[BlairH]

On Sunday, I played a pseudo ninja 3000pt list against 3000pts of daemons. I lost. Badly.

By the time my force arrived, my opponent had already fortified his objective with squads of plaguebearers (toughness 5, nice invulnerable save, feel no pain, immune to instant death, etc) He also used that Kairos character (he's a T'zeench character that allows you to re-roll any failes saves within 12", so basically, he had his normal invul save, the his re-roll, and if he failed that, he got his feel no pain). I raked his formations with burst cannon and pulse rifle fire (over 50 shots in one turn) and couldn't take out a single plague bearer. Hammerhead submunitions proved to be similarly ineffective.

I guess my question is, what's the best way of countering daemons with Tau, and in particular, how do you sweep plaguebearers from objectives? You can't tank shock them, since they're fearless, and you can't kill them, because they're pretty much invincible.

[limpchickeninabizkit]

Against daemons you should near always start with everything on the board.

Daemons are typicaly an assault/close range army. Use this weakness to your advantage. Setup on your objective, and try and shoot him off of his. At worst you'll get a draw, if you kill him a win. He has to come to you to try and kill you, and that is where rapid fire does very well. I found against daemons if you destroy/incapacitate the first wave, the second one will prove no real trouble. Try and get him to get the first turn. The extra shooting phase makes a difference.

Against Nurgle, try and use mass shots. Burst cannons, twin-linked flamers, mass pulse fire, submunition shots.

Target Kairos. He is the linch-pin of this army. Target him with mass mid strength fire. That is the key.

The other option is set up your troops and use transports to contest his objectives. If you control one, but he only has one contested, its yours....

[Odo The Brave]

Against Daemons, play mobile, but not ninja. Use bait and switch, set up everything in the beginning, then hop in fish and zip off. Daemons greatest asset is also their greatest fault: CC prowess and Deep Striking. They have to come in close and tie you up in CC to kill you. If you can stay out of grasp in transports they will be very hard pressed to damage you. Also, aim for the big stuff. Knock out any Greater Daemons, Soul Grinders, and DPs first. They're expensive and nearly the only form of Anti-Tank he's got: if they're gone you can attack from vehicles with impunity.

Fateweaver just needs to be hit with massed firepower. Kairos needs to make his saves, if he doesn't there's a good chance he'll simply leave the field. And with enough shots, he'll fail those saves.

Hope this look from a Chaos player's perspective helps.

[D Black]

The trick to his set up is that The faithweaver is squisy to pulsefire, he's got but T5 and permenantly on his own (MC) so even with 3+ rerollable save he will fail em' and if he fail's one theirs a chance he'll just f#%k off after but one wound, another point is in any battle you should have a even portion of objectives, so hold on to yours slow down any plague bearers (seriously, they SUCK in combat), even fire warriors will worry then (kinda), plauge bearers never cause much damage and unless your really unlucky with Ld test's you sould hold em' up

again it's Step 1: kill Kairos
hold up plague bearers (Kroot are your Friends)
Step 2: kill Plague bearers on 1 of his objectives (you can't split fire)
use plasma and fusion and rather surprisingly Cy ion Blasters
Step 3: Repeat step 2 if possible or neccesary

And of course take out big threats as they come but most in deamon armys are actully easy enough for tau to take down, khornate units are pretty brittle to tau weapons and should take no more than one turn to deal with,

actually i'm surprised you havent pointed out that Pink horror's mince tau quite easily but meh, they are another case of tau acctually accel in combat (as fire warriors out number for the most part)

Oh and Yeah no ninja tau, static works and mobile works but not ninja

[Briane75]

I have someone where I play that is playing a shooty daemon army. Well, kinda. He has Deamonettes which are melee oriented, but after that he has a bunch of pink horrors, and some manta ray looking things that are anti-armor.

But, he has some dang daemon that uses a flame thrower template that wounds on 4+, no cover or armor saves allowed! He did a perfect deep strike in a very small hole (an inch in any direction would have sent him to the mishap table) and took out an entire broadside team with them in one go. tsk.

[Odo The Brave]

Originally Posted by Briane75

I have someone where I play that is playing a shooty daemon army. Well, kinda. He has Deamonettes which are melee oriented, but after that he has a bunch of pink horrors, and some manta ray looking things that are anti-armor.

But, he has some dang daemon that uses a flame thrower template that wounds on 4+, no cover or armor saves allowed! He did a perfect deep strike in a very small hole (an inch in any direction would have sent him to the mishap table) and took out an entire broadside team with them in one go. tsk.

Ouch, Tzeentch blasted. Sounds like he's running a mostly Tzeentch list with Daemonettes as tacklers. Keep in mind that you do have range on him, despite his powerful shooting. If you hold back and play long range, you can probably outshoot him. As to the Flamers (the things with template attacks), that was a one in a million Deep Strike. I can't help too much with Tzeentch, since I haven't looked/played with them that much but they are tough.

@ D Black: The OP didn't mention Horrors, so I left them off my comments. Needless to say, they are the odd ones out of the Daemon Codex.

[knightperson]

Unfortunately, outranging Daemons isn't really an option since they are going to deep strike in within range of something. Mechanized mobility will help some, since horrors can't run as fast as devilfish, but I think it's a question of close-range firepower with those guys. Their weapons are Assault, and fairly nasty, but they are no more effective at close range than they are at long. Our pulse rifles should be able to outdo them at rapid-fire range. Outrange the stuff that wants to chop us up, block it with vehicles, or pile into the devilfish and escape.

The advice about Kairos / Fateweaver and the Soul Grinders is good, though. Kairos is tough, but not indestructible. He should fail 1 out of every 9 saves (counting the reroll), and has about a 40% chance of leaving the field at each failed save. Even if he doesn't run, he's only got 3 wounds. Soul grinders are really dangerous in assault, but nothing assaults out of the deep strike. Soul Grinders are immune to Shaken and Stunned results, so you have to actually kill them, but they die to railguns and fusion blasters just like any other vehicle. If one of them shows up at close range (doesn't get a bad scatter on the deep strike), make it target #1 for you big vehicle-killing guns.

[Shasel_Ahab]

I think I found out why you lost:

Originally Posted by BlairH

3000pt list(s)

At 3k Daemons are pretty much in their zone. They can bring all the ridiculuous shtlk in their Codex and still have a semi-balanced force. Normally their balanced by the points cost, but at 3k they can drop 333pts or whatever on a Fateweaver and still have it not be a crippling percentage of their army... and then throw in Flamers and Screamers and Soul Grinders and everything else...

Whereas Tau don't have any one thing that can "bring it" on anywhere near that level.

3k pretty much requires filling the FoC for Tau and that's never an efficient thing to do...

So I'd say, yew, we have hope. Just not at anything over 2000. 2500 maybe. 3k? Not IMO, sorry.