New Player Guides (Tau Specif)

[Ulrock]

Are there any Tacticas for new players? I played a 1,000 game against Tau and he brought 3 broadsides with the missile pods and completely destroyed me. He put some headquarters suit in the unit as well which had a 2+ save, with that in the unit do all my shots have to go against it untill it dies? I couldn't kill it so it just soaked up the shots and they kept shooting missile. Any help for a new player would be appreciated, this was only my 3rd or 4th game.

[Idlem]

What was your list first of all. Second, 1000 point Tau lists are hard to crack, I'll be glad to give you all the anti-tau tactics I can muster if I can get an idea of what you've collected.

[Ulrock]

I have a small dkok assault brigade. I brought 2 platoons with 3 squads and 3 plasma, 1 vanquisheR Lehman russ and 2 Griffin mortars.

[Idlem]

I can't recall, Krieg can't take Chimeras, right? Chimeras are possibly the best transport you could ask for. Each squad should really have one.

Footslogging against Tau is a pretty tough thing to do. They outrange you, they have better guns and if you charge them they just overwatch whatever made it to them. Cover for Imperial Guard is so essential and the fact that Tau can ignore it also hurts footsloggers. Hiding behind an Aegis Defense line would help, but again, Markerlights can remove that bonus. Markerlights will have to be a target priority.

Vanquisher is pretty much useless if they're not taking Hammerheads. Switch it out to a more useful varient such as a run of the line Battletank, or Executioner. Pieplates are your friends against Pathfinders. If he puts his Commander in with a tough unit and you pie plate enough figures in that unit, he'll be sweating eventually at having to make a lot of saving throws he'll eventually fail. It's even better when you ignore his armor save too.

Before I go off rambling too much, how he takes the wounds depends on the position of who is firing at him. He HAS to take the wounds with the closest unit to the firer. So if his Commander with the 2+ save is closest, he is the one that takes the wounds.

So say you shoot and wound him 5 times. He takes his armor save for each of those wounds until he either A, makes all the saves or B, fails enough wounds and dies. So by placing his character up front like that, he's shielding the Broadsides from taking those wounds. If the character is NOT the closest, then he cannot take the wounds for whoever may be the closest to the firing unit until enough units die and he's closest again. So when you're firing at his units that he wants to protect, try to fire at them in a way their commander is not the closest figure.

Use your plasma (Or even better, Melta!) to target his Commander. I know he's taking the Irridium Battlesuit which gives him higher toughness and save, but it can't ignore plasma so you knock that sucker down to a 4++. Guard have bad BS, so make sure you're shooting weapons that have high rates of fire so you can land some hits and force saves. Autocannons are always great.

Missilesides will just slaughter uncovered infantry like guard. Transports to protect them until they get in firing range is essential. Cover if you can but again, Tau have means to ignore that.

The best answer to Tau is Tanks with blastweapons and Transports. Place your armor in a shield for your infantry and protect your sides and rear. Position your fire so that you can try to ignore that Commander tanking up all the hits. Target his markerlights so you can ensure his ability to hit remains a BS 3 and he doesn't get the dreaded "ignores cover".

I'll get into more details as you have questions. My posts usually turn into this rambling if not focused by exact question.

[Argun]

For something that would definitely be useful against his missilesides, (if they're grouped up) I'd suggest taking some Medusa carriages (as they've got longer range than the tank with the same gun IIRC). Put those suckers in the rear, and watch as he just... disappears. S10, AP2 tends to do that ! Drop the griffons, as they aren't worth it IMHO, and the commisar, and you should be able to get one of those carriages. Probably drop Vanquisher as well, and get yourself some more artillery! Artillery's always a good solution... (almost) ALWAYS.

[Ulrock]

HQ: Company Command

-2 Plasma

Quartermaster Cadre

 

Troops: 1st Platoon HQ

-2 Plasma

1st Squad -Plasma

2nd Squad - Plasma

3rd Squad -Plamsa

4th Squad -Plasma

 

2nd Platoon same as above

 

Elite:

Griffon -Carcass Shells

Griffon -Carcass Shells

 

Heavy: 2 Vanquishers

-Pintle Mounted Storm Bolter

1 Avenger Strike Fighter

1 Medusa -Bastion Breacher Shells

 

This is what I am thinking of taking at 1850 what should I replace griffons with? Or the vanquishers he's been running armor hence why I included these.

[hendrik]

once you go above 1500 pts the game changes completly due to the forlorn hope rules as your destroyed platoons will just return into play, annoying him endlessly!

personally i don't think the avenger will be worth it, due to the easy acces tau have to interceptor and skyfire. also, he might start bringing a/multiple riptides soon! now you could always run those vanquishers as an allied armoured battalion,allowing them to take beast slayer rounds which will insta kill anything it manages to score an unsaved wound on.

i'dd also say go for smaller platoons so they return into play much sooner! you could replace the griffons with heavy mortars (cheaper,but less accurate, or quad guns)

it should also be noted that if you make those vanquishers all ordance weapon units can draw line of sight from the vanquishers, allowing you to deploy the artillery itself out of LOS!

[Ulrock]

Vehicle wise would 1 vanquisher, 2 demolishers and 2, griffons with carcass shells be a hard challenge for tau at 1850 or no? I will start utilizing the forlorn hope rule so the rest of points will be infantry.

[hendrik]

it can, just expect your vehicles to die. tau have an autokill character for a hammerhead that will destroy any imperial guard tank it manages to hit (on a 2+,with a reroll...). blob your infantry around it to get a cover save, use cover!

personally i don't think the demolishers will be very usefull due to their low range, although that might just be because my opponent plays not that many suits (yet, he has warned me he'll be using farsight+6 suit bodyguard, all tooled up to 750pts in some future games...)

ordonnance wise those griffons will eat his firewarriors/pathfinders hiding in cover!

whatever you do, definetly make one of those russes a forward command tank. this way you can hide your griffons out of LOS, yet have them target units the russ can see.

[Ulrock]

So priority should be hammerheads? Is that the tau best anti armor vehicle? I haven't played this high points yet and only units I have painted and together are all the infantry.

[hendrik]

in my opinion, yes. he can take an upgrade character which is BS5, and has prefered enemy (and i believe tank hunter, etc). this means he will only miss you on a double roll of 1, and it's high strenght makes it a great tankhunter. i usually ended up losing 1 tank a turn, which is why i praise the BS4 vanquishers a lot, since they formed a serious threat to him. Note that i use an armoured battalion as allies though, so my BS4 vanquishers have the option to take anti riptide/MC shells too!

Anyway, good luck,and keep us informed how the game goes!

[Ulrock]

What book is the armoured battalion in? Would it be better to take them as allies since I'm bringing 3 tanks.

[hendrik]

imperial armour 1, volume 2. once you take 2 leman russes and don't use any other allies it's definetly a list worth taking. you should google it, it's definetly a fun list to use!

[hendrik]

today i had a casual 1500 pts game against the tau player. since i usually bring quite a lot of tanks i wanted to suprise him so this time i used an all infantry army, using the DKoK assault brigade armylist. here's what i brought:

-company command sqd: banner of martyrdom, 2 x PG

-4 x inf. platoon:

       PCS: 2 x PG

       2 x infantry sqd: flamer
- 1 x heavy weapon platoon:
       2 x mortar sqd
 

I faced:

-farsight+ 7 bodyguards, all tooled up with different gear. they all could target different units, had reroll to hit and ignores cover... all of them! sure it was a 750-ish unit but damn! although in all honesty i did manage to shoot away half of them when they deepstriked (did i mention they don't scatter?)

-2 x riptide

-2 x broadsides (AA variants with lots of missiles)

-12 fire warriors

-2 x 10 kroot

 

we ended up playing the emperors will, playing over the length of the table. this meant my returning platoons would have to travel way to much, but i still wanted to use the forlorn rule, so decided to plant the DKoK objective as close to his as possible.

 

His shooting was absolutly horrible, and men died by the droves. and due to the fact that entire platoons had to be destoryed before they could arrive again it also ment my returning platoons (2 of them returned into play) by turn 4, when we had to quit were not in a place where they could do much damage.

 

offcourse your opponent might not use such a powerhorse unit himself but here's what i learned from this game.

-don't rely on the DKoK assault rule to win the game for you, your platoons will only arrive in time to secure a homebase objective.
-you need an alpha strike. being able to score first bood is HUGE, and you sort of need it, especially since the opponent doens't need to capture your DKoK objective to earn a VP. investing in some long range firepower with the ability to autokill a vehicle/unit is definetly a must do! i'm sure my command vanquishers with beast slayer rounds could have opened up his army list a lot more!

- he will only need anti tank and ap5, while you will need AT, AP2, AP3 and AP4. make sure to include a bunch of everything!