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I have a friend who plays tau and I play orks, if I've thought things through correctly then somewhere around the 500 point mark would give him a problem with squeezing in enough guns to mow down my orks. Correct me if I'm wrong, so what point limit can you suggest that would give me the upperhand?

Thanks to any replies in advance.

Tau against orks in general is a terrible match up until the orks are properly updated, especially if the tau are enclaves.

As for "not enough guns", remember that in 500 the army is mostly basic troops, and tau's basic troops ARE the anti-horde answer of tau, and are VERY good at mowing down lightly armored targets.


Not to be discouraging, but I can't think of any point level where the current ork codex won't be stomped by a quasi-optimized tau army.
Its just a hard match up with a codex that is outdated enough to struggle against anyone to begin with.

How many Battlewagons do you own?

The orks are getting a new codex in june, so that might help out with tau match ups

My friend is extremely over-confident and the last time we played all he did is just shoot at me with no real tactics, incase that helps with anything. And I own one Battlewagon and one trukk ( I'm fairly new to collecting). If there isn't much you can do with orks against Tau, currently, then what would you expect a tau player to bring at 500 points?

Current codex vs tau, orks lose barring a DAMN good player knowing exactly what he/she is doing. Which most people arnt, especially ork players since most of us play them because theyre funny.

As stated earlier, our common troops mow orks down in droves, And with the exception of Plasma, everything in our entire codex counters orks like nuts. Reason i exclude Plasma is because its only target it wants is MANz, which are better dealt with by Fusions for pasting-goodness and popping vehicles.

As you can tell from my siggy and past posts, i have both orks and tau in abundance. Never actually faced them against each other in a game, but i compare my numbers and past experiences and i dont see how the orks can win unless the Tau was expecting to fight IG armored company and brought fusions out the arse, and ended up facing a green tide. Which even then, tau has a decent chance due to firewarriors being so good against boyz.

 Povilov wrote:
I have a friend who plays tau and I play orks, if I've thought things through correctly then somewhere around the 500 point mark would give him a problem with squeezing in enough guns to mow down my orks. Correct me if I'm wrong, so what point limit can you suggest that would give me the upperhand?

Thanks to any replies in advance.

Main problem with Tau is that they're utterly fantastic at low point games. While some armies are terribly limited at lower points, Tau can basically bring a smaller version of their biggest, meanest lists with maybe a few expensive things missing. If you want to play okrs vs Tau then you should set a limit on Fire Warriors and submunition hammerheads as such a gunline mows down everything with save worse than 3+. Unfortunately Tau are great counter to horde armies due to their ludicrous amounts of S5 fire(remember, it even wounds Marines on 3's and a marine can roll only so many 3+ saves against such volume of fire), access to pie plates(submunitions, 'tides) and ways of countering short ranged/assault armies. Overall I think it'll take some gentleman's agreement so the Tau player doesn't bring the most competitive force he could field. Encourage him to take units he likes the looks of, maybe make a themed list with some fancy idea without trying to make a tiny netlist out of it. Kroot would be fine for that encounter as they lack some of the values that underpriced Fire Warriors have while providing their own special rules and unique playstyle.

Also you should tailor your list against Tau. Think what you could do to waste as much of his firepower as possible, take huge hordes or stick to stuff that won't die so easily.. maybe bikers or mechanized orks in trucks? With new jink save you can survive some of the shooting and once you get there(and not die to overwatch), you have a chance to turn it into a massacre.

Best way is to talk to your friend and build your lists together. This will allow you both to have a fun list, and hopefully a more balanced and fair game. Maybe ask to have some extra points to balance out the age difference of orks and tau

You could take so many grotz that he can't possibly kill them all. Just a Warboss missile and as many grotz as you can field.

Just checking in to see if anyone already said "0."

Cause...yknow...that's technically the answer.

BW rush is your only possible option to even have a hope of beating tau and the points level won't really matter its just a matter of will he tailor and bring fusions up the wazoo

21 points.

Lol.
As a Tau player I can honestly say Tau are good at every point level. (I almost feel bad about it)
At said 500 points it would be possible to bring a lot of things.
My 500 point list is
Commander with 2 missile pods, drone controller, target lock and 2 marker drones.
Crisis with TL missile pods, target lock and marker drone
Crisis with TL fusion
Crisis with TL fusion
2 x 6 man firewarrior team with shas'ui
10 kroot with snipers
493

On reflection i would probably change a few things, but its just for example purposes.

Boniface wrote:
Lol.
As a Tau player I can honestly say Tau are good at every point level. (I almost feel bad about it)
At said 500 points it would be possible to bring a lot of things.
My 500 point list is
Commander with 2 missile pods, drone controller, target lock and 2 marker drones.
Crisis with TL missile pods, target lock and marker drone
Crisis with TL fusion
Crisis with TL fusion
2 x 6 man firewarrior team with shas'ui
10 kroot with snipers
493

On reflection i would probably change a few things, but its just for example purposes.

Bikeboss and as many Boyz as you can fit in.

Should be decent?

My advice to an ork player is get as much speed as possible and have numerous smaller squads. Tau can technically target all of them but likely won't be set up to. Meaning you should have some left over. That and massed Dakka boyz. I don't orks works well enough to help more than that.

Make your buddy play Orks and you play Tau. Show him what fun it is to play against Tau.

Tau are strong at every points level.

My buddy and I play mainly apoc games - he has Tau and I have marines. In almost every match up he can out shoot me regardless of what I have. My only hope is to get close to him as fast as possible, ideally by outflanking. Problem is he can spam riptides which take a huge amount of firepower to take down. One is hard but five is all but unkillable.

Tau is super boring to play against as they basically sit still and shoot with there superior range. Crisis suits do move and are super effective with their jet pack jumps. Multi shot units with plasma shots kill marines so easily.

I think at the moment you are not going to be able to win any game against them with Orks. Best bet is to work on some form of theme game such as Planetstrike etc so you can limit his overpowered units and give you some sort of fighting chance. Otherwise play a different game till new codex comes out and see if you have any chance then.

Sorry not that helpful but tau are just too op for most games. Hence, why they are a top tier tournament army here in the UK.

This is just speculation on my part seeing as how I've never actually played this kind of game, but in a Escalation game pure Tau have rather a raw deal of things. We don't get any particularly amazing superheavy units. About the only two that are standouts are either the Tigarshark A-X-1-0 (which is pretty cool, but not nearly as intimidating as a lot of other superheavies, while also not being all that effective at superheavy removal, only having one D strength shot and that not even being a template) or the Manta (which is completely over the top ridiculous in so many ways that it's probably not really in the discussion seriously).

Combine that with our supposed inability to deal with heavy armor, and the outcome is that Tau tend to do worst ad mid level Escalation games where you can take a better superheavy than we can.

Man lost cause with Tau vs orks!

Just be allies with Tau think they would do great supporting orks and I think they can be allies without any grief (dont quote me on that though)

Terrain placement plays a big part in this matchup. I find to make a tau vs ork battle fun (especially at low points) yu should use more terrain, specifically more LOS blocking terrain. This makes the game a fun match where the orks want to hug cover as much as possible so they can burst out and assault while the tau try to establish firing lanes and stay out of threat zones. As you said you are just starting out, I imagine you also dont have much terrain, if so you might have abit of a bad time because an ork without a battlewagon in LOS of a tau is a dead ork :(

Bobug wrote:
Terrain placement plays a big part in this matchup. I find to make a tau vs ork battle fun (especially at low points) yu should use more terrain, specifically more LOS blocking terrain. This makes the game a fun match where the orks want to hug cover as much as possible so they can burst out and assault while the tau try to establish firing lanes and stay out of threat zones. As you said you are just starting out, I imagine you also dont have much terrain, if so you might have abit of a bad time because an ork without a battlewagon in LOS of a tau is a dead ork :(

1
This. Do you play Jenga? Bust out those blocks! Make high walls to break line of sight. Take random things to make terrain. I am a Tau player and I am tired of people saying how cheesy or OP we are. Want to melt some taut? Get in close. How do you get in close? Talk to your friend and agree to make a more balanced set up. You don't need to be cheap and make it impossible for him to get a shot off, but making blindspots make it both more fun and exciting for both players.

OP, just hold in there, a new Ork codex is coming out and I feel like it is going to be awesome.