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Advice against Tau & his markerlights

685 views 11 replies 9 participants last post by  FalcosMarines 
#1 ·
Hello fellows

I really need some advices on how to beat the Tau army that it very hard for me to defeat. I know my units are stronger than his in cc, but I have very difficult to get my units into cc, before he blast my rhinos and razorbacks to pieces. :freaked-out:
He keeps firing those dahm markerlights at me to reduce my coversaves, it is so difficult for me "hide" my transports and let them do their jobs, do anyone have these problems too?

I can not use drop pods, because I don't have them and don't have the money to buy them yet. As for deepstriking units I usually have 5 standard terminators to draw fire and give something punishment back, if they survive the shooting. For anti-tank I usually field 3 attackbikes with multimeltas, I turboboost them to get to his tanks, but his markerlights reduces their coversaves to much for them to survive. He almost always deploy 2 units that can fire markerlights on each side on his table edge.

Hope you have some ideas on how to get close to crush the Tau in CC.
 
#3 ·
Agreeing with the above poster. If he's got a unit on each side of the board using markerlights, I would also suggest an outflanking scout unit.

Another possibility is deep striking some land speeders, with a Heavy Bolter and/or a Heavy Flamer. That should greatly diminish the number of markerlights he's able to tag your transports with.
 
#6 ·
If you want a sure-fire way to murder Tau and get people into CC, take Khan as an HQ. If allows your army to outflank, which means you can take the quick way across the field. Bikes coming on from reserve via outflanking will be able to cut through units.

What is the composition of his army? Is it mostly fire warriors with some backup, or are there a lot of crisis suits?

I'm tempted to tell you to build an anchor force that has a lot of missile launchers, or possibily some Typhoon MLs to Deepstrike and his enemies with frag grenades (and if its crisis suits, go ahead and pop them with the krak missiles). Meanwhile have other forces coming in from outflanking, and you've got a unit that the Tau will hate.

And I realize you said no Drop pods, but they are so very useful. I would invest in a couple of them if you can. Drop a sternguard unit w/ combi-meltas/ combi-flamers, and they can rip an opponent's backside a new hole. Drop a Dreadnaught w/ a solid anti-whatever you're trying to kill loadout and you'll be able to laugh as your opponent spends the next couple turns killing you Dreads as the clock swiftly ticks down to your outflankers entering play.

Also, if you ever do get drop pods, spend the extra 20 points when buying them for the Deathwind launcher. Opponents usually don't pay attention to a pod (and if they do they usually have to expend a fair amount of firepower), but a deathwind can crunch infantry pretty effectively. And if you add any deepstrikers not in DPs, you may want to consider locater beacons. They are far more useful than teleport homers, are fairly cheap on DPs, and allow you to bring down everything DS right behind the enemy's line.

Also, if you want things to hold the objectives back home, scouts with camo-cloaks will make markerlights less effective.

A quick summary of good units:

Khan: for outflanking
Bikes: if outflanking
Scouts w/ camo-cloaks: good for anchoring home points and surviving Tau shots
Dreadnaughts in Drop pods: tough to kill and can put out a fair amount of firepower
Deathwind Drop Pods: infantry murderers. often overlooked by your opponent...make them pay for that
Sternguard: drop them out of a drop pod and they can kill infantry units easily
Landspeeders: Drop them into the battle w/ your favorite/ most useful loadout. (good landspeeder tactica is here: http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/40k-finished-tacticas/184128-tactica-landspeeders.html)
 
#7 ·
Building an anti-Tau list is easy, using your normal list to stop them is trickier.

What do you normally use? How many points?

For ==Me==, I typically run this at 1850
MotF w/ conversion beamer
3x dual TLAC Dreads
3x Tac Squads in Rhinos-MM, flamer, combi-melta, melta bombs
10 camo sniper scouts with missile launcher and Telion
3x MM/HF Speeders
3x AC/HB Preds

Against Tau, it's a solid wall of armor moving up to BBQ them and smash them in HtH (even basic Tactical Marines can mess up Tau units). Speeders would Deep Strike to go after entrenched units and get inside the disruption field, while massed S7 fire can bring down vehicles or suits.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Usually we play at 1750 points and my list looks something like this.

Captain or librarian
Chaplin w jumppack joining assault squard

10 tac marines ML, flamer or meltagun, powerfist sgt. + rhino
10 tac marines ML, flamer or meltagun + razorback with heavy bolters
10 tac marines ML, flamer or meltagun + razorback with heavy bolters
sometimes 5 scouts with sniper and heavy bolter

5 assault marines, sgt lightning claw + flamer
3 attackbikes with multimeltas

1 dreadnought assaultcannon DCCW+ heavy flamer
1 dreadnought lascannon + ML or a standard dreadnought
5 terminators

1 dakkapredator

This is not an ideal list, but I do not have to many models yet, but more are on the way, I hope. :) Really like the idea of some drop pods, it will really give me an edge over him, he hates when I reach his gunline. :sinister:
Maybe I should use some more assault marines to get to him faster and lock him in CC, I do have 5 more?
I almost every times combat squad my 2 tac with the razorback to stoot some templates on his firewarriors or shoots at his hammerheads to knock out some of his big guns. My attackbikes moves fast up on him in turn 1, but he almost every game manages to kill them before the do their job. Assault squad with chappie also moves fast towards him turn one, but he deepstrikes an strong HQ unit with bodyguards an drones an almost every time kills most of them, so that when I charges them, there to many wounds to defeat, but at least, they don't shoot at anything else.
He always fields a railgun, an ioncannon, that nasty HQ unit of suits, 2 squards of markerlights shooters and 2 squards of firewarriors.

Hope you guys can get some sense out of this post. :)
 
#9 ·
5 man assault squads are very meh. 10 man assault squads are twice as meh. I'd just leave them at home. Without any ablative armor (a transport), they get shot up too easily.

Split up the Attack Bikes, giving him 3 separate targets that are all big threats.

Ditch the Termies, running them naked is just handing your opponent a gift.

Dreadies are nasty, but you generally want them doing the same thing for redundancy's sake. I like MM/HF for the versatility, but dual TLAC or TLAC/ML would be useful for nailing transports and suits from afar.

Don't be so quick to hop on the Pod bandwagon either, dropping it in does let you bypass his firepower, but you had better do a lot of damage with it because it's dying next turn. Sternguard are great for this, especially with a Librarian to help them teleport around if any make it.
 
#10 ·
5 man AS. Squads are Meh, 10 man AS. Squads with PF and 2 flamers ane so not Meh. If that unit hits any of their infantry they will melt. Keep it in cover when you can and be smart with it and you will be good.

Walking Terminators against Tau isn't a good idea.

Dreads in pods are great too. They take up turns of enemy shooting while you can get your transports in to short range fire fight distance.
 
#11 ·
In my experiance any and all tank based armour should not really be used.

I've had great success with the following units against Tau.

Drop pods: 1 or 3. 2 is pointless. In the first turn drop in sternguard with a librarian. (I tend to take scout bikes as you can get all the way across the board by turn one and have a locator beacon exactly where you want it). Other pod (if there is one) will have a tac unit. This will drop in with the sternguard so you have a strong fire base. The librarian will allow your killy sternguard to move about upto 24" with the bikers locator beacon used to prevent deviation.

Landspeeders: Crisis suits (if used well) are a real issue as they are very mobile and very killy. Take Typhoons to deal with them. You can keep up with their moves and insta kill them.

Bikes: Large squads of bikes are hard to get rid of, move fast and pack a lot of punch.

Thunderfire Cannon: Underused and underated. These things can be merciless. You get a free techmarine with it too!

Heavy Flamers: these are your friends. I often take Vulkan, a libby with Gate and the flamer template (forgot the power) and a sternguard squad with two heavy flamers and two combi meltas. They jump out the pod, combat squad and take on two seperate targets. I always aim to take down troops if massed or heavy support. This squad has been merciless in the past.
 
#12 ·
I found that Drop Podding Dreads w/MM behind or right next to the Tau players gun line is the best thing to do to start with. This will either destroy the big guns in the army or at least tie them up for a turn or two allowing the rest of your army to cross the battle field to engage those wimpy fire warriors and crisis suits. As for marker light squads, biker scouts work wonders. Set up 18" from them make your scout move, shoot, and then assault tying them up for 2 or 3 turns. Plenty of time to take care of the other units that can actually hurt your army.

Another option is using Shrike. Put him in a unit of AM Infiltrate, jump pack, and assault the crap out of any unit that you feel is bothering you. If you really wanna scare him take out his troop choices first, this pretty much wraps up the game especially if you are playing an objective based mission.

couple the two suggestions above and i dont think any shooty army stands much of a chance as they are more worried about whats already behind there army rather than whats coming to hit it from the front. :sinister:
 
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