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If a Big Mek decides to invade a tau world with his enormous dreadmob ( Kans, dreads, mega-dreads, stompas, gargants, great gargants and mega gargants) how would the tau likey fare if they didn't have air or space superiority (no tigersharks or mantas)? Could they face this threat in a ground war and how would they go about it ?

The Imperial Answer wrote:
If a Big Mek decides to invade a tau world with his enormous dreadmob ( Kans, dreads, mega-dreads, stompas, gargants, great gargants and mega gargants) how would the tau likey fare if they didn't have air or space superiority (no tigersharks or mantas)? Could they face this threat in a ground war and how would they go about it ?

Warfare 101, if somebody has orbital/air superiority and you completely lack any ability to mount a defense, you're fethed. When sorties are strafing your territory all day and night long, yeah, good luck mounting any kind of cohesive defense. Also, depending on how advanced the Orks are, they'll have fun stuff like tactical teleporation via tellyportas.

Anyone would be screwed by that. Including Necrons.

Best the Tau can do is evacuate the civilians, use the FW in a fighting retreat, as they are faster than the Ork machines, get off world...

... and then come back with the big guns and mess the Orks up real bad.

When I said didnt have superiority, i meant heavily contested to the point all aircraft the tau have can't be spared from their orbital or air battles that are also tying up ork aircraft in a stalemate. So both sides aren't using many aircraft for ground attacks.

Well the problem shifts to who's gun has the longest range, if an Ork can match a Tau for range (Since the dread mobs and gargants CAN) this match will be one sided as the Orks will use sheer weight of firepower to whipe out the Tau.

Only if the Tau give them a ground battle where it matters. Depends on the terrain of the planet. If the Tau can bring their mobility to bear, then they can use guerilla tactics to bleed the Orks of troops and vehicles. With a properly-planned ambush, they could take out a Gargant, and then fade away, refusing to engage the Orks until they've whittled them down to a more manageable size.

 BunkerBob wrote:
Well the problem shifts to who's gun has the longest range, if an Ork can match a Tau for range (Since the dread mobs and gargants CAN) this match will be one sided as the Orks will use sheer weight of firepower to whipe out the Tau.

Ork WHAAGHS that have sufficiently advanced enough don't need range, they have tactical teleporting they can use constantly with moderate accuracy. The 7th Edition Ork codex gave Orks a crazy buff, even doing stuff like looting a planet and turning it into a weapon.

In the same book the Orks use lootas, flash gitz, and any get with a fancy shoota to upgun the tau. The problem for the Tau is that they don't have the body structure to survive an oversized bullet. Weight of fire wins wars for Orks against the Tau.

I think the tau would fair well. Hunter Cadres would do what they always do, lure in the big army then ambush it from the sides with kroot and stealthsuits, firewarriors mow down infantry, hammerheads snipe gargants from extreme range, seeker missile strikes weaken and destroy other armor. Tau have a very similar volume of firepower compared to orks and theirs is much more advanced and accurate.

Although it's hardly a fair scenario to contemplate. If the Orks have all their largest warmachines, and the Tau are somehow restricted from having anything equivalent of theirs, it's a pretty good chance that things will swing in the favor of the Orks.

It'd be like saying what would happen if the Imperial Guard invaded a planet and brought a Titan Legion along, versus Orks who do not have anything larger than battlefortress variants.

The reality would rest on the Tau's ability to maneuver. If the Orks can cut off their ability to maneuver by controlling the terrain, then it will be over for the Tau.

The Tau require mobility. If you can deny that to them, they're in trouble.

As long Tau have mobility & battlesuits & hammerheads they have hope to win.
The first thing they will do is a planet evac so they may lose precious time , but dont forget that tau have won outmached vs ork in past many times (1st,2nd ,3rd expansion) so they sould have fought in senarios like this.they have the same tactics as they got the "puretide engram neurochip"
Of cource we talk about logical diference of nubmers , otherwise is like saying a tactical SM squad can protect a planted from a full-open warp atack

huh I was always under the impression Tau are pretty good at owning Orks due to their tsctics working well vs crazed orks

Considering Tau vehicles absolutely gak all over Ork vehicles in just about every way, I imagine they'd be alright.

Frankly, armor columns are probably the Tau's preferred enemy. "What's that? Large, slow moving targets that we can easily jump in and blow up from a distance with railguns, than zip away on our jet-packs/repulsor-lifts before they can follow us? Right on!"

It mostly depends on orks rather than tau.

Independent Big Meks usually don't lead huge forces - at least for ork standards. Thus the scenario would be like:
1. Orkses arrive, stomp some 'eads, take what they want and fly away leaving some spores to plague the planet ever after.
2. Orkses arrive, stomp some 'eads but get too carried away and heavy reinforcements arrive and drive them away or completely annihilate the current threat killing Mek himself. Some spores are left to plague the planet ever after.

If the mek's not alone but part of some warbosse's WAAAAAAAAAAAGH! it's most likely that they're gona overtake the entire sector before faced with all the opposition possible, get stuck there and eventually beaten and spread across the invaded territory and plague it ever after.

A bigmek can lead big WAAAAGH!!!!!s. Big Mogrok is currently in control of the one in the sanctus reach campaign which though splintered, is somewhere in the millions if not more. There are also quite a few mentioned in Imperial Armor 8 as leading dreadmobs and their own mek waaaaghs. And their all independent as far as I can tell.

There are plenty of big meks taking planets on their own, heh. Meknobs are far from uncommon.

Wasn't the big green of Sanctus Reach a big mek originally?

Anyway, Tau airpower is significantly superior to Orkish airpower. It's like... if Ork fliers are Fokker Dr1.s, the Tau fliers are Avro Lancasters, with all the ball turrets that implies.

Tau heavily outmatch Orks in both the fluff, and on the table. They've demonstrated that they can take them on even when the forces seem grossly lopsided in favor of the Orks.

It would basically come down to how big the WAAAGH was. The thing with Orks is that every so often they become insanely powerful - some of the historically powerful WAAAGHs threatened the survival of Terra itself. These would surely destroy the Tau Empire as it currently exists. The Tau are basically in a race to build their power base as much as they can before they get inevitably get hit by a xeno invasion that is a serious existential threat (whether that be from Orks, Man, Tyranids, or some other threat).

Depends, if they get the right tactic's.

Ie ambush, killing off the leaders to cause chaos, using mobility and speed to avoid the massive bulk and firepower while hitting key units and orks to cause the most damage and make them fight each other.

It really comes down to attrition, and how big an area they are fighting over. If more than two or three cities with any kind of distance between them I see the advantage going to the Tau, unless Mattkull Wardruk is on hand there's no way an Ork horde specialising is walkers is going to be able to counter the Tau's strategic mobility. The longer the distance between cities the longer the supply lines, the longer the supply lines the more vulnerable they'll be to mobile Tau forces, when the supplies lines are interrupted the Orks on the front lines will likely start fighting amongst themselves over what supplies they have.

Long range Gunlines with Fire Caste. Retreating as much as they can while removing cover and buildings with Earth Caste to leave the orks in the open.

Tau have superior weaponry in many ways. But agreed they might be screwed without air support.

How many Tau on world? What kind of Tau world is this? Research, Sept, Frontier, Military? That could all affect how the Ork invasion goes. If there is a competent Tau commander with enough resources, he could easily cut down several of the larger Ork warmachines, and use Riptides and Fire Warrior gunlines to kill off smaller warbands. Basically, I need more data.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
How many Tau on world? What kind of Tau world is this? Research, Sept, Frontier, Military? That could all affect how the Ork invasion goes. If there is a competent Tau commander with enough resources, he could easily cut down several of the larger Ork warmachines, and use Riptides and Fire Warrior gunlines to kill off smaller warbands. Basically, I need more data.

For convenience I will just say A sept world.

The Imperial Answer wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
How many Tau on world? What kind of Tau world is this? Research, Sept, Frontier, Military? That could all affect how the Ork invasion goes. If there is a competent Tau commander with enough resources, he could easily cut down several of the larger Ork warmachines, and use Riptides and Fire Warrior gunlines to kill off smaller warbands. Basically, I need more data.

For convenience I will just say A sept world.

Then by the time the orks finished with the orbital defenses, relief forces would already be on the way.

Past that, even if the Tau aren't dominating in the air, the Sky Ray is one of the best anti-aircraft platforms in the 40k universe. The Tau will be able to keep supply lines safe from fightas and bommas even if they aren't bringing Tiger Sharks to bear against Ork titans.

Even without air support, stealth suits with meltas would wreck havoc on Ork war machines.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

The Imperial Answer wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
How many Tau on world? What kind of Tau world is this? Research, Sept, Frontier, Military? That could all affect how the Ork invasion goes. If there is a competent Tau commander with enough resources, he could easily cut down several of the larger Ork warmachines, and use Riptides and Fire Warrior gunlines to kill off smaller warbands. Basically, I need more data.

For convenience I will just say A sept world.

Then by the time the orks finished with the orbital defenses, relief forces would already be on the way.

Past that, even if the Tau aren't dominating in the air, the Sky Ray is one of the best anti-aircraft platforms in the 40k universe. The Tau will be able to keep supply lines safe from fightas and bommas even if they aren't bringing Tiger Sharks to bear against Ork titans.

Even without air support, stealth suits with meltas would wreck havoc on Ork war machines.

I can see that working against the smaller walkers, but what about against larger ones with a kustom forcefield ? I've seen those shrug off things more powerful than meltas in the lore.

Yeah, but the thing about meltas is that they have a habit of getting inside your void/power/force fields and just ignoring them.

Normally when the tau control a planet they turn it into cites taking out the forests and other natural spots BUT if there are forests and other spots like that and you follow the normal fact that orks are a plant like species then i think the Orks will win the planet even if the tau have air superiority or not due to the fact that orks drop spores when they die that produce more orks meaning the planet will be infested when the first ork is killed Unless the tau have transformed the planet completely into cites and military bases

Common misconception: Orks only shed spores when they die.

Orks actually shed spores continuously through their lives.

I think the bigger issue with this scenario is that this large force is being lead by a big mek. The amount of infighting and uppity nobz will stall out the invasion well before it really gets going.

 Vankraken wrote:
I think the bigger issue with this scenario is that this large force is being lead by a big mek. The amount of infighting and uppity nobz will stall out the invasion well before it really gets going.

Why? I don't think there's any reason the biggest Ork couldn't like building stuff (and promptly using it to fight).