5.0 Tactica - Tau Empire

[Hokiecow]

SabrX: Glad to see a Tau army that breaks the mold! Looking forward to the battle report.

[SabrX]

SabrX: Glad to see a Tau army that breaks the mold! Looking forward to the battle report.

I'm glad to see Warseer back running again.

Here's the link the the battle report posted by my friend between his Grey Knights versus my Tau:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum...st/364017.page

[SevenSins]

interesting stuff, and quite a heap of dead kroot

[samiens]

So with the increase in popular fast strike armies (blood angels and shunt punch grey knights for example) have tau become even more invalidated competitively, or has anyone come up with a good fix? As background last weekend my Tau got curb stomped by blood angels twice in a tournament and I'm at the stage of having no solutions at all. It doesn't seem to matter if they DoA or just go full throttle, i can't seem to kill them, escape or effectively block them. Any thoughts or is the popularity of these armies just killing Tau for now?

[SabrX]

Tau will struggle against FNP. Your best answer against them is Fire Knife and using bubble wrap Kroots.

While the new Grey Knights packs a lot fire power and perform well in assault, they are expensive in points. They still die like normal marines. Once again use Kroot bubble wrap and whittle them down with volume.

[Archibald_TK]

From my personal experience I mainly fight BA Predator spam and shooty DoA lists with two Librarians. All of the problems I have of course are because of DoA (note we all do all comer lists so no list tailoring here). This is usually what my opponent try to achieve:

- Play second so that he has one more shooting phase than me over the course of the game.
- Take risks (which aren't really that risky with DoA) when DS and form bubbles where all units will be under FnP and the Librarian 5+ cover save.
- Position the Librarians so that in case of Blood Lance he may hit multiple units.
- If any vehicle is within 12" shoot with Blood Lance and melta.
- If any Crisis unit is within 12 do the same to inflict a maximum of ID shots on it and hope the unit will run away.
- If nothing is in range, shoot any unit of Kroots and try to break the bubble wrapping by making it run away from shooting.

In any situation there are few to no ways to prevent the lance from hitting something as it can extend quite far.
The only thing I can do is, infiltrating then moving the Kroots far enough in front of my other units while leaving no holes behind so that nothing else will be in melta range. Pray that my opponent didn't fancy using Fear of Darkness today, pray I do not mess up my Plasma shooting, pray a lucky Blood Lance don't extend too far and destroy something important with a lucky hit, pray it's not "let's remove the dust from the Sanguinary Guard" day as Tau are not good at dealing with it. Basically it's probably our worst match-up, every model in the opponent army require focus from our Plasma as regular volume of fire is no good vs FnP.

It's because of the BA that I started abandoning the old model of not putting Drones with suits that Stelek, Kirby and other made popular two years ago. Droneless suits simply no longer cut it in the current game where new armies have such an easy time landing a lone S8 ID shot on us and cover is basically nothing more than a way of saying "you have 50% chance of removing a suit and force a moral test". It's my personal PoV but I consider droneless Suits to be an outdated concept. Also I use TA on all of my Fireknives team leaders, to increase accuracy without constantly relying on Pathfinders that are no good at dealing with MSU. I am pondering using more Kroots than before for extended bubble wrapping, not to the extend of SabrX armylist, but running at least 3 or 4 units of 13 Kroots at 1750 (I also face Deathwing armies and the Kroots volume of fire is something that I'm looking for vs mass TH/SS Terminators). Yup SabrX you are not alone, there is another guy on the forums who has a philosophy close to yours when it comes to Kroots

[SageoftheTimes]

So with the increase in popular fast strike armies (blood angels and shunt punch grey knights for example) have tau become even more invalidated competitively, or has anyone come up with a good fix? As background last weekend my Tau got curb stomped by blood angels twice in a tournament and I'm at the stage of having no solutions at all. It doesn't seem to matter if they DoA or just go full throttle, i can't seem to kill them, escape or effectively block them. Any thoughts or is the popularity of these armies just killing Tau for now?

You've gotta bubblewrap, as SabrX suggests. Kroot are cheap, and will usually die, granting you another turn of shooting, which most units will have a hard time with, as they'll now be close to you and out of assault.

Fireknife suits are spammed for a reason.
The combo of light vehicle killing, MC destruction, FNP denial, AND an alright anti-infantry platform is why they're well loved. Combine that with a 6" assault move, and you're good.

As for Grey Knights, remember they're not going to have as many units as normal marines. They've got plenty of psycannons, so understand that they'll be throwing out tons of anti-armour weaponry. Their stormbolters are going to be pretty powerful too, so be careful of that.

DoA is going to come to you, so oblige them by giving them kroot walls (hounds help!), and castling everything. Kroot outside, Vehicles out of melta range, everything else inside the wall. They'll drop in within 12" happily obliging you w/ double-tap plasma. Consider a piranha for long-range contests. Beyond that, just get tons of plasma, and make sure you have two units of kroot (10 kroot, 3 hounds is decent).

Tau will struggle against FNP. Your best answer against them is Fire Knife and using bubble wrap Kroots.

While the new Grey Knights packs a lot fire power and perform well in assault, they are expensive in points. They still die like normal marines. Once again use Kroot bubble wrap and whittle them down with volume.

Just wanted to talk a bit about Grey Knights here. If they're on foot, remember that. They're foot marines. Foot is vulnerable to massed fire and tank shocks.

From my personal experience I mainly fight BA Predator spam and shooty DoA lists with two Librarians. All of the problems I have of course are because of DoA (note we all do all comer lists so no list tailoring here). This is usually what my opponent try to achieve:

- Play second so that he has one more shooting phase than me over the course of the game.
- Take risks (which aren't really that risky with DoA) when DS and form bubbles where all units will be under FnP and the Librarian 5+ cover save.
- Position the Librarians so that in case of Blood Lance he may hit multiple units.
- If any vehicle is within 12" shoot with Blood Lance and melta.
- If any Crisis unit is within 12 do the same to inflict a maximum of ID shots on it and hope the unit will run away.
- If nothing is in range, shoot any unit of Kroots and try to break the bubble wrapping by making it run away from shooting.

In any situation there are few to no ways to prevent the lance from hitting something as it can extend quite far.
The only thing I can do is, infiltrating then moving the Kroots far enough in front of my other units while leaving no holes behind so that nothing else will be in melta range. Pray that my opponent didn't fancy using Fear of Darkness today, pray I do not mess up my Plasma shooting, pray a lucky Blood Lance don't extend too far and destroy something important with a lucky hit, pray it's not "let's remove the dust from the Sanguinary Guard" day as Tau are not good at dealing with it. Basically it's probably our worst match-up, every model in the opponent army require focus from our Plasma as regular volume of fire is no good vs FnP.

It's because of the BA that I started abandoning the old model of not putting Drones with suits that Stelek, Kirby and other made popular two years ago. Droneless suits simply no longer cut it in the current game where new armies have such an easy time landing a lone S8 ID shot on us and cover is basically nothing more than a way of saying "you have 50% chance of removing a suit and force a moral test". It's my personal PoV but I consider droneless Suits to be an outdated concept. Also I use TA on all of my Fireknives team leaders, to increase accuracy without constantly relying on Pathfinders that are no good at dealing with MSU. I am pondering using more Kroots than before for extended bubble wrapping, not to the extend of SabrX armylist, but running at least 3 or 4 units of 13 Kroots at 1750 (I also face Deathwing armies and the Kroots volume of fire is something that I'm looking for vs mass TH/SS Terminators). Yup SabrX you are not alone, there is another guy on the forums who has a philosophy close to yours when it comes to Kroots

Another thing you can do on the vein of BS 4 suits is running commander teams, or splitting your suits into 5 groups of two instead of 3 groups of 3 and one commander.

More kroot is always viable, too, but I think positioning will be very important for them. Leave the contesting to Piranhas, use the Kroot to massively extend your bubblewrap.

But, against FNP and termies, Plasma is your friend. More suits!

[Archibald_TK]

Another thing you can do on the vein of BS 4 suits is running commander teams, or splitting your suits into 5 groups of two instead of 3 groups of 3 and one commander.

Agree about that. My Typical setup is Fireknife + 1 leader (TA, HW MT, 1x Attack Drone). Smaller units so easier to handle, more MSU, less important losses per unit, wound allocation, more BS4 on the board (3 per 6 Crisis instead of 2 per 6 when you use Teams of 3 Suits). The Drawback is that if you use Pathfinders less Suits benefits from each Markerlights, which brings me to the next point. And now I go into rant mode:

[RANT]Usually people will prefer 3 suits teams in order to allows more of them to benefits from each markerlight use. The price to pay is to sacrifice tactical options by playing with less unit, increase the loss on a failed morale test and facilitate our opponent target priorities by offering juicer targets. That is something I do not like. To me Pathfinders are a support unit, they support the army and not the other way around. They are not a Farseer hiding inside a fortuned Wave Serpent, if the opponent want them out of the board turn one they will be. If the army took drawbacks to maximise synergy with the Pathfinders, once they'll be out of the picture only the drawbacks will remain. That's why I promote the idea of using Pathfinders as a support unit to an already established army structure, instead of twisting said structure to accommodate the Pathfinders (excluding of course the Devilfish/FW synergy)[/RANT]

PS.
A thing that I'd like to mention since we were talking about BS4, is to always buy a second Shas'El first before buying Bodyguards with a TA, as the Commander only cost 5 more points but is vastly superior in both stats and being an IC.

[SabrX]

Here's a list I want to try out:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=302637

In objective games I plan on outflanking 2 squads of 20 Kroot and praying they'll arrive on the right table edge. This list should perform well against MSU mech spam and possibly horde armies such as Green Tide or Nids.

I'm 7 Broadsides shy, but I've been thinking of a little conversion turning normal Crisis Suits into Broadsides.

Another alternative is trading one squad of 20 Kroots for 2 Piranhas with Disruption Pod and Fusion Blaster, which will hopefully stay alive long enough to contest objectives in late game. However, its unlikely as they would be the only tanks my army, which will draw a lot of fire from my opponent's anti-mech range weapons as they would have no other vehicles to shoot at.

[samiens]

Maybe I just had bad luck at the tournament, first time mephiston managed to get stuck in combat with kroot, second time my bubblewrap ran away. I play a pretty standard list but blood angels absolutely slay me at the moment. Does anyone have consistent success or are we doomed to needing the luck against them?

I play tournaments regularly and they are the one army I have no luck against, plus they are incredibly common on the tourney seen nowadays. I'm seriously thinking of expanding my eldar but I love the grey guys

[SageoftheTimes]

Just run tons of Fireknives, it does the trick.

I think I've only faced BA jumpers once. If I had castled more, I'd have slaughtered them. Just spam fireknives.

[SabrX]

While Fire Knife is great against MEQ, it might not be enough against numerous squads of BA FNP Marines. In fact, FNP Assault Marines equipped with Meltaguns and Mephiston is one of the toughest lists against Tau.

There is an anti-footslogging MEQ list that relies on AP2, AP3, and force pinning. However, its better have a "take all comers" list in a tournament environment.

Tau needs an update to compete against the newer armies. Fortunately they rumored to get a new codex soon after Necrons and perhaps Sisters of Battle. Until then, hang in there! Out time will come soon.

[Archibald_TK]

Just run tons of Fireknives, it does the trick.

I think I've only faced BA jumpers once. If I had castled more, I'd have slaughtered them. Just spam fireknives.

With all due respect, just no.
You possibly faced an unoptimized DoA list (or a heavily CC oriented list that didn't have any efficient shooting the turn it lands). You won't walk over a DoA list just by spamming Fireknives. They have the tool to reduce the efficiency of Fireknives and the tools to hurt them. While I agree that the more AP2 the better vs them, due to the price of a Fireknife just spamming them won't help you. Without extended bubblewraping you risk losing models to ID and whole units to morale test before even having a chance to fire.

An interesting usually unused option, is to upgrade a Broadside Team Leader with TL Plasma Rifle and HW Multitracker. That's 15 pts for the additional Plasma shots, quite a decent bargain that actually doesn't screw the list in an "all comer" format.

[Carlosophy]

So I finally got a game in with my 2000pts horde Tau. It was a lot of fun fielding 100 Kroots. My friend is working on the btrp, which I'll post the link in due time. While I won't divulge on outcome, I will say 100 Kroots makes a great fire magnet. The draw attention away from my Crisis Suits and act as a good shield against assaulting enemy units.

I recently sold off Dwarf army and bought more Hounds. This summer I'll build them and eventually finish my 100 Kroots + 50 Hound Tau horde army!

Bring it on green tide!

Just a suggestion but as the cherry on top have you considered Anghor Prok? He's still a legal character and for a minor 75pts cost allows all kroot within 6" to re-roll misses ALL THE TIME! This for me turns my Kroot from a decent CC unit into a deadly one as those re-rolls can munch marines and hordes alike.

[Archibald_TK]

Just a suggestion but as the cherry on top have you considered Anghor Prok? He's still a legal character and for a minor 75pts cost allows all kroot within 6" to re-roll misses ALL THE TIME! This for me turns my Kroot from a decent CC unit into a deadly one as those re-rolls can munch marines and hordes alike.

He is not legal. Friendly games, Apocalypse and tournaments that allows extended armies selection sure, but for nearly everybody he is not legal. He doesn't even have a page on the GW site anymore and I highly doubt a lot of people even know who he is.

[SageoftheTimes]

While Fire Knife is great against MEQ, it might not be enough against numerous squads of BA FNP Marines. In fact, FNP Assault Marines equipped with Meltaguns and Mephiston is one of the toughest lists against Tau.

Castle up, bring around 8-10 fireknives.

There is an anti-footslogging MEQ list that relies on AP2, AP3, and force pinning. However, its better have a "take all comers" list in a tournament environment.

Which is why you BLoS to your suits with hulls and bring an all-comers-list. Fireknives fit well into said lists.

Tau needs an update to compete against the newer armies. Fortunately they rumored to get a new codex soon after Necrons and perhaps Sisters of Battle. Until then, hang in there! Out time will come soon.

It's still pretty competitive, but it's an unforgiving army. Screw up on one aspect of play, or roll badly in the early rounds, and it's hard to regain momentum.

With all due respect, just no.
You possibly faced an unoptimized DoA list (or a heavily CC oriented list that didn't have any efficient shooting the turn it lands). You won't walk over a DoA list just by spamming Fireknives. They have the tool to reduce the efficiency of Fireknives and the tools to hurt them. While I agree that the more AP2 the better vs them, due to the price of a Fireknife just spamming them won't help you. Without extended bubblewraping you risk losing models to ID and whole units to morale test before even having a chance to fire.

Already suggested bubblewrap and castling, don't know why you guys are jumping all over me. Fireknives are the main way to deal with FNP here, so I don't know how else you're gonna kill them. :/

An interesting usually unused option, is to upgrade a Broadside Team Leader with TL Plasma Rifle and HW Multitracker. That's 15 pts for the additional Plasma shots, quite a decent bargain that actually doesn't screw the list in an "all comer" format.

You might get an additional shot per turn, but generally they're gonna be in the back, avoiding the AP 1 weaponry. Fireknives can at least JSJ. And Plasma isn't all that great for an all-comers-list, ironically.

[SabrX]

Castle up, bring around 8-10 fireknives.

8-10 Fire Knife is not enough to deal with 60 Assault Marines, 3 Sanguinary Priest w/ Jump Pack, Mephiston, and a Librarian w/ Jump Pack. Furthermore, Jump Infantry is harder to counter with Bubble Wrap because they have the ability to jump over Kroot bubblewrap.

[Archibald_TK]

Already suggested bubblewrap and castling, don't know why you guys are jumping all over me. Fireknives are the main way to deal with FNP here, so I don't know how else you're gonna kill them. :/

Sorry if it sounded like I was jumping on you, consider it post BA Battle Traumatic Disorder.
I know that we need the Fireknives, but I insisted on the fact that just adding more at the expense of a better wrapping would not work. It is my view that at one point we must reach a balance when facing DoA. I insist on one point, I find DoA armies that include Librarians the scarier. Seeing a cover save on a lot if not all of the BA MSU even when they are in the open severely damage the efficiency of our Crisis Teams. And dear God these damned lances and the damage they can do on a lucky range roll...

You might get an additional shot per turn, but generally they're gonna be in the back, avoiding the AP 1 weaponry. Fireknives can at least JSJ. And Plasma isn't all that great for an all-comers-list, ironically.

Still a viable option I think as there are very few chances you won't have an unit of jumpers within 24". I agree that in an all comer list I'll prefer saving the 15 points and keeping SMS but I find that upgrading a Broadside leader is a way to tinker with a list so it can be slightly more anti DoA without severely damaging it's "all comers" status.

[Carlosophy]

Against Blood Angels I find unorthodox tactics are the name of the game. Castleing up against Jump Infantry is a bad idea as they will eventually get you; there is only so much your firepower can do.

I take Pathfinders and Kroot as an advanced attack and then deep strike suits. Lots of flanking kroot (with Prok if games allow )forces your opponent to split his force and divert attention. If you abuse the positional relay you should be able to let him advance towards you. Bring on kroot and tie up select units then deep strike suits behind the jump lines to shoot softer units. If you can flank pathfinders into a decent position even better.

[SageoftheTimes]

Against Blood Angels I find unorthodox tactics are the name of the game. Castleing up against Jump Infantry is a bad idea as they will eventually get you; there is only so much your firepower can do.

Castling prevents them from getting to your juicy units. You also know where they'll be coming in, if they want to do damage to you, thus you can most-likely get within 12" plas range. The alternative is melta and flamer fire at suits and other units without cover (not that flamers care).

I take Pathfinders and Kroot as an advanced attack and then deep strike suits.

First, you're gonna have to post pics of an example (easily done through Vassal). Deep-Striking suits is far less reliable (they get to reroll reserves, you don't, they only scatter d6, you will get 2d6 w/ a reroll) and limits their firepower. If you've got battle reports that show otherwise, link them.

Lots of flanking kroot (with Prok if games allow )forces your opponent to split his force and divert attention.

Depends how much of a threat the kroot are. If they've got FNP/FC, BA will slaughter them. If they don't, BA will STILL slaughter them, with hounds and maybe kroot getting to strike back and take down a couple of marines.

Diverting attention means contesting objectives or creating a legitimate threat. Kroot can sit in cover and shoot, then take a charge, but a single flamer shot at them means you've lost most of your unit, and they might break. Any assault after this means they might as well. Kroot just aren't that survivable. As I said before, and battle reports detailing how you do this and your opponent reacts would be awesome.

If you abuse the positional relay you should be able to let him advance towards you. Bring on kroot and tie up select units then deep strike suits behind the jump lines to shoot softer units. If you can flank pathfinders into a decent position even better.

I guess you could feed your opponent Kroot till they get into a position that's advantageous to you, but....that limits your opponent's fire to a couple of vehicles and so on. Some of those assault marines can just drop in next to a vehicle, use melta, and move on. Flanking 'finders could work, but that's around one less turn of shooting, and 5 assault marines can easily clean them up.

I also doubt DSing suits will kill an entire squad of marines without markerlight support, and some torrenting before-hand, so I'm not seeing how that works. You can't really out-ninja them, but you can force them to go through some kroot before they get to anything valuable. Post a battle report so we can see what works with your style, at least, I'll go find some from somewhere.