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Me and my buddy faced off in a 2000 point battle this weekend, between his Tau army and my Blood Angels. Lists are posted below, please vote in the poll, and comment or query about both the army lists, I will try get the battle report written up and pictures posted of the battle as soon as I can.

TAU - 1999

HQ 1
XV8 crisis suit - commander shas'el - Cyclonic ion blaster - Target Array
XV8 body guard - Shas'vre - twin missile pods - Target Array
XV8 body guard - Shas'vre - twin missile pods - Target Array

HQ 2
r'myr commander longknife - Double bar plas.
XV8 crisis suit - Shas'vre - twin missile pods - Target Array
XV8 crisis suit - Shas'vre - twin missile pods - Target Array
2 x Sheild Drones

Elite
xv8 Team leader Shas'ui Twin Missile pods, Target Array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array

xv8 Team leader Shas'ui Twin Missile pods, Target Array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array

xv8 Team leader Shas'ui Twin Missile pods, Target Array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array
xv8 crisis suit, shas'ui, twin missile pods, target array

Troop
Kroot Shaper anghkor.
9 Kroot - Kroot rifle
4 Kroot Hounds
3 Krootox - Kroot gun.

11 x Kroot - Kroot Rifle
11 x Kroot - Kroot Rifle
7 x Fire Warrior - Pulse Rifle

Heavy Support
Xv88 Broadside - Shas'ui TLRG, Target lock, hw multi tracker
Xv88 Broadside - TLRG, HW multi tracker.
Xv88 Broadside - TLRG, HW multi tracker.
2 x sheild drone.
2 x Hammerheads, Ion Cannon, Smart missiles.


Blood Angels list - 2000
Librarian terminator armour., rage/sheild 125

Honour Guard, jump packs, 4 x meltaguns,3 x melta bombs. 220

Assualt terminator 3 x lighting claws 2 x TH/SS 210

Furioso Dreadnought, Blood talons, magna-grapple,
heavy flamer 150

2 x Sang priests, Jump packs. 150

10 x assualt marines, melta/melta, powerfist 235

10 x assualt marines, melta/melta, powerfist 235

10 x assualt marines, melta/melta, powerfist 235

10 x assualt marines, flamer/flamer, powersword. 215

Scout Squad - Heavy bolter, camo cloaks.100

Stormraven. TLLC, TLMM. 200


Can't promise the Tau list is exact but it is pretty much exact, may have the odd bit of wargear out. Enjoy ('');

BA should take this. FNP assault marines make Tau a sad panda.

I am going with Tau. Its funny how well the supper old Tau dex is actually getting better the more dexs they relase, based on how well they mach up aginst them,

tau is gettting better with newer dexes, which is weird. But if the tau player plays it right, they could win. Kroot walls if they decided to DOA or walk. and so much s10 and missiles, FNP means nothing.

post the bat rep! lol

Mafty wrote:tau is gettting better with newer dexes, which is weird. But if the tau player plays it right, they could win. Kroot walls if they decided to DOA or walk. and so much s10 and missiles, FNP means nothing.

post the bat rep! lol

Yeah, Tau has a chance....a slim one. Tau is good against MEQ'd opponents, but they just can't hang with 45+ fast FNP marines.

And who really cares about 5 S10 guns when there's only 1 vehicle that can be shot down. And with 4+ cover, don't be surprised if it makes it to drop off its payload.

This is just one of those rock-paper-scissors matchup, with Tau being the scissors and BA the rock.

Report is finally written, please enjoy, Full army lists can be found at the top of this page with the OP

Article is picture heavy!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Blood_Angels_Vs_Tau_2000_Points

whyd tau setup first and go second? you cant do that lol.....

Mafty wrote:whyd tau setup first and go second? you cant do that lol.....

It's how the order of play goes for that battle mission.

In 2000 points he only have his suits MP's? I think thats a pretty big error, especially against mech. PR's make short work of mech, and the 2 hammerheads are pretty useless. He already has more than enough anti vehicle and anti dread's with the one broadside team and all the MP's hes got. I like kroot, but they are only gonna be usefully here for capture and control or objectives. Krootox are gonna be useless lol I feel sorry for this tau list, lots of suits, no silly upgrades, no terrible units like stealth suits or stingwings. But it should still get smashed, should have definitely gone with Fire Knife suits


*Edit

Oh God, just saw he got sharper, scratch that no terrible/pointless models

darkcloud92 wrote:In 2000 points he only have his suits MP's? I think thats a pretty big error, especially against mech. PR's make short work of mech, and the 2 hammerheads are pretty useless. He already has more than enough anti vehicle and anti dread's with the one broadside team and all the MP's hes got. I like kroot, but they are only gonna be usefully here for capture and control or objectives. Krootox are gonna be useless lol I feel sorry for this tau list, lots of suits, no silly upgrades, no terrible units like stealth suits or stingwings. But it should still get smashed, should have definitely gone with Fire Knife suits

So are you saying the Tau list is good or bad? I'm sure my buddy would appreciate the advice.

Its not terrible, but imo it needs work.
For instance, the sharper. Its generally agreed about that he is a waste of points. 6 up armor isn't that helpful, and for his price you can almost get a whole nother kroot squad. And He should give the crisis suit teams 2 weapons, like Fire Knife (PR, MP). Also I prob wouldn't go with the ion cannon for the HH. Those are they only real big errors.

Then my personal opinion would be to give the Broadsides ASS, some suits Fire Knife combo with multi tracker, drop a kroot squad, drop a HH, and drop the kroot-ox. Hope this helps! Im sure the community here would be able to help a lot if he posted his list in the army list section

Hi all, thought id sign up.
i can explain some of my choices, having only played against elders various ba armies, the general rule is that if a unit gets assaulted its gone so i usually have 2 turns to do damage due to the jump pack range on the marines.
My previous lists have always had pr/mp and a fusion/pr to reduce saves, the prob iv had is this is one heavy loss of points in a game along with multi trackers. Also with so many marines on the board i just wasnt killing the qty i needed. So this time i tried to make the suits as cheap and still effective as possible and try to field the maximum of them and as many other units as i could. The broadsides i never intended to move so by using the multi trackers on them meant i could use the smart missiles in the same turn and they have been good to me ignoring cover. heavy support choices im a bit limited, i have snipers which so far havent worked, and only 3 broadsides so i turned to the hh. ion was also to save points, my aim with the hh was to to move them maxium range down the board hoping to be a menace by splitting his squads directions. The mission turned out to be a terrible one and i think i was a bit reckless with my deployment to, that said i didnt have much room to play with. Kroot wise i wanted as many as possible to try and at least gain some rolls/ hold ups in assault , in our last game my krootox had helped due to there increased strength and shooting strength. It does seem at the minute that even with 20 plus dice im rolling far too many 1's.
As some one had said before the armour saves are crazy and although tau can shoot armour to bits its just not in enough numbers.
I agree with the shaper removal, i only included 1 out of the 3 squads. I felt that maybe a few saves were better than none for that unit.
iv tried vespids - useless.
snipers - useless,
pathfinders, 1 carbine 3 rail rifle have been ok but points to kill ratio not worked for me, same with markerlights in general
firewarriors in teams of 12 or 6 just die on me hence the min included.
i often joke that elder has a squad that has a made up rule for just about anything goin. Perhaps an ethreal would help lol ;-)

dazman82 wrote:Hi all, thought id sign up.
i can explain some of my choices, having only played against elders various ba armies, the general rule is that if a unit gets assaulted its gone so i usually have 2 turns to do damage due to the jump pack range on the marines.
My previous lists have always had pr/mp and a fusion/pr to reduce saves, the prob iv had is this is one heavy loss of points in a game along with multi trackers. Also with so many marines on the board i just wasnt killing the qty i needed. So this time i tried to make the suits as cheap and still effective as possible and try to field the maximum of them and as many other units as i could. The broadsides i never intended to move so by using the multi trackers on them meant i could use the smart missiles in the same turn and they have been good to me ignoring cover. heavy support choices im a bit limited, i have snipers which so far havent worked, and only 3 broadsides so i turned to the hh. ion was also to save points, my aim with the hh was to to move them maxium range down the board hoping to be a menace by splitting his squads directions. The mission turned out to be a terrible one and i think i was a bit reckless with my deployment to, that said i didnt have much room to play with. Kroot wise i wanted as many as possible to try and at least gain some rolls/ hold ups in assault , in our last game my krootox had helped due to there increased strength and shooting strength. It does seem at the minute that even with 20 plus dice im rolling far too many 1's.
As some one had said before the armour saves are crazy and although tau can shoot armour to bits its just not in enough numbers.
I agree with the shaper removal, i only included 1 out of the 3 squads. I felt that maybe a few saves were better than none for that unit.
iv tried vespids - useless.
snipers - useless,
pathfinders, 1 carbine 3 rail rifle have been ok but points to kill ratio not worked for me, same with markerlights in general
firewarriors in teams of 12 or 6 just die on me hence the min included.
i often joke that elder has a squad that has a made up rule for just about anything goin. Perhaps an ethreal would help lol ;-)

My opinion mate is do what you want and what you are comfortable with. Army lists are 90% based on opinion and personal choice. Now, being a stats major, I tend to build lists from Cost effectiveness charts.
Now as a personal note I would like to make that a lot of Tau players don't realize is that TW-MP actually the most inefficient combo out there for MEQ armies (and actually, all army types). Here is a nice article were someone has already done the math on this.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/360480.page
If on some magical day you could take two MP without twin linking, this would be a completely different story.

I'm a fan of kroot, so I won't tell you to cut the kroot. But I would get rid of the shaper and the krootox and maybe pick up a couple more hounds.

As for your broadsides maybe go with groups of 2 (how I do it). With 2 in a group you can give the squad lead a hard wired Target lock and then both a multi-tracker. This way with the least amount of points you can shoot at more targets. With a third suit in the mix you would be forced to waste a rail shot into something you don't want, or be forced to take a second target lock and drop a multi-tracker. It seems popular now to take a lot of broadsides and surrender hammerheads, which once I tested actually works quite nice (mild problem with horde if not careful). So if you drop a krootox and shaper+armor you can field an extra broadside and bring yourself to four.

You can also drop one hammerhead, make the second a railhead (since you have a lot of broadsides), this way you can have at least one piece of artillery. This should free up enough points to upgrade your deathrains into fireknifes.

As for some final notes: Snipers, vespids are bad. Stealthsuits are really expensive for their usefulness, so I tend to shy away from them. Pathfinders should be taken purely for their markerlights, you can drop the railrifles. On that subject, I'm not a full fan of pathfinders right now. I just don't think the advantage they provide through markerlights makes up for their expensiveness. Now if you were allowed to use them without a devilfish, that would be a different story.

As for the Battlereport:
Also disruption pods, take them on ALL vehicles. Kroot in the games scenario should of been the bubblewrap for you army, not just your commander. Line them as far ahead of your army as possible. In any other case I would outflank then and try to throw the enemy off guard. Also this army is a prime example of Missile Pod weakness and plasma rifle's strength. You cannot take FNP saves against an attack that would not allow you to take an armor save, AP plasma rifles puncture all armor thus no FNP saves (BRB pg75). Other than that, the army you fought was a rough one (though mildly cheesy). I wouldn't feel too bad about losing to it.

Made some comments on some rules you guys had questions on via the article edit button.

Cheers for all the input, elder found an article on saves which it appears we have been playing incorrectly, more teams of broadsides sounds a great idea they have been worth every point each game

sudojoe wrote:Made some comments on some rules you guys had questions on via the article edit button.

Thanks for the comments and rule references, found them super useful.

Nice batrep. The scenario certainly seemed to favor the ba. Did you guys choose that scenario or did you roll for it?

Lakvin wrote:Nice batrep. The scenario certainly seemed to favor the ba. Did you guys choose that scenario or did you roll for it?

We rolled for it, I let dazman roll, we agreed on a 1-3 it would be either the first, second or third mission in the Tau section. Then on a 4-6 the same for the Space Marine section. So it was a complete random selection. We both couldn't believe that scenario was in the Tau section really!

Eldercaveman wrote:

Lakvin wrote:Nice batrep. The scenario certainly seemed to favor the ba. Did you guys choose that scenario or did you roll for it?

We rolled for it, I let dazman roll, we agreed on a 1-3 it would be either the first, second or third mission in the Tau section. Then on a 4-6 the same for the Space Marine section. So it was a complete random selection. We both couldn't believe that scenario was in the Tau section really!

I haven't played nearly as many missions as I would like to out of the Battlemissions book. I'll have to see if my Tau buddy wants to give that one a try

I think this one could actually be a pretty close call. It all depends on how soon those assault marines come out of reserve. If they deep strike amongst the Tau early, the Tau are screwed. If they get stalled for a few turns, every Blood Angel that didn't deep strike is going to get shot to pieces.

alienvalentine wrote:I think this one could actually be a pretty close call. It all depends on how soon those assault marines come out of reserve. If they deep strike amongst the Tau early, the Tau are screwed. If they get stalled for a few turns, every Blood Angel that didn't deep strike is going to get shot to pieces.

The bat rep is posted, the link is further up the post.