My POV on playing Tau

POV Addition

 

First I would like to come off saying that I enjoyed playing Tau and in fact Tau were going to be my main fighting force but  my son decided otherwise as you have noticed. I do like the fact that they are a shooty army and tend to do well as long as you keep your distance seeing how they are squishy when up close and personal with most if not all armies. Some of their guys shoot for crap but they make up for that in numbers. As you saw in the first round those numbers came into play and getting within 15 inches it’s even more deadly.

So on with my POV.

Now looking back at the troops I took, while it was somewhat thrown together at the last moment they did fairly well. If I knew more about the Tau units than I did I would have taken different choices. One issue I saw (and didn’t think about in the beginning) was that I only took 2 scoring units. This was a BIG flaw in my list of guys. One advantage I had were the Crisis Suites which are new figs for my son and in fact he has not even used them yet in a battle. I didn’t know how well they would do but all in all I think they were one of the deciding factures in this win.

 

Changes

Knowing now what I do about the troops I took, here are the choices I should have made.

First is replace the Pathfinders with more Fire warriors.

While the Pathfinders did well on the first round they didn’t last after that round and they are also NOT a scoring unit which was the BIG flaw of what I took.

Second would be the Bodyguard.

Now this would be a tough choice for me to change but I think taking him out is a better option. Reason why it would be tough to take him out is because he did very well with the Commander but taking him out would give my Fire Warriors each a Shield drone (better saves) and would also give my Commander a Gun Drone with the points that would be available.

Third is my Commander

Now I wouldn’t have taken him out but I did make a mistake with him. I misread the rules for Vectored retro-thrusters and thought this allowed hom to move shoot and then move again. That was totally incorrect and in fact he already was able to do this due to jet packs. So taking out that support system I would be able to give him a Drone controller and as I said above a Gun Drone. Doing this gives the drone the same BS as my Commander which gives a better advantage when the drone shoots.

So all in all I enjoyed playing a different army from my Blood Angels and if I had a chance to play others I would do so. It would give me a better perspective of my targets in the long run.

 

 

 

Upcoming Battle: Chaos Space Marines vs. Tau - 500 points

Our groups next scheduled battle will be an epic battle between the Chaos Space Marines played by Dreese who have yet to play a single game of Warhammer 40,0000 against Tau played by Austin who has yet to win a game. The game is in Austin's favor since he has played 4 games in the past weeks and only the fickleness of the Dice Gods or possibly beginner luck should stand in his way. I guess I probably just jinxed him by saying that but oh well.

The Mission has already been rolled and we will be keeping the Dawn of War battlefield for sake of convenience. The mission that the fates have handed them is the Relic. This will be the first time we have had the opportunity to run with this mission so I know that we are going to screw this up. At least it will be good times and since this will be a teaching game anything is bound to happen.

As soon as I get both of the army list i will be posting them and maybe even make a couple of comments.

Forge World: Lorgar

This is Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, the fig was made by Forge World as were the ones for Erebus and Kor Phaeron. Now for a very long time (3rd or 4th Edition) I wanted to build a Word Bearer army but they weren't really feasible. Yeah they had rules out for them at some point but they never really felt like a fanatical army of traitor space marines. They simply felt like chaos space marines with chaplains. They didn't have any special characters or anything else for that matter. They just were.

So now Forge World seems to be doing their best to make me want to spend money that I just don't have. That and the fact that I need to work on my Imperial Guard. So what am I to do? Well it looks like I am just going to have to bide my time and pick up what I can when I can. There will be a 30k Word Bearer army in my future, it is just a matter of when? If Erebus and Kor Phaeron hadn't made my mind up for me, the big guy above most certainly has.

Battle Report: Blood Angels vs Tau

I guess I should start off with the table and how bad my current terrain pieces are.

This is the battlefield, the books are hills and the white square are the bases of what will at some point be forest tiles. It is simple and it doesn't matter what side any one picks because it is all the same. There are three objectives, one in the center of the tree line and one on each of the hills in line with the trees.

Now for the armies, this is a father vs son battle where they are playing each others armies. The Scott (father) is play Tau and Austin (Son) is playing his father's Blood Angels. So here are the list.

Blood Angels - 500 (Austin)
Librarian w/ Fear of the Darkness and Wings of Sanguinius
Tactical Squad 1 (10 man) (broken into Combat Squad 1a and 1b) w/ Plasma gun and Heavy Bolter
Scout 1 (5 man) w/ 4 Sniper Rifles and Missile Launcher
Assault Marine 1 (5 man)

Tau - 500 (Scott)
Commander - Missile Pod, Plasma Rifle, Stimulant Injector, Vectored Retro-Thrusters and Shield Drone.
Body Guard (1 man) - Missile Pod, Plasma Rifle, Vectored Retro-Thrusters
Stealth Team (3 man) - 1 Fusion Blaster, and Shas'vre
Fire Warriors 1 (6 man) w/ Shas'ui
Fire Warriors 2 (6 man) w/ Shas'ui
Pathfinders (4 man) w/ Shas'ui

I don't have anything to say about these armies since I never actually played either one and the Blood Angels are different enough from my Dark Angels to give me pause in commenting.

Tau won the roll and took the deployment as their own.

Tau Deployment

 Fire Warriors 1 at the top followed by the Commander and Bodyguard, Fire Warriors 2 and finally the Pathfinders at the bottom.

Blood Angel Deployment

 Blood Angel Tactical 1a with the plasma gun at on the left followed by Tactical 2 with the Heavy Bolter and Librarian, and the Scout squad on the right.

Both the Pathfinders and Scouts redeploy towards the bottom objective.

Both the Stealth team and Assault squad sit in reserve for the start of the game. At this point I was puzzled by the fact that Austin matched his fathers deployment almost unit to unit. I hoped that he had a plan but and that he could seize the initiative since I didn't believe that the tree lines cover save was going to be of much use to him in the first turn. He didn't seize the initiative though and the Tau took their first movement.

Tau Turn 1 (0 - 0)

I found this the most unusual thing ever. I am used to the Tau sitting on the back line and taking pot shots at me.The Tau moved in the first turn, FW1&FW2 as well as the commander moved their 6 while the Pathfinders simply moved to the edge of the hill and then they all open fire. It was a good volley of fire for the Tau too.

Fire warriors 1 dropped 2 from Tactical 1a

While a combined volley from the Commander/Bodyguard and Fire Warriors 2 dropped 2 from Tactical 1b. The Pathfinders put 2 down on the Scouts and Pinned them for the time. Everyone made their Morale test as is expected for Space Marines.

Blood Angel Turn 1 (0 -0)
Movement was as expected, Tactical 1a and 1b moved their 6 while the Scouts sat on the hill. Now I will say that I made a mistake here and completely forgot about the scouts being pinned or some such. So when it was time for the Scouts to fire, 2 snipers shots and a Frag missile dropped on the pathfinders and they were splattered across the hill side. As for Tactical 1b, they dropped 2 Fire Warriors and their Morale held. Fire Warriors 1 also lost a man but held their ground. At the end of the turn the Blood Angels found themselves a point up with the scoring of First Blood.

Shooting looked a little like this.

Yeah there sits the template that was the doom of the poor pathfinders

Tau Turn 2 (0 - 1)

Turn 2 saw the landing of the stealth suits exactly where they were supposed to. Wish i could roll scatter dice like that.

It also saw the Commander moving to block for Fire Warriors 2.

Shooting was uneventful as only 1 member of Tactical 1a and Tactical 1b were lost to the Tau firepower.

It really does amaze me how many shots were fired and that only 2 Space Marines were lost.

Blood Angels Turn 2 (0 - 1)

If the deployment was the same then so shall turn 2, the Blood Angels Assault squad shows up and lands in nearly the same spot on the opposing side of the table and also land exactly were they wanted to. They only scattered an inch or so. Though the little scatter they did get put them very close to the Tau Commander of which Austin apparently had very little interest.

Tactical 1a also decided to take a stroll a little close to the top objective though while I have seen solo Space Marines last several turns before, I can honestly say never while within 15 inches of four Tau Fire Warriors.

 If you look real close you can just see Tactical 1, show that Space Marine truly Know No Fear. The shooting phase showed that under stress the Space Marines are capable of missing. Tactical 1a missed, Tactical 1b, the Scouts, the Assault squad and the Librarian dropping a Fear of the Darkness all on Fire Warriors 2 only saw 2 casualties and a passed Morale test. I can honestly say that this was the first time the Austin has used Deep Strike with anything and it not be a total wash for the unit in a turn or two.

All those shots and it only accounted for this. In truth I would have fired 4 bolt pistols and thrown a frag grenade with the Assault squad, while he only fired the bolts and they couldn't get a charge this turn due to Deep Strike.

Tau Turn 3 (0 - 1)

Tau turn 3 can be summarized like this, more Commander blocking and a bunch of Assault members dying, yet no failed Morale test. Only needed one picture to illustrate this one.

 

 This seems to be the theme for Scott at this point, block the Fire Warriors until the end of the game and jump on an objective. Seeing as he only had 2 scoring units I thought it was a pretty wise move and amazingly enough I never once had to tell him that he couldn't move through a friendly unit. 

Blood Angels Turn 3 (0 - 1)

The Blood Angel turn was a bit more entertaining than the Tau. Firstly the Assault troops ran away from the Tau Commander which puzzled me at first but then I realized that they had a better chance against Fire Warriors 1. Tactical 1b with the Librarian fell upon the center objective expanding the current lead to 4 point to 0 in the Blood Angels favor. Now I do want to say that we keep up with the current VP score in order to understand where we are in a game and to help us focus on what we need to do next. I found that if we didn't we would forget and ultimately lost the game because of it.

You can see on the right that Tactical 1b has the objective and that Fire Warriors 1 are very close to some very angry Assault Marines. This is the result.

Bolt pistol, Chain swords, Charge, Morale Loss , cut down while they ran, and 3" consolidation. It was over in moments. There was just not enough Overwatch left in the group do slow down the Marine who slew two fire warriors on the charge and not one marine was wounded.

Turn 4 & 5 (1 - 2)

Not allot happens at this point, Tactical 1b and the Assault squad get annihilated, by Fire Warriors 2 and the Commander. The Librarian runs for Line Breaker using Wings of Sanguinius as do the Tau Stealth suits while the Tau Commander and Fire Warriors 2 run for the center objective. It is at this point Austin realizes that Scouts are Scoring units and I roll for a 6th turn.

Turn 4, Librarian and his Wings

Turn 4, Librarians Line-breaker

Turn 6 

This is where it all changes. The Stealth Suits destroy the scouts removing the Blood Angels last Scoring unit while maintaining line-breaker.

Fire Warriors 2 finally sets foot (or hoof) on the center objective for 3 VP and the commander and his body guard put a large number of hits on the Blood Angel librarian. So in the end the battlefield looks a little like this.

So in the end the final score was Tau 5 and Blood Angels 1, though thinking about it with the Blood Angels completely destroyed it doesn't really matter. I found the game very fun to watch though slightly repetitive in the first two turns. Hopefully they both walked away with a better appreciation of each others armies or at least better knowledge of how they play.


As a note, this was the first battle report I have written up since second edition and I know for a fact that we messed up on a few things during the game or left them out all together. I am hoping that I can get the guys to write up a small post giving their views on the game and possibly something short on how/or if they would change the list they took as well as if they would have changed anything in the game. Maybe we can all learn a little something from what they may have to say.

Army Builders: Quartemaster

 

I love building army lists and I have been known to do it for fun. For a very long time I had been using Army Builder and loved it but one day I let the license lapse. On top of that my laptop is currently a door stop so there is no reason to renew my license and there is probably a much cheaper alternative. Last night I started looking around and one of my searches pulled up an iPad app. After taking a look at it for a while and checking out the web page I bought it. Now I am skeptical of iPad apps because I have an old first generation and a good portion of the apps now require a "Forward Facing Camera" yet they never state that in their requirements. I spent the $5 on the expectation of having to contact Apple and tell them to give me my money back because the app requirements were wrong, fortunately enough they weren't.

So I am now the owner of a copy of Quartermaster. I highly suggest that if you purchase the app that you go to their site and give the User Guide a quick read just to avoid any confusion, being in IT, I expected some confusion and after a couple of minutes I decided my life was difficult enough that I would just go read up. Quartermaster appears to be a full-fledged army builder, of course you can build army list and it does a good job of keeping your list legal. I double checked a couple of my builds against the codices just to be sure and they were correct. You can also build templates and share them out so others can use them. Speaking of templates you will need to download them and the User Guide does a good job of telling you how. The templates are user created and the site that was listed has most everything you will need. The couple I looked over seemed to be correct and up to date, those that aren't have the release date of the file clearly listed on the site. The App allows you to publish your army list to the app for viewing, to most of the document viewers on my iPad and to email, if I missed something under publishing I probably wouldn't have used it anyways (sorry).

I can honestly say that of the tablet based army list builders, both free and purchased, quartermaster is the only one I feel was worth the price. I am not saying that I have tried every one out there but after only a couple of minutes and a glance through of the User Guide I was very comfortable with the app. If anyone is interested I linked their website below.

Quartermaster

Upcoming Battle: Blood Angels vs. Tau 500 points

Let me start with the fact that this is a 500 point battle and yes that is scrapping the bottom of the barrel as far as point values used in a game, but there is a reason. Most of my group is just starting out and can only field 500 -750 points in their army or as in my case just cannot find their 3000+ points worth of an army.

This is going to be a pretty special battle. It will hopefully be the first Battle Report I get to post and it is also a Father/Son battle with a twist. The twist is that they are going to be play each others army. They didn't say why other than they wanted to, so I will go with it. I get to be the arbiter and will be setting up the table, objective and basically telling them that they are wrong and say, "and what page was that on?".

I rolled up their mission as being Crusade on a Dawn of War battlefield and we have 3 objectives (I rolled 4 objective but in an attempt to break my groups love of Ties I rounded it down - Thanks Noah for the suggestion). I should have the List sometime later today or tomorrow and since I haven't really had a chance to read their codices more than once I probably won't say to much on the topic. Please be kind since I don't think they have read each other codices either.

There we are, 500 point battle upcoming between Blood Angels and Tau with the players playing their opponents army. My guess is that it is going to be sloppy and everyone will forget their rules. I guess i will find out tomorrow evening and everyone else over the weekend or sometime next week.

Rumors

Firstly I am not a rumor guy and I am not planning on getting into being a rumor guy. There are already so many good rumors sites out there and they have the connections, but saying that the link below may have some interest to at least one person in my gaming group so I figured I would link to it.

While I was most interested in the article due to the Sisters of Battle information a buddy of mine plays Blood Angels so how do you think he would feel about an updated codex?

From Faeit 212

Sister's of Battle and Blood Angel Digital Codex Releases

Forge World: Ashen Circle and Kakophoni

Both seem to be getting a limited pre-release at  Games Day UK. The Kakophoni appear to be the precursors to the Noise Marines, while the Ashen Circle are assault troops with flamers. Of the two I must say I would take the Ashen Circle since I am not that big a fan of the Emperor's Children.

The Word Bearer's Ashen Circle

Word Bearers Legion - The Ashen Circle


The Emperor's Children Kakophoni

The Emperor's Children Legion Kakophoni

Well, that sucked.

Yeah that is about correct. No games on Friday night meaning that I don't have a battle report or at least pictures of a battle and nothing to say on the matter. Was sick on Saturday so I didn't get to paint and don't have pictures of that. Sunday was may daughters birthday party, I was still not feeling great, and it looks like my laptop has become a door stop. Now this has moved into Monday with a bit of an issue as well but I won't go into that at the moment, at least I got to do a little painting and took a couple of pictures. So soon you will get to see how moderately well I paint. Maybe, if my wife lets me use her laptop to upload the pictures that is.

Anyhow, I am hoping to have a game this Friday and it may be the first appearance of our Chaos player as well as his first game ever of 40k. If we are lucky us veterans will get to watch a game between Chaos Space Marines and Tau (our other junior player). This will probably be a very long very boring game in which we beat them over the heads with the rulebooks while they try and figure out what they are doing.

If all goes well then we should have the report up at the beginning of the next week.

Voices from the Warp: Devilfish

I have this buddy that is very new to wargaming and decided he was going to play the Tau. Well he isn't doing so well right now as you can see on the right in the Win/Lose/Tie box for my gaming group. Three loses and a Tie is rather dismal to say the least, so in an attempt to help him out with out actually telling him how to play (everyone one needs to fail....I mean learn on their own) I am starting the Voices from the Warp post. Here I will be linking some articles that may help out certain members of my group or even myself. This is another in a series of articles about Tau from over on 3++ that I found interesting and I hope it helps.

Tau Codex Review: Devilfish

Forge World: Ferrus Manus

Forge World is releasing another Primarch, this time Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands. While I am not a huge fan of the Iron Hands and wish Forge World would actually release a Primarch that I actually want, Manus is actually a rather nice model and i have to say i like it more than the Fulgrim model. Also the interlocking base is a rather cool idea. If you haven't seen the video click the link below. I also added a link to the Forge World page with a couple of very nice pictures.

Genesis of a Primarch Ferrus Manus The Gorgon with Simon Egan

Forge World News: Ferrus Manus

Why or Why Not: Space Marine Drop Pods

Let us start with this, I have never used a drop pod with my Dark Angels, I have never seen anyone ever use a drop pod, and I have never read a battle report where a drop pod was used. So i have absolutely no experience what so ever in the way of the drop pod, yet Games Workshop has drop pods and has put them in Battle Group boxes. So what is a drop pod? Well it appears to be a 35 point vehicle that allows infantry and/or dreadnaughts to deep strike. It has the same armor as the front end of a rhino on all sides and a storm bolter, also just like a rhino. So for the same point value as a rhino you get an immovable rhino with AR 12 on all sides that can deep strike but not Tank Shock.

Let us look at the drop pods delivery system, Deep Strike. In turn two the drop pod can be brought in from reserves via deep strike and follows all the rules for deep strike with one exception, the Inertial Guidance System. This system allows the pod to reduce it scatter if it may happen to land on an object that it wouldn't normally be allowed to land on. This greatly reduces that chance of a mishap and while i have never had a mishap when arriving from Deep Strike I have seen it in the past and it can be very bad for an army that is expecting its troops.

The delivery system of the drop pod has another advantage over normal deep strike troop, the drop pod assault. This lets up to half of your drop pods to deep strike in turn 1. So if you only have one drop pod you automatically get it on turn 1.

What else does the drop pod give us? Not much more over the normal rhino other than the fact that it can transport a dreadnaught. This may be a very good way to deliver close combat dreads to the front lines were it could devastate the enemy but it also probably won’t last very long. It could be dropped in a way to block LOS ,force an enemy unit to destroy it, or go around in order to get to an objective making it a glorified piece of impassable terrain. Well at least it is impassable terrain with a storm bolter. Your opponent will be forced to deal with it and with the moderately good armor it may distract them for a couple of turns.

So would I try using a drop pod in the future? Well before I sat down and started writing this up I would have said no, I like my Assault Squad drops behind enemy lines but seeing that they have been less than stellar in the last game I used them I am hesitant to use them again anytime soon. Now that I have actually stopped and thought about some very annoying things to do to my opponent using a drop pod I probably will take one in a game or two just to see how it plays out.

Forge World: Erebus and Kor Phaeron

I don't usually get excited about Forge World stuff (mostly because I cannot afford to) but this is a bit different. I have wanted a Word Bearer army for a very long time but hate the look of the current Chaos Space Marine figs, so when I had the opportunity to sell off the ones that came in the Dark Vengeance box set I did. I figured I would never play that army so it wasn't worth keeping the figs and if I ever did get around to building out a Word Bearer army it would be well after I finished my Imperial Guard, and then Forge World did this.

Erebus and Kor Phaeron @ YouTube

Voices from the Warp: Fire Warriors

I read this article a couple of days ago and figured i would share it. It was a pretty good read and I thought that it may help out my buddy who is playing Tau.

Tau Codex Review: Fire Warriors @ 3++

Evolution of an Army List: Dark Angels

Way back in 3 and 4e I had a skirmish 500 point list for when I just wanted to play a short game of 40k and it was pretty good in most situations. It looked a little like this.

HQ: Chaplain with Jump Pack

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Heavy Bolter and Flamer. Rhino transport

Troop: Scout squad w/ Sniper Rifles and Heavy Bolter

Fast Attack: Assault Squad w/ 1x Plasma Pistol


That was then and it worked very well for what passed for missions at the time, but now it lasted one battle and a Tie against Eldar. Now I am not saying that the current list was the same as the old but they were pretty close. The big difference is that it didn't really work for me. Several games later I hit on something that worked much better. It looked a bit like this.

HQ: Librarian

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Plasma Cannon and Plasma gun and Rhino w/ Hunter Killer Missile

Troop: Tactical Squad w/ Missile Launcher

Troop: Scout squad w/ Sniper Rifles and Heavy Bolter


The tactics on a 2 or 3 objective mission was rather straight forward. Advance deploy the scouts on or near an objective with cover and deny the opponent. Move the Combat Squad with the plasma gun in the Rhino towards another objective. The Missile Tactical Squad moves towards what ever objective needs support or denied depending on the current needs while the Plasma Cannon Combat Squad sits somewhere with the Librarian and eats re-rolls due to misses or bad scatter from Prescience. Works pretty well for the most part. Had a couple problems keeping scouts on the objectives due to their small numbers but they usually get back on the objective pretty quickly and anytime a 5 count of scouts can last 4 or 5 turns on an objective against large amounts of Tau fire is damn good from my point of view.  

In one game I replaced the scouts with a minimum unit of Ravenwing that seemed to work ok but when it came to the objective base game they didn't help deny as much as i hoped. I know one game does not make it good or bad and the Dice Gods are fickle. So i will give the current list another game or two and then try the bikes again just to make sure.

All in all I was surprised that the way units play now versus back then and the fact that objective based missions seem to have become the norm has changed the way one has to organize their army. 

The Dice Gods LOVE Tanks!

Just don't expect them to hit anything!

Every game I have played in 6e except one has had a tank and when it comes to a tank that is not also a transport the Dice Gods love them. Now I haven't played a lot of games under the 6e rules as of yet but the games I have played this has been true. The Dice God will not let you kill a tank. Now I have read ever since 6e was released that tanks are weaker in that you can literally one shot them with the correct weapon but that does not seem to be the way of it with my group. Take the last game we played, one Predator, one Fire Prism, and a Leman Russ. After multiple hits from the Predator and a direct hit from a Battle Cannon over 3 turns the Fire Prism only lost one hull point. Looking at the return fire we saw that the Fire Prism for what ever reason could not even hit the Leman Russ. After turn 3 we basically all gave up on shooting at each others tanks. It didn't really help though, in the next 2 turns I think our tanks take out only 2 Tau Stealth Suits and that by the Leman Russ' hull mounted heavy flamer. 

In truth the only thing that I have been able to do with a tank in the last 3 turns was in the first game i took a Rhino for my Dark Angels. No don't expect good shooting though i did kill a Fire Warrior with a Hunter Killer Missile and shot a couple more with the storm bolter. The best my tanks have done is literally to Tank Shock a unit off the table. I only had to try this 3 times. I must say that is was fun seeing that as a transport I only meant it as a distraction.

So in short, the Dice Gods will not let us destroy tanks, wont let tanks shoot anything, and if you want to do damage to infantry then you have to run them over.

Ties!

Ties! I hate ties, especially the ones above but that isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about the ones when after a couple of hours of wargaming there is no clear winner as far as the gaming system is concerned. See under 6e I have played a total of 4 games and of those I have tied twice. My buddy who is playing the Eldar has tied twice, so every game we have played together that went to completion have been ties. The one other game took too long and we had to cut it short giving me a win, technically. The problem is there should never be a time in a wargame when there is not a clear winner. Well i guess if both sides are completely wiped out there wouldn't be a winner but how often does that happen? I can honestly say that i have never seen it. So why do wargames have this? Nothing is worse than a tie other than maybe not playing at all.

So what can we do with 6e that will allow us to break a tie?