Disclaimer: This "tactic" will only work 1/3 games due to the deployment zones in various game types. It will only work with Dawn of war. On top of this it will also only work if you get first turn.

In regards to above disclaimer I've been using this dirty trick for a while now and it really puts a wrench in your opponents deployment forcing him/her to think on their feet and make a quick decision on redeployment of where they wanted to place their units.

As we ALL know Tau are terrible in close combat but have awesome long range fire power. A smart commander using any other army would be wise to try and engage the tau player in CC as soon as possible rather than try to out gun them. With this in mind they will place their CC units as close to our forces as possible and with good reason. Normally we accept this as the way things are done. And after a few searches it came to me that none else does this (or publicises it).

It's as simple as this: Set up your units as you normally would but keep a squad of Kroot, FWs or anything else you don't mind getting smushed right on the edge of your deployment:



Here I've used 10 kroot and 12 FW's to limit the opponents deployment. This is a VERY rough drawing, I'm not a graphic artist and know little of even paint! However I hope it illustrates the point. If someone better than me can make it so it represents the distances and areas of exclusions better you will forever have my thanks!

Think about it; you essentially get 2 extra turns to blast threats. Always a good thing, just make sure you run your squads on the first turn away from the enemy or into cover otherwise the difference will be made up fairly quickly.

On top of this it forces your enemy to march to your beat and to place his army in a very restricted way. If you're smart you can use the exclusions zones more to your advantage by leaving one area where he can place his CC troops on the line. You can set up fire lanes to eliminate the threat on turn 1.

You can also deploy a certain number to protect high value assets. In the image below you can see the BS set up with an added exclusion zone from 10 Kroot. This limits the enemy's choices as to where to deploy units that can take them out i.e. CC troops and anti TEq units. Normally if you set up first the enemy has an advantage of knowing where your troops are, but you can control his deployment to some extent. He has to remove the threat and now his only option is Anti Tank.



Anyway, this has been my first post. I've been playing tau for over a decade and I hope you've all found this, at the very least, helpful.

Gair333

This has been edited to bring it into line with 5th ed rules. On top of this it has also provided a much larger scope for tactical opportunities.

Wow, for something so simple that's actually quite genius. Granted, the circumstances have to be just so to pull it off, but it certainly sounds like a good enough plan on paper.

Or you can do what I do and deploy my XV-8's as close to the enemy as possible, and leave gaps for them in a 'shell' formation in the rear. That way when the CC units are placed, they are already in range and within a kill zone of all my TL'd Plasma Rifles. Gun them down and retreat backwards. Let them chase you under a hail of plasma fire instead of waiting for them to get to the bulk of your firepower. *shrug*

I always deploy my forces as far forward as possible when I play. It gives me more room to retreat backwards while shooting at maximum effect.

That's an excellent idea. I usually deep strike my XV-8's in when needed or use them to manoeuvre and lead the enemy in to fire lanes or plasma death. I suppose the only reason I've not tried it with XV-8s is they're normally to valuable and doing something else more important.

I am having a bit of difficulty visualising this for some reason, so a (basic) picture from paint etc would be nice. Just wondering how it would force the enemy 12 inches away from you, as they can assault you then the unit/s behind.
Now for some problems:
-The enemy can shoot back at you! If you start off with your sacrificial unit 24 inches away, chances are someone can shoot at you. As said unit will most likely be kroot (due to cost), Fire warriors (due to guns) or gun drones (due to mobility), it won't be hard to make the unit go bye bye.
-These units can be tank shocked pretty easily due to our leadership for most units suitable for this role. Just note that your unit can still block off areas for the enemy and shoot while retreating so that isn't too bad (considering they are supposed to run away anyway. "Run away, (for Tau'va!), run away!" )
-Many CC units are jump infantry or ride in skimmer (assault marines/dark eldar come to mind) and can simply jump over you unit, making it redundant for this tactic. For montrous creatures that can't fly like the winged hive tyrant etc this may be a viable tactic to consider.
-It gives up a Kill point. Only effective in 1/3 of games played by the Big Red Book but still something to factor in.

Apart from that, an extra turn of shooting always sounds good to me!

The unit isn't there to survive, that's a secondary objective for it. It's there to stem the tide as it were limiting the enemy's deployment and mobility and putting them off foot before the game even starts.

Here is a visual:



The orange represents the tau player and the dots the sacrificial squad (for the greater good and all that)

The red represents the opponents total effective deployment zone after this tactic has been implemented. It stops them from placing dangerous troops close to your lines as they must deploy 12" away from an enemy unit.

Authors note: This picture is for 4th ed, 3rd ed and any other game type that uses table quarters that do not utilise an non deply zone

We've been using the battle missions deployment recently, which stops this by adding a 18" exclusion zone at the centre of the board. Wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the norm for this very reason.
'Course the other big advantage is that usually it's deploy first/go first - so you're getting two advantages there - a turn before the enemy moves, and then the extra turn and a bit from the distance you've gained.

However I think actually it's a bit more complex than that, with the real benefit being the fact you've pushed the enemy back and in a way gained greater access to the flanks of the board. There's plenty of armies that can outshoot the Tau at long range due to our lack of squad heavy weapons, it's at short range that crisis suits are most effective, so being able to claim the sides quicker is just as important as putting distance between you and the enemy. As a bonus, the unit doesn't even need to be sacrificial - we've plenty of units that are happy to be at 18" away from the enemy.

On top of this, Tau are pretty rubbish at taking objectives but a little better at holding them, assuming they are in or near cover. Pushing the enemy back away from the centre gives you more opportunities to infiltrate kroot close the centre line where the objectives will likely be.

So;

First turn,
Move manoeuvring room, your 'half' covers 62.5% of the board,
Better infiltration opportunities,
Extra two-ish turn of shooting*

for

60+ pts
1 Kill point (if not a fast unit)

*Probably also worth pointing out, that some enemy units will ignore this due to being able to use their assault move to close the gap.

Excellent contribution. That's what this forum is for!

With regards to fast moving infantry you still get a full extra turn to shoot at them (if your battlesuits jump back) and perhaps wittle them down quite a bit with BS weapons and indeed other weapons to reduce the threat even more.

Perhaps a piranha squad or devilfish would provide more survivability for roughly the same points cost for a basic piranah. load it with some fellecettes and a fusion blaster for extra punch.

There's probably some value with putting a bit of dangerous terrain in the middle of the board - but I think all the vehicle chassis (and the ones big enough to mean anything, so not tetras) are too many points to spend on creating a 6" patch of no mans land in the middle of the board and usually have some more important roles to fill. I could see a flechette piranha working though, since it's going to want to be suicidally reckless anyway against lightly armoured assault armies like Orks and 'Nids.

Another concern I think would be worth considering when deploying the rest of the army is that you're going to be up against a lot of reserves if you do this, and potentially outflanking units. You've knocked the total area they can deploy down by 10% and likely the useful area even more so as most of the significant terrain tends to be in the middle (unless you're up against WFB players) - as first infiltrator your first concern should be blocking off potential sites and making sure your flanks are covered against outflankers - you're going to lose an objective anyway if they are infiltrating and chances are you'll probably have more infiltrating units due to kroot and a shot at the other 'neutral' objective when it comes to placing your second unit. Just remember that dictating the deployment in 75% of the board is usually more important than claiming the first objective before the game begins. Depending on the placement you might even be able to deny the ideal objective and a lot of infiltrating space with your first unit and then move in to claim it with the second (so you're deploying over a table half, rather than a quarter).

Overall it’s a decent simple strategy even if it's only useful a very small amount of the time (I don’t even remember the last time I rolled anything other than pitched battle bleh)

The only thing to remember when talking about using anything other than the use of a cheap sacrificial unit (min kroot squad etc.) that gair333 suggested is initiative steals, if you place a squad of fireknives or 2 or most your amry in the same place your going to quickly regret it if they steal the initiative and you find yourself in combat after only getting one turn to shoot (should still take 2 turns to catch you without jet packs) jet packs are also an issue, if you do this and then find two units of jetpack or fleet units at the front of their army they are going to be on you fast, so I would only suggest this with the sacrificial unit which is how I’ve done it before and it usually works in your favor, giving up one small unit to give your whole army and extra turn before assault is a good move.

If we're talking about the standard 'Spearhead' deployment (quartered table) from the BRB; then I'd just like to point out that no unit may set up within 12" of the centre of the table anyway. Which means your units ought to be setting up at least 24" away from your opponent's. Unless they have infiltrators but that's an entirely different issue.

Yes, I agree with flashman. How exactly do you 'force' them away seeing as in 66% of games you need to be 24" away from each other anyway? The third one is dow so doesn't exactly need to force the enemy to deploy far away from you. I think that this is so viable a tactic that GW have added it into the rules!

Redone for current rules:




the above shows a VERY rough estimation of exclusion zones possible (in this example a squad of 10 kroot and 2 squads of 6 FW's)

As we can see the exclusion zones are quite large and force the opponent in to holes, you can direct them in this way and make them march to the tempo. I'll update the first post to include more detail but here we go, much more effective.

What setup is this? From the diagram it looks like Dawn of War (the only one without the 24" buffer). Yet in Dawn of War you can only have a HQ and 2 Troops, so not the 3 squads in the diagram (one could be an honour guard for an ethereal, but I'll ignore that as this is a tactics article!). Also, if it is Dawn of War, as the majority of their army is also coming from reserve, you aren't really impacting on their deployment at all. Finally, this looks like a good way to lose all your troops in one go!

It seems a good idea with a solitary unit of Kroot or XV8s to block or harass the enemy respectively, but seeing as both of the scenarios where you can impact deployment already have the buffer, it seems a bit redundant. That said, its worth remembering for custom missions, battle missions or future editions without the buffer where this seems a reasonably good tactic.

As Pantherus just mentioned, the modern deployments aren't suited to this tactic. However, if in Dawn of War you were to sacrifice one squad of Kroot spread out as far as possible over one half of the deployment and then continue to set up your whole army in one quarter rather than playing across the board, the kroot would not only set the opponent back 18" and still act as a speed bump, but you could also effectively choose which quarter you wanted. This could work particularly well in a capture and control game where you and your opponent get one objective each. I can see this working quite well as a tactic to keep the enemy away.

Well for a kroot squad in DOW deployment, a maxed out squad (leaving out shapers and krootox as they would be a waste of points for a sacrifical squad) of 20 kroot and 12 hounds, and using the 2 inch coherancy rule you could make a straight line of 94 inches (each base is 1 inch wide so 32 models=32 inches and 2 inch gap between each model gives us an extra 62 inches! What is 92 inches, 7 and a half feet of so? That is your average board covered with krooty goodness (and a 6 inch deployment zone for his squads all across the board). Not bad!

Only problems are the opponent will only have to deploy up to 3 units (optional) so they could just deploy nothing, exposing your kroot big time and that sqaud will cost around 300 points. That is 300 points of non killy stuff (the techincal term clearly).

Could help with horde ork arimes sinc ethey can have 60 boys on the board from turn 1 with a hq.