# Anti Tau Marine Army?



## Cards344 (Jun 16, 2008)

I hate Tau, I hate their story, I hate their beliefs and I hate how they play. Alot of people at my store joke about how you cant get to them because of their ranged fire. I am tired of their smug attitude, I am starting a second army now using Marines and they are going to be a spite army. They are going to be Iron Hands that specialize in killing Tau. I know you are not supposed to build an army to fight one particular army, but I dont care, my second army is going to be fun to play.

My current idea is to play a droppod heavy army with 3-4 Tactical squads getting objectives, while I deepstrike 5 Dreadnoughts with Heavy Flamers and other weapons right in front of the Tau. Any other tactical ideas or advice would be very much appreciated.


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## beenburned (May 15, 2008)

Try scouts with snipers. They have a 6" range advantage over the fire warriors, will kill the odd one, and crucially will be forcing pinning tests. At LD7 for fire warriors, just under half his units that take the test should get pinned. I like those odds.

I had limited success with a land raider and assualt termies with lots of storm shields. They died after 2 turns, after taking out 2 units of fire warriors completely, but the rest of my army was completely untouched for those 2 turns. Not a bad tradeoff considering it won me the battle.


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## Deneris (Jul 23, 2008)

I'd suggest Sternguard to engage any Crisis teams...

Make at least one of those dreads a Furioso-pattern one for smashing Broadsides in CC...

A Whirlwind for those hard-to-reach Fire Warrior/Kroot squads...

Truly nasty? Find the rules for the Siege Dreadought with the Inferno gun from FW- Nothing says "dead tau" (Roasted Chicken, anyone?) like a long range flamer...


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## Cards344 (Jun 16, 2008)

For the Dreads, I wanted a nice mix up. 2 Regular With Muilti Meltas, 2 IronClads, and 1 Venerable with an assault cannon all have heavy flamers and come in through drop pods


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## beenburned (May 15, 2008)

Don't bother with the venerable far too expensive. You want him in cc and the extra ws will _really_ come in handy against tau. Who have ws2. - take a further ironclad instead I say. Tau excel at taking down light armour, but the only thing they have to really deal with heavy armour is the short ranged fusion blaster and the (relatively) rare, single shot railgun. Take the railguns out early and things, like the ironclad dreadnought, with high AV are cruising, especially if you get them into combat. I second whirlwinds too. Very handy against devilfish lists, as theres no better time to get those fire warriors as when they're all bunched together after piling out of a devilfish.

Sternguard are good for crisis, but the only tactic that's ever worked for me is drop podding a full 10 of them, then combat squadding. 5 die too quickly.

Really though, they're a bit of a points sink, as they're gonna be flagged as highpriority...unless you get lucky with reserves rolls and the tau player has to decide between 5 dreads or a the sternguard. Tough call.


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## Deneris (Jul 23, 2008)

I've also found that Heavy Bolters work wonders for clearing out Fire Warriors...

What is the makeup of the Tau army(ies) you'll be fighting?


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## CommanderAnthor (Sep 28, 2008)

I'd throw devastator squads with missle launchers, or put a missle launcher in each scout squad since a box of 5 comes with parts to make one.


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## TheUnmarked (May 19, 2008)

Well I mostly play against Tau and I have found that the standard marine army doesn't work however my list in this thread hands them their blue asses very easily 
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=19290

The bikes really mess with the Tau ranged units as yours will be in range and hitting more often (twin linked BS4) and the extra toughness also makes their pulse guns much less effective. But as I have always found the attack bikes are the best Unit you can field, since the most effective range for Multimeltas is within the range which negates his decoy launchers thingie, hence they will pummel his tanks. oh and although I didn't use them, in a larger game I would have dropped a squad of sternguard in there and used kraken rounds on his fire warriors, same range as his but they ignore his armor (AP 4) and marines hit more often.


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## dirty-dog- (May 14, 2008)

put the pie-plate launcher in the drop pods...........

heaps of thunderfire cannons


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## effigy22 (Jun 29, 2008)

6x Dreads in Drop Pods, 3 of them iron clads with hurricane bolters, 3 of them bog standard. Drop in 3 on his army in turn 1 and another lot the following. That would generally make them sweat.


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## Lord Reevan (May 1, 2008)

assault squads are the best marine unit against tau. hands down. What your list says to me is that you want to out shoot him with a strong CC side. That will not happen. Nothing outshoots Tau. Best bet is to load up on assault squads, a few vanguards, not for heroic intervention mind, And a few Tooled up characters. 5 assault marines, one with a power fist, have gone through 16 firewarriors and a devilfish for me.... imagin what you can go through with say 30 assault marines? then for heavy support a devastor squad with 4 ML. The frags will rip shreds out of infantry and the kraks will take out their vehicles. 

Use cover well and you'd be in their ranks with very few casualties. in a 1000 pt game I lost 6 men. the tau weer massacred.


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## TheUnmarked (May 19, 2008)

Had a similar result with my bikes, Actually could have won the game without the character (forgot to use his rules at all) and the bikes did all the damage the tac squads lasted well though. however I have found that a sound strategy is to nullify an opponents advantage and then press yours, something bikes are very good at (if used right). And although the assault always finished off the units I faced, the shooting beforehand made them fall much faster(being bikes they can do both on the same turn) and the maneuverability allowed me to hammer multiple parts of his line all at once preventing my now exposed bikes from getting ripped to shreds with pulse rifle fire. My drop pod tac squads were really just a distraction plopped right in the middle of his forces
end result lost 3 bikes and 7 marines total and had three objectives in hand (made irrelevant when my assault bikes popped his last devilfish)


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## Dessel_Ordo (Jul 28, 2008)

beenburned said:


> but the only thing they have to really deal with heavy armour is the short ranged fusion blaster and the (relatively) rare, single shot railgun. Take the railguns out early and things


I dony know what you are talking about wiht railguns being rare. at least 1 broadside team is a given for most Tau lists. As is at least 1 Hammerhead. thats 3 twin-linked Railguns, and 1 big one, that can sub-munition any troops you have.

also, almost all of their units out-range yours, and damn near all the options for XV8's can insta-kill most marine troops, an HQ's, if it werent for their invuln saves.


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## Shas La (Oct 13, 2008)

only works in larger games get dread to take out broadsides then rhino rush with squads with flamers unload toast then then tank shock then cc them


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## Someguy (Nov 19, 2007)

To beat tau you don't need to be good at cc, you just need to be in cc with anyone.

Units that combine speed and durability are better than hitting power in cc. You are fighting against the worst cc units in the game so just about anyone can beat them - if they get there.

In a marine army, scouts in a land speeder storm and scout bikers are by far the fastest things to get into combat. Both can easily charge on turn one and reach all over the board thanks to scout moves, infiltrate and outflank. If you are deploying to go second, I strongly recomment outflanking, as the Tau guy will not allow these guys to live if he gets a chance to hit them. Give the sergeant a power fist and maybe a combi-flamer for dealing with kroot.

Drop pods are ok, but Tau have lots of good counters to them. If I'm playing against a drop pod list with my own Tau I just put everyone in reserve, wait for the pods to fall down on turn one when there's nothing for them to do, then come on and shoot them from far away. So much of my Tau army can deep strike or outflank that I can quite easily turn the tables on a drop pod army.


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## Underground Heretic (Aug 9, 2008)

Like Someguy said, you just need to get into cc with Tau to win against them. If you have jump marines make sure they are in full squads. The more power armor you have, the more the crisis suits will have to focus on them.

Use hills, Use Hills, USE HILLS! Any terrain that can block a Fire Warrior's LOS will help you. If they can't see you their range is useless. A heavy bolter devastator squad will kill roughly seven fire warriors per turn (4 Heavy bolters) at six inches out of their range. 

To kill suits, a Vindicator or plasma cannons are amazing. The Vindicator can potentially kill a full command squad in one shot. Any unshielded suit teams should be hit with the Vindicator, Power Fist, or Krak missles. Any of these will inflict Instant Death on a suit.

Remember, they have one power weapon in their list (Farsight, a special character). An Assault squad can tie up a Crisis Team for half a game. You hit on 3s and wound on 4s, they hit on 4s and wound on 3s. Assault Marines can chase down a crisis team if you run them.


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## Herbert (Apr 7, 2007)

Marines vs Tau.

Take as many scouts as possible 60 yer 60 

then as many sv 3+ blokes as possible allowed by list

no vechiles, no dreads, 1 cheapest hq possible.

Walk/run towards him with the 3+ sv guys smiling as u go. All shoulder to shoulder, yer shoulder to shoulder so as to show him total disdain for his weaponry. Remember every one can now run in 5th edition why not 3+ sv marines 

Jump on him with scouts when they turn up from reserve. Then in later turns advance up to the objectives as necessary.

Any tau army would want to turn an run from that lol 

***** edit 

army list

any hq worth 100 pts

2 tactical squads both basic 10 mans 340 pts

3 scout sqauds all 10 man 420 pts 

1 scout sqaud 9 man 127 pts 

3 devastator sqauds all 10 mans 510 pts

total 1497 leaving 3 spare 

51 marines in power armour, 39 marines in scout armor

90 marines what more could be sweeter ?

**** edit 2 
I have just been reminded by my mate. I took this very sort of army versus another friend in 4h edition. (Shows I am consistent i suppose) 
It romped up and bashed every Tau in sight. Marine victory was total. Also at the time the run rule wasnt involved so we would be faster now


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