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Played my second ever game Friday just gone and lost quite badly against tau with my 650 points or orks this is the list I took with me

Warboss PK BP

26 shoota boyz nob PK BP

25 shoota boyz nob PK BP

10 lootas

From what I could tell he had fire warriors,drones that came in from reserve on my table side, crisis battle suit, piranha, and something that had a rail gun on not sure on his others.

What would you change to take him down I'm playing him this Friday again, other units I own are

Big mek KFF
3 killakans 1x rocket 1x skorcher 1x big shoota
Trukk
2 nobz shoota/rocket kombi
2 nobz slugga and choppas
1 nob slugga PK
1 nob shoota/skorcher

I may have a little bit of cash to buy some other units if need be but only about 50 English pounds

It's actually not that bad of a list.
Shoota boys are great. Solution is to use the boys to dakka, then assault, anything that gets too close, such as crisis suit or gun drones.
The lootas should focus on the fire warrior squads. If you place them in terrain, then "bubble wrap" them with a squad of boys, they should last a while. The lootas will force your opponent to move his fire warriors closer to try to deal with them.
If you can, make him come to you, and force him to fight your whole army at once. If you spread out too much, he will be able to use his deep strikers to pick you apart one unit at a time.
I would lose the PK's against this opponent, as thy seem rather superfluous. Those points should be spent on more boys.
A Big Mek with KFF would serve you better than a Warboss as well.
I am assuming here that the "thing with a rail gun" is a Broadside battlesuit. Ignore it. There aren't enough turns in the game for that thing to make a difference against a Ork horde.
Hope this helps.

Bloody tau, if i were you i'd
- always field Big Mek with KFF cuz 5+ sv is godsent for orks
- put lootas in cover and never take 'em out unless their outta range (crisis, piranha, killer)
- keep ur shootas that way and take out PK cuz so far there are no vehicles to smash, take big choppas and keep BP
- 6 default orks and put them to trukk (tough up the trukk) and charge their firewarriors, maybe give them armour, painboy and cyborgs if you can give the points
- maybe not kanz because their only good for shootiness and taus are even more shooty, take them with bigshootas i reckon cuz of range
- ignore the boss altogether but if you have points to spare, take him and give him whatever

With tau orks avoid small number of elites and try to zergling rush them, 50 pounds + ebay = alot
Now shed blood for the blood WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

I was thinking of trying to fit a nob bike squad in with a painboy

Nob bikers are great, but rather pricey. How many points is your next game supposed to be?

At 650 Nob bikers will eat up your points real fast. Might consider a ADL for 50 points. Tau is one of the armies I can see using a small squad of storm boys with their leader charge after deepstrike but again at 650 that allot of points might just go with more boys and lootas and maybe the ADL.

I would throw some big shootas in your mobs and i would consider tankbustas maybe 10 they will be excellent for instakilling his crisis suits

My experience with Tau shows: either very fast of very durable is the answer, anything that is neither will be blown apart before it can properly act.

Great range is also an option, but you will get shot back, as Tau also play the range game pretty good.

If you follow my earlier advice of dropping the PK's, you can easily max out your squad of Lootas.
A 15 boy loota mob will be absolutely brutal at this point level.
Bring down the fire warriors first, he rest will give you little difficulty.

OK so I've found a picture of our game with the units he had and i know he has bought a Broadside Battlesuit Upgrade Pack

Looks like you could use more line of sight blocking terrain. And agree at this scale a big mek with KFF will be much more valuable than and Boss. Deploy him in a unit of boyz, on the side and have the other squad within 6 inches.

3 big shootas in the boyz squads would go a long way in helping with your fp. Also when running the boyz deploy them in width instead of in depth. The short range of the guns mean they'll likely not have many shots at any given time.

That hammerhead, the vehicle with a rail gun will do nasty things to boyz squads with the large template ammo. Bringing a vehicle to force it to fire it's rail gun at may be worthwhile to save the boyz some hurt. But if you do expect it to die, he has plenty of anti vehicle fp. I might consider bringing the lootas in 5 man squads so he isn't able to focus fire and kill them. But first turn seems very necessary with lootas against his list.

Dareece wrote:
OK so I've found a picture of our game with the units he had and i know he has bought a Broadside Battlesuit Upgrade Pack

Being a Tau player myself, I'd note that that formation of Orks is really easy to deal with, considering how almost all of our ranged units can merely back up and shoot faster than you can get to us. With that formation, I could just merely move to your flanks, making you choose one target while the portion of my army you chose not to attack annihilates you. It's a simple tactic, and it works well against Orks, extremely well against 'nids.

Try and avoid putting all your Boyz in a line like that.

Agreed, that line takes to long to get across the table thanks to how wounds are taken now. Rather, make that line go horizontal, at least itll allow you to get whats left of your mob to the enemy lines at the same time.

That actually looks like a pretty good list for that points range. Also, tau are pretty difficult against and ork player due to their range. I honestly think the list is pretty strong though.

Well against Tau, ideally Orks want to get into combat ASAP. So slogging across the table usually isnt a good idea against them, because regardless of what people say, Tau can still shoot our asses off.

you could proxy that trukk as a BW and rush 20 boys up.

should attract lots of fire and save your guys that are foot slogging across the board and get a unit into close combat fast.

plus you could get 4 cheap big shootas to help with the range difference.

you just gotta take out his anti tank with the lootas first thing if you went this direction.