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So I've been playing space marines vs a buddies tau and it always seems I just end up losing. And It's not like a close lose, but some times full on tabling. I can't survive his volume of fire. This last game was me having 3 squads of tactical marines (2 plasma 1 special salamander flamer), an assault squad with two flamers, a librarian ml2, a dreadnought (assault cannon/heavy flamer), and vangaurd veterans. His list was 9 fire warriors with Cadre Fireblade in a devil fish, a pirhanna, 2 broadsides with missles, 1 double plasma crisis, 1 double flamer crisis, 2 crisis suits with 2 burst cannons and flamer, and 4 pathfinders. This mission was 3 objectives, one in each deployment zone, and one in a peice of open terrain.

I got first turn and just moved guys into cover and killed his stealth suits first turn with a psychic. His turn was spent not doing much. My turn 2, my assaults come in from deepstrike and toast his pathfinders, but are shot off the board next turn with the dreadnought gettign hit by the broadsides. His turn all of his suits come in from deepstrike and harrass my units but not enough damage. It continues on like this until he pretty much has full range of second objective with me no where to put my units line of sight blocking. He ends up winning by just jumping a crisis suit with objective secured onto the point when all I have left is my librarian near it. I can't survive anotehr turn of shooting due to only able to kill a few crisis suits, and all the is left is the librarian, and a plasma tac squad on my objective.

What could I have done differently? We are playing an escalation of 250 and added the dread and vangaurds in for my 250 with minor tweaks. Until we reach 1500 we have to keep the same units with minor loadout changes, so I'm trying to figure out what can I add when I move onto a 1000 points, and maybe better set up terrain. I try advocating for better los blocking so that units will have to get close to each other instead of large open swaths of land, but he's not for it, also we have some GW terrain and some pieces of syrofoam that we end up using as unpassible terrain, which as a marine army, blows cause I can't traverse it, and he runs a lot of crisis suits.

Your list is not good at all for dealing with a gun line since your entire list is entirely walking infantry. You can't expect to walk through a firing range and expect to make it to the other side intact.

You need transports. A delivery system to get your guys across the table without getting shot at. Rhinos won't last very long either but they will get you 18" up the table before your guys start to get shot at. Or drop pods which let you show up right next to them and start shooting them first. You also need some shooting that works at ranges other then 12" or less (your only gun that is effective at above 12" is the single assault cannon on your dreadnought) so you don't have to walk across the whole table to start dealing damage to them.

well some ideas I could have changed was the dreadnought could be a double autocannon dread and a sternguard squad. I would have dropped some points and drop podded them.

Carnith wrote:
I try advocating for better los blocking so that units will have to get close to each other instead of large open swaths of land, but he's not for it

No gak, sounds like he just wants you to put your models in a line while he rolls dice and you remove them. If you're walking slowly up the table against a gun line, where there's basically 0 LOS blocking terrain, you'll never beat Tau.

Drop the plasmas, atleast for know. You are running salamanders, so take advantage of the mastercraft and flamers. Sarge should always have a mastercraft bolter, makes for a very safe combi plasma.

You are using a standard CAD detachment looks like.

You running 5 man or 10 man squads? Sounds like 5 man, so you might be better from a points tweak to run a 10 man squad with a rhino and 5 man on foot. Combat squad in the rhino so you can toss one squad out early and then blitz to the next location before tossing the second squad out.

Becuase you are facing Tau the heavy bolter and classic Missile launcher are good choices. HB will down the piranha, the DF with side shots, eat both FW and pathfinder while forcing saves on all the suits (3+ to wound). The Missile Launcher will give you range to start hurting hurting broadsides out side the 36", and the S8 AP3 will have you doubling out crisis suits.

Can you squeeze a power weaon in to the assault squad? a Mastercraft power sword (3 attacks on the charge) or Claws (2 re-roll to hit, re-roll to wound) will dice crisis suits and threaten broadsides.

Same on the Vanguard, but take Axes (ap2) and Maces (S+2) to hammer the broadsides down.

The dread is vulnerable to the broadsides and plasma suits, but it will wreck face against the stealth teams, so I would send the dread after those while taking out the broadsides/ After that the dread can be a real threat.

 Griddlelol wrote:

Carnith wrote:
I try advocating for better los blocking so that units will have to get close to each other instead of large open swaths of land, but he's not for it

No gak, sounds like he just wants you to put your models in a line while he rolls dice and you remove them. If you're walking slowly up the table against a gun line, where there's basically 0 LOS blocking terrain, you'll never beat Tau.

I agree. It sounds like he just wants to roll dice with someone watching- not play a game of 40k.

Bring dreadnoughts with flyers, drop dreadnoughts with heavy flamers and multi-meltas in front of his stuff and smoke the vermin out of his hole. As strong as they are while they're forcing you to come to them once you flush Tau out of their little hidey holes they're as bad as Tyranids.

Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

Make it interesting, bring more terrain in there. Try for a dense urban/jungle setting.

yes, 3 5-man tact squads. I initially did meltaguns to be fluffy in a 4x4 combat patrol map but since I had nothing which could reach him, I changed to plasma for the ability to just be able to damage him.

I use the prometheus's wrath relic on a squad for the ap4 flamer.

so maybe for my 250 point list. I'll fit a rhino or two in there and maybe take devistators. I have another list that had the points equivalent of the vanguard with sternguard.

so augmenting my list. I have
ML2 Librarian (will roll on Biomancy)
10 man squad with Prometheus's wrath, combat squaded in a rhino. SGT: Combi weapon
5 man squad with plasma gun in rhino Sgt: Combiweapon
5 man assault 2 flamers
5 man sternguard all combi
dreadnought double autocannons
Devistator 4 missles extra body (6 in total)

This will be for a 1000 point game. At this point I'm not expecting a riptide until we reach 1500 and allowed a reshuffle of our points.

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

No, thank the Emperor. Missiles will double them out, but las also bypasses armour and can keep them safe from retaliation.

Carnith wrote:
yes, 3 5-man tact squads. I initially did meltaguns to be fluffy in a 4x4 combat patrol map but since I had nothing which could reach him, I changed to plasma for the ability to just be able to damage him.

I use the prometheus's wrath relic on a squad for the ap4 flamer.

so maybe for my 250 point list. I'll fit a rhino or two in there and maybe take devistators. I have another list that had the points equivalent of the vanguard with sternguard.

so augmenting my list. I have
ML2 Librarian (will roll on Biomancy)
10 man squad with Prometheus's wrath, combat squaded in a rhino. SGT: Combi weapon
5 man squad with plasma gun in rhino Sgt: Combiweapon
5 man assault 2 flamers
5 man sternguard all combi
dreadnought double autocannons
Devistator 4 missles extra body (6 in total)

This will be for a 1000 point game. At this point I'm not expecting a riptide until we reach 1500 and allowed a reshuffle of our points.

Did not think Relics were available to squads, but not up on Salamander relics. Don't forget to mastercraft that the all the Sarges (re-rolling sternguard special ammo is worth it)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Drasius wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

No, thank the Emperor. Missiles will double them out, but las also bypasses armour and can keep them safe from retaliation.

Quite true, was just looking at point costs, especially in tac squads. If you can afford the Lascannon, they are better armor hunters.

 Drasius wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

No, thank the Emperor. Missiles will double them out, but las also bypasses armour and can keep them safe from retaliation.

I have been overestimating them a great deal.

pm713 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

No, thank the Emperor. Missiles will double them out, but las also bypasses armour and can keep them safe from retaliation.

I have been overestimating them a great deal.

The new model makes them look like they should be, but they are still just jumpless, up armored crisis suits.

barnowl wrote:

Carnith wrote:
yes, 3 5-man tact squads. I initially did meltaguns to be fluffy in a 4x4 combat patrol map but since I had nothing which could reach him, I changed to plasma for the ability to just be able to damage him.

I use the prometheus's wrath relic on a squad for the ap4 flamer.

so maybe for my 250 point list. I'll fit a rhino or two in there and maybe take devistators. I have another list that had the points equivalent of the vanguard with sternguard.

so augmenting my list. I have
ML2 Librarian (will roll on Biomancy)
10 man squad with Prometheus's wrath, combat squaded in a rhino. SGT: Combi weapon
5 man squad with plasma gun in rhino Sgt: Combiweapon
5 man assault 2 flamers
5 man sternguard all combi
dreadnought double autocannons
Devistator 4 missles extra body (6 in total)

This will be for a 1000 point game. At this point I'm not expecting a riptide until we reach 1500 and allowed a reshuffle of our points.

Did not think Relics were available to squads, but not up on Salamander relics. Don't forget to mastercraft that the all the Sarges (re-rolling sternguard special ammo is worth it) .

For Salamanders, the relic can be used on any infantry model that may take a special weapon. What the relic does is it's a s4 ap 4 flamer and if the model didn't move it's heavy 1 torrent.

Not entirely sure what your table looks like, but it sounds like you need to invest in more terrain. Planet pool table is deep in Tau territory and you should never go there.

haha we used to play on the pool table when we began. We used random junk in his basement as our terrain. We eventually used some styrofoam peices to throw around which lead to me being fustrated by some pieces not being ruins and others being considered ruins and granting saves, so I went the route of cardboard terrain. I hot glued a bunch of cardboard, cut out some windows and doors and was good to go.

Finally around christmas, I bought a Relicos and then for a gw event, I bought the imperial sector. I've made about 4 buildings out of the sector and still can make about 2 more. I plan to start making the Relicos soon to give our board plenty of terrain. Not to finally mention, I invested in the Death Ray Design MDF terrain kickstarter that had a bunch of space marine stuff.

A third friend who is slower at modeling wants a terrain filled board cause he wants to play cities of death and killteam with the board so he's excited to see more terrain for when he has his dudes finally built.

Have you looked in to Paper Terrain? WorldWorksGames Mars Station is a good 40k set. Fingers and Toes all as has soem really good stuff. Just takes some time and a printer to get nice terrain.

Carnith wrote:

barnowl wrote:

Carnith wrote:
yes, 3 5-man tact squads. I initially did meltaguns to be fluffy in a 4x4 combat patrol map but since I had nothing which could reach him, I changed to plasma for the ability to just be able to damage him.

I use the prometheus's wrath relic on a squad for the ap4 flamer.

so maybe for my 250 point list. I'll fit a rhino or two in there and maybe take devistators. I have another list that had the points equivalent of the vanguard with sternguard.

so augmenting my list. I have
ML2 Librarian (will roll on Biomancy)
10 man squad with Prometheus's wrath, combat squaded in a rhino. SGT: Combi weapon
5 man squad with plasma gun in rhino Sgt: Combiweapon
5 man assault 2 flamers
5 man sternguard all combi
dreadnought double autocannons
Devistator 4 missles extra body (6 in total)

This will be for a 1000 point game. At this point I'm not expecting a riptide until we reach 1500 and allowed a reshuffle of our points.

Did not think Relics were available to squads, but not up on Salamander relics. Don't forget to mastercraft that the all the Sarges (re-rolling sternguard special ammo is worth it) .

For Salamanders, the relic can be used on any infantry model that may take a special weapon. What the relic does is it's a s4 ap 4 flamer and if the model didn't move it's heavy 1 torrent.

Well I suggest the OP to take more Droppod than Rhinos, Salamander is great at drop assault. And a steel rain will force the Tau to face threat overload, if you have 3 Droppods loading with Dreadnoughts, Sternguards or Tac / Command Squad with melta guns or grav weapons, followed by 2 more Tactical Squads to camp objective or as second wave strikes, you should do ok.

pm713 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Forget missile launchers. Get some lascannons to double out the broadside suits.

Are Broadsides not T5?

No, thank the Emperor. Missiles will double them out, but las also bypasses armour and can keep them safe from retaliation.

I have been overestimating them a great deal.

Broadsides are relatively glass cannony. The trick is living long enough to hit them back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dracpanzer wrote:
Not entirely sure what your table looks like, but it sounds like you need to invest in more terrain. Planet pool table is deep in Tau territory and you should never go there.

Some battles are indeed fought in the open, though. Much of the eastern front of WWII had relatively little cover other than hilltops.

There is a lot to talk about here. There are some basic rules in 40k that work well. No matter who you are facing with what. Yes I am serious.

1) aggression: attack a place on the board. Forget maelstrom they ruin 40k. Just pick a part of the board in his deployment zone and saturate it. Take it over. Smash it. To do this follow step 2)

2) ignore casualties. I mean it. Think in terms of points. Just forget taking it personally. Win your target. Forget if it means your newly painted unit got to go back in its box.

3) by turn 3 everything you own should be in close combat or in a big gang in one place still doing step 1) but to a new place.

4) know what is likely to happen. Do the maths in your head. If you can't be 75% sure what the outcome is don't risk it. Always have a second back up unit to deal with the 25% probability they failed. Stay in cover unless you are 75% sure. If you can't get to cover don't deploy them at all or buy more cover. Never deep strike if there are intercept units. Try to manipulate the roll somehow or think of some way to deny him the target. Yes you can.

5) run the list. Kill not what is important to your opponent utility kill what you can be 75% sure will be wiped out. This is important. Most players react badly to losses. They start to make mistakes. Make him put models in his box. Dead units means less choice for him.

Carnith wrote:
So I've been playing space marines vs a buddies tau and it always seems I just end up losing. And It's not like a close lose, but some times full on tabling. I can't survive his volume of fire. This last game was me having 3 squads of tactical marines (2 plasma 1 special salamander flamer), an assault squad with two flamers, a librarian ml2, a dreadnought (assault cannon/heavy flamer), and vangaurd veterans. His list was 9 fire warriors with Cadre Fireblade in a devil fish, a pirhanna, 2 broadsides with missles, 1 double plasma crisis, 1 double flamer crisis, 2 crisis suits with 2 burst cannons and flamer, and 4 pathfinders. This mission was 3 objectives, one in each deployment zone, and one in a peice of open terrain.

I got first turn and just moved guys into cover and killed his stealth suits first turn with a psychic. His turn was spent not doing much. My turn 2, my assaults come in from deepstrike and toast his pathfinders, but are shot off the board next turn with the dreadnought gettign hit by the broadsides. His turn all of his suits come in from deepstrike and harrass my units but not enough damage. It continues on like this until he pretty much has full range of second objective with me no where to put my units line of sight blocking. He ends up winning by just jumping a crisis suit with objective secured onto the point when all I have left is my librarian near it. I can't survive anotehr turn of shooting due to only able to kill a few crisis suits, and all the is left is the librarian, and a plasma tac squad on my objective.

What could I have done differently? We are playing an escalation of 250 and added the dread and vangaurds in for my 250 with minor tweaks. Until we reach 1500 we have to keep the same units with minor loadout changes, so I'm trying to figure out what can I add when I move onto a 1000 points, and maybe better set up terrain. I try advocating for better los blocking so that units will have to get close to each other instead of large open swaths of land, but he's not for it, also we have some GW terrain and some pieces of syrofoam that we end up using as unpassible terrain, which as a marine army, blows cause I can't traverse it, and he runs a lot of crisis suits.

I think you will find that you need fast assault elements, at least one GOOD one. Outflanking is something i do a lot of and If I do, i prefer to take two units for it to get across and get Linebreaker as well as to kill.

Transports as has been said is a legit way to approach a force like the Tau Empire. In that case, forego shooting and just move flat out in turn one. Movmeent and getting in their face fast is more important than whatever small amount of damage you might have accomplished.

One more point: Remember that the best way not to get hit is not to be there when the punch lands. You will find a lot of help on my blog listed below, as far as alternative ways of deployment and null deployment. It might help you envision a different way to employ your forces.

The last point I will make is this: Strategic Warlord traits are the best when you are trying to fight the Tau Empire. Several useful abilities in it that would very much help your cause.

"Never deep strike if there are intercept units. "

Too late if you brought a pod army.

It's actually easier than you think to apply this sort of thing. Never allow the odds to be in the other players favour, if you're forced into it try to refuse it. This last part is almost never done. Most people focus on 2 or 3 things like this:

1) list building visit forums
2) basically squad layout and how to put last canon guy at back
3) use dice at fairly appropriate things that can bee seen if it fails call it luck
4) people micro manage to gain distance and things.

None of this makes a blind bit of difference.

The stuff I am sharing works all the time. I've rarely been beaten, I run odd lists you'll never see on forums and I never ever blame the dice when things go wrong. They always go wrong. There are some lists in 40k that are incredibly broken. I don't run them. If I face them I push them really hard and abuse their weaknesses. I've come up with lists that you'll never see on forums that could win any tourney. The games are boring that way. It'd be mean to share thesearch sorts of lists but they're so broken, it's awful. You're maybe thinking it's hot air but I've shared them with some incredible players and they wereally gobsmacked. And they're too much for the community to handle.

I hope they never get out.

What I'm saying is knowing that I can pull one list out that'd win no matter what gives me the sort of confidence NOT to power game. If someone does I'll use half an army to give them a game.

What I would day is that marines are hard to use at the moment. Personally I'd go all in for "free" las Plas razor backs carrying 5 man squads of Melta gun combi melta melta bomb type thing. And spam msu because marines are tough to win at the moment. This is especially easy if salamanders. I have to say I'm little of of the loop with marines I play space wolves some I'm not 100% sure of the legality of what it is, but dual demi company with free transports in the one to build around.

Drop pods are alright sort of. But not my thing.marines one thing is they are good at most stuff so equip them that way. Anyway I'm straying off the topic massivley so I'll go. But the main thing is to understand your strengths and your weakness and know their strengths and weaknesses

Martel732 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dracpanzer wrote:
Not entirely sure what your table looks like, but it sounds like you need to invest in more terrain. Planet pool table is deep in Tau territory and you should never go there.

Some battles are indeed fought in the open, though. Much of the eastern front of WWII had relatively little cover other than hilltops.

True, though the steppes are anything but flat. Advancing infantry on a WWII battlefield had a lot of tools that GW will likely never bring in to 40k. The tiny sliver of a battlefield a 40k game represents is a far cry from the blasted landscape you would see at the point of assault on a WWII battlefield.

If you want to reinact the battle of the Somme then you should have gone with imperial guard. Your tactic of slowly walking up the battle field into machinegun fire is as popular as it is futile.

You could include a thunderfire cannon to deal with pathfinders. Grav centurions will give you some actual offensive firepower. Given you have to keep your horde of useless tactical marines the best way to get some work done by them is to combat squad your guys with 4 guys + lascannon at the back for guarding objectives and 4 guys with a flamer / melta podded in.

EldarArmy wrote:
There is a lot to talk about here. There are some basic rules in 40k that work well. No matter who you are facing with what. Yes I am serious.

1) aggression: attack a place on the board. Forget maelstrom they ruin 40k. Just pick a part of the board in his deployment zone and saturate it. Take it over. Smash it. To do this follow step 2)

2) ignore casualties. I mean it. Think in terms of points. Just forget taking it personally. Win your target. Forget if it means your newly painted unit got to go back in its box.

3) by turn 3 everything you own should be in close combat or in a big gang in one place still doing step 1) but to a new place.

4) know what is likely to happen. Do the maths in your head. If you can't be 75% sure what the outcome is don't risk it. Always have a second back up unit to deal with the 25% probability they failed. Stay in cover unless you are 75% sure. If you can't get to cover don't deploy them at all or buy more cover. Never deep strike if there are intercept units. Try to manipulate the roll somehow or think of some way to deny him the target. Yes you can.

5) run the list. Kill not what is important to your opponent utility kill what you can be 75% sure will be wiped out. This is important. Most players react badly to losses. They start to make mistakes. Make him put models in his box. Dead units means less choice for him.

Maelstrom ruins 40k? For a lot of lists and armies Maelstrom brought the fun back. Maelstrom actually just breaks your style of play, not ruins 40k. Other than that nothing really new here, looks like the general strategy for all EW missions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

EldarArmy wrote:
It's actually easier than you think to apply this sort of thing. Never allow the odds to be in the other players favour, if you're forced into it try to refuse it. This last part is almost never done. Most people focus on 2 or 3 things like this:

1) list building visit forums
2) basically squad layout and how to put last canon guy at back
3) use dice at fairly appropriate things that can bee seen if it fails call it luck
4) people micro manage to gain distance and things.

None of this makes a blind bit of difference.

The stuff I am sharing works all the time. I've rarely been beaten, I run odd lists you'll never see on forums and I never ever blame the dice when things go wrong. They always go wrong. There are some lists in 40k that are incredibly broken. I don't run them. If I face them I push them really hard and abuse their weaknesses. I've come up with lists that you'll never see on forums that could win any tourney. The games are boring that way. It'd be mean to share thesearch sorts of lists but they're so broken, it's awful. You're maybe thinking it's hot air but I've shared them with some incredible players and they wereally gobsmacked. And they're too much for the community to handle.

I hope they never get out.

What I'm saying is knowing that I can pull one list out that'd win no matter what gives me the sort of confidence NOT to power game. If someone does I'll use half an army to give them a game.

What I would day is that marines are hard to use at the moment. Personally I'd go all in for "free" las Plas razor backs carrying 5 man squads of Melta gun combi melta melta bomb type thing. And spam msu because marines are tough to win at the moment. This is especially easy if salamanders. I have to say I'm little of of the loop with marines I play space wolves some I'm not 100% sure of the legality of what it is, but dual demi company with free transports in the one to build around.

Drop pods are alright sort of. But not my thing.marines one thing is they are good at most stuff so equip them that way. Anyway I'm straying off the topic massivley so I'll go. But the main thing is to understand your strengths and your weakness and know their strengths and weaknesses

Do you write for infommercials or advertising? If not it might be a good career choice. Not saying you don't have killer lists, but you have pretty much lost any credibilty with your writing style.

Maelstrom is definitely fun. I dont know why the TC insists on having it in their tournaments since such a random thing is probably not AS good an idea in competitive play but it is at least a more engaging mechanic. Ultimately I like more normal misions for organized play and Maelstrom for casual play.

 Jancoran wrote:
Maelstrom is definitely fun. I dont know why the TC insists on having it in their tournaments since such a random thing is probably not AS good an idea in competitive play but it is at least a more engaging mechanic. Ultimately I like more normal misions for organized play and Maelstrom for casual play.

Do you not understand how the ITC format works?