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With the recent re rise of tau popularity making heavy interceptor a thing again I am thinking for a competative list of dropping the marines and running 2 paladins instead od the single crusader. This makes me more vulnerable to psychic death stars without a pod to get my culexus near though. Any other reasons you can see that may make me stick with the pods instead?

To me when it comes to Tau it seems like we're screwed either way, your pods either get intercepted to death, or your knights die to ignores cover D missiles. Incontol may have fought new Tauwith War Convocation recently, hopefully he'll chime in.

 ultimentra wrote:
To me when it comes to Tau it seems like we're screwed either way, your pods either get intercepted to death, or your knights die to ignores cover D missiles. Incontol may have fought new Tauwith War Convocation recently, hopefully he'll chime in.

I play War Convocation with drop pods and you are hardly "screwed". Frontline gaming already did a good Batrep where the Tau guy had two stormsurges and riptides and lost even with favorable rolls.

Just make sure you kill markerlight units and use a drop pod with vanguard turn one if needed. Interceptor will most likely not be enough and even then you could use a destroyer drop pod with FNP priest to bait the interceptor.

But even then you just pop Stealth and Shrouded, and put your deep strike units behind the drop pod for intervening model save giving them a 2+ cover save with no markerlights on by then.

Tau is a game of target priority with markerlight units and it isn't very hard after that when they only hit 50% of the time and can't ignore cover.

Well, don't forget his little monologue in the beginning, Tau did win in the first turn but the decided to start over for a more interesting game.

DirtyDeeds wrote:
Well, don't forget his little monologue in the beginning, Tau did win in the first turn but the decided to start over for a more interesting game.

Indeed, I think this goes to show you just how important first turn is to War Convo. Gotta get those Canticles up.

DirtyDeeds wrote:
Well, don't forget his little monologue in the beginning, Tau did win in the first turn but the decided to start over for a more interesting game.

Yah, but that was on a steal of Initiative.

You can't really say AM suck in that match up because they get shot off immediately on a 1/6 chance that you deployed too offensively. Tau would have also ate it just as bad if he went second and stole initiative.

What a AM player has to know is that if they go second or are worried about SoI, they need to null deploy or deploy defensively overall for the first turn.

The toughest combo right now is the drone formation which gives them a minimum of 16 marker drones with interceptor.. that is a NO NO on dropping vs them. I played a fantastic Tau player utilizing that formation and 5 ghostkeels + riptide and stuff. I had to ditch most of the dropping (2 empty 1 with vanguard) and slog up the field after putting down long range hurting via the crusader knight. Was a bloody game but for the most part as we all know when Tau aren't landing marker lights on you they aren't hitting particularly hard and the Knight can still do a LOT of hurting. I would say remain strong with the ad mech / drop style because even with the most matchup you are still OK but vs everything else you are strong. If they cannot intercept with marker lights Shrouding/stealth canticle means "go ahead and intercept" as you defend and destroy.

Kataphrons are slow and bad on foot but it is better than just auto losing them. Drop the empty pods (assuming you're facing intercepting marker drones) on objectives / away from their melta. If they want to intercept them? Fine.. just don't drop them where those things would have NOTHING else to do.. they will take the free kill.