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ah ok, guess i misread somewhere that he was T1 assaulting

That's another thing... He needs to be careful of getting too close on the Top of Turn 1 with Ghazzy. If I get the chance to can hit him with before he can get his 2+ Invulnerable, I'm going to jump on it and try and down him. However, I don't really see Dash letting that happen. It's still something to keep in mind though.

TopC - from our private chat conversations, the T1 assault is restricted solely to the deffkopta(s). They have the ability to cross the table pre-game scout move, and move into position for a turn1 assault. Yeah - Ghazghkull is my lovable turn2+ fuzzy stuffed animal.

Davicus wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:In the case of the broadsides, a turn1 deffkopta assault to tie up the broadsides until Snikrot can enter the board and finish the unit off. Whether the deffkoptas start on the table or in reserve pretty much depend on whether I roll for 1st or 2nd.

But that's assuming your opponent leave the broadsides open for you to do that. If you as a Tau player yourself know you won't make that mistake, what makes you think your opponent will?

It is not solely a matter of hiding them, a standard GW board is very short across, and your koptas can move that in a turn. 24" scout move, 12" move, shoot (just cuse you can), then 12" assault. That's the whole board, and they can start 6" in. Hiding is not optional. Someone said that assault is 6" for koptas. I don't think this is right, but even if it is, then it is still a 42" move.

You still have to be able to land within 6" of them. And that's assuming you can get within" 18" of them without being within 12" of something else on your scout move.

despoiler52 wrote:

Davicus wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:In the case of the broadsides, a turn1 deffkopta assault to tie up the broadsides until Snikrot can enter the board and finish the unit off. Whether the deffkoptas start on the table or in reserve pretty much depend on whether I roll for 1st or 2nd.

But that's assuming your opponent leave the broadsides open for you to do that. If you as a Tau player yourself know you won't make that mistake, what makes you think your opponent will?

It is not solely a matter of hiding them, a standard GW board is very short across, and your koptas can move that in a turn. 24" scout move, 12" move, shoot (just cuse you can), then 12" assault. That's the whole board, and they can start 6" in. Hiding is not optional. Someone said that assault is 6" for koptas. I don't think this is right, but even if it is, then it is still a 42" move.

There are ways to protect a unit beyond just deploying them far away, you know. You could use your minimum unit of 6 fire warriors to surround them, for example, and prevent them from being assaulted in turn 1. Properly placed kroot (just over 18" out) also protects them from anything that hinges on a scout move. With that in mind, here's why I don't think tying up broadsides on turn 1 is something you can force. There's always a way out - if you can make the assault, it's because the tau player let himself be boxed in.

You deploy first:

Deffcopta deploys center field, giving you the widest area of potential turn 1 assaults to cover. This is the most sensible deployment because, obviously, if you put down in a corner I can just deploy in the opposite corner and keep you faaaaar out of range. From the "center" point of your deployment (12" in, 3' on either side) it's about 51 inches from you to either of my back corners. With the size of a broadside's base, you bring that down to 49. You can move 24" + 12" + 6" = 9 inches short. So you see, when you go first, your opponent can react to your deployment and put his broadsides outside of your deffkopta's range. Their 72" range means that you'd have to huddle in the opposite corner of the board with for that to be an ineffective deployment, but orks don't exactly win games by camping

The obvious answer to this is to bring more than one unit of deffkoptas. In that case, if it's just them and the broadsides you're pretty much guaranteed to catch them on turn 1 unless they reserve. Either way, no broadsides shooting on the first turn.

UNLESS

The tau player blocks them off with kroot. Broadsides go down on the board edge in the corner of their choosing, kroot deploy (if you are smart and put units on the corners) just 18 inches away from you which puts them ~16" out from the broadsides. You only need 24 kroot bases to form a line from one table edge to the other (each one occupies 5" of space - 1" base, 2" coherency on either side) so it's not like there are likely to be gaps. That's easily a part of any take all comers list, so not a problem (my 1750 list has 36 kroot bases). When making a scout move you can't end it within 24" of an enemy model. If I can deploy the rest of my army so that there's something within 12" of everywhere behind that line then you can't scout behind it. You'd be forced to end your movement 12" in front of it. That means on turn 1 you'll be ~28 inches out. That leaves you about 10 inches short. No dice.

There is a way you can counter this, but it's at a hefty trade off. Since you deploy first, you can take advantage of your unit of infiltrators to prevent the kroot from deploying far enough forward to block off your scout moves - that' right, you have to put snikrot down on the table. The horror, I know.

If you put Snikrot down within 18" of my broadsides, the kroot have to deploy alongside them instead of in front of them. This means you can end your scout move nice and close, well within distance of a turn 1 assault. The thing is, you have to commit your ambush unit to regular deployment. Is that worth it? I think it is, but it's not as simple a solution as you've been talking about in previous pages. You could always include a basic kommando unit, but that's straying into list tailoring territory which is not where you're going with this, yes? After all, aside from putting pressure on during deployment kommandos without snikrot are pretty much useless. It's not very likely that you'd include more than the one unit in any tournament list.

It's important to keep in mind that you have to dice for who gets to deploy infiltrators first if you both have them, you don't deploy in the same order as the rest of your army. Lots of people forget about this. The reason why it's important is that your counter completely relies on random chance - this is a very common theme with orks, and is another big reason why I'd never try to play the army competitively. Nobody likes to walk away from a game feeling like they lost because of one roll, right?

This all remains more or less the same if you go second, except that the broadsides will get to fire at least once and I can just throw kroot or whatever at your deffkopta. So, bottom line, you need turn 1 for this to work, you need to either be playing somebody who doesn't understand why deployment is important, or you need to change your game plan.

It's not as easy as "put down deffkopta, scout, win!"

I imagine the reason why you've had so much success with this strategy is because, like you said earlier, even though people know just how far your manz can cover in one turn it's hard to fully understand that and act around it. Lots of people don't really understand the importance of deployment entirely and just plonk their dudes down and go "ok, kill me!"

It's a shame, because I'm pretty sure the ones who don't realize how important deployment is for Tau are the ones who are crying about how awful the current codex is, just because they haven't expanded their game beyond the 3 phases of actual play.

I conceed that it is not a case were a turn one charge is impossible to avoid. I know that I stated before that it is, but there were a couple factors I did not consider. The first being the reduced assault range of dethkoptas. I know you said that spliting up the dethkoptas would increase the chances for a first turn strike, but I think that the odds are exellent, three deth koptas, one far left, one far right, one central. This covers pretty much all areas of the board in a "danger zone". Another advantage is that you must yield favorable positions to protect yourself, even if I don't reach you first turn, I still forced your placement of the Kroot, and made sure that your firing lanes were suboptimal.

As a side note does anyone have the exact dimantions of a standard GW board?

Erm....6' x 4' in Inches, that's 72" x 48"

despoiler52 wrote:three deth koptas, one far left, one far right, one central. This covers pretty much all areas of the board in a "danger zone". Another advantage is that you must yield favorable positions to protect yourself, even if I don't reach you first turn, I still forced your placement of the Kroot, and made sure that your firing lanes were suboptimal.

The thing about defending with the kroot is that it doesn't require me to overextend basically anything. That is their sole purpose in the army list - stand there and be in the way of your stuff. Kroot could have a stat line with nothing but 1s and they'd still be useful as long as they can infiltrate, because it allows you to control deployment and the early game. As for reducing the effectiveness of my firing lanes, this is the kind of thing you use to defend against fast moving junk. Trukks aren't going to be getting cover from me shooting over the kroot (and besides, they get it from the mek), and if you're on foot then I don't have much to worry about in the first place.

The whole thing costs like 120 points to do. 120 points to 100% protect my deployment zone from turn 1 assaults reliant on scouts. There aren't a lot of armies that can do that, and tau probably do it the best.

There's a more in depth explanation of this deployment strategy here:

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/06/follow-up-beating-outflankscout-tactica.html

and some pictures here (towards the end of the album):
http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2009/06/valkyrie-scouting-pics.html

You actually prevent the assault just be strategic placement in your own zone, the use of terrain on a side, and the use of gun drones from vehicles effectively giving you a 0cost screen. By deploying correctly related to the given terrain you can effectively limit routes into your flanks as well make choke points that are easily restricted by 2-4 gun drones. cover isnt really an issues anyway..

Guess to me anyway, any intelligent tau player realizes that broadsides are an asset that DOES REQUIRE defense from other units for the first 1-3 turns to ensure that it gets some armor kills in. After that its fairly irrelevant to alot of tau players as they have fire knives/hammer heads to deal with the softer targets anyway..which if targets were prioritized should be whats left to deal with..

So kudos if your getting turn 1-2 assaults into broadsides... we need to get some vassal games goin if you wanna play i found a link where we can get the vassal 40K module to play

my two teef....
Squads of lootas would inconvenience your trukks I hope.
Squads of skorcha buggies would work pretty well against trukks as well (no cover saves from KFF)
30 man squads of shootaboys with big shootas might also work especially if there was a gretchen wall in front of them to slow them down. A battlewagon full of tankbustas might also slow your advance. Sure you'll assault them next turn and it uses up two heavy weapons slots but a strength 8 rokkit against your side armour is in with a chance. I don't know if a bombsqig counts as a shooting attack or an assault and is affected by KFF.
Heck, lets just use zoggy and turn ghazz into a squig. That would be funny. Also if he gets a zzapp result it might inconvenience a battlewagon.

To beat DoP's list I think I would take gunline Orks. 30 Lootas, 10 Tankbustas (3 bomb-squigs, 2 tankhammers) 3x3 kannons, a SAG mech, and several max-size shoota mobs, all castled up with a grot mob (including 3 Runtherds with grot-prods) surrounding them. I ignore the battlewagons first turn and try to blow up as many trukks as possible before you enter charge range. Once you do enter range you'll have to charge the grots, and on my turn I unload the Lootas and SAG on Ghazzy, then counter-charge Ghazzy with one or two shoota squads and the burnas with the rest. On turn 2 I also let loose my bomb-squigs and charge a BW with my Tankbustas.

If you tank-shock the grots aside, I'll do the best I can to place them in such a way that you have to assault them; then I'll charge the last unit to arrive, to keep them out of the melee going on inside my castle. The more of your boyz I can keep out, the better.

I don't have any idea how this would play out, really; I think I would win if I could crack 3-4 trukks before you got into assault range. With a SAG, 30 Lootas and 10 Tankbustas, that should be possible. The Glory Hogs rule won't really hurt me here because there will always be plenty of vehicle targets to pick from.

BeRzErKeR wrote:To beat DoP's list I think I would take gunline Orks. 30 Lootas, 10 Tankbustas (3 bomb-squigs, 2 tankhammers) 3x3 kannons, a SAG mech, and several max-size shoota mobs, all castled up with a grot mob (including 3 Runtherds with grot-prods) surrounding them. I ignore the battlewagons first turn and try to blow up as many trukks as possible before you enter charge range. Once you do enter range you'll have to charge the grots, and on my turn I unload the Lootas and SAG on Ghazzy, then counter-charge Ghazzy with one or two shoota squads and the burnas with the rest. On turn 2 I also let loose my bomb-squigs and charge a BW with my Tankbustas.

If you tank-shock the grots aside, I'll do the best I can to place them in such a way that you have to assault them; then I'll charge the last unit to arrive, to keep them out of the melee going on inside my castle. The more of your boyz I can keep out, the better.

I don't have any idea how this would play out, really; I think I would win if I could crack 3-4 trukks before you got into assault range. With a SAG, 30 Lootas and 10 Tankbustas, that should be possible. The Glory Hogs rule won't really hurt me here because there will always be plenty of vehicle targets to pick from.

the only down side i see is the 2nd BW, the one with the Burnas that would eat gretchen and boyz squad for lunch. other wise good plan. is this a Take all comers list? or a custom list just for DoP (The OP)?

poodle wrote:my two teef....
Squads of lootas would inconvenience your trukks I hope.
Squads of skorcha buggies would work pretty well against trukks as well (no cover saves from KFF)
30 man squads of shootaboys with big shootas might also work especially if there was a gretchen wall in front of them to slow them down. A battlewagon full of tankbustas might also slow your advance. Sure you'll assault them next turn and it uses up two heavy weapons slots but a strength 8 rokkit against your side armour is in with a chance. I don't know if a bombsqig counts as a shooting attack or an assault and is affected by KFF.
Heck, lets just use zoggy and turn ghazz into a squig. That would be funny. Also if he gets a zzapp result it might inconvenience a battlewagon.

Your two teef made me chuckle; how orkish.

And if Zoggy turned Ghazzy into a squig, I'm pretty sure that somehow, the universe would implode.

No, it would be the fiercest, kunniest squig the universe had seen!

Kaltak wrote:

the only down side i see is the 2nd BW, the one with the Burnas that would eat gretchen and boyz squad for lunch. other wise good plan. is this a Take all comers list? or a custom list just for DoP (The OP)?

I think the list I proposed would be an effective take all comers list. Here's an actual proposed army list;


Big Mek; 95
-shokk attack gun

15x Lootas; 225 (320)

15x Lootas; 225 (545)

10x Tankbustas; 165 (710)
-3x bomb-squigs
-2x tankhammers

30x shoota boyz; 220 (930)
-Nob w/PK, bosspole

30x shoota boyz; 220 (1150)
-Nob w/PK, bosspole

30x shoota boyz; 220 (1370)
-Nob w/PK, bosspole

30x gretchin 135 (1505)
-3x Runtherd w/grot-prod

3x kannons; 78 (1583)
-3x ammo runts
-3x extra krew

3x kannons; 78 (1661)
-3x ammo runts
-3x extra krew

3x kannons; 78 (1739)
-3x ammo runts
-3x extra krew

3x Warbuggies; 105 (1844)
-TL rokkit launchas


Since I had a few extra points I threw in the Warbuggies. They'll be pretty safe, since DoP has literally no ranged AT, and they can speed around behind and go for side/rear armor shots on his BW. DoP can either divert a trukk or two to try and plank them, which I'm happy with because it'll dilute the force of the turn 2 charge, or ignore them and hope I don't take something out. Then after the charge hits, they'll swoop in and try to force morale checks on depleted trukker squads.

I think in all honesty what the list suffers from is something a lot of the power builds do. Being a spam browbeater type list. If you dont know how to deal with it, you are going to lose. But anyone who has either an army built up that can combat this such as lots of mobile shooting (Eldar, tau), or just sheer numbers (guard, bugs, orks) can probably take it. In addition a marine or chaos list with some decent hand to hand could put the hurt on this army. Naturally mission, terrain, and most importantly player skill comes to mind.

The army relies on basic smashing the enemy turn 2. Just putting so many hits out there from boyz that the enemy cannot recover. Any army with the numbers to take this and hit back, the speed to just avoid receiving a decisive charge, or the sheer resiliency would be able to work wonders against this list. I played a 2000 point ork army at adepticon that was something like 150 shoota boyz and 45 lootas, plus a KFF big mek and I think gaz. That army would probably be able to mess up this list.

A mech vet guard army could be very painful. Multiple ranged shots to drop trucks and possibly wagons, and then they can just hide in the chimera wall, shoot, and once you pop the tanks you are getting shot up. I think that mech space wolves would be worse to face. 30 marine attacks on 12 boyz is never a good thing, and thats assuming the boyz havent been shot up before hand.

Finally I and others have been over why a speed list could take this apart. Shoot transports, run away, and win because orks arent as fast as tanks, and you army has zero ranged firepower.

I would recommend going for some more balance in the army. Maybe dropping the burnas for lootas.

Eidolon wrote:

I would recommend going for some more balance in the army. Maybe dropping the burnas for lootas.

That would unfortunately ruin the theme here. I do have Lootas, I love Lootas, and I use them....but not in a mechanized assault list.

One list that Im starting to see locally that might cause you problems would be IG gunline, with a couple vendettas.

With the pregame scout move a couple vedettas (each a single model squadron) would have very little problem getting side armor shots at the mek's BW. Three TL lascannons, two+ hits....ignore one due to cover still gives an almost guaranteed one side hit per vendetta. Str9 vs av12 plus open top gives a very high percentage that the mek is going to be on foot. The key point then is that once hes out of the BW the kff has a much smaller range, which will leave a good chunk of the truks with no cover save from all of that dakka.

If the IG go first, with a couple vendettas the ork army in all likelyhood is broken into two components, not a good thing. If the IG rolls slightly well they may even get a shot at both BWs.


A lot will depend on how popular the venedetta becomes, but its a ridiculously good vehicle for its cost and its incredibly shooty as well.



Sliggoth

Yep the KFF Mek is the Achilles heel. If you can dismount him early, your trucks are easy to take down. dismounting a few units first turn in order to break up the assault is going to be key against you. I think may mobile lists will be able to accomplish this, while those that are not are without an answer and get crushed.

Ya, but you don't know which vehicle the bigmek is in. You would have to shoot at one, damage it, then ask him to make sure that the bigmek was within 6" of it. Thus finding out. As for brezerkes list, I like it and think it would do well against the OP, I might consider swapping the SAG, I never get it to preform well, actually for me it norrmally scores really bad strength, scatters wildly, or blows itself and all around it up. Is there somewere else 95 points could be spent? A pair of warbugies with TLRL? then 15 points to buff up some upgrades, also defantly take out one rutherd and grot. As for the OP I think that a list of pros and cons is in order, and really when isn't it.

Pros;
-Really frickin' fast, turn two assault is very feasable.
-Covered desently by the KFF
-Compact, so it can assault specific sections of the enemy's army
-Lots of tough CC units that can be driven up pretty much anywere, also with a fair complement of PK

Cons;
-Lacks ranged anti tank weaponry
-Must get into combat quickly to be effective
-Relies on manuverability, that can be taken away against armies with lots of Anti-tank.

Pretty much it I think.

despoiler52 wrote:Ya, but you don't know which vehicle the bigmek is in. You would have to shoot at one, damage it, then ask him to make sure that the bigmek was within 6" of it. Thus finding out. As for brezerkes list, I like it and think it would do well against the OP, I might consider swapping the SAG, I never get it to preform well, actually for me it norrmally scores really bad strength, scatters wildly, or blows itself and all around it up. Is there somewere else 95 points could be spent? A pair of warbugies with TLRL? then 15 points to buff up some upgrades, also defantly take out one rutherd and grot. As for the OP I think that a list of pros and cons is in order, and really when isn't it.

Pros;
-Really frickin' fast, turn two assault is very feasable.
-Covered desently by the KFF
-Compact, so it can assault specific sections of the enemy's army
-Lots of tough CC units that can be driven up pretty much anywere, also with a fair complement of PK

Cons;
-Lacks ranged anti tank weaponry
-Must get into combat quickly to be effective
-Relies on manuverability, that can be taken away against armies with lots of Anti-tank.

Pretty much it I think.

Most tourneys don't allow closed lists.

despoiler52 wrote:Ya, but you don't know which vehicle the bigmek is in. You would have to shoot at one, damage it, then ask him to make sure that the bigmek was within 6" of it. Thus finding out. As for brezerkes list, I like it and think it would do well against the OP, I might consider swapping the SAG, I never get it to preform well, actually for me it norrmally scores really bad strength, scatters wildly, or blows itself and all around it up. Is there somewere else 95 points could be spent? A pair of warbugies with TLRL? then 15 points to buff up some upgrades, also defantly take out one rutherd and grot. As for the OP I think that a list of pros and cons is in order, and really when isn't it.

Pros;
-Really frickin' fast, turn two assault is very feasable.
-Covered desently by the KFF
-Compact, so it can assault specific sections of the enemy's army
-Lots of tough CC units that can be driven up pretty much anywere, also with a fair complement of PK

Cons;
-Lacks ranged anti tank weaponry
-Must get into combat quickly to be effective
-Relies on manuverability, that can be taken away against armies with lots of Anti-tank.

Pretty much it I think.

Well, I need an HQ. The other option would be a KFF Mek to give cover; not important against this list, but it could be against others.

I like SAGs; when they go wrong, yes, terrible things happen, but when they go right hot DAMN they go right. Nothing like dropping a small blast that removes EVERYTHING it touches on a squad of Assault Termies with a Librarian.

I'm sorry, closed list? I'd still say drop the SAG, most of the time the SAG makes me SAD, mabye something a little more reliable, warboss?

In a tourney, you know what your opponent's army is and what's where always.

This list has ABSOLutely no solution to NightBringer. I don't think I have to elaborate on this, do I?

Orkish wrote:This list has ABSOLutely no solution to NightBringer. I don't think I have to elaborate on this, do I?

Yes, because Ghazzy with a 2+ invul and 7 S10 attacks isn't going to hurt the Nightbringer. While that is the only thing in the army that can fight him Dash's build means that it is the only thing that will fight him.

Ya, ghaz on a charge will rip him a new one. One what I'm not quite sure, the night bringer's anatomy confuses me. Also even a regular PK nob can cause some pain, 4 strength 9 hits are nothing to be sniffed at. Can the nightbringer even sniff?

For the Night Bringer, 4 S9 hits are something to sniff at. The Nob will be lucky to score a single wound while the Nightbringer will drop his template and destroy any squad of boyz in a single phase. Ghaz is his only option, but it is enough.

Crap, well ya. OT, does zogwork affect him?