isnt hard as long as you ground him. Once that is done, the marker drones remove invis and hes just a normal DP with a 4+ save. Also, if you have first turn or seize, you can often do a few free wounds on him before he can fly.

 zephoid wrote:

Demon screamer star is probably dead in the majority of settings by now. Most tourneys are taking up ban lists to help mitigate the stupidity of GW and the grimorie is normally #1 on that list.

Says the Eldar player. Maybe cause its fair for most tau/dar players to have less competition and rule the tourney boards by other "stupid" GW rules like serpent spam,autohit shields, seer council, rapetides x many plus revenant happy D sticks. GJ man. Ah ofcourse having a revtitan is not unfair for you cause you play eldar? apart from screamerstar the grimoire is not broken.

So do you think that it would be smart to run an Eldau list with a Revenant and then a Tau ally? I have another thread on this list I made for that, so if you could check that out too and give me some hints, it would be really helpful.