How do Tau effectively deal with hordes of GEQs?
I have searched the forum for answers, but so far all I have found is a cyclical argument. We remove our fire warriors, thus reducing their glaring weaknesses but also removing the bulk of our S5 weapons. Then when people ask how to deal with hordes everyone just says we’ve got lots of S5 pulse fire will do the trick. But we’ve gotten rid of the bulk of our S5 fire power… so where are we getting all this pulse fire from?
The suits that are effective at killing marines have too few shots to effectively take out hordes. And while Heatwaves are great for a one use objective sweeper, and are absolutely devastating… they really are a one trick suicide pony. They’ll come in, take a unit out, and be killed themselves. So this isn’t a great solution in the end.
Perhaps hammerheads would be effective, but that’s a very small basket to put all the anti-horde weapons in a list in.
So ATT, how do you deal with hordes of GEQs when you’re still making a TAC list capable of handling vehicles, TEQs, and MEQs?

The mandatory Fire Warriors you have to take, Devilfish, secondary weapons on Hammerheads and Piranhas. And don't forget that Kroot at STR 4 are almost as effective at killing guardsmen.



That's not really true at all. The standard crisis suit is missile pod/plasma rifle, and that has only one less shot than missile pod/burst cannon, the highest anti-GEQ firepower you can get on a crisis suit (short of flamers).



Which is usually fine. After all, how many objectives do you need to clear off in a single game?

I think that does more to illustrate the point that Crisis Suits aren't so hot at anti-horde in any configuration. I mean, they're not terrible, but there's a bunch of better stuff, including many of the other things you mentioned.

The real stars seem to be the often underestimated Kroot, and the Hammerhead, with both the submunition round and whatever secondary system. I'm a Burst Cannon fan myself.

But at the same time I sympathize with Carrelio on this one. There are few units in the game (let alone the Tau army list) that handle hordes quite the same way as Fire Warriors do.

I use a Thunderstorm-5 (AFP/Twin BCs), and maybe Heatwaves w/ Burst Cannons or Drone Controller/Gun Drones as the 3rd hardpoint. The Thunderstorm is actually a pretty solid build (though expensive), just a matter of getting used to how it works.

Airburst Fragmentation Projector.

Makes Dark Eldar and Orks cry.

Shame you can only take one. (I've been experimenting with it for a while, I'm finding that Helios w/AFP is a rather useful thing for the commander suit to have. Still working on the problem, though. Deathrain w/AFP is useful for a 'Vre in the Elite slot. With a multitracker, the only thing it can't reliably engage is heavy infantry.)

The weakness is the short range on it, but even then it's longer than Heatwaves and just as devastating.

This is one of the reasons that I like to have at least one hammerhead instead of a squad of Broadsides, for the template. This is also a situation in which a Farsight bomb could potentially rock face-MASSED firepower of any sort, followed by an assault by someone who hits like a MC and all his S5 buddies.

How exactly is it "solid"? It's a single-purpose setup that's worse at that single purpose than TL flamer + AFP, and borderline useless against anything other than a horde army. The single extra shot is just not even close to worth giving up the STR 7 firepower of a TL missile pod, and AFP/TLMP works just fine as an AFP carrier.



I really doubt it. Farsight's squad doesn't bring any more firepower than equal points in standard crisis suits focused on the same target, and the squad's assault ability is laughable. A single power weapon isn't going to do anything remotely useful against a horde of Orks, an IG power blob, etc. All you're doing is suiciding a ton of points, and to add insult to injury, you crippled your army to do it.

Not really. The kroot needs a 3+ to wound T3, and if you count in the chance of hitting they will wound (and kill) a MEq 4/12. A TW will hit and kill 5/12. Of course, the kroot is cheaper, and can handle themselves in a close quarter fight vs MEqs.
All in all, I would say the kroot is the better choice.

Flechette Dischargers on Piranha's (RAW) aren't terrible. Make sure your Tournament Org rules before your games though on what happens for them.

The mandatory fire warrior squad might as well get the extra 60 points for these situations to boost the killing power. (you're usually already bringing the devilfish to protect them) They aren't the optimal choice to beef up, but they fill the niche with an element that was already in your army anyways, and in that regard, could be considered the minimal point investment necessary to deal with horde. Don't expose them until later when the heavy weapons are gone, and marker them up to take out 18 or so GEq's at once. obviously, don't expose them if theres a reasonable chance nearby units will do more than 3 successful wounds to them or tie them up in assault...

Kroot bring sheer numbers into the game and are harder to remove with shooting, but the large foot print and the common out-flank maneuver makes it less desirable to beef them up for the purposes of hiding on the enemy end-zone objectives, Consider the play style and purpose and see which is better...

Flechettes remove hordes, but any smart opponent only needs to not assault it to make it worthless. Its decent for screening strength which is important, and it can pull off the odd MEq or two with luck, but its not a reliable horde remover against anyone with even an inkling of an idea of what they can do.

Hammerhead w/ railgun and burst cannons, xv8's w/ miss.pod/burst cannon, lots of kroot, devilfish w/ sms and burst cannon, pathfinders to make all your shots more reliable, and hq's taking a cib and/or afp w/ burst cannons. Leave the stealth teams, sniper drones, piranha, and drones at home. Against horde army's make good use of the markerlights and use all hits on upping your BS. More than likely their save will be a 5 or 6 which you can live with. Also your target priority will have to be spot on and make sure your distances are right in regards to shots. jsj to 18" and to 24", unless there fleet you should be good. Best of luck!!

As a constant kroot blob advocate, I'd like to throw my hat in with the kroot, they are my main form of anti-horde (I don't use hammerheads) along with some deathrains/heatwave mixed squads and they can work really well, for the cost they are a great shooting unit with a 40 shot rapid fire at close range.

On the charge a squad of 30 can deal with around 50 guardsmen in a prolonged fight and can even deal with around 80 if they were not stubborn due to commissars etc. as they are likely to win the first round by around 6 kills. Of course this requires you actually get the kroot into the combat in good shape and even flash lights will quickly take a toll on a kroot squad so smart infiltration or use of outflanking is vital to pull this off.

Against tyranids, 30 vs 30 with termagaunts is a definite victory for the kroot either exchanging fire or in assault, against hormagaunts though, whoever gets the charge will win in assault (likely the fleeting leaping gaunts) unless weakened by shooting before they reach.

For Ork boys they are similar to the hormagaunts if you can get the drop on them your can do significant damage before they even strike back but on the charge they can be very dangerous so outflanking for playing to your advantage in shooting is important.

Kroot are themselves after all a horde unit and in my opinion one of the better ones in the game their only failing being unable to hide a power weapon or two in the masses but as this is more for MEQs the kroot make a great anti-horde unit.

I agree that kroot are good against hordes. The main thing about killing hordes, in my opinion, is not gearing specially towards it but to keep your balanced list. The trick is to fire all guns att the horde unit you need to kill that turn. I mean every gun. All kroot, firewarriors, the devilfishes, drones, piranhas, hammerheads and broadsides with SMS (which by the way are one of our best horde killers, give them two markerlights and they fire 12 S5 shots hitting on 2+ not allowing cover unless the opponent is in area terrain).

In general I think one trick to being sucessful with tau is to not forget the random shots you have every turn from devilfishes, kroot units, small fire warriors teams and disembarked drones.

I wouldn't count on this. Flechettes on a Piranha squadron effectively say "if you assault this, you die", which means nobody is ever going to assault them. Now, making your Piranhas impossible to assault still has value (perhaps not enough to buy all those flechettes though), but relying on them to kill stuff is hopelessly optimistic.

Kroot are very handy vs horde for a number of reasons.

1st: as stated they are not shabby on the shooting front

2nd: they are not bad on the combat front and vs hordes of orks or nids you better plan for the fact that they will get into combat with you

3rd: Kroot hounds are very handy in combat as they will often get to strike first or at the same time as most base line horde units

4th: Krootox are cheap for a big gun that can take out transports and when things get messy they are strong enough and have enough attacks to do a fair bit of damage in combat to boot. Also one of your best troop options for damaging a tank in combat or a large nid for that matter.

5th: they are cheap and that is important vs horde armies cos as good as a battle suit is it will have to take out a hell of a lot to get its points back and can easily be killed by any of the large number of nasty weapons aimed at it. Where as you can have 100 basic kroot for a bit over half a 1500 point list.

If placed well they can seriously so a lot of damage to a horde force.

Outflanking with them or even keeping them reserve to bolster your line is not a bad idea either.

But kroot will not win the war for you they work best with other Tau each one picking on ideal targets to get maximum results.

Battle suits are nice but vs large horde forces they just don’t have the firepower to point ratio and thanks to the number of mins on the table have a hard time of deep striking close to tasty units to use their close up weapons. any horde army will also have a number of heavy weapons to put you to shame most of them instant killing your xv8 suits in one go and are often mounted on walkers or monsters to give mobile fire support to the troops as they swarm you.
The one exception to this XV88 who is idea at taking out heavy transports, tanks, walkers and big nids while getting a 2+ save vs most heavy weapons coming back at them or cover saves if needs be.
I would go for the XV88 over the hammerhead as the poor old hammerhead tends to spend most of the game being stunned or just having its gun ripped off from the amount of fire it takes and that makes it kind of a massive waste of points. Also the number of SMS shots a squad of XV88 gets is not to shabby either.

I've never been a big Kroot fan. I can't really see taking a whole bunch of them to deal with hordes.

Isn't the point here to reduce the number of troops we take and still not make ourselves vulnerable to hordes? More Crisis Suits, Broadsides, and Piranhas makes us better against everything else - everything we don't spend on troops, we can spend on those things, yeah?

If we're going to dedicate points to anti-Horde purposes, don't we get absurdly more mileage per point from Fire Warriors? I can totally understand not wanting to take Fire Warriors, but to take a bunch of points out of Warriors and put them into Kroot, as a way of dealing with hordes, just seems bonkers to me.

Kroot as an assault screen? Sure, that I can support. But an assault screen doesn't do much if there aren't guns behind it that can deal with whatever comes through it. Orks will come right through, and once they do, there won't be any Kroot left to shoot them. If you use Kroot as an assault screen against Orks, you still need enough anti-horde guns to shoot them down.

IG probably won't assault, and if it's a gunfight, Fire Warriors would be better. Against DE (a horde-ish army), again, anything that assaults (Wyches) is going to eat Kroot alive, and anything that doesn't (Warriors, Trueborn), you'd rather be shooting with Fire Warriors anyway.

It's not about taking extra Kroot for horde removal, it's about recognizing that the Kroot you're already taking for other reasons can cover a lot of your anti-horde needs.



Actually no. Against GEQs in cover (and they're always in cover), Kroot actually do slightly better per point at shooting (with the higher cost of FWs offsetting the better gun), and obviously way better in the assault phase.

Agreed. The key thing is, if one DOES find himself lacking in anti-horde measures, adding Kroot for just that purpose is probably not the way to go. And it's not ridiculous to think some armies out there don't have enough horde countermeasures. I've certainly seen some that don't.

Always? Orks aren't always in cover. Guard jumping out of a broken Chimera aren't always in cover (same with DE falling out of Raiders). Things that just won an assault aren't usually in cover. Troops guarding an objective are sometimes not in cover.

Also, Kroot are only better at shooting point-for-point if they don't take Hounds. (Though they remain a valid option if taken that way.)

Also the range and superior armor are not inconsequential when comparing the two.

Finally, yes Kroot are better in an assault, but against horde or hordeish armies, the only cases where this comes up (that I can think of) are Orks and Wyches, both of which chew through Kroot like silly. We quickly get into the range where we'd rather our own unit fall immediately (as Warriors would) than to stick around and risk not opening the opponent to a second volley of fire (as Kroot might).

Another way to look at anti-horde is not to try to match them just with fire, but also with superior mobility, in which case suits are an option. To borrow from mao and Sun-tsu...just not be where the horde is. Sometimes though they just have to go...so

I use a basic guide that any unit must be dealing out a shot at S5+ per 10 points. The firestorm (MP/BC) I find is a very good way to get out 5 shots at 50 points, plus have adiitional mobility. I remember reading somewhere that point for point they're better against Meq than the fireknife too, but that's an additonal benefit.

Kroot? Yes please. A kroot bomb (max kroot and hounds) can be useful, especially on the charge against boyz. Leave the Krootox at home though. For their cost, you can almost get a suit, or 5 more kroot, which will be far more useful.

The point made about concentrating fire is an important one. Don't spread your fire too much.

Taking on a horde has to be a decision you make though... do you really need to kill them? Is the one kill point worth it, or are there more vulnerable targets?...or if there's enough objectives around, can you let that one slide while you overwhelm the others?

I have been fielding the krootox in in my kroot squads for a while now and I have found them to be really useful both at long range and in combat. They are also very handy vs MEQ list and saved my bacon in a recent game vs deathwing.
The only real downside with kroot in general is they cannot benefit from marker lights.
Ok if you are daft enough to plonk them in the open then they will drop like flies but plonk them behind a unit of fire warriors and they get a 4+ cover save and can charge in to save/avenge the fire warriors when it gets messy. Also you can have 20 kroot for just a little more than it costs to have a full fire warrior with leader and bonding.
I will confess I never bother with a shaper or armour as they seem a waste of points.

I have found the idea of mobile war vs a horde army in 1500 points on a 6x4 table is a nice idea but not always possible. The horde will stretch from horizon to horizon and still reach you by turn 2. Deep striking can work if you can find a free spot to land but providing you don’t mishap you will probably be looking at a dead unit next turn and the hoard would not have broken step. outflanking is a safer bet with xv15/25 or kroot with hounds and if done right will rid you of a hostile unit and also draw more units away to deal with them. That said you could end up not getting them till turn 5.
Best not hold to much back as well as you really want as much fire power from the word go.

I find Xv8 suits just die from mass str 8 shots unless you are lucky enough to have a zonking massive bit of cover to hide behind but for me the main problem is most of their anti-horde weapons have a rather pitiful range and thanks to things like run and fleet combined with our low BS, squad size and high points means then you can be hard pressed to deal with a mad rampaging horde unit when you do get your horde weapons in range or close enough to the wall of fire you get from mass of imperial guard infantry men. Can’t comment on the FW suits mind you.
That said the Xv8 do serve a very handy role along with krootox and that is taking out light transports at long range.

Indeed if you can slow the horde down in any way it can save your bacon this is where pathfinders come in handy as they can almost guarantee you pin a unit……….. providing you can hit wound and kill something in the intended unit with a pinning weapon. Also sniper drones come in handy as they can split fire and on a really good day force up to 9 pinning tests a turn on one unit or on up to 9 different units if you max out on them.

However the best way to take on a horde list is to have a little of everything but don’t get carried away wasting points on expensive suit configurations and tank upgrades. More guns the better