Guest Tau Tactica by the French Overlord: No Allies Required for this Recipe.
Commander A – Puretide Engram Chip, 2 Missile Pods, Target Lock, Velocity Tracker
Commander B – Iridium Battlesuit, 2 Missile Pods, Target Lock, Drone Controller, 2 Markerlight Drones
Riptide – TL SMS, Ion Accelerator
Riptide – TL SMS, Ion Accelerator, Early Warning Override
Riptide – TL SMS, Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity Tracker, Counter-fire
10x Kroot, 1 Kroot Hound
10x Kroot, 1 Kroot Hound
10x Kroot, 1 Kroot Hound
10x Kroot, 1 Kroot Hound
8x Markerlight Drones
Broadside Team – 2 w/ High-Yield Missile Pod, TL SMS, Target Lock, 1 w/ Heavy Rail Rifle, TL SMS, Velocity Tracker
Hammerhead Tank – Ion Cannon, TL SMS, Sensor Spine, Disruption Pod, Blacksun Filter
Hammerhead Tank – Railgun, Submunition Shell, TL SMS, Sensor Spine, Disruption Pod, Longstrike
Total 1,850 Pts.
The Commander A is suppose to shack up with the Broadsides to give them Tank Hunter and add to their Firepower. The Unit can effectively Target 4 Targets, which of those 2 Targets include 2 Flyers. I find the unit Versatile and resilient unlike most people who have been taking broadside shoring them with Missile Drones and no LD boost.
The Commander B is the Markerlight Drone Squad Escort, not only does he make them a lot tougher but provides his BS5 to them. Almost ensuring 8-10 ML hits against 1 unit.
The Ion Riptides are purely to benefit from the 10 ML Drone Unit. With the combined BS and Ignore Cover ML they should be able to rip apart a unit a turn.
The Heavy Burst Cannon Riptide is an additional Skyfire resource as well as an effective Overwatch supporter to the other Riptides.
The 44 Scoring Models that can be kept in reserve and outflank offer highly mobile and adequate resilient scoring.
I like the Hammerheads as mobile platform that don’t depend too heavily on markerlights to put pressure where they need.
Upon Deployment, they will only be 17 Models but for the most Part all of them are 2+ Armor and AV13. That makes going second not such a liability.Thoughts and Comments?
The French Overlord is a very skilled player and this list has some new tricks I had not considered. What do you all think? -ed
Anything that can close the gap quickly in cheap numbers (read daemons and tyranids) will still be a hard counter to 9/10 lists that the tau codex can crank out.
The list would ruin light Armour with all that S7 and people who rely on a 3+ save or a cover save. It looks hella fun to play mind
I agree that Nids and Daemons are going to be rough on Tau (and they always have). Plus Daemons can cancel out overwatch, too.
Nasty list with alot of crazy fire power. I really like the Ridtide with the Intercepting Ion Accelerator as it is a great answer to one potential weakness of this list (though you never see it) which is Alpha Striking drop pod lists with combi. Plas sternguard or other similar stuff. With that interceptor it will seriously discourage such tactics. There has been alot of skimping on the drones in favor of firepower in this list. While it is very scarry, the Boadsides can be delt with by a dedicated round of lascannon/ bright lance/ etc. fire. Or another Tau player that manages to remove cover saves and put an overcharged Ion Accelerator on thier heads.
This army will probably be super rough on MEQ and TEQ based armies but may have a hard time against hord armies like Deamons who have a natural inv. save and cheap models who are good in CC. The same is also true to a much lesser extent with regard to Orks and Nids (no Inv. save). IG will take it on the chin form this list but a squadron of Vandettas really hurt this army so long as the IG player can kill off the Broadside team before it gets to fire back, which is not unreasonable since they don’t have drones or interceptor (you get at minimim 2 turns of shooting before they can target your flyers this way)
Dark Eldar would have a rough time with this list as well unless they have great LOS blocking terrain and even then the amount of SMS fire available will probalby smash their hopes and dreams.
No way most armies can deal with 3 Riptides and all the other toys, but, good objective placement that forces the Tau player to get his troops in the middle of the board could make it so that doesn’t matter. On a board with a bunch of woods… your Kroot are same as houses.
In my opinion this is a top notch list, with few counters. If I had to play it I would do the following to counter act it. (Note: all my armies are MEQ or TEQ loyalists armies)
1. try as much as I can to deploy objectives outside of cover and near the center of the board to force the Kroot into the middle where possible except (leaving 1 objective a piece in each DZ hopefully behind a LOS bolcking piece of terrain)
2. Target Priority in this order (since I usually have Stormravens in my lists) 1. Broadsides 2. Makerlight Drones 3. Kroot 4. Riptides
3. Combat Squad to dilute the effectiveness of markerlights and Blast weapons from the Riptides
4. reserve troops and then try and bring them on completely out of LOS if possible, since with Markerlights, all it takes is a glimpse of the target and your cover is gone.
Nice..
I like the way he evened out the model count with the Kroot and veered away from the conventional. Looks like he’s got some of the mobility back from the average static gun line paradigm.
Random thought. Once again a very uncommon list, but a Runepriest in a Pod with Gray Hunters could really make a mess of things. If he survives the Interceptor shot from the Riptide, Jaws could clip atleast 2 if not 3 riptides … wow that would suck.
The riptide suit making use of the marker lights is highly effective. Isreal used them to great effect to shread through a couple units on monday night cutting them down to damn near nothing turn one. Thanks might have helped this but the suit is very well equipped to eat infantry.
Nice article. I had previously thought of the commander+marker drone combo. It is very powerful. I would only mirror a previous sentiment and say that many armies will be closing the gap with 5-6 CC units and this list only excels at decimating a single unit a turn.
I really like the Riptide, but only one and only the Ion accelerator variant. It is the only thing in the codex that drops a large ap2/str8+ template. I find the BC versions to be redundant.
I also really like the Ethereal with 35 Firewarriors mounted in 3 Dfish.
The commander+marker drones is legit, but the Commander+Broadisdes I had not considered. That sounds pretty awesome.
What about D-Fish do you like? I tried them and hated them, honestly.
I pretty much agree with you about the vehicles. Nothing special. It is more the ability to T2 drop 35 dudes and the ethereal in double tap range of an opponents main stuff. A little over 100 str5 shots dividable into 3 potential targets. Ideally the markerlight commander unit and possibly some Skyrays (I would probably take 3. I really, REALLY like them) would make all your dudes hit on 2+ and ignore cover on the enemy unit that wants it most.
The other thing, and it is nothing new, the combination of the Dfish’s big-ass hull and the annoying spacing thing you can do with the detached drones makes assaulting this movy-shooty-blobby-Tau thing really annoying if altogether impossible.
I should write an article about this… I have played about 6 games against Tau now and it has not been fun at all. I don’t think they are that vulnerable to anything yet, not even demons. I will go ahead and make a prediction. Tau will= more whining and gnashing of teeth than Grey Knights did when they came out.
Just my opinion though… I really hope I am wrong.
Wait, wait. I do stand corrected. Runepriest spam in droppods bend Tau over. That is all I can think of though….
Ughhh…. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth thinking of Israel standing there tabling opponents….
J/K. Love you buddy. You deserve this codex for waiting it out faithfully with the Tau.
I will not be “that guy” that fields 3 riptides.
Why do you say that? I am not being confrontational at all, I am just curious as to why fielding 3 Riptides makes you “that guy,” and what ‘that guy” is, exactly.
What I mean by that is, the rules allow it, it is totally legal. So, someone who brings that many of any unit is playing fairly. However, some people feel like there is some kind of unwritten rule that you shouldn’t actually do that. For example, I HATE Hell Turkies, I think they are ridiculous, however I never get mad at Frankie when he plays his triple turkey list. I may tease him for it, but I would never object to him doing it.
I always find it interesting when people take this stance that somehow taking 3 of one thing makes you “that guy” while taking 3 of something else doesn’t. I am curious to hear your reasoning for making that statement.