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Okay so batrep is coming, I've been playing all of my games except one recently against Andilus Greatsword, an old friend, but for my latest game a friend challenged me with his Tau! I decided I had not a freaking clue what the Tau fought like other than their powerful shooting abilities, so I prepared as best I could, anyways

EDIT: Scroll a few posts down for Batrep, http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/429716.page#3911584


Tau Army: Led by Shas'O Cal-Nan (Commander Heavy Sword)

HQ: Shas'O and 2 Shas'vre (270 points)
2 missle pod, 2 TL plasma rifle 2 fusion blasters (twinlinked), shield drone, target lock

Elites:
XV8 Battlesuit team, Shas'ui + 2 Shas'vre = (132 pts)
weapons: 2 plasma rifles , 1 flamer, 1 missile pod, 2 fusion blasters

Stealhsuit Team (1 Shas'ui + 3 Shasvre) = 95pts
equipment: Target lock, shield generator

Troops:
Fire Warrior Team 1 (Total 131pts)
9 warriors + 2 drones
Equipment: Markerlight Bonding knife, 4 EMP grenades

Fire Warrior Team 2 (Total 131pts)
Equipment: Markerlight, bonding knife

Kroot Carnivore Squad (160pts)
12 Kroot
2 Krootox rider

Kroot Carnivore Squad (174pts)
10 Kroot
4 Kroot hounds
2 Krootox rider

Fast Attack:

Vespid (150pts)
8 Stingwings
1 strain leader

4 Stingwings
1 Strain Leader

Heavy Support:
XV88 Broadside (210pts)
3 Shas'ui

1 Hammerhead Tanks (165pts)
(burst cannon 10pts)(smart missile system)
1 Targeting array, BS+1)


1 Skyray Missile Defence Gunship (150pts)
(smart missile system)(Flechette discharger 10pts)(Targetting array 5pts)



HQ
Librarian (Epistolary, The Sanguine Sword, Unleash Rage) - 150pts
Mephiston - 250pts

ELITES
Furioso Dreadnought (2x Blood Talons with Heavy Flamer and Meltagun, Drop Pod) - 170pts
Furioso Dreadnought (2x Blood Talons with Heavy Flamer and Meltagun, Drop Pod) - 170pts
3x Sanguinary Priests

TROOPS
10x Assault Marines (2x Plasma Guns, Sergeant with Plasma Pistol and Power Weapon, Rhino)
9x Assault Marines (1x Meltagun, Sergeant with Plasma Pistol and Power Weapon, Rhino)
9x Assault Marines (1x Meltagun, Sergeant with Plasma Pistol and Power Weapon, Drop Pod)
7x Death Company (7x Chainsword/7x Bolt Pistol, Drop Pod)

HEAVY SUPPORT
Stormraven Gunship (Hurricane Bolter Sponsons, Twin-Linked Heavy Bolters, Twin-Linked Plasma Cannon)

Always good to see a Tau Batrep, but I believe your list is illegal. Too many HS slots (1xBSides, 2x Hammerheads, 1x Skyray = 4 slots).

Would love to see those Vespid getting used though, I can honestly say that I've never seen them played. Ever.

I wasn't aware, but I'm sure he'll hear about this.

You'll get to see the details on how the vespid fared, for sure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I didn't build the list. He actually almost fielded 3 XD but that was quickly resolved


Automatically Appended Next Post:
wait, sorry, yeah, he dropped that Hammerhead, they just forgot to edit that out when sending it back over here, it's 3 slots

Oooohhhh.....Vespid.

haha that's what I hear a lot

Great White wrote:Oooohhhh.....Vespid.

Titan Atlas wrote:haha that's what I hear a lot

lol, I told Red that if you posted this report that was what everyone was going to say. As the game observer/referee I will withhold my comments until the report is posted.

But, without further delay, I'll now post my first batrep. Woo! I'd bring a cake to commemorate the occasion, but I ate it.



Alright, so first turn, we all got on Skype (Andilus Greatsword oversaw the game) - just a heads up, as a relative noob, this game is still riddled with errors made by yours truly, I hadn't realized until now that a lot of my moves in previous games were actually under the guidance of Andilus. He's such a good fella.

As said before, the lists were put together, we set up our board, and we rolled for mission and deployment.

I felt no need to spoiler-up this, so I may as well say it:

Seize Ground (...alright)
Spearhead (...alright)

Neither of these have seen high degrees of success in the past, I've only won one other Seize Ground mission before, and Spearhead I had only played two games with this. We rolled for initiative, and I got it.

So we made our placements:


-We'll refer to the opponent as...RedFaction, or simply Red for now. I imagined he'd do something like this (I thought I'd be a dick and make a forsaken objective point , it's reeeeeeeally well hidden in the trees. Legal, I believe, so long as it's 12 inches away from the board edges. Red had his forces ready and able to attack at a moments notice, and I had no idea what to expect.

TURN 1: ATLAS

After a lot of deliberation (seriously, waiting for me to move is a snoozefest until I get to an assault), I made my move:

-I felt it was best to secure the middle-most objective near the dome with my Regular Assault squad and then send in Death Company as backup via drop pod, so I sent them in their Rhino towards the stealth suits, eager to take their lives. The two wielding plasma guns fired, one scoring a wound and killing a member. Love the first kill of a game. I moved my other vehicles flat-out so as to get the much-needed cover saves and then be able to get my marines in for an assault next turn. I used power of the machine spirit to fire my stormraven's one gun, bloodstrike missiles at the broadsides, drop pods fired at the covered Fire Warriors and the upper FW squad, while my furiosos dropped in, flamed a few guys, whiffed on their meltagun shots (WTF). Things were going according to plan, sorta, and ideally I had some powerhouses already going in to put the squeeze on his best units.

Lastly, Mephiston moved in, eager for some killin'. As you can see, little killing was done, I scored a wound on a crisis suit, killed a stealth suit and 4 fire warriors. Rather underwhelming, but this was also the first turn with the majority of my units going flat-out, and my assault is more valuable.

...that was it.

RED

Then came Red's movement. As I am an assault unit that needs to close the distance quickly against his shooting army, this phase of the game was likely to be the most deadly of them, the shooting-before-charging-units-reach-you...part. This is the main part that had me nervous, but alas, let's see what he did, shall we?



- Actually not as scary as I thought it would be. He moved, as you can see, a unit of kroot and fire warriors to try to capture that objective my non-priest assault squad was after (I'm starting to think I should just drop a man, add the priest and just work from there :/ 10-man capacity rhinos are lame,) his stealth suits successfully hid in the woods, guarded an objective (but didn't score as they're not troops, woo!) put a marker on that same rhino so that it could get sky-rayed. I thought it was screwed, but interestingly enough, it was only shaken

Meanwhile, he didn't do anything on my stormraven on that turn, but was highly, highly successful on my furiosos, stunning one and blowing one up! Feth!

Alright! I survived that shooting! Maybe this wouldn't be so bad! (spoiler alert - major idiot moves made by me coming up)

TURN 2: ATLAS

Well, that wasn't so scary! Image and description of what transpired:



Alright, so next was to protect and later claim that objective in the center, bring my other rhino to the fray (and...I unloaded, with the marines standing there like idiots. Silly me, they really had no use this turn). Mephiston rushed angrily ahead, casting wings of Sanguinius and not taking no for an answer. He dashed ahead, and rushed for an assault on the crisis suits, who were stunningly well-equipped (I'll suppose there's a reason why they name them accordingly.) Since Red was a meanie and killed one of my furiosos, my other one was really rather useless this turn. Meanwhile, the stormraven squeezed into the little gap there, and dropped my librarian's squad off (it was actually incredibly tense, I had such little space to disembark cause of unit congestion that I nearly lost some lol, another error of sorts, AND I ran with the Librarian squad...geez, the nerves were getting to me)

The stormraven used its machine spirit and fired off heavy bolter shots at the broadsides, killing one and wounding another (this may be incorrect, I believe I bloodstriked them later on, if not later on then Andilus may correct me on this one,) the drop pod took off another FW. Reg ASS took down some kroot who wanted that objective, saving plasmagun fire so they could assault them as well (the rules apparently allow to say ahead that you're not firing certain weapons in squads, that was cool) and the rhino and drop pod nearby there - a phantom drop pod that successfully deep struck, I kept it empty, I remember a fellow BA player suggesting it, it's a hilarious concept but totally works - they both fired upon the stealth suits but failed to achieve results.

Assault was a short one. Mephiston cast Sanguine sword and Unleash Rage, and quickly made short work of the first Crisis Suit unit. If only I knew what I was getting him into..........


RED

Red knew what to do - kill Mephiston. He moved his kroot nice and close to my regular assault team (reg ASS is sort of a silly joke that stuck) but didn't move into assault...just to keep my guys occupied there that much longer. But feel free to see for yourself...



- Okay, let's recap what happened here. My stupidity allowed my librarians to be vulnerable this turn (I had stupidly run instead of assaulting anything, I had thought maybe I could get to the broadsides! Stupid!) so they got shot up, I allocated a wound to my librarian and let some assault marines die. He got some good hits on them, but he actually focused the brunt of them on my remaining furioso and Mephiston. As you can see...

I completely underestimated his HQ's shooting. They annihilated Mephiston easily, it was horrible to watch, honestly. I reassured myself, remembering that because of this he used a lot of firepower on him, who is realistically an excellent distraction for the real stars of the BA army, the assault marines. But yeah, Mephiston got his worst raping in this game, worse than any other death in any other game, he got some kills.....but still, holy crap.

Meanwhile, he managed to kill a member of my middle assault squad (I failed an armour save with FNP reroll...grr) - but again! His Sky-Ray failed to deliver! It was odd, really. Also, it should be noted that it was not until after that I realized he could have used other crisis suits to target my stormraven and likely could have brought it down more easily!

Finally, his shooting resulted in my other furioso being immobilized. I really should downplay my furiosos, so that they don't become targets. Something that doesn't make them stand out, like...I dunno, having them as guests on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Rimshot, anyways, we're back - he got gimped. So...yeah. Grr.

The assault phase was uneventful, that's all I can really say there.

TURN 3: ATLAS

So that was disastrous! I knew though that I could still hold onto this game, I was about to get in some massive assaulting. Or so I thought...



-As you can see, I could probably have planned some moves out better, but other things went highly according to what I wanted!

Left to right - My rhino and drop pod continued to fire upon the stealth suits, eliminating one more, while the assault marines fired some bolter shots at the kroot before going into assault. Enraged over Mephiston's death, the Sanguinary priest's squad went north...and I am not really sure why I went in that direction, as I had been wanting to go into contact with the FW's in cover, but you can probably tell (damn vassal and scale conversion!) - I was more than 6 inches away so assault would not be possible, doubly so since there was difficult terrain in the way. FAIL

*ahem* anyways, so my stormraven fired it's plasmacannon at the d The Epistolary's squad went in for the kill on the sky-ray - They were underestimated by my opponent. You shall see.


Assault phase came upon, and everything worked out. The reg ASS wiped out the xenos squad, bye-bye kroot...they didn't really get much consolidation but they didn't really need it either. Meanwhile, the Epistolary finally got to make use of his rather expensive but worthy ability, casting both Unleash Rage and Sanguine Sword successfully, and he nailed the Sky-Ray with 4 penetrating hits (it was impossible for him not to, like, completely impossible, with sanguine sword - didn't realize unleash rage was unnecessary but whatevs, didn't get perils anyways) and it exploded, but luckily didn't actually kill any units, thankfully.

BAM. Took out that particular threat, now to deal with the rest. This was now much less intimidating, and my playing sped up from here.


RED

So he had to scramble if he wanted to score an objective. Here's what happened -



-This was an interesting turn for the both of us. He moved his FW's in to cause further hell, and to a decent degree of success, I might add! He moved his remaining kroot to attack the stormraven their way, with the help of the hammerhead as well. His suits had little option but to remain in the woods, fair enough. He moved his HQ toward my Librarian squad (I should add that from this point forward, my Epistolary will likely be my bitchin' HQ designed to reflect me as a player) and got ready to unleash hell.

His FW's picked off 4 of my assault marines! They stood their ground though, thankfully. But the real heavy hit came from Shas'O, where his fusion blasters and plasma rifles managed to pick off three of my guys! Gahh! In other news though, an assault marine from the Sanguinary priest's squad was killed, and I was very disappointed by that.

However, in a rather bad move, Red sent Shas'O's squad against my Epistolary who was at this point pissed. My Epistolary made short work of Shas'O and the 2 Shas'vres by himself (I declared I would attack the Shas'O twice, and this was with Sanguine Sword and Unleash Rage), seriously. It was pretty scary how successful the veteran psyker really was. They consolidated, ready to take on the next Hammerhead.

Ouch. That probably killed the game for Red right there, but the show must go on!

TURN 4: ATLAS

Alright. I felt pretty good that I wouldn't screw anything MORE up. I made the advance, ready to crush Red's forces and his chances of taking those objectives.



-Finally, my Death Company arrived, perhaps at a very good time. I placed them nearby the objective and the Assault marines because I knew that Red would try to deep-strike at least a unit of vespids in there.

Meanwhile, my middle assault squad moved in to shoot up the fire warriors, and my epistolary moved to attack the hammerhead's rear armour, hoping for similar results as with the sky-ray. Reg ASS went in for the kill on the pesky FW's.

Shooting phase was excellent - the middle squad killed enough fire warriors and they failed the leadership test, making them run which provided enough solace that I could maintain a hold on that objective. Meanwhile, my gimped stormraven, rhino and drop pod worked to make sure the broadsides would not be able to fire again, and were successful, as they were eliminated. The remaining kroot were further-whittled-down, but stood their ground....




Assault was quick and painless - Reg ass wiped out the FW's, and the Epistolary squad took down the Hammerhead. It exploded (geez, again) and they suffered no wounds.


RED



So his vespid came in, to the rescue! He deep-struck one unit up at the top corner, just in range to shoot my assault squad (although significant at risk of DS'ing off the board, but they hit straight-on so no worries there) but the other one, he attempted to deep strike, on the other side to provide some support and perhaps try to work down some more of my units, keeping them from the objective. Unfortunately, he scattered, right on top of his units, and had to roll a D6 to determine their fate...



The other vespid squad was thus placed right on the bottom-left corner. I considered putting them in a more vulnerable spot on the possibility that I could then table him, but I figured this would be just as much of a delay to his plans and it did just that.

Red had equipped bonding knife onto his FW's so he used that and was able to regroup and save them from falling off the board! They moved within double shot range of my Epistolary squad who was on a hot streak. Meanwhile, the vespid brought the Reg ASS into their sights, and the other vespid sat in the other corner. Red also trained his Kroot on my librarian.

His vespid get 3 kills on my assault marines! My guys passed their leadership but....still. Geez. Thankfully, no other kills were made, and no assault would occur for the rest of the turn.

We made it to the 5th turn! Now things would get interesting...

TURN 5: ATLAS

So order of business - clear out remaining threats and hold down objectives.



-I did just that, scrambling with my reg ass and sang priest units to respective objectives, rolling good run rolls to get over there. Meanwhile, my empty rhino on the right side moved upwards to get some shots at the fire warriors. The other rhino castled up at the objective, and the epistolary squad went hungry for kroot blood, with the assistance of a hurricane bolter sponson from the Stormraven.

Having closed in on one objective and coming close to claiming the other, I went into the shooting phase. The Death Company ran in, shot up some vespid, and prepared to assault what was left of them. The Epistolary squad and hurricane bolter made short work of the kroot, and the stormraven's remaining arsenal with the assistance of the 2 storm bolters finished the Fire Warriors.

Assault was quick - Death Company finished the Vespid, consolidated.

I now realized just how quickly Tau fold in assault :S

But nonetheless...


RED


So Red at this point had two squads left, one being only one soldier remaining. He sent his vespid as far as they could to maybe pick off some death company, but alas they weren't in range.

Nothing really happened this part. :(




The game was pretty surely in the bag for me at this point, but we rolled to see if there'd be a sixth turn.......




TURN 6: ATLAS

So...I had very little to do at this point. I could potentially table Red in this turn, with any luck. I fired some storm bolter shots at the stealth suit, and some at the vespid. Killed the last stealth suit (tricky little bastard, nearly evaded some of my shooting thanks to night fighting) and one more vespid. Whoop.

RED

The vespid stood their ground, and fired some shots at the DC. They managed to kill one, but this was all to happen in this turn.

We rolled to see if there'd be a turn 7 and..............




BA - 2 objectives
Tau - 0

Victory for the Blood Angels!

Afterthoughts - Well, I had never faced Tau before. I hadn't realized just how dependent I was upon Andilus - he's a great teacher, and I've still got a lot of room for improvement. But this list has consistently proven itself powerful, and there was no exception this time. Red had me gaking myself against his shooting early on, and that was scary, but I was able to eventually stop being stupid and eliminate his heavy-hitters, piece by piece. The main thing that frustrated me was once again losing a Dreadnought. I'll have too reconsider my options there.

It's always the scariest for my units when they haven't gotten into the charge yet, so the Tau were definitely an opponent to heighten those nervous feelings, but I managed to pull through. Red is a great opponent, and his shooters are dangerous, I must say! All in all a fun battle, full of action, humour and the odd homoerotic sentiment. VASSAL FTW

I was surprised that Red was able to hold you off for as long as he did, he hasn't played Tau in ages... and his choices of some units is, er, interesting. I didn't really know his list or how to play Tau until I watched this battle, so I was only so much help too. I'll probably give him some suggestions for a list next time and then things should be much more entertaining.


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Titan Atlas wrote:But yeah, Mephiston got his worst raping in this game, worse than any other death in any other game, he got some kills.....but still, holy crap.

I dunno, that time with my Lone Wolf was pretty sad too.

woot. I'll also probably either make some adjustments or not make as many mistakes

Congrats on the win, Atlas. Looks like you didn't need to use the Death Squad as a stop-gap reinforcement like I thought you might have (I consider this a good thing). Also, I knew the Tau were terrible in melee, but didn't expect it to be so much of a slaughter.

The videos and pictures made me laugh.

JUST looking at the list, before seeing anything else I am telling you now that the tau list will lose. They will definitely lose unless the BA player is completely incompetent, or the Tau player gets beyond amazing dice. Really Vespid??? Gosh the reason people think the tau army is so bad is b/c of the lists they make! But best of luck to you, even though the list is illegal

I've since edited the list to what it turned out to be (when we set up the game there was the realization that the list was illegal, thus the removal of a hammerhead and the addition of a vespid unit)

thanks, I think be sure to read the report if you haven't already!

darkcloud92 wrote:JUST looking at the list, before seeing anything else I am telling you now that the tau list will lose. They will definitely lose unless the BA player is completely incompetent, or the Tau player gets beyond amazing dice. Really Vespid??? Gosh the reason people think the tau army is so bad is b/c of the lists they make! But best of luck to you, even though the list is illegal

Yeah, Red seems to think that Vespid are worth their points because they get AP3 guns... from what I've seen, not so much. They seem to be only good at mopping up squads. If I was him, I would have spent the points on a pair of Piranhas with Fusion Blasters or something.

And yeah, so far literally everyone has commented on the Vespid. I'm a prophet.

Yesh

I read the report, it was a nice report! I can't help but think I saw this coming lol Those suit load outs arn't so great, mainly b/c of the fusion blasters. Plasma is much better, and AP 2. Fusion blasters at 12 inch force you to get way to close to the enemy, and a squad with them only gets 3 shots at 12, while a squad of Plasma gets 6. Oh and stealth suits are pretty terrible to. Actually very terrible, since they take up a crisis suit slot. But it was always gonna be an uphill battle against Assault marines, very few harder opponents lol

It was a fun battle, once I got past those fusion blasters it was smooth sailing. Although to be honest, that Sky-Ray was pretty poor in its shooting.

Ya the Skyray always leaves me saying "meh"
I only run Broadsides in my heavy support, but that's just me. The hammerhead isn't so bad, but the skyray is to expensive point wise.

mmyeah, the broadsides caused some damage for sure. Any changes I can make to my build if I'm preparing to fight a Tau army? I mean, my list worked fine but perhaps there's a better setlist you can think of? Although I suppose so long as I can make it to the assault it's not a huge deal what I use

Ya lol Uhm I actually don't know BA or many other armies besides tau so well. But from the tau perspective I can tell you that anything that gets you into assault with us the fastest. lol I am sure people in the army list section would be willing to help if you post in there

kk, figured as much. Well, my list works well for that, but so would a mech build I imagine. I like DoA but they're just so vulnerable to shooting that way that it makes me hesitant

If you really just want to aggravate Tau, try using a DoA FNP Assault marine force. It makes his AT count for nothing, you get into assault unbelievably fast, and FNP allows you to shrug of masses of Str 5 shooting.

Example:

24 Str 5 Bs 4 (we'll say he had a markerlight, or is shooting w/ a Warfish) shots.

(# of shots) * (probability of hitting) * (probability of wound) * (probability of missing save) * (probability of missing FNP) = probability of killing a FNP marine

24*(4/6)*(4/6)*(2/6)*(3/6) = 1.78

So, in 24 shots (at an increased ballistic skill), he'll be able to kill ~2 marines. Sad day for Tau.

Really the only viable way for Tau to handle these guys is to sacrifice devilfish and piranha to get in the way and blast 'em with CIB shots or Plasma/Railguns. Even, then you're going to be cleaning up.

Oh, right! I suppose I'm perhaps overhyping the Tau shooters...alright, I'll try that! Thanks


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Cuz I do have a list like that in mind

Titan, do you want to face off against another BA list? I've been meaning to try VASSEL for a while now and could use someone to play against

It'd be interesting, I'll get back to you on that one.

Good report Atlas. I'm impressed how well you did. Just for my own theory I wanna try a Tau list against you sometime just to see how I'd do lol.
On another note, I look forward to playing against you on Friday. It'll be an interesting game, one way or another lol

Sounds fun, dude. And yes, looking forward to it! Soon we'll also have to set up a team battle, as well.