Let's see here:
Tau typically come in two flavors: Mechanized Fire Warriors, with a few tanks and suits backing them up; or the 'Crisis Horde' with lots of Crisis suits backed up with a few FW.
The Modus Operandi for Mech Tau is to advance inside the Devilfish to about 12" away from the enemy, and then the FW jump out and rapid-fire the stuffing out of a squad. The DFish typically has both the SMS and burst cannon, and will add it's fire to that of the squad. Pulse and SMS are AP5, so Guardians are in deep trouble. The counter to this is to kill the transports ASAP. With the loss of their transports, Mech Tau are less frightening, but still put out a _large_ volume of fire, even at long range, and the first time you are within 12" of the Tau gunline, you will become very afraid for the continued existence of your army. Once you get into CC, however, it sucks to be Tau. The Tau have almost no CC capabilities to speak of.
The Crisis Horde is a very Eldar-like army. Very fluid in it's responses, hard to kill, and very well armed. It also folds quickly once it starts taking losses. Treat the Crisis Horde like a bunch of Marines (bring Reapers and Starcannon). Here, the basic Fire Warrior is a sideshow to the Crisis suits, but still can't be ignored safely. Your priority here should be his Crisis suits, not his troop (or the Transports). Don't think that Crisis suits are easy prey in CC, either. They're S5, T4, 3+ save, with 2 wounds each. They can hurt things in CC, it's just not likely that they'll hit you.
Marines, assuming your chapter identification is good, are flexible. You may see a shooty army (probably will with the IFists), you may also see a CC-oriented force (Chaplain-led assault squads are all the rage right now). You may even see both in the same army. Marines are excellent all-around troops. Your Scorpions are slightly better in CC (higher I), and your Reapers have better weapons, but a marine Tactical Squad can fight in CC better than your Reapers, and outshoot your Scorps.
A good Marine battle plan has redundant units, and is mutually supporting. A Devastator Squad will provide heavy weapons support to 2-3 Tactical Squads, which will be backing up an Assault Squad. The complete loss of any one squad will cause little damage to the battle plan, one of the other squads will fill in. Well-generalled Marines can be very hard to defeat. Every fight you enter has to be to your advantage. Hit his assault squad with a couple Reaper squads. Shut down his Devastator squad with Banshees or Scorps in CC. Shoot his Tactical Squads with as many starcannons as you can bring to bear.
Watch for his Scouts. Infiltrating scouts with Bolt Pistol/CCW are almost the equal of Assault Marines.
The Tau got a big power-up with the new codex, and the rumors about the Eldar codex include similar power-ups. There is not a 'no-brainer' choice in the new Codex, every piece of equipment has it's niche, as does every squadtype. Even with that said, Craftworld Eldar vs Marines or Tau is reasonably fair (although there will be some complaints about 'starcannon spam', as there are a lot of different platforms to bring starcannons to a battle, and Starcannons are probably the single most effective weapon in the game, with a good rate of fire to deal with hordes, and the AP to kill Terminators.)
_________________ "For the Lion and the Emperor!"
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