That was what we discussed ourselves last night. My dice were exceptionally good for the airforce last night and Dobbsy's were crap. So do keep that in mind also....

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So drop an entire other activation to put them in? I'm better off not taking the AX1-0 and including an extra ground formation. Unfortunately extra Skyrays means no WE hunting. Not really an option in an army with very little WE killing ability.

I'm just curious, has anyone ever tried to kill a titan with Tau before, using only rail guns and no TK? If you have, how many formations/turns did it take you to do it?

My best effort was 9 formations over three turns and 5 of those in the final turn when the Reaver- yes that's right a simple Reaver - was already damaged. It came down to the final die roll of the game and i only managed to do it with a Crisis suit's MW shot....

Do people understand how difficult RA is to kill with simple rail guns? I see a lot of posting/theorising about how people have used their rail guns to strip shields etc etc but have people actually played much vs titans/massed WEs? I don't think they truly grasp how important the AX1-0 truly is in the tau list - being the sole TK unit.

Anything short of a Warlord should be easier for the Tau than for other armies, as with their speed (and in the E series of proposed list ajustments also Markerlights) they can claim Crossfire on the enemy Titan and cut their saving throws significantly.

Killing an unshielded Reaver goes from 24 hits (tough to lay), to somewhere nearer 14 hits (pretty easy, for the Tau).

Add in some Crisis Suit (or under the E series, Hammerhead) MW shots, and you should deal with it.

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Bear in mind this was with a previous incarnation of the list, before all weapons were dropped by a point.

Quite a few armies have the same problem with this as well though dude.

I know that they do not have Titans. Personally, I try to avoid 500+ point war engines when playing a battle. They can deny up to 3 VP which is a problem, however from what I saw of the Tau last night, their shooting would account for quite a large portion of the rest of the opposition army.

Thereby, if it was taken to the 4th turn, the Tau should be winning on casualties as the War Machine would rarely cause it's same points in damage unless the opponent made some serious errors in placement of troops. Combine that with the 30cm skimmers (90cm move - ignore terrain), and you have a pretty hard hitting mobile shooting force (those MW units really hurt).

I digress. Is the answer to beef up the AX-1-0, or re-look at the Flak that the Tau have available to them? Afterall, the main problem that I am hearing is that the AX-1-0 does not have the protection. Rather than make it a beast with unlimited access to the table (I am not stating that this is what is being asked for - I am just stating a point), why not have a protection for it on it's own half of the table? Skyrays. Are they correctly costed? If so, do they really need markerlights?

Just an uneducated view from someone who has seen them for the first time under this review.

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A 5+ reinforced save hardly makes them able to fly through flak with impunity though.

It equates to an extra +0.5 on saving throw (So more like a 3.5+ sv) over what they have now, and they would gain more use from a jink save (Allowing a 4+ then a 5+ reinforced save if failed).  

It certainly goes a long way towards justifying a 350 pt price tag without making them game breaking.  When pricing these things you also have to bear in mind the usefulness within a list as well as the actual value of the unit itself.  As one of only 2 units (The other being a 700 pt Manta) with any real effectiveness against WEs, AX-1-0s are almost compulsory in a Tau list but are just not worth their 350 pt price tag right now (IMO of course).

Dobbsy how much AA are you taking? Really you need about 500 points worth, for tau that's 3 skyrays (dual purpose in the E&C list) and a flight of barracudas. Thats just a baseline to fend off air assaults and the like.

Heltalons are something else as they are being tested and their abilities are not yet fully agreed (what version were you using? 30cm 2xAA5+?).

But yes, against 3 flights of 3 fighters any races bombers suffer. Marauders would go down in flames (and they are range 15), Eldar bombers would get torn up and Ork fighter bombers will go down in droves. The A-10 suffers in a similar fashion? Well, thats basically life. The best you can do is get those 3 skyrays covering them and be cautious. On the plus side you are popping 2 fighters a turn with them on average, he is using a similar level of points to engage you in the air and he isn't fielding a load of ferals/other WE. Nothing is in isolation.


You have a manta which can orbital insert in anywhere on the board end of turn 1.



No, just Warhounds which are fairly easy to knock off with Tau (this was when the tanks were move 30 so a cross fire was easy and ='s a dead warhound). But I imagine it would be like engaging RA targets with my Imperial Guard (I don't take shadowswords). Tough, but not impossible (I believe E&C in a tourney brought my Warlord crashing down with no TK weapons being used).



Sorry, but that just sounds like bad luck, or was it just marshalling? It takes on average 4 hits to do one point of damage on an RA target (yes if Biggles is rolling saves) so there no point doing more maths on that.

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Is there also any analysis on against what army's they are good/bad against?

I can tell you they are wing'ed death to Marines, wether its terminating terminators or dealing with grounded thwaks. Hell they even shoot warhounds.

Against guard I've had few problems, largely due to the guard having average flak levels and the rest of the army outmanoeuvring them.

Against Eldar I would at best hope to force the nightwings to go on CAP and trying to maintain an activation advantage so if I do have to fly I do so after them. On the plus side Nightwings cost 300 points per flight.

Against orks its random depending on what the orks have, what air cover is operating and so on.

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Steady on there chap  

15cm range.  

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My personal experience with titans has been:

1. Only faced in larger games (4000-11,000 pts), however, in general, my rule of thumb is to ignore them and focus on the rest of the army. My oldest son is in the process of building an AdMech Titan legion, so I guess I'm going to get some experience playing against them in the near future.

I agree with TRC that the Tau have enough tools to deal with Warhounds.

My general strategy against titans is to yield the BTS and focus on gaining 3 of the other objectives. A warlord is rather slow moving and tends to only be able to focus on one task. Played aggressively, they are a pain.

2. In one game, I ignored the Warlord and yielded the objective to it, focusing on the other parts of the army, to their detriment. In another game, I used a large portion of recon units with plenty of ML assets (a campaign game) to strip down and wipe out a Reaver in something like 2 turns.

3. I've never fielded a manta, but having purchased one recently, look forward to trying it out. In the past, the Tau also had Morays and Scorpionfish to assist against WE's.

I also want to make an observation. A list cannot "have it all". After adjusting the list, (per all the demands) removing the Morays and Scorpionfish, which were extremely helpful against WEs, why all of a sudden is there a lament about the dearth of TK weaponry? What were you all expecting to happen when you removed those units?

Note: Historically, per fluff, Tau have not had really good solutions for WEs. In the Damocles campaign, they backfooted the Tau throughout. In the Taros campaign, one AX-1-0 operating under Tau air superiority, trashed one Warhound.

So, in general, don't be surprised that the AX-1-0 doesn't dominate a battlefield unless the Tau have achieved air superiority in some manner and from a fluff perspective, it is certainly in character for the Tau to struggle against WEs.

I know that may not be what everyone wants to hear, but those are the current consequences of the recent actions.

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I agree with Honda, TK is an area in which the Tau are not exceptional, and degrading enemy AA so that they can bring on the AX-1-0's (or risking flying them through enemy AA shots) is an important part of the Tau theme.

Under the right circumstances however (synergy!) the Tau can have 2x TK3 shots hitting on 2's, to which LOS can never be blocked...

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So we're not even going to discuss the possibility of a slight boost to survivability (i.e. the 5+ RA), instead we're just going to get long winded versions of:

"Sucks to be you" and
"Learn to play".

Nice.  

So it seems you need a bit of skills and synergetic strategy to bring out the full potential of Tau WE killiness?

Reminds me a lot of Space Marines Except that Space Marines don't have a dedicated TK unit.

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If playtesting and battlereporting shows a clear difficiancy in the unit, I'm sure Honda will look at doing something in the future, but right now I'd say the most important thing is simply doing battle reports, or at least it will be once Honda's proposed list update is posted.


So I don't think the message is "sucks to be you", more "there are bigger fish to fry right now... maybe once we've caught that shark over there..."

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LOL, you guys have it so easy, try playing Feral Orks with having no AA and no real TK.