A tale of fail: Tau vs. Daemons

Greetings,
initially Trotzki and me just had in mind to play one of our usual weekly games. We met after work, Trotzki had his daemons and I was up playing tau again, as my tyranids are not ready for more than "test-games". We decided to play cities of death again (imo the best addition to 40k so far). We set up a board with an abandoned fortification in the center consisting of our three bastions and aegis lines, surrounded by some buildings and containers and a street. The mission would be to secure the own building and attack the one the enemy had declared to be his own (I never can recall how the missions are called correctly). In hindsight we chose absolutely pointless stratagems. I fortified my home building and would get feel no pain additionally. Trotzki had the two stratagems where he would get a 5+ cover save in the open due to smoke grenades (amazing when you have a 5+ invul save as well...) and wrecking gear to tear down buildings.
I lost the first roll.off and had to set up first. I placed my broadsides and the kroot in the fortified building the railhead and the two deathrains and the stealth suits behind him next to the street. The ionhead and two fireknives on the other side. I wanted to create some kind of two-pronged assault on his building on the opposite site of the board. I kept both my warfishes and the command fireknife team in reserve.

On my first turn I just moved towards his objective and as no daemons were on the field yet, no shooting occured. Trotzki was lucky to get his designated first wave and so a greater daemon of tzeentch, 15 daemonettes, a tzeentch herald and a daemon prince dedicated to tzeentch as well materialized in real-space. But the warp was treacherous and the daemon prince mishapped to the other end of the board. Maybe a sign of things to come.
Things like the greater daemon of tzeentch "el poldo diablo" shooting on my fireknives.

Nothing spectacular, the bolt of tzeentch just roasted one shield drone leaving the suits unharmed. But who would have thought that this particular shield drone was the shas'ui's heirloom which he favoured more than his XV8 suit? Every evening he spent his free time with lovingly cleaning and optimizing it while his buddies went out to meet the girls or getting involved in a good old brawl in the local tavern. And now that. A warp-spawned monstrosity hurled a shiny bolt at him and in a desperate hover-jump his drone finally fulfilled its duty and saved him (and his squad-mate) from being turned to slimey goo. That was too much for one day. With a cry of desparation on his lips the shas'ui jumped for the burning remains of his once beloved drone, grabbed them under his battle suits arms and turned tail, running home!
That seemed to be the signal for a game of mutual abysmal dice rolling.
On Trotzki's second turn no reserves arrived, not a single unit. Oh lucky me. Don't blame me that I don't remember every normal detail of that game, I just want to share the highlights. On my turn the command team of three fire knives showed up and under the combined firepower of them, the ionhead and 6 firewarriors and the warfish el poldo diablo was sent back to the warp. Can you imagine what happened on Trotzki's turn with the command team? I guess you know what this is all about. Right, the shield drones were destroyed. And what do elite firewarriors do when that happens? Right again. They cut and run, turn tail, flee. To make long things short, the deathrains lost their single drone as well, failed their morale check and fled. But hey! I learned from the other two squads and I had moved them more to the center of the board. So when they fled 8" to my table edge they ended their run merely 1" from it! And as exceptions some kind of proof the rules, they passed their morale check to regroup. Hah!
Next remarkable thing was the soulgrinder. He didn't do much damage the round he appeared. And I was of good spirit as he materialized right infront of two BS4 twin-linked railguns and railhead lurking on his side.

The broadsides hit but didn't penetrate and the railhead missed with a 1. Over the remaining course of the game I just managed to immobilize him and destroy his mawcannon. It's not too spectacular but it matched the feeling of the game.

Trotzki had bad luck with his last daemonettes which didn't show up until turn 5, where they mishapped and were sent back to warp. On turn 6 they appeared again, scattered, mishapped and were claimed by the warp.
In the end I didn't manage to get anything to Trotzki's building, the last surviving deathrain was annihilated by the daemon prince, who later smashed the railhead.

Trotzki had the damaged soulgrinder with one foot/claw in my building and nothing to claim his home base. So the only acceptable outcame was a draw.

I am definitely not complaining about this poor dice rolling as it was bad luck on both sides and wasn't one-sided, what would have caused a rather disappointing if not annoying game for one of us. So sometimes it was that ridiculous it even was starting to get funny again.

I want to end with a citation from the "Imperial Infantrymen's uplifting Primer" concerning cowardly battlesuits:

"There are several types of tau 'Battlesuits' (as they
are laughably known), all equally ineffective. Battlesuits
are given to warriors who are even more
cowardly than their compatriots, and who refuse to
enter combat without maximum protection.
Feckless cowards! The tau encased in the cumbersome,
brittle arnour are usually inexperienced and
untrained.
Battlesuits are such easy targets that they
might as well have a bull's eye painted on them.
But it should be put on the back because they will,
in all likelihood, run away at the first sighting of a
well-armed and determined Imperial Guardsman!"

Did you experience something similar or have you had games like this where all and everything seems to fail?

Tau vs. Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 3

So the Tau got tabled in Round 1, almost tabled their opponent in Round 2. And went into the 3rd Round game with mixed feeling, who would it be? Funny enough it was the same guy that the demons had to face in Round 1.

3^rd game: Imperial Guard

Pitched battle, seize ground (5 objectives)

I cant’t remember the exact list as I am not familiar with guard lists. I remember:

Command squad with master of ordnance and master of the fleet

A lot of infantry with missile launchers, lascannons and plasma rifles (nice conversions with WWII style rifle grenades!)

1 chimera (with to me unknown content)

Heavy weapons team with 2 missile launcher and 1 lascannon

Leman Russ squadron (3 with heavy bolter in the hull)

Thunderer siege tank

Basilisk

2 scout sentinels with autocannon

Again this was a very funny and exciting game with a nice opponent.

Again I lost the roll to decide whether to go first or second and he decided to start. I would have done the same. He deployed everything evenly stretched over his table half with the basilisk, heavy weapons team and leman russ squadron on the flank to my left and the thunderer on the other side. The sentinels would be outflanking. As it turned out I missed that he said that and completely forgot about them.

I was a bit unsure of what to deploy and what to put into reserves. As it was an objective based mission I held my troop choices back of course, the kroot would make a flank march. I decided to place the broadsides in the highest ruin in my deployment zone with one model in each storey so that his numerous pie-plates wouldn’t do so much harm with one hit. The hammerhead was placed on the other side on my right flank behind some cover. But as every ruin in my zone was too small to hide a tank it would be targetable from at least one lascannon/missile launcher and of course from my big concern the basilisk. As the hits on side armour with strength 9 would bring me into serious trouble, I placed the death rains next to the broadsides out of line of sight so that they could jump-shoot-jump and hopefully kill the artillery tank and maybe could target the heavy weapons team later on. The ionhead would be pretty much useless this game so I decided to use it as kind of a bait or flying cover and placed it in the middle of my deployment zone. I didn’t really know what to do with my fire knives so I placed them there too, to take some shots at the heavy weapons. My command squad would be deep striking.

So I can’t remember how each turn went on in detail. First turn of his shooting made my fire knife team lose their morale seeing one of their precious shield drones destroyed so they decided to cut and run. Cowards. Another shield drone of the broadsides was destroyed but they bravely held their ground.
On my turn I destroyed the basilisk as planned but just managed to stun one of the leman russ and destroy the battle cannon of the same. Very short turn.

And then my luck turned on me. The remaining gun drone of the broadsides was destroyed and I rolled double 6s for the morale check and again double 6s for the retreating distance so my broadsides fled from the battlefield. In addition the railgun on the hammerhead was smashed. So stripped of any kind of anti-tank capability I faced a forlorn battle as I couldn’t do much against armour 14.

So in the remaining turns my kroot outflanked and killed the heavy weapons team and another 10 men squad before being killed by an overwhelming number of guardsmen.

I risked deep striking my commander and retinue behind the thunderer and was awarded by its destruction.

The sentinels I forgot appeared behind my incapacitated hammerhead and immobilized it before being destroyed by the ionhead and deathrains.

I charged my command squad into the two squads on the right flank and tried to kill at least one of it and thereby pulling them from the objective they held until then but failing a lot of armour saves and rolling high for morale and then low for the initiative test didn’t help much. The commander and his remaining bodyguard were overrun. In the end I managed to kill enough of this squad with smart missiles of the crashed railhead so that they had to fall back and couldn’t claim that obejective. My firewarriors never disembarked and their transports armours couldn’t be penetrated by a lot of shelling so I held one of my own objective and contested the other one which was in turn contested by the leman russ’es. I lost 1 to 2 and a lot of victory points. My secret objective was to brake one of his squads in close combat so that that squad would run away from the table. Ridiculously hard to achieve with tau. But funnily my opponent didn’t achieve his objective too. He had to destroy my most expensive tank, the railhead, which was immobilized and stripped of all weapons but not destroyed! Yeehaw ;-)

So coming to the end I want to thank my opponents for mostly very nice and smooth games and of course to all who made this tournament possible.

Conclusion: 

So what do I think of my army performing in a tournament. Considering that I didn’t face only tournament-streamlined armies I am very happy with the overall performance. Against the Chaos list there isn’t much I could have done. I am not sure if a list like this could be beaten with tau, at least not with my army composition and experience. My second opponent’s list wasn’t really a challenge and marines in the open are no match against 5 plasma rifles, an ion cannon and a lot of strength 5 shots. And my last game was more a case of bad luck than of anything else. I think that I could have got at least a draw when all my railguns wouldn’t have been destroyed so early.

I think it was the right choice to take the ion cannon armed hammerhead instead of the skyray and I’ll be fielding it again in future games, at least at these point levels. At more points I might consider taking a second railhead. Another option of course is to take 3 broadsides and both hammerhead variants. I have to try this some day. And I have to emphasize the kroot. They are so great I really really recommend taking them. They give such a great versatility either by being just a cheap meat shield or by outflanking and thereby offering the opportunity to threaten the enemy’s flank. And of course they are the only choice which has something like close combat abilities. And they are scoring.

One thing which was of a concern is that a unit consisting of 2 suits and 2 shield drones have to take a morale check when one drone goes down. And that is really annoying when your precious unit flees the field of battle just because their silly drone is a smoking wreck and they are. I thought, that’s the purpose of the shield drones. A unit of 3 suits and 2 drones should be better as it would take 2 destroyed drones to force the morale check. So that’s something I am going to change.

Tau vs. Dark Angels - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 2

Well Round 1 was a bit of a let down for the Tau, so good for us there was a break. So we went to get some food and talk it over.

After some nice hot dogs we were ready for Rouns 2, and i think this was a much more enjoyable experience, but enough of me talking!

2^nd game: Dark Angels

Spearhead, table quarters (at least one scoring unit and no enemy unit in one quarter)

Army List:

Interrogator Chaplain in terminator armour with combi-flamer

5 terminators (2 with shield and hammer, 2 with twin lightning claws, 1 with heavy flamer)

2x 10 marines with melta and heavy bolter/plasma cannon

5 marines with melta

10 devastors with 2 lascannons, 2 plasma cannons

Land raider crusader with multi melta

Vindicator

Land speeder with multi melta

This game was in every way the opposite of the first game and the guy I played against was very nice and a good sport.

I faced a more or less foot slogging marine army with a lot of bodies and every single unit could hold one table quarter as everything was scoring. He chose to deploy and go first and set up everything close to the middle so that his units could walk into every quarter first turn with the land raider, vindicator and land speeder coming to my quarter.

I was a bit impressed by so many marines so I decided to build a castle in my quarter with the broadsides standing on some kind of fortification with tanks and crisis suits behind that more or less out of line of sight.

As I only had 3 scoring units I decided to keep my fire warriors and the kroot in reserve with the latter outflanking. My bonus mission objective was to have more points of HQ on the table in the end so my commander would be in reserve as well.

First turn was as expected. He boosted the land speeder 24” towards my homebase and drove 12” with the land raider and vindicator, popping smoke. All marine units (all combat squadded) except the 2 lascannon dev-squad walked into the adjacent table quarters. The lascannons were the only ones able to shoot so they opened fire on my broadsides, killing one shield drone.
On my turn I jumped out of cover and opened fire. I thought my death rains could down the land speeder but I only managed to stun it. The hammerhead and the broadsides opened fire on the land raider but as the dark angels smoke launcher reduced every hit to glancing I only managed to shake it and destroy the assault cannon. The ionhead killed one or two marines of the lascannon dev-squad. In the end all suits jumped back behind the fortification.

In his second turn he continued to drive his tanks towards my little castle and his troops marched again. I don’t know why he did that, so he couldn’t fire one more turn and he even did not walk into cover (which was rare, admittedly), only the lascannons held their position. He fired the demolisher cannon at my broadsides but scattered a bit so I suffered only one wound which was saved by the shield drone. The railhead suffered one hit from a lascannon but the disruption pod negated any harm.
All railguns fired on the land raider and shook the crew, no immobilization, damn. The deathrains immobilized the speeder and destroyed the multimelta. But it still would contest my table quarter so it would take one more turn of fire to bring it down. I decided to start the push into another table quarter, so I jumped my fire knives not behind the fortification but towards the so far unclaimed quarter.

Third turn’s movement saw the land raider and vindicator continuing the push to my deployment zone and at last shooting from the marines. The demolisher shell scattered yet again and caused no damage. A few heavy bolter shells pinged off the armour of the broadsides and the lascannon weren’t able to damage the skimmers.

One devilfish and my commander arrived and I placed them to shoot at the marines in the table quarter to my right, the commander and bodyguards being able to jump behind cover in the assault phase. I destroyed the land raider with the hammerhead so the broadsides, the two fire knives and the ionhead fired on the disembarked death wing terminators, killing only one lightning claw armed one. The combined fire of the command squad and the devilfish killed 9(!) marines.

 
In his fourth turn he shot another gloriously scattering demolisher shell at my fire knives, killing none and the few bolter and heavy bolter rounds didn’t do anything as well. His terminators destroyed the shield drone of the death rains but weren’t out of assault range. I really started to feel sorry for him at this point.

On my fourth turn all remaining reserves arrived and the outflanking kroot showed up on my right hand side in charge range to the plasma cannon dev-squad. The ionhead fired at the side armour of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the fire knives killed the 5 men-squad in this table quarter. My commander used his target lock to kill the last remaining marine in front of the team and his bodyguards killed one of the devastators. The death wing terminators and the interrogator chaplain threatened my home base, so I fired everything I had at them, even the firewarriors disembarked to fire and the deathrains used their flamer. I killed everyone but one lightning claw terminator. I don’t know why he put a wound from a railgun on his chaplain. Maybe he thought the rosaries would save him. But it didn’t and the solid slug killed him instantly. The kroot charged the remaining four devastators and killed 2, losing 2 of their own. The death rains jumped in front of the firewarriors to protect them from getting charged by the last terminator.

In the remaining turns I killed the marines in his corner and all other marines on the table, wiping him out completely. In the end I only lost 3 shield drones and the death rains and 5 kroot.

I have to thank my opponent for a really kind and funny game, never losing his humour even when facing a massacre. And that made me feel a bit bad about tabling him in the end. But I think his list isn’t very suitable for a tournament environment. He mentioned he usually plays the double wing and I think that would be far better.

Tau vs. Double Lash - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 1

Hey,

so i finally got around to post the battle reports the guys wrote up and put in some pictures. I promise I gonna get you the full army lists for each game as my stupid "online codex" program isn't working as it should!

So without further talking lets start with Managarm´s Report for his Round 1 game!

Managarm here, tuning in to report of my three games during the local tournament.

1st game: Chaos Space Marines

Dawn of War, capture and control

Army List:

2x Daemon prince with wings and lash,

3 chaos terminators

2x5 chaos marines with melta in rhino 

5 chaos marines with melta in land raider with daemonic possession

3x3 obliterator

 

The standard “dual-lash-9-obliterator-I-win” list. Boring to play (in my oppinion) and boring to play against. And that was exactly how it turned out. I was a bit disappointed that I had to play my first tournament game against one of the hardest list one can field, but okay, let’s take it.

The guy I played knew what he was doing and had played a lot of tournaments so far. He won the roll to go first and did so. He placed one rhino with the side exactly at the middle line with daemon prince behind it (actually no daemon prince but a conversion from bits of the possessed and chaos spawns…so not the usual size for a monstrous creature...) and the other rhino behind some ruins in his deployment zone. I deployed nothing and kept the fire knife team in reserve to deepstrike later on, so he moved everything else on the board and the rhino and daemon prince further to my deployment zone.

I don’t want to go into too much detail as the game was not much fun to play. I made one mistake that I didn’t shoot at the daemon prince in my first turn. I don’t know why I did that. The remaining 5 turns consisted of jumping to me, lashing the suits to the daemon princes, killing them in my turn so I couldn’t shoot them and blasting the tanks to pieces with the obliterators. Rinse and repeat until no tau is left on the field. In combination with that this guy wasn’t very polite (re-measuring every second move I did is not something which makes me comfortable) and I made a mistake in close combat (I hit his prince on 4+ instead on 5+) which seemed to piss him off more than necessary I was glad when the game was over.

Of course I got no tournament points by getting tabled.

A never ending cycle of painting tau battlesuits

Hi guys,

I am very busy with getting everything painted until saturday. Currently I am working on the last crisis suit and the ion cannon for the hammerhead.
Just wanted to show you the latest additions, another fireknife suit and my second broadside:

Fireknife XV8

Broadside XV88 MkI

Nothing too specatacular, but I hope that the converted heads and the little re-posing of the arms and legs of the fireknife gives a bit more dynamic to this model.

The great conversion idea for the head can be found here at warhammer tau. Thanks to Adam again for nice ideas and inspiration.

Pictures of the 3 other suits I painted over the last weeks are due to follow and of course a family picture of the complete tournament army will be online at friday, so stay tuned!

Skyray or not?

Greetings,

silence dropped onto Bellum Aeternum for the last weeks due to too much work in real life. But now I have holidays and I spend my time with painting and considering army lists as the tournament is in less than two weeks. I have to paint 4 crisis suits and 1 broadside, 2 crisis are done and the broadside will be finished today.
Trotzki and me had some test games for training the last weeks and it seems I will have a hard time with my tau army at the tournament. I played the list I have posted earlier and it was a bit boring with 3 hammerheads, so I changed the heavy support choices for 2 broadsides, 1 hammerhead with railgun and a skyray. I had to drop 4 kroot for freeing points, so list is as follows:

Commander Shas'El, XV84-fireknife variant, targeting array, stimulant injector, 2 shield drones
bodyguard fireknife

3 Fireknives, 'Vre with targeting array

2 deathrains (TL missile pod, flamer, multitracker)

2x6 fire warriors in warfish (SMS, multitracker, tageting array, disruption pods, flechette dischargers)

16 kroot

2 broadside, targeting arrays, 2 shield drones

hammerhead, railgun, SMS, target lock, disruption pod, flechette discharger

skyray, SMS, targeting array, disruption pod, flechette discharger

1647 points


We just managed to play two games. Sorry, no pictures as my camera does not work with empty batteries (who would have thought) and I had to proxy a few minis and that looks terrible.

The first game was against Trotzki's semi-mech eldar (exarch with jump generator, warp spiders, 2x10 guardians, 10 dire avenger in serpent, 6 harlequins in serpent, 6 fire dragons in falcon, wraithlord).
Very sad, very sad. We played with two objectives in the own deployment zone. Trotzki had everything in reserve, I kept everything in reserve but the broadsides and their kroot screen on my objective. On turn two nearly everything became available for the eldar and the tanks zoomed towards my deployment zone and the dice gods failed me yet again (or preferred Trotzki, as you wish) I managed to do absolutely nothing, not even a shaken result (2 hits, with immobilized and weapon destroyed on a serpent with cover save reduced to 6+ by markerlights. Passed.) To make long things short, I got outmanoeuvred and shot down and killed in close combat. I abandoned my home objective and tried to run for Trotzki's but I got smashed there too. I made a few mistakes to be honest. I placed my hammerhead next to the broadsides as it became available from reserve and that stripped me of my whole anti-tank capability after two turns. I won't do that again, lesson learned. But it's impossible to win against such a fast force like eldar when you are not able to bring their tanks down quickly. You get outmanoeuvred and wiped out by highly specialised units. And bad dice rolling does not help either.

Second game was against a more or less fun list of marines:
Librarian in terminator armour with vortex of doom and gate of infinity,
5 terminators with assault cannon,
dreadnought with multi melta and heavy flamer,
2x10 tactical marines with missile launcher and melta in drop pod,
10 assault marines with fist sergeant, 2 flamer,
land speeder with multi melta and heavy flamer,
land raider with extra armour,
predator annihilator with lascannon sponsons, extra armour

That was a close and funny game. It started very bad for me as I seem to be unable to have luck with dices, but that bad luck turned around and "lady average" showed up in the second part of the game. We played the same mission with the same deployment and I placed the broadsides and the kroot on my objective, the broadsides on the second level of a building and the fireknife unit behind that ruin. I split my force into two parts, one consisting of the deathrains, the hammerhead and one fish trying to get to his objective and the other part defending my home objective as I saw a chance to hold it. I kept the skyray in the middle of my table edge to lend marker light support where needed. I made one mistake as not knowing the rules properly. I charged two combat squads with my kroot and one of those with my command team, thinking I would kill the smaller combat squad with the commander and his bodyguard so that he is free again on my next turn. But as the rule for multiple combat resolutions says, they have to stay in contact with the other ongoing close combat. I really thought that would be the game deciding moment as the terminators were due to charge. But luck was on my side this time and I could win this fight and managed to bring the two remaining kroot between the terminators and my command team and on top of this one kroot survived the shooting by going to ground and never failing a morale check. So I could gun down the terminators and all 20 tactical marines. The force designated to capture Trotzki's objective was taken down by assault marines and the land speeder. After the dust had settled, one lone (and pinned) fire warrior hold my objective and I had won this game.

So having played a few games with my former list and two games with this list, I will be fielding broadsides with kroot as screening unit. A railhead will definitely be in it too. Yesterday I thought about the skyray and its role in this army. Not much dakka for the spent points, that's obvious. But are the two, in most cases the one markerlight hit worth it? In the first games against eldar it was useless, completely. In the second game the markerlights boosted the ballistic skill of the fireknife squad so that the terminators suffered more plasma and missile hits. In this case it was well worth it. As I won't be able to play a game this week I have to "theorycraft" another idea. I am considering a hammerhead with ioncannon. The list would be something like that:

Unnamed1650 Pts  -   Tau Army

1 Commander Shas'el (XV 84 Variant) (HQ)     
     Target Lock; Markerlight; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Stimulant Injector
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
          Hard-wired multi-tracker
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
          Hard-wired multi-tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader (Elites)
     Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired multi-tracker
     Bonding Knife
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader (Elites)
     Flamer; TL Missile Pod
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Flamer; TL Missile Pod

6 FireWarrior Team (Troops)
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Flechette Discharger
          Multi-tracker

6 FireWarrior Team (Troops)
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Flechette Discharger
          Multi-tracker

16 Kroot Carnivore Squad (Troops)
     Kroot Rifle

1 Broadside Battlesuit Team Leader (Heavy Support)
     Smart Missile System; TL Railgun; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired drone controller
     Bonding Knife
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Broadside Battlesuit
          Smart Missile System; TL Railgun; Targeting Array

1 Hammerhead Gunship (Heavy Support)
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Flechette Discharger
     Multi-tracker
     Target Lock
     Disruption Pod

1 Hammerhead Gunship (Heavy Support)
     Ion Cannon; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Flechette Discharger
     Multi-tracker

Models in Army: 48
Total Army Cost: 1646

By taking the cheaper Ionhead I now can take another bodyguard for the commander thereby getting another BS4 fireknife. So the need for markerlights becomes somewhat redundant. And I have a bit more dakka. I think that 3 str. 7 shots should help against monstrous creatures, light transports and of course against power armour.
The point is, I haven't much time left to playtest this list and I know that the ionhead does not appear in any list you find in forums or on blogs, the so called internet-wisdom seems to despise this version of the hammerhead. Maybe it is really so bad but I don't know, on paper it looks ok. Does someone have experience with it? What list would you prefer? (I know the first list is pretty mich the same as the one Adam from Warhammer Tau fields).

So far so good, that's it for the moment. I have to paint some battlesuits! Pics are to follow later this week.

New forgeworld tau battlesuit on the horizon

Look what's coming to us soon!

The new XV-9 battlesuit! I am absolutely amazed by this model. Again forgeworld is doing such a great job at designing  shiny tau battlesuits. Further pics here.

Have a look at the proposed rules here. I only say toughness 5... vectored retro thrusters.... and fast attack choice!

I have to place order....now!

Revised Tau Tournament List

Hey everybody,

I revised my Tau list that I am going to take to a tournament in november. I took the advices I got here into consideration and came up with this list now.

Tau 1650 points v2:

 1 Commander Shas'el (XV 84 Variant)
     Target Lock; Markerlight; Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Bonding Knife; Hardwired multi-tracker; Stimulant Injector;
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Bodyguard Shas'vre
        Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
        Hard-wired multi-tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Shas'vre
     Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Targeting Array
     Hard-wired multi-tracker
     Bonding Knife    
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Missile Pod; Plasma Rifle; Multi-Tracker

1 Crisis Battlesuit Team Leader
     Flamer; TL Missile Pod
     Hard-wired drone controller
     1 Shield Drone
     1 Crisis Battlesuit
          Flamer; TL Missile Pod

6 FireWarrior Team
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish         
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Multi-tracker
          Sensor Spines

6 FireWarrior Team
     Pulse Rifle (x6)
     1 Devilfish         
          Smart Missile System
          Disruption Pod
          Targetting Array
          Multi-tracker
          Sensor Spines

20 Kroot Carnivore Squad
     Kroot Rifle

1 Hammerhead Gunship
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker

1 Hammerhead Gunship 
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker


1 Hammerhead Gunship 
     Railgun; Smart Missile System
     #Targetting Array
     Disruption Pod
     Target Lock
     Multi-tracker

Models in army: 49
Points: 1649


So I kicked out the stealth team, stripped all tanks off the flechette dischargers and degraded the Shas'O to Shas'El and most important I added more fireknives to the list for better anti-MEQ capability. At the moment I run 3 railheads for I think I definitaly need them for anti-tank.
I had 2 games with this list last weekend. First game was against Trotzki's daemon list where we played annihilation. That ended as a draw. The railheads seemed to miss anything with their guns and Trotzki's soulgrinder moved around unharmed for a while and ate one flank for breakfast.  Everything else performed averagely. I think I would have won if the game lasted longer than 5 turns. It was a solid game and we both were rather content with our lists.

Next game was against my marines which proxied a Vulcan list with 2 land raiders (1 redeemer, 1 normal), 2 squads of TH/SS terminators, 2 tac-squads with multi-melta and melta in drop pod and a land speeder with HF/MM. Again annihilation and dawn of war deployment where we both kept everything in reserve. That game was disastrous. I rolled abysmally for about anything. The dearly needed fireknives showed up on turn 5 and missed pretty well. The hammerheads again weren't able to harm anything (even drop pods!!! *argh*) and I don't need to talk about the little crappy guys called firewarriors. Admittedly Clausewitz who played my marines rolled more than above average (for example 17 shots with bolters against 3 crisis suits, 17 hits, 14 wounds....you can imagine the rest). The game ended 6 to 3 killpoints in the marine's favour.

Ok, I won't complain about failing dice rolls. That happens, it's unnerving but it happens.

Conclusion: This list should work I think. Bad luck away, I should have won the second game or got at least a draw. 3 railheads should suffice to cope with the land raiders and the missile pods should crack the drop pods. And as long as I can stay out of 12" range of the meltas I should be fine. The fireknives are really needed for anti-MEQ firepower.
One thing I lack are markerlights. But at the moment I see no way in getting them into this list. The 3 railheads are definitely needed, so there sadly is no place for the skyray. And I do not own pathfinders and the time is too short to paint a few of them. So I think I have to live with that.
The kroot are great as always. The firewarriors suck but are kept at a minimum at the moment. Taking only one mounted squad would let me down in objective based missions, so I think I have to live with them for the time being.
One thing I am thinking about is to change the heavy support choices. The alternative would be dropping one hammerhead and taking 2 broadsides with ASS and 2 shield drones. That would grant me with one more railgun. But the downside with this would be the impaired mobility and I think I would need at least 10 kroot to screen them from turn 2 attacks. Tau aren't that mobile though and having this static element would further decrease the mobility so I am not so fond of that.
Speaking of mobility, the sensor spines saved me more than one time. Staying away from the enemy as far as possible is key and this wargear lets you fly around more freely. I will take these, but I am not sure where to put them. Either on the hammerheads to grant them more flexibility or on the fishes for grabbing objectives. That needs to be tested.

As always, your comments are very welcome and helpful!

Taking the Tau to a tournament

Greetings,

as the title tells, Trotzki and me are going to participate in a local tournament and I will play with my Tau.

The tournament will be at the first weekend of november, so there is still pretty much time left, but I will need a bit time to finish the army and get everything painted in the first place and secondly I will have to practice a lot.

1650 points will be played with normal FOC, forge world stuff is allowed too and there will be some special rules which are still to be announced.

I have considered something like this list:


1650P Tau Army list:

Shas'O
XV84 suit, plasma rifle, missile pod, shield generator, hardwired multitracker, stimulant injector, hard wired drone controller with 2 shield drones
bodyguard with plasma rifle, missile pod, targetting array, hard wired multitracker

XV8 team (3) with TL missile pod, flamer, team leader with bonding knife

Stealth team (3), all with targetting array and burst cannon

(2x) 6 fire warriors
Devilfish, smart missile system, targetting array, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers, sensor spines

20 kroot

(2x) Hammerhead with railgun, smart missile system, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers, target lock, sensor spines

Sky ray with smart missile system, targetting array, multi tracker, disruption pod, flechette dischargers



These are my first thoughts, so there is a lot of space for changes. One thin is the sky ray, actually I am not sure if he is that valuable. The marker lights are nice though. But Another hammerhead could be nice too, be it a railhead or an ionhead.
I could kick all sensor spines out as well, thereby freeing 50 points.
And considering that more then half of all players seem to play MEQ, I think I will need a bit more punch against power armour.

My list needs me buying (and painting) at least 2 more crisis suits at the moment and if I take a third hammerhead I will have to paint the gun and turret. And the hammerhead with the green camo is at the painting table again to match it up with the rest of the army.

So tweaking of this list and of course painting more tau miniatures is on the schedule for the next weeks.

And of course I'd be glad, if someone leaves a comment on the list.

New painted stuff: Sternguard and Tau Broadside

Hey everybody,

just a quick one this evening. I just want to show the new minis I have painted over the last weeks.
First off, I started to paint my self-made sternguard. I plundered my bitsbox and found a lot of useful stuff and I tried to make combi-meltas from bolters and meltas and that worked out so well that I assembled 4, so that I can equip all 5 sternguards with them.
Here are the first 3 including the sergeant with lightning claw:


And for the greater good I finished the first broadside to pack more punsh against the mighty tanks of the imperial guard (and land raiders of course). For the lack of shield drones I just took the upper side of gundrones. That has to suffice for the moment:


It's pretty obvious what's coming up next: the last 2 sternguards and a second broadside. But I am a little bit short of time at the moment. The usual excuses, I know...

Tau Sky Ray

Hey folks,

the third battle tank for my expanding tau army has just left the assembly yard, this time it's a sky ray missile gunship.
But see for yourselves:




I think it fits well with the hammerhead I painted earlier. Only thing is the light blue camouflage is a little bit lighter than on the hammerhead since I had to re-do my 4-colour-mix for that and must have missed the exact ratio.

With that I can field about 1650 points of Tau goodness. So, at last, I am ready to play!


Next week I am back at university and that will put an end to this extensive painting over the last weeks.
But I will start the big project of painting tanks a little bit more realistic: a leman russ is the dummy where I try some new techniques I read about and I'm going to teach myself (e.g. airbrushing, weathering, washing, layering, blending...) and then I will finally begin with the stormblade!
You can expect pics!

Tau Stealth Marker Team and Kroot

Greetings,

just a little update on what I did last week. I finished 6 Kroot and a 3 men/tau stealth marker team.

XV25 Stealth Suits

Kroot carnivore squad

The Kroot were painted quickly with foundation colours and washes, it took me about 6 hours from sprue to finished. That's really awesome and the result is ok in my eyes.

The Stealths got some more attention but I tried to paint them a little bit faster than I usually do. In this case I painted the whole miniature in shadow grey and applied my self-made black wash in the recesses and armour joints with a fine detail brush. You save a little bit time with that as you do not need to be very precise when adding the grey. I did the same with the hammerhead by the way.

Heavy Fire Support: Tau Hammerhead

Good morning!

I finally finished my second Hammerhead yesterday and here it is!
I put a lot of effort into it, especially the highlights along the armour segments are a little bit exhausting, but overall I think it paid off.
I am particularly happy with the decals as they aren't glossy (the trick with gloss varnish as undercoat then the decal and matt varnish as cover really works out well)

Mind the blue glowing power unit :-)

Sa'cea Hammerhead

That brings the army at about 1250 points. Next on the schedule are 6 more Kroot and a 3 men stealth marker team.

Tau XV84 Commander

Here we go, my latest addition to my expanding Tau army: the XV84 Crisis suit with marker light.




Yeah, Forge World miniatures....that's something special....you get addicted to it once you have your first models.
I think these suits look way better than the ones from GW, much more hulking and somewhat threatening and you can pose them more freely. I thought a lot about which pose I wanted to have him and I decided to let him jump away from the enemy and blasting away with his burst cannon. (I was a little bit inspired by the Tau commander in DoW, when he makes this kind of jump).
The weapons are both magnetized so I can switch between all loadouts I want.

...and here is why I have so much time for painting at the moment:

Shas'El in command

Hey all,

as promised here is my new addition to my Tau army: A Shas'El commander in XV8 crisis suit, armed with cyclic ion blaster and missile pod.



The base he is standing on is from Micro Art Studio; they have a great line of all different kind of bases. You can find their shop right here.

Two hours of painting: Kroot

Hi guys,

Only two words: Foundation. Washes.
Those colours are absolutely amazing and are a great and easy way of getting your miniatures painted quickly with a nice outcome. I never saw a possibility for using the washes with my marines or the fire warriors as I think the best way to use is with more organic structures like Trotzki had that with his daemons. And at the moment I don't want to start a completely new army and so I decided to get myself some kroot mercenaries for the Tau and I wanted to paint something really quickly and get the finished models as soon as possible without compromising the quality of the paintjob.

I used Knarloc green as base colour, graveyard earth for the "clothes", snakebite leather, scorched brown and bleached bone for the other brown parts and of course boltgun metal for the gun. I painted all that first and then washed the green and brown parts with devlan mud und the metal parts with badab black. And thats it. Nice methinks.

Tau Devilfish: Straight from the painting table...

Just a little update from my Tau. The second Devilfish for my slowly expanding Tau army just left the production halls...ahem my painting table.
More (and nicer) pics are due to follow when I am done with the passengers. Just two to go.
That's it. Hope they see some action soon.

Some thoughts on Tau

Hey.

We had the "first" game with my wip Tau this week and I was pretty pleased with the outcome. As I just wanted to test the few units I already have, we played with no restricted FOC and I was out for a lot of points to get as near as I can get to 500 points.
I fielded:

Shas'O (cyclic ion blaster, plasma rifle, missile pod, hw multitracker)
12 firewarriors (including a Shas'ui with bonding knife)
Warfish (SMS, targetting array, multitracker, decoy launcher, disruption pods),
Sniper drone team

First game was against Eldar. Basically Trotzki put a squad of guardians with star cannon, dire avengers (don't remember how many), 3 dark reapers and as HQ an autarch with jump pack and fusion pistol on the field.

We played on a 48"x48" table with two LOS blocking buildings and several 5+ cover ruins. Mission: Kill'em all!!!

That game ended with a draw, me only having the the warfish left and all Eldar killed.

Second game against Space Marines.
A Reclusiarch with jump pack, pfist, frag grenades, terminator honours.
6 SM with missile launcher and flamer
10 SM with heavy bolter, flamer in rhino with extra armour and smoke.

The Marines suffered yet again another defeat. The Tau could outmaneuver them completely. On turn 2 and 3 I really thought the chaplain would get the commander and he was on the run, but he could escape him and meanwhile shoot on the tactical marines. In the end I had 5 firewarriors, the devilfish and the commander left, the marines entirely wiped out (*sigh* for me marines...)

Ok, let's come to my musings :-)
The winner of the game or MVP or whatever you wanna call it was definitely the Shas'O! This guy rocks! The cyclic ion blaster is really worth the points and combined with either 2 missiles or 1 to 2 plasma shots is really devastating against everything. And with a bs of 5 he nearly hits everything he points his guns to. I often read that the 'O is not worth the points and one should rather take the 'El and spent the 25 points elsewhere but I must say that I really appreciate the advantages this guy brings with him and I think he is worth it and he suits my style of gaming (with 4 wounds I willingly risk jumping him into difficult terrain...). A little drawback is the missing invulsave (the autarch melted him straight into oblivion), but I think with more models on the field and his IC status will make him more survivable.

Firewarriors in warfish: I wanted to test the famous Fish of Fury so I kept them back until 3rd or 4th turn. But I am really satisfied with the warfish. The SMS is really useful and the addition of a targetting array further enhances that.
But I must confess that I still have to learn to guess 12" correctly. After I FoFed a SM squad I got charged the next round...sadly. But oh dear, the little firewarriors managed to kill 2 marines! Yeehaaw!
Ok, I think with 2 fishes it will perform better and when I am able to place them exactly in 12" distance to the enemy it will be pretty nice. (but to be honest, I really really fear the whirlwinds my marines will definitely field! Two units of 12 FWs bunched up base to base and a 5" pieplate with ap4 wounding on 2s....kiss your *** goodbye!)

Ok the gundrones: CRAP! Really, I like the style of them, but game-wise crap. Not being able to move, only hitting on 4s or sometimes on 3s with 3 shots is ridiculous. And as I understand it, as they have to keep unit coherency with the spotter they can't even use their jump capability in the close combat phase to move away from their position. Maybe they are more useful when fielding 3 teams but a single one is crap. And at higher point games the HS slots will be filled with far more versatile units. Sorry guys, you will stay at home the next games.

Conclusion: Shas'O is great, skimmers are great, JSJ is really funny and I am looking forward to the next games with hopefully more models.
And let's see what 5th editions brings concerning the warfish and LOS for the suits.

Project Log: Tau Sa`cea

Hi,

I had the idea to start a project log for my relatively new army, the Tau of the Sa'cea Sept.

When my Marines had reached a comfortable level (pointswise....ahem) and I always thought of a second army, ranging from Chaos to Necrons to Imperial Guard including considerations espacially on the Tank Company (the Baneblade is still on my mind) I finally thought of the Tau. Clausewitz once bought some of them the days the last codex was released but never really started painting them. I never thought well of them since fluff-wise I don't like them at all. But as time went by I changed my opinion about them and started to rethink that whole thing again, read the codex, was impressed by their weapons and nice rules (JSJ ftw!) and most of all the oh so beautiful tanks made me change my mind. In the meantime Emperor (our friend, not Him on Earth ;-) ) became the owner of the little still unassembled and unpainted guys (he was as excited as me about their weapon loadout especially when comparing flashlights with pulse rifles *lol*) but as he didn't started them as well, the boxes changed the owner again and they found their new home with me. Namely I aquired 2 boxes of firewarriors, an XV8 commander and a sniper drone team. So basically all one needs to start the first 500 points.

And here is what I have already painted: 12 firewarriors and a XV8 Crisis suit in the famous Fireknife configuration:

I decided to paint them in the Sa'cea colours, I like the blue and it matches the cityfight scheme of my Marines.
At the moment I am painting a devilfish/hammerhead (still undecided). But as I think a project log or pics about painting a mere transport isn't that exciting I will post a pic in the overall project log here when it's done.