# Tau recovery...



## Wu-Tang-Tau (Apr 2, 2009)

Hey guiz! I am sure there are probably already heaps of threads about Tau involving "How to beat a horde army?". After being eaten by bugs again today! (Actually I lost a an annillation battle with 4 vs 6) I've come to the conclusion that Tau's biggest weakness now being the lack of chance to recover from bad luck and "Single significant" battle field events.

I mean, usually a Tau army is pretty much done for after one-two bad shooting rounds, when you face horde armies like orks and nids you pretty much can't run any where when they are coming at you from every direction!

I am just wondering if anyone here had some first hand experience in recovering from crippling bad turns and not just mathhammer and theory.

By the way, I lost today's game because of two events:

1. His winged hive tyrant managed to roll 2 6 for his invulnerable save!
2. I manage to miss a single suriving gaunt with 3 hammerhead...

If I was a marine or eldar army I probably wouldn't be too worried with those single events cause I have the ability to dish back in hand to hand...


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## Daneel2.0 (Jul 24, 2008)

Tau generally have a problem with hand to hand armies (like nids and orks), but you also have some pretty significant advantages which can help you mitigate them.

If you are using the Railhead configuration for your Hammerheads, then the submunition shot does a great job of eliminating hordes from tremendously long ranges. And as a template weapon, it scatters rather than producing a hit or miss scenario (which is really helpful, since you'll most likely get some kills even on a "miss")

Use your range, and concentrate fire. If you drop a template on a unit and don't kill it all off, have your fire warriors longer range rapid fire weapons pick off the stragglers. If it takes 4 squads to get them all, then it takes 4 squads. Painful sometimes, but you do what you got to do.

Finally don't forget mobility. Against hordes, I'd sacrifice numbers for the ability to move, you're already going to be outnumbered anyway. Pay the extra for a no-frills, Devilfish or 2 to transport your troops out in if the horde gets too close. Then you can turbo-boost and redeploy in an alternate location.

As to being vulnerable to a single bad phase, well, you can't fight your own dice. But don't think that's just a Tau thing, all armies are susceptible to that. I'm not quite sure what you want as far as advice here though. 

I've had a set of 5 Terminators shrug off 160 gauss flayer shots in one round without taking a single wound. I've had 3 Tau Stealth Suites take out 3 Wraiths in CC without losing a wound. And I've had 1 Necron Warrior destroy a Landraider with a single shot at 24". Sometimes that's just the way the dice roll.


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

the closest to a recovery from a bad turn for tau is hopp in a devilfish so your dudes don't get assaulted and hope that if the fish gets assaulted there isn't anything that can take it down. closest that comes to it.


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## onlainari (May 10, 2008)

My list is quite capable of killing 50 tyranid models in 5 turns.

I can kill 80 orks.


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## Underground Heretic (Aug 9, 2008)

Daneel, sorry but Devilfish can never move more than 12". The Multi-tracker allows them to _fire_ as a fast vehicle, but it can not move as a fast vehicle. If you really want to avoid a horde, but still keep shooting look into the Warfish pattern (SMS MT DP TA). It's 120 points, but can fire four 5/5 shots when moving 12", seven if you only move six. If they get much too close, unload the fire warriors and shoot twice at 12". If two fire warrior squads do this, they should annihilate any guant brood. Markerlights should help your accuracy, but the choice is yours.


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

Tau against A horde?

*Turtle and mosquitos*

The trick to beating Hordes is condensed fire.
in a 2000 point battle, I'd want to put down 4 units of 12 fire warriors and a big unit of kroot.

you'll want to use a refused flank deployment scheme too.

Bunch up on one side, with some fire power, preferably Hammer heads, although, broadsides are fine too.

Stick an Ethereal in the centre of the ranks and screen the Fire line with the kroot.

Now, the next bit is the *mosquito*.
Your commander and body guard is one.
Stealth suits and Crisis suits (with Flamers) make up the others.

As the enemy moves towards you, keep your cool. Focus on creating Holes in his lines. When a Sizable hole has been created, deepstrike a Mosquito into the hole.

If done with precision, you should drop all of them at the same time.

Although the Mosquitos will be surrounded, it will hamper his march toward you, allowing focused fire upon the survivors.

If a Horde is focusing on a refused flank, your opponent will often find himself bottlenecking himself. With a need to shred you with his best troops, he will often Prioritize them hitting your lines first, meaning they have to show their faces...when this happens, shoot it off.


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## Daneel2.0 (Jul 24, 2008)

Underground Heretic said:


> Daneel, sorry but Devilfish can never move more than 12". The Multi-tracker allows them to _fire_ as a fast vehicle, but it can not move as a fast vehicle.


My mistake, sorry. That's what I get for working from memory :rtfm:

Still, I'd rather have my troops in a transport than being slaughtered in CC, even if it does take 2 turns to get them out of danger. 

And don't forget that you can still use the Devilfish as a CC impediment and force the CC units to go through the vehicle before they get to your troops. Not necessarily something that you would want to do, but something you could anyway.


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## ItsPug (Apr 5, 2009)

Hi just my two cents...
1) Flechette dischargers will put a horde player esp. Nids from EVER assaulting a vehicle. Theres some conflicting arguments about how they work in squadrons but on a devilfish its no problem to kill 45% of the gaunts assaulting you.
2) Use lots of fire warriors. Combining two squads with a squad of pathfinders should result in 48 str5 shots at 12 inches at BS5. and if he does Nidzilla use the marker lights to make you Crisis suits missile pods and plasma BS5 instead.
3) Kill it till its dead then kill it again. Cannot stress this enough. if ONE gaunt gets into CC it'll ruin your whole day. It stops a squad from shooting and blocks LOS for your own units trying to fire past the CC at the big ones.


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

i've had a marker drone kill a carnifex once, and a sniper drone kill a lictor. obviously if you want to beat nids you take drones...
there may be some differing opinions out there... >.>


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## Wu-Tang-Tau (Apr 2, 2009)

Actually, come to think of that battle again, I think I have made the mistake of not firing enough at the gaunts. I think I've wasted about 4-5 solid shots on big bugs!!!! If I shot earlier, I probably wouldn't have had the problem of single surviving gaunts to worry about  I was a pity my fire warrior fof waves didn't do much  (First fof was directed at this squad of warriors I want to kill, he ended up having to roll for 10 saves on 4+, and ONLY ONE warrior died! That squad got wiped out by the warriors next turn. So I rushed another fof squad onto the warriors and over killed it... that squad got shot to piece by a tyrant devourer next turn and broke...)


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

The larger Tyranids often move slow. An exception to this is the Winged Hive Tyrant...he needs to go, fast.
Target the smaller, often faster units.
A tyranid player is trying to get you in CC, so his forces are heading full speed toward you. Stagger your shooting and target whats closest or what moves fastest. A clever opponent will have all his forces arrive at the same time however, when this happens, focus on the Synapse creatures.

Lesson of the moment:
A carnifex has a high strength but not that many attacks. It WILL take him 2 turns to kill 10 Kroot. It also moves 6' and charges 6'...so he moves at the speed of a Grandma.

Hormagaunts move 6', get an Extra D6' then Charge 12'. 8 hormagaunts throw out 24 attacks on the Charge! 

As i said, target the faster ones first.


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

Wu-Tang-Tau said:


> Actually, come to think of that battle again, I think I have made the mistake of not firing enough at the gaunts. I think I've wasted about 4-5 solid shots on big bugs!!!! If I shot earlier, I probably wouldn't have had the problem of single surviving gaunts to worry about  I was a pity my fire warrior fof waves didn't do much  (First fof was directed at this squad of warriors I want to kill, he ended up having to roll for 10 saves on 4+, and ONLY ONE warrior died! That squad got wiped out by the warriors next turn. So I rushed another fof squad onto the warriors and over killed it... that squad got shot to piece by a tyrant devourer next turn and broke...)


erm, looking like priority issues to me


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## bishop5 (Jan 28, 2008)

Twin-linked flamer Crisis suits are your friends vs hordes; sure you have to get close but that's kinda the point with flamers, plus they're really quite cheap (for elite troops) May go for flamer, missile pod, MT so you can at least shoot some stuff while you're getting into bbq-range.


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## Hellskullz (Jul 24, 2008)

Here's something I find very interesting about Tau. Most armies dominate at one specific phase generally, like for example Orks dominate in the assault phase. Tau, while generally dominating in the shooting phase, CAN instead dominate in the movement phase. Very few armies can do this, and if done correctly is very destructive because of two reasons.
1. YOU choose were all the fights take place. If an area looks bad and not in your favor then you can relocate your unit(s) there. (oh, for this to work, everyone has to be able to move 12"). When you do choose to fight, you want to make it so you out power your opponent so much, it's neigh impossible for him to survive.
2. The other cool thing about dominating the movement phase, is unlike the other two phases, you don't depend on dice rolling.
I fought a guy who works at my LGS who plays tau in an annihilation match, 2000pts. In the end, Kps where 1 for me, 5 for him. And that kp i got was from my warp spiders making excellent rolls for their movement in the assault phase :shok:


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## HighHubris (Mar 16, 2009)

Hellskullz said:


> Here's something I find very interesting about Tau. Most armies dominate at one specific phase generally, like for example Orks dominate in the assault phase. Tau, while generally dominating in the shooting phase, CAN instead dominate in the movement phase. Very few armies can do this, and if done correctly is very destructive because of two reasons.


never really looked at it this way, but now that ya say it, yeah i agree


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## ItsPug (Apr 5, 2009)

I used to play Tau in 4th and I used a combination of *Target Denial*, *Target Saturation* and *Concentration of Force*. 

Target denial works by only giving your opponent vehicles to shoot at, and in 4th tau skimmers were pretty hard to kill (they've been nerfed a bit in 5th but the disruption pods still work a treat), and all those points the enemy has spent on anti-infantry is a waste. You basically neutralise 60-70% of his army by making it unable to harm your guys, while still being able to dish out some serious firepower, aimed at his assault units. In my army basically everything was a vehicle (Hammerhead), inside a vehicle (Devilfish) or out of LOS (Suits).

Target saturation comes into the equation by simple means of the fact that not many armies could take down 5-6 skimmers with 12-13 front armour. This means they have to prioritise their shooting, do I shoot at the relatively weak devilfish thats not doing a lot of damage or the harder to kill hammerhead blowing my squads to smithereens with sub-munitions.

This is a little harder to accomplish in 5th because its a lot easier to take a vehicle out in CC as opposed to shooting, especially one with a disruption pod, which ties in with what Hellskullz mentioned - movement is key. If you can pick your fights and overwhelm small parts of his force with most of yours you'll annihilate any army. 

Killing the enemy all boils down to a concentration of force, most armies have to use movement or range to concentrate force and you can see by how the enemy deploys what his intentions are and what he can deal with. A balanced Tau force can concentrate force with marker lights. Lots of Tanks - guide your Broadsides, lots of infantry - guide stealth suits and fire warriors.

As a small aside my devil fish were all built as warfish and did most of the work getting a few easy kills by being out of LOS and using the SMS to engage the assault/ counter assault units so that i could FoF in relative safety, (the SMS is also slightly better in 5th as its a weapon that replaces the drones so you then don't lose a KP for them as well as the vehicle). 

Haven't played much 5th edition with Tau but the same principles still apply.

Good luck next game anyway.


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## Culler (Dec 27, 2007)

I played against a black templar list in 1850 points with 40 initiates and 40 scouts all armed for close combat and organized into 20-man mobs with my tau. I did end up losing but only because we were playing objectives and then only because my FWs sitting on the objective failed the only morale check they were called to make and ran off the board despite a shas'ui. I actually won on kill points and killed 52 marines, 6 landspeeders, a chaplain, and an emperor's champion in 6 rounds (losing 24 fire warriors, my commander, 20 kroot, and a crisis team). I'd welcome the sight of 160 orks after facing 80 marines that fall forward when you shoot them.

Things I found really helpful: 
kroot: a no-frills 20-man kroot unit led by a shaper is cheap and good for counter assault or fire support
hammerheads with submunitions: when you drop it on the center of a horde I always got at least 6 hits, once got 11 on a unit crossing a bridge. 6 bs4 burst cannon shots on the go are pretty sweet too.
stealth suits: lots of dakka and survivability to keep the heat on
plenty of fire warriors: FWs are pretty great troops for their points. lots of them or lots of them being mobile are nice to have against hordes because you need all the shots you can get.
concentration of force: eliminating units one at a time is huge because it lets you shape how things are coming at you. If you use a denied flank and force his lumbering horde to come slowly swinging around to you it becomes a meat grinder on the closer units and then they keep coming as you keep knocking them down.
*and especially*: being a punk with my tanks. If he's going to get into assault range of my gun line, I put a tank or two in his mobs way preferably alongside some impassable or difficult terrain so that his mob can't get around and assault my troops in one move. He didn't have much in the way of anti-tank with his mobs, though they could have glanced my tank to death in theory and it would have been worth it to become difficult terrain at the very least and give my troops another round of shooting. Devilfish work great in this role because you can fish of fury them at the same time.

As far as recovering from a crappy shooting phase, all you can really do is try to buy time perhaps by sacrificing units or vehicles to block movement or using mobility to try to get more turns of shooting. If your guns don't kill his guys before they get to you, you lose as a ranged army. That's just how it goes.


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## Wu-Tang-Tau (Apr 2, 2009)

bishop5 said:


> Twin-linked flamer Crisis suits are your friends vs hordes; sure you have to get close but that's kinda the point with flamers, plus they're really quite cheap (for elite troops) May go for flamer, missile pod, MT so you can at least shoot some stuff while you're getting into bbq-range.


I am trying to get another one so I can use a team of three for the next game! I will definetly bring pathfinders to make sure those suits deep strike on point! I don't really want them starting on the table cause tyranid shooting is actually really painful!


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