Nids vs Tau Tactics

[chicop76]

Hello. Before I begin I am speaking from an old nids prospective. Once I play new nids i'll add additional information later. However anyone that wants to can add in any additional experiences they would like to add.

Last nid codex I went unit defeated against Tau. However keep in mind this is two games I played where I was nids. Also keep in mind when I play Tau I utterly wreak nids with little effort. Expect to take losses against the Tau is all I can say.

This topic is hard to really talk about due to different Tau builds. You either have tide and broadside spam, riptide spam, heavy Tau troops, Skyray spam, heavy pathfinders or they use marker drone squads, or marker drones in units, and even HQs can vary from O'SHOVA, O'shova and stealth girl, ethereal, swiss knife commander and fire blade.

Depending on how received and how much time I have I can cover more specific strategies. How I will cover a broad outline which should help that nid player defeat Tau players.

To be clear from what I gathered from the new nid dex so far and my experience with the old one I will say nids have an up hill battle for them to overcome.

I wouldn't suggest getting into a shooting competition with Tau. They have all the advantages that you don't have. You might be able to put out more over all shooting, but they can deny cover, shoot further, shoot better, have better shooting weapons, etc. You simply can't match it, don't try to. However you can shoot at key units, or disrupt units that is causing you grief.

#1 combat: combat is your advantage and terrain is you friend. Tau have 3 strengths that keep them out of combat and kill you dead.

A. Cover denial. Lack of cover saves will cause you to loose more units. You really need cover saves. Kill dem marker lights if possible. Ranged shooting is excellent in taking out pathfinders and the such. The Swiss commander and drone combo can only really be taken out with ap 2 shooting or with a lot of fire power causing a lot of wounds. If you think you can kill it shooting go for it. If not just ignore them since they can be a hard target.

B. Tau can wound your stuff on 2s and ignore armour saves on all your stuff from ion guns to even the lowly kroot rifle. Triple tap range can wipe out whole units with ease. For example it is possible for 12 fire warriors to shoot 48 times which is quite capable of taking out 30 gaunts really easily. This is where tervigons actually come in. At best you can run 6 30 man gaunt squads, however it is quite possible for tau to kill all of that in one or two turns. However the tervigons bring to the table more squads. Squad numbers is an advantage against Tau. For example Tau can easily destroy armies with just 10 units and will struggle against armies with 30 units. Unit saturation is the key here over unit volume.

Basically you want your whole army in the Tau face at the same time. Waves really don't work since Tau can easily handle them. Every game I won was due to mix assaults in the third turn with my entire army. Tau will have to choose who they want to combat with. I guarantee you they don't want it to be poison gaunts, I rathera trTrigon assault my squads than poison gaunts, simply due to the squad possibly tying up the trygon, while the gaunts kinda keep coming.

C. Over watch. Which goes back to b. When you think your shot up army has been shot up it is gonna be shot up again. Here having multiple units that can assault comes in nicely. You want your weakest units to assault the shootiest units first. This way your stronger units can assault without being shot up. The Tau player will lose shooting attacks if for say he chooses not to over watch two gaunts not the charge with 20 gaunts sitting right next to them.

Another tactic that have been working rather well was deep striking MCs and outflnaking tervigons. This worked rather well since by turn 2 I had MCs that's in the Tau's face. Plus my army was in triple tap range. If the riptides use interceptor it would not be *** effective as waiting to shoot during the next shooting phase. Plus it's unlikely they can down a deep striking MC anyway through interceptor.

With all that being said the Mawlock may be of use since it can devastate units and if it misses it is still a threat that can tie up broadsides, etc. Personally I am liking a trygon deep striking in and flaming dem marker drones, pathfinders, or ethereal units.

[Halollet]

I had a thought about Tau. Since I play them I'm thinking along the lines of what don't I want to see come at me; and the answer, surprisingly, is Genestealers. Specifically the Broodlord.

That Horror power from an infiltrated brood can hit just about anything in the deployment zone, like those Markerlights. Pin those so they can only snap fire and then you dont' have to worry about cover denial. You could also pin the Crisis suits so they can't get away and there go his anti-MC weapons. You can even pin the riptide and there goes a pieplate you have to deal with!

Take 2 broodlords and keep them in cover. They can go to ground and still use their power without penalty, then have them follow a MC into combat to help clean up.

[chicop76]

I faced stealers before. The problem is with Tau you wound them usually on 3s and its very easy to deny cover, even without marker lights. They tend to die quicker since they usually happen to be in triple tap range.

[Sly]

Tau are why the Hive Mind invented Biovores.

[Halollet]

I faced stealers before. The problem is with Tau you wound them usually on 3s and its very easy to deny cover, even without marker lights. They tend to die quicker since they usually happen to be in triple tap range.

Right, but you put the tau in a damned if you do shoot em, damned if you don't situation. If they do shoot the hell out of the stealers, that still gives your army an extra turn to move up the field unimpeded.

And outside of markerlights, what other ways to deny cover? The suite. So one other unit? SMS yes, but they're on big things which mean if they shoot the stealers, your big bugs go unscaved.

That extra turn that the Tau player is blowing away the stealers is that turn you need to get a Mawloc up the butt of those markerlights, and/or Exocine the broadsides, and/or assault the riptide, etc.

Its not a nice situation for the Tau.

[Quaade]

Tau are why the Hive Mind invented Biovores.

Yeah, Biovores **** Tau up to infinity and beyond, S4 and AP4 shreads their basic infantry and most of their markerligts too. Biovores are your friends.

[Tynskel]

I faced stealers before. The problem is with Tau you wound them usually on 3s and its very easy to deny cover, even without marker lights. They tend to die quicker since they usually happen to be in triple tap range.

That's a funny statement. I don't always start my genestealers 12" away.
People forget: Stop Point n' click with Nids.

Your army must hit at the same time. That means, for Genestealers, Infiltrate where you can maximize survivability.

[Power Klawz]

A lot of good points here. Unit saturation and coordinated assaults while neutralizing marker lights with deep striking big bugs sounds like a good strategy all around.

Do you see any reliable application of the trygon tunnel-pod in disrupting the firing line, or will it just end up being a one way ticket to pulse laser hell for your tunneling beasties?

[Sly]

A lot of good points here. Unit saturation and coordinated assaults while neutralizing marker lights with deep striking big bugs sounds like a good strategy all around.

Do you see any reliable application of the trygon tunnel-pod in disrupting the firing line, or will it just end up being a one way ticket to pulse laser hell for your tunneling beasties?

For Tau, I see a much better application of Mawlocs, using their blast to hit Broadside squads in the side or rear, where they can't use the Tau Commander to soak the wounds. However, I don't think that's a good take-all-comers list, since Mawlocs are not a major threat to most Eldar lists, and I think that Nids are going to have to tailor their lists more to defeat Eldar than Tau.

[chicop76]

I done the Trygon ds before and it worked rather well. However last edition I had a doom and used mines before the game to disrupt the Tau's deployment, and make a hole for my stuff to deepmstrike in. However I need to look over the new dex to see what is viable, since obviously you can't do that with new nids.

The issue with genestealer is they not cheap. Also you have to understand the real range of triple fire. The tau rifle fires at 30" away which provides a rapid fire range of 15". Also the Tau can simply move up 6" which makes the triple fire range a possible 21" away. If I can get the triple barrage on turn one I always move my Tau up to get it which will give me 2 turns of triple fire, and typically ends the game. Which means for the g enestealers is 18" is rather close.

I dealt with the stealers with devilfish for example which half it's weapons fire sms, you have basic fire warriors. The tau have way too many ap 5 weapons and you only have the broodlord who can tank the wounds for the unit. Seeing that a stealer is equal to 3 gaunts and tau have slightly more effort to kill a stealer I w