Home >> Tau Tactics >> Common Mistakes With Tau >> Printer-Friendly Version
Thanks to Garner Durant for the "Divided and Conquered or Overlapping Firepower" part of this and thanks to Auno Lissta for the "More Stats" part of this.
Disclaimer: I don't play Tau, but I have considered, played and beaten them more times then I can imagine.
When glancing at the Tau codex, the first thing you are more than likely to notice is their 30" range on basic weapons. This range will give you a major advantage against almost all armies you face.
However, a 12 man strong squad of Fire Warriors cannot stop a squad a 10 Space Marines from 30" away. They [Space Marines] will almost always shrug of the attrition and make it into close combat. Here are some rough statistics:
This brings me to my point. It is not that Tau rifles aren't powerful. Far from it. Pulse rifles have one of the highest basic strength in the game for infantry's guns. However, to take down Marines your tactics need to be a little more heavy handed. If you fired 3 troops of firewarriors, the results would have been much more spectacular:
I know what you're thinking. That 4 marines is hardly worth three squads shooting. But in two turns the squad is well below fighting strength. But to be able to mass this kind of fire power you have to overcome one of the biggest mistakes most Tau players make: Do not spread out your forces.
Otherwise you will not be able to overlap firepower needed to take out some of those tougher squads. Establishing a strong firebase will allow you to focus firepower against certain target until they fall. Keep Fire Warriors in tight formation and make sure not to overextend your Crisis suits, stealth teams and pathfinders, and it will be next to impossible to launch an assault against you.
However if you do find yourself in an assault, either mob the enemy assuming its the tattered remains of a tacticle squad, or get out of dodge and establish another firebase.
I'm Auno Lissta, in this part, I'm looking at the basic unit with average stats and figuring out, if a unit moves straight forward and there's no intervening terrain, and your unit takes no casualties, if you can kill it. This is just to give a rough idea of the sort of kill rate that you could expect from two Fire Warrior squads.
Unless otherwise noted, it takes the unit four turns to get across the table. Note that I'm rounding all stats down.
You hit six times, wound four and they make three, for the first three turns, amounting in three casualties in the first three turns and two in the turn that they reach our Pulse Rifle's rapid fire range. The Tactical Squads who this part targets (And their chaotic counter parts,) are some of the hardest units to kill.
Warriors have the same death rate as Space marines; however the WWB rule means that half the dead get back up.
They can generally reach your line, with fleet of foot rolls, in three turns. But as Eldar Guardians and Dark Eldar Warriors are weaker, and with a higher armour save, more die in a turn.
Like the above, only slower. Note however, the basic Joe Schmoe of the Guard (I.e. The Infantry platoons) probably won't advance into an assault with you.
As hormagaunts can reach your line in two turns, ignore the Carnifexes, at least with your Fire Warriors.
A Shoota Boyz armor save is high, but they have a Space Marine's Toughness.
© TauOnline.Org 2002 - 2007. All rights reserved.
0.0471 seconds for page to load.