Tau at 1500...Can I get bonus points now please?

I think this army will be under represented at ToS – meaning that I will have a solid shot at gaining a greater than average score…providing of course that I perform and any other Tau armies don’t….it has a solid chance of performing and will not be frowned upon – increasing my chances of getting ‘blowjob points’…

Shas’El – PR, MP, MT, HWDC – Gun Drone, Shield Drone 112 points
Shas’Vre Bodyguard x2 – PR, MP, HWMT, TA 164 points

3x Crisis – PR,MP,MT 186 points
3x Crisis – TLMP, TA 159 points

10 x Kroot 70 points
5 x Kroot Hounds 30 points

10 x Kroot 70 points
5 x Kroot Hounds 30

6 x FW 60 points
Devilfish -MT, DP, Gun Drones – 95 points

Piranha – Fusion Blaster, Gun Drones, DP, TA 75 points
Piranha – Fusion Blaster, Gun Drones, DP, TA 75 points

1x XV88 Team Leader; SMS, A.S.S, HWDC – 1xSD, HWTL,
1x XV88; SMS, A.S.S 190 points

Hammerhead – Railgun, 2xBC, DP, TA, MT 165 points
Hammerhead – Railgun, 2xBC, DP, TA, MT 165 points

Total Points 1496 points
KPs: A million. Or 15.

How does this work then? Well, this is the Tau list I was running quite a way back. It was an evolution of six months of Tau play and online discussion and research at ATT and YTTH plus Warhammer Tau.

Whilst I may have a different view to running a Tau army to some sites, I did gain massively from Warhammer Tau’s modelling and painting of Tau…So much so that I completely stole his paint scheme (sorry Adam)
Since that time he has sold on his Tau army to fund his new Space Wolves blog here. Its an excellent site for all kinds of gamers.

Anyway, several potentially controversial elements in the list;
- The Kroot. Over on Warseer and some other blogs, the use of Kroot is frowned upon. I have found them indispensible. Some argue they are a utility unit, I find they fail in this role, lacking the specialisation and stats to cope with multiple roles. My use for them is as ‘bubblewrap’ – a term I leant of from Stelek over at YTTH. By using two good sized units to protect my XV’s, Hammerheads and Piranhas from several key things;
o Deep Striking units – this includes Chaos Demons, Drop Pod Assault, SW Logan & MM Long Fangs etc.
o Melta – not deep struck melta, but general melta range. A couple of fantastic articles from Kirby at 3++ are brilliant at explaining the correct set up and deployment of bubblewrap to prevent Melta from getting inside its crucial 2D6 range.
The Kroot are also to be used as road blocks; slowing the advance of any assault based units for a turn whilst the rest of the army redeploys whilst still laying down its nasty, nasty Tau firepower.
If one unit of Tau can do this, then why take 2? Redundancy and efficiency. One unit of Kroot plus Hounds can hold up an assault unit for a turn, blocking the path to their true target. Two units mean that that killer unit can be held up for 2 turns whilst the skimmers and crisis units move even further.
One unit of Kroot can spread out around the Tau deployment zone, ensuring that certain areas are too risky to deep strike, or forcing drop pods laden with melta back out of range. However, 2 units of Kroot can make sure that the same Deep Striking units cannot DS near the meat of the army. It ensures that MM’s are also out of range…for enough time to destroy crucial threats.

The massive downside of running the Kroot in this role (which I view as their only viable one) is that they will inevitably die. Crushed beneath heel of inexorable advances.
This leaves only 1 min sized squad of FW in a Devilfish to survive and claim AN objective. Are the Piranha’s likely to survive long enough to contest? Not in the role I have planned for them…This will leave me in a very hard place. Whilst Tau can shoot like a fast vehicle, we cannot move like a fast vehicle. At 1500 points, sacrificing some of the firepower will not work as Tau’s best defence is a very solid offence.

So I will have to work on midfield objective clustering. As I destroy the opponent vehicle or unit at a time, focussing fire as all good Tau should, I need to be moving slowly up to the midfield. Clearly, this has issues of its own. Certain SW builds love to hold the midfield, and in cover, all the plasma in the world will not help! Play testing once again will reveal counters and schemes….

Back to the ‘odd’ unit selection…

– The Piranhas…hmmm…not popular at all with a lot of forums and the general online opinion. But then, Tau are viewed as very, very low on the competitive scale by the vast majority of the online community. What does this tell us though? Certainly not to trust drivel like this…

Movement blockers primarily. Drop off drones as they form another layer of roadblockers to be assaulted out of the way. Slowing down those units a bit more. With only an effective 24” range, more than likely the Piranha’s will need to be turboboosted into solid blocking positions, using their turbo boost cover save to keep them alive…half the time! If one survives then it can use its melta weapon to nuke a tank or transport. Bearing in mind that they cannot really be damaged from a Ram if positioned correctly, and have a turboboost cover save, AV11 at the front dictates something more than small arms fire to be used to counteract them. This dilutes further the stream of anti-tank fire heading into your skimmers, broadsides and maybe crisis suits – although torrent of fire is far more efficient vs XV’s.

I have toyed in the past with the use of Seeker Missiles to be turboboosted first turn and use Pathfinders to launch the missiles into side armour, but this is far from consistent. Only one has limited effectiveness and accuracy, more than one and it requires a second markerlight squad (most likely pathfinders) which also happen to fall in the same FOC as the Piranha’s…so we can see that 4 choices from a 3 slot max FOC is not going to fit….even if it were a judicious use of points.

So what about everything else in the list? Pretty standard set up. No flamers on suits. This is the law, or should be. Maybe as a cheap third hard point to be used on a TLMP Deathrain suit. Maybe, but a Targeting Array is a far better use of points. Granted flamers give a little utility, but they also encourage you to use that utility when really, your suits should be nowhere near flamer template range.

The PR/MP combo, or Fireknife I am sure is to be debated due to the excess of cover in 5ed. However, for that time – and its actually pretty frequent if you can get the drop, when that sternguard squad has been dumped out of their razorback, or the Grey Hunters are footslogging as their rhino has been left a smouldering wreck…the Fireknife boys come in very handy. Until Power Armour is no longer the norm at tournaments I believe we will continue to have a very solid use for them. OK, and if you don’t buy that, then they can be used to pop a transport here or there, however the MP half of the suit does this job far better.

As I cannot seem to bing a Tau list without a unit of TLMP, TA suits I have rolled one into this list. For 159 points they can pop out 6 TL-S7 attacks at 42” (effective). Cheap as chips – we know that this will come in handy taking out all those rhinos. ..

Ok. Next step is to playtest once again. I have not played this army since before IG, SW, Tyranids and BA were released. As a result this list needs to be played regularly against these forces to see if it still holds weight…


Whilst I do this, if anyone has any thoughts please let me know!
Venerable

Throne of Skulls thoughts and plans....

In light of GW’s new, all-improved Tournament system (Throne Of Skulls) I will be taking a new direction for a little while to see how I get on.

I am not sure how much of a knee jerk reaction this is, but I am aware of just how many Space Marine armies there are out there, when the ToS hits with its backwards new points system I need to have a way of being ahead of the pack.

Now, I am not just talking about winning games, as clearly this is the name of the game; I am talking about ensuring (as far as is possible) that I can run an army that is not hampered by dozens of other players running Blood Angels or Space Wolves or Imperial Guard.

Why hampered? If the top end of the tournament is dominated by the typical armies, how are these guys going to differentiate themselves? The more consistent the results, the averages of these armies will reduce their actual game scores to relatively small figures. They will need to completely outperform the other Blood Angels or SW or IG. With tourney level players this is not likely. Are enough of the entrants going to bring crap armies? Be mugs and play terribly? Slim chances of these things happening.

If I am just another mech BA player, how does my army out perform all the others? Assuming that the system has achieved what it set out to do, normalise all the armies in each codex, how do I win? Make sure I have received at least 3/5 ‘Best Army’ nominations from my opponents?

I am thinking that to maximise chances of winning, not only do I need to win games, I need to win games with an army that will not be well represented and have a shot at a solid average.

Um, I also need to be a very nice boy and play well with others….

More thoughts coming up very soon…. 1500 competitive and not well regarded…can we guess what it is yet…?

Knee Jerk Reaction

Um. This is garbage.

Shocking.

Random Pairings? I don't care as if I win I'm expecting a harder/equal opponent, what about Dave? You know, Dave- the one who loses alot? He heads from a game where he gets his face smashed in...to another of the same, cause its random not swiss.

Great for Dave. Poor git.

1500 in 2 and a half hours?

The points system. Jesus.

I'm not sure what to say or do here. I feel this is utter pants.

For some real hate on the matter...head here....

And breathe....

Now, count to 10.

Stil pissed off? Yeah, me too.

Logan Drop List...kidding. Just one DP...

The Great Wolf. The Big Dog. Fangfather…Not a Blood Angel!

I have all the models painted except Big Dog and Arjac and trying out the snow flock mixture on my Space Wolf models has reawakened the wolf inside. Never fear, the mech BA are still the top dogs. Pun half intended.

Logan Grimnar
Wolf Guard x5 - 1x TDA,CML
Wolf Guard x5 - 1x TDA,CML
Wolf Guard x5 - 1x TDA,CML
Wolf Guard x6 - 1x TDA,CML, 1x um….Arjac Rockfist!!
Thunderwolf Cavalry x5 1xSS, 1xPF, 1xMB’s
Long Fangs x6 – 5xMM, Drop Pod

This is just shy of 1500 points. Is it any good?

Why do I need it? Well my 40k-fu with speeding BA tanks around the board has become strong – but I need to keep my eye on all kinds of different things- who knows what kind of out-of-the-box stuff will crop up at the UkGT – in whatever format it takes…………...ah, who am I kidding??

I just got bored. I need to try out new things!

So here is my attempt at a Logan Grimnar list. I will be 100% honest here – the inclusion of Arjac Rockfist is based purely upon Steleks ‘template’ here for the Logan Drop List…which doesn’t exist. I would not really have thought of doing it as Logan is already such a massive point sink.

I mean, screw it, might as well throw in Bjorn and Ragnar while I’m at it!

I had included another squad of WG in the same cookie cutter format as the others, plus some Fenrisian Wolves to form a meat shield to the TWC.

And speaking of them? A fast, rapidly re-deployable unit that can threaten from turn 2 onwards and cause a lot of psychological ‘friction’ for the opponent. Who to shoot? Target priority gets messed up when a massively dangerous, high priority target like Long Fangs with Arjac AND Grimnar drops into your lines, yet the ferocious TWC are going to hit next turn. Also how do we silence the missile launchers peppering us from across the board, in cover no less the cheeky minxes.

Glaring weaknesses? Check. All reserves and Logan’s Drop-ride becomes monstrously less effective. Hope to drop in cover and move relentlessly towards whatever comes on?
Hordes? An OK number of frag missiles and TWC do pretty well, plus multiple assaults from the WG MSU’s can help out a lot. Don’t get me wrong though – hordes will not be kind to these dudes…
Plenty of melta and S10 CC scattered in the list…well, most of it focussed on that 620 points of carnage descending from the sky…

So, thoughts? Especially from experienced SW players and opponents…

My other SW lists can be found here, these are what I ran when the codex first hit…

Competitive Conundrum

So here we go. My Blood Angels (list mainly here - in the middle of the post, not the Asscannon army, I say mainly as this is not the final list – I am keeping that a little quiet for now as I’m really happy with it but don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet) have been doing incredibly well at the LGS. They have only lost once to Daemons (yes, I know – I killed 1200-ish points out of 1500, but ran out of turns (ended turn 5) to zoom across and contest the plaguebearer-held objective FTW) and drew to Eldar – great player and very weird local tournie mission.

Yesterday I got in 3 games at 1500 vets night. Black Templars, spearhead, capture & control…tabled turn 3.

I didn’t lose a model.

Mech Eldar plus Pathfinders, turn 5 we called it with 3 Howling Banshees and a Farseer left on the table, surrounded by 6 fully operational BA tanks…

I lost one Rifleman dread.

Ultramarines capture and control, over by T5. Below 25% casualties.

Am I in danger of running out of dudes who’ll play? The Black Templar guy stated after the game that he won’t play the Mech BA again. Others have the psychological cloud that they’ll be “steamrolled”…

But I need to practice. My movement is becoming very precise and fields of fire, cover and all the ranges of weapons are spot on to my eye now. I’m doing great on tactics and ideas against a wide variety of opponents and armies.

The UKGT (in whatever format it takes, TBA soon) is this autumn and its my first GT. I regularly get to discuss in person ideas with 2 ex-GT winners but I am a noob when it comes to the tournament atmosphere etc. so I feel my game needs to be as tight as possible.

But what do I do in the mean time? There are a good number (6-7) of guys locally that are tournament players and a number of very good players (3) that don’t play at tournies but give me a good game.

However, these guys are not around every week, 3 or 4 are, but the nature of pick up gaming states that I am more than likely going to be matched up against some one who is not playing an optimised, stripped out and wolf-lean army.

This then becomes no fun for either player. I have read a lot recently on the ‘social contract’ of wargaming and subscribe to this principle/theory. I may play tough, but I do it without being an asshat.

But this said, do I need to run a softer, fluffier army for the guys that don’t play in GT’s, or do I get in as much practice as possible, not being a tosspiece, to ensure my own goals are met sufficiently? I can still almost guarantee GT-level games once a fortnight, is this enough prep time?

Any thoughts would be appreciated? Mainly if you have played a lot of Tournaments? As I said, there are dudes I can talk to at the store, who are all in tournament prep mode, which leads me to believe that I should be too?

It's snowing!

So I'm building a snow themed playing board for the skirmish game Malifaux. I'm trying out some snow flock/pva glue/ bicarbinate of soda combo's and this is the test mixture...

Slopped it onto my original test mini's for my Space Wolf armies.


I like the look...the first layer of snow is now on the board. I'll be posting a stage by stage with photos once the board is fully finished and I can do it in one go, just like the weathering guide.