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Sorry no pics at all.

My List:
Shas'el missile pod, Plasma, target lock
3x 3 crisis missile, plasma
6 firewarrior w/markerlight
2x 10 Kroot & 7 Hounds
2 pirahna fusion, gun drones, 2 seeker, diruption pod target lock, targeting array
2x railhead sms disruption pod etc
3 sniper drone teams

Game 1 Doug Miller DA
His?
Samael jet bike
6 dw bikes, attack bike, land speeder w/melta
devastator 2 missile, 2 plasma
veteran squad kitted for cc
2 troops las plas? and rhinos
deathwing termies

There might have been more I lost the lists from my 1st day opponents.

He went first my kroot outflanked.

first turn nothing of great note, I immobilized a rhino and killed a couple marines, he made 1 railhead not shoot.

turn 2 he parks a rhino next to the objective in the board center. Samael cowers on my right flank fearing to assault sniper drones, his bikes come in from the flank and can't reach my guys. My pirahnas die to attack bike and speeder.
One of my kroot squads comes in and assault into the cover held by missile dev combat squad in the far left corner. They die horribly and my kroot claim the objective in the forest bravely for the rest of the game. Samael dies for his cowardice/bravery standing in front of a Tau gunline. All but one of his bikes die on the flank. No problem right?

turn 3 I am not in range to be assaulted by anything but his bike and on the other flank his attack bike. He fails to hit with his lascannons for the third straight turn. DOH. His bike does a single wound to my sniper team. I fail, and think sure I will lose a drone these 3 guys may be able to kill him. STUPID!!!! Should have removed the spotter and left him in the wind versus my firewarriors, 2 units of sniper drones, 3 crisis suits and a railhead. On the other flank his attack bike wiffs it at my drones from the pirahnas and of course drones can't kill bikes (see previous combat...)
My other kroot arrive from the right flank and fail their assault into the cover where a las combat squad and plasma dev combat squad are hiding, really a 4 shouldn't be that hard to come up with on 2 dice right? The bikes and drones on either flank flail at one another to no effect. His unit hiding in cover in the center break from shooting casualties and run 10", they won't get that far on a diff terrain check the rest of the game.

turn 4 bikes and drones flail at one another again termies arrive and blow the rail gun off of a hammerhead. Lascannon stuns the now non railhead.
Everyone but the lascannon that could in the back die. He refuses to be effective, but won't run away. The veterans die to a man. Termies are left with 2 hiding in the terrain where they are contesting an objective. My drones now cunningly choose to fold after inexplicably not dieing earlier.

turn 5 attack bike with melta and termies down railless railhead. His bike on the right flank assaults my firewarriors and two die, they fail to kill and surround him menacingly.
I blow everything that is left arround the center objective away, and try to kill the combat squad claiming the objective in the far corner with my surviving railhead. No Go. I charge in the reamaining crisis suit on the right flank to hopefully bail out the firewarriors against the bike, again no one does anything.

Game ends, I win on victory points 13-8.
Doug was a ton of fun to play, and played his list pretty well, if I pull the spotter though I think this ends as a massacre in my favor.

Game 2 Sean Conner DW
Landraider
Belial & command squad
4 terminator squads

Sean gambles with a squad it scatters off the table and dies. Other than that this is a stand and shoot game with not much happening. This game to me emphasizes why killpoints RAW suck. During the game he manages to kill: My piranhas, their gun drones, 6 firewarriors, and 1 sniper drone unit. I kill all but 3 regular termies (from 2 different squads) and an immobilised 2x weapon destroyed LR. We have to go to victory points where of course I win. If the game goes to turn 6 I table him.

13-8
Sean was good to play and we ended up learning some of the vagaries of 5th together. Again: Kill Points are dumb.

Game 3 Alan Marshall Black Templar (painted red like blood angels for some reason my brain never overcame the paint scheme)
2 predators
4 razorbacks emporers champion, commander both with squads, 2 smaller squads
3 rhinos with troop squads

This game broke down really quickly. With my army I should be able to kill or stop a lot of armor 11 right? Well turn 1 ends with 1 rhino immobilised, and 1 razorback not shooting and weapon destroyed. Turn 2 goes exactly the same. Then black templars assault tau... you fill in the blanks.

4-17 loss.
If your army refuses to hit the other army GAME OVER.

Game 4 David Fay Stealer Shock MY VOTE FOR FAVORITE OPPONENT
Broodlord 10 stealers
3 lictors
12 stealers
5x 10 stealers

spear head deployment, due to inexperience with the army I don't think to infiltrate the kroot, adn so I set everything up close to board center and wait for the horror to begin. Crickets on turn one and the Tau wet themselves. Then the horror begins...

turn 2 everything but 1 lictor arrives without using any rerolls. NOT SO GOOD for the Tau. They get closer. One lictor lands on another when deepstriking, and gets sent to the corner, the other ends up in range to assault a unit of suits. He kills one and they hold.
I blaze away and due to some great cover saves, there are only about half a dozen stealers dead at the end of the turn. Another wound on my suits from the lictor, he takes one too.

turn 3 my kroot didn't quite get out of assault range of one stealer and the other lictor came in from reserve and assaulted with them. The kroot kill a few on their way out.
My entire army shifts left to hopefully kill the wave coming in from the left while being out of assault range from the right. It mostly works...

Turn 4 my piranha speed bump for the right flank die horribly and their drones would quiver if they knew well enough to. Unfortunately what is left of the stealers on the left are enough to kill my other kroot and firewarrior squad meaning that I have no scoring units left.
The left flank is cleansed during my turn leaving the broodlord and only a couple of his pals plus a lictor and 2 mostly full other squads of stealers on the right.

Turn 5 the pinned drones die screaming. David makes masterful use of cover as we see in my turn 5, apparently those stealers found every hole around.
Everything moves right to blast him off of the objectives, after the fusillade of fire, there are 3 genestealers from 2 different broods holding each of the objectives still in range of the broodlord who has one wound left. There is also a lictor hiding with his 2+ cover in a forest. The last 3 stealers bounced 13 4+ cover saves to stay around.

Game ends on a roll.

4-19 massacre. Man I love playing with fully painted armies, an awesome opponent and a game that literally hangs in the balance until the last roll. I would play David anytime anywhere. He is that fun to play against. I wish that I had remembered to take pics of the tourney, this game looked epic, many people stopped to watch what was an incredible looking and playing game.

Game 5 Damien (sorry I forgot your last name)
Flyrant
Broodlord and 5 pals
5 warriors deathspitters and barbed strangler
4x Dakkafex
Fex toxin, crushing claws, barbed strangler
28 spinefist gaunts
2x 8 stealers

This was a close fought game as well, I don't remember all the sequences quite as well as the others, can you tell I was burned out at this point? This was my first GT so this much gaming plus the Friday doubles was just more than I was ready for. In the end he got me on kill points with only 2 gaunts, 2 stealers, a broodlord with 1 wound left, 2 dakkafexes with 1 wound left, and 1 with 2 wounds left. That is how they started the last turn as well.
The key point int he game was when 2 out of six firewarriors were left with the claws of the broodlord dripping the ichor from their comrades grizzly death and they decided it was time to drink the bravery cool-aid. We won't run they say. Instead we'll roll so we can die on our turn and let the brood lord charge without getting shot. That cost my my sniper drones in subsequent turns and eventually the victory.

5-17 loss. Damien was fun to play and the few things that we hadn't yet encountered in 5th that we ran across in this game we found relatively informative in the book. Learning with him was very good.

All in all I really enjoyed the GT as a whole, and I will attend the LVGT in the future when possible.
Word to the wise play test your army a bunch of times before, don't' just paint it up the 2 weeks previous and expect to do OK.

You scrub, you shame me!

Alright.

Gonna get you for that! lol

Don't make me get all passive aggressive!

Too late.

Froggage wrote:
Game 4 David Fay Stealer Shock MY VOTE FOR FAVORITE OPPONENT

David went on to get BBQed by St. John in game #5. I think if you managed to win, your army should have given St. John a better fight.

Game 5 Damien (sorry I forgot your last name)

That should be Damien Garcia who is Augustus.

Thanks for that blackmoor.

Thanks for the report, I play and constantly tweak a very similar army so it was good to see how it did at LVGT. I don't think your battle score really reflects your overall performance, a couple of those games as you noted could have gone either way.

Anything you wish you had different in your army? I don't normally play with 3 sniper drone teams at 1750...how did they perform overall? Did you suffer only having 3 unmounted troops? Seems you didn't claim a lot of objectives.

As for Armor 11...I have to say, that I don't feel like I can stop armor 11 to save my life anymore with fireknives, and need deathrains, which of course causes me to have to shuffle all sorts of stuff around. argh.

The thing that I noticed was markerlights are terribly inconsistent and unreliable in that small of a sample size. One of the games I hit a total of once firing all of them every turn.

Having only 3 troop choices was a huge liability given the "disposable" quality or fragility of Tau troops choices. I think that is possibly the biggest hit to Tau in 5th. In 4th they were a great utility unit because if someone shot them instead of your killy units it was an additional bonus where in 5th you have to keep them alive to win 2/3 of the games or table your opponent.

The snipers are kind of a nice bonus when they do things, and are really a cheap way of getting more marker lights. But with as much as you need troops now it would actually give you 2 more wounds for your marker light to do a minimum sized firewarrior squad with a marker. That is something I am going to have to toy with though.

The thing that I like about fireknives is the top end potential is so much higher than when you twin link a single system. However, if you don't hit you don't hit.

Yeah, I typically do 2x 6 man firewarriors with markerlights and 2x sniper drone teams. 5 more points and worse in other ways, but they score so thats why I tend to use them.

And yeah, I have almost always played with all fireknives...I'm just finding that with more light vehicles, more things getting cover saves the plasma may not be as worthwhile. And everyone being able to run that I rarely get to exercise the rapid-fire aspect of fireknives without getting run down. But it's still worth it I think even if you're just turning 2+ saves into 4+ saves with plasma, and to just have the threat of being able to quickly melt some high-save squad if they make a false move.