Tau allies

[Ushtarador]

TAU ALLIES he says?? Let ourselves in with filthy xenos?! Hell, be glad I'm not proposing our necros bros I have played my Blood Angels at a team tournament this weekend, 1000pts per player. My friend played Tau, and let me tell you, those two armies work a treat!

I am convinced that Tau make an excellent ally for our chapter. They offer really great synergy, balancing out our weaknesses extremely well. Let's look at the Tau's strengths and weaknesses:

Strength:

• Strongest shooting <15''. Noone gets even close to their output now.
• Excellent long-range low-ap shooting.
• Firewarriors are excellent static scoring units.
• The riptide with interceptor and skyfire. You can deny a lot of space with this guy, nobody will place a baleflamer next to a synced melta with 18'' range, and a large AP2 blast makes deepstriking very dangerous.

Weakness:

• High AV. Your sources for meltas are scarce and highly specialized (krisis, ghosts, piranhas), the hammerhead is the only long-range solution but still dies relatively quickly.
• Fast armies that get into cc turn 2 will ruin your day.

This list may not be exhaustive, but it covers the main points. You can see that Tau compensate for a lot of our weaknesses, while we bring deep-striking meltas, countercharge units and highly mobile scoring troops.

Our stormraven is an excellent flyer and reliably delivers firepower and scoring troops to the farthest corner of the battlefield. If fragiosos slam into the opponents line, he has to divide his forces between them and the Tau shooting at him from afar. Keeping too many units back means you will never reach the Tau lines before being eradicated, while sending everything forward leaves the dreads to wreak havoc. Oh, and there's always Mephiston, arguably the single best counter to any fast biker unit that might threaten your Tau.

If one chooses to ally in Tau, I feel that the following units are a must-include:

• Ethereal. This guy is really strong now. Not only may firewarriors use his LD10, which makes them unlikely to break, he adds an additional shot to every pulse weapon in rapid fire range. That's 3 shots per firewarrior!
• 2x Firewarriors. Two squads are a good number to make use of the ethereal. They provide a solid firebase, and their excellent range makes it almost impossible to avoid them. They get a lot better with markerlights, which is where the sniper drones come in.
• Riptide. AP2 pie plate, highly mobile, monstrous creature, intercept&skyfire. This dude is really strong, and what's even better he falls into the same "unit class" as Mephiston (T6, W5), meaning your opponent has to focus on either Mephi or the riptide if he wants to achieve anything.
• Sniper Drones. Wow, those things must be the most underestimated unit in the whole codex. They field rapid firing sniper rifles with 48'' range and get +1 on their cover save. For 174 points you get 3 markerlights and 24 sniper rifle shots at 24'', everything at BS5! They rip through heavy infantry and monstrous creatures without problem, and they are very hard to take out if properly shielded.

The Blood Angel part should bring things like Mephiston, Fragiosos in pods (at least 1), stormravens (2 should be amazing), some melta ASM or multimelta trikes. Bolter DC might work very well too, just deploy them in front of your firewarriors to soak up charges.

Do you have any experience with Tau allies yet? Let us hear your opinion! I may be biased because Tau were my first 40k army and I still like them a lot, but I am convinced that the fishheads currently are the best ally for our chapter by far.

[Orogen]

I DEFINITELY have some thoughts to add - I've been toying with this pairing for a bit.

 

Some additional points that Tau can add:

• Plasma - Ap2 tends to be tough to come by for BA, but Tau can bring an abundance on slick platforms (jetpack suits).
• Special characters bringing nice skills- whether Shadowsun (giving stealth/shroud) or Farsight and his high Init presumably with another suit giving hit and run
• DAKKA! - the missile systems (both high yield and regular pods) spit out sheer volume of fire, capable of glancing most vehicles to death or laying down the smack on infantry.  Heck, even terminators fair saves when faced with enough dice rolling.

BUT, I think the big point that your team tournament hides is the competition for spots.  Both the riptide and crisis suits are great and fill gaps in the BA codex... but you have to choose one or the other!  Same for the sniper drone squad and boradsides or hammerheads.  I've been struggling mightily with which units are the most cost effective (BA are already pretty pricey and its tough to create space) while filling out the limited ally force org.  I shudder to admit, but I was even looking in to a Tau main force with BA backup, but most BA squads are best in pairs. 

 

To finish, I'm kicking around two lists - (1) a semi-standard BA list with some assault marines, Baals, fragnaught, with farsight/bodyguard for plasma and riptide for skyfire, and (2) a heavy dakka list with Baals, razorback squads, raven with hurricane bolters, supported by firewarriors/ethereal, crisis and broadsides loaded with missile systems.  The combo of assault cannons and missile systems means you are rolling a TON of med-high strength shots every turn which can solve a lot of problems.

 

I haven't nearly optimized either list really and I'd love to see where this thread goes.  There are a lot of options in the Tau codex, and our beloved BA bring a lot to the table as well, but both options are not particularly cheap so you really need to squeeze out every point and make sure each unit has a defined roll (it seems to me).

 

Cheers!

-Orogen

 

[Orogen]

I'm trying to prod a good buddy of mine, long time Tau player, to jointly create a list... we'll see if he takes the bait and I'll post what comes of it.

[Morticon]

As per B&C forum rules, we're still a power armour site.

The extent to which we discuss filthy xenos scum is expressly limited to the army list design forums in terms of specific lists.

This one gets the melta i'm afraid.