Null Deployment Tau

Fritz,

Thanks for making the blogsphere an interesting place! I've been watching your old videos, and have been very interested in your null deployment theories, and the ambush/surprise discussion recently on your blog. I've been playing Tau for the last year-and-a-half (got into the hobby roughly a week before my first Tau purchase, which i spent agonizing between Tau and everything else. Thanks to Dawn of War's 'creative liberties' i went with Tau). I would rate myself as a 'pretty good' tau player. I consistently get rolled by Fatecrusher lists and Nurgle/twin-DPrince armies at 1500 pts, but stand a decent chance against the other codexes. While I do love crisis suits, broadsides and hammerheads, my other favorite units (stealth suits and fire warriors) rarely get any love due to their extreme handicaps. So, on to my question.

With Tau, how would you go about employing null deployment, or would you avoid it as an option due to the lack of reserve modifiers in the codex? Also, have you ever built an army that effectively used multiple squads of fire warriors, or stealth suits instead of crisis spam? Or would you recommend the monobuild, and hope for better with the new 'dex, whenever it drops?

Thanks for the time and brainspace!

Shas'el Mike

shootfirstthenjump.blogspot.com

Mike, first things first- added your blog to my blog roll and hope to send you some traffic as a member of the 40K community.

Now onto Tau and Null Deployment…

Although it has been designed from a Tyranids point of view, I know we can export the idea out to other armies and lists, so let’s give Tau a whirl. Two things that we have to adapt for is the lack of a reserve modifier like Hive Commander, and the lack of “decent” close combat troops like ‘stealers and the like which are the bulk of a ND list.

First is building a nice big fire base in the center to put pressure on the opponent and pin them in place for the side and rear elements of the Null Deployment to come in. Tau can do this very well- better then Tyranids! Fire warriors, sniper teams, hammer head tanks with rail guns, disruption pods for cover saves, and all that. A nice compact core to spit out those long range shots and put center pressure.

In front of them I would add a nice blob of kroot to infiltrate and then get into cover for at least a cover save- maybe even woods if you are lucky. These guys want to march up the center of the board or at least make it look like that to encourage your opponent to sit and shoot. In the Tyranid list this is done with gaunts, which are certainly expandable like kroot, and some would argue just as ineffective.

Now we need the outflanking elements, which we are going to turn to infiltrators a bit since Tau don’t have the +1 modifier. My first choice would be stealth suits since they have the night fight to protect them and pack some mean weapons.

Finally I’d add some outflankers and deep strikers into the mix since you need them, even thought we don’t have the modifier. More kroot and some hounds? Deepstrikers are of course suits, and more suits.

The order for the list and how it moves will be a bit different…

You deploy your shooty core in the center (or as close as it can be)and infiltrate your first kroot blob. Stealth suits get infiltrated to one flank that is weaker- using terrain to hide/get cover saves, etc. Suits deepstrike and drop on the other side, and the outflanking kroot meet in the middle and cause as much commotion as possible.

Keep in mind that any scoring or mission critical elements need to be held in your center core- everything else is expendable and has the job of killing off your opponent’s troops and mission critical resources.

So, Null Deployment for Tau- that is the formula I would start to experiment with!

-Fritz