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I just had one of the fantastic games of 40k I've ever played, using my Tyranids against my friend's Tau. We agreed to 1,500 points, and the game panned out to be a three objective Dawn of War. My list looked something like this:

Hive Tyrant- Wings, Hive Commander, Stranglethorn Cannon, Leech Essence, Paroxysm
Genestealers x15
Genestealers x15
Zoanthropes x3- Mycetic Spore
Zoanthropes x3- Mycetic Spore
Doom of Malantai- Mycetic Spore
Shrikes x3- Boneswords, Barbed Strangler

And His list was something like:

Crisis Commander- Autocannon and Plasma
Cirsis x3- Melta and Plasma
Crisis x2- Melta, Plasma, and Shield Drone
Crisis x2- Melta, Plasma, and Shield Drone
Pathfinders x3- Markerlights, Devilfish
Fire Warriors x9- Devilfish
Fire Warriors x6
Fire Warriors x6
Kroot x10
Railhead
Railhead

Tau 1- He deploys Fire Warriors on an objective, Kroot nearby, and the Crisis Commander with the Kroot. Everything walks in.

Tyranids 1- Everything is in reserve.

Tau 2- He better prepares for the coming assault- I feel like this is a battle from the fluff!

Tyranids 2- Everything save one squad of Genestealers come in due to the Hive Tyrant's Hive Commander power. Shrikes mishap and are placed are the far side. Hive Tyrant drops near the DoM. Each squad of Zoanthropes drops on the delicious rear armor of the Railheads. Both tanks perish. One stealer squad gets a lucky roll and assaults/destroys the squad of three Crisis Suits. Doom of Malantai drops in soul-sucking range of two Gun Drone groups (from the Devilfish's), Pathfinders, Fire Warriors, and a Crisis Squad. The Suits roll just badly enough to lose the entire squad. Three Fire Warriors die, and everybody else is surprisingly safe! Hive Tyrant casts Paroxysm on the three Crisis Suits. Hell yeah, awesome phase!

-Author's Note: The opponent was fairly (read: EXTREMELY) demoralized and had sub-par tactics from previous games, so at this point I began to help him a lot. I'm a good man.

Tau 3- Shooting from Kroot and Fire Warriors sees the Genestealers brought to three men (bugs?). He tank shocks the Doom of Malantai with his Devilfish, I opt to Death or Glory! as I had ten wounds. I psychic test, roll sixes, and get run over by the Devilfish. I was on such a high from last turn that I wasn't even mad, and it brought up his spirits very much! He is about to shoot my Zoanthropes with his squad of now six Fire Warriors from the nine, but then I demand that he charge them instead. He obeys and does the same with his Crisis Commander to the other squad, after unloading Plasma and Autocannon. Now it begins. Zoanthropes lose two wounds to FW combat, then take another wound due to fearless. Crisis Commander and Zoanthropes whiff, it stays like this for the entire game. Hive Tyrant is shot to one wound, then I show him a way to move his four drones to make it impossible for my HT to charge his Crisis Squad.

Tyranids 3- Genestealers don't come in. The three Genestealers assault and kill a squad of ten Kroot. Nothing happens with Zoanthropes. Hive Tyrant kills the Pathfinders and their pesky Marker Lights. Shrikes fly up the field.

Tau 4- He annihilates the Hive Tyrant from existance with Plasma and Melta, then proceeds to tie combat with my Zoanthropes more. The stranded Genestealers are reduced to nothing with the six Fire Warriors shooting them.

Tyranids 4- Genestealers come in and assault the Fire Warriors on an objective. We tie combat... The Zoanthropes fighting the Fire Warriors kill one and overrun them, yes! Shrikes move towards the central objective.

Tau 5- My Shrikes melt to Melta and low AP fire, even with wound allocation shenanigans. He drives his Devilfish to the Genestealer combat to contest that objective. I dismantle his Fire Warriors and consolidate on their objective.

Tyranids 5- I fire at his Devilfish with my one Zoanthrope, but fail to do anything to it. My Genestealers fail to kill the Devilfish, as it moved 12. We roll to get turn six, but the game ends. He wins 1-0!


I was really happy with this game. I normally tear him apart with my Chaos, so the Tyranids were a good change of pace, mostly because I barely play them. Even though I lost I had so much fun, Tau CC for the win! He was happy with that game too, even with the second, brutal turn. I retrospect I should've had three squads of ten rather than two squads of fifteen stealers. I wish I had more games like this one! Slaughter with two Lash Princes and nine Obliterators gets old quickly.

Can you clarify what you mean by Tau CC?
He had only 10 Kroot I think? Did you mean Tyranid CC vs Tau?

No; not at all. His two units assaulting my Zoanthropes allowed him to win, otherwise I would've vaporized his crisis suits, allowing my Hive Tyrant and Shrikes to descend among the Fire Warriors and Drones. Then, six Fire Warriors tied combat with 15 Genestealers.

That's Tau being stellar in close combat if you ask me!

Thats not them being stellar, thats them being lucky.

You can't say they are "close combat tau". They are "regular" tau who happened to be forced into close combat. When you say close combat tau that means his list is oriented to close combat, which its not.

It sounds like a game I would have played with my friend. only exception: I would have given him no leeway, and he still would have gunned me down.

I have to admit, few things bother me more than an opponent getting really demoralized early in the game. It turns a fun game into kicking a hobo. Especially because often it's not even as bad as they think!

Good report I enjoyed seeing the tau win

Im surprised he won with so many helios suits.... Not exactly horde friendly when your dealing with 3 shots at 12"....

Firestorms with Multi trackers and Leaders with targetting Arrays and HWMT would smoke horde especially 9 of them.

Nice Battle Report, even though it was just text it felt very vivid.

What I liked most is that you talked about the morale of generals, not just the models

Ignore the lawyers arguing about what Tau CC means. The important thing is you had the fun factor cranked to 11!

Yeah that game was pretty awesome, I love sheer overkill. It was so much fun destroying so much of his army in one turn! I don't feel bad at all because I still ended up losing.