Tau: Best Way to Deal with AV13+ Spam?

[Pottsey]

Although Dark Eldar can get 1 vehicle that fits in said category.

Most other armies can at least field 3 or more. The human armies besides sisters and grey knights can field 6 or more of said vehicles.

As for "most" armies being able to spam AV13+, Marines can, but they're easily taken care of by getting around the sides. Chaos...from what I remember that's pretty much same as Marines. Flank and laugh. Orks I don't see enough of to judge accurately unfortunately so I don't know. Guard and Necrons can certainly, but they're both made of Cheddar stuffed with Brie and topped with Camembert.

My local Ork player likes to use both AV14 tanks with custom force fields or rows of Ork dreadnoughts on the front lines, sometimes both. Not every game but I can confirm some Ork players use high AV builds. EMP's are out of the question as if you are close enough to do that the tank has done its job and tons of Orks disembark to CC you.

This is why I am concerned about the change as I struggled with s10 broadsides in squads. So now it is going to be massively harder to deal with as you have to stop them before they get into CC range.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

Actually, shadowsun isn't bad now. And with her Warlord Trait, she and her squad will get to move 3d6 in the assault phase with their jet packs. They could cover ground very rapidly and bring 4 Fusion Blasters to bear.

[Chicop76]

Although Dark Eldar can get 1 vehicle that fits in said category.

Most other armies can at least field 3 or more. The human armies besides sisters and grey knights can field 6 or more of said vehicles.

...no they can't. Dark Eldar highest armour is 11 unless you're referring to something from Forgeworld which, frankly, doesn't count as it's not legal without permission anyway.

As for "most" armies being able to spam AV13+, Marines can, but they're easily taken care of by getting around the sides. Chaos...from what I remember that's pretty much same as Marines. Flank and laugh. Orks I don't see enough of to judge accurately unfortunately so I don't know. Guard and Necrons can certainly, but they're both made of Cheddar stuffed with Brie and topped with Camembert.

So there's 3 armies which physically can't spam the kind of thing that this thread's addressing, another 2 who can very easily be dealt with by flanking (Vindicators especially), one I'm unsure of. Land Raider spam should mean that the culprit gets massacred as soon as he disembarks by Overwatch and then EMP greandes (there should be some of those lying around somewhere), so that just leaves Guard and Necrons, which as I've pointed out are insane anyway and everyone struggles with.

In the regular Dark Eldar codex you can take an armour 13 or 14 raider for roughly 500 points. I included vect and the nine guys you have to take that's included in the cost.

Ig can run 9 russes easy with front armour 14 and side 13. If the rear is 10 isn'ts not a problem, but rear 11 is a slight problem.

The way I dealt with them in the past is to deep strike 8 man gun drone squad and target locked 4 man melta stealth suits behind vehicles. Taking the pathfinder devilfish helped reduced scatter.

Can you do that now. I don't know since I haven't read the new codex yet. Besides that.not like other armies can dish out a bunch of strength 10 shots. I meam look at tyranids that have 9 strength 10 ap 1 lance shots in the elite slot and 6 strength 10 shots in the heavy. They also get preferred enemy to help hit with those shots.

Guard can only have 9 str 10 pie plates at ap2, while most marine armies have 3 strength 10 ap 2 shots.

Everyone else either doesn't have strength 10 shots or have only 1 or 2 one shot weapons that can do that. I forgot Greyknights and sisters fall in that category, but a vindicator is really better than a strength 10 shot anyway.

I doubt that we will see an over abundance of armour anyway. Daemons flamers and Taus rail guns took a hit which might help more vehicles on the board. Also Dark angel's ability to have +4 invulnerable saves on land raiders which can re roll bad results and vehicles like soul grinders which can easily have a +3 invulnerable save or a +2 invulnerable, I would fear the +2 invulnerable bloodthirster a bit more with the +4 FNP.

Anyway 13 armour spam is an issue since a lot of armies still have str 9 shots which can be taken in abundance which makes spaming such vehicles a bad ideal. Armour 14 spam is more likely to occur which most players do not due, because in the end of the day you have no scoring units and only. Can win against armies that can't crack mass armor 14.

With side armour shots it depends on et up and terrain. I always put my important vehicles in the corners of the board making side shots really hard to do. Unless you are out flanking, or taking a risk of ds off the board you are not hitting side armor. If I spam armour 13 with guard than I will be forced to have a few tanks sides exposed though.

The only army who can really spam armour 13 is dark angels. 3 elite dreads, 3 fast baals, 3 vindicators. I don't remeber if they can take raiders as dedicated, but typically you see a ton of discounted razorbacks thrown in.

Necrons can do so, but one pen turns their vehicles into dark eldar vehicles. Strength 8 is still strong enough to pen 13. My Grinder in 5 th speaks from experance from being either killed or immobilized a lot thanks to those luck strength 8 shots. Now with either a +2 cover save or a + 5, +2 max invulnerable save the lucky str 8 shots is not much of a problem, not to mention my flyers soak up the shooting instead. Go bloodthirster!

[Pottsey]

I guess we can always take a  commander with no weapons but tank hunter, monster hunter, ignore cover and rerolled all misses for a 3 man broadside squad.(via signature systems)

[The Man They Call Jayne]

Hmm, Give him Iridium to keep him survivable and it could work. Give the 88s Drone Controllers and 6 Missile Drones and the level of output would be terrifying.

[Pottsey]

That's a really good idea but if you gave the commander a drone controller those drones all hit on BS 5 leaveing free slots for the 88's.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

But then you can only take 2 drones. Handy at BS5 sure, but 12 shots at BS3 is better odds in any ones book surely? Plus, it would royally mess up any flyers than came into range.

[Pottsey]

As I understand it Drone controllers do not allow you to take drones. Instead drone controllers make the drones use the BS of the whoever has the  Drone controllers instead of the drones own AI/BS.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

Most squad leaders can take any 2 Drones, or in the case of Broadsides, everyone can take 2 each. The DCs do boost the BS of the Drones yes, so you don't NEED them, but it means 6 out of 12 S7 shots. Any light vehicle is going to be worried by that.

[InsaneTD]

Had a game today, I had no rails at all and couldn't even kill a single armour 12 tank. I had an ionstrike, two broadsides  with high yields and Farsight with two body guards, each with plasma. Didn't kill a single vehicle. Did knock a hull point off one.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

You will need Fusion at the very least. You have to have something that can hit armour hard.

[InsaneTD]

I'm thinking I'll use one rail head, catty armed with ion and fusion and broadsides with MMM. MMM was against infantry and chaos bikes, but wasn't so great against vehicles. Would probably mulch flyers and most transports.

Actually, I forgot about the raider but that died to fire warriors.

[Carrelio]

I thought some anti-tank statistics on some of the weapons might help those of you who are also struggling with AV13+ (or armour in general).  I can cover more if people provide me with the stats (I'd like to run comparisons on all the Riptide's weapons once I get my book, and I'll do so anyways once I get my codex), I will also aim to look at the statistics against Toughness values later on.

These are the statistics of each weapon dealing damage to a vehicle.  They are the average amount of damage each weapon will of; composed of the number of shots by the percentage to hit.  All statistics are rounded to the nearest 2 decimal places.  Ballistic Skill was assumed to be the baseline of the unit using the weapon (BS3 for everything with the exception of the hammerhead weapons) Blast weaponry was accounted for assuming a single vehicle was targeted and scatter was averaged across the distribution of possible outcomes.

Burst Cannon
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.67   0.33   0.06
11   0.33   0.00   0.00
12   0.00   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Burst Cannon: Twin-Linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   1   0.5   0.08
11   0.5   0.00   0.00
12   0.00   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Fusion Blaster: No Melta
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.42   0.33   0.17
11   0.33   0.25   0.13
12   0.25   0.17   0.08
13   0.17   0.08   0.04
14   0.08   0.00   0.00

Fusion Blaster: No Melta, Twin-Linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.63   0.50   0.25
11   0.50   0.38   0.19
12   0.38   0.25   0.13
13   0.25   0.13   0.06
14   0.13   0.00   0.00

Fusion Blaster: Melta
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.50   0.49   0.24
11   0.49   0.46   0.23
12   0.46   0.42   0.21
13   0.42   0.36   0.18
14   0.36   0.29   0.15

Fusion Blaster: Melta, Twin-linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.75   0.73   0.37
11   0.73   0.69   0.34
12   0.69   0.62   0.32
13   0.63   0.54   0.27
14   0.54   0.44   0.22

Heavy Rail Rifle
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.63   0.50   0.25
11   0.50   0.38   0.19
12   0.38   0.25   0.13
13   0.25   0.13   0.06
14   0.13   0.00   0.00

High Yield Missile Pod
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   2.00   1.50   0.25
11   1.50   1.00   0.17
12   1.00   0.50   0.08
13   0.50   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Ion Accelerator: Nova
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.28   0.27   0.09
11   0.27   0.25   0.08
12   0.25   0.21   0.07
13   0.21   0.15   0.05
14   0.15   0.09   0.03

Missile Pod
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.67   0.50   0.08
11   0.50   0.33   0.06
12   0.33   0.17   0.03
13   0.17   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Missile Pod: Twin-Linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   1.00   0.75   0.13
11   0.75   0.50   0.08
12   0.50   0.25   0.04
13   0.25   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Plasma Rifle: Single Shot
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.25   0.17   0.06
11   0.17   0.08   0.03
12   0.08   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Plasma Rifle: Single Shot, Twin-Linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.38   0.25   0.08
11   0.25   0.13   0.04
12   0.13   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Plasma Rifle: Rapid Fire
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.50   0.33   0.11
11   0.33   0.17   0.06
12   0.17   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Plasma Rifle: Rapid Fire, Twin-Linked
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.75   0.50   0.17
11   0.50   0.25   0.08
12   0.25   0.00   0.00
13   0.00   0.00   0.00
14   0.00   0.00   0.00

Railgun
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.78   0.67   0.33
11   0.67   0.56   0.28
12   0.56   0.44   0.22
13   0.44   0.33   0.17
14   0.33   0.22   0.11

Seeker Missile: BS3
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.42   0.33   0.06
11   0.33   0.25   0.04
12   0.25   0.17   0.03
13   0.17   0.08   0.01
14   0.08   0.00   0.00

Seeker Missile: BS4
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.56   0.44   0.07
11   0.44   0.33   0.06
12   0.33   0.22   0.04
13   0.22   0.11   0.02
14   0.11   0.00   0.00

Seeker Missile: BS5
AV   HP   Pen   Explode
10   0.69   0.56   0.09
11   0.56   0.42   0.07
12   0.42   0.28   0.05
13   0.28   0.14   0.02
14   0.14   0.00   0.00

The statistics suggest that the twin-linked fusion blaster (assuming you are inside melta range) is the best anti-tank option among those listed here for pure statistical punch.  It is however limited by its low range, making delivery and evacuation difficult.
As expected the non-Twin-Linked burst cannon is the worst option listed here (no surprises).
The Riptide's nova charged ion accelerator performed astoundingly poorly, given the tendency for it to over heat nearly 50% of the time between the Nova Generator and the Gets Hot! rules.
The hammerhead performed admirably compared to the options we have.
The high yield missile pods outdo the heavy rail rifle in taking off hull points by a wide margin but are artificially capped by S7 at AV13, while the heavy rail rifle provides a slightly improved chance to explode the vehicle after a penetrating hit and can glance right the way up to AV14.

[The Man They Call Jayne]

Wow. Lotta states there. Not a bit math head myself so I am assuming that 1.00 would represent a 100% chance?

Ie the HYMP gets a rating of 0.25 for explodes on AV10. Is that 25% chance?

[Scout Sergeant Mkoll]

I think your no melta and no melta, twin-linked fusion blaster stats are the wrong way around. Other than that, nice work.

It's also worth pointing out, I feel, that most vehicles with 13 side armour have weaker side armour. Especially in Marine lists, so combining the stats above with my suggestion of flanking your opponent's vehicles should work very well indeed when trying to counter such vehicles.