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topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

Sounds like the simplest way to adjust is Kroot to screen to be honest.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

Sounds like the simplest way to adjust is Kroot to screen to be honest.

Kroot screen equals perfect place to lock something in combat and have a turn where you don't need to spend 2 cp on conceal. Kill them in the tau players turn and then you have an easy charge turn 2/3. It really is tau and guard kryptonite.

 small_gods wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

Sounds like the simplest way to adjust is Kroot to screen to be honest.

Kroot screen equals perfect place to lock something in combat and have a turn where you don't need to spend 2 cp on conceal. Kill them in the tau players turn and then you have an easy charge turn 2/3. It really is tau and guard kryptonite.

They have an infiltration equivalent to be a roadblock and they're pretty darn easy to kill by accident if you try to get next to them.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

LOL no. Seeker missiles get to fire at the shooter's BS at 2 ML. At 5 ML they get the +1 to hit that everything Tau gets. So 2 ML to get to hit on 3+ for hammerheads/skyrays and 4+ for Devilfish/Broadsides. Competitive Tau isn't good because of their shooting. They are good because of their ablative wounds from SP. Their shooting is honestly kind of awful considering they can't melee or psyker.

 DominayTrix wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

LOL no. Seeker missiles get to fire at the shooter's BS at 2 ML. At 5 ML they get the +1 to hit that everything Tau gets. So 2 ML to get to hit on 3+ for hammerheads/skyrays and 4+ for Devilfish/Broadsides. Competitive Tau isn't good because of their shooting. They are good because of their ablative wounds from SP. Their shooting is honestly kind of awful considering they can't melee or psyker.

How do you land 2 ML on the -4 Lord Discordant?

you don't.

there are as said before 4 potential sources for 2+ ML,s which would ultimately be 6+ hits.


Without a reroll your chances are one 4/6 , so a bit more then 1 hit.
however since you require 2 you need to half that, so statistically speaking, it 2/6th.

 DominayTrix wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

LOL no. Seeker missiles get to fire at the shooter's BS at 2 ML. At 5 ML they get the +1 to hit that everything Tau gets. So 2 ML to get to hit on 3+ for hammerheads/skyrays and 4+ for Devilfish/Broadsides. Competitive Tau isn't good because of their shooting. They are good because of their ablative wounds from SP. Their shooting is honestly kind of awful considering they can't melee or psyker.

At bs 3+ they are hitting on 7s, you need to land 5 ML, which even with uplinked markerlight you'd be lucky to do, to hit on 6s. And because you're not dealing with big muti wound damage but lots of d1 and d2 possessed that throw out 15 mortals in the fight phase saviour protocols won't work well.

Not to be a negative point on this but my Tau force wouldnt be bothered by this kind of thing. The easiest way a tau army could deal with it is run flamers. The trick would be running stealth suits / ghost keels and give the 3x3 stealth suits the homing beacon. Beacon gets dropped t2 and allows a large crisis suit team to deep strike in within 6" of the beacon (yes this means they can come in within flamer range) and then wooosh. Run the crisis as flamers and give them a ATS to make those auto hitting flamers ap-1. Shield drones work to protect the suits vs close combat. Farsite can actually fight in cc. So can the suits. I ran this list in a local tournament (not a major itc or anything like that I am not assuming it would always work) and actually won my first 2 games with it, 1 vs new marines (ironhands had no idea what hit them) and 1 vs imperial guard (I proved that even russes can burn when hit by 6d6 auto hitting str 4 ap-1 hits using the command strat for rerolls).

My long winded point is while the possessed bomb is definitely a hard counter to the typical tau net list it's the tau players job to find a way around it. Is trying to fight chaos in close range combat a good idea? Probably not but what other choice do the tau have? Lol.


Back onto the topic of chaos I personally still dont care for alpha legion but I do understand why people like them, they are a very good option. Personally I have had a ton of success with flawless host, just the sheer number of attacks a basic marine can put out if needed is quite good. But if talking about disco lords I prefer black legion. Run 1 as warlord with indomitable trait so he takes half dmg, then mark of nurgle and dark apostle for easy to do -2 to hit, and use him to buff deamon engines in his vicinity.

Azuza001 wrote:
Not to be a negative point on this but my Tau force wouldnt be bothered by this kind of thing. The easiest way a tau army could deal with it is run flamers. The trick would be running stealth suits / ghost keels and give the 3x3 stealth suits the homing beacon. Beacon gets dropped t2 and allows a large crisis suit team to deep strike in within 6" of the beacon (yes this means they can come in within flamer range) and then wooosh. Run the crisis as flamers and give them a ATS to make those auto hitting flamers ap-1. Shield drones work to protect the suits vs close combat. Farsite can actually fight in cc. So can the suits. I ran this list in a local tournament (not a major itc or anything like that I am not assuming it would always work) and actually won my first 2 games with it, 1 vs new marines (ironhands had no idea what hit them) and 1 vs imperial guard (I proved that even russes can burn when hit by 6d6 auto hitting str 4 ap-1 hits using the command strat for rerolls).

My long winded point is while the possessed bomb is definitely a hard counter to the typical tau net list it's the tau players job to find a way around it. Is trying to fight chaos in close range combat a good idea? Probably not but what other choice do the tau have? Lol.


Back onto the topic of chaos I personally still dont care for alpha legion but I do understand why people like them, they are a very good option. Personally I have had a ton of success with flawless host, just the sheer number of attacks a basic marine can put out if needed is quite good. But if talking about disco lords I prefer black legion. Run 1 as warlord with indomitable trait so he takes half dmg, then mark of nurgle and dark apostle for easy to do -2 to hit, and use him to buff deamon engines in his vicinity.

Alpha legon have a strat to make deepstrikers land 12" away, and a second to shoot a unit that lands within 18".

I think if you're looking to maximise attacks on anything but lord discordants then you could just run world eaters. Marines with chainsword have 4 attacks each and can take an icon to reroll charges but bezerkers stil outpreform any troops choice we have. If i had more than 20 bezerkers I would try a hoarde of bezerkers spamming apocalyptic frenzy. You could get 100 bezerkers up the board pretty quickly and although they'd die in droves when they connect it would be massively messy. Even if just 30 make it into your lines it's pretty much gg.

Azuza001 wrote:
Not to be a negative point on this but my Tau force wouldnt be bothered by this kind of thing.

So what you're saying is that if you tailored your list to counter this thing, you could counter this thing.

What a stunning revelation.

What you later said is true, but here, I think, is the crux of it:

"...it's the tau players job to find a way around it."

You could say the same about any army, but more to the point in a tournament setting your can't just build a Tau army to fight one specific Chaos list, as you'll end up dying to everything else. The reason lists like this Chaos list work is because the general meta isn't ready for it. Anyone can tailor their list to beat a specific other list. Beating this at a tournament, if it is as unstoppable as some seem to be intimating, without tailoring your list to beat it would be the real test.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Azuza001 wrote:
Not to be a negative point on this but my Tau force wouldnt be bothered by this kind of thing.

So what you're saying is that if you tailored your list to counter this thing, you could counter this thing.

What a stunning revelation.

What you later said is true, but here, I think, is the crux of it:

"...it's the tau players job to find a way around it."

You could say the same about any army, but more to the point in a tournament setting your can't just build a Tau army to fight one specific Chaos list, as you'll end up dying to everything else. The reason lists like this Chaos list work is because the general meta isn't ready for it. Anyone can tailor their list to beat a specific other list. Beating this at a tournament, if it is as unstoppable as some seem to be intimating, without tailoring your list to beat it would be the real test.

i also really doubt that 6D6 S4 ap-1 D1 flammers really hurt a blob of possessed.
like each posessed has allready W2, a 3+ armor, can carry a lot of further buffs.

on average he can expect 21 hits. of which only 10.5 wound, of which 5.25 get ignored by armour, that is 3 dead possessed, maybee, if lucky.

Further, due to AL, chances are you get denied and have a bunch of stealthsuits sitting around now with flamers.
Further further, say hello to ambsuh, and or lord discordant bully.

How exactly do you achieve the -4 to hit on the Lord Discordant? Alpha Legion trait, plus Clandestine and then the Nurgle Psychic power?

Plus benediction of darkness from a DA. A chaos lord can get -5 with shadeblade.

 small_gods wrote:

 DominayTrix wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Don't Tau have the seeker missiles hitting on unmodified 2+ after 2 markerlights?

The "Hard countered T'au" maybe means that the 50 shield drone list cannot beat the possessed. That's normal rock paper scissors. If you spend 600+ points on pure defense against shooting and I play an army that doesn't shoot, this means you are on a disadvantage from the get go.

The possessed bomb makes the netlist of the T'au invalid, just as the triple TFC + tremor shells made plaguebearer lists invalid. It's more a problem because T'au don't have any other list option rather than the possessed being problematic by themselves.

LOL no. Seeker missiles get to fire at the shooter's BS at 2 ML. At 5 ML they get the +1 to hit that everything Tau gets. So 2 ML to get to hit on 3+ for hammerheads/skyrays and 4+ for Devilfish/Broadsides. Competitive Tau isn't good because of their shooting. They are good because of their ablative wounds from SP. Their shooting is honestly kind of awful considering they can't melee or psyker.

At bs 3+ they are hitting on 7s, you need to land 5 ML, which even with uplinked markerlight you'd be lucky to do, to hit on 6s. And because you're not dealing with big muti wound damage but lots of d1 and d2 possessed that throw out 15 mortals in the fight phase saviour protocols won't work well.

Oh I wasn't very clear. I was agreeing with you guys that Tau will not be able to reliably hit it. The best way to get markerlights on something like that would be a Sac'cea Sept locked strategem that auto places markerlights in an AOE around a unit. From there, BS2+ ML are spammed until one hits and rerolling 1s slightly increases the odds to ~20% per markerlight. If it does hit, uplinked markerlight will have about a 33% chance which is increased to ~55% if they use a command reroll. That's roughly 4CP and terrible odds.

The Y'Vahra is the most likely answer with a S6 Ap-3 D3 14" flamer (assuming Borkan Sept). They are overcosted and frequently outrun their drone support so screening for smite is a lot less likely.

No offense HBMC but I never said I wrote my list to counter the possessed bomb. I said this is the list I have been running for a few months now as tau and it has had a lot of success locally. People expect tau gun line that doesn't move, not tau in your face close range assault.

I run a squad of 6 bodyguard crisis suits. Each has 2 flamers and an ATS. That's 12d6 potential auto hits. Add the strat to have a commander not shoot but those bodyguards get to reroll failed wounds for 1cp (command and control node) and it's the most effective counter to a lot of different types of lists. That's also why I mentioned it worked well vs iron hands and imperial guard.

Is it something chaos players should worry about? I couldn't tell you, other than my own experience as a chaos player and a tau player. But it does show that the odd list out can swing a dont bother to play game into a fight.

42 hits
23.33 wounds
Just under 8 failed saves

Not dead Lord Discordant

At 23.33 wounds and a 4+ save that would be 11-12 wounds (ats makes it ap-1 on those flamers) and then there is farsight there to charge in and finish him. Not a guarantee at all, but it's still there.

Azuza001 wrote:
At 23.33 wounds and a 4+ save that would be 11-12 wounds (ats makes it ap-1 on those flamers) and then there is farsight there to charge in and finish him. Not a guarantee at all, but it's still there.

Lord Discordant is a 2+ base.

The list includes a nl element to shut down overwatch and bubbles, and lock in CC. I dont think your list changes much.

Could someone give me some advice on how to kit out contemptor dreadnoughts?

I really want to build them with one close combat weapon and a Butcher Cannon but I'm not sure if the Chainclaw is worth the extra 10pts and which weapon to put into the claw arm?

I was thinking Chainclaw, Butcher Cannon Hell Flamer and Havoc Launcher. It comes in at 166pts, the flamer would be helpful when moving in to attack and if it gets counter charged and if the butcher cannon gets at least a wound whatever the dread charges would have a pretty rough leadership test later.


I'm new to the game but I really like the idea of a claw and a big cannon on the thing so any advice on how I should kit it out more exactly?

double butcher cannon

 Dr.Duck wrote:
double butcher cannon

What this here dakkanaut is trying to tell, the hybrid loadout is due to gw ruledesign inherntly worse then a pure shooting or stabbing one.

That said, consider magnetisation.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Dr.Duck wrote:
double butcher cannon

What this here dakkanaut is trying to tell, the hybrid loadout is due to gw ruledesign inherntly worse then a pure shooting or stabbing one.

That said, consider magnetisation.

Yes either go full shooting or full assault. An assault oriented contemptor can still have ok shooting. I run ectoplasma blasters in my double chainclaw contemptor to vaporize primaris or soften up harder targets before charging in to hack them to pieces. Just don't expect to be both a gun platform and an assault unit.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Dr.Duck wrote:
double butcher cannon

What this here dakkanaut is trying to tell, the hybrid loadout is due to gw ruledesign inherntly worse then a pure shooting or stabbing one.

That said, consider magnetisation.

Magnetisation might be something I consider doing but since it's a bit of a conversion project I would basically have to make weapons to magnetize


I get that full ranged Dreadnought might be more efficient but I don't want to use that and I'm not sure I'm convince the full melee one is better...

Chainclaw + Deathclaw +2x combi-bolter and havoc is 148.

Chainclaw + Butcher Cannon + Hellflamer and Havoc is 166.

For that 18pt difference I get 1 less melee attack and like 4-8 blinky bolter shots less but gain 4x 3+ hitting (when moving) S8 -1 D2 shots on the approach and a heavy flamer. That trade off seems super worth 18 pts to me?

If I trade the flamer for a combi bolter that's instead 3 pts difference for the butcher cannon in exchange for -1 attack and half the bolter shots.


Am I thinking weirdly about this? With the assumption that I want a minimum of one close combat weapon on it would it not be better to bring a range weapon instead of the second claws?

One gun + One Melee weapon is okay if you're keeping the shooting weapon cheap like a TL Heavy Bolter or Autocannon. The extra attack from the two melee weapons seems great, but in practice you won't need it a lot and being able to plink wounds off low model count units is good so you can continue focus fire elsewhere.

The real question is where do you see the Contemptor fitting into the army?

If it's hanging out in your DZ, the Chainclaw is there to clear out deepstrikers and you've basically made a bulldog to patrol your backfield. You'll be putting out less damage downrange though as you lose a ranged weapon.

If you're moving into the midfield to assault, you present a priority threat to the enemy and you're probably going to be focused on. In that case you don't want to invest too many points in the Contemptor's ranged shooting, as it's going to get blown away pretty quickly. So in that case, a lot of people prefer to maximize their CC damage and keep the model cheap.

I think you can make a case for mixed-loadout Helbrutes that come in at <100pts with a Combi. But they also have a few special rules and stratagems that Contemptors don't get.

Yoyoyo wrote:
The real question is where do you see the Contemptor fitting into the army?

If it's hanging out in your DZ, the Chainclaw is there to clear out deepstrikers and you've basically made a bulldog to patrol your backfield. You'll be putting out less damage downrange though as you lose a ranged weapon.

If you're moving into the midfield to assault, you present a priority threat to the enemy and you're probably going to be focused on. In that case you don't want to invest too many points in the Contemptor's ranged shooting, as it's going to get blown away pretty quickly. So in that case, a lot of people prefer to maximize their CC damage and keep the model cheap.

I think you can make a case for mixed-loadout Helbrutes that come in at <100pts with a Combi. But they also have a few special rules and stratagems that Contemptors don't get.

Helbrutes are absolutely awful at trying to be mixed loadout.

If you can find a cheaper unit that can put a 3D fist into a target at WS3+, let me know.

Yoyoyo wrote:
If you can find a cheaper unit that can put a 3D fist into a target at WS3+, let me know.

Maulerfiends aren't much more expensive and move faster, so there's that.

I said less expensive.

Helbrutes are there for economy before all else.

Maulerfiends also don't strike at WS3.