Dealing with 58+ S7 shots at 36" range [1850]

[DrStrangeloveJD]

Almost no army can win a shooting war with a tau gunline, and the ones that can are specialized mech lists that struggle against mobile and aggressive opponents. But, Tau gun lines are far from invincible, stay calm and remember these tips.

1. Deployment is now one of most important phases in your up coming game. If you can, make the tau player set up first. Tau gunlines only have two effective deployment options, they can "castle" their army in the most defensible position (usually a large ruin for the 4+ cover save) in their deployment zone. Your opponent will be bunched up in cover to maximize saves, overwatch with friends potential, and to make sure all their units can shoot at the same targets. The other deployment option is a literal line near the edge of the deployment zone, which allows maximum objective grabbing and enemy targeting options. If your opponent chooses to castle your template weapons are now super effective so make sure your list has a few, Ignores cover and long range preferred. If your opponent forms a lose line, deploy your army as close to one table edge as possible. You will be deploying outside of half of the Tau weapon range and will force your opponent to spend a turn or two re-positioning units from the far side to bring them in weapons range. While your opponent re-positions you have the opportunity to use your superior numbers and weight of fire to seriously degrade half your opponents army.
2. Understand the value a long range artillery support unit has against a more or less static force. Lobbas, Thunderfire Cannons, Wyverns, Basilisks, and the daemon warp storm table are all great at racking up wounds each turn and as you degrade the gunline it gets much less dangerous. IG/AM has a special edge with AV14 tanks shooting ID pie plates. Knight Paladins are also fantastic w/ 2x S8 ap3 large blasts and will be brought up more later.
3. Dual or Triple threats are a must. When you can control what your opponent has to shoot at, you are winning the fight. Charging an imperial knight and a land raider full of nasty is the perfect example. Any tau player knows that once they are locked in CC they are flirting with death. Sure they have a few tricks like farsight's 4 ap2 S5 I5 attacks but these are not only eminently manageable, but few and far between. A tau gunline faced with a knight/land raider rush has to kill at least one of those units before the turn 2 charge (no small feet btw). You just freed up two turns for the rest of your army to pound on the tau. Your land raider will almost surely survive till turn two (you should be out of 2d6 melta range turn one) and if it does you can multicharge a few units and will either cut them down after winning combat or stay locked and safe.
4. Learn to love math hammer. Understand the numbers and the rest will follow. The original post said the tau list puts out 60-70 s7 shots a turn sounds like a lot, and it is, unless you bring the right toys. Lets do the math for a Knight on turn one just to show you what i mean. I am going to assume that the front facing of the knight av13 with an active ion sheild 4++ will be hit on turn one. To be as generous to the Tau as possible i'm going to assume the Tau list can put out 70 s7 shots a turn and 35 of them are TL. I'll even be nicer and assume that marker lights have boosted all these shots to bs 4. out of the 35 regular s7 shots 23.333 should hit on average so lets say 23-24. 6's will glance so Tau can expect to average 3-4 glances half of which should be saved on the 4++ shield totaling 1-2 glances on average from 35 s7 shots, OUCH! Now on to the TL shots, 35 TL shots will average 23-24 hits on the first roll, and of the 11-12 average misses 7-8 of those will hit on the TL reroll, totaling 31-32 hits. 32 S7 Hits will average 5 glances against AV13, which will be reduced to 2-3 glances with the 4++ ion shield. At the end of the day this entire Super charged bs 4 tau gunline will only be getting 3-5 glances turn one on a knight. Not even enough to kill it.
5. Know the Tau weak spots. Toughness 4 makes for easy instant death opportunities on expensive and dangerous models like broadsides and crisis suits. Low leadership makes powers like terrify, psy shriek, dominate,special rule like fear great, and creates a vulnerability to LD checks from shooting. Average WS2 and I3 makes Tau prime CC targets and little more then skulls for the skull throne if you have ws 5 and up.
6. Know your armies cheep tricks. If you play CSM, slap a dirge caster on a land raider, multicharge the tau lines turn 2 overwatch free. Play daemons? Be'lakor can invis your important CC units. Cast shrouded your first turn and surround Big B with anything in your army that can jink for 2+ cover save which forces your opponent to use valuable marker light shots or ignore the squad. Play the imperium? Knights, IG/AM armor, centurion stars work great. Etc etc etc...

[sfshilo]

Storm ravens with inquisitors allied with a knight or two.

Charge asap with knights. Laugh at s7 trying to hurt an av12 flyer that ignores melta. Also take the inquisitor that has the fun grenades. Use psychic to get invisibility.

[Maelstorm]

Necrons

Can you say "Death Ray"?

3 Necron Doom Scythes will clean them up. Strength 10, AP1 3d6 line starting 12" away - can hit anywhere on the board starting turn 2. AV13 vehicles (Annihilation Barges, Ghost Arks, Catacomb Command Barges) on a landing pad for a 4+ Invulnerable save. You might lose 1 Vehicle on turn 1, and 1 flyer on turn 2, then it's Instant Death for anything under Toughness 6.

[Ang56]

I read through most of this, I agree with the people saying that it's board setup. My group decided a little into 6th we didn't like the drift towards gun lines. Decided to revamp our boards to attempt to remedy it. While there are still problems, it's had very positive results for us.

- Put a lot of terrain down, not area terrain. Filling the board with cover saves is either irrelevant or overly strong for a lot of armies. Elevation changes, solid structures that can't be entered / seen through, rocks, block out the bottom levels of buildings or put them on 2" platforms with stairs up to the doors, etc. You can get pretty creative. Very little deployment zone to deployment zone shooting. At ground level we try to keep LOS between 12-24" excepting a few long corridors, going up gives you better range but is risky, especially since the bulk of the units on the board for both sides won't even have a target at ground level on any given turn.

- Play smaller games, or on larger boards. Personally I feel like 1500 pts on a 6x4' table is very tight, weapon ranges don't really matter for most heavy weapons, they'll be able to reach targets. Most of our tables are 8' or 10'. 1850 pts on a 10' board is pretty fun. Makes it much more about movement and adds a lot of lateral movement. Encourages mobile units, or larger volume of cheaper units. This I think has been the biggest factor for us and discouraging deathstars, they may be near invincible, but they cost a lot and don't usually cover enough ground to make up their cost.

- Place objectives in the open and towards the middle, most of the batreps I watch the Objectives are in all the places you want to park a unit anyways. Awesome cover and a good view. Make camping an objective to deny it a risk. No cover and in those corridors with long lines of sight where lots of heavy weapons can see.

To be honest the armies feel much more balanced since we redid our boards (more balanced, not balanced :P). There's been a few very hard to beat lists pop up, but we are seeing way more variation then we did with open 6x4' tables, and almost all games are very objective focused since the majority of your units will spend several of the turns moving to get into position, tabling someone is rare.

As for your str 7 36" gun spam for a low unit count army they'd be far less overwhelming when they spend a lot of the game walking to targets on a 10' board and can't gang up on your units if they want to be spread out enough to score obj's. Just based on my experiences with maelstrom and our tables, Fire Warrior spam, backed up by some XV teams is scarier to me. Maybe throw in a riptide and some drones for snaking vps on the less defendable markers.

I'm not saying it's not a strong list I just think it's not nearly as threatening when you cut down the LoS and spread out or depopulate the game space as opposed to the 6x4' 1850 arena style blood baths that allow 75%+ of your guns to find targets every turn and by turn 4 one side is down to remnants if not tabled.

[ti9999]

Here's one to take out Tau gunlines.
1850
Chaos Marines -
CAD 1 - 1080
HQ - 80
Sorceror - 80
(Mark of Slaanesh)
Troops - 100
Cultists - 50
Cultists - 50
Fast Attack - 525
Heldrake - 175
Heldrake - 175
Heldrake - 175
Heavy Support - 375
Maulerfiend - 125
Maulerfiend - 125
Maulerfiend - 125
CAD 2 - 770
HQ - 140
Herald of Tzeentch - 70
(Psy2)
Herald of Tzeentch - 70
(Psy2)
Troops - 90
Nurglings - 45
Nurglings - 45
Heavy Support - 540
Soul Grinder - 180
(Slaanesh, Phlegm Bombardment)
Soul Grinder - 180
(Slaanesh, Phlegm Bombardment)
Soul Grinder - 180
(Slaanesh, Phlegm Bombardment)

This is bascally damned if you do, damned if you don't. All the Daemon Engines have invulnerable saves, the Drakes and Maulers have IWND. The Maulers can go 12" a turn and be in position to assault on turn 2. The Grinders can advance with nigh impunity while blasting away thanks to AV13 and the 5+ invul. Once the Drakes show up, it's the coup de grace. No matter what he shoots at, he can't stop enough of it before the rest of it ravages his units. The heralds can take Prescience and whatever else you think might be useful, then spend most of their time twinlinking the Grinders. The Sorceror's Slaanesh powers largely focus on screwing with enemy's ability to fight back. Use Sensory Overload ALOT since in can pin and blind (if they don't have Blacksun Filters). Even getting it off on a unit of Broadsides just once before the sorceror dies can utterly screw them over since they would only be able to snapfire no matter how many markerlights he has.
Your goal is to focus on the Missilesides first, since thats where the bulk of his dangerous firepower is, while charging full throttle into his teeth.

That's the key weakness of this Tau list. A big chunk of points are sunk into only 6 models that hold much of the firepower. If these units can be neutered or wiped completely before the deepstrikers start arriving, it will severely hamper the ability of this list to handle anything effectively. Additionally, since most of the shooting is S7, armies that lean to either extreme end of the tough/numerous spectrum will give this list a hard time. For example, a marine (loyalist or chaos) force that spams land raiders will give these tau a very hard time. On the other end, a tau force like this has absolutely no chance whatsoever of stopping an 1850 point green tide formation from the Ghazghkull book before it hits them. One like this -

Try shooting this down before it gets across the board to you. The Big Boss Pole makes the whole formation Fearless.
Waaagh Ghazghkull - 1848
Green Tide -
Warboss - 190
(Mega Armor, Big Boss Pole, Da Supa Cybork, Choppa of Da Ragnarork)
8x Mobs = 1336
22 Ork Boyz - 167
(Nob, Power Klaw)
2x Mobs = 322
21 Ork Boyz - 161
(Nob, Power Klaw)

208 Ork Boyz, 10 Nobz, 1 Warboss - 219 Total

Actually there are very few armies that stand a chance of stopping this before it gets to them.

My overall point is that while this Tau list may be a very good all round, all comers list, it will struggle against several highly specialized lists such as high armor or extreme hordes. You just need the right build to exploit that weakness.

[Wildcard]

I read through most of this, I agree with the people saying that it's board setup. My group decided a little into 6th we didn't like the drift towards gun lines. Decided to revamp our boards to attempt to remedy it. While there are still problems, it's had very positive results for us.

- Put a lot of terrain down, not area terrain. Filling the board with cover saves is either irrelevant or overly strong for a lot of armies. Elevation changes, solid structures that can't be entered / seen through, rocks, block out the bottom levels of buildings or put them on 2" platforms with stairs up to the doors, etc. You can get pretty creative. Very little deployment zone to deployment zone shooting. At ground level we try to keep LOS between 12-24" excepting a few long corridors, going up gives you better range but is risky, especially since the bulk of the units on the board for both sides won't even have a target at ground level on any given turn.

As for your str 7 36" gun spam for a low unit count army they'd be far less overwhelming when they spend a lot of the game walking to targets on a 10' board and can't gang up on your units if they want to be spread out enough to score obj's. Just based on my experiences with maelstrom and our tables, Fire Warrior spam, backed up by some XV teams is scarier to me. Maybe throw in a riptide and some drones for snaking vps on the less defendable markers.

I'm not saying it's not a strong list I just think it's not nearly as threatening when you cut down the LoS and spread out or depopulate the game space as opposed to the 6x4' 1850 arena style blood baths that allow 75%+ of your guns to find targets every turn and by turn 4 one side is down to remnants if not tabled.

I am not familiar with the army you play, but shooty lists fear/are really at a disadvantage at short ranges. I have Imperial Guard and Grey Knights armies and mostly play against chaos space marines and blood angels, and sometimes eldar and orks. There is not a single time i've had any chance with IG against any army that has close combat units capable of moving like jump infantry.
- They either jump over los-blocking terrain and charge or
- They jump over los-blocking terrain with units that cannot be killed in one turn (either too tough or too many, like msu in case of BA assault marines) and after that they charge.

Then its all over for any artillery, tanks, and infantry.


We started playing right at the start of 5th ed, and first games we had open boards. Needless to say my fellow gamers soon decided under the relentless Leman Russ Battle Tank and Basilisk fire that on the future we play with boards that have as many cover as possible -so i agree with you that atleast some cover (los-blocking) is required.