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Hello fellow Dakka members, hopefully this is the right forum for this sort of question as I could potentially see it belonging in the tactics discussion instead. But I digress .

I'm a newbie with a question (shock horror); When considering allied forces is it generally better to bolster on your existing strengths or to cover your glaring weaknesses of the main contingent?

To give some context I've recently started the foray into 40K and chose my main force as the Tau (Cue general sounds of disgust and expletives) and as everyone knows in combat they have a comparable capability to that of a chocolate teapot. As such I was looking at including some allies when my points value gets decently high, so therein lies my question; Is it worth covering your weaknesses as an army?

If the general consensus is that its better to focus on strengths even considering allies, I'll just stay with Tau as I'm not ready for the cheesiness of Tau-dar just yet . However, if its better to cover some weaknesses I can consider a few models that I do currently own for other armies such as BA or even Orcs if I get super desperate haha.

Any help is very welcome!

Fishy.

Hi there ! I'm a new guy in the 40k world too, but I read and ask loads of questions too, maybe I can help

I think you may want allies to fill some holes in your current list. Tau are really good at shooting indeed, and terrible in CQC as they should be (must be hard to have a good sense of balance when your feet are actually hooves). Now you want to have counters to armies that rely on CQC units, because if we consider you ally with another shooty army, you'll have a great firepower, and you could just say "Whatever, if he can't reach me alive who cares about melee ?", and then you would have deepstriking murdermachines right behind your lines, forcing you to divert your fireline to deal with the threat that just popped right in your back, while there's still tough units walking to you, well protected and ready to brawl. While you could get lucky and quickly eliminate the uninvited guests, you may have bad rolls too and now you have a choice: will I use my frontline shooters to deal with the deepstriking unit ready to wreck havoc at their next turn, or do I try to scatter the other ones walking right up to me ? Now you wish you had something a little tough to lock the newcomers in melee while you re-organise your guys to better shooting positions.

So in my eyes, I'd personally ally with an army that could fill my weaknesses. That way your main army specialisation is still useful, but you don't risk losing everything to a hard counter or a few bad luck rolls.

Hope that helped, and if a more experienced player wants to correct me feel free to do so.

Fishy_Firepower wrote:
...(Cue general sounds of disgust and expletives)...

...'General sounds of disgust and expletives'? The Tau have long since been knocked off the pedestal by Eldar as the army you get sounds of disgust for admitting to play. Unless you start gushing about your Riptide wings or Stormsurges, that might get you some disgust.

As to the actual question the answer is usually 'it depends'. Most of the time if you can't get Battle-Brothers (read: if you're playing one of the four non-human/elf/chaos armies (Tau, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids)) Allies are more trouble than they're worth; with the Tau allies detract from the force-multiplier effect of more markerlights/more things to make use of the markerlights, and it's hard to find someone who's tough enough to make a useful speedbump to keep enemy melee troops off your army at small enough points totals to be an allied detachment. If you want to be a munchkin about it Daemons wouldn't be a bad idea; a Nurgle DP makes a respectable backfield charge-catching unit and a Tzeentch force could get a small daemon engine going to park free Bloodletters in front of the important stuff.

You want cheap, expendable screening units.
Investing in melee units is something you go all in with or don't bother with.
Best Tau allies I've ever encountered were Imperial Guard.
Drop Pods were useless because he covered his whole deployment zone.
I couldn't go around or jump over the IG, I had to go through them.
I couldn't hide in combat because sneezing in their general direction kills IG.
I held back models, I made disordered charges, I was forced to use every trick I knew because one Thunderwolf easily killed two out of five Guard models and forced them to take Leadership tests which he almost always failed and regardless of how we rolled my units wound up out of combat and just standing about to be shot at.

Tau usually go better without any allies since the eldar got swapped off battle brothers to whatever it is now.

Kroot are good at screening and cheap points wise.

Wow that's a lot of ideas to digest haha thank you all for that!

The general consensus seems to be that I should basically find some unit to tar-pit a squad at a moments notice, whether they're needed in my backline or just moving up the field so without any particularly beneficial allies, it does seem to mean i'm basically left with kroot haha.

...'General sounds of disgust and expletives'? The Tau have long since been knocked off the pedestal by Eldar as the army you get sounds of disgust for admitting to play. Unless you start gushing about your Riptide wings or Stormsurges, that might get you some disgust.

Well saying that I have already purchased my first Riptide, I'll begin preparing myself for the torches and pitchforks.

Are Orks a possible ally if I'm really desperate? I seem to recall them being relatively cheap to field and can throw quite a few attacks at any interlopers especially on the charge.

Aaranis, I didnt ignore your post dont worry, Its just exactly what I was thinking as well.

Meh allies are just there to build the army that you like to build. You want some flyer transports in your army because you think that its cool and makes sense in your idea of the fluff or you like the idea of orks having decent "looted" vehicles and artillery. But you don't have them in your army book just ally them in.

Thats what it is for, the whole "Improve on strengths or cover weaknesses" discussion is way too competitive minded to care about reasons why you field stuff. If you want to field the best stuff out there just do it.

I rather use allies to cover waeknesses. I plan to use some Necron tentacle-robots with my Tau army in the future.

My tau don't use allies
Why let a lesser race fight alongside us

Strength!!!

If you play a Rock list, be the best damn Rock list that you can! Remember that Paper will give no feths, so Rock that Paper like it's Scissors!

It's best to do both. But if you can only choose one, synergize on your strengths.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Fishy_Firepower wrote:
...(Cue general sounds of disgust and expletives)...

...'General sounds of disgust and expletives'? The Tau have long since been knocked off the pedestal by Eldar as the army you get sounds of disgust for admitting to play. Unless you start gushing about your Riptide wings or Stormsurges, that might get you some disgust.

As to the actual question the answer is usually 'it depends'. Most of the time if you can't get Battle-Brothers (read: if you're playing one of the four non-human/elf/chaos armies (Tau, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids)) Allies are more trouble than they're worth; with the Tau allies detract from the force-multiplier effect of more markerlights/more things to make use of the markerlights, and it's hard to find someone who's tough enough to make a useful speedbump to keep enemy melee troops off your army at small enough points totals to be an allied detachment. If you want to be a munchkin about it Daemons wouldn't be a bad idea; a Nurgle DP makes a respectable backfield charge-catching unit and a Tzeentch force could get a small daemon engine going to park free Bloodletters in front of the important stuff.

1st part of this seems to be a trend from Eldar players. Yes we all hate Eldar players because you guys have been the broken codex since 6th edition dropped and before that you were top tier as well. But that doesn't mean we don't hate Tau just as much. Nothing like having the only gimmick your army has completely ignored by the entire Tau faction (cover saves vs Marker Lights) Or having your huge force completely gutted by turn 2 because Tau can put out more damage at range then anyone else. And nothing screams I hate the tau more then a Riptide wing with a Stormsurge in support.

And to answer your question, there are no good CC units in the Xenos faction that will stand up to an imperial Deathstar. So you might get a turn of a speedbump but thats about it. It is probably a better option to just go full Tau and earn all that hate your going to get.