How win as Tau?

[Blitzwing]

Hi, somehow the only good weapon is flamer and stealth?

Do I miss something?

[Jonkenden]

Still updating my game so haven´t played with Tau yet, but from seeing the videos posted online it seems Breacher teams are pretty good. Crisis suits look good too, i´ll try and remember to post more once I played with them

[Jonkenden]

Ok after having played a few fights and unlocked about a third of the stuff. God the Tau are strong, first off

Strike squads * need to use the Pulse Rifles ASAP. Carbines sorta suck, or atleast I can´t stand the carbines. With the Rifles they have insane range and accuracy with armor pierce 4.

Always Mark targets when possible, it gives a 10 % boost to hit against that target for your whole army and removes some of the falloff from being outside optimal range. Can't seem to stack the markers like TT so don't waste uses of it.

Strike squads are snipers and squishy so stick them in the back and focus fire targets you mark.

Breacher squads * do insane damage for a starting unit, just make sure they are right next to the target and have it marked. They will make it hurt real bad, the grenades they unlock later make enemies have worse evade and accuracy so nice defensive tool that adds a little bit more hit chance for you as well.

Cadre fireblade * is a meh damage dealer but the volley fire ability you unlock for him makes your entire army insane, 25 % more shots for everyone within 2 of him makes him a must have just for that.

Commander * is lovely, ran him with the heavier armor and he is a beast. Flamer is as good as any flamer ever and his Burst cannon has splash damage so does decent at range. Very mobile and tanky.

Crisis suits * oh boy they are tanky with high armor and good health for Tau, with burst cannons they are ok chaff killers but their missiles are really where they shine. They will badly injure most targets with them, they do have limited ammo so try and save them for the juicy targets. Very Mobile again thanks to boosters.

Tried the optional fusion guns and they seem very good against heavy armor targets, as expected.

Riptide * Big boy, pretty tanky and has a nice free plasma attack. Sadly bad damage but good armor pierce, aim it on vehicles or similar for best effect. The main Burst weapon is very good at bursting down single targets and does allright against groups. Solid unit.

Piranha * Very fast and has a free attack as well as a burst cannon, a squishy vehicle. Lost it in the second fight right after getting it so don't have much to say here yet.

Broadside Battlesuit * Oh man quickly a favorite unit of mine, hilarious walking animation. Huge gun that hits so hard it made an enemy Pentinent engine fall over from the hit without dying. Insane range, probably longest I seen in the game so far. It also comes with a 0 action cost Smart missile attack that is awesome looking, has limited ammo but great splash damage. Also has the Seeker missile on the other shoulder and this thing does huge damage that AUTO hits against marked targets. So mark thoose targets people, didn't face any vehicles when I got to try it so it probably would be more effective there but it looks cool and did good damage against infantry too.

Pathfinders * Another great unit when loaded with their Ion rifles, suprised they don't hit as hard as I expected but they can overcharge to reach the damage levels I was expecting. Does come with self damage risk drawback for overcharging though.

Hammerhead * I have unlocked the Hammerhead but not had enough points to buy it yet, looks great though.

Drones * Well they are fast and cheap, good chaff. You can also bring a single one with some other units.

Stealth suits * Hmm not unlocked the stealth ability yet but they look pretty nice and have decent bulk.

Gotta say this is my favorite DLC so far, every unit looks as expected and have great effects. Missing Kroot units though and also Devilfish, for some reason transports are shunned by the DLC makers.

Also not sure why anyone would ever pick a gun drone to go with your other units, it costs an action to fire so it makes no sense to use it over the regular attack? Except maybe distance issues, maybe something im missing on them.

TLDR Version:

Make sure you stay in optimum distance and fire away with marker lights on targets and you'll wreck stuff.

[Drabur]

To add to Jonkenden's review, the stealth ability of the Ghostkeel and Stealth Suits is absolutly busted, it effectivly makes the unit invincible for two whole turns in which they can act however they want to.
The Stealth Suits also have a jetpack, so they can flee from the frontline near instantly which means that in practice they can go in, kill whatever they want to for two rounds and then run of afterwards.

[TMiR]

They got pretty good anti armor too, where I find they can suffer a bit is vs Armored infantry if they didnt pack enough Ion weapons, but I think all weapons exept for the pulse carabines and maybe the Ethereal blade have their good uses while often beeing quite specialized (exept the breachers pulse blaster which really seem to be good against most stuff if they get to them)

Ability wise the photon grenades seem to do quite good, or the auto hit ability and the rapidfire ability of the fireblade do good work, the tier 2 ability for summoning crisis suits can turn arround a game I think. And naturally stealth is super powerfull.

The fast attack options are a bit lacking though drones do good clearing horde style units and are actually the second cheapest unit for gaining access to flying/hovering/jumping units.

Sadly for their heavy units (Hammerhead and Riptide) you tend to pay a lot of points for the hitpoints and armor of a unit that will try to stay far away from the frontline and mostly out of enemies range, though that can still be quite good in extermination style missions.

Generally I would say you could either do a press forward with Crisis, stealth or ghostkeel suits supported by breachers and a tau commander or even an ethereal giving temp hp to your suits making them extra tanky, or you can set up firing lines of the objectives or chokepoints with LR untis while having some strike units like breachers in your backpocket to strike anything that tries to get to close espially with the cadre fireblades auto hit ability you can get your rail weapons to easily snipe out HQs and tanks before they get to do any of their stuff (which can feel bad). Drones can be good to soak up some space or quickly move in after the ranged units cleared up some space to contest points or just as sacrifical pawns in either setup.

Eitherway allways bring enough ppl to markerlight.

Also I think if tau got the devilfish transporters breachers would become really disgusting.

[Meep42]

Originally posted by Drabur:

To add to Jonkenden's review, the stealth ability of the Ghostkeel and Stealth Suits is absolutly busted, it effectivly makes the unit invincible for two whole turns in which they can act however they want to.
The Stealth Suits also have a jetpack, so they can flee from the frontline near instantly which means that in practice they can go in, kill whatever they want to for two rounds and then run of afterwards.

It's a great ability, but they're far from invincible. If an enemy unit tries to move into their space they get a free reaction attack but lose their invisibility immediately. For the Stealth suits that's at least a lot of damage, but the Ghostkeel does its weak melee attack.

[Doctard]

After you get the camouflage ability for stealthsuits/ghostkeel they becoome a lot more reliable, you can easily bring the ghoskteel up to melee range to flamer people and still feel relatively safe

Other than that, so far my battles have mostly just been me shooting and running away. I'm not familiar with the other factions but the tau seem reasonably mobile.
I'm not sure i've been running breachers right, but they work amazingly well at overwatching units that use jump packs to fight me in melee

[Ekko Tek]

So Pathfinders just seem like slightly better Fire Warriors? Same weapon, same mark target ability, just a little more evasion and health I think? My last exposure to them was in Dark Crusade where they were differentiated a lot more.

[Jonkenden]

Originally posted by Ekko Tek:

So Pathfinders just seem like slightly better Fire Warriors? Same weapon, same mark target ability, just a little more evasion and health I think? My last exposure to them was in Dark Crusade where they were differentiated a lot more.

Pathfinders are the only ones that can access ion rifles, apart from that they aren´t very different from the others. Fire warriors can use Pulse rifles wich are really good and have longer optimal range as well as less falloff than Ion but less armor pierce.

Stat wise

Pathfinder 90 points base 120 with ion rifles

50 health
4 move
4 armor
15 evasion

Strike team 70 points base 90 with pulse rifle

40 health
4 move
4 armor
5 evasion

Breachers 80 pts

60 health
4 move
4 armor
10 evasion


Breachers make the best frontline chaff as they have 60 health and decent evasion while being costwise right in the middle or cheapest when kitted. Their Guns are devestating up close too.

Midrange you either want Strike teams or Pathfinders, either one with carbines. Don´t reccomend that though since they are squishy for midrange fighting. Long range with Pulse Rifles and Ions is my preferred way.

My front line is 4 breachers that have fire support from 4 long range strike teams and 1 pathfinder squad with ions for heavier armor cracking. Could maybe pick another pathfinder squad for more infantry. I also like 2 squads of drones for the fast and cheap chaff up front, adding in marker drones for 60 pts total per chaff. Worked solid for me so far.

[Blitzwing]

So, far I did win by fire and fall back vs tyranids.

Somehow they are not good vs many small enemies in 1 squad

[Jonkenden]

Originally posted by Blitzwing:

So, far I did win by fire and fall back vs tyranids.

Somehow they are not good vs many small enemies in 1 squad

Crisis suits can equip flamers and have missiles with limited shots that work well too, the ghost keel has flamers as well but somewhat weaker than the others since it´s a single model. Finally the Commander gets a Flamer by default as one of his two weapons.

Riptide burst cannon is okay against swarms since it has splash damage and broadsides have smart missiles. Drones should do okay with their number of shots, but there is plenty of options for dealing with swarm units.

[Ekko Tek]

Commander flamer is hilariously strong, depending on positioning you can hit 3 tiles of units, which with his 2 attacks will wipe 3 squads of lighter units.

[L O F T Y]

Just spam Tau best units. Stealth Suits, Ghostkeels (even if you can't pick Cyclic Ion Raker which would be their best weapon in this game for some ¤#O%£$ reason) a single Pathfinder squad with Ion rifles and 2 Coldstar commanders. Necrons might give you some issues if you don't bring Hammerheads, so maybe include one or two if you don't know what you're facing.

Also, play forced flank. On deployment, move everything to one flank and go. If your enemy is trying to spread out, they've lost.

[Brother Severus]

The units are very well crafted but I feel the Tau are really underpowered.

[Metal Izanagi]

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

The units are very well crafted but I feel the Tau are really underpowered.

You may not be playing them the way they seem intended, in that case. They're *crazy* strong if you can get the drop on the enemy and unload all your fire from optimal range.

[Brother Severus]

Originally posted by Metal Izanagi:

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

The units are very well crafted but I feel the Tau are really underpowered.

You may not be playing them the way they seem intended, in that case. They're *crazy* strong if you can get the drop on the enemy and unload all your fire from optimal range.

You might be right,I’m usually not a Tau player even in the tabletop so I might miss some of their features.
Just as I played them few times I felt the units squishy.