Wednesday, April 10, 2013

6th edition Tau tactica: dominating your opponents assault phase

One of the first new rules that one might encounter if reviewing the codex from beginning to end, would be "Supporting Fire".  Where one might think that having a couple BS 1 shots is next to useless, you need to remember the main Tau principal, "synergy".  There are no stand alone death star units in the Tau army, but there are devastating combinations.  These combinations can make a good unit even better.

Maximizing the number of shots
1.  Use an Ethereal, with the Etheral new power invocation of fire you can grant all units within 12" of the Ethereal an additional shot while shooting at an enemy within rapid fire range.

2.  By taking four squads of fire warriors and inter locking them into two separate sets you can increase the number of squads that can benefit from each other's supporting fire.  For a diagram of how to interlock squads click HERE.

3.  Upgrade all of your vehicles to have "Point Defense Targeting Array", allowing your vehicles to overwatch as well

4.  Realize that you may use supporting fire on all tau units and vehicles as well as Battlebrother units and Battle brother vehicles.

Maximizing the number of hits
1. Use markerlights.  Markerlights can now affect snap shots, meaning that you can enhance the BS of firing models.  Make sure that when selecting which order to fire your units in you use units with markerlights fire.  Although the firing unit will not benefit from their own markerlights, any units following may use the markerlights to enhance their own shooting (including their own markerlight shots)

Synergizing to increase the effectiveness of Markerlights.
One of the popular ways people are building their army lists is to include drone squadrons with nothing but Marker Drones granting a pretty decent 12 marker lights.  By including a commander with a drone controller and two marker drones you can have a unit that is pumping 14 BS 5 marker light shots each turn.  By including a command and control node and drone controller, you can have the equivalent of 14 BS10 markerlights during the Tau shooting phase.  If you include a commander with a drone controller and a counterfire defense system you can fire 14 BS 2 markerlights as supporting fire.

*Notes for Taudar players

-by including a farseer to cast foreboding on this unit that includes a commander with a drone controller you can pump out 14 BS5 markerlight shots during overwatch.

-by including a farseer to cast prescience on a commander with a drone controller and a counter fire defense system you can pump out 14 BS 2 re-rollable markerlight shots during overwatch

-by having your farseer cast both prescience and foreboding on a commander with a drone controller you can pump out 14 BS 10 markerlight shots during overwatch. 

Vehicles are more resistant to assaults and ramming
Flechette Dischargers- strike in the Initiative 10 phase, the enemy unit suffers a number of auto hits that equals the number of models that made it into base contact with the vehicle

Dpods- increase the cover save of all vehicle by 1, meaning that if you moved vehicles fail to ram on a 4+, or if you turbo boosted vehicles fail to ram on a 3+.

Walls of flame and fire
with the enhancements to supporting fire you can use the flamer to inflict D3 auto hits, and because the Wall of flame has no minimum, use your flamer equipped suits after all other units have fired because they don't require marker lights, you can be hitting the very back of a group of boyz.

Punching AV 14 to death
With the new rules you can put a gauntlet on a commander for 5 pts, allowing him to make a single S10 AP 1 attack during an assault phase.  Couple this with the new Puretide chip and you can grant him either tank hunter or monster hunter allowing him to re-roll armor penetration rolls.  Or you can re-roll the to wound on a monstrous creature.

Thought for the day.
Someone was prophetic when they made the prediction that Tau would dominate the assault phase. click this link here and skip to 3:30. WARNING! this video may contain harsh language or images that might be considered offensive to some.

1 comment:

  1. yes, new tactics, lets take a look.
    maximizing the number of shots.
    1. yes
    2. VERY YES, that is a nasty tactic right there.
    3. expensive? might be worth it with TL 4 str. 5 ap. 5 shots at 30" ignore cover no line of sight.
    4. ouch! can we? so does that work on allies of convience as well? like imperial guard?

    maximizing the number of hits:
    markerlights were always my way of making sure that what I shot at would die. they still do, so I will still take them.

    synersiging(something) makerlights to increase their effect. well IMO 12 bs. 10 shots are overkill, and you can only shoot it at one unit, 12 normal markerdrones will already do the trick, even with bs.2 I am trying out a combo of 5 markerdrones + commander with drone controller and command and control node though. also for markerlights I just use 2 squads of 5 pathfinders, so each squad will produce 2/3 markerlights on a different enemy unit, and I only have 10 pathfinders. of course this takes up 2 fast attack slots, so perhaps make 1 squad of 10 with 3 special weapons and some drones? the way I look at them it is either sitting back and markerlighting or going full recon, take on some drones and shoot the enemy with 24" pulsecarbines and 30" rapid fire str. 6 ap. 1.

    vehicles are more ressistant do assualt and ramming.
    agreed on the assault, but not really on the ramming, I never ram really. it mostly does nothing and then my vehicle ends up in the middle of enemy territory. assault though, overwatching and supportive fire will help.

    walls of flame and fire, already thought of that. deathrain with flamers will be sort of artillery and then when the enemy charges the front lines they will help out with their flamers.

    punching av 14 to death, not a reliable option though, the enemy will simply keep his stuff away from your commander. could be used as a surprise if the enemy hasn't seen it though.

    thought for the day:
    LOL

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