Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've just started 40k with Tau (oddly I started the same time they got an update without even realizing) and the guy that has taught me to play and got me introduced to the game consistently tables me all but our first match, and I dare say he let me win.

Last weekend we had our closest game yet, where I had a good start, but ended up backing into the furthest corner possible by the end of the game to avoid CC as much as possible. we normally play 1750

my list was

-Crisis Commander, Onager Gauntlet, Iridium Armour, Airbursting frag, Cyclic Ion Blaster, and Drone controller.
-Dark Strider
-2 squads of 12 fire warriors
-2 squads of crisis suits all with twin linked burst canons, and burst canons(MVP unit probably)
-Riptide,heavy burst canon, SMS, Stim Injector, 1 Shielded missile drone, counterfire defense system
-1 broadside High yield missile pods, SMS, Early warning override, and velocity Tracker
-1 railhead, Longstrike, submunitions, and burst canons.
-squad of 5 pathfinders,with devil fish this is where Darkstrider was put
-squad of 12 gun drones, this is where my commander was placed.

his list sorta looked like this,

Bloodthirster,
Skulltaker
and 2 heralds of Khorne
2 squads of bloodletters with one in reserve
2 2 squads of blood crushers,
and a soul grinder.
I might be missing something from his list but i doubt it.

I let him deploy first so I knew where to put my guys, he deployed across the table evenly to send troops around in a flank type maneuver so I placed mine similarily to form 1 large gun line using the hill in the middle of the board to my advantage, but I got distracted while deploying my own, and potato'd as I will call it and put my broadside on the opposite side of the table than his blood thirster.

first turn went well for me of course as he could only move forward, his soul grinder survived the blow from the hammer head and the missile barrage from the broadside. devastated one unit of blood crushers leaving only one behind, and his second unit survived with 4 left. his bloodletters went fairly untouched as I was focusing on the greater threats. but he had placed some thing in front of my fire warriors that he would spawn pink horrors out of for the rest of the game.

second turn I finished all but one of his blood crushers in his 4 strong squad, while his other one got into CC with my broadside where it would stay for then next 2 turns. my hammerhead finished his soul grinder before it could do any damage to my fire warriors. I lost both squads of fire warriors on his turn to close combat, and almost killed his blood thirster with overwatch shots, just to find out he could replenish his wounds. this brought him from 3 wounds to 8.

next turn I moved my devilfish forward into the centre of the battle area, and the riptide behind it to close of his troops from the rest of my now halved army. i unloaded into his troops bringing the blood thirster down to 3 wounds again,finishing one squad of bloodletters who defeated my firewarriors, and halving his others. his turn he charged the riptide with his bloodthirster and last blood crusher killing it with the bloodthirster. He charged my devilfish with blood letters destroying it, we finished the combat with the broadside and blood crusher from earlier his blood crusher coming out with one wound. he also healed his bloodthirster to 8 wounds.

I began moving my troops as far away as I could resulting in cornering myself. killed his last blood crushers and bringing the bloodthirster down to 5 wounds. his bloodletters where hidden behind my devilfish so I didnt shoot them, but by this time I didn't have much to shoot with anymore anyways. my assault phase I moved my warlord and drones behind my tank and crisis suits infront of it. his turn he killed darkstrider with his bloodletters, brought his other bloodletters in beside my tank, and killed my crisis suits with his bloodthirster.

Im missing some smaller moments but you can see where this battle is going. The only interesting thing that happened in the corner was defeating his skull taker in CC.

His Blood thirster turned out to be a real pain, and the Burst Canon crisis suits worked amazingly well. Perhaps this would have went better in my favor had I put the broadside on the correct side of the table, but with the amount of CC that came in the lat few moments I doubt I would have won that game, it also happened to be kill points.

Anyone have a better list idea, or point out more things that I could have done differently? also, this is my first battle report, so it most likely isn't very good.







Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, as I know if this was about the battlereport it owuld be in the wrong section, but it's mostly about learning better tactics against Daemons, but felt a battlereport would help paint the picture of whats happening

Your list seems to lack markerlights for one, but honestly with the list you have I have no idea how you lost.
His list is so unoptimized already, against a fast optimized Daemon list there might be some problems for Tau, but definitely not for this list.

Kill the bloodthirster first turn, shoot markerlights at it to force grounding tests, once it's down shoot everything at it.

Bloodcrushers are expensive and doesn't even do what they cost, and there's only 4 of them and they shouldn't have even have gotten into combat.

Bloodletters are so slow, leave them til the end, if they deep strike then wait till your turn and throw fire warriors with rapid fire into them, 20 BS3 S5 + markerlight support easily can wipe a bloodletter squad.

If you really want to deal with the Soul Grinder 1 shot should be sufficient from the Hammerhead, anyway though it's only got 36" range on that gun, so easily avoidable til at least turn 2.

Basically move backwards or just deploy backwards in general, once his bloodthirster and crushers are down he's pretty much done for.

he runs invulnerable saves on everything so that's how the soul grinder survived, well, thats how everything survived up until they got into close combat. perhaps a whole lot of bad luck along side poor deployment.

I typically run 5 markerlights, as I tend to just shoot one thing to death then move onto the next, but I guess more markerlights definitely couldn't hurt, especially for putting down the hurt.

Daemons always have invulnerable saves.

They are daemons. This is what they do,

Usually it's only a 5+ though, and often they don't have an armour save at all.

 Ascalam wrote:
Daemons always have invulnerable saves.

They are daemons. This is what they do,

Usually it's only a 5+ though, and often they don't have an armour save at all.

I wasn't sure if this was an always thing, or a sort of war gear option. either way, it keeps enough of his troops alive to get into CC, or has been anyways, lucky rolls I guess, I have a few new things to try next game, namely deploying to one location and instead of trying to stop a flank, let them and just decimate one side at a time, not fancy, but should get the job done.

The best way to deal with invuls is to spam them down with shots. One big hit is worth less than a whole lot of lesser ones, as he has to fail those saves sometime

A unit or fire warriors or two ought to be able to gun down just about any daemons infantry unit, or at least feth it up severely with rapid fire shots followed by overwatch.

Normally my generic anti-daemon advice is target priority, but that's a substandard Daemon list (to say the least), so there is no "must kill" "should kill" "don't waste time shooting" at rankings. Just volume of fire. Skyfire into the Thirster until he goes down, then finish him. Fast units, then slow units. Doesn't look like he's running the Book, so no unit is super important to kill (or avoid wasting shots at) or any of the truly scary Daemon units (to Tau, or in general).

Just screen as needed, and kill faster units. Be glad it's not a Screamerstar (the anti Tau) or a Fateweaver Circus or a Seeker Rush or a Dogpound (I love how many options are in the Daemon book....Tau too)

anonymou5 wrote:
Normally my generic anti-daemon advice is target priority, but that's a substandard Daemon list (to say the least), so there is no "must kill" "should kill" "don't waste time shooting" at rankings. Just volume of fire. Skyfire into the Thirster until he goes down, then finish him. Fast units, then slow units. Doesn't look like he's running the Book, so no unit is super important to kill (or avoid wasting shots at) or any of the truly scary Daemon units (to Tau, or in general).

Just screen as needed, and kill faster units. Be glad it's not a Screamerstar (the anti Tau) or a Fateweaver Circus or a Seeker Rush or a Dogpound (I love how many options are in the Daemon book....Tau too)

Well I know he doesn't use the book properly as Im sure he's supposed to deep strike all of his units in, but we just play basic rules, regular deployments with just kill points, as he's taken to tabling me every time we play. From what everyone's saying it seems I'm on the right track to flipping the tables on him and tabling him myself. I normally prioritize his blood crushers as they are faster than his bloodletters, and I can get rapid fire sooner against them.

NauticalKendall wrote:

anonymou5 wrote:
Normally my generic anti-daemon advice is target priority, but that's a substandard Daemon list (to say the least), so there is no "must kill" "should kill" "don't waste time shooting" at rankings. Just volume of fire. Skyfire into the Thirster until he goes down, then finish him. Fast units, then slow units. Doesn't look like he's running the Book, so no unit is super important to kill (or avoid wasting shots at) or any of the truly scary Daemon units (to Tau, or in general).

Just screen as needed, and kill faster units. Be glad it's not a Screamerstar (the anti Tau) or a Fateweaver Circus or a Seeker Rush or a Dogpound (I love how many options are in the Daemon book....Tau too)

Well I know he doesn't use the book properly as Im sure he's supposed to deep strike all of his units in, but we just play basic rules, regular deployments with just kill points, as he's taken to tabling me every time we play. From what everyone's saying it seems I'm on the right track to flipping the tables on him and tabling him myself. I normally prioritize his blood crushers as they are faster than his bloodletters, and I can get rapid fire sooner against them.

Daemons deploy like everyone else now. When I said "The Book," I meant The Grimoire of True Names, which can boost invulnerable saves (sorry for the slang)

oh it's alright, perhaps I'll ask to go through his codex, it may help to understand a few of his units, as he understands most of mine having been a tau player himself.

I don't actually know all that much about demons, but making a quick "dummy list" in battlescribe, I don't see a lot that scares me that much. You should have at least two turns to shoot stuff, and he can't shoot back so you'll have markerlights the entire game.

I'd try something like this:
Stick in the back of your deployment zone. Join commander to marker drones. Put kroot and battlesuits in front of fire warriors to eat the first charge from whatever's left. Use the skyray first turn to give a massive middle finger to the bloodthirstier, follow up with riptide if necessary.

The invul save is probably why he has burst cannons on his crisis suits, normally they are not worth it since you get about half the shots with plasmas but its S6 and AP2 so it actually kills what it hits, but in this case it doesnt remove invulsaves so numbers > AP value.

I'd ditch the gun drones personally. I dislike the gun squadrons, i only get the drones for markerlights with a Mark'O commander. Its better to slap him in a group of crisis suits as each suit (including him) can take 2 drones for 12pts each, totalling 8 drones. Thats still quite a bit of dakka, cheaper, and is much safer for the commander.

And as stated before, you need more markerlights. A single 5man pathfinder team will not suffice. Even if he ignored them (which is highly unlikely) they wont help your army all that much as they will be dedicated to helping the riptide, nothing else.

I have not faced demons yet (only CSM, which is only partly similar but not vs the guy ive been playing so bleh to that comment) so i dont know exactly what they have, but i would assume the Railhead is not needed. What is that S10 shot being fired at? Besides a Great Unclean One buffing himself to T9/10 so you can actually hurt him, theres no point for this overpriced gun. I think you'd be better off getting a kitted out Missile Side team or even an Ionhead.

there's a vehicle with AV 13 and a pretty nasty gun with a 36" range. You can kill it in the first turn or two, then use the sub munitions to mop up bloodthirster squads.

Step one would probably be to get the Daemon player to start following the rules. There is no way for a Bloodthirster to regain more than 2 wounds per turn, which requires two very specific rolls on the rewards table. Specifically a 1 on the Greater Rewards for +1 Wound and It Will Not Die, coupled with a 3 on the Exalted Rewards for Soul Eater. Even so, only one of these (Soul Eater) is able to bring him above his starting number of wounds, which would be 6 in this particular case. So there is absolutely no way he could possibly jump from 3 to 8 wounds in one assault phase. That Bloodthirster should have been dead at the end of your third shooting phase going by the numbers you gave.

I will actually disagree with the dropping of the drone squad as it tends to be a GREAT unit for scoring hits. 12 gun drones = 24 shots, +drone controller with the commander hitting on a 2+. TL you're probably gonna see almost all of them hit. only having 3 crisis suits per squad means I cant have as many gun drones controlled by the commander, meaning less shots, this unit is almost an auto include for me, and has never disappointed me yet. A lot of people under estimate them once they watch me place them on the table, but quickly learn when they nearly topple an entire squad themselves. While I do see the merit of eliminating them and going with crisis + drones, I get more mobility out of having them separate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the railhead was taken to destroy the soul grinder, as last time we played I chose Ion head which turned out to be less effective. The soulgrinder made its invuln and had to die turn 2, the Railhead then would use submunitions on bloodletters, unfortunately, scattering and not hitting the intended location, even with BS5. As for his Bloodthirster not being able to regain more than 2 wounds, I will have to read his rule myself, as I do believe you but he may have missed it.

I always did better with missile pod suits. S7 with twice the range. Yeah, half the shots, but you survive so much better at 36-42 inches than you do at 18-24.

I also felt that S5 on battle suits was wasteful. You can do S5 everywhere else in the army.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I always did better with missile pod suits. S7 with twice the range. Yeah, half the shots, but you survive so much better at 36-42 inches than you do at 18-24.

I also felt that S5 on battle suits was wasteful. You can do S5 everywhere else in the army.

-Matt

we just play on the table with the longest edge as our deployment, I don't remember the name of this, but after advancing his 6 inches on the table, and then running as far as he can, by turn two he will be well within 18" anyways, and those 2 extra shots will be missed. the strength of the weapons doesn't matter much as str5 will wound on a 3+ against his bloodletters and bloodcrushers. His invulns require as many wounds as possible.

NauticalKendall wrote:
I will actually disagree with the dropping of the drone squad as it tends to be a GREAT unit for scoring hits. 12 gun drones = 24 shots, +drone controller with the commander hitting on a 2+. TL you're probably gonna see almost all of them hit. only having 3 crisis suits per squad means I cant have as many gun drones controlled by the commander, meaning less shots, this unit is almost an auto include for me, and has never disappointed me yet. A lot of people under estimate them once they watch me place them on the table, but quickly learn when they nearly topple an entire squad themselves. While I do see the merit of eliminating them and going with crisis + drones, I get more mobility out of having them separate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, the railhead was taken to destroy the soul grinder, as last time we played I chose Ion head which turned out to be less effective. The soulgrinder made its invuln and had to die turn 2, the Railhead then would use submunitions on bloodletters, unfortunately, scattering and not hitting the intended location, even with BS5. As for his Bloodthirster not being able to regain more than 2 wounds, I will have to read his rule myself, as I do believe you but he may have missed it.

It Will Not Die is in the main rulebook, so you can check that whenever you want. Souleater will be a bit harder, as that's Codex: Daemon specific, but next time he tries to regenerate his Bloodthirster ask him to show you the book, assuming that's what he's doing it's page 67 you want. He also has to roll for his rewards, so make sure he's doing that properly. Has the Warp Storm table ever come up?

[quote=Chrysis 540353 5853532 null

It Will Not Die is in the main rulebook, so you can check that whenever you want. Souleater will be a bit harder, as that's Codex: Daemon specific, but next time he tries to regenerate his Bloodthirster ask him to show you the book, assuming that's what he's doing it's page 67 you want. He also has to roll for his rewards, so make sure he's doing that properly. Has the Warp Storm table ever come up?

Skulltaker can't have any of those abilities. There is no way for Skulltaker to regenerate wounds. Now, the bog standard Khorne Herald can, but he can only get one of those abilities so he'll only be regenerating one wound per turn. And if he's got a Portalglyph, the thing that spews tiny numbers of Horrors, then only his Bloodthirster and one of his Heralds can have any regeneration ability at all.

Then he was probably proxying his skull taker as a herald. This is good to know thanks, I'm not sure if he was doing these on purpose or just didn't realize he couldn't. But I will definitely be looking into it, but having bloodthirster immediately jump back up to 8 wounds twice , and then to 10 in the final turn isn't very nice.

NauticalKendall wrote:
...but he had placed some thing in front of my fire warriors that he would spawn pink horrors out of for the rest of the game.

Hadn't seen this touched so far, if the Horrors were giving you any trouble, note that you can shoot this thing(it's called the Portalglyph).

It's AV 12 all around and has only one HP, so should go down easily.

Did he roll for the horrors? They only arrive on a 4+ at the end of the movement phase.

 Malthor wrote:

NauticalKendall wrote:
...but he had placed some thing in front of my fire warriors that he would spawn pink horrors out of for the rest of the game.

Hadn't seen this touched so far, if the Horrors were giving you any trouble, note that you can shoot this thing(it's called the Portalglyph).

It's AV 12 all around and has only one HP, so should go down easily.

Did he roll for the horrors? They only arrive on a 4+ at the end of the movement phase.

ah yes he rolled for the horrors, when it was first placed he had only spawned 2, and I decided it would be wise to railgun it the next turn after taking out his soul grinder, but as the soul grinder survived I felt it was best to ignore this, while attempting to eliminate his other units. His pink horrors ended up dying due to some warp stuff and he only spawned one other group of 5 or something, they ended up being a small inconvenience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I didn't think his portalglyph would be a kill point so never worried about it either, but thinking back now, the portal itself probably was.

Definitely look into it. With specific regard to the regenerating side of things the pages you'll want to look at in his codex are:

The top of page 66. This explains that he has to roll for what "Rewards" he has, he doesn't get to pick and choose.

Page 67, result 3, Soul Eater. This explains how Soul Eater works, and is perfectly clear that it regenerates only a single wound.

And of course pages 92 and 94, which are the Army List entries and will tell you what options the Bloodthirster and Heralds/Skulltaker have.

Chrysis wrote:
Definitely look into it. With specific regard to the regenerating side of things the pages you'll want to look at in his codex are:

The top of page 66. This explains that he has to roll for what "Rewards" he has, he doesn't get to pick and choose.

Page 67, result 3, Soul Eater. This explains how Soul Eater works, and is perfectly clear that it regenerates only a single wound.

And of course pages 92 and 94, which are the Army List entries and will tell you what options the Bloodthirster and Heralds/Skulltaker have.

Thanks a lot for the tips, I decided to join a forum, because while I was playing and learning from a large group of veteran players, a lot of them aren't very good at helping newer players figure things out, and just go for the easy win. I'm trying my hardest not to let that happen. I'll be definitely skimming through some other codex's and being sure what can and can't happen.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
That all being said, is it still possible that he had an automatic 6" charge distance ontop of whatever he rolled? I never had much room to keep shooting.

Banner of wrath - instead of rolling normal charge range, you get 6+D6 charge range. Yep, it's a wargear option he can get.

I play as daemons and play as Tau many times over. Counter charge units for a pure tau tends to be some sort of sacrificial fire warrior or kroot squad. I would move them into 1' away from the enemy and spread out so they would have to go around them or charge them. Moving around them would be too much trouble and assaulting them means the daemons just get d6' consolidation which slows them down a lot and buys another round or so of shooting. Bigger squads of fire warriors doesn't give you that tactical flexibility though it would be harder to force a morale check.

As daemons I see lots of these kinds of screening units and I basically design my assault elements to must have 12'+ movements such that I can hopefully move around such groups but it still eats up valuable movement though against novice opponents this doesn't come up as often. (so stuff like blood letters just doesn't cut it. Crushers maybe but hounds are much better points spent) Setting up the multi-charge is the best and only effective way of playing assault I feel like. too bad you lose furious charge but meh, getting locked in combat is usually more important.

Also, that daemons list is actually pretty soft. The Tau list has plenty of guns to have made it work. I think it's just lack of screening that cost you. Heck, I'd even have detatched the commander and used the gun drones if needed as a screen at times.

(also if you have points to spare, consider a squad of pianhas as they come with gundrones and detatch as a squadron - 8 drones for free essentially. 160 points but so much dakka. 12 drones on the other hand would run you 168 points and you actually end up with less overall shots. 4x2 = 8 shots from the extra drones vs 4 x 4 = 16 shots from the 4 pianhas at bs 3 vs TL bs2)

dementedwombat wrote:there's a vehicle with AV 13 and a pretty nasty gun with a 36" range. You can kill it in the first turn or two, then use the sub munitions to mop up bloodthirster squads.

Ah, gotcha. Didnt think they even had any armor value stuff. Daemons and Angels are the only races i havent faced at all, even once, so i know little about them other than general knowledge.

Honestly, your battlesuit units taking burst cannons is a terrible idea. You need to take plasma and/or fusion guns on them instead. Tau already put out lots of str 5 firepower, their suits need to bring what you don't have.

The drone on the riptide doesn't need to be there, and the lone broadside needs 2 extra broadside friends to really do anything.

Finally, you need more markerlights and I recommend another unit of troops.

NauticalKendall wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I always did better with missile pod suits. S7 with twice the range. Yeah, half the shots, but you survive so much better at 36-42 inches than you do at 18-24.

I also felt that S5 on battle suits was wasteful. You can do S5 everywhere else in the army.

-Matt

we just play on the table with the longest edge as our deployment, I don't remember the name of this, but after advancing his 6 inches on the table, and then running as far as he can, by turn two he will be well within 18" anyways, and those 2 extra shots will be missed. the strength of the weapons doesn't matter much as str5 will wound on a 3+ against his bloodletters and bloodcrushers. His invulns require as many wounds as possible.

So you're saying that you're out of range turn 1.
S7 will wound on 2's which is nice. More importantly, the output isn't that far off, and the range lets you finish off units, by putting shots where you need them.

24 shots per turn (half twin-linked) wounding on 3+, without turn 1 shooting gives you: 20 wounds by the end of turn 3.
12 missile shots per turn (half twin-linked) wounding on 2+, and within range turn 1 gives you: 18.75 wounds by the end of turn 3.
So in the first three turns of shooting, burst cannons edge out missiles by 1.25 wounds.

If you aren't going to take advantage of the range, spend those points on carbine firewarriors.
You get 16 for the same cost.
That's 32 shots at 18", and you pick up pinning.

Drop the railhead for a Skyray. A single S10 shot doesn't do much unless you are up against princes and if you miss then they will be on you by turn 2. You can drop the Bloodthirster turn 1 then use the BS4 markerlights and SMS to mop up and assist or tank shock units off of objectives. If all you want is the pie plate then an ionhead is much better and will instant death the Khorne "dog bomb" if he decides to up his game or you go to a tournament.

Kroot with sniper rounds are golden vs. monstrous creatures. They also are great vs. daemons for sniping Heralds out of units with precision shots (daemon LD is not that great for look out sir rolls). Which will get rid of the buffs they provide and annoying wargear like the grimoire of true names. Finally. they can be used for bubble wrap to trigger supporting fire and buy a round to reposition your shots from assault units.

As others have said you need more markerlights.