Well Tau are a lot like the Eldar, only with blander colour schemes. Essentially the ideal Tau will, like the Eldar, seek to move about with firewarriors in devilfish, battlesuit teams, and maybe Kroot (one Tau player that I know is building an all Tau list), using their ranged firepower to isolate and decimate key enemy units.

Essentially keep your weaker units manuverable, in wave serpents, or with jump packs/bikes, while the dedicated close combat units such as banshees, harlequins, and scorpions engage the Tau in just the way they don;t want.

Ultimately its a learning curve, and how lucky you are with the dice, but with practice no army should scare you.

That said I did hear last night about a firewarrior getting incredibly lucky and killing a Daemon Prince.

 

Tau are a highly specialized ranged army that excels at delivering a nasty long range punch combined with decent mobility and fun tricks.

The key to defeating them is removing their advantage. They tend to field lots of high strength, single shot weapons (rail guns) and medium strength, rapid fire guns (pulse rifles). Thankfully, they don't throw many templets around and as a result, they sometimes have trouble dealing with a large number of units.

You're going to want to do one of three things. 1) Deny them the chance to shoot, 2) Give them too many options, 3) Out shoot them.

1) You can deny them the chance to shoot by:
a) Using cover/deepstrike/outflank
b) Get into CC as fast as possible, tie up all non-vehicles and try your hardest to punch holes in the skimmers.

2) Target Saturation: this is where you field as many threats as possible in as large numbers as possible to give the Tau player too many targets to deal with. This is my favorite option though it may be harder with your army (easier for the SM player).

3) Not really an option with your army, but the key is that Tau have no eternal warriors, meaning everything they field can be double toughed (except the vehicles of course). Bright lances are your friend here. As is any other long range tank buster.

You are a lot faster then they are, use that to your advantage. You can outflank them with walkers who will generally wreck anything they make contact with. Get as many units as you can on the board and threaten as much as possible to try to get them to panic and focus as much of their fire as possible on one or two units which allows you to get close with everything else.

The long and short is that Tau can be hard to beat if the player is good but they are by no means invincible. Check out the tactica in my sig for more thoughts on deployment vs. ranged opponents.

 

Tau are not good with units that outflank or otherwise just show up right in their face and ready to go. Good Tau armies are also mechanized, so packing plenty of anti-tank to deal with tanks or splatter battlesuits is recommended.

Tau really aren't much competition atm, however, so I wouldn't worry overmuch. Their units are presently a little too costly.

 

Tau weaknesses:

-Deepstrike. Tau have to take you out before you get close, or they die. Stuff that deepstrikes on top of them will mess their plans up, and cause a lot of havoc if they get into enemy lines. I've never seen them used, as I don't see much Eldar, but Warp Spiders should be able to handle this one.

-Outflank. Coming on from their board edge, or a side, means you will be able to quickly get right in their faces quickly. War Walkers are good for this. As a note with War Walkers, never mix weapons. Just have them all have the same weapon, and saturate them with shots.

-Destroy transports. Transports are their key to their mobility, and without it, they are sitting ducks. If you can destroy them before reserves arrive, your Warp Spiders and War Walkers will have clear shots at enemy infantry. Devilfish APCs fall fast to anything anti-armor, and a few shots from anything of the sort will take it out.

-Broadsides are the most aggravating shits ever. Snipe the damn things with some nice high-power weaponry; Fire Prisms are great.

With the exception of your footsoldiers, who can ride in transports, your vehicles are much faster than his. With the star engines, they gain even more move. You simply have to corner him with your superior mobility. You don't have the advantages of durability, so you have to play a game of cat and mouse with him, exchanging roles each turn. Come from all over the board, and he'll have nowhere to back up to.

 

As a tau player... you cant beat the greater good just surrender and become one of us.

To beat us, dark reapers are mint. They shred crisis suits with their nasty ap3 shots. I hate the bloody things.

Personally I dont fear deepstrike unless its got a 3+ invun and a thunderhammer as you cant assault me and so I can converge all my fire power onto you and just rip you apart. Plus it gives me a turn to get in the devilfish and run like stink.
Outflank on the other hand is horrible.

Anti tank is really a must have as our vehicles shrug off shots with our disruption pods giving us a cover save and therefore I would recommend lance weaponry and fire prisms. Close combat units in waveserpents and jetbikes are also mobile enough to give me a turn.

Basically you need to get at them very quickly give him lots of stuff to worry about like banshees all in waveserpants, and you dont need big units because you will rip through his troops if you get in combat.

I would recommend pathfinders as troops, a pain in the arse with there ap1 on 6's.

Some fire dragons, banshees and quins in wave serpants. The fire dragons simply because when you rush forward with banshees and quins he will struggle with what to shoot first. Chances are he will go close combat which may allow ur fire dragons to get in range. Melta weapons plus at 12 inches his disruption pods dont work mean dead railhead and dead devilfish which = dead troops in close combat.

Fire prisms and dark reepers and I would be quite scared but thats just one tau players opinion and possibly all from one experience where i used farsight and dark reepers managed to take him and a huge bodyguard down by outranging me

 

as a tau player, the hardest things to kill it wraithlord and jetbikes. they are the only thing that i cant kill with easy.

 

Oh dear, shhhhhhhhhhh don't let zxyogi hear this talk, i thrash him every match with my Tau. Don't let him have any advice!!!!

 

Let's see. Lots of jetbikes. Seer council on jetbikes. Autarch on jetbike. Dark reapers. Rangers. Howling banshees in wave serpent.

Don't bother taking: any tanks, avatar or war walkers

 

Don't bother taking: ...war walkers

Really? Why do you say that?

 

War walkers, along with being a badass looking model, outflank, and really mess his day up in numbers. If they show up anywhere near him, he's soon to be big on problems and short on solutions.

 

Wow guys thanks for the response. Can someone tell me more bout the warwalkers. I would say probaly dual scatter laser. However would one warwalker be enough (for a 1000 point game). It seems you can get up to 3 in a squad, however due to my budget and such I would prefer to spend less on models (I dont have a very good income). Would 1 warwalker be effective?

 

Would 1 warwalker be effective?

One is usually better then zero, but in this case it depends largely on what else you are fielding. Honestly, I don't know a ton about Eldar list building so I'll keep my input to general tactics vs Tau and leave the specific advice to the Eldar players.

Remember, the more targets you have for your Tau opponent to shoot at, the less effective their fire will be.

 

I wouldn't take war walkers. They are rather easy for a hammerhead to pop on the contrary a fire prism is very difficult and he will concentrate his hammerheads on that leaving your wave serpents with a little more time to reach him

 

The issue is less that it's easy for a railgun to destroy, as these will probably be shooting at wraithlords and skimmers, and more that a war walker can be taken out by the rest of the army with ease. Missile pods are a very common crisis suit armament, and they're pretty much made for killing light vehicles at strength 7. Also, every other unit in the army excepting kroot has strength 5 weapons which can take down lightly armored things like war walkers with ease. War walkers basically get 1 turn against Tau.

 

Unless the Tau player is so intent upon the approaching threat that they don't have the resources to spare when the walker shows up on the side of the board. Or, said walker showing up creates enough of a threat (real or imagined) that it pulls their resources from your main advance, giving you the extra turn needed to get close enough to do real damage.

Admittedly, I don't know what else Eldar could take as a replacement for the Walker (as a fire magnet) due to my limited knowledge of their codex. Can they take anything else that can outflank and is a must kill?

 

warpspiders can deep strike while I think warhawks... need to find my codex.

 

While I doubt I can say anything that has not already been given voice, at a recent tournament I used the terrain to great effect against a Tau player. In essence, I hid behind buildings, made sure my vehicles always had their 50% obscured save, and denied his broadsides any prime shots. This is utterly dependent on your gaming table, but I would want you to keep it in mind during games.

 

While I doubt I can say anything that has not already been given voice, at a recent tournament I used the terrain to great effect against a Tau player. In essence, I hid behind buildings, made sure my vehicles always had their 50% obscured save, and denied his broadsides any prime shots. This is utterly dependent on your gaming table, but I would want you to keep it in mind during games.

This my friend seems to be a very important key, however like you said its all on the table as of now most of are "terrian" is big rocks stacked and scattered on the table.

 

A strategy based around out-shooting Tau may work, but is not as reliable as engaging them in combat.

War walkers, honestly, are not at their best against an army where even the most basic trooper can take them down from 30" away. Wave serpents and tanks with holofields are ok because the masses of strength 5 can't hurt them and railguns have a reduced impact.

The main thing though is to just get up close. You are going to want a fair number of guns to stop his tanks, which are about as tough as yours, and then engage the infantry in cc. You probably want a combination of high strength guns to attack tanks and suits, then things to fight up close.

One thing to slightly watch for is that battlesuits aren't totally hopeless in cc. They have decent toughness and strength, plus good armour saves. As a Tau player I've actually quite often charged my broadsides at eldar guardians, against whom my 2+ save and strength of 5 has tended to win a majority of combats.