I know some of you will be disappointed that I am not purposely straining poor grammar and a fake Russian accent in this article, but to be honest, it hurts my brain to type that bad.
Do not worries, brave water caste diplomat Comrade JStove will one day return.
Now, this article today isn't about joining the greater good, its about crushing it. Black Blowfly over on BoLS posted his own plan for destroying the tau recently, and I'm not going to bash him in my own article... His way works, provided youre a khorney CSM player that owns the exact same models that BBF does.
However, not all of us play CSM, or for that matter, play mono-god khorne in CSM. I made a similar point in the comments section of that article, and then someone posted, "I wish this was an article."
So let's go with that. I don't need to trash BoLS posters here. They do that enough on their own boards, and they don't need my help.
What I am going to do is offer you some tips for dealing with the blueberry scourge that have worked for me. Admittedly, I am CSM player, so my tricks aren't too far departed from BBF's.
However, all of these tricks revolve around a sound principle of game mechanics that can be applied with tools from any army.
(They're just easiest to apply with CSM because Phil Kelly gave me ridiculous chaos spawn.)
Target Priority- Pathfinders
The first thing we need to know about the blueberries is that 90% of their shooting is nothing we haven't seen already.The jetpack movement is a cool trick that can keep them out of trouble, but the vast majority of their toys aren't unique. A Strength 10 gun isn't news. Half the tanks from forgeworld have one, and so do vindicators and russ demolishers, and plenty of eldar toys. Strength 7 guns aren't news either, and neither is volume of Strength 7. All guard players have a love affair with the autocannon, and pretty much everybody who plays any of the bajillion imperial armies at one point or another has a fat stack of plasma guns hanging around. None of this is anything we haven't seen already or didn't already deal with before 6e tau.
When you analyze what guns are actually on the table, Tau shooting is actually pretty lacking. You have space marine style weapon loadouts without space marine ballistic skill. You have guard style ballistic skill without guard style numbers. The only guns in the army that really stand out as clear winners are the Smart Missile System and the Fusion gun, or as we say in the Imperium, "better melta."
So what makes Tau shooting actually work?
3 things.
-fire warriors.
-supporting overwatch.
-markerlights.
Fire warriors are, up until the dire avengers show up, the small arms kings of the game. A marine with a bolter is good and resilient, but a fire warrior and all his friends with the correct support and force multipliers will pretty much put more hurt down the table than any other standard trooper... At 30 or 15 inches. Pretty soon though, we're going to start talking about Guided Psuedo-Rending 18" running dire avenger shuriken spam though, so enjoy that while it lasts, fish head. Regardless of what the new eldar will or won't do, the backbone of every tau list is the fire warrior... Or if the tau player is really saucy, the sniper kroot. In any case, both these units have the same goal. Add a ton of cheap, high strength buckets of dice to whatever the tau player really wants to kill with plasma rifles and missile pods, to make sure that the big guns actually sweep it up.
The second nastiest thing of course, is the supporting overwatch. Again, this is another opportunity for fire warriors to shine. When it comes to overwatch, quantity counts for a lot more than quality. We all need 6s, so more dice is better than stronger hits. I'm more worried about charging into combat if fire warriors are supporting than I am worried about charging into a combat with fusion/plasma suits. Dice can happen if you roll enough of them, and that's the fire warrior's job.
The third thing is of course the markerlight, and the markerlight is of course what makes tau shooting go from under-funded imperial guard and low-budget space marine to "6th edition king commie turkey shoot."Without the markerlight, the weaknesses of tau shooting, that they do actually have, become more apparent.
The target priority for your army then immediately becomes the pathfinders, or the tetras, or whatever goofy markerspam fish Forgeworld comes up with the next. The point is, most of the tau army is shooting at Guard grade ballistic skill without Guard grade volume. If you eliminate the thing that actually makes them work, you don't actually have to try that hard to kill crisis suits or broadsides or riptides or whatever. Tau shooting without synergy is not a big deal.
Now, thankfully, in all his great wisdom, Shas'O Gorbachev did not think it was terribly important for pathfinders to wear armor, so they have a 5+ tshirt save that will pretty much gaurantee they get murdered if anything bolter-sized actually shows up near them. Naturally, this means that the little punks are going to hug cover.
And that's ok. Templates of all kinds are great for hurting pathfinders. They can be frag missiles from your basic missile launcher, a buffet of pie plates from your resident Guard player, or my personal favorite, the ever faithful and never missing havoc launcher. The flying murder turkey is of course also a clear winner.
There are 2 immediate and important consequences to blasting pathfinders that will make tau players groan.
1- The loss of markerlights, no matter how insignificant or devastating, has a permanent and immediate impact on the efficiency of the whole tau shooting phase, even if you scatter or he makes cover saves and you only ever clip 2 or 3 of the little bastards with one missile.
2- You may force him to go to ground in order to take better cover saves and keep his markerlights. This is just as good as killing them, because it makes them snap their markers, which for your sake is as effective as killing most of the unit.
So, that's where we're at with the most popular choice for markerlights, pathfinders. If we can kill them by raining party poppers on them, that's fine. If we can make them hunker down and snap fire their flashlights, that's not just fine, in some cases, its actually more devastating than killing them, as it immediately robs the unit of a great deal of flashlight efficiency, even if they aren't dying.
Ordnance templates- The great blueberry lie, number 1.
They are of course the mega-charged riptide ion pie plate, and the hammerhead submunition pie plate. Between the 2 of them, Rippy is the obvious favorite as its basically an AP2 battlecannon, although the 6/4 subbie plate from railhead is certainly more than enough to wipe out anything that isnt a MEQ and is strong enough to produce a volume of wounds on MEQs that will actually produce results.
Most veteran tau players have of course been waiting for this kind of weapon for a long time, as naturally before the riptide, the subby rail was the only tool that the camel commies had to clear out big packs of guardsmen, orks, nids, and anyone else who brought a lot of fodder.
Now, this is something to consider as a major weakness in tau shooting. Tau shooting is excellent as an assassin's army- Eliminating high value targets with precision short and medium range fire is something that the tau are well equipped to do.
Eliminating low value targets like spammy guardsmen, orks, or cultists? Not so much. Tau do get flamers, and the burst cannon is lovely, but in general, without throwing pie plates, tau have to get out of their comfort zone to reliably combat hordes with any success. The plasma rifle and the missile pod are too smart to zap gaunts, the flamer has to get too close, and the burst cannon, while a good gun in its own right, is generally best suited to stealth suits- Most crisis teams will probably want to stick to what they know, and what they know is usually fireknife or something close to it. Not many tau players will leave their comfortable crisis loadouts, especially not in an all-comers tournament format where they expect MEQs.
So where does that leave us? Well, Rippy has a pie plate, Railhead has a pie plate, and they can theoretically put a dent in a big pile of orks.
Of course, any Guard player will tell you, after BS3 and scatter, one pie plate isn't really that much business. That's of course why Guard players buy everything 3 at a time. Tau on the other hand, don't have that luxury. They'll have 1 or 2 pie plates in the whole army, and they have to make them work.
The way make them work naturally is marker insurance. 2 to dump the cover save, and a few more to guarantee that the template lands on target by charging up ballistic skill.
And brother... That's not such a good deal. Sacrificing 3 or 4 flashlight hits to make 1 pie plate rake it in against low value targets, or even medium or high value targets, is a lot of commitment for an army that prefers to do precision shooting.
Which brings us to the point- Any time you force a tau player to dump markerlights into a template is a time that you're winning. He could have spent all those markers guaranteeing plasma/missile, rail, or even pulse rifle hits, but instead he's dumping a pile of markers to make sure he kills 90 points of tshirt wearing goons cowering behind an aegis line. That's a winning trade in your book. When you force a tau player to commit to his pie plate, you are forcing him to sacrifice his most dependable shooting, and tau without dependable shooting usually end up dead in their own deployment zone after they get bayonet rushed by every other army in the game.
Interceptor- The great blueberry lie, number 2.
Now, getting your model killed right when it shows up does suck. But in general, getting your model killed by tau is always going to suck, because they're just going to shoot it anyways and that's boring. If I'm gonna die, I much prefer to die punching people.
Intercepting though is not something you should be worried about. As a matter of fact, in the tau army, you want to be intercepted.
-Intercept fire does not benefit from markerlights, so we're talking about normal, base, not-very-reliable typical tau ballistic skill. If they intercept you, they're already committed to substandard shooting.
-If they intercept, they aren't shooting on their own turn, where they do have all their support assets. Moreover, you know exactly what they aren't shooting, and can move around those units with impunity. Deciding whether or not to take advantage of Interceptor is a desperation move for a tau player that will typically only pan out if its a matter of life or death for the intercepting unit.
This generally makes outflanking the tau serious business. interceptors are great for dealing with low model count reservists like flyers and elite deep strikers that they can reasonably destroy in one round of interception shooting, but against outflankers that can bring whole squads of infantry that will not be as easily shifted, its a big deal. This also has the added benefit of psychology- Most tau units are already inclined to rub shoulders with each other due to their supportive overwatch, but if your opponent knows you're planning an outflank he'll deploy centrally and avoid table edges, keeping his nest egg in a nice, tight ball that you can shove a battle cannon into.
One of the major problems that tau suffer from is that in many cases their style of play doesn't have a lot of answers for a foe who is willing to take casualties and make sacrifices. The tau shooting phase assumes that they will always be making precision strikes against high value targets that value their own defense. If you can shove them with a commissar assisted fearless guard blob, outflank a fat ball of marines or what have you by attaching an independent character in deployment, or otherwise just figuring out a way to make a lot of bodies show up on their side of the table, the tau plan will often fall apart. As an army, they are ill-prepared to counter anyone who is either crossing the table faster than them, crossing the table more expendable than them, or preferably both.
Comrade Frisbee- The great blueberry lie, number 3.
Another thing that makes life difficult for tau is that a lot of their best wargear makes them even worse in an assault than they already are. Most high value tau units prefer to have their faithful frisbees on hand. The riptide has shield drones, the special characters have shield drones, the broadsides have drones... Everybody in the tau army plays frisbee like its some kind of mid west college campus.
Now, the nice part about frisbees for the tau is that they're faithful bullet catchers who will happily sacrifice themselves to block harmful weapons like plasma shots and krak missiles, keeping their owners intact.
However, this benefit chiefly applies only against shooting- In melee, frisbee overdose can prove fatal to the tau player.
Most tau suits can actually fight fairly comfortably against foes that don't have power weapons or rending. Their armor is typically 3+ or 2+, and the suits are often strength 4 or 5 for robot punching, and they all have multiple wounds. A tau suit would generally prefer to be shooting than fighting, but in a protracted melee, a team of broadsides or crisis suits might last a turn or two, provided nobody with a good weapon skill and a power weapon shows up.
Generally, for the non-tau, this isn't the problem. Walking up to the tau and punching them so they can't shoot you is half the battle. Being stuck in combat with the camel hooves is typically a best case scenario.
However, if the tau overdose on frisbees, you can generally outfight them and win combat simply by showing up and punching the drone that doesn't have the kind of armor that the robot suit does.