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How do guard beat Tau?


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Good day sirs!

 

On saturday I have my intital fight against Tau with 800 pts of Astra Militarum. Its an escalation campaign and so far I can't use lords of war. 

 

What is the MUST KNOW tricks of how to beat the tau if your are Astra Militarum? What is the afest strategy. I dont care if its a boring army list, I just want to win at all cost this time to see if it is possible :) !

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I'm moving this to the barracks, where you will get more face time with other Guard commanders. The first and most important thing is that you play Guard and your opponent filthy xenos - you've already won the most important part msn-wink.gif For the table top it's not so easy as the Guard codex is a little long in the tooth and that can feel longer still when you go up against the latest and greatest. Guard can also struggle at lower points as you need to invest comparatively more points to cover your bases but at least this will become less of an issue as you're escalating.

Speaking of which, how does your escalation campaign work? Is it restricted in that you must build upon the identical list from lower points, or do you have free reign? If it's the former you'll need to plan for the big picture so we'd need to know before we can offer more detailed help smile.png Following on from that it'd help if we knew what you have available, as under a week isn't very long to add models to your collection msn-wink.gif

Other will be able to help you out with Tau specifics, but I can start the ball rolling with some general plans. Against such opponents cheap and cheerful is best - expensive "death star" style units only make their potent shooting find easy targets. They have lots of annoying tricks to help them out, so casualties are to be expected. You'll also need to muster your best weapons to deliver damage as closing with the enemy will be very difficult.

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 I just want to win at all cost

 

You can always edit your Army Builder files to reduce unit costs.  Weighted dice are too esy to spot, but if you change the 2's to 5's on a portion of your dice that can help skew the odds in your favor.  Also, epub versions of codices are just zipped collection of html files.  Change the extension to .zip, extract and edit the seperate files.  Change First Rank, Fire. Second Rank, Fire to give all weapons (including lascannons) an extra shot.  Make all shots from orders twin-linked while your at it.

 

 

-- in case it is not apparent, don't do that.  I am just expressing my distaste with WAAC.

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For the smaller games, I would rely on Wyverns, Veteran Cav squads, and hellhounds/Sentinels with Heavy Flamers.

 

Focus on one unit at a time till it's gone, then move on to the next. Realize that Tau are going to be better at shooting than your guard, with better BS, better Str. However if you can get them in combat, or just get close enough to drop templates on them, they die fast. Tanks are good, but Crisis suits are honestly better, so focus fire those first.

 

In the games I've played lately (a few with my guard) I have found the Tau are the hardest to beat, because they're basically Guard +1 in a lot of areas. If you can work out fielding more tanks than they can possibly kill, and fill them with small squads of Guardsmen, that has worked well for me in the lower point games.

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Tau will struggle against AV12/14 at this point level so consider a couple of LBRTs and wyvrens

Remember despite their crappy BS the tau do out range guard 30" vs 24" on their standard AP5 weaponry and can boost their BS and get ignores cover easy. So don't try and have you infantry try and shoot them out

Id take vets in chimeras with plasma advance them behind the LBRTs

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Tau will struggle against AV12/14 at this point level so consider a couple of LBRTs and wyvrens

Remember despite their crappy BS the tau do out range guard 30" vs 24" on their standard AP5 weaponry and can boost their BS and get ignores cover easy. So don't try and have you infantry try and shoot them out

Id take vets in chimeras with plasma advance them behind the LBRTs

Can't agree. They can take cheap troops to save points for their battle suits with hard hitting multi-shot guns. So i would not put all my money upon tanks. The most effective strategy i used against the blue faces was having as many troops as possible to make losses tolerable. 

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Felix, Like most IGers I also struggle to beat Tau, but I do manage to do so from time to time and here is what I've learned.

 

You've already gotten some great advice from everyone else:

-take plenty of troops (including mechvets and infantry platoons)

-take some tanks (especially wyverns and Hellhounds, although the various Russ variants and Chimeras are good too)

-It won't be easy to balance the number of troops, tanks, and other units you dhould take (as you can see in the discussion between Duz and Shamansky). This is something that you will have to figure out through trial and error and it will vary based on your playstyle and terrain/mission/Tau opponents meta.

-Concentrate on one target until it is dead or has jinked/gone to ground

-If given the choice between targeting suits/MCs or tanks, concentrate on the suits/MCs

-Take at least 1 level 2 psyker, Tau really can't challenge you in the psychic phase and many disciplines really complement the guard nicely

-If FW is allowed, field a command Vanquisher with Beast hunter shells. These are a lethal threat to MCs like Riptide suits. If you manage to hit, wound, and get past the invulnerable save (if any), and FNP (if any), then the MC is removed regardless of how many wounds remaining.

-Senior officers screaming "Ignore cover!" at squads will be invaluable

 

I'd like to add 4 other pieces of advice:

-If at all possible, kill the marker lights first. Marker lights are a key Tau force multiplier (like our artillery and our orders) and you will be surprised at how much some (but not all) Tau lists crumble if you are able to take their markerlights away. Markerlights can be equipped on many units: drones, Tetras, Pathfinders, Sky Rays, etc. I always ask a Tau opponent where their markerlights are. They are always very nice and tell me. The number of Markerlights is usually pretty reasonable and you can winnow them down with some good target selection (and perhaps a bit of luck). Tau markerlights are sort of like Nid synapse creatures, if they take too many then their list lacks oomph if they take too few then their list lacks, well, markerlights.

-Conscripts are a very useful unit against Tau (well against anyone really). On Turns 1 and 2 they can bubble wrap your tanks against deep striking crisis suits and on subsequent turns you can advance them to gain board control. They'll dissolve rapidly, but who cares, and the shots that are going into them aren't going into the rest of your list

-Ratlings: Recently I've had found that my ratlings are pretty decent at putting wounds on Tau MCs and, like conscripts, they are so cheap that if the Tau player concentrates fire on them and blows them away, it's no skin off my back.

-Don't bother taking fliers. Tau can get so many skyfire shots its sick. Plus their fliers are pretty ho hum so you don't need to take anti-air fliers like Vendettas.

 

Good luck! As others have noticed, Tau are a top tier codex right now. This is in some weird way sort of appropriate because Tau players had to spend over 10 years from 3rd through 5th edition (2001-2013) in the long dark night with army codices that were arguably lackluster. Fish of Fury was briefly a thing back in the mid 2000s but once you played against it once you quickly learned to counter it with bubble wrapping troops. The Tau got better and things changed with the 2013 6th Edition codex so, in a karmic sense, the fact that Tau are so ridiculously overpowered today is just the universe rebalancing itself.

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Eradicators. Their main cannon is S6, AP4, ignores cover, large blast and they aren't ordinance so you can still fire heavy bolters at full BS. Great for taking out pathfinders, drones, and fire warrior squads. Cheap too.
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Ive actually had very good results against Tau with my IG.

On the effective side i definitely like Emperors Fist tank company; specifically a couple of Punishers firing at BS4 will down Riptides and various suits just by weight of fire (esp with Pask on board).

 

Tau can struggle with armour conventionally, you just need to be aware of their deep strike reserves, keeping a good infantry buffer around your tanks.

 

As mentioned Wyverns kill markerlights, nuff said.

 

Is this staying at 800pts?

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Thank you so much guys :) ! I really apreciate that you take your time to ellaborate your answers! The battle was moved to next weekend so we havnt been playing yet. It is a campaign where you cam change your list from time to time, it begins at 800pts and moves up to 1800. When it comes to what kind of models i have left it is not a problem. I literrally have guard worth of 8000 pts. All painted in same scheme and ready to be deployed in "an endless tie" againts tje xeno-mofos!
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i strongly do not recommend taking Emperor's Fist formation for 800 pts. 5 russes can be destroyed in 1 shooting phase by the noseless. KV128 Stormsurge for example. Add markerligts and tanks are history. Also Rapetides are cheap enough for 800 points too. Minimal tau CAD is 96 points. Imagine what they can add to it. 

Or they will just take this

optstealthcadre

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