New 1000pt Tau List, quick battle report

Last saturday saw a 1000pt quasi-pickup game between Myself (Tau) and Matt (Space Marines) versus Aaron (Eldar) and Russell (Tyranids), played at Chaos Games (our FLGS) on what is without doubt the most amazing and awe-inspiring terrain board I have ever played a game of warhammer on. This thing was an epic, hilly skimmer/jump pack paradise, although as I learned, really obscured line of sight. The entire thing was a snowy painted landscape, and seeing how my models looked on it, I'm thinking about doing the bases as dark rocks with scattered snow - the contrast is appealing without looking absurd.

Anyway, moving on to the nitty gritty. Being as it was a 1000pt battle, I quickly switched around my "standard" 1000pt list to include another Broadside in place of the slow, useless, and utterly ignorable Kroot. Here's the result:

1000pt Tau Empire List
HQ:
-Shas'El Commander w/ Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multi-tracker, Hard-Wired (HW) Drone Controller and 2 shield Drones
--> 2 Shas'vre Bodyguards, w/ Plasma Rifles, Missile Pods, Targeting Arrays, and HW Multi-trackers.

Troops:
- 7 Fire Warriors
--> Devilfish transport w/ Smart Missile System, Targeting Array, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod
- 7 Fire Warriors
--> Devilfish transport w/ Smart Missile System, Targeting Array, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod

Heavy Support:
- Hammerhead Gunship w/ Railgun, Smart Missile System, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod
- 2 Broadside Battlesuits, advanced stabilization System


Much the same as the last list, but I like having 2 broadsides rather than 12 kroot - with most of my army dependant on mobility and long range, having 1 lone unit of slow short range squishies isn't as effective as I thought, and at times is actually a detriment (12 kroot are __ points of stuff that the enemy doesn't have to worry about with most of his/her army, given that the little twerps aren't fleet and I always forget to make sure there's a good forest on the table.)

Since it was getting late and I'd already played 2 games of Warhammer Fantasy that day (my Lizardmen figured out that High Elves also taste just like chicken, and my Dwarf Army was brought out of retirement to remind me that, while they won't often win combats decisively, they're damn hard to kill, even against swordmasters -- a win and a draw/very minor victory, in total), I was pretty tired and not paying as much attention to the game as I should have been.


Tau (me) and Space Marines (Matt) vs. Tyranids (Russell) and Eldar (Aaron)

Game: Modified Capture and Control (I think...)
Deployment: Dawn of War
Allies: Matt (Space Marines)
Opponents: Aaron (Eldar), Russell (Tyranids)

The single objective was this truly massive and detailed Eldar custom-built Eldar tower (sitting on 2 hill levels in the middle) with rules on gettin infantry from the door to the shooting platform on top. Anything with 12" range was going to have a hard time shooting stuff directly below them, it was that high up (we used 'top down' sighting, we weren't that rules-crazy).

Given the massive amount of dangerous terrain cliff faces and obstacles (no 'slopping' hills here - dangerous terrain slopes were everything here) and the fact he hadn't played anything else for a while, Matt brought out a very standard and well rounded Space Marine Army, consisting of standard Marines (or sternguard?) in Rhinos, a Predator, some CC terminators, and another tank-busting-tank of some sort or another. I was getting pretty out of it by this time, it was after 8:00pm when we started, and I'd been wfb-ing since 11:00am. Russell's list was his standard with a few tweeks (the Genestealers had extended carapace - ohhhh man that hurt), and Aarons was.... some wierd Eldar thing with non-mounted/transported infantry and a big ol' forgeworld Wave-serpent thingy.

They went first, and Turn 1 saw very minimal deployment, given Dawn of War rules, and almost no shooting - except from my commander's battlesuits and the Hammerhead that rolled on during our 1st turn, both of which rolled EXTREMELY NICE night fight sighting rolls, taking out almost 1/3rd of a Guardian Squad, forcing him to go to ground and take a panic check. Matt took the middle/right, going for the objective, while I took the left edge, thinking to swing around and pump enough raw firepower into their flank to send even the synapsed Warriors running for the hills (if, you know, they actually were allowed to fail automaticly passed leadership tests).

Turn 2 - I continue to underestimate Russell, as a squad of incoming Genestealers obliterated my Battlesuits that jumped back to just too near the board edge rather than towards the middle. D'oh. Lots of fighting between Matt's Space Marines and the bulk of Russell/Aaron's infantry started up around the objective, and escalated with each turn. The waveserpent moved up to begin threatening my battlesuits/Hammerhead from behind cover, and recieved a few solid Railgun hits for its presumption, shaking the crew so they couldn't shoot the next turn.

Turn 3 - despite 3 solid Railgun hits, I failed to pen/he rolled good cover on his wave serpent that was progressing on my battlesuits, but 2 full rapid-firing squads of fire warriors finished off the Genestealers - as the 2nd squad came further towards my board edge. Oi. Fighting in the center started to get to a fevered pitch.

Turn 4 - Their turn saw the 2nd squad of Genestealers advance towards my Hammerhead, the waveserpent move from behind cover to point blank range, and the carnifex/warriors/gaunts moving around the middle objective hill to flank Matt's marines, and my hammerhead railgun getting busted off by the genestealers. Shooting was utterly worthless for me, as a lot of shots at the Serpent just ended up "can't move or shoot"-ing it, and another devilfish losing its weaponry to a Fex. The fighting in the center reached its climax, as Matt, desperate to hold the position at any cost, actually blew up the objective building, creating some cover for him to sit in and messing up the Tyranid advance.

Turn 5 - I didn't pay much attention here, with most of my fire warriors, the 2 broadsides, and the hammerhead being destroyed at the onset. Matt somehow managed to pass enough dangerous terrain tests to being his rhinos to the top of the hill to serve as a wall, and I followed closely (and more easily) with the weaponless Devilfish (which was promply blown up at the start of the next turn). A roll of 5 kept us in the game for another turn.

I left at the onset, having only 2 devilfish left, one of them without weaponry and quickly destroyed, the other doing a quick out-of-order but allowed shooting at the genestealers and getting packed up. It was well after 2:00am by this point, so I packed up and got a ride home from the 2 friends who had kindly stayed around another 20 minutes after their game of WFB ended to wait for me to get to a place to bow out.

What I've learned: My usual tactics and army builds works extremely well against tank and transport dependant enemies and MEQs, but not so much against infantry lists - I need to rethink a few things, possibly adding in a few more anti-infantry weapons on the Battlesuits in place of the Plasma rifles, or knocking off a devilfish in exchange for a few stealth suits and a static fire warrior shroud around the Broadsides. Despite some bad rolls this game, I never normally have trouble eliminating enemy tanks, and despite my mobility a lot of the hilly terrain really messed me up at first, allowing the more experienced Eldar player (whose board this was) to bottleneck me and keep me away from the main fight on the other hill. Of everyone, this board was really built for an infantry army, and both Matt and I had trouble with that.

This game also really hammered in the fact that I have to be more mindful of Genestealers/outflankers, especially when playing (Russell's) 'Nids. Overall, the game was fun but exhausting, and I'd rather not play with quite that much terrain and obstacles again, even if it does look just so gosh darn pretty.

Coming up - 3k and 4k Apocalypse lists and tactics for the game on Memorial Day. I'm not going to be there, but I'm letting them borrow my Tau to make the sides even if they can't find a 6th player (hopefully on the condition that they take pictures and let me live vicariously through their blog posts).

Tau and 'Nids vs. Imperial Guard - The unfinished Game

Russell ('Nids), Max (iGuard), and I had our usual Tuesday 40k Matchup, this time without out illustrious Space Marine Biker Captain friend. The typical tuesday army smash is 1500pt per person 2v2, but since Matt wasn't going to be coming, Max boosted his to 2000pts, and both Russell and I took 1000pt lists.

I took the 1000pt list I posted earlier (check under '1000pt', or 'Army List'), thinking I'd give the Kroot one more shot at being relevant to my general army tactics. Heh.

Max's iGuard army consisted of a confusing platoon of mortar squads, infantry squads with laz-mortar-things, at least 2 chimeras, 3 Armored Sentinels, 3 Leman Russes, and a command squad with a Master of the Fleet and a Mortar Commander-thingy. I'm not entirely sure what was going on there, I just knew that I had a target rich environment, and to be happy with that.

My ally Russell's Tyranid force consisted of his 1000pt usual - 2 squads of warriors, 2 big squads of some kind of gaunts, 2 Carnifex - nicknamed Jake (a Sniper-Fex, notably the only close-to-WYSIWYG model on the table other than 1 of my fire warriors - you know, the only one with arms) and Jimmy (a horrendously potent Devo-Fex) - and 2 squads of outflanking Genestealers.


Rather than do another annihalation mission (we were all pretty much sick of those recently), we re-rolled, and ended up with standard deployment and 4 objectives (2 on his side, 2 on ours). The most interesting of the 7 pieces of terrain was the "warp field" - a big chunk of purple cloth that we decided gave a random, dice-rolled cover save each turn to anyone being shot through it, and did funky-random stuff to anything stupid/daring enough to chance going through it (which none of us were brave enough to try). Max won the roll and let us deploy first, fortunately failing his 'seize the iniciative' roll.

The first 3 rounds were brutal - EVERY army was a 'shooty' army, so mostly we just all slowly advanced and shot a ludicrous amount of shots at each other so we could displace the enemy off of a bunker enough for a chimera/devilfish to sweep in a and claim/contest it. Confusing.

What was more confusing was when we were told the store would be closing in 7 minutes - right in the middle of turn 3. Since our illustrious aforementioned friend works at said game store, we were used to just staying later and having him lock up when we were done. However, this was not the case, and turn 3 progressed in the span of give or take 4 minutes, with only the important shooting/moving/whatsits happening.

End Result - we controlled 1 uncontested bunker to the other 3 contested ones. There was a LOT of this game that hadn't been played, and had it actually gone another hour through turn 6, his slightly superior tank force would have probably wiped most of our tanks/the last fex out of existence. Despite some early victories with railguns, my Hammerhead was already imobilized by turn 3, and the broadside barely surviving the abusive treatment of 3 tanks per turn thanks to a 2+ save and nothing higher than AP3 with line of sight to it. The sheer quantity of template weapons Max was dropping each turn was astounding.

None of us considered this game finished, and as such I'm not even counting it for a win. At best, this was a Draw for me, as I'm sure that, the way things were going, I wasn't going to last much longer. Russell's army wasn't unscathed (he lost 3 gaunts and Jake), but mine was taking a brutal beating, even in the first 2 turns.

It did give me more good experience on how Guard tend to operate, though, which will go a long way towards the development of my Anti-Guard list. Hopefully I'll be able to finish a game soon :D


Also - Kroot are still worthless.

Battle Report #1 - Tyranids

Well, the Tau fought their first battle against an offshoot of the vast Tyranid swarm, and it was decisive. Seeing as I'm not terribly that good at battle reports yet, I'll try to keep it brief.

My list: as seen below, no changes.

Russell's List: (from what I can remember)

3 Tyranid Warriors, shooty upgrades (but lacking Carapace Armor upgrade)
3 Tyranid Warriors, shooty upgrades
squad of Gaunts
squad of Hormagaunts
squad of Termagaunts
2x squads of Genestealers
Sniper-Carnifex
Devil-Carnifex

Caleb's Tau (1000pts) vs. Russell's Tyranids (1000pts)
Mission: Annihilation
Setup: Dawn of War

Turn 1 - I fail to sieze the iniciative. Russell's main force comes on, but everything is out of range thanks to night-fight rules.

My army rolls onto the board as well, and thanks to some lucky night-fight rolls, I manage to clip a few termagaunts with a smart missile system, and take out a few more with plasma rifles and missile pods before jumping the battlesuits back over a wall and into a nice cozy kroot blanket.

Turn 2 - the Kroot blanket proves essential, as a squad of Genestealers pop up right next to them on the left flank. The Termagaunts make a break for the broadside in the rear-center of my deployment zone, and various shooting sees a bunch of lucky saves from my Tanks. In combat, the Genestealers manage to slaughter the Kroot to a ...man?... but leave my battlesuits unscathed. The warriors and Gaunts in the back-mid-right (it works in my head, dangit!) move up a little and fire on the 'fish, but fail to do much, and proceed to move back and hide there for most of the game, denying me kill points.

Disheartened by this, the 3 Battlesuits + Shield drones decide to take their chances with the Carnifex's in the back left, and jump over the impassable barrier again to peg some Hormagaunts with rapid-fire plasma rifles and missile pods. The devilfish move up from the lower right edge to drop 2 squads of fire warriors almost right in front of the termagaunts, and the fiesty little buggers are finally killed off by ehe combined smart-missile and rapid-fire pulse rifle barrage. Fiesty little buggers. The Gaunts in the back take a pie-plate to the face, but 4 survive and the Hive Mind says 'Stay!'.

Turn 3 - The sniper 'Fex starts pouring fire into the Shas'El command squad, knocking out a shield drone, while the devilfex advances to within horrible-mangled-death-for-tau range. The warriors and hormagaunts in the middle pour fire at one of the fire warrior squads, killing 4, but they make their leadership and stay. The Genestealers pour forward (yiike!), and the other 'stealers fail to come on the board.

Shooting sees a massive amount of combined fire fail to kill the Genestealers - 10 pulse rifles, 12 smart missiles, and the Hammerhead Submunition - while almost the entirety of the Tau army turtles up in the back middle of my deployment zone, save the devilfish, who move in front of the fire warriors to provide some cover. The battlesuits take amost all of the wounds off of one Devilfex, but it lives.

Turn 4 - the 2nd squad of Genestealers comes on, but at almost the same place as the 1st did - they've got a looong run ahead of them. The warriors and hormagaunts in the middle throw caution to the wind and move in on the battlesuits, with the sniperfex steadily moving forward as well. The Devilfex gives them up for dead and moves through the woods, preparing to kill the Tau Turtle formation the next turn. Shooting sees all but the Shas'el Commander die screaming, and he manages to survive unscathed. The Hormagaunts and warriors pile into combat, but only manage one wound, which the Commander happily returns, tieing combat. The back-mid-right warriors and gaunts move forward to salvage some kill points, shooting the smart missiles off of a devilfish and leaving the crew shaken.

Tau shooting proves MUCH more effective, and the Devilfex is laid low by a lucky shot from a lowly fire warrior, while remaining Genestealers from the first batch are killed by the Broadside's smart missile fire. The Hammerhead's submunition scatters off the field, proving ineffectual. The commander remains in combat, nothing particularly intersting happening over there.

Turn 5 - The warriors and gaunts in the back-mid-right move forward and immbobilize the devilfish they'd shot last turn, the genestealers continue charging towards relevance, and the combat with the Commander and the Tyranid Warriors continues a-pace, neither scoring a wound.

Tau shooting fails to do much, and isn't really worth noting. The Commander STILL won't accept defeat, and keeps fighting without taking any wounds.

Russel rolled a 1 on the dawn of war 'continue the fight' thingy, and the game ended. I won by 3 kill points (Genestealers, Termagaunts and Devil-fex) to 1 (Kroot), but it was a tough fight, and 1 more turn would have likely tied it up without much trouble.

A good game - we both made (in hindsight) tactical no-no's, managed both lucky and unlucky dice rolls, and generally had a good time. For my part, I've learned that the Kroot are still essentially useless, and luckly remembered early on that staying near the board edges with Genestealers lurking around was tantamount to suicide. Turtling worked alright, but I chock my win mainly to the fact that Russell wasn't able to bring any sort of mass-rush or combined shooting at me, the 'Fexs being distracted by the Battlesuits and the stealers being too far away when they came on.

1000pt Tau Army List

From the basics, here's the 1000pt Tau Army List that I'll be using as the 'core' of my army - essentially, what I'll probably end up fielding in almost every game. Not too sure how this'll preform, but hey, maybe I'll get to give it a try soon.

Tau 1000pts
HQ:
-Shas'El Commander w/ Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multi-tracker, Hard-Wired (HW) Drone Controller and 2 shield Drones
--> 2 Shas'vre Bodyguards, w/ Plasma Rifles, Missile Pods, Targeting Arrays, and HW Multi-trackers.

Troops:
- 7 Fire Warriors
--> Devilfish transport w/ Smart Missile System, Targeting Array, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod
- 7 Fire Warriors
--> Devilfish transport w/ Smart Missile System, Targeting Array, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod
-12 Kroot

Heavy Support:
- Hammerhead Gunship w/ Railgun, Smart Missile System, Multi-tracker, Disruption Pod
- Broadside Battlesuit, advanced stabilization System


A little heavy on the Groundpounders, and this list will have a slightly bigger problem with a vehicle heavy enemy army than other Tau lists (which is to say, still not that much), but I like it. I nixed a broadside to add a 12 kroot bodyguard, since enemies with brains (and tanks to protect) will be targeting the broadside and Hammerhead with whatever outflankers' they've got - most likely infantry, a weakness for most of my railgun-equiped stuff. If nothing else, they'll make a good infiltrating harrasement/throwaway unit to give me another turn of shooting.

Ordinarily, I'd go at least 8 fire warriors per squad, but I tried the 6 man squads in a battle the other day and they did a LOT better than expected, since the enemy underestimates them based on size, and I didn't think they'd do much myself - until they started rapid-firing 'Cheese Machine' (space marines) squads to death, claiming out-of-the-way objectives for cheap, and being overlooked in favor of more potshots at my tanks. Therefore, I compromised at 7 - big enough to do damage, not quite big enough to be a serious priority.

If/when I play this list, I'll throw out a battle report. If I don't end up playing tonight, I plan on throwing a Devilfish onto the 'What's Painted' list - I think it'll be easier to paint than the fire warriors, honestly enough.