Hi guys,

Since BETA1 I have been struggling with this match up. Bearing into account I make any balanced fleet (a couple of carriers, long distance boats, a 2-3 escorts, 2 LCs etc) I always lose. Today I saw 2 Desolators simply disappear in about 30-45 seconds. I always lose. Tau out-dps and seem to out-range me or have the same range.

• I can always try running and securing 3 objectives but that is not always a possibility on the map.
• Closing the distance seems to make it even worse.
• The only thing that seems to work is the SPAM 6x Slaughterers list, but that's boring as hell.
• I try to get the escorts first to win the scouting game, but they seem surprisingly durable, even to 2x Desolators firing.

It seems like easy gameplay for Tau - just mark and wait. Opponent should be dead in a minute.

Ps. How do Eldar deal with them?

Which Tau Fleet?

you could try to go with 5x carnage and escort heavy. "balanced" lists are just sub-par atm and the desolator is one of the worst ships in the chaos roster.

Protector I think, the 'forgeworld' one that had sculptors hired not the old one.

Chaos lances aren't good weapons right now, so stay clear of them. Tau protector cruisers are all carriers, so they tend to smash less numerous wings if that Player uses them to cover their torp salvoes, which are fully capable of erasing ships. Also, most chaos carriers have lances as backup weapons, which makes them quite piddly in dps for their cost in general and non-ideal in this matchup specifically, unless you dedicate your whole fleet to overwhelming fighter numbers so you can get the fighters and the torps, too.

Tau have heavy armor on the front hull, at least until the generator is crit out. They also can put all their fire downrange while facing you, ideal for focus fire at longer ranges with their best armor eating return fire.

Tau are weak in that they have poor top speed, and their morale isn't great. To exploit these, you specifically need to get close and wrap around so you have good dps ships shooting into the rear with some ships still out front to draw their fire, or force them to take rear shots if they turn. Boarding to take down the generators removes that heavy armor in the front and makes direction less important. The boarding combined with ramming (not into the heavy front, ideally) depletes morale and makes them vulnerable to mass rout if you focus the admiral out.

Slaughters and Carnages work because they've got good dps, speed, and boarding to exploit the tau weaknesses, while being distributed enough that no single ship can be focused down on approach and cripple the whole formation. Any other solution you develop will need to mimic those advantages.

A friend of mine is also playing Chaos and we also had our fair share of trouble against Tau, but once we started to make them move with bombs and going close they where pretty doable. Not sure what Chaos ships are good but you could just try to play aggressive against them, force them to move arround with bombs so you can get close or behind them and wreak havoc.