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Hey guys, just played one of my two 1k games for this months 'tale of three gamers'

We are at 1k and We rolled an annihilation (finally) with spearhead deployment.

Lists were..

the villains.

canoness - book
celestian retinue with heavy flamer
immolator smoke

celestians 2x flamers
immolator smoke

10x battle sisters 2x meltas
rhino smoke

10x battle sisters 2x meltas
rhino smoke

exorcist

exorcist

the plucky heroes.

shaso missile pod, plasma rifle, multi-tracker, positional relay, drone controller, 2x shield drones, iridium armor, stim-injectors

shas'el twin-linked fusion blaster, airbursting fragmentation projector

crisis team one shas'ui upgrade 2x twin linked missile pods 2x targeting arrays

monat twin-linked fusion blaster, targeting array

monat twin-linked fusion blaster, targeting array

6x fire warriors
devilfish SMS, disruption pod, targeting array, multi-tracker

15x kroot, 10x kroot hounds

4x pathfinders
devilfish SMS, disruption pod, targeting array, multi-tracker


OK here we go...

I lose the roll to choose, and my opponent sticks me with first turn. He is learning here is my deployment.


He deploys thusly...


Get ready for a lightning fast game!

Turn 1 Tau activate and GO!


I didn't have range to anything so I just chilled out and said 'go ahead'

Turn 1 sisters...


He moved his whole force up except his exorcists, which were afraid of exposing rear armor to my fusion. He didn't pop smoke on the front of his pain train though.

Turn 2 tau...


I asked for my missile pod crisis team and rolled a '1'. So it was still lonely ole Shas'o. He did manage to JSJ and kill the front immolator. Shas' OH!

Turn 2 sisters...


Where did that shot come from? Hide behind that building, pop smoke, they are everywhere! they are nowhere!

Turn 3 Tau...


I asked for the pathfinders and got them. I did not declare that they were flank marching, since we were running a spearhead. I JSJed and took a shot at the smoked rhino, the cover save was made.

Turn 3 sisters...
No pic available.

They trundled forward. Leap frog, pop smoke, pain train is on the tracks. The exorcists either couldn't get LOS or range this turn. Both were set up for next though.

Turn 4 Tau...


I ask for the missile pod guys now that some vehicles were in range. JSJ with the shas'o and the crisis team makes the front exorcist go kaboom. The resulting explosion kills 3 out of 5 passengers.

Turn 4 sisters...
No pic available.

The two remaining flamer sisters ran towards the corner where I was hiding out. One exorcist killed the devilfish, but not a boom. The other killed one of two crisis suits in the unit. It was skin of my teeth, nob biker style wound allocation saved the kill point. The canoness and her unit ran towards the corner as well.

Turn 5 Tau...



Turn 5 is party time! Fire warrior devilfish comes on in the middle of my long table edge, lining up those two lonely sisters, the kroot outflank on the table and say. "Look like the tau have this under control, lets go to ground behind this crater." My shas'el nails a 'hit' deep strike just within 6" of one exorcist. One of the monat's scatters 4 inches backwards. The third monat scatters 11" backwards off the table and i rolled a 'terrible accident'.

I start shooting with the fusion first, the shas'el kills the exorcist he was next to, but although the monat hits, he only rolls a '1' to penetrate. My now single missile pod crisis suit pops out and shoots at the 2 woman sister unit and get two wounds. Two armor fails later and I tally up another KP. This frees up the fire warrior devilfish to fire the SMS at one of the two rhinos (the one behind the smoked rhino) he gets a 6 to glance and a 6 to immobilize it. The shas'o unloaded into the front rhino, but the smoke was too strong.

Turn 5 sisters...


The sisters in the immobilized rhino got out and hoofed it as fast as they could to protect the second exorcist. The canoness' unit moved straight towards the firewarrior devilfish hoping to shoot the soft insides as they tumbled out. you can't see the undamaged rhino but it steamed 12" to get as close as possible to the cluster of brave tau. Everyone except the canoness' unit and the exorcist moved too far to shoot, and so it came down to this. Exorcist loads only a single missile into its chamber, the firer struck a chord on her keyboard. "Damn, that was supposed to be an E flat, I hit a D." Missile hits, missile pens... disruption pod saves!

My opponent casts the die to see if the game ends and...





it did.

Final score.

Tau 4 (immolator, immolator, celestians, exorcist)
Sisters 2 (pathfinder's devilfish, Deepstrike mishap crisis suit.)


My opponent was indeed KevinNash. I've gotten two really big and exciting wins from him recently. I've been doing a lot of gloating, and I'm going to stop now. He is still figuring out how to face ninja tau. (if you haven't faced it, and you are confident that you'd know exactly what to do, then you are most likely wrong.) He needed his exorcists to score KPs, its the only thing with enough reach to do it in his army against a ninja army. There was no guarantee where any of my stuff was going to show up, so he had to hedge his bets all game. I probably would have played a bit more aggressively with the rhinos/immolators, but for every aggressive move he makes, it seems I have a non-aggressive counter. He is learning more and more every game. And ninja tau loses a lot of its effectivenes when your opponent is very familiar with what you are trying to do. You can see that he didn't split up his forces this time. That makes every kill I make a dangerous one.

Ultimately, drawing a KP mission with an armor 11 mechanized army against ninja tau is a death sentence. Spearhead gave him a better chance to box in my shas'o, but the game only went 5 turns. A near perfect storm for him.

Thanks for reading about the courageous Tau and their brave stand against the villainous witch hunters.

Those pictures make my eyes bug out.

Games looks like it was fun.

oni wrote:Those pictures make my eyes bug out.

In a bad way? I'm trying out a top down picture taking method. It seems to get the most information that is game relevant. if it isn't working, or its confusing let me know

What do you mean the couple times you say "I asked for X unit?"

Kyrolon wrote:What do you mean the couple times you say "I asked for X unit?"

I used a piece of wargear from the Tau codex called the positional relay. It's rules state that instead of rolling for reserves normally, you may instead choose one unit that you have held in reserve, on a roll of a 2+ that unit, and only that unit may enter play.

There is an entire style of play based on using this wargear, holding everything except the wargear carrier (it needs to be on the table) in reserve, and only trickling non-vital units one at a time until either turn 4 or turn 5, then opt not to use the positional relay. All of your units will flood in at the end of the game and overwhelm local areas of the board, and your opponent won't have time to react before the game ends.

Ahhhh. I figured it must be something from the Tau codex. It's been a long time since I had mine out. Being a fan of all reserved Eldar with 2Xautarch I can see the use of the strategy.

Shep wrote:There is an entire style of play based on using this wargear, holding everything except the wargear carrier (it needs to be on the table) in reserve, and only trickling non-vital units one at a time until either turn 4 or turn 5, then opt not to use the positional relay. All of your units will flood in at the end of the game and overwhelm local areas of the board, and your opponent won't have time to react before the game ends.

Ah, okay - I've heard the term 'ninja-tau' bandied about lately and I'm assuming that's what it means, true?

Cool report, lovely armies.

I must admit that i got a bit confuddled by the way the overhead shots are from each players perspective!!!

Shep wrote:

oni wrote:Those pictures make my eyes bug out.

In a bad way? I'm trying out a top down picture taking method. It seems to get the most information that is game relevant. if it isn't working, or its confusing let me know

The top down pictures are nice but the board... what's up with that? A bunch of strange rectangles?

ArbitorIan wrote:Cool report, lovely armies.

I must admit that i got a bit confuddled by the way the overhead shots are from each players perspective!!!

Great report! I love the overhead shots, but I agree with the above- it'd be easier to follow if it was from the same perspective for each shot (with the "bottom" of the picture being the same table edge each time). Otherwise, really great

I'm just starting playing with a tau army I traded for... the ninja method looks cool, but you say it's not as effective once someone has played against it. If you were playing a very experienced opponent, would you still go with the ninja strategy? I.e. is this what you always use?

Thanks

How do you explain the pathfinders versus fws? I do enjoy the list concept, especially at 1k -- do you have any more batreps versus not-the-perfect-storm?

Cheers,
ibushi

Death By Monkeys wrote:Ah, okay - I've heard the term 'ninja-tau' bandied about lately and I'm assuming that's what it means, true?

Yep.

ph34r wrote:The top down pictures are nice but the board... what's up with that? A bunch of strange rectangles?

It was a table constructed for cities of death. The rectangles are supposed to be concrete slabs. It works a little better in person, but the table will be retired as soon as I finish my realm of battle gameboard which is probably one weekend away from completion.

RiTides Nids wrote:Great report! I love the overhead shots, but I agree with the above- it'd be easier to follow if it was from the same perspective for each shot (with the "bottom" of the picture being the same table edge each time). Otherwise, really great

I'm just starting playing with a tau army I traded for... the ninja method looks cool, but you say it's not as effective once someone has played against it. If you were playing a very experienced opponent, would you still go with the ninja strategy? I.e. is this what you always use?

Yeah the overhead shots really give you the best idea of what is going on during the game. My ceiling isn't tall enough for me to capture the whole table, and I walked around to the other side to take the other pics. I should have rotated them around in iphoto. I thought about it before posting them, but since I had played the game, it made more sense to me where everyhing was. I should have gone with my hunch.

I believe that the ninja strategy is the best chance tau have of winning, period. The more experience your opponent has against it, the less mistakes he will make, but there is still no real 'tactical' counter. If you go left, my guys will come right. If you rush my deployment zone, my guys will land in yours or outflank into yours. If you hang back, then we'll just have a shoot out and my deep strikers will walk on from my board edge. If you spread out... well then, you just lost. My opponent in this game was already doing things right. And of course the post battle hindsight proved that he should have moved his exorcists 3 more inches forward on turn one. That would have given him shots one turn earlier. Other than that, I don't see much else of what he could have done. The turn that he hid all his rhinos from my shas'o looks like a bad play as he was getting his tanks taken out, but just remember that if he had hard rushed my shaso too early, then I just decide to bring the rest of my army on the other half of the table, shoot into side and rear armor, and then he'll have to turn around and go all the way back to get into range. You have to wait until i've made some reserves come in before you know where to move.

I don't mean to insult the good players who aren't using the ninja technique, but mechanized tau just doesn't have the firepower to kill any of the really tough models or large hordes. It isn't quite fast enough to redeploy away from trouble, and so you get boxed into your table edge, and then, even if you do shoot your way out of it, the game is practically over and now you've got to get your scoring units into position.

ibushi wrote:How do you explain the pathfinders versus fws? I do enjoy the list concept, especially at 1k -- do you have any more batreps versus not-the-perfect-storm?

Do you mean why did I take them instead of more fire warriors? The reason the pathfinders are in there is because of their devilfish. It is really important to me to be able to re-roll my deepstrikes. If my opponent hadn't dropped that devilfish on tun 3, my crisis suit probably wouldn't have mishapped, and he may have ended up scoring zero kill points. I think its valuable enough to include, and occasionally I could make use of the markerlights. I can outflank with them. Which is a massively important factor when building ninja tau. Sometimes, especially when facing super aggressive assault armies, you end up just hanging your shaso out to dry and you set up a new firebase off of a short edge, or on the far side of the table. That way his whole army can kill your one model, then he'll have to cross the table again to get to the rest. Games aren't long enough for that.

I hate my firewarrior unit. If I could make it a kroot unit, I would. It's the only unit in my planned 1750 that has no alternate means of deployment.

As to more batreps. I have some experience in all the missions. Kill points is the best to get, high objective count seize ground is next best, low seize ground objective counts and capture and controls are the worst.

When the number of places you'll eventually need to go is low, then your opponents ability to predict where you'll ultimately be improves. And then you can't just take bites out of his army, you gotta eat the whole thing, something tau have never been any good at doing.

But I don't have the batreps to prove it. I'll try to get pics of my games as we continue along in our campaign.

Very interesting report! I am trying to get my tau buddy to field a ninja army vs. my sisters to try and figure it out myself.
I think he might have done well to move up the exorcists a full 12" first turn, and parked a rhino behind them to keep their rear armor covered. Alternately, setting them up nearly butt to butt, on a 45 degree angle can block rear shots nearly as well, requiring being within ~4-6 inches away (if I recall) to get rear or side armor from the front or back. Since the launchers are on turrets, they can fire 360.

Still, there doesn't look to be much else he could have done, and it was well played over all. Man I want to try my hand vs ninja tau!

Are Tau back in style yet?

Wehrkind wrote:Very interesting report! I am trying to get my tau buddy to field a ninja army vs. my sisters to try and figure it out myself.
I think he might have done well to move up the exorcists a full 12" first turn, and parked a rhino behind them to keep their rear armor covered. Alternately, setting them up nearly butt to butt, on a 45 degree angle can block rear shots nearly as well, requiring being within ~4-6 inches away (if I recall) to get rear or side armor from the front or back. Since the launchers are on turrets, they can fire 360.

Still, there doesn't look to be much else he could have done, and it was well played over all. Man I want to try my hand vs ninja tau!

If I could do this over again I would just move my exorcists forward on the first turn to get another round of shooting and then I'd move the 4 remaining vehicles into the opposite corner and play keep away.

There was no need for me to move across the table since I was able to barrage him at range with 2 exorcists. He'll deep strike near me and get his shots in in the final turn but then I'm in a position to return fire with my entire army.

That doesn't ensure victory of course because I could still miss at the bottom shooting round and not do enough damage, but at least I get to shoot with everything for the final turn.

Interesting. Your Ninja Tau tactica is being used by one of my friends this weekend at a 1,000 point tournament; cool to see it in action (rather than just the theory).

What am I bringing? Razorback Mech DA. :(

Shep wrote:
If you rush my deployment zone, my guys will land in yours or outflank into yours. If you hang back, then we'll just have a shoot out and my deep strikers will walk on from my board edge.

You decide the method for deployment for your units held in reserve during your deployment phase. Even though the positional relay allows you to determine when your troops arrive from reserve, you cannot decide whether to move on from table edge, or deep strike during the game. You have to specify what they're doing when you specify what's in reserve. Sorry if you already knew this and your statement was hyperbole, that positional relay tactic looks like a PITA to play...as if the Tau needed more help vs my beloved Hive Fleet:|

sexiest_hero wrote:Are Tau back in style yet?

I dont think so. They still have some severe disadvantages. Ninja Tau seems to be the only real effective way to play them lately.

Would you use the ninjatau approach against Daemons? Or would you simply set up as usual? How about Guard with indirect fire ordnance? Seems like those two lists in particular could gank the Shas'el quickly enough that the pos relay doesn't help. Possibly the same with an all-biker list.

tzeentchling wrote:Would you use the ninjatau approach against Daemons? Or would you simply set up as usual? How about Guard with indirect fire ordnance? Seems like those two lists in particular could gank the Shas'el quickly enough that the pos relay doesn't help. Possibly the same with an all-biker list.

I really have no idea against nob bikers or demons. I guess the idea would be that each and every unit would be at a different extreme edge of the table, so that anyone who planned to assault to win would have to traverse hunderds of inches to make their points back, if there are multiple objectives that are close to table edges, then it could spell trouble for a demon player.

Ninja tau certainly can't kill a nob biker unit, but hide from it? Sure.

interesting report as well as the game. IMO the theme color for your ninja tau should be black since you named them a ninja but within' Naruto style.

Shep wrote:(if you haven't faced it, and you are confident that you'd know exactly what to do, then you are most likely wrong.)

I would shoot them with my guns.
pew pew.

Nice report. It looked like fun.

And both armies look great.