Tau & Eldar

[MM3791]

I have a Eldar/DE list that's hilariously stupid hard to kill and can do terrible things to AV14 with 0 lances.

Wynches are ace

[andalucien]

I got a burnin' question that I can't answer on my own....

Say you have an Aegis wall.  On one side of the wall is some Scarabs.  On the other side is some Wave Serpents.  How far away to the scarabs and/or Serpents have to be from the wall in order for the scarabs to be completely hidden behind the wall?   I don't have any Wave serpents to test it out.

BTW, this is the missing piece of an equation... the other 2 pieces are...

Q: How many Scarabs does it take to usually kill a wave serpent on the charge?
A: 2.

Q: Assuming the aid of a Tomb Spyder, how close do the scarabs have to be in order to usually charge a wave serpent? (regardless of terrain)?
A: 24".

[Sir_Prometheus]

I had the idea a little bit ago that Dark Eldar might be worthy of a resurgence, at least as allies. They can bring some tools to deal with the 4 Riptide lists as well as Flying Circus lists. Dark Lances aren't bad at dealing with AV 13, sorry make that AV 12, at a distance either...

I wish I could tell you it works, but it doesn't.  Poison doesn't work, because of the 2+ save.  You might actually kill a riptide in two turns if you shoot an entire armies worht of poison at him, but then the tau player is grateful you left everything else alone.

3 Ravagers don't even kill a riptide, 9 shots, 6 hits, 5 wounds...3.333 wounds after invo save.  That's assuming he didn't get cover or boost his invo.

Truth is that DE is one of the easiest matchups Tau have.  Every shot they have nearly autokills DE vehicles, and the troops are cover dependant. 

[Sir_Prometheus]

I got a burnin' question that I can't answer on my own....

Say you have an Aegis wall.  On one side of the wall is some Scarabs.  On the other side is some Wave Serpents.  How far away to the scarabs and/or Serpents have to be from the wall in order for the scarabs to be completely hidden behind the wall?   I don't have any Wave serpents to test it out.

BTW, this is the missing piece of an equation... the other 2 pieces are...

Q: How many Scarabs does it take to usually kill a wave serpent on the charge?
A: 2.

Q: Assuming the aid of a Tomb Spyder, how close do the scarabs have to be in order to usually charge a wave serpent? (regardless of terrain)?
A: 24".

OK, scarabs will kill a wave serpent in combat.  But so will anything that can reach them, it's just the usual AV 10 back armor thing.  Problem with scarabs is that you have a lot of STr 6+ that ignores cover.  A wave serpent could make you pick up the entire unit in one shot.  They have no special reason to be within 24" of you.

[PhoenixFire]

I got a burnin' question that I can't answer on my own....

Say you have an Aegis wall.  On one side of the wall is some Scarabs.  On the other side is some Wave Serpents.  How far away to the scarabs and/or Serpents have to be from the wall in order for the scarabs to be completely hidden behind the wall?   I don't have any Wave serpents to test it out.

BTW, this is the missing piece of an equation... the other 2 pieces are...

Q: How many Scarabs does it take to usually kill a wave serpent on the charge?
A: 2.

Q: Assuming the aid of a Tomb Spyder, how close do the scarabs have to be in order to usually charge a wave serpent? (regardless of terrain)?
A: 24".

OK, scarabs will kill a wave serpent in combat.  But so will anything that can reach them, it's just the usual AV 10 back armor thing.  Problem with scarabs is that you have a lot of STr 6+ that ignores cover.  A wave serpent could make you pick up the entire unit in one shot.  They have no special reason to be within 24" of you.

Matt is right, the easiest way to kill them is CC, unfortunately not all armies have CC and wave serpents are tough to catch flying all over the damn board.

So what are some good shooting options? well they're AV12, there is a lot of Str7 floating around in Tau missiles and Autocannons which is still only a 30% chance for a glance or pen, Str8 with Marine missile launchers, Psyriflemen, Melta (which is going to give you a better chance anyway if you're close enough)

and of course there are tons more Str7,8,9,10 weapons out there. The problem with the higher stuff like Rail Cannons, Manticores, Orbital bombardments, etc is you're probably going to only get 1 hit on a Wave Serpent and even if you get an explosion the Eldar player may just turn it into a glance.

The most reliable way of shooting them to death seem to be glancing the hell out of them, i've tried firing 10-12 twin linked IG autocannon shots at one and still not getting it done. Hopefully i'll have better luck with Tau missilesides

[Sir_Prometheus]

SO, I've been doing with my buffed up missile crisis squad (which also does the majority of marker lighting, through target locks).  12 Twin linked (4 are BS 5) twin linked str 7 missile pods with ignore cover and tank hunter.  That is pretty much a guaranteed WS kill a turn, you could try for 2.  It's similar to missile sides but because it's mobile it's harder for the WSs to run.

I could also see GK squads with 4 psycannons doing in WS pretty easy, but range would be an issue.  I think annihilation barrages would be pretty efficient at it, too.

Missiles, sure, though only 4 shots non-twinlinked is fairly old-school, at this point. 

The big guns can still be useful, though....remember they almost always want to shoot the shield wave.  SO unless they're drastically cutting down their dmg output, a rail gun will cut through them second turn just fine.

[andalucien]

OK, scarabs will kill a wave serpent in combat.  But so will anything that can reach them, it's just the usual AV 10 back armor thing.  Problem with scarabs is that you have a lot of STr 6+ that ignores cover.  A wave serpent could make you pick up the entire unit in one shot.  They have no special reason to be within 24" of you.

Yes, but scarabs might be in an unique position to take advantage of wave serpents, because
1) they have the longest charge range in 40k
2) they MIGHT be short enough to hide completely out of side from a wave serpent behind a wall.  They are even shorter than grots, which we all know can hide out of LOS behind a wall. 

How bout this for a reason to be within 24" of me:  I put the wall about in the middle of the board, and if I get first turn, I move the scarabs right behind it.  At that point (assuming I'm running true scarab swarm), they should be within 24" of basically the entire board.

I agree that the problem here is that Wave Serpents are also really good at killing scarabs.  I think it could only really work if a good number of scarabs can consistently hide out of LOS entirely, which the wall MIGHT help with, and some boards might accommodate better than others.

[Benjamin]

We can say CC is the optimal way to kill really Wave Serpents and Riptide bombs, and in a vacuum we might be right. But in 6th Edition? Nah. Nothing I know of that can assault could also move fast enough or be durable enough to survive Taudar in any permutation.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Well, you can usually assault vehicles just fine.  And the kind of overwatch you're thinking usually happens with the huge FW blobs, which are kinda the worst way to run tau, anyway. 

OK, Matt, you put the aegis in the middle of the board.  But that means the scarabs won't start all snuggled up to it start.  And what if the Wave Serpent gets to the top of a hill? I think guarding them is just a very fragile thing.  I mean, it wasn't that hard to take care of scarabs with GK str 6 razorbacks and psycannons....it is way way easier with Tau and eldar. 

If you were going to do that sort of thing, I'd do wraiths.  But people tell me Wraiths are pretty easy to take care of, too. 

[Benjamin]

Well, you can usually assault vehicles just fine.  And the kind of overwatch you're thinking usually happens with the huge FW blobs, which are kinda the worst way to run tau, anyway.

If a player is letting you assault Wave Serpents, that player is either unlucky or terrible. Same thing about Tau, too. I do not know of an assault unit fast enough or resilient enough to make it across the board reliably to its target.

[Sir_Prometheus]

When I said "assault vehicles just fine" I was referring specifically to the overwatch system.  It's also good to keep in mind that Tau vehicles are no faster than rhino. 

Catching fast skimmers like eldar is an exercise in board control.  It can be done, but no, it isn't terribly easy. 

[andalucien]

OK, Matt, you put the aegis in the middle of the board.  But that means the scarabs won't start all snuggled up to it start.  And what if the Wave Serpent gets to the top of a hill? I think guarding them is just a very fragile thing.  I mean, it wasn't that hard to take care of scarabs with GK str 6 razorbacks and psycannons....it is way way easier with Tau and eldar. 

If you were going to do that sort of thing, I'd do wraiths.  But people tell me Wraiths are pretty easy to take care of, too.

Yeah, it depends on how far away the LOS hiding works.  If the scarabs are "snuggled up", I'm suspect sure it won't matter if the wave serpents are up on a hill or not, they're not going to be able to see the first line of scarab bases. 

Actually the best result I ever got at a "hardcore" BG event (i.e. not a 500 pt tourney, not a team event) was 3rd place with my scarab farm back in 5th.  ALthough str 6 doubled out scarabs, it was easy enough to get enough scarabs through to devastate IG gunlines and meched up GK's, stuff like that. 

Wraiths, although they might actually be one of the best ways to try to assault mech eldar & tau, still won't work well enough IMHO.  They're quite a bit slower (over 5" less charge range due to lack of fleet and lack of tomb spyder cheat), less efficient at attacking vehicles (70 pts of wraiths needed to usually kill a WS as opposed to 30 pts of scarabs), and impossible to hide.   If there's not a way to make the sneaky scarab strategy work, I'm with y'all, I don't know if the 41st millenium has fast assault units that can really get it done.

[Moosifer]

The main Tau weakness is they just don't have troops that are very durable, or very mobile.  But there are fixes for that.

This is why i love the allies part of 6E, got a hole in your codex? plug it with something your army doesn't have access to.

This is part of 6E that I actually dislike.

Also you just have to get rid of the pathfinder units and then no more remove cover crap.  Except that cheaty bull with the commander and a riptide.  Bonus, unit is majority t6 so good luck killing anything!

[PhoenixFire]

The main Tau weakness is they just don't have troops that are very durable, or very mobile.  But there are fixes for that.

This is why i love the allies part of 6E, got a hole in your codex? plug it with something your army doesn't have access to.

This is part of 6E that I actually dislike.

Also you just have to get rid of the pathfinder units and then no more remove cover crap.  Except that cheaty bull with the commander and a riptide.  Bonus, unit is majority t6 so good luck killing anything!

Well everyone is entitled to their own opinion but judging how many people take allies at tournaments it seems to be a major success for GW.

Killing or pinning Pathfinders to take away their marker lights is generally not that hard, but getting rid of the marker lights on a AV13 Skyray or a bunch of marker drones can be somewhat more difficult

[Sir_Prometheus]

I really like allies -- yes filling up holes is nice, though I suppose you could say covering obvious weaknesses takes some skill out.  The real reason it's awesome is because it means no codex will ever really get "left behind" like they used to....before they got their new codex Tau were still doing ok, because they could use allies (in my case GK) to shore up the weak spots. 

Killing or pinning Pathfinders to take away their marker lights is generally not that hard, but getting rid of the marker lights on a AV13 Skyray or a bunch of marker drones can be somewhat more difficult

I literally take "decoy" pathfinders.  They never do much, and usually die first turn.  They're there so don't shoot at the better stuff.  All the good, reliable marker hits come from the missile squad with marker drones, maybe the skyray, and sniper drone team if I take them. 

OK, Matt, you put the aegis in the middle of the board.  But that means the scarabs won't start all snuggled up to it start.  And what if the Wave Serpent gets to the top of a hill? I think guarding them is just a very fragile thing.  I mean, it wasn't that hard to take care of scarabs with GK str 6 razorbacks and psycannons....it is way way easier with Tau and eldar. 

If you were going to do that sort of thing, I'd do wraiths.  But people tell me Wraiths are pretty easy to take care of, too.

Yeah, it depends on how far away the LOS hiding works.  If the scarabs are "snuggled up", I'm suspect sure it won't matter if the wave serpents are up on a hill or not, they're not going to be able to see the first line of scarab bases. 

Actually the best result I ever got at a "hardcore" BG event (i.e. not a 500 pt tourney, not a team event) was 3rd place with my scarab farm back in 5th.  ALthough str 6 doubled out scarabs, it was easy enough to get enough scarabs through to devastate IG gunlines and meched up GK's, stuff like that. 

Wraiths, although they might actually be one of the best ways to try to assault mech eldar & tau, still won't work well enough IMHO.  They're quite a bit slower (over 5" less charge range due to lack of fleet and lack of tomb spyder cheat), less efficient at attacking vehicles (70 pts of wraiths needed to usually kill a WS as opposed to 30 pts of scarabs), and impossible to hide.   If there's not a way to make the sneaky scarab strategy work, I'm with y'all, I don't know if the 41st millenium has fast assault units that can really get it done.

I still have trouble with wraiths.  I'm told Tau have an easy time killing them, generally, but like I said, I've had trouble, at least when they have a destroyer lord tanking for them.