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@jy2 "Are hymp really that good?" Yes, they are. You said it yourself when talking about how to equip Riptides, it's all about rate of fire (I would give tides ion/fusion+evo tho personally). HYMP-sides with drones have waaaaaayyy more shots, higher strength, and more wounds for a comparable price to Riptides.

Tack on the iridium/chip commander, which can float from unit to unit as needed, and they gain even more resiliency and tank/monster hunters. SICK.

I still think 'tides have a place and would take a pair with ion/evo, but I would consider 1 squad of missle sides to be mandatory in any Tau list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw, I called that game to perfection. 1 or 2 Wraiths lived and you were able to play the objective game.

Well played, Jim. Thanks for another great report. (Though I still think you deployed incorrectly. You had a PERFECT opportunity to refuse flank. Setting up spread out straight across the board against a pure gunline army plays right in to their hands.)

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I said triple Ripetide is overrated and I think this report proved just that - too much moar win in lieu of balance.

I think that the Riptides could've been much more useful here. I don't see any reason why (after the death of the wraiths) the Riptides couldn't have all started moving forward. Jy2 couldn't have really done much to them, and they would've easily been in contesting range by the end of the game. Also, they would've been a threat to all the barges (in assault, a smashing riptide will kill an AB) and would've made movement more difficult for the flyers (particularly the locked velocity one).

Given their resiliency, I the riptides alone could've clinched the battle for the Tau.

 hippesthippo wrote:
@jy2 "Are hymp really that good?" Yes, they are. You said it yourself when talking about how to equip Riptides, it's all about rate of fire (I would give tides ion/fusion+evo tho personally). HYMP-sides with drones have waaaaaayyy more shots, higher strength, and more wounds for a comparable price to Riptides.

Tack on the iridium/chip commander, which can float from unit to unit as needed, and they gain even more resiliency and tank/monster hunters. SICK.

QFT. Missilesides are monsters. I'm a necron player that runs triple barges, and these guys are what I fear. The force-multiplying effects of markerlights and the chip can make these guys absolutely horrendous.

Consider 3 missilesides, 2 drones each, with a drone controller, shooting at the front armour of an annihilation barge:

WIth no assistance, they have a 23% chance to glance it to death IN A SINGLE VOLLEY

4 markerlight hits (2 to take cover, +2 BS), they have a 72% chance to glance it to death IN A SINGLE VOLLEY

4 markerlight hits and tank hunter, they have a 98% chance to glance it to death IN A SINGLE VOLLEY

They're not cheap, but they can do a lot of damage to anything in the game except AV14.

Anyone else think the terrain was poor?

That table looked very sparse, and more importantly all the terrain was clustered on the edges. Additionally there was no line of sight blocking terrain at all.

Still good job on staying on task and pulling the win through.

Good job turning that around JY2, altough indeed as mentioned and i mentioned also I think you botched deployement and your first turn.

Running to gun lines is a tactic only employed by primitives when they have thousands to sacrifice.

Now however, you then executed the flyer game to perfection and the small gamble for turn 5 payed of.

I think Riptides are like Helldrakes, 2 is a worriesome thing to face 3 is overextending and debalancing your army.

As someone working to perfect his Tau army and strategies, I'm a little baffled by a few things on the Tau side. If the opponent isn't posting here (as he doesn't seem to be) maybe others can throw out thoughts behind his reasonings that I'm missing?


1) The first thing that stuck out to me was: why did he make his Ethereal the Warlord? I mean, I guess if you're planning on running the Commander out into the middle of the enemy army that you might figure he's going to die for sure, but just in general the Commander is SO much more durable with Iridium armor than the Ethereal that it just doesn't make much sense to me. Plus if you do, then you're putting 2 VPs together in a basket for your opponent to get as opposed to splitting them up between the Ethereal and the Commander.

Really, the only way that would make sense is if you have some really good LOS blocking terrain to keep your Ethereal hidden behind all game while not compromising his ability to support your squads at the same time, but that CLEARLY wasn't the case in this game, so it just seemed really odd to me.

And if you ARE going to put the Ethereal into a squad, why would you not put him into a 10-man Firewarrior squad and instead put him in with only a 7 man Pathfinder unit? I guess perhaps because you're counting on going to ground and don't want to lose a FW squad's shooting compared to a Pathfinder unit? It just seems like if you're going to have the Ethereal be a potential target then you need to put him in with a bigger squad for protection.


2) Which gets me to...how many shots did the Necrons manage to put onto the Pathfinder unit that first turn to kill 6 guys who presumably were getting 2+ cover saves? Or did he not go to ground for like the first Ann Barge's shooting and then later in the phase did so to save the Ethereal's skin? I know 3 Ann Barges can kick out a tremendous amount of wounds if you get lucky and roll those 6's to hit, so I'm wondering if you remember how many wounds were actually caused roughly to get those 6 failed 2+ cover saves (obviously odds wise that should be 36 wounds, which should be pretty unlikely to get!).

Also, he did have that ruin sitting right next to his ADL, it seems like he could have safely hidden the Ethereal (joined to a unit still) behind the ruin just to ensure that no amount of shooting could ever end up killing him, while still providing his abilities to all the Tau units behind the ADL.


3) I think people with Riptides seem to automatically use the Nova charge even when its not really necessary and that ends up being the main way that Riptides end up dying. Although I haven't gotten my Riptides onto the table yet, I think one of the keys will be figuring out when you can get away with NOT trying to Nova charge to make sure all your Riptides are still contributing throughout the entire game (instead of killing themselves).

For example, on the first turn he knew he was firing EVERYTHING at the Wraiths. I get that he really wanted to pummel the Wraiths on that first turn, but in that situation using the Nova charge really isn't adding that much additional benefit compared to the risk (IMO) of wounding your Riptides (especially as there would be NO flyers coming on turn 1 as well for him to Intercept either). Yeah, if he was going after vehicles or something where Rending was crucial, then you take your chances, but honestly I don't think the extra 12 S6 shots against Wraiths were crucial (and obviously they turned out not to be as he devastated your Wraiths without passing any of his Nova checks on that 1st turn.


4) His Commander and Bodyguard were unwounded going into the Necron turn 3, correct? If so, can you please explain how you managed to kill the Bodyguards before the Commander exactly? Was it just really poor placement of models on his part that allowed you to get flanking position to make the Bodyguards the closest models to some of your firing units? Because really, with a thrust move after the Crisis suits shoot, there should NEVER be a time where that happens except in extreme circumstances. The Commander should always be WAY in front and then the 2 Drones should be next followed by the Bodyguards last. So if ANYTHING the Drones should be the ones that end up getting waxed first if the enemy does some extreme flanking maneuvers, NOT the bodyguards.

This is especially true because the entire Bodyguard unit gets to auto-pass Look Out Sir tests, which means you really want to focus on getting all the (non S8+ AP2) wounds you can onto the commander until he's down to 1 wound remaining and only then start to auto-pass stuff off onto the drones.


5) I also agree that his unfamiliarity with the Necrons led him to castle way to long. Tesla weapons are the unique situation where you have no AP, so you're not really gaining anything from hiding Firewarriors behind the wall at that point (because you're probably not going to ground all that much with them either, I'd wager). So once all the Wraiths were killed and the last D-Lord was down, it should have been GUNG-HO the very next turn (really turn 3).


6) The Eldar jetbikes are a tough one. In many ways, that is one of the most important units in his army in this mission and against this foe, but probably the only real safe place to go would have been to fly TOWARDS those Night Scythes on the right flank (within their 18" minimum bubble) behind some building where other the Scythe and Ann Barges on the other flank couldn't see them...losing that unit really changed everything, because it meant he really only had any chance to capture a single objective.


7) And of course, anytime you're playing the BS objective placement rules from the rulebook that allow 2 objectives to be 6" from one table edge, whomever gets to have those 2 objectives on their side has a huge advantage beyond army match-ups, skill level, etc. The fact that the Tau player made this even worse by placing his one objective in the middle put him at a HUGE massive disadvantage.

If before the game you told me that it was Tau vs. Necron and the situation with the objectives, then even if there is NO terrain on the table and regardless of not knowing what the armies are comprised of or who is going first you have to give a huge edge to the Necrons...so frankly your opponent never should have been surprised that he lost.



Anyway, overall great read and very informative. Makes me definitely think about things I hadn't thought about with the Tau yet and can't wait for my Riptides to arrive in the mail (I think I'll only ever be running 2 max, though!).

I think the Tau guy was hoping to wipe out all AB before he went to the mid.

GTKA666 wrote:
I think the Tau guy was hoping to wipe out all AB before he went to the mid.

I agree, but given that Tesla weapons don't have an AP then you're not gaining anything by keeping FW units behind the ADL...and in fact you're kind of forcing the Necron player to have to decide whether to try to take out Troops that are moving towards objectives or go for stuff that is likely going to kill his ABs in the next turn. Whereas, by keeping the FWs behind the ADL, the Necron player can safely ignore them and just focus on taking out the stuff that can damage really damage him.

There's not too many multi-shot 'heavy' weapons out there like that (that aren't AP4), but a Necron army that basically only has Tesla weapons left is the rare case where that happens.

The Tau player just needs to work on his tactics with his riptides really. Turn 3 they should have begun booking it for objectives across the table, and his infantry for the middle. All of the Necron combat troops were gone turn 3 and only the some barges and flyers remained. Personally, I find my riptides attempting to Nova every turn, but his rolling for his riptides was atrocious to say the least. I would have stopped rolling to Nova by the third turn for sure with failing so many attempts.

I am now subscribing to the theory of Positional Dominance.

Excellent game.

If the Tau player got over the willies of getting into the thick of it, you would have been . But luck given by the Dice Gods favoured you to end the game.

Great report! Much appreciated.

Eh, the Fire Warriors should have been spreading out all over the board after turn one. This isn't 5th Edition where you have to stand still to get rapid fire.

I concur with all of Yakface's points. What's the point of the ADL when Tesla has no ap?

Why he didn't put easily accessible objs in his deployment is another mystery.

I will add that the movement phase is really the only part of the game where a good general has 95% control of what will happen (difficult terrain tests account for the other 5%). Games are won and lost during the movement phase, but beginner players or people who just thrive for the 'kill' tend to weight their tactics via shooting/assault.

Jy2 is a very good tactician, i read his batreps regularly. he understands, and puts to use with this "Positional Dominance" theory what the rest of us should all learn and live by: "Move Right, win the fight". or something along those lines. It also helps that necrons have basically the ability to appear anywhere on the table as long as their night scythes are functional.

41_WarGaming wrote:
I am now subscribing to the theory of Positional Dominance.

I'd subscribe to objective dominance 1st. I said it earlier and Yak said it again, in this scenario with these two armies and those objectives it was pretty much over before it began. Deploying poorly and being almost tabled only to win because of horrible objective deployment from the BRB has nothing to do with positional dominance and everything to do with owning half the VP turn one ie luck.

Terrain was actually not that bad, considering the fact that if you fallow the terrain deployment from the book it easily could have been worse, and probably would have been. So it baffles me whenever people ignore the BRB for terrain generation and deployment, but then claim that the objective deployment rules from the BRB are sound

Even after all this, the tau player lost it through silly errors. Basically Yak hit all the major points on the nose.


Necron deployment was simply awful, this demonstrates the biggest problems Necron players run into. They are so used to having that silly resilience that they tend to mis-deploy based on that false confidence. This was as hippo said, a refused flank 101 situation. There is really no reason to set up spread out across a gun line especially when you own 2/3 of the objectives 6" from your edge.

It was a decent game and demo'd the taus volume fire well, and most importantly showed how FW are the real work horses and maybe people will take the queue to stop minimizing them for RT's and bodyguards.

Had this game been set up with balanced objective placement this would have been over after the necrons bad deployment. Oh well, welcome to 6th

GG! hopefully nobody will spoil the next one as I know these take a lot of time and energy!

I will respond to more comments a little later when I have more time.

 hippesthippo wrote:
I think you screwed up deployment. You should have refused flank out of range of half his army at least. :/

That is definitely 1 strategy that I probably should have tried now with some hindsight. I admit that I just over-estimated the survivability of my wraiths. I really didn't think I would lose that many wraiths that quickly. I was going for the shortest-distance approach - I might take more fire initially, but he's only got 2 turns to do so. If I took him from an extreme flank, I would have taken less fire initially, but it would have taken at least 3 turns to get there and even though the 1st turn might be very little, I'd have to take 3 turns of firepower.

But in hindsight, I agree that a refused flank maneuver would have been the better strategy.

 yakface wrote:

As someone working to perfect his Tau army and strategies, I'm a little baffled by a few things on the Tau side. If the opponent isn't posting here (as he doesn't seem to be) maybe others can throw out thoughts behind his reasonings that I'm missing?


1) The first thing that stuck out to me was: why did he make his Ethereal the Warlord? I mean, I guess if you're planning on running the Commander out into the middle of the enemy army that you might figure he's going to die for sure, but just in general the Commander is SO much more durable with Iridium armor than the Ethereal that it just doesn't make much sense to me. Plus if you do, then you're putting 2 VPs together in a basket for your opponent to get as opposed to splitting them up between the Ethereal and the Commander.

Really, the only way that would make sense is if you have some really good LOS blocking terrain to keep your Ethereal hidden behind all game while not compromising his ability to support your squads at the same time, but that CLEARLY wasn't the case in this game, so it just seemed really odd to me.

And if you ARE going to put the Ethereal into a squad, why would you not put him into a 10-man Firewarrior squad and instead put him in with only a 7 man Pathfinder unit? I guess perhaps because you're counting on going to ground and don't want to lose a FW squad's shooting compared to a Pathfinder unit? It just seems like if you're going to have the Ethereal be a potential target then you need to put him in with a bigger squad for protection.


2) Which gets me to...how many shots did the Necrons manage to put onto the Pathfinder unit that first turn to kill 6 guys who presumably were getting 2+ cover saves? Or did he not go to ground for like the first Ann Barge's shooting and then later in the phase did so to save the Ethereal's skin? I know 3 Ann Barges can kick out a tremendous amount of wounds if you get lucky and roll those 6's to hit, so I'm wondering if you remember how many wounds were actually caused roughly to get those 6 failed 2+ cover saves (obviously odds wise that should be 36 wounds, which should be pretty unlikely to get!).

Also, he did have that ruin sitting right next to his ADL, it seems like he could have safely hidden the Ethereal (joined to a unit still) behind the ruin just to ensure that no amount of shooting could ever end up killing him, while still providing his abilities to all the Tau units behind the ADL.


3) I think people with Riptides seem to automatically use the Nova charge even when its not really necessary and that ends up being the main way that Riptides end up dying. Although I haven't gotten my Riptides onto the table yet, I think one of the keys will be figuring out when you can get away with NOT trying to Nova charge to make sure all your Riptides are still contributing throughout the entire game (instead of killing themselves).

For example, on the first turn he knew he was firing EVERYTHING at the Wraiths. I get that he really wanted to pummel the Wraiths on that first turn, but in that situation using the Nova charge really isn't adding that much additional benefit compared to the risk (IMO) of wounding your Riptides (especially as there would be NO flyers coming on turn 1 as well for him to Intercept either). Yeah, if he was going after vehicles or something where Rending was crucial, then you take your chances, but honestly I don't think the extra 12 S6 shots against Wraiths were crucial (and obviously they turned out not to be as he devastated your Wraiths without passing any of his Nova checks on that 1st turn.


4) His Commander and Bodyguard were unwounded going into the Necron turn 3, correct? If so, can you please explain how you managed to kill the Bodyguards before the Commander exactly? Was it just really poor placement of models on his part that allowed you to get flanking position to make the Bodyguards the closest models to some of your firing units? Because really, with a thrust move after the Crisis suits shoot, there should NEVER be a time where that happens except in extreme circumstances. The Commander should always be WAY in front and then the 2 Drones should be next followed by the Bodyguards last. So if ANYTHING the Drones should be the ones that end up getting waxed first if the enemy does some extreme flanking maneuvers, NOT the bodyguards.

This is especially true because the entire Bodyguard unit gets to auto-pass Look Out Sir tests, which means you really want to focus on getting all the (non S8+ AP2) wounds you can onto the commander until he's down to 1 wound remaining and only then start to auto-pass stuff off onto the drones.


5) I also agree that his unfamiliarity with the Necrons led him to castle way to long. Tesla weapons are the unique situation where you have no AP, so you're not really gaining anything from hiding Firewarriors behind the wall at that point (because you're probably not going to ground all that much with them either, I'd wager). So once all the Wraiths were killed and the last D-Lord was down, it should have been GUNG-HO the very next turn (really turn 3).


6) The Eldar jetbikes are a tough one. In many ways, that is one of the most important units in his army in this mission and against this foe, but probably the only real safe place to go would have been to fly TOWARDS those Night Scythes on the right flank (within their 18" minimum bubble) behind some building where other the Scythe and Ann Barges on the other flank couldn't see them...losing that unit really changed everything, because it meant he really only had any chance to capture a single objective.


7) And of course, anytime you're playing the BS objective placement rules from the rulebook that allow 2 objectives to be 6" from one table edge, whomever gets to have those 2 objectives on their side has a huge advantage beyond army match-ups, skill level, etc. The fact that the Tau player made this even worse by placing his one objective in the middle put him at a HUGE massive disadvantage.

If before the game you told me that it was Tau vs. Necron and the situation with the objectives, then even if there is NO terrain on the table and regardless of not knowing what the armies are comprised of or who is going first you have to give a huge edge to the Necrons...so frankly your opponent never should have been surprised that he lost.



Anyway, overall great read and very informative. Makes me definitely think about things I hadn't thought about with the Tau yet and can't wait for my Riptides to arrive in the mail (I think I'll only ever be running 2 max, though!).

I will try to answer as best as I can what I felt he was doing. Of course a lot of it has to do with 1) lack of experience against a competitive army like mine and necron flyers in general and 2) the tendency for most Tau players to be overly cautious about their armies.

1. He probably meant for his commander to be suicidal melta unit. I believe in most of his other games, his Ethereal survives and his suits dies, so he probably made his Ethereal Warlord by nature of habit. Also, in the previous games between us, I normally go after his fire warriors first and ignore his pathfinders. Had he put the Ethereal with the warriors, it would have made my target priority much easier. Now he's making me choose - go after his scoring units or after his Warlord with a non-scoring unit.

2. Not all of them were gettting protection from the Aegis. They were back away enough from it and my AB guns were high enough that some of those guys weren't 25% obscured by the ADL. Had he been slightly closer, he would have benefited entirely from the ADL.

He wanted to centralize his Ethereal so that everyone would and could benefit from him.

3. This would be a judgement call. With wraiths initially and flyers every turn, he probably felt it was a priority to maximize the firepower of his riptides. He just wasn't rolling well with them. Although he probably should have did the 4D6" jump near the end, I have no problem with him over-charging every turn. If I was playing Tau, the riptides are just another sacrificial pawn to me. I really don't care if they live or die as long as my troops survive. Just like I really don't care if my wraiths live or die. You can't really be to attached to your units surviving unless they are scoring or they give off VP's when killed. Those riptides were neither.

4. Doesn't the commander automatically Look-Out-Sirs to his bodyguards? He wanted his marker drones to survive, which was why he left them in the rear. So any shots that hit were were automatically going to his bodyguards first and foremost, whether his bodyguards were in front or his commander was. I fired both AB's and the NS and he failed just enough saves to kill off both bodyguards.

5. Force of habit and probably unfamiliarity with my crons. I think he just stayed back there because he was just so used to it. He probably didn't realize he didn't need to do this until Turn 3, which was when he started advancing his troops.

6. His concern was that I could have just disembarked my troops and rapid-fired at his bikes. I also had 2 NS in reserves that would be coming in so there really was no safe place for them to hide. However, moving back into the protection of his army, he would be daring my flyers to go into shooting range of his entire army. Also, any scythes coming in from reserves that try to take out his bikers would be moving into Interceptor range of his riptides. At least that is why I think he moved them back there.

7. Yup, that's just the risk of uneven objective placement. His placement of his objective in the center also surprised me, but in the overall scheme of things, he was able to reach it fairly easily (even though I was able to shoot him off of it). I believe he was planning to contest on T5 with his jetbikes, and had there been some LOS-blocking terrain on the table, they probably may have. Though had their been some LOS-blocking terrain on the table, he probably wouldn't have been able to kill off all my wraiths so easily either.

But even with the uneven objective placement, he could have easily overcome that by advancing earlier. Sacrifice 1 turn of shooting for his pathfinders by advancing and then running and next turn, he may well have been in range to Markerlight my troops. Advance his riptides to try to contest and advance his entire (of at least part of his) army on Turn 2 and he would be well in range to threaten my backfield objectives and objective-holders.

No, objective-placement was a disadvantage but not a HUGE disadvantage. I'm of the opinion that the lack of LOS-blocking terrain was a much LARGER disadvantage. It just makes gunline armies so much better.

As both a tau and cron player i think necrons will struggle vs a good tau list which I don't believe the list played was. they necrons list was a optimised tournament list , not only was the tau list not optimised I don't think its tournament competitive at all.

The Tau list is okay but it can definitely be improved.

 jy2 wrote:

No, objective-placement was a disadvantage but not a HUGE disadvantage. I'm of the opinion that the lack of LOS-blocking terrain was a much LARGER disadvantage. It just makes gunline armies so much better.

This bother me. It all depends on your idea of LOS blocking terrain. Terrain that can hide small units or tanks=good.... Terrain that can entirely hide 6 man units of wraiths let alone 18 while still advancing on your enemy=bad. I don't think there is a situation where 1000 points of wraiths is gona make it to 2000 points of tau without some seriously skewed terrain setup. With bubble wrap and friendly overwatch it's simply a losing strategy.


Wraiths have a 3++ and I don't think it was unintentional to make the new models so large for a 2 wound model. . I have to say I'm shocked if you disagree that having 2 out of 3, 3 VP objectives just 6" from your board edge is anything but a huge advantage.

On a side note I had a laugh that he didn't use black sun filters. Playing a gun line and knowing there are two separate 33% chances at night fight and having access to cheap night fight ignoring war gear and not using it baffles me.

I don't think JY2 was talking about having a LOS blocker for all 18 wraiths. But how different would this have been if he had 1 piece to hide a Dlord and 2 wraiths while the other 4 In the squad get blown away. My guess from reading his reports is he meant what you said, just enough terrain to block a tiny section and not be running through an open killing field in the middle of the board. The terrain was clearly set up in the tau favor and the objective placement balanced that out IMO.

Chancetragedy wrote:
I don't think JY2 was talking about having a LOS blocker for all 18 wraiths. But how different would this have been if he had 1 piece to hide a Dlord and 2 wraiths while the other 4 In the squad get blown away. My guess from reading his reports is he meant what you said, just enough terrain to block a tiny section and not be running through an open killing field in the middle of the board. The terrain was clearly set up in the tau favor and the objective placement balanced that out IMO.

So what does he mean then? Hiding space for one unit? OK so turn one still would have cost him a unit and a half and he would need to expose himself with the rest at some point to assault. Remember you need LOS to assault as well in 6th, so baring poor play from the tau, he was going to need to expose himself to 150 s5 shots at some point.

OK and had the central piece been solid he still would need to rush out for at least 2 turns worth of fire. Those wraiths are not going to beat that much s5 fire. All those wraiths are the equivalent of 36 assault marines, not even as resilient as blood angel FNP AM in this match up and I would never bet on them making it into assault and being effective so why would I bet on the wraiths? No, the objectives didn't balance the game, the game was unbalanced by the objectives and only seemed close due to clean firing lanes and poor necron strategy, people have this backwards. He never even had top assault him to win, had there been massive LOS blocking terrain all he'd need to do is hide until the end of game, not to mention how even more unbalanced it would have been had he placed those two objectives in areas out of site.

Cool batrep!

 jy2 wrote:

4. Doesn't the commander automatically Look-Out-Sirs to his bodyguards? He wanted his marker drones to survive, which was why he left them in the rear. So any shots that hit were were automatically going to his bodyguards first and foremost, whether his bodyguards were in front or his commander was. I fired both AB's and the NS and he failed just enough saves to kill off both bodyguards.

Actually I'm pretty sure there was no reason for him to put those wounds on his bodyguard. The Sworn Protector rule only states that they automatically pass any Look out Sir attempts. It says nothing about them HAVING to take the shots if they didn't want to. So yeah he should have been able to use his iridium armor commander to soak up those shots/wounds and once he was down to 1 wound he could start Look out Sir'ing. With the 2+ Armor save on the Character.. that would mean each hit would have had to make it through the 2+ armor save first, then each wound (or unsaved wound) he could either take on the character OR (when down to 1w remaining) he can pick any other model from the unit within 6" to take a Look Out Sir attempt, which he automatically passes due to Sworn Protector.

All told, he could have likely saved a good deal more wounds having the hits be on his commander, and then he'd have been able to mitigate 5 of them with 3 on the commander and 1 on each bodyguard. This is all based on my reading of the rules, BRB pg 16 and new Tau Codex pg 104 Special Rules reference section.

Do you feel that would have changed the outcome much JY2?

Im actually a little disappointed. As a Tau player whose new fire warrior gunline has gone 4-0 with ease I was hoping to see the wraiths hit home and do some damage. I dont doubt that a counter exists (a reasonable one that isn't 3 LRs) but I was hoping to see it here. I'm starting to feel bad blasting my opponents to pieces and watching their spirits get crushed. I might need to switch back to my Nids . Anyway, informative BR thanks for your effort.

 BigJP wrote:
Im actually a little disappointed. As a Tau player whose new fire warrior gunline has gone 4-0 with ease I was hoping to see the wraiths hit home and do some damage. I dont doubt that a counter exists (a reasonable one that isn't 3 LRs) but I was hoping to see it here. I'm starting to feel bad blasting my opponents to pieces and watching their spirits get crushed. I might need to switch back to my Nids . Anyway, informative BR thanks for your effort.

Im with you bigjp....one of the reasons i use crisis suits and a farsight deathstar as i think it is more fun for the enemy to fight against regardless of its efficiencies.

I am actrually moving about the board instead of setting up a wall and my opoonents have found it more fun, especially since i always let at least 1 assault unit (wittled down of course) try their hand at assaulting the deathstar and fighting farsight.

As others have said this is really not a competitive Tau list.

The Riptides IMO were not optimised with Interceptor AND Skyfire. Using Riptides as your only AA is a waste of points and best left to Missilesides who are probably the best AA unit in 40k right now. They are also great for taking on anything else through sheer weight of high strength firepower. They can glance AV13 to death pretty quickly too.

I have been using Piranha squads VERY successfully and I think 2 or 3 of these with FB would have minced your AB's. You have to be SUPER aggressive with the new Tau and I have won against a couple of tournie style Necron lists through sheer aggression and focus fire.

I also play Necrons so that probably helps ;-) They are incredibly frustrating to play against and the NS + Troop tactic of just claiming objectives is horrible and so effective. I think Crisis suits with two MPods each could have helped against troops and even the flyers. They spew out some good firepower since the FAQ to the weapon systems.

Overall the Tau player really needs to look at his list and not just rely on 3 Riptides to do the majority of the heavy lifting as when they fail he has no solid back up.

The Ethereal + Firewarrior combo however is brilliant and I use him inside a DF with 11 Firewarriors for a modern Fish of Fury. Combined with support it can put out a lot of pain. Risky as hell but hey, you gotta be aggressive :=D

 Red Corsair wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

No, objective-placement was a disadvantage but not a HUGE disadvantage. I'm of the opinion that the lack of LOS-blocking terrain was a much LARGER disadvantage. It just makes gunline armies so much better.

This bother me. It all depends on your idea of LOS blocking terrain. Terrain that can hide small units or tanks=good.... Terrain that can entirely hide 6 man units of wraiths let alone 18 while still advancing on your enemy=bad. I don't think there is a situation where 1000 points of wraiths is gona make it to 2000 points of tau without some seriously skewed terrain setup. With bubble wrap and friendly overwatch it's simply a losing strategy.

Wraiths have a 3++ and I don't think it was unintentional to make the new models so large for a 2 wound model. . I have to say I'm shocked if you disagree that having 2 out of 3, 3 VP objectives just 6" from your board edge is anything but a huge advantage.

On a side note I had a laugh that he didn't use black sun filters. Playing a gun line and knowing there are two separate 33% chances at night fight and having access to cheap night fight ignoring war gear and not using it baffles me.

I don't advocate huge LOS-blocking terrain where you can hide practically your entire army. I think a 6x6" is probably fair. Even 12x12" is getting a little too large for my taste. But some LOS-blocking terrain is better than none. Otherwise, it just becomes a turkey-shoot for gunline armies in what essentially is a shooty edition of the game.

Objective-placement can definitely be an advantage (as it was in this game)....but really, it depends on the dice roll. There are no guarantees here. Had my opponent won even one of those rolls - to place objectives first or to pick sides first - he could have very easily been the one with 2 objectives on his side. Just like the roll to go first or the roll to steal the initiative or the roll to make/fail a charge or the roll to see what mission and what deployment you have. In other words, this "advantage" is completely random. It turned out to be an advantage for me in this game....but it could have very well been an advantage for him as well. Just like going 2nd on board with no LOS-blocking terrain against a shooty army is an advantage for him.

In any case, these "advantages" can easily be mitigated by tactics and strategy. I could have very well avoided a thumping by deploying my units outside the majority of his shooting (though I would be way out of position) and he could have very well mitigated the objectives disparity by going after the objectives much earlier.

Night-fight isn't as much of a factor if you plan for it. All his suits/riptides have BSF. Also, markerlights don't suffer from NF because they don't cause any wounds. Once they hit, you can just remove cover for the rest of your shooting. It's really not that big of a deal. The only problems was that he did not plan for it and did not move his pathfinders earlier. BTW, even without NF, my warriors can still get 2+ cover from the ruins. That's because the objective there was Scatterfield (+1 cover) so really, he needed to move his pathfinders there to markerlight me anyways.

GreyDragoon wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

4. Doesn't the commander automatically Look-Out-Sirs to his bodyguards? He wanted his marker drones to survive, which was why he left them in the rear. So any shots that hit were were automatically going to his bodyguards first and foremost, whether his bodyguards were in front or his commander was. I fired both AB's and the NS and he failed just enough saves to kill off both bodyguards.

Actually I'm pretty sure there was no reason for him to put those wounds on his bodyguard. The Sworn Protector rule only states that they automatically pass any Look out Sir attempts. It says nothing about them HAVING to take the shots if they didn't want to. So yeah he should have been able to use his iridium armor commander to soak up those shots/wounds and once he was down to 1 wound he could start Look out Sir'ing. With the 2+ Armor save on the Character.. that would mean each hit would have had to make it through the 2+ armor save first, then each wound (or unsaved wound) he could either take on the character OR (when down to 1w remaining) he can pick any other model from the unit within 6" to take a Look Out Sir attempt, which he automatically passes due to Sworn Protector.

All told, he could have likely saved a good deal more wounds having the hits be on his commander, and then he'd have been able to mitigate 5 of them with 3 on the commander and 1 on each bodyguard. This is all based on my reading of the rules, BRB pg 16 and new Tau Codex pg 104 Special Rules reference section.

Do you feel that would have changed the outcome much JY2?

You are right. It looks like he made a mistake which ended up nerfing his own unit. I was not too familiar with the rule, so I played it how he thought it was played.

I will let him know the next time I see him.


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@Thread

I am sure there are many different opinions on what makes for a competitive Tau army. Some thinks triple-riptides are competitive, some think you need HYMP broadsides to make it competitive, some may think a Farsight-deathstar build is competitive, some think you need allies to make competitive......that is all fine. Perhaps it is a mark of a good codex when we all cannot agree on a truly competitive Tau build?

Personally, I really like my opponent's list. I feel that the strength of the Tau lies in its raw firepower headed by an Ethereal, with lots of markerlight support, taking advantage of supporting fire and the versatile riptides for anti-everything. For mobility, eldar allies are perfect with their super-fast jetbikes, psychic defense, and force-multiplying potential (Doom), at least for a few weeks more.

Now not everyone may agree, but that's fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Just don't be surprised when you see Tau winning tournaments with similar builds to my opponent's army here.

Though probably by then, not sure eldar allies will be the optimal choice for allies anymore.

 jy2 wrote:


I am sure there are many different opinions on what makes for a competitive Tau army. Some thinks triple-riptides are competitive, some think you need HYMP broadsides to make it competitive, some may think a Farsight-deathstar build is competitive, some think you need allies to make competitive......that is all fine. Perhaps it is a mark of a good codex when we all cannot agree on a truly competitive Tau build?

Personally, I really like my opponent's list. I feel that the strength of the Tau lies in its raw firepower headed by an Ethereal, with lots of markerlight support, taking advantage of supporting fire and the versatile riptides for anti-everything. For mobility, eldar allies are perfect with their super-fast jetbikes, psychic defense, and force-multiplying potential (Doom), at least for a few weeks more.

Now not everyone may agree, but that's fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Just don't be surprised when you see Tau winning tournaments with similar builds to my opponent's army here.

Though probably by then, not sure eldar allies will be the optimal choice for allies anymore.

I agree 100% I started off thinking the riptides were not optimized but pointed out in this thread I learned the effectiveness of rending and allied fortune, so I changed my tune. ((see if eldar survive as allies as you mentioned though))

my 2 cents - death star, 3 riptides, missiles sides, kroot!! WOOT WOOT!!!

shogun wrote:

The fact that you need mobility doesn't change the fact that the player with 2 objectives has to big of an advantage. You can simply put the objectives 6 inch from your table edge and its an uphill battle for the other player with only one objective. What if Tau got 2 objectives in this battle report? Then the don't have to move at all and need even less mobility. So theirs no tactical thinking needed. If that third objective was placed in the middle of the field then it would be more exciting because the Necron need to get that objective despite all the tau shooting and also the tau army need to get out of their defence line to claim it. If the Necron army really wanted to win the could dig in and let the warriors claim both objectives. The could even attach a Necron Lord to both warriors units to take hits and to make sure the survive.

Unfortunately, that's the way the cookie crumbles. 40K is an inherently unbalanced game. This is made even more pronounced by the differences of each and every army. Yes, it's an advantage to the army with more objectives on their side against a slower army. It is also an advantage for a shooty army to go first on a table where the opponent has nowhere to hide. It is an advantage for armies with strong troops because most missions involve objectives. It is an advantage for psychically strong armies against an army without psychic defense. It is an advantage for deathstar armies in certain missions (VP's, the Relic). It is an advantage for assault armies if there is too much LOS-blocking terrain. It is an advantage for flyer-heavy armies against armies with inherently weak anti-flyer/FMC shooting. It is an advantage for some armies with lots of ally options (i.e. Tau, IG, Imperial armies vs Tyranids). The list goes on and on.

But guess what? People still find ways to win despite these "advantages". Yes, it's called tactics and building a balanced army. If you want to play a fair game, play tic-tac-toe. In 40K, your "advantage" depends on the roll of the dice.

Deshkar wrote:
mmm. a very static gunline. think competitive tau need some more mobile scoring to maintain high level competitiveness.
it really shows how the objectives wins the games.
still, nice job by JY to pull out a win, from that devastating firepower.

Mobile scoring is definitely a good thing. But even without it, Tau can still pull off the win. Tau players just need to get out of the mentality that they are a static gunline army. When you are killing that many units, you need to be moving out. With the assault moves of the suits and riptides, they actually have some very good mobility. Don't just stay confined to "your space". Go out and conquer some new territory. Plan for how you are going to get to the objectives. Ideally, this should begin in the list-building phase even before you have played any game, but it continues onto your actual tactics in the game. As they say in the army, "Move your butt, soldier!!!"

 Unreg1stered wrote:
Jy2, thank you as ever for your battle reports. When I check the battle report list every few days, I always know that yours will be a thumping good read. Good pictures, great looking armies, detailed assessments of movements.

The Tau player really should have been advancing by turn 2. By his Turn 2 shooting he had already neutered your wraiths. Moving forward could have easily achieved the middle objective and given him more firepower against the ones in the back, perhaps even throwing a riptide at them to contest.

I think he was a good player, but too cautious. That's why I think orcs are the perfect ally for Tau; they charge right up the field to kill what they can (and usually die) while the Tau follow up behind them, which eliminates their desire to just sit in the back.

Thanks! And I agree with all your points.

My opponent is good, but he hasn't played his Tau in a while, at least not until the new Tau codex came out. He still has room for improvement. The more he plays against me and the other good opponents here, the better he's going to get. In a few months, I think his Tau is going to be a very scary army to face.

Orcs definitely make for some very good allies to Tau. A number of people have been using them to good success. I really like how orks complement a Tau army. But IMO, Tau are really competitive just by themselves. They can succeed just like necrons can succeed as a stand-alone army.

If a tau army wins a GT without misslesides you can tell me to eat crow. :p

 hippesthippo wrote:
If a tau army wins a GT without misslesides you can tell me to eat crow. :p

I'm not as familiar with them because I've never seen them in action. Who knows, maybe someone will win a tournament with riptides and missilesides. As long as they can put up a good volume of shots, especially S7 shots, then it is a good unit.

The only "disadvantage" I see with the missile-sides is that they can either take Skyfire or Interceptor, but not both. Riptides, on the other hand, can take both. Also, missilesides cannot deal with heavy army like the riptides can. That's why I think the riptide is a more versatile choice and why they will be more prevalent in competitive lists.

Of course, I don't see why a competitive Tau list can't have both.

You should have lost your Tau opponent seems quite incompetent, not planning for a 5th turn game over, it happens 1/3 the time.

 jy2 wrote:

 hippesthippo wrote:
If a tau army wins a GT without misslesides you can tell me to eat crow. :p

I'm not as familiar with them because I've never seen them in action. Who knows, maybe someone will win a tournament with riptides and missilesides. As long as they can put up a good volume of shots, especially S7 shots, then it is a good unit.

The only "disadvantage" I see with the missile-sides is that they can either take Skyfire or Interceptor, but not both. Riptides, on the other hand, can take both. Also, missilesides cannot deal with heavy army like the riptides can. That's why I think the riptide is a more versatile choice and why they will be more prevalent in competitive lists.

Of course, I don't see why a competitive Tau list can't have both.

I agree that Riptides are good. And in a first draft list I would prolly take two, but keep them cheap with only ion/fusion/ewo [~190 pts]. However, consider this.

A unit of 3 Broadsides costs 195 pts and puts out:
-12 s7 ap4, twin-linked shots @ bs3
AND
-12 s5 ap5, twin-linked, ignores cover, ignores los shots @ bs3.

Each suit can add 2 missile drones for 12 pts each. Each drone puts out 2 s7 ap 4 shots. So, for an additional 72 pts, you can add:
-12 s7 ap4 shots @bs2.

The drones prolly aren't worth it unless you've already maxed out your HS slots. Regardless, this unit puts out a metric f-ton of firepower at a very efficient cost. With an attached commander granting tank-hunter (and even more missles), I'm positive they are more effective at taking out high AV tanks than a Riptide.

I'm also not sure the inability to take both interceptor and EWO is a big deal. They're putting out such a high rate of twin-linked fire that EWO should be enough. Not to mention velocity trackers are friggin expensive. The [more than likely] attached Commander should be manning a quad gun behind the ubiquitous Tau aegis line anyways.

I agree with you that the best Tau list will probably have both Riptides AND Broadsides.

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As a side note, I think it's worth pointing out that the senseless bashing of Jy2s opponent is entirely unnecessary and uncalled for here. In a niche hobby like ours, we should be encouraging new players (or players new to competitive play) and trying to help them. Constructive criticism is key. Bashing new guys until we have no one left to play man dolls with really isn't getting anybody anywhere. Price increases are hurting our numbers enough as it is. He may not be posting here, but you have no idea whether or not he's reading.