Content by Azraphael99 and T0nkaTruckDriver, Written by Azraphael99 and T0nkaTruckDriver, Edited by T0nkaTruckDriver
This section of the Guide will walk you through many of the intermediate and advanced tactics that should set you on the right path to playing and winning with a Mech Tau Army. Below are some general principles to keep in mind, while the following pages contain more detailed descriptions on how to deal with specific situations.
The Principles of Mech Tau
- Enemy assault troops that DO NOT have jump packs and transports are very nearly zero-threat to any fully mechanized Tau force. We simply outmaneuver them to such an extreme that they will never come to blows and, as such, cannot do more than vaguely deny us tiny areas of the table.
This implies that when enemy transports are destroyed, any assault troops they contain might as well have been destroyed, for our purposes, magnifying the utility of destroying transports early.
- Enemy artillery is exceptionally dangerous to static armies, but markedly less so to mech-tau. The most dangerous weapons have a signifigant minimum range and are vulnerable to deep strike (which we have in abundance) and railgun fire. The ones that don't necessarially fit that profile (like the whirlwind) are useless against our armor, for the most part.
This implies, to me, that any enemy artillery is a minimal threat at best, easily countered by the native strengths of our army.
- By fielding so many vehicles, we are suddenly dangerously exposed to enemy heavy weapons, as those weapons grow less useful when fired on troop concentrations (a-la the lascannon - killing a tank is worth it. Killing a firewarrior isn't). However, we effectively negate most enemy anti-infantry heavy weapons with one felll swoop, as their strength is too low to hurt the tanks.
This implies that eliminating enemy anti-tank weaponry early is a priority, one that takes a great deal of precidence over just about anything else.. except, perhaps, dealing with transports.
- Our low model count makes us exceptionally suceptable to morale issues... if we lose models. However, the Mech Tau doctrine, when utilized correctly, minimizes model loss and, generally, makes it hard to hurt us, effectively negating huge swaths of enemy points invested in weapons, and halving (or worse) effective enemy troop values.
This implies that if we concentrate firepower on smaller areas, so as to whittle down even those already wounded points scores, we'll ultimately end up eroding individual units into uselessness, negating their value.
- Our emphasis on mobility and flexibility allows us to better position ourselves for the taking of mission objectives. In the heat of combat, it's easy to forget what you're trying to do! If you're playing a rescue mission, it doesn't matter if your opponent destroys 2/3 or your army, as long as you've got that token! You can use that mobility to lure your opponent into that trap. By using several highly mobile units in a diversionary role, you present your opponent with the choice to either delay his assault of the objective and deal with your flanking troops, or press on towards the mission objective and suffer the consequences... neither of which is really a good choice.
- In missions that use Victory Points, a common misconception is that units must "make their points back." In reality, the only time a unit must "make its points back" is if it dies! If 3/4 of your army stays buttoned up behind a huge forest doing nothing the entire game and your two Hammerheads kill 7 marines over the course of 6 turns, you win the game! At the start of the game, the two sides are even, neither army having killed any of the oposing army's forces. Any time you stick your nose out (or deploy your Firewarriors), you risk taking casualties which must be "made back." Therefore, if we are careful about when and where we pick our fights, we can be sure to always take more Victory Points than we lose and will never feel pressured to engage an enemy we may be ill-suited to fighting.
This implies that a healthy amount of caution be exercised when deciding which targets to engage. In a perfect world we would only ever engage targets that we were sure of destroying in one round of shooting and would attack from an angle that denied LOS to every other unit on the board thereby negating any chance of return fire. While this situation is highly unlikely, there are often situations where terrain can be used to minimize return fire and therefore casualties. In short, AV12 fast-moving skimmers (with decoy launchers) are good at minimizing casualties, and a minimum number of casualties means less Victory Points for our opponent, and less Victory Points for our opponant means less Victory Points that we need to collect to win the game.
- In order to win a game of Warhammer you necessarily need to dominate ceratin phases. Some army lists are geared to completely dominate one phase (say close combat), without any attention given to the others. Their goal is to use their extreeme advantage in that one phase to so drastically overwhelm their opponent that they thereby minimize their disadvantages in the other phases. "I win Tau", the strategy whereby you bring maximum static firewarriors, maximum broadsides and shoot your opponent to death, is another example of this. In this case you are dominating the shooting phase at the exclusion of movement and close combat.
Alternatively, a more balanced army could, try to be dominant in one phase while being compitant enough in the other phases so as to not be completely overwhelmed. A Dark-Eldar Raider-Wyche army would seem to me to be this type of list. They dominate the movement phase, while still being compitant in both close combat and shooting. While they might not hold up against a dedicated close combat list, they can certainly minimize their losses in that phase of the game through some of their special abilities.
When designing an army list, a general has the opportunity to choose which phases he/she wants to dominate. In general, the points are not available to design a list that dominates all phases of the game, so compromises must be made. If we consider the 3 primary phases to be movement, shooting, and close combat, then it is clear that Mech Tau is aimed at dominating the movement phase with shooting being a close second.
And now to my point. The novice Mech Tau player will now be saying to himself, "But why would any intelligent general choose to put points into dominating a phase that doesn't kill anything?!" This is true, the killing happens during the other two phases of the game. However, the reason dominating the movement phase is so effective, is that movement is the only phase of the game that doesn't depend on chance. Any Black Templar player can roll a command squad up to a line of Firewarriors and whiff with all 83 attacks. True, it's not very likely, but it can happen. A Devilfish that moves 12" in the movement phase always moves 12" in the movement phase, no matter how poorly you roll! Therefore, by choosing to invest points in mobility, an intelligent general will get their points worth 100% of the time. That is the advantage of dominating the movement phase, and that is the advantage of Mech Tau.