Content by T0nkaTruckDriver, Written by T0nkaTruckDriver, Edited by T0nkaTruckDriver
This section of The Guide to Mech Tau is being added only after much debate within the Mech Tau community. There is a firm belief held by many Mech Tau veterans that success with a Mech Tau army cannot be achieved through traditional methods of "bring this and you will succeed". Rather, a player must try it himself, see what works for him and adjust his play style to compensate for his failings. Many times have newcomers to Mech Tau asked for armylist advice on internet forums, received it, and returned with horror stories of how things went terribly wrong and links to their Devilfish auctions on Ebay. This is the reason we are hesitant to provide army specific strategies.
However, we also realize that when taken in the proper context, these helpful bits of advice can assist Tau Commanders who may be playing a new opponent for the first time with suggestions on which units to be cautious of, which units are especially effective and some key special rules to watch out for. Therefore, it is with this attitude that we provide this collection of Army Specific Strategies for your perusal.
There are generally two ways to approach Army Specific Strategies such as these. You can either make suggestions on unit selection basing your advice on which units are effective against the nature of your opponent's army, or you can make suggestions of tactics which are more useful in a tournament setting when you don't have the freedom to tailor your list to a specific opponent. Therefore, the following articles will be separated into these two sub-headings in order to accomodate both types of readers.
Finally, I'll close with a quote from the GuideLite:
Mech Tau is not a strategy. It’s not a tactic. Mech Tau is a style of play; it’s a way of making war. Someone who thinks they can ‘give Mech a try’ by proxying a Devilfi sh or two and challenging their buddy to a game will likely be sorely disappointed. Without a major paradigm shift accompanied by an entirely new set of tactics and strategies, Mech Tau will seem silly and pointless.
Members of the Mech Tau Tactica forum have put together The Guide to Mech Tau as a compilation of tactics and strategies that we have found work well for us. However be cautioned that memorizing the strategies outlined within are not sufficient to win games. Mech Tau truly requires a different mindset that can only be acquired by playing games and trying things out for yourself. Once you’ve done that though, we promise you won’t be disappointed.