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Any ideas for battling the Tau ?


Bloodblade

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Greetings fellow sons of Sanguinius...

 

Just new here and wanted to get some ideas from some Blood Angel Vets.

 

I have a game coming up with a buddy who is a long time Tau player.  With the new Tau codex he is slavering for a game and I am looking forward to hewing his "greater good" minions down, but he has a fierce gunline...

 

He will camp in cover and rake the killing ground that I have to go over to get my chainswords into him.

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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Whilwinds - S5 AP4 Large Blasts will negate armour of his fire warriors and most importantly pathfinders. those need to go down first.

wow that's actually a really good idea.. biggrin.png ally in some dark angels to get a 65pts whirlie and blast those pathfinders off the board.

Generally speaking, it's really important to kill the markerlights - Tau become a lot weaker once they don't shoot with BS5 ignoring cover. Also be careful when deepstriking because of interceptor, a riptide will just blow your squad off the board as soon as it lands. Apart from that, just try to get into cc as fast as possible and they will fold.

@BloodTzar Normal plasma can only glance a furioso, so that's not dangerous. What's even better, Tau plasma only has S6 so no worries ;)

I just don't like the thought of giving him a chance to kill the whole squad at once where otherwise he'd need at least 2 shots to kill them. But then I guess it also depends a lot on whether you have the first turn or not.

You also have to be very careful when dropping dreadnoughts actually, the riptide will most likely have a TL 18'' meltagun as secondary weapon which covers quite a lot of area.

Here's what I have been doing:

 

1 Fragioso in turn 1 if I want it.

2 Tac Squads in rhinos (1 with melta and combi-melta, 1 with Plasma and combi plasma)

Baal Pred on table

7-8 DC in a crusader with bolters

1 Predator

1 Whirlwind

 

This seems to work really well. I basically hold back until the riptide is dead, then rush forward with the tac squads and DC. It is easy to outshoot tau with a lot of 36+" weaponry.

If there is an army that sanctions the use of Vanguard Veterans, it is the Tau.

 

Assuming an intercepting riptide doesn't ruin their day. I believe that instead of thinking how to deal with something of your opponents you should think how they will deal with something of theirs. That being said, deep striking models to their doom before they can do anything is not something to be overlooked. It sucks.

 

I would consider sternguard or death company in a crusader. Other than hammerheads, they have almost nothing that can deal with av14. Lot of S8, but relying on 6's is not something tau like to do.

I fought the new Tau once and got absolutely demolished, simply because I had never fought Tau before - even their old 'dex.

 

Drop podding dreads is a good idea - I wish I'd had one of mine for that battle. Instead, I brought infantry and they were simply shot to shreds when they landed - S8 Ap2 or 3 (can't remember which) big template with the Interceptor rule is nasty vs infantry. 

 

Also, assault squad jumping it across the board was not great either, they also got shot to oblivion. Basically, I think you need tough, durable units that are able to get in their face ASAP - podded dreads, scouting Baals (if you go first) and, as has been mentioned, land raiders delivering dedicated ass -kicking units.

 

The one thing that really annoyed me was their "support overwatch", basically I charged a unit if fire warriors and not only them but other units (I think 3 units in total shot at me) get to fire overwatch at you as well. Often with +1 BS... My squad, already fairly demolished, got 2 guys from a ten man squad into melee, but just those two guys won the combat and wiped out the fire warriors as they ran away. 

 

Essentially, I think, you just need to minimise their ability to shoot at you by killing specific units as quickly as possible. 

Played them again today, tabling them by turn 4. The fragioso killed 6 sniper drones with 2 controllers and the ethereal warlord turn 1 (the other fragioso actually mishap'd off the table..). He made a mistake when deploying, not covering his stuff well enough with his interceptor-units, I feel that Tau are a codex that really rewards skill and punishes mistakes very hard.

Someone mentioned it before, but I've had amazing success with vanguard vets especially when you deep strike something just before them as a screen to soak up interceptor fire. Give them a couple power weapons, including the free strength 6 blade on the sarge plus melta bombs for the squad and go about wrecking infantry and vehicles alike

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