Using a Stealth team's Outflank special rule opened up the use of a small team of Stealths kitted out for AT duties; using the Outflank move to get a Fusion Blaster shot in the rear or side armour of enemy vehicles that sit at the back and generally cause mayhem, such as Predators and Basilisks. However, because of a combination of Stealth Teams being more useful in an anti-infantry role, and the relative scarcity of our Elite Slots, this tends to be not very popular.

Recently though, I was compiling a list of what small ~13 man Kroot teams could operate as on the battlefield. Because they also have the Outflank special rule, it opens up many opportunities for them, and one of those that has come to light is to use them as rear armour hunters. It may sound ridiculous at first, but with some extrapolation it actually seems kind of plausible.

First off, because of the Positional Relay, we can almost guarantee that our team of Kroot will come in. The advantage here is twofold; you get your Kroot. And because players often use the PosRel to keep valuable units off the board by bringing in another unit (often small and expendable) instead, we can do that and use that unit to actually do something. Although the unit has a 33% chance of coming in on the wrong side of the board, we can easily use more than one unit of Kroot. Which brings me to my next point; Kroot also have the advantage of being a unit in a Troops slot. Most Tau players are probably going to have a few troop slots free, and so using a unit this way doesn't take up valuable slots like Elites. And in the event that the Kroot actually survive, they can capture objectives. Multiple units of Kroot can be purchased cheaply and don't limit the army in any way (apart from taking a few points)

The Kroot have an 18" inch 'threat radius' from the side of the board they come on, and so if you use two units which come on either side, you will cover half of a 6' board. In this area there is likely to be at least one enemy tank in armies like Imperial Guard, Tau or Marines. If such armies have deployed their armour in the middle of the board, having two Kroot units running round on the enemies' flanks can create problems for him. This is quite likely to happen, but in the case where there is some soft AV10 right in the way of the Kroot, they can cause it some damage. 13 Kroot rapid firing will hit about 13 times, which should cause about 2 glancing hits. Although these aren't penetrating hits, they still can make an impact. You have a good chance of getting a Stunned result, which renders the vehicle useless for a turn. The advantage of this is that this means one less tank shooting at you for a turn, and gives your Railguns or Fusion Blasters time to move into position to engage the Stunned Vehicle.

Once the target is dealt with, the Kroot can find a piece of cover to go and hide in, or they can find something else to harass. If the Kroot get shot and die it won't matter very much at all, they are intended to be expendable and if they aid in the destruction of an enemy vehicle then great! You haven't lost out on an important elites slot and few points have been invested in the Kroot.

If you can get into charge range, then by all means charge the tank; you get more attacks and because it is at the back of the board it is likely to not be moving much, which means it should be fairly easy to hit in CC. However, it is extremely unlikely that a vehicle will be positioned <12" away from the board edge when the enemy knows that you have an outflanking team in reserve. Although not many players would suspect a Kroot team that is actually intended to hunt tanks.

You could even buy a Shaper and give him a Pulse weapon so there is a small chance of a Penetrating Hit against AV 10.

Thoughts?

I used that tactic before(hence the signature). I decide to field only one set of kroot so I had a 20 strong squad (10 hounds). If the opponent is in 12" this squad would probably have 40-50 attacks. Even if they can't destroy the vehicle, they'll at least immobilize in our turn and can finish the poor vehicle in opponents turn. If you roll wrong side of the table, you can still use this squad to assault an enemy infantry group or protect your own flank.

I use this tactic regularly. Outflanking Kroot rock! I commonly field 15~20 Kroot with as many Hounds as possible. They just eat their way through anything within 12" of the table edge, infantry and tanks alike! I almost always get ±6 glances, so I'll either stun or immobilise the vehicle. Then my Kroot go on claiming objectives or charging more infantry, depending on the situation. Except for the rare instances that my Kroot come in at the wrong place, at the wrong time, an opponent rarely seem to recover from a Kroot-Bomb thrown into their flank.

Kais

Remember when assaulting a vehicle you always hit rear armor value. Which means even if their front is facing you you'll be hitting the 10 as well. To give you an idea of how much this means I stripped a vindicator of all its guns with 10 kroot and hounds. You can also attack high point infantry such as dark reapers. (Easily costing 3 to 4 times as much as the kroot) if there aren't any other good targets around.

took out 3 basalisks and moved down the line with a kitted out squad of kroot- the tactic works, but only later in the game when you have other elements to draw the army out.

Thanks for the replies,

Larger teams can be more flexible because they are better in all aspects (shooting; assaulting and capturing objectives), but using a small team specifically for the Tank Hunting role seems more appealing to me. I will always use a large Kroot team, but to make a complete mess of the opponents backfield; not just to inconvenience their vehicles. Much of my strategy relies on the large team causing lots of havoc, so I am disinclined to use it against tanks which it cannot actually destroy (unless you get extremely lucky). Using the small, seperate team with the large team takes the tank hunting role off the larger team. And if it dies, you only lose 91 points. Not much for the enemy to write home about.

So I think I'll stick to using both a large and small team. The large one to assault infantry and capture objectives, the small one to hunt the tanks. Having them both often means that the enemy forgets about the smaller team, especially if you have deepstruck an XV8 team into their lines aswell. Disruption tactics work very well in 5th.

I'm just getting back into the Tau after a hiatus. But, I ran with two groups of kroot back in the day. One about 10 - 12 kroot for the infiltrate and another with 16-20 and 2 oxes for rapid fire/counter assault protection. Now in 5th Ed. the outflank will make the infiltrate squad hugely important. I'm planning a Shaso'o with PR like the OP said too.
Thanks for the idea!

While I can see the merits in using this strategy, limiting yourself to only glancing hits makes destroying an enemy vehicle quite a bit harder. What I have been using as of late is a Pathfinder team A La EMP Commando (equipped with EMP grenades). Not only do they stand a decent chance of destroying an enemy vehicle (increased further by their ability to shoot and assault), but if they end up on the wrong side of the board, their markerlights can be used to support the rest of your army.

I usually use 15 Kroot, 5 Hounds, and a Shaper for vehicle stomping purposes. Charging with that group gets 65 CC attacks on whatever target I go for. Odds are I will get one "Crew Stunned" out of all those swings at minimum. Maybe an Immobilised. Now against a Monolith or a Land Raider, we'll be having Fried Kroot for dinner. I can see how the Pathfinder EMP Commandos are much more effective, but Pathfinders are much more important than the Kroot for many different reasons. The biggest one being the markerlights. The Pathfinders most likely knock out the vehicles in one go, but Markerlights and EMP grenades that close to enemy armor just screams Fire Magnet in the next Shooting Phase.

The Kroot aren't supposed to destroy the vehicles, just render them ineffective until you can bring your bigger guns to bear. If you manage to score anything higher than a 'Crew Stunned,' that's a bonus. The Kroot and Railgun/Fusion/Missile Pod armed units are meant to be working together in order to bring down a large threat with an AV.

On the subject of EMP commandos, I have not used them before so I cannot add anything useful. I am disinclined to use them because you can often get 2 extra Kroot teams for their points. They are less versatile (in my opinion) because of their limited assault capabilities. It also doesn't help that my Fast Attack slots are nearly always full. I must be one of the only Tau players that has this problem!

Best place I've found for outflanking kroot against vehicles is either artillery or transports. Against tanks I've found they usually get shot to pieces, while artillery can't fire due to their minimum range, and surrounding a stunned/immobilized transport will usually put a dent in your opponent's plan. (A tactical squad of marines is quite ineffective at killing kroot if they can't get out of their stunned rhino)

I haven't had the problem of being shot by the tanks, my opponent usually has something more important to shoot at than a small unit of Kroot!
Using them against artillery is a very good idea, as Kroot are easily able to damage them. The only problem is that artillery are so rare these days due to the existence of outflankers in the first place.

I think if you are going to use them against transports, it is probably best to set them up with the rest of your army. Transports are trying to rush troops to your lines as fast as possible, and so having a unit off the board for the first 2 turns doesn't really help. Against Tau, the enemy is much less likely to send transports up your flanks because most of the Tau army can move 12", and will just run away; the Kroot coming in from the side won't be able to get to the centre fast enough. Kroot are a good unit for slowing up transports, but usually when they've been infiltrated or set up with the rest of the army. Of course this is just in my experience though, we all have different metagames and playstyles and all that.

I'm not entirely sure why you need more tank hunting equipment than is already available in the Tau Codex. I went up against a mech IG list and I obliterated it, I had 1 full squad of broadsides, and 2 battlesuit squads that had anti-tank/heavy infantry weapons. I know it helped a little that my opponent accidentally destroyed one of his tanks (immobilized a leman russ in a forest while still in a squadron) before I even got to go, but that was just one of his 6. This was 1500 points I think, maybe 2000, and I still wouldn't have asked for more anti-tank in the list.

I suppose if you had nothing better to do with them this might be an acceptable option, but I don't see that coming up too often.

It would be impractical to play this list all the time though, as in tournaments where you can't change your list and are playing against a variety of armies the sensible option would be to take a spread of anti-infantry and -tank. This is where the beauty of the Kroot lies; their adaptability.

I dunno, I run three sets of Fireknife Crisis, three Broadsides, a Hammerhead, and two Piranhas in 1500, plus a couple of Kroot packs to boot. There are very few armies against which that kind of firepower is wasted.

Kroot are great and all, but using them to hunt tanks (excepting backline artillery, like Basilisks, that hides out of LOS) is something of a waste; we have lots of other units that can fill the AT role; we have very few others that can serve as counter-charge, bubble wrap, or pushback.

I wasn't advocating using Kroot in a strictly anti tank role, rather highlighting another aspect of their versatility. They can add another element of redundancy to the army; one that can come as quite a surprise to the enemy. Say you had two teams of Broadsides, but one was destroyed first turn due to a lucky indirect fire hit. Your other Broadside team is out of LOS to a dangerous enemy vehicle, but with a 2 turns of average rolling on your ASS roll will put the vehicle in your Railgun sights. The Kroot can outflank and stun the vehicle for those two turns ensuring that it can't destroy important elements of your army without retaliation.

Using the Kroot to harass vehicles shouldn't be the primary use of them, I am merely explaining how they could if the opportunity should arise. There are going to be some games in your lifetime when all your AT fails/dies horribly. Knowing that your Kroot can at least make a small impact is always good. Their mobility and versatility can add many elements of redundancy to the army, without hampering your force effectiveness in any way; Kroot are extremely cheap. Surprise, Disrupt and be unpredictable. Sure knowing how many marines Fireknives can kill in a turn of shooting is helpful, but 40k is a game of tactics. Good tactics (even with a 'standard' list) will crush averages and well built lists.

My list or the IG? My list takes up maybe 700 points, if you are in a smaller game you won't need that many battlesuits set for killing heavy infantry/tanks. That's not even a full list, it's a few selections that make up a small part of a list.

The only way Kroot will have nothing better to do than attack a tank is if you've killed everything else and it's a kill points mission. I run Kroot and I've only gotten in that position once, and that was all the way back in 3rd, it was a good day to be that squad's shaper, he ate everything, including a chaos lord, champion, command squad, and greater demon. Nom nom nom nom. Sadly, he was the only one left alive of that squad.

Actually, there's a thing Kroot's can and our tank hunting equipment can't do. When Kroot attacks and surrounds a rhino or chimera, it's passengers are dead. When a unit surrounds a transport and said transport is wrecked, units inside that transport are removed from game. Albeit cheesy that's usually a gamebreakear. You can even try to surround a Land Raider with them and continue shooting railguns.

Right, but they aren't the ones hunting the tank, they are hunting it's crew. The broadside, or what have you, are the ones hunting tanks, ensuring the occupants are paste when the anti-tank unit has done it's job isn't tank hunting.

Not to mention it is risky. The passengers will be destroyed if the vehicle is wrecked, but not when it is destroyed... And the explosion of the vehicle is VERY likely to kill quite a few Kroot (wound on 3 with, typically, no armour saves for the beaky squad).