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 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.

Not if the big mek is determined. The big mek mogrok in the sanctus reach campaign is managing his forces without much infighting or interference from his nobz.

The codex talks about how Warbosses often bully big meks that get too big out ( or kill them) and as the good Kaptin once said about some gits on his spacy hulky "Dem boys have themselves a mek fer a boss. Dat's just sad dat is"

A large scale Waaagh would seem to be prone to falling apart without a big warboss for all the nobs and boys to look up to. If I was a dead killy nob who is getting bigga and bigga I wouldn't be too keen on being under a mek.

Also it was a bit of a half joke answer to the very vague hypothetical scenario.

I've seen some meks that rule through fear and violence. Nobs who get other ideas or who decide to question them usually suffer "accidents". He doesn't have to command their respect, just their fear.

Tau have railguns and cruise missiles. The more important question is how much war materiel can be fielded on the invaded planet, not just the availability of air power.

 Flinty wrote:
Tau have railguns and cruise missiles. The more important question is how much war materiel can be fielded on the invaded planet, not just the availability of air power.

Since its a sept world the mek would be attacking I'd say more than a few cadres.

The Imperial Answer wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Tau have railguns and cruise missiles. The more important question is how much war materiel can be fielded on the invaded planet, not just the availability of air power.

Since its a sept world the mek would be attacking I'd say more than a few cadres.

An Uash'o (command) the second largest formation in the tau military. A huge number of cadres.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

The Imperial Answer wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Tau have railguns and cruise missiles. The more important question is how much war materiel can be fielded on the invaded planet, not just the availability of air power.

Since its a sept world the mek would be attacking I'd say more than a few cadres.

An Uash'o (command) the second largest formation in the tau military. A huge number of cadres.

While on the subject of this, how many battlesuit are typically assigned to a cadre ?

Up to eight, including the Commander.

Some cadres may be larger, however, as deploying two cadres together is still called deploying a cadre.

Source: The Manta is designed to deploy and support a single full Cadre for any given mission, and has capacity for eight battlesuits, two devilfish, two hammerheads, six drones and forty-eight Fire Warriors.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Up to eight, including the Commander.

Some cadres may be larger, however, as deploying two cadres together is still called deploying a cadre.

Source: The Manta is designed to deploy and support a single full Cadre for any given mission, and has capacity for eight battlesuits, two devilfish, two hammerheads, six drones and forty-eight Fire Warriors.

Does that include things stealth suits, riptides, R'varnas, skyrays or kroot auxiliaries or are those not counted-unable to be deployed via a manta or nor included in a typical cadre ?

Cadres can have anything in them pretty much. What we see at a cadre is actually a hunter cadre, admittedly the most common. There are lots of different cadres, just look in the tau code, it has a list of some. Also, look at the old and new tau apoc formations, those are all cadres.*

*mostly

Well, it depends on a lot of things:

1) How well orks use shock tactics;
2) How cunning their boss is;
3) That kind of terrain they are in;
4) That kind of warbands are in this crusade;


Even ignoring air and space, orks can use shock and awe tactics to tie down, surround and destroy defenders if they are caught outside full backing of Tau. Speed kult is known to exploit terrain and to perform hit and run tactics. Due to this, they will raid long before main tide of orks can reach Tau supply lines. Melee minded boys are performing poorly against Tau. Without a proper support and terrain they will be destroyed. Even though, they perform well in cities or any other cover heavy terrain. Knowing that you have a mek boy, I assume that this horde will have a great number of vehicles and mek boys. Due to this, green horde will open up with blitzkrieg tactics by speed boys first disturbing enemy's supply lines and later tank columns are going to engage any effort at establishing defense lines. Then rest of horde arrives, it will be just a matter of bleeding Tau dry by focusing on surrounded or partially surrounded objective such a starport of capital or more aligned to mek boy's interest, an industrial heart of the planet.

Vehicles will be scrapped and rebuilt, initial tide of orks will be replaced with native feral orks. Without reinforcements I do not think that Tau has any way of dealing with surprise attack from orks. It's simply because Tau cannot replace their resources as fast as orks can and if not destroyed quickly, they will just grind you down in the war of attrition. And trust me, in this kind of war even Tyranids are being beaten badly. If Tau forces fail to win this war quickly, then their chances of winning is just going down no matter of that they will do.

The Tau would identify and eliminate Ork leadership, supply dumps, command and control structures/ships. And would do so at any cost.

The Ork titans would be firing at each other.

This sort of tactic is tried and proven in Tau tactica, and it's what allowed utterly crushing victories over Ork strongholds since the very beginning of Tau expansion.

The only way the Orks could win is if they overwhelmed the defences of the Tau world entirely and fortified before relief forces could arrive. That's more than possible if you have enough Orks. But it would ultimately result in a counterattack using the same strategic plan as above, albeit with greatly reduced effectiveness and far larger casualty counts to the point that it might not even be worth counterattacking.

At which point, Exterminatus-By-Fusion-Bomb.

Infinitely better races than Tau had tried and failed. Eldar, Tyranids, Necrons, you would think that they have technology to assassinate ork warboss, but fortunately, old ones predicted this weakness and made a lot of safe guards against it. For example, orks are all psykers and can passively feel if something is ''unorky''. Meaning that all assassins are at risk of being spotted outright, no matter their cover. Assassination of warboss is more a matter of luck than possibilities then we are talking about major Whaaaaagghhh. Even if you do manage to kill him, at worst horde will stagger a bit until obvious next best warboss takes the lead, at best horde falls into disarray and begins to fight among themselves.


Orks supply chains are all well armed. You need a serious strike team for that. Second, every damn ork on reserve duty will be restless to seek fight with you if you are nearby. To raid supply chain sound easy in theory, but it's more difficult to achieve in reality.


Tau are foolish, naive and lucky race. They don't even realize yet that beating orks is not same as beating full fledged Whaaaaagh. Also, every warboss and campaign is different. As is seen with ''War of Dakka'' campaign, a warboss adapted and outsmarted Tau with dead cunning tactics. Now this simple casual horde has forced Tau to fight for their very survival. If not for a plot armor, this hostile universe would take care of their one of the weakest race without even humanity's intervention.



Orks do fight that way. They always strike with extreme numbers in order to create shock among defenders and destroy them before they can orginize. It's funny that such clumsy race is capable of such swift and blunt strikes, but it's true. Their bloodlust forces them to overextend and in so doing, they either destroy defenders or reinforcements save them. If then orks are not destroyed then any victory will be a pyric one, because orks are best at attrition warfare and they simply do not loose. They either win or die and that's it.


In the end, it's a loss for you rather. Orks will not feel this blow they simply do not care, but Tau will. They will be bombing their major world since only world of that caliber could attract horde which would be bombed from orbit outright.

Most of the Tau Empire is built on the ruins of Ork-held space.

And everyone uses the "assassinate the leader" trick on the Orks with great success. It doesn't eliminate their leadership capabilities entirely, but it causes great division while leadership is being decided, so a gap to cause serious harm.

Case and Point: Ciaphas Cain.

Kill the Warboss, and half the nobz want to 'ave a go themselves.

As for supply depots, Orks don't believe in safety. A markerlight and seeker missile is probably all you need to blow one up, and getting a markerlight in range is dead easy when you have stealth, anti-grav and repulsor jet technology.

Tau have successfully manged to destroy stompas and similar machines using just that tactic.They have gotten pathfinders that close and back out safely.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I doubt Ork supply chains are as well protected as those of the imperial guard, which tau have no trouble disrupting. Stealth and crisis suits backed up with tanks (all with perfect to near-perfect night vision) attacking at night can disrupt almost anything.

Those boys were weak and divided. Full-fledged war or war of attrition is completely different matter and Tau is at risk of being exterminated by da boyzs. I do not know if new codex changed anything, but War of Dakka, a conflict which began from a single or few warbands had outgrew into existential conflict for the Tau and good fight for the orks.

Assassination of orks warboss isn't easy nor common. Few examples that you had given fails to deny trend that most warboss are notoriously difficult to kill or to assassinate. Take for example the Boss Urlakk's who required personal punching contest with da best Imperium boyz in existence and that's only after Imperium had brought entire Whhaaagghhh of their own to this ork's doorstep. I fail to see how dooming entire crusade to fail just for a chance to locate warboss and send primarch there is in any way considered as efficient and as an assassination. In addition, there is always a risk that someone is second in command among boyz. It's not unheard of that an ork manages to rally clans together before they turn into fighting each other, especially then there is really good foe to bash. That's the strength of orks, their leaders cannot be assassinated if they see someone as really good opponents, as was seen in Orks vs Tyranid famous duel. They simply will prefer to fight toughest boyz out there and if Orks sees someone as a real threat, they will always prioritize to attack their foes even without central command.


Supply depots are not centralized. Orks are sporadic and impulsive and thus they will hide their depots at unexpected places and will nor rely on a huge stockpile despite it being more efficient. That's more, supply depots will not be protected by administrators as it would be with Tau or Hummies, but with soldiers. Every single of them is a killer and every single truck of theirs carries some dakka dakka. To get into supply zone first you have to pass random orks who will wander territory. If you hope to bring heavier vehicle to bear, you would better hope that you remain unseen. If not, every boy nearby will come to loot your can.

In the end, Orks rely far less on supply chains than most races out there. Why? It's simple, they often move with everything they need and loot everything they need. Hummies might carry food for a week or so, but orks tend to move as a tide with their weapons and supplies all at once. It's more like migration of tribes rather than organizated approach towards war.

Orks do win almost all wars of attrition, that is absolutely true.

The problem is that the Tau tend to avoid attrition at all costs. So they would put every effort into avoiding direct battle by assassinations, sabotage of supplies and area denial by means that don't cost lives. The supply depots being amongst the Ork forces wouldn't mean much, the Tau are well known for their kunnin'.

If the Tau were driven off the planet before reinforcements that could accomplish these attacks arrived, then the Orks would win. Which, as I said, is entirely possible. But you need to bring a lot of boys. Far more than most bosses have to throw around to take a planet without being vulnerable to the aforementioned assassination technique.

Every Tau is first and foremost a public servant. Infiltration missions to assassinate warbosses would not require the assassins to live, and the knowledge of this would not dissuade the Tau carrying it out from their mission.

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:
Orks do win almost all wars of attrition, that is absolutely true.

The problem is that the Tau tend to avoid attrition at all costs. So they would put every effort into avoiding direct battle by assassinations, sabotage of supplies and area denial by means that don't cost lives. The supply depots being amongst the Ork forces wouldn't mean much, the Tau are well known for their kunnin'.

If the Tau were driven off the planet before reinforcements that could accomplish these attacks arrived, then the Orks would win. Which, as I said, is entirely possible. But you need to bring a lot of boys. Far more than most bosses have to throw around to take a planet without being vulnerable to the aforementioned assassination technique.

Every Tau is first and foremost a public servant. Infiltration missions to assassinate warbosses would not require the assassins to live, and the knowledge of this would not dissuade the Tau carrying it out from their mission.

You keep going to assassination, but there is a problem with that, assassinating a warboss, let alone a Big Mek, is hard. First you have to find said BM, which is harder than the codexs point out, especially since a BM is a back line commander, he is here for the loot, and thus is building his warmachines from the back line.

As for supply lines, once again this is a BM. The likely hood that they have teleporta's is high, so what would happen is that one moment the Tau are fighting a on coming wave of orks, next they getting hacked from behind. Not to mention the looting that takes place during\after the battle.

Also you are for getting that there are Kommando orks who are specialist in guerrilla warfare(ork style) so they will not be blind, not to mention the amount of tech this ork horde will have will mess up alot of sensors, as well as keep an eye out for long range threats.

 Ernestas wrote:


Orks do fight that way. They always strike with extreme numbers in order to create shock among defenders and destroy them before they can orginize

Fixed that for ya


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yep, assasinating a warboss/mek ain't that easy. It sure happens but it's not like: "Oh, there are orkses coming, just call a couple of guyz and let's go assasinate their leader. No big deal".

Firstly, he's never alone. And by 'not alone' i mean there are hundreeds of thousands in not millions orks around all the time. It's hard to phisically get close enough not even telling about tracking him in the first place.

Secondly, even if you managed to spot him and get close enough to land a precision shot/strike you need to actually kill him. It's not easy to kill a regular ork. It's even harder to put down a mek/boss in armor.

Thirdly, even if you slay the leader, it's not a guarantee that orks will fall apart that easilly. You got to sit and wait and see what's gona happen. Cause if you try to strike them emidiately...well, orks don't need orders to engage in a good fight. And there's alwayz plenty of nobz eager to take the lead. They fight for it and if a clearly stronger one arises, he's gona take the place in no time and you'll have to begin the assasination stuff anew. However, if the fight goes on and on, you're lucky. Now the WAAAAGH will break into warring warbands and you can take them out one by one.

 koooaei wrote:

 Ernestas wrote:


Orks do fight that way. They always strike with extreme numbers in order to create shock among defenders and destroy them before they can orginize

Fixed that for ya


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yep, assasinating a warboss/mek ain't that easy. It sure happens but it's not like: "Oh, there are orkses coming, just call a couple of guyz and let's go assasinate their leader. No big deal".

Firstly, he's never alone. And by 'not alone' i mean there are hundreeds of thousands in not millions orks around all the time. It's hard to phisically get close enough not even telling about tracking him in the first place.

Secondly, even if you managed to spot him and get close enough to land a precision shot/strike you need to actually kill him. It's not easy to kill a regular ork. It's even harder to put down a mek/boss in armor.

Thirdly, even if you slay the leader, it's not a guarantee that orks will fall apart that easilly. You got to sit and wait and see what's gona happen. Cause if you try to strike them emidiately...well, orks don't need orders to engage in a good fight. And there's alwayz plenty of nobz eager to take the lead. They fight for it and if a clearly stronger one arises, he's gona take the place in no time and you'll have to begin the assasination stuff anew. However, if the fight goes on and on, you're lucky. Now the WAAAAGH will break into warring warbands and you can take them out one by one.

People who think Orks are easy to deal with should read Siege of Castellax. The Iron Warriors thought it would be easy as well, then got bitchslapped for being so cocky and unprepared.

willhman wrote:
You keep going to assassination, but there is a problem with that, assassinating a warboss, let alone a Big Mek, is hard. First you have to find said BM, which is harder than the codexs point out, especially since a BM is a back line commander, he is here for the loot, and thus is building his warmachines from the back line.

As for supply lines, once again this is a BM. The likely hood that they have teleporta's is high, so what would happen is that one moment the Tau are fighting a on coming wave of orks, next they getting hacked from behind. Not to mention the looting that takes place during\after the battle.

Also you are for getting that there are Kommando orks who are specialist in guerrilla warfare(ork style) so they will not be blind, not to mention the amount of tech this ork horde will have will mess up alot of sensors, as well as keep an eye out for long range threats.

Assassinating the warboss is an easier proposition than fighting a war of attrition against an enemy who is not only more competent at such combat, but thrives on it. If the Tau fight that sort of war, they inflict massive casualties but lose. Against pretty much every opponent with troops to spare, which is most other armies in the setting. The Tau try to only fight on their own terms. For the Orks, that means ambushes, using their instinctive aggression to draw them into disadvantageous positions, degradation of Orkish capabilities to fight as effective, and elimination of leadership to break their formations.

Meks would be easier to find than a normal boss, surely? I mean, if the Tau are aware, all they have to do is follow the loot: bolt a tracker to something interesting and let it get taken. If the Tau aren't aware, construction yards and the like would be on the list of priority targets for sabotage anyway. Teleportas would indeed be a problem, but far less so when there wouldn't be front line to teleport in behind at first. Tau garrisons are for scouting and enemy disruption. Some of them would fight a delaying battle as civilians evacuate, but that would be a short thing.

Kommandos have a lot of tricks, but the Tau have the advantage when it comes to this sort of warfare. Kommandos rarely make up anything but a slim majority of any particular warband, and certainly don't make up more than that in a Mek-based Waaagh! The vast majority of Orks aren't "trained" to deal with denial of open battle, while it is the central philosophy of Tau tactica. The Orks are probably the reason it is the central philosophy of Tau tactica, they were the first truly hostile alien race the Tau encountered and Orks get very frustrated when they don't get to fight something.

With the Orks, it comes down to numbers. If they have enough ships to repel a space-borne counterattack, they'll win. If they have enough boyz on the ground or enough ships to make a purge with the Tau version of Exterminatus too costly, they'll win. If they have enough boyz on the ground and the planet isn't worth retaking, then they'll win. They're not easy to deal with, but there are sets of successful strategies you can employ against them.

Ideally the ork hoard in question would be one like buzzgobs boys or morgroks half of the sanctus reach WAAAGH!
(Spanner boys, lootas, mega-nobz, pain-boyz, makboyz, mek-boy junkas and an insane amount of kills Kans, dreads, mega-dreads, gorka-morkanauts, and stompas.) So im not sure how many kommandos they would have.

Also the mek in question has his own mekboy stompa-gargant mob. If the tau were going to try and assassinate him and or stop his walker mobs, would they be able to get close enough to do it when he's in the middle of said mob ? Can you even infiltrate a stompa or gargant for that matter ?

They would definitely be ale to get there. Pathfinders have been known to do that, and it would be a breeze for stealth suits.

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:

willhman wrote:
You keep going to assassination, but there is a problem with that, assassinating a warboss, let alone a Big Mek, is hard. First you have to find said BM, which is harder than the codexs point out, especially since a BM is a back line commander, he is here for the loot, and thus is building his warmachines from the back line.

As for supply lines, once again this is a BM. The likely hood that they have teleporta's is high, so what would happen is that one moment the Tau are fighting a on coming wave of orks, next they getting hacked from behind. Not to mention the looting that takes place during\after the battle.

Also you are for getting that there are Kommando orks who are specialist in guerrilla warfare(ork style) so they will not be blind, not to mention the amount of tech this ork horde will have will mess up alot of sensors, as well as keep an eye out for long range threats.

Assassinating the warboss is an easier proposition than fighting a war of attrition against an enemy who is not only more competent at such combat, but thrives on it. If the Tau fight that sort of war, they inflict massive casualties but lose. Against pretty much every opponent with troops to spare, which is most other armies in the setting. The Tau try to only fight on their own terms. For the Orks, that means ambushes, using their instinctive aggression to draw them into disadvantageous positions, degradation of Orkish capabilities to fight as effective, and elimination of leadership to break their formations.

Meks would be easier to find than a normal boss, surely? I mean, if the Tau are aware, all they have to do is follow the loot: bolt a tracker to something interesting and let it get taken. If the Tau aren't aware, construction yards and the like would be on the list of priority targets for sabotage anyway. Teleportas would indeed be a problem, but far less so when there wouldn't be front line to teleport in behind at first. Tau garrisons are for scouting and enemy disruption. Some of them would fight a delaying battle as civilians evacuate, but that would be a short thing.

Kommandos have a lot of tricks, but the Tau have the advantage when it comes to this sort of warfare. Kommandos rarely make up anything but a slim majority of any particular warband, and certainly don't make up more than that in a Mek-based Waaagh! The vast majority of Orks aren't "trained" to deal with denial of open battle, while it is the central philosophy of Tau tactica. The Orks are probably the reason it is the central philosophy of Tau tactica, they were the first truly hostile alien race the Tau encountered and Orks get very frustrated when they don't get to fight something.

With the Orks, it comes down to numbers. If they have enough ships to repel a space-borne counterattack, they'll win. If they have enough boyz on the ground or enough ships to make a purge with the Tau version of Exterminatus too costly, they'll win. If they have enough boyz on the ground and the planet isn't worth retaking, then they'll win. They're not easy to deal with, but there are sets of successful strategies you can employ against them.

I am not saying that assassination is a bad thing, but it is a hard thing, more so for a mek who will probably be in the back lines. The reason assassination works on warbosses is because they are on the front lines or are near those lines, making them easily distinguishable from the other orks, Big Meks on the other hand are usually deep behind ork lines which will have more tech to detect tau tech. Before you say that tau tech is superior to ork tech, please understand that these orks will be using looted tau tech, and as such will have a better chance of detecting tau forces. Also loot will be distributed among the meks at the battle, not to the big mek. Orks are inherently greedy, and so if the big mek is not around for the after party looting the chances of some of the loot reaching him are slim as the other meks are already taking anything worth of note. Which will also mean that meks will be spread all over the WAAAGH!!!! making it harder to find the BM.

Tau warfare against orks that I have read rely heavily on their speed and maneuverability. But since this is a tau world, then there will be tau cities and what not that must be protected. The tau will want a area to draw ork forces so that they don't target these cities, but with teleporta's the orks have increased maneuverability across vast areas of space, plus it allows them to strike at random making it harder for the tau to keep track of the ork forces, thus harder for them to pin point the mek. Though you have said that the tau will try to keep attention away for these cities, that will not stop hordes of boys from attacking it, making it so the tau are forced to defend if they do not want to lose these cities to the ork forces, giving them more tech to play with.

As for kommandos, yes I agree that they are less than tau in many ways, but with the mek bonus their kits of trap bombs are tailored more so that they will have bigger bangs and have a bigger aoe, and they will have some added tech to their usually array of equipment, maybe some tau looted stealth suits that have been made orkified.

When it comes to a BM WAAAAGH!!! the scariest thing about it isn't the number of boys(which is still a ridiculously amount) but to how fast ork tech progresses as the WAAAGH!!! moves from battle to battle.

 DanielBeaver wrote:
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).

That isn't really what the fluff showed. The fluff showed that even against a below average size ork force, the Tau had everything they could do to halt it and it even led to a marginal fracturing of their Empire.

Orks and tyranids are the worst thing tau can face since they are horde armies that exploit the low number of tau that actual exist.

Not really. There are quite a few tau for the area, they just have less total.

Which is what I mean. If a significant ork waagh or hivefleet arrived, they are the sort of foe that will make for a bad day. They don't just leave. They can't be scared off. They need to be fought to the end, something the tau struggle with since they do not have the numbers to take significant losses.

And that is tau, tiny, almost insignificant, but surviving. The ultimate underdogs.