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I just got back from a tournament on the weekend where I managed a 4th overall placing which I was pretty happy with (considering I can't paint). The only thing I was unhappy with was a 20-0 loss to a mechanised Tau army. At first glance I thought I would have an easy time of it, but the army proved very difficult to beat and I am a bit lost as to how I should have gone about playing against it. The army is run by a friend who is a good player. The list is:

Ethereal

12 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
12 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
12 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
12 Fire Warriors in Devilfish
9 Fire Warriors in Devilfish

3x Tetras (AV 10 skimmers with markerlights and tl pulse rifles)

2xHammerheads with Railguns and BurstCannons
1xhammerhead with TL-Mega fusion blaster and burst cannons

I was playing BA with

Codicer w/ veil of time/BP/JP/Honors
Reclusiarch w/JP/BP/Honors

3x6-Man las/plas with Vet sarges

2x8-man assault squads w/2 plasma pistols and vet w/ powerfist
Landspeeder Tornado w/ AC/HB

8-Man Devastator squad with 4 HB and vet sarge
8-Man Devastator squad with 3 ML and vet sarge
Whirlwind

What should I be looking to do to beat a mech tau army with this list and furthermore what could I change to make the list more effective against this army (as I will have to beat it if I want to make a serious push for placing in most local tournaments)

batrep? how did the game go?

Fear of darkness will help you keep his fire warriors in their transports Just say, "Hey, my Librarian has FEAR OF DARKNESS!" and then jab him in the shoulder real hard and make fun of his mom.

Certainly not what I'm used to seeing, especially with all the forgeworld stuff. I'd certainly be curiouis how the battle went, and how the Tau guy did overall. Really. he's got a lot of well armored skimmers, and you don't have that much AT...at least not enough to stop that kind of army.

What were you playing? I'm guessing around 1750 points?

I can see how the tau player probably approached this battle. If he more or less layered his D-fish on the approach, your limited, although not small, amount of AT fire would have had to be focused on one or two fish, leaving the bulk of this list free to advance. He probably loaded up on a flank and just used concentrated fire to wipe out whole units at a time. Thats a lot of rapid firing Tau goodness. The three markerlights on the tetras probably were only used to help the Hammerheads as to not loose too much shooting effectiveness. Rough. I can see how the Tau list looks deceptivly weak.

As for you. You stated that the list is BA (I assume blood angels) but were you really using the BA codex? The list looks like a typical SM list to me. If it was BA, how many black rage checks forced your heavies to move and thus loose a firing chance? If you can't shoot your AT guns, you will never stop those skimmers. Also what mission level was the game? If you played escelation, you would have had a huge advantage as you would have had a lot of shooty guns on the table and would be able to pick apart the Devilfish as they came on board. I'm guessing it was probably gamma level. Anyway, if I saw that many skimmers, the first thing I'd do is make my whirlwind fire castillians. Those bad boys always hit rear armor and are S6 glance only, but since your shooting skimmers its pretty much the same thing. That and vengance are only S5 so you can't even hurt any of his tanks from the front.

Obviously FOTD on your Librarian would have worked much better against Tau than Viel of Time, but you were in a tourniment, and since its not Tiggy, no changing it mid flow. However I've found that there are few armies that Fear is useless against, so it might be the better choice next time in the grand scheme of things.

Then the last thing is that you could have just been out played or had the worse luck. If a few other rolls on the damage tables went the other way you could have stalled his advance. Maybe you found youself spread out during deployment and he was able to use his superior mobility to wipe out whole units while your heavy guns had to move or choose less than optimal targets.

These things happen. Who knows if you played him a second time right away, you would have done better as you would have had a better idea on the strengths of his list.

If he had decoy launchers on all his vehicles nothing except hope you get lucky with your shots. You would just have to hope you stun one vehicle and try to destroy it in the next shooting phase so you can actually penetrate. Get used to this kind of list as this will probably be the future of competitive Tau lists. Even with thier new dex and options it would appear that Mech Tau will remain strongest.

Cheese up a bit and grab some more asscans?

They really are the best weapon in the game. They will tear apart skimmers and heavy tanks.

Another option is to arm your Dev squad with autocannons and tank hunter. Or do loyalist marines not get ACs for their dev squad. 8 S8s can put the hurting on skimmers.

no autocannons for devestators. that would hurt.
First off, that is the most firewarriors I have ever seen in a mech tau army, ever. Most mech players run 2 or 3 fishes, no more. They also take crisis suits and stealth teams.

To change your list you could do with a little more anti tank firepower. Melta bombs on the assult marines are a possibility.

As a mech tau player I have to say min maxed squads are ausome. I can eat them up in one shooting phase. 2-3 10 man squads packed tightly together is a pain to try and dislodge. Cant get close or they will eat me and with 3 las cannons they will hurt the tanks over time, far more than I will hurt them.

I would have to say the worst things I have ever faced (two losses with mech tau) are hords of marines with anti tank firepower. One was iron warriors with 2 large dev squads and 6 oblits and 6 man marine squads. The other was about 60 alpha legion with 2 dev squads and 3 oblits. Lots of guys and lots of anti tank firepower kill mech tau easily. Kind of obvious but that is their major weakness. Small armies get eaten by them and they can do a good job of avoiding combat armies.

Hey all thanks for the input I will give you a run down of the battle. It was a gamma cleanse, he got to choose deployment zone. The table was dominated by a line of size 3 terrain cutting through the middle. The quarter he chose basically reduced me to having very little range with which to use my heavy weapons and no line of sight unless he came to me. Basically I knew I oculdn't possibly just send the Assault squads over alone or they would be cut up. So he pretty much just set up a move over the size 3 terrain and started rapid firing. Using a wall of vehicles he prevented me from counter-charging. The fact of the matter is that the damage done in the initial turn of shooting was too great and I could not down any of the fish the second turn so I got hit again. By this point it may as well have been game-over. The frustrating thing is that I had no options when playing the game. Even looking back I don't see what I could tactically have done given the army to beat him.

I agree though that I think the best way to stop this sort of army would just be a mass of marines. Given enough marines he couldn't hope to do enough damage with the rapid fire and could not win a close-range shoot-out if heavy bolters were involved. The idea to use castellans is also a good one which I considered, but I had no mine-fields modeled.

As another note, Marines with bolters vs Fire warriors win out in a close range firefight, even without special weapons. They both wound on 3's, but the Marines hit more often and have a better save.

Hmm. Were the HB dev squads targetted? Seems like they should devastate a squad a turn with their shooting. (6 kills per turn shooting).
The whirlie should have been able to put major hurt on any deployed squads on the turn they deploy, was he able to get to it? Was there no terrain to hide behind?

What do you have that can deal with their transports? Looks like 3 MLs, 3 LCs and a smattering of lasfire, oh and the 1 Assault Cannon.

I am not entirely sure, but what is good at taking down large quantities of AV12 in the marine list?

Happy Anarchist?

Do you realize thats not exactly true even against 10 marines, and he is only facing a maximum of 8, ok lets say he uses the standard the Fish of Fury tactic, against the large HB Devestator squad.

Fly 2 Devilfish over and land directly in front of the marines, deploy the fire warriors in the middle of the two and fire everything they got. . . 2 BC's, 4 Gun Drones, 24 Fire Warriors?

54 Strength 5, Ap 5 shots, and 4 Twin Linked Pulse Carbine Shots. . .
28.75 hits, 18.97 wounds, 6.26 dead marines. . . Marines will have to take a ld check, maybe a pinning test or even 2, and even if they pass to return fire to the firewarriors, they will need to make another ld check or shoot at the devilfish which he probably can't hurt, if he makes the ld check, he will be able to do on average only 2.87 kills on one of the FW squads, which won't even have to make a ld check?

Well straight off it looks like your wasting 160 points, devastators, and las/plas squads shouldn't get veteran sergeants, and I don't like the whirlwind its only really effective against stationary tau, orcs, and troop heavy IG which is never played anymore for good reason. . . oh and another bad thing against the whirlwind, you only have 1, if you buy tanks follow the IG's commandment, "Thou Shalt Always have more than 1" this goes for every single army I have ever read except maybe the necron monolith.   

Now I can see if you have an area set up like you said, I would have split up my devastator squads, one to each of your deployment areas corners. . . if their all in one area his tau can just mass fire power kill one squad and then not have to move to still rapid fire, while you can support your own squads with your better range. . .

Your Assault squads I would have moved up towards the cover, so he would either have to land in the cover with his devilfish, or land between you and your devastators, giving you free shots at the rear of the devil fish or forcing him to make a dangerous terrain check, or letting him try to skim past your assault squads to engage the devastators, if he did that you would just assault the fire warriors with your assault squads next turn. . .

You also could have risked the lives of your 2 assault squads just to get close enough to assault his Ethereal, killing him would have really really hurt his army. . . Every single one of the troops would have been forced to make a ld check or fall back, I am not sure how that works with the fw's in the devilfish though. . .

Thats all I can think of, but frankly I like his list alot, and would be suprised if he didn't do well in most of his tourneys if he knows what he is doing at all. . .

"Well straight off it looks like your wasting 160 points, devastators, and las/plas squads shouldn't get veteran sergeants"

I am playing as Blood Angels and I get to pick up these vets into the DC with free powerfists, where else am I supposed to get these from?

" I don't like the whirlwind its only really effective against stationary tau, orcs, and troop heavy IG which is never played anymore for good reason. . . oh and another bad thing against the whirlwind, you only have 1, if you buy tanks follow the IG's commandment, "Thou Shalt Always have more than 1"

I would have to disagree with this in the case of a tank which only fires indirectly. The purposeof that commandment is too keep all the opponents anti-tank weapons from ganging up on one target. My whirlwind shouldn't and didn't get shot at til the 4th turn.

"Now I can see if you have an area set up like you said, I would have split up my devastator squads, one to each of your deployment areas corners. . . if their all in one area his tau can just mass fire power kill one squad and then not have to move to still rapid fire, while you can support your own squads with your better range. . ."

As it stood I set them up together in the center of my zone rather than split it, which just would've left me more spread out and easily isolated. That and one of the devastator squads would have been totally out of LOS.

"Your Assault squads I would have moved up towards the cover, so he would either have to land in the cover with his devilfish, or land between you and your devastators, giving you free shots at the rear of the devil fish or forcing him to make a dangerous terrain check, or letting him try to skim past your assault squads to engage the devastators, if he did that you would just assault the fire warriors with your assault squads next turn. . . "

This probably would have been a good idea, but would only have delayed things, I never had the capability to win the game because of his mobility.

"You also could have risked the lives of your 2 assault squads just to get close enough to assault his Ethereal, killing him would have really really hurt his army. . . Every single one of the troops would have been forced to make a ld check or fall back, I am not sure how that works with the fw's in the devilfish though. . . "

To do this I would have had to have downed the devilfish with the ethereal in it, considering my opponent is under no obligation to disclose which one he is in this would have been risky to say the least. Even had I known which one it was, it was likely the one surrounded by other vehicles so I could not have assaulted it. Even if I had been lucky, troops in vehicles don't need to take morale tests

"Thats all I can think of, but frankly I like his list alot, and would be suprised if he didn't do well in most of his tourneys if he knows what he is doing at all. . ."

He does, He won the tourney and only dropped 3 points in the gaming (or none I can't remember).

First you need to scrap your list...its just plain junk. The only heavy BA needs to take are dreadnoughts or a vindicator, the rest arent worth thier points. A whirlwind is just plain junk in your army. Get more speeders, drop the devs and bump up the strength of our tac squads. If you wanna rely on heavy weapons for tank killing, either used the twinlinked las of a dread, or put heavy weapons in your tac squads. A BA player with devs is just looking to roll a black rage with them..


Also BA is a very specialized list, you need to step back and not run a vanilla marine list throwing in the BA colors and trying to get a deathcompy. Personally, who cares about powerfists in your DC

I will ignore most of that, unless of course you would like to explain to me why any of your suggestions would have helped me against his army given the terrain. As for BA being a specialised list, they are not an all-out assault army, they are a counter-assault army. My last game was against an all-out assault BA army with exactly the choices you are talking about and I massacred it thanks very much to 4 factors;

1) The Whirlwind performed well
2) The Devastator squads shot him as he came in and I had little to deal with come turn 4
3) My army had superior firepower and was killing him from turn 1
4) Those PF's in the death company are the reason I wiped out his DC with a counter-charge in 1 turn

This player was soundly beaten in all but two games. It's funny because asides from this one game the heros of my army were the very units that you are telling me to drop.

If you wanna rely on heavy weapons for tank killing,

Are you implying I should have had melta-bombs too assault the skimmers?

So I say it again, rather than just rattle out random things I should change, explain to me how they would have helped against these tau cos I am not seeing it.

Melta bombs and the like wouldn't have, and I can't and won't argue that they do shooting is usually the best way to drop a vehicle unless it didn't move. . . that 6 to hit is really horrible

The huge factor seems to have been terrain set up vs. this person's army build, albeit it seemed effective.

I used to play a guy who always would set up terrain in this fashion (line of trees down the middle of the board) as he ran mechanized Eldar. It always seemed to give him such a huge advantage for exactly the same reason you gave: you can't send your assault elements up unsupported and you have to wait for him to cross terrain in order to shoot. Doesn't make for a very fun game, unfortunately.

To counter it, then would be to get your fire support past impossible LOS issues. Deep Striking and Drop Pods seem the most viable. This is the particular situation I can see where only 2 Drop Pods could make a big difference in a game. Terminator Retinue w/ Librarian and FotD, Land Speeders would be other decent selections for Deep Striking.  Your opponent has two options- shoot whatever dropped into his lines or move away (or both I suppose). This helps you get your assault elements move into position w/o taking obscene amounts of shooting.

Sorry to be a bit vague, but I really think this was more of a terrain set up issue than army list design.

 

 

 

 

 

I was also thinking about that, but frankly I am not going to propose a drop pod list, until I have one since the damn FW models cost so much. . . Tempted to go find some battle tech drop ship models should be close to the same size and probably cheaper. . .

Maybe even just head down to Toy's R Us and check what they got from the latest anime

Well yeah, that does make me a feel a bit better. The more I have thought about it the more I have thought (hopefully not arrogantly) that with the terrain setup that I really did not have much of a chance excepting some amazing luck. If it had been a straight shoot out I am confident I could have downed at least 2 fish and stunned some more fish. I'll probably play him this weekend and ask him to play on some more open ground just for curiosity and get back to you all about how it goes. I expect it will be more in my favor............

double post

First, your army isn't set up even as a counter assault force. Second, whoever you played playing BA all assault, if he took 4 turns to get to your devs, his list is junks. With my list I'm usually in assault turn 1, and definatly by turn 2.

How this would help against his skimmers, easy..kill the rest of his army off in assault. Tau are at thier weakest when they are recieving a charge.

As for tank killing, I'd rather use meltaguns or maybe a multimelta on a speeder...Speeder moves 11, can always fire and costs 65 pts. Your devs cost at least double that, can't take advatnge of mobility, and if they black rage they are now useless for a turn.

My initial reaction after reading the battle report was that you lost because of a combination of factors, primarily the interaction of your particular lists combined with the terrain setup.

However, if your opponent went on to win the tournament, that's probably doing him a disservice. Apparently he's a skilled player, and when you combine that with the obvious advantages caused by the first two factors I mentioned, you're going to lose. He has the advantage, and he's good enough to make sure he keeps it.

That particular scenario, though, seems pretty rare, but if you want to have a chance to overcome it, you'll need to adjust your list somehow. I'm not a pro on bloodangels, so I can't help you out, and it's quite possible your list is fine as is, but LVL 3 terrain across the table against a skimmer army will routinely give you trouble as is.

@celticpride
"With my list I'm usually in assault turn 1, and definatly by turn 2."

See its comments like these that make me not take you to seriously. I have no clue how you expect to get into combat in the 1st turn against an even semi-intelligent player who gives himself the space he needs. He couldn't get into combatwith me because I would just scoot back and was at the back of my deployment zone after pushing back with the whirlwind.

"How this would help against his skimmers, easy..kill the rest of his army off in assault. Tau are at thier weakest when they are recieving a charge. "

You can't charge a mech tau/fish of fury army without downing a lot of the vehicles first. You are just stating the obvious here, but it doesn't even apply.

"As for tank killing, I'd rather use meltaguns or maybe a multimelta on a speeder...Speeder moves 11, can always fire and costs 65 pts. Your devs cost at least double that, can't take advatnge of mobility, and if they black rage they are now useless for a turn."

My opponents army has 40+ S5 shots just on vehicles, More speeders would just have meant less model counts and more free points to him

@grimaldi

I think you have summed it up fairly well, I was outplayed on an unfavourable board of terrain with a bad army matchup, but I was still outplayed. Didn't mean to take anything away from him as he is a very good player and a good friend.

I think you have summed it up fairly well, I was outplayed on an unfavourable board of terrain with a bad army matchup, but I was still outplayed. Didn't mean to take anything away from him as he is a very good player and a good friend.

I'm glad to hear this attitude. Sometimes you just get a bad draw. Since it was a tourniment, was the terrain preset? If it was, you can't even hold terrain setup over his head, and over all it was just a bad situation for you to be in. However if you were allowed to move things around, and he purposely did take a small advantage of that, but you are also at fault for not seeing what was happening and saying ... um no.

I'm not too convinced at most of celticpride4246 advice. I've never played Blood Angles, but I've played against them lots. First turn charges are practically impossible unless your opponent is an idiot. The old Rhino list could do it, but not jumpackers (even with a 6" rage). I can see a second turn charge, but thats only if your opponent is being agressive and moving forward. Anyway, to go against this specific list, speeders in place of devi squads is not the answer. Like LibrarianEloqui said, too many S5 guns on vehicles. Most that can reach out and tag a speeder. However, you might want to replace the HB devi squad with a preditor anillator. Two heavy bolters and an auto cannon, plus the ability to shoot all the guns even if you move. Your front 13 armor is enough protection against everything he has except the hammerheads. Your job will just be to try and limit their ability to shoot at it or just take them out first. The auto cannon can effect the hammerheads and d-fish, where as the heavy bolters most likly could not.

Anyway, I'd say that your list is probably good. If this Tau player was your only problem, then you really can't fault your list too much. If you change too much out to try and handle just this Tau guy, you may find youself vunerable to a basic marine or necron list that will show up next time.

The terrain was preset, and there were a lot of complaints about that particular table at the end of the weekend from multiple players. So yeah that was a factor beyond my control.

As for celticpride's comments, he seems as if he may still be playing a different edition for all the sense his advice takes. however your comment about the predator is duly noted and could be a good idea. I don't mind trading a few shots for more mobility.

I play a mech tau and my friend a BA army but with more crisis suit and less firewarrior in fish.

The things that help you are the death company that is very difficult to kill with the list provided. It take 18 shot of S5 weapon to kill one death company marines. To kill the death company in a turn the tau player need to drop all his firewarrior in rapid fire range with support from his hammerhead. The death company because of that can make a big space buffer where the tau player will not want to advance without risk. If you provide him with another of the assault squad not too far you are sure that the tau player cannot kill those 2 unit in one round without being in close combat the round after. Only the 3 tank are a menace to the death company so keep it in cover to keep your cover save. If you keep another assault unit beside you basically provide him with so many wound to kill in one turn that he cannot kill them all before you assault in your turn.

Use melta-bomb against that much skimmer. You would not hit a lot but you need them. In a perfect scenario you are assaulting and going from unit to unit in assault and he the tau player will have lost only half is victory point because the vehicle will still be alive. There is 11 vehicle and you need to take them down which means that you cannot do it only by shooting at them. In a typical game against blood angels the infantry die very fast but the skimmer will continue to be assaulted for the rest of the game. Power weapon and melta bomb make the tau player think twice before doing a tank shock.

Deep striking terminator with assault squad and death company are also good. If you can force him to either have the back of his vehicle to your shooting base or your assaulting base then you may hit some back armor.


That list migth be even better in the new codex with flechette discharger on the vehicle


Vehicle against tau are not that good normally but this list has only 3 weapon that can touch armour 12 and above. So if you take some heavy vehicle it the game is now a dice game because if you destroy his hammerhead  before he destroy your vehicle he cannot do anything against them. Anything in the glance table will keep an hammerhead from shooting so you need 3 glance a turn and you are fine