Here they come!
A few weeks ago I participated in a Combat Patrol Tournament. While I came out on top, I did lose one game. More specifically, I lost it rather badly to an army with a fast assault element. When I wrote up the battle report, I commented that I needed to review the procedures for dealing with fast assault elements. While I definitely need the review, I decided that other people could probably benefit from such a review as well. First I'll cover the general concepts on how to deal with them that are applicable to any army, then I'll cover how each one might apply to my Combat Patrol force.

Picket Units
Picket units set up in the forefront of your army. They are essentially bait units designed to get the enemy to charge them. Maybe the unit is a Wall unit, so you can tie them up for a while, or maybe you’ve got some counter charge units waiting nearby to lend a hand, or maybe you want to keep a different unit from getting charged. You might be able to pull faster units further away from the rest of the assault army, allowing you to defeat the army piece by piece. You might even decide to sacrifice the unit to allow you to fire on the enemy unit in question once it kills your picket unit. Picket units will be a little forward of your main lines, making them tempting targets for the enemy. If you are planning on sacrificing them so that the rest of your army can shoot when they die, make sure that they are more than 6” away from the next unit, since otherwise the enemy might try advancing into the next unit when they win the combat. One key to this plan, however, is making sure that your picket unit loses during the enemy assault phase (ie: right before your turn, not his!) so that you can actually shoot. You may need to reinforce your picket squad if it looks like they will lose in your turn. As a final note on Picket units, remember that they can charge too, but should only do so if it will prevent the enemy from taking more movement than they would get in their next turn. Also remember that a Picket unit that charges will have to survive 3 assault phases to be useful instead of just 1.

Torrent of Fire
This is the common name for the rule that allows you to target a specific member of an enemy squad, if you cause more wounds to the squad has members. In this instance you can appoint a specific member of the squad and have them make their armor save separately. This gives you a great chance to take out the most dangerous member of the squad without having to kill the rest of them. An example would be taking out the Powerfist Sergeant from a squad of Assault Marines. While the others will still do damage, against Crisis Suits, a Sergeant with a Powerfist or Powerweapon will do way more damage, so eliminating that one will go a long way toward keeping your army safe.

Split Deployment
If you separate your army into two parts and deploy them with a wide space between (preferably an open killing ground--more on that later)then you can give yourself a big advantage and the fast assaulters a big headache. Fast assault is predicated on the idea of closing with the enemy fast to reduce the time they are exposed to shooting. Even if they hit one side quickly and wipe it out, they still have to spend time moving across the board to the other side. If they decide to split their forces, choose one side to protect and use the firepower of both sides to take out the fastest moving targets first. A minor variation of this is to make sure you place your units with more than 6 inches of space between them, much like with the picket units. That will prevent a fast assault unit from winning an assault, then charging into the safety of combat with a nearby unit. Instead, it will leave them out in the open for your other units to blast to bits. The key is to make sure that your unit will break during the enemy assault phase. Typically having a small unit or a fragile unit is enough to do this.

Tau Specifics
Okay, now let's look at how all this applies to Tau Empires armies, and specifically to the Combat Patrol force I brought to the tournament.

Picket Units
Kroot and small units of FireWarriors make excellent Picket units in Tau Empires armies. Kroot have very light armor and will die quickly to most assault units. Although FireWarriors have much better armor, a small team will also die quickly to most assault units due to their small numbers and poor assault capabilities. In my Combat Patrol force, I do have a small team of FireWarriors and I could also use one of my Crisis Suits as a Picket unit as well. In fact, given the small size of the Assault squad, one of my Crisis Suits would have been a better choice. If I had placed one suit out in front, with the others outside of their charge range (and 6" away from the picket Crisis Suit) then if the Assault squad had charged it, it would have died immediately and the rest of the Crisis suits and the FireWarriors) could have rapid-fired into the Assault squad, almost certainly killing it. It would have been trickier if he hadn't taken the bait on the first turn, but moved closer instead. That would give him more choices about targets to hit, but I could spread out my suits further and do essentially the same thing as planned before.

Torrent of Fire
This rule that allows a chance of taking out specific members of a unit can be very handy. The Tau Empires army has a number of units that can put out some serious firepower. Large units of FireWarriors top the list, but multiple Stealth Suits or Piranha or even a unit of Broadsides with their Smart Missiles can really put out a lot of wounds in a single turn. In my Combat Patrol list, on the other hand, there aren't any large units. The highest number of shots for an individual unit would be 6 (my FireWarrior team) and that is unlikely to cause more than 4 Wounds.

Split DeploymentThe Tau Empires list is full of units with long range, which are very good for Split Deployment. My Combat Patrol list also has lots of long-range weaponry. In addition, I have a lot of fast-moving units, which can turn the Split Deployment into a Refused Flank by suddenly redeploying.

The Take-AwaySo, my strategy against Fast Assaulters basically boils down to using my high mobility and long range to keep my individual units spread out, but still be able to concentrate firepower on a single unit after it crushes one of my Suits. If the assault unit isn't destroyed in that turn of shooting (or if there is more than one Fast Assault unit) I'll have to make sure that I use my Assault Phase movement to spread back out more than 6" apart to repeat the tactic again on the next turn.

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