Ok Tau are out what we gonna do about it??

[dakkathrope]

I played a tourney last weekend with 3 tau players. My biovores always made their points back, but by far Doom was my MVP every game. The tau players tended to clump for all the combined overwatch, so dropping doom in a nasty spot was almost garenteed and tau don't have the best leadership. Doom killed 400+ points of tau in both games against them.

[Lanesend]

^ That probably won't work a second time.

[gman25639]

The answer is obvious... INSANE LICTOR DEEP STRIKE ATTACK!
Bring Lictors, Mawlocs and/or Trygons, Doom of Malan'tai and anything else you can fit in a spore pod or fly onto the board. Most of your army drops in and wipes everything out as they are hit with pyschic powers, S6 AP2 blasts, and insane amounts of CC MCs!

[agonzoman00]

So a lot of ideas floating around. I just want to get a consensus.

HQ - Flying Hive Tyrants might be a bad idea. What about Swarmlord?

Elite- Ystealers and DoM, With limited Tau air power, lack of cover, and needing to close to reach 24" are HG worth it?

Troops- Tervigons and Pod devilgants. Once again no reason to dust off the Warriors.

Fast - Gargoyles if you have to take fast attack. Can we just agree that the spore mine orbital deployment thing is just silly and we all just want an excuse and reason to use it because we want to be jerks? How would Harpies fare with long range pie plate pinning?

Heavy - Biovores and Mawlocs

What I don't see being addressed are broadsides, hammerheads, and APC's

[WestRider]

Harpies are horrible against many Tau Armies. I see a lot of Players turning to Skyfire MissileSpam Broadsides, one of which has a pretty good chance of downing a Harpy in a single go.

Broadsides and Hammerheads, as far as I can see, we pretty much need to deal with in Assault, as quickly as possible. Yealers are probably the best bet here, tho Gargoyles can actually rack up Glancing Hits pretty well when Charging a Hammerhead, and can get there fast. They'll tie up Broadsides for a while, but won't actually kill them anytime soon.

[infornography]

Flying hive tyrants are not a bad idea, you don't have to swoop with them, they are much faster as jump infantry than walking tyrants and swarmy. Plus swarmy is a complete waste against tau, you don't need a super competent melee powerhouse to take them down in melee.

[gman25639]

Listors guys! Lictors! They guide in your deep striking stuuf and can do a fair amount of damage if they survive to reach CC. The fact that you will want to put them in cover will deny the cover to your opponent, which tau generally need to make use of. He will try to stay away from cover to avoid springing Lictors, putting him out in the open for Mawlocs being guided in by said Lictors. This also makes him vulnerable to Biovores and other blast weapons.

[gigasnail]

i really want whatever this guy is smoking.

[gman25639]

Lol. Anyway, the only real issues i see with lictors is the inability to assault on the turn they arrive. But that is the point of putting them in cover.

[gigasnail]

and their (please do not swear) armor save, and their cost, vulnerability to ID, and taking up an elite slot better spent on something useful.

[infornography]

I will give you that Deathleaper can be good if played right, but generic lictors are not that scary. Too many weaknesses and vulnerabilities. They also are not scary enough to make anyone who knows what they do avoid anything. The pheremone trail doesn't even work the turn they arrive so trying to use the lictor/mawloc combo means one fewer blasts from the mawloc in the course of the game in all likelihood since you have to wait an extra turn before burrowing. Plus the lictor has to survive the enemy shooting phase which rarely ever will happen.

It had the potential to be a nasty combo but It got all crudded up with bad rules writing.

[innocent]

Lictors have been terrible for a long time.

Using them to guide other deep striking elements of your army does not work either: they cannot use this ability the turn they come in, so in order for this to be effective you need:

- The lictors to come in on turn 2 and everything else to NOT come in on turn 2.
- Lictors to survive a turn at close range (against an army that can mass interceptor, Str8 shooting and mass bolter shots).
- Enemy units to kindly stay within 6inches of your Lictors.
- Everything else to come in in the following turn.

So yeah, the odds of that happening are pretty hilariously low. Lictors remain firmly in the Lolwat?? category for me.

Deathleaper is mainly taken for his LD debuff ability, and that's pretty expensive for what it does.

[gman25639]

Deploy Mawlocs normally with rest of army, on turn Lictors arrive, burrow the Mawlocs so they automatically deep strike next turn, on the issue of keeping Lictors alive bring them in groups of 3, they are less likely to all die, and of course put them in cover when they pop up. Combining the Lictor+Mawloc strategy with an outlfanking group of Genestealers and the rest of your army moving up on them, your opponent will be stuck between a rock and a hard place, give Hive Tyrant hive commander to help get reserves in quickly.

[gigasnail]

it's a bad combination for the reasons people have already pointed out.

[halos]

Also relying on your Lictors cover saves versus Tau when all it takes are two markerlight hits to remove that advantage entirely* is a fools errand.

Or just any free SMS with no better targets will make a mess of Lictors without using up marker hits.

*Admittedly for a single Tau unit; but with T4 and a 5+ save that's likely all it'll take.