Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Still new to tabletop. And still learning.

I have a 1500 point Tau army, and my friend has a 1500 point chaos army with typhus and nerg. We've played seven games so far over a few weeks and I've lost every single one. Unless I'm doing something horridly wrong, the tau are a cardboard tier army that can't kill Anything. I even forced my friend to lose his predator and rhino tank, and hellbrute and I lost even faster.

2 Missle broadsides
1 crisis suit
2 pathfinder teams ( 5 soldiers, a drone)
4 fire warrior teams (12 soldiers)
1 stealth team ( 6 suits)

Vs

2 Chaos space marine squad
1 plague marine squad
1 terminator squad
1 chosen squad
35 zombies
Typhus

0 victories and 7 defeats

What is wrong here??

I am no expert on Tau, but you need something with a little more punch and synergy. Pathfinders are great at supporting something, but you list lacks that something to me.

On a side note, you mentioned vehicles, but they are not on the unit list. Do you all have vehicles?

 Havok210 wrote:
I am no expert on Tau, but you need something with a little more punch and synergy. Pathfinders are great at supporting something, but you list lacks that something to me.

On a side note, you mentioned vehicles, but they are not on the unit list. Do you all have vehicles?

I do not own any vehicles, my friend owns a Hellbrute, a Rhino, and a Predator. This last battle was just infantry to see if I could make a dent in his forces.

Unless you've missed a couple of units there, your army comes in at ~950pts for me. So that might be one thing. If you're using devilfish, that gets you up to 1500... but stop, devilfish are generally overpriced for what they provide.
His list comes in at ~950 with minimum sizes squads (2x 5 marines, 5 chosen, 5 terminators, 5 plague marines). If thats the case you should be able to easily wipe one marine unit off the board every turn even at long range, so I'm guessing he's using bigger units.


Tau have a few very good units, and a lot of decent units. You're not fielding anything, except for an overkill of firewarriors. Chaos Marines have very few good units. This should be relatively easy for you. I'd hazard that you're forgetting or misplaying some important rules if you're finding this a tough matchup.

The army you have should be putting out enough firepower to kill a lot of his stuff. You outrange all his stuff, all his guys are pretty slow and they want to walk towards you. You can kill Rhinos with Firewarriors on the first turn to buy yourself some more time. He really doesn't have any shooting power in his list to thin out your numbers before he gets close.
If you're having trouble against his heavier armour, thats because you're not bringing much in the way of your own anti armour. If your Stealth suits have Fusion blasters though, they should be able to get some damage in on the enemy especially if they get rear armour. Likewise your Broadside shouldn't have too much trouble putting some hull points on Rhino/Predator/Hellbrute.

If you want to field a firewarrior-centric army, a good investment is an Aegis defense line and an Ethereal or Cadre Fireblade. Fireblade gives one stationary squad +1 shots at all ranges; Ethereal gives everyone within 12" an extra shot at half range. That gives you 144 S5 AP5 shots at close range!

One thing you might look at is the lone crisis suit. They're one of the best units in the codex (especially if you use the Farsight supplement, but even without that they're strong contenders). They're not really very tough, so you should look at multiples. Typically you want to equip a squad of 3 each with 2 of the same weapon. A squad with 6 plasma rifles using 2 markerlights for support should be able to wipe out a terminator or marine squad in close range.

Broadsides with all the missiles are great. Riptides with the Ion Accelerator are also a fantastic, top-tier unit that is amazing against marines of any variety.
As you start playing more objective-based games you might find that having so many firewarriors makes your lines a bit static. My tau army tends towards 1 12-man and 2 6-man squads of firewarriors and lets the Crisis Suits, Broadsides and Riptides do the heavy lifting.



This is how i'd expect the battle to go:
Turn 1.
Lets say you deploy 30" away and get first turn, and 4 markerlight hits. All of his stuff is Nurgle so T5 3+ save. You kill 7 marines with combined shooting.
He moves 6" and runs ~4".
Turn 2.
You repeat. another 7 dead. He moves 6" runs 3" forward.
Turn 3.
You either retreat back to the board edge and hope to get another full round of shooting, or you advance in to doubletap range and hope to buy another round of shooting by killing his front rank. Lets say you retreat back to the board edge. Another 7 dead. He moves. He's pretty close now, should be able to charge next turn.
Turn 4.
You doubletap this turn: killing 12. ~33 dead marines by this point. He charges with 1 unit - combined overwatch with supporting fire and any remaining markerlights kills 3 marines. The charged squad unfortunately holds in combat (boo photon grenades).
Turn 5.
The rest of your army focuses down another squad, killing ~8 marines. ~40-45 dead by this point. You lose combat at the end of your turn and break, get run down.
Turn 6.
By this stage there is a handful of lone enemy marines on the table that even marines vs tau don't pose a huge threat. You mop up.
And I forgot to shoot with the Crisis suit and the Stealth suits! Lets say they teamed up and whittled down the zombies - Stealth suits vs Zombies should be a fairly hilarious game of 'you can never catch us while we do 5+ wounds per turn'

Thats how I'd *expect* the game to go. Maybe being a little optimistic with kill counts, but also not factoring in the distance you're pushing him back with casualties.

Can you give a bit more of a run-down of a specific battle, that might help us identify what's going wrong.


Of course, all of this is moot with Tau getting a new codex in 2 weeks...

Hi, just want to say its gonna be really hard to dent his forces if you don't have the tool for it. Like Havok said, there is no synergy in your force, or not much is there.

1) Did you equip your commander to a buffmander to help the broadsides? Give him some markerdrones and drone controller to make him a super support character to help your army.

2) I think devilfishes are really amazing. They are expensive, like what Trasvl said, but if you play maelstrom missions, they are obj secured vehicles who can jink to get 3+ cover saves. And that is amazing against chaos.

3) Go close with your firewarriors if you need to. This is specially good because you have 4 maxed out squads and each doing double tapping on your opponent can really do alot! And also, firewarriors can chew light infantry really well, especially with your pathfinders around. 80 bs5 str 5 shots can do damage to ALL infantry, including MeQ and if you're lucky TeQs as well.

4) Stealth suits should be equipped with fusion blasters and kept small so they can hide in terrain. Make the vehicles afraid of you and yet they can't touch you because a melta is nearby.

5) Target priority. See what your threat is first. The worst things for tau are fast units then followed by transports. I will destroy those first before targetting anyone else. I will always destroy transports first because they are the easiest to destroy, and most of the time get first blood.

These are the things I recommend for now! If you do not want to get vehicles, I would suggest more crisis suits because they are really versatile and amazing for what they do. Even the new suits coming out fill a niche that the crisis suits can do as well!

Trasvi wrote:
Unless you've missed a couple of units there, your army comes in at ~950pts for me. So that might be one thing. If you're using devilfish, that gets you up to 1500... but stop, devilfish are generally overpriced for what they provide.
His list comes in at ~950 with minimum sizes squads (2x 5 marines, 5 chosen, 5 terminators, 5 plague marines). If thats the case you should be able to easily wipe one marine unit off the board every turn even at long range, so I'm guessing he's using bigger units.


Tau have a few very good units, and a lot of decent units. You're not fielding anything, except for an overkill of firewarriors. Chaos Marines have very few good units. This should be relatively easy for you. I'd hazard that you're forgetting or misplaying some important rules if you're finding this a tough matchup.

The army you have should be putting out enough firepower to kill a lot of his stuff. You outrange all his stuff, all his guys are pretty slow and they want to walk towards you. You can kill Rhinos with Firewarriors on the first turn to buy yourself some more time. He really doesn't have any shooting power in his list to thin out your numbers before he gets close.
If you're having trouble against his heavier armour, thats because you're not bringing much in the way of your own anti armour. If your Stealth suits have Fusion blasters though, they should be able to get some damage in on the enemy especially if they get rear armour. Likewise your Broadside shouldn't have too much trouble putting some hull points on Rhino/Predator/Hellbrute.

If you want to field a firewarrior-centric army, a good investment is an Aegis defense line and an Ethereal or Cadre Fireblade. Fireblade gives one stationary squad +1 shots at all ranges; Ethereal gives everyone within 12" an extra shot at half range. That gives you 144 S5 AP5 shots at close range!

One thing you might look at is the lone crisis suit. They're one of the best units in the codex (especially if you use the Farsight supplement, but even without that they're strong contenders). They're not really very tough, so you should look at multiples. Typically you want to equip a squad of 3 each with 2 of the same weapon. A squad with 6 plasma rifles using 2 markerlights for support should be able to wipe out a terminator or marine squad in close range.

Broadsides with all the missiles are great. Riptides with the Ion Accelerator are also a fantastic, top-tier unit that is amazing against marines of any variety.
As you start playing more objective-based games you might find that having so many firewarriors makes your lines a bit static. My tau army tends towards 1 12-man and 2 6-man squads of firewarriors and lets the Crisis Suits, Broadsides and Riptides do the heavy lifting.



This is how i'd expect the battle to go:
Turn 1.
Lets say you deploy 30" away and get first turn, and 4 markerlight hits. All of his stuff is Nurgle so T5 3+ save. You kill 7 marines with combined shooting.
He moves 6" and runs ~4".
Turn 2.
You repeat. another 7 dead. He moves 6" runs 3" forward.
Turn 3.
You either retreat back to the board edge and hope to get another full round of shooting, or you advance in to doubletap range and hope to buy another round of shooting by killing his front rank. Lets say you retreat back to the board edge. Another 7 dead. He moves. He's pretty close now, should be able to charge next turn.
Turn 4.
You doubletap this turn: killing 12. ~33 dead marines by this point. He charges with 1 unit - combined overwatch with supporting fire and any remaining markerlights kills 3 marines. The charged squad unfortunately holds in combat (boo photon grenades).
Turn 5.
The rest of your army focuses down another squad, killing ~8 marines. ~40-45 dead by this point. You lose combat at the end of your turn and break, get run down.
Turn 6.
By this stage there is a handful of lone enemy marines on the table that even marines vs tau don't pose a huge threat. You mop up.
And I forgot to shoot with the Crisis suit and the Stealth suits! Lets say they teamed up and whittled down the zombies - Stealth suits vs Zombies should be a fairly hilarious game of 'you can never catch us while we do 5+ wounds per turn'

Thats how I'd *expect* the game to go. Maybe being a little optimistic with kill counts, but also not factoring in the distance you're pushing him back with casualties.

Can you give a bit more of a run-down of a specific battle, that might help us identify what's going wrong.


Of course, all of this is moot with Tau getting a new codex in 2 weeks...

Ive been using the battlescribe app on iPad and it totals my army to 1497 points with all the extra things I would include.

I usually start off with my stealth suits jumping in and attacking the first thing that sits in front of them, usually a vehicle. However this battle i had them jump out of cover and attack his chosen squad, which was wiped very quickly.
This was then followed by my remaining force taking some shots at the zombie hoard and removed a couple from the fight. None of the zombies got back up and He began his turn, only killing two stealth suit by crappy rolls. He then moves his people up and it resumes my turn, Stealth team jumps out and fires, killing a few zombies because of their proximity. remainder of forces fire unsuccessfully, removing only 5 more zombies.

His turn, cover saves my stealth suits from getting shot and everything else is out of range. So he deep strikes his terminators and typhus in the dead center of my remaining forces. Interceptor from broadsides and crisis suit remove two terminators from the equation. Assault phase, zombies rush my stealth suits, somehow they have 35 hits to apply to the stealth suits (we follow the rules best we can) so the stealth team gets destroyed and one of them is added to the zombie hoard.

My turn again, I focus two 12man firewarrior teams and one 10 man firewarrior team to shoot the gak out of the terminator squad. Used a few markerlights and wiped all but two terminators. Pathfinder team cant hit typhus, and broadsides unleash hell to drop typhus down to 2 wounds. a few more zombies die. Used my crisis suit jet packs and jumped into cover. End of my turn. Terminators roll for leadership test and pass, keeping them where they stand.

His turn, he moves forward and gets one wound on my crisis suit. His terminator squad wipes my 10 man firewarrior team and his remaining forces charge into my crisis suit (which is my commander). Commander gets slaughtered and the failsafe detonator hits 13 units...killing 2 and wounding one...

CHAOS BOON TABLE TIME

Terminator that killed all those tau gets 6 boon rolls apparently. Increases his toughness on top of mark of nergle, gives him shroud, and additional wound, and oh of course. Daemon Princehood. (Boon Table roll 6 6)

At that point, i called it and conceded, as the last time we looked into it the Daemon Prince is impossible to kill without rolling perfect sixes.

I love my army...i just want to see it win just once

If you're going to go infantry heavy, you might want to look into getting a Cadre Fireblade or maybe an Ethereal. Both have abilities that enhance the shooting of Fire Warriors. If you're planning on just doing a gun line of Fire Warriors, you might also want to invest in an Aegis Defense Line. It'll make your Warriors far more survivable, giving them all a cover save, which helps against AP4 or better shooting attacks.

Your Crisis Suit and Stealth Suits should never be getting into combat. Assuming an 18" threat range on the Burst Cannons, you should be moving away from your target, but staying within 18". Shoot in the shooting phase and then jump 2D6" AWAY to safety in the assault phase. Make your opponent have to chase you.

Also, double check the Typhus Zombies. I don't think they get any shooting. You make it sound like they were shooting you.

Shas'Shaam wrote:
Ive been using the battlescribe app on iPad and it totals my army to 1497 points with all the extra things I would include.

Then I would say you're spending FAR too many points on things which aren't providing you any benefit. (EDIT: Your crisis is a commander. factored that in) the loadout I would take on those forces (minimum upgrades) your list comes to 1050pts at most. That means you are spending 450pts for no significant increase in firepower or model count.

This is the list I would run with what you've described is:

Fire Warrior Squad: 12 Firewarriors = 108pts
Fire Warrior Squad: 12 Firewarriors = 108pts
Fire Warrior Squad: 12 Firewarriors = 108pts
Fire Warrior Squad: 12 Firewarriors = 108pts

Broadside Squad: 2 Broadsides, HYMP, SMS, EWO = 140pts

Commander: 2x Plasma, EWO, Shield Gen, Iridium, Failsafe Detonator = 155pts

Stealth Suits: 6 XV25, 2x Fusion Blaster = 190pts

Pathfinders: 5 pathfinders + Grav Drone ? = 70pts
Pathfinders: 5 Pathfinders + Grav Drone ? = 70pts

Before you go just piling on the upgrades, think about the tradeoff between the points you're spending and what those points could potentially buy you elsewhere. Choose what you want a squad to do in optimal situations, and make it efficient at doing that, and don't spend points that don't make you better at your primary task. Does giving EMP grenades to all your firewarriors really increase your damage output, or would you be better off taking 2 dual fusion crisis suits. Think about it: 450pts difference is 2 freaking riptides. It is 3 Skyrays. It is 9 crisis suits with dual plasma. A riptide with EWO could vaporise that entire deep-striking terminator squad the second it appears. I don't see anything you could be buying to upgrade your existing squads that is worth 2 riptides.
Haywire grenades? Kind of fun sometimes, but Fusion blasters on various platforms are better in all except the most niche applications. Shas'ui +markerlights / upgrades for your firewarriors gives a single expensive markerlight shot that must go against a target you've already hit - its better to buy 2 more pathfinders for the same price.
Are you using Carbines or Pulse Rifles on your firewarriors? Pulse Rifles are better in nearly every imaginable situation.

I usually start off with my stealth suits jumping in and attacking the first thing that sits in front of them, usually a vehicle. However this battle i had them jump out of cover and attack his chosen squad, which was wiped very quickly.
This was then followed by my remaining force taking some shots at the zombie hoard and removed a couple from the fight. None of the zombies got back up and He began his turn, only killing two stealth suit by crappy rolls. He then moves his people up and it resumes my turn, Stealth team jumps out and fires, killing a few zombies because of their proximity. remainder of forces fire unsuccessfully, removing only 5 more zombies.

That seems oddly low. I'd expect your Broadside to be removing 3-5 zombies on its own (depending if they're nurgle marked), and your firewarriors with below average markerlight support to be getting another 10-15 kills (if everything can see)

His turn, cover saves my stealth suits from getting shot and everything else is out of range. So he deep strikes his terminators and typhus in the dead center of my remaining forces. Interceptor from broadsides and crisis suit remove two terminators from the equation. Assault phase, zombies rush my stealth suits, somehow they have 35 hits to apply to the stealth suits (we follow the rules best we can) so the stealth team gets destroyed and one of them is added to the zombie hoard.

It should be literally impossible for your Stealth Suits to get caught by the zombies. The zombies are Slow and Purposeful so they can only move 6" per turn until they charge. Your fire range is 18" and you move 6" per turn ignoring terrain PLUS 2D6" after you've shot.

My turn again, I focus two 12man firewarrior teams and one 10 man firewarrior team to shoot the gak out of the terminator squad. Used a few markerlights and wiped all but two terminators. Pathfinder team cant hit typhus, and broadsides unleash hell to drop typhus down to 2 wounds. a few more zombies die. Used my crisis suit jet packs and jumped into cover. End of my turn. Terminators roll for leadership test and pass, keeping them where they stand.

His turn, he moves forward and gets one wound on my crisis suit. His terminator squad wipes my 10 man firewarrior team and his remaining forces charge into my crisis suit (which is my commander). Commander gets slaughtered and the failsafe detonator hits 13 units...killing 2 and wounding one...

Failsafe detonator is... not worth the points. Don't take one, ever.
Think about it. Its a 'last laugh' item that relies on your commander being killed, in combat. And as you can see, with S5 AP- its not hurting anything anyway. Why plan on dying in combat when you could instead spend points to stay out of combat? Or spend the points on Iridium Armour + Shield Generator + Hit & Run instead?
On the other hand... your commander shouldn't be getting caught in combat by space marines anyway. Its not as sure a thing as against the zombies, but it really shouldn't happen. They move 6 and can do one of run/shoot/charge. He moves 6 (ignore terrain), shoots 12-36" depending on weapon, and moves 2D6 in assault phase. Plus he should be killing at least 1 marines per turn with plasma rifles/ fusion blasters anyway, pushing them further back.

CHAOS BOON TABLE TIME
Terminator that killed all those tau gets 6 boon rolls apparently. Increases his toughness on top of mark of nergle, gives him shroud, and additional wound, and oh of course. Daemon Princehood. (Boon Table roll 6 6)

Well thats completely wrong.
Only the champion gets to roll, he only rolls once, IF he personally kills an enemy character (Shas'ui in this case). Now it sounds like you probably have spent the points to have characters in your Fire Warrior squads, so you could possibly give up one roll on the table. Alternatively, you just decline the challenge he issues and he can't kill the character and can't roll. If your character is killed by sweeping advance then he doesn't get the roll either.
Furthermore, you don't retain any special rules/wargear apart from your mark of chaos if you get turned into a Daemon Prince.

Even more than that, it seems unlikely to me that your firewarriors get so decimated by only 2 Terminators - with your photon grenades they don't get any bonuses for charging, meaning they do only 5-7 attacks depending on loadout, killing ~3. Add in Typhus for another 2 kills... he would need to hit and wound with all 10 attacks . Terminators can't make sweeping advances so even if you do break after that, you still run out of combat, he doesn't get any boon rolls, and you live to fight another day.
Did you remember to do overwatch + supporting fire? It sounds like your army was bunched close enough together that the 12, 12 and 10 man squads should have gotten to fire, plus possibly some markerlights. I'd expect that you could put one wound on terminators with that much overwatch.

At that point, i called it and conceded, as the last time we looked into it the Daemon Prince is impossible to kill without rolling perfect sixes.

Your fire warriors are actually pretty decent at killing Daemon Princes. Remember that Daemon Princes are only T5, and the Daemon of Nurgle doesn't get +1T like Mark of Nurgle does. It sounds like you still had at least 2 squads of 12 fire warriors alive - 48 shots that hit and wound on 4s before any markerlight support, which (on average) should kill the Daemon prince in one round of rapid-fire shooting.

I'd seriously recommend dropping all the upgrades you have, and filling out the 450-500pts that gains you with
- Ethereal
- riptide with IA, EWO, Stims
- 3 crisis suits with Dual plasma or fusion.