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Hey guys! so my first actual batrep and the name of the game here to start testing out the new space marines.

Also we are both more armchair generals than we have actual practice, as we mostly play each other, so we made this a
pretty friendly game so we forgave any major oopsites to make this as close to tournament level/best decisions as possible.

Even then the result of this game was.. surprising so we were both wondering what we messed up.

Please forgive.. a lot of proxying, also as this is my first batrep im still working on the best angles for pictures/lighting/etc.

In general though:

the sideways paint jars represent bikes (and blue ones represent grav bikes)
The ACTUAL bike with 2 flags represents the CM, the 2 bikes with plasma represent 2 more grav bikes, and the lsat one is a seargent.

Upright mason jars represent riptides (both vanilla with the ion loadout), downturned jars represent drop pods.

The first test was up against the NOVA winning quad riptide list. We also stuck with the last scenario

Primary: 5 objectives, 3 exactly in the middle of the board 18 apart from each other, 1 on each deployment zone.

Secondary: quarters and i think the normal 3 VPs

Tertiatry: Kill points

My 1850 List

HQ;
Chapter master with TH, the EW shield, artificer armour, bike
Level 2 Librarian with bike (he rolled on telepathy and got psychic scream and puppet master)

Elite:
8 sternguard with pod
1 Seige dread (FW unit) with pod

Troops:
10 tacticals with pod MG and combi-MG and pod
5 CC scouts with meltabombs and LSS transprot
9 Bikes with MM attack bike and 2 grav guns
5 bikes with 2 grav guns

FA:
2 stormtalons with missiles

HS:
Hunter
TFC

The farsigh/tau list (from nova from memory)

HQ :
farsight
Support commander with all the trimmings (twin link , ignore cover, tank hunter/monster hunter)
O'Vessa: The HQ IC riptide with ion/melta loadout, FNP, 2 shielded dones

Elite:
Ion-Tide
Ion-TIde
HBC tide with skyfire, the super deny the witch equipment, 2 shield drones.

Troops:
Missile crisis suit
missile crisis suit
missile crisis suit
3 plasma crisis suits with farsight
10 kroot

HS:
2 skyrays

The map (circled areas are objective locations)


Night fight is on
I have first turn/deployment, Tau won the roll off and decided to go second.
Deployment:

My half:
Pretty basic, thunderfire on top of my ruins, hunter hiding in some cover, and my bikes are spread out with grav guns in front (there's no real reason for tau to try and seize) to be able to get shots off.
Bikes are combat squadded so my CM is with 3 normal bikes and the attack bike, force the tau player to either shoot the CM or focus on the grav bikes.


Tau Half:


Also pretty basic, we gleenad from the nova that the player tended to play centrally clustered up to take advantage of the 4d6 deny the witch for as long as possuble, so that's how we did it.
Remember that the 2 rear mason jars are iontides .Also note the lone suit holding an objective. The skyrays are NOT on the board, which incidentally was probably the biggest mistake. Our logic though was that
by holding them in reserve they could be safe from the hunter/talons and then come onto the field and be able to shoot them down. The markerlights werent a big deal most of the shots would be blasts.

The FNP ic riptide is in front.

And off we go!

Turn 1:


Turn 2:


Turn 3:


Turn 4:


Conclusions/Mistakes:
So yeah, the SM win pretty handily, which is surprising. Major mistakes we made:

SM:
- Dropping the siege dread near the crisis suit. THat really got me nowhere and he only really was going to get 1 wound on him, especially since there was nightfight that first turn and so the TFC was out of 36 range. So i just gav eup easy firstblood there.
- Not actually having a troop unit at or near my home objective lol.

Tau:
- Reserving the skyrays. we did it out of some fear of the hunter/getting the jump on the talons, but in retrospect they needed to be out to work on popping bikes and also get some markerlight hits going. Finally they could have screened out the riptides and forcibly been grav targets.
- Getting the list wrong with 1 unit of kroot instead of 2. I could have forseen using oen of those kroot to act as a screen for the tides, which might have delayed things enough.
- Possibly forgetting to try and hit and run out with o'vessa's squad? I cant remember why that didnt occur, either we forgot (who has the hit and run, is it the commander?) or the thunderhammer was reducing them to init 1 and so they kept failing.
- Being too central with the riptide deployment

In the end the riptide shooting just wasnt fast enough to shoot me off in 2 turns, and the blasts could only ever hit at most 3 bikes, which usually resulted in only like 6 bikes dead (and.. 7 out of 8 sternguard) in the end. Luck definitely played a factor here with the ordinance shot early on but.. yeah. Should we have been JSJing out more? maybe, but i still would have caught them with the libby squad or CM and continued to charge. I think this game was lost by the reserve decisions and deploying too close, im not sure how we could have had the tau win given those 2 mistakes, the bikes are almost as fast, especially with charging/ignoring difficult terrain.

MVPs:
The CM, clearly. He tied down the o'vessa unit, pretty much shrugged off all their overwatch and a good chunk of other tau shooting, and dealt the initial 3 wounds that took down O'vessa so quickly.
Grav weapons also did a lot of damage and lived up to their name. Id only ever run them on centurions or bikes though, no other platform makes sense.

Next up is 3 riptide 3 broadside (and like 2 groups of 6 fws), which i think i fear a lot more.

Been following your table pmblog and I can't wait to see some more paint hit that table, this game will be a fun one to see unfold despite my distaste for that tau list.

I don't understand list-hate. If a list is strong it makes the game all the more exciting.

Thanks! yeah im waiting on the terrainworks terrainpaint to get here to start at least basecoating the board

Im all for strong lists and dont mind this one too much, lists like 3 riptides and 3 broadside teams at 1750 all with EWO are a lot more frustrating, or the new FW riptide that just came out which is.. a wee bit broken. sigh, normally FW rules are pretty balanced too

The tau list is a little off, I had 1 less solo suit and the 3 man suit squad had missile pods as well. Additionally there was another kroot unit and in lieu of hounds i had a positional relay on one of the supporting iontides. How many fusion guns were on your riptides? Ovesa was the only one who had a fusion gun and everyone else had sms in what i played. I saw that you noted putting the rays in reserve was likely in error and I agree, I would also not put the crisis suits on the table and either normally reserve or deepstrike them/join any of the characters to them late game once the marine firebase is reduced. I did this a few times during nova when i needed to ensure my otherwise fragile scoring units stayed alive. I also wouldve gone first, or if going 2nd i would have deployed out of range of the grav guns.

Interesting read thusfar, looking forward to seeing the outcome. Please dont read the above as too harsh of criticism...I was just pointing out some things that could be done better to improve the play of the tau army.

I welcome the criticism! the goal of this was to get community feedback as to how it should be played. Our goal is to both get to be able to compete on that level, so might as well start figuring that out.

My goal is to have a SM list that can deal with the meta (tau, eldar, demons) in a TAC way without spam, and the tau player's goal is to get better playing tau.

Next week we'll do a braodside/triple riptide list at 1750... i dont see how i can win vs that yet (any ideas on what i should do? my list at 1750 pretty much is the same without the Libby)

We had too many fusions then, we played with all 4 ion tides with fusion.

Yeah the crisis suit was definitely just from the fact that we otherwise had too many units in reserve. Had we had skyrays in there the crisis suit wouldnt have been in reserve.

Im surpised you would have taken first though, ususally 2nd is best from objectives? I also figured the tau going second would prevent a possible first turn charge by bikes.

I dont reaaally see an easy way to avoid the grav guns though unless you are pretty much hugging the back table edge. The total threat range first turn is 42.5-43 (starting 12 away from the centerline, get .5-1 from the pivot trick, 12 move, 18 range), so the only way to avoid that is by going sideways with the riptides, which seems pretty hindering. Granted it would have forced me to have the grav bikes out front, which means they would be amongst the first to die from blasts..... hrm.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
I don't understand list-hate. If a list is strong it makes the game all the more exciting.

That's fine, and your opinion. I was just stating my own opinion, that I simply enjoy playing and watching the game with more rounded lists that have variety in them. To me it's just more boring and takes less skill to play with the fewest "toughest" units. It's not even about hard lists, for example deathwing is very fluffy and not really that great currently and I hate playing against them because it lacks so much flavor and variety. Again, just my own personal opinion feel free to disagree or misunderstand.

@largo- Can't wait to see the paint hit that table you are doing an amazing job mate! I wish you were local to me, I'd love grabbing a game or 10 on it

Largo39 wrote:
I

Im surpised you would have taken first though, ususally 2nd is best from objectives? I also figured the tau going second would prevent a possible first turn charge by bikes.

I dont reaaally see an easy way to avoid the grav guns though unless you are pretty much hugging the back table edge. The total threat range first turn is 42.5-43 (starting 12 away from the centerline, get .5-1 from the pivot trick, 12 move, 18 range), so the only way to avoid that is by going sideways with the riptides, which seems pretty hindering. Granted it would have forced me to have the grav bikes out front, which means they would be amongst the first to die from blasts..... hrm.

I actually went first the last 4 games of the open, including a game vs 5 ejb units. Its all about if your opponent can hold his troops in reserve...most things will come in turn 2-3 unless they have scriers or a comm relay, and then they go away from all the sms and ion shots.

Grav guns only have the range you mentioned if you take khan for the scout move, I was making more of a comment towards the game you posted as they would only have a 31ish range per turn. Good call on the turn on the spot/free inch trick i didnt realize that existed this edition and had to go back and look in the brb. I'd still deploy in a corner/out of range of as much of the grav as possible. After turn 1 the tau has the ranged threat advantage. I know that seems extremely passive and that its giving up alot of board presence, but that fades away usually by turn 3-4 as the firepower takes its toll, and then you can agressively move/jump towards your opponents backfield.

sorry, yes you are right in that the bikes only have a 31 inch threat radius without scout. I guess what i meant was that in this particular instance, because this game was dawn of war my bikes were only at most 36 away from the riptides.
Thus, unless we counter deployed the riptides in the corners , at which point i can just hide behind the LOS building and neutralize the tau shooting that way. Hmmmmm

haha, thanks! im very happy with it so far, i just need to get better at taking pictures of it, there's so much detail it sorta becomes a multi-colored mass at distance. Yeah i wouldnt mind being able to get a bigger group of people be able to play on it or something when its' done, it really makes the game a lot more fun to play. I definitely hope to make something of a campaign out of playing on it at least. I dunno maybe if frontlinegaming comes back to LA for a tourney I can see if they'd be interested in having games on it (when painted of course) .

Did the commander/burst tide attempt to hit&run out of combat with the chapter master?

Getting farsight and friends into the backfield looks good. I usually stick him in with the ovesa star for his combat potential/initiative 5 for hit&run. Interesting to see him used to precision drop a troop unit into the backfiield.

Hrm, that makes sense with the o'vessa star, hit and run would have been key there. i believe they kept failing or were otherwise hammered down to init 1, i really cant remember.

thanatos67 wrote:
Did the commander/burst tide attempt to hit&run out of combat with the chapter master?

Getting farsight and friends into the backfield looks good. I usually stick him in with the ovesa star for his combat potential/initiative 5 for hit&run. Interesting to see him used to precision drop a troop unit into the backfiield.

Without far-sights initiative its actually terrible odds on that.

I am honestly not that surprised by the outcome. I have been playing SM against my brothers tau which uses a riptide and a wraith knight and I can honestly say they are not living up to the internet hype. The CM on the bike just shuts down the MC's and he is so fast they can't to much beyond deep striking to avoid him. Overall I think the new SM codex has everything it needs to handle Tau, thunder fire canons are just brutal against FW and Kroot and grav weapons ruin crisis suits. The only wild card IMO is the farsight bomb which marines really don't have a great answer to still. It's so expensive though, and if it arrives late or is outmaneuvered it can be shut down.

I hate the siege dread BTW, I think you'll find an iron clad to make a better alpha strike and is way more resilient. I personally field a drop pod IC dread and a contemptor mortis with 2 TL lascanons and cyclone missile launcher. My other two heavies are 2 thunderfire canons, which fortify two terrain pieces which my mortis hides in and snipes MC's and tough vehicles all day long. I run the CM solo to tarpit and hit and run.

 Red Corsair wrote:

thanatos67 wrote:
Did the commander/burst tide attempt to hit&run out of combat with the chapter master?

Getting farsight and friends into the backfield looks good. I usually stick him in with the ovesa star for his combat potential/initiative 5 for hit&run. Interesting to see him used to precision drop a troop unit into the backfiield.

Without far-sights initiative its actually terrible odds on that.

Shielded missile drones are I4. Not really terrible at all.

I think SM can handle riptides okay... the main problem is true tau spam: aka 3 riptide 9 broadside tau at 1750. There I think the ordinance shot will be key, because if it lands on a broadside team it could potentially wipe them out, which should greatly help my ability to survive the firepower.

Also taudar can really wrek me, though typically with taudar their AA element is a lot weaker, so i think my talons can really do some damage there.

In such a situation any sort of deepstriking is pretty much suicide, at which point i cant cut down the range as quickly anymore. Furthermore charging into that kind of overwatch becomes a lot harder to survive.. so yeah that game i think will be a much better test of the SM. Although Im pleased with how my army performed this game I have to add an * to the result beause i feel like we really hurt the tau's chances winning, but I do think that in general this list hold ups abouuut even to quad riptide, which is the result I was hoping for.

I dont disagree about the ironclad, however he's still base, what, 15 more than the siege dread without getting heavy flamers (which puts him close to 20-25 higher?) That's a lot of points to free up and without an str 6 ap 3 flamer shot.

Honestly in higher point games the army transforms to being 10 more tacticals instead of the seige dread, because having more troops is so key, and it lets me fracture the army to UM/White scar so all the pod units get twin link or psudeo twin link with someone like tiggy, and the white scars just become the bikes.

I do have a contemptor mortis that I used to run with, the main reason why I stopped is because he's 30 short of a landraider without the resiliency and whose BS just got dropped to 4. He really needs a point drop now to remain competative, when he was bs 5 it was okay because he never missed, but now he needs some help point wise.

thanatos67 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

thanatos67 wrote:
Did the commander/burst tide attempt to hit&run out of combat with the chapter master?

Getting farsight and friends into the backfield looks good. I usually stick him in with the ovesa star for his combat potential/initiative 5 for hit&run. Interesting to see him used to precision drop a troop unit into the backfiield.

Without far-sights initiative its actually terrible odds on that.

Shielded missile drones are I4. Not really terrible at all.

Yea and what happens when that CM beats you by 3 and he sweeps you anyways. Trouble with buying as many models for that unit as you are suggesting is it wracks up an incredible toll for a none fearless unit. Heck even terrify can win you the game in one casting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think the contemptor is better with 2 las c now. bolster some ruins with him in them and he becomes an ace. 3++ from none cover ignoring is amazing and even then the front av13 is great against tau and eldar units. They need to over commit to take him out which is a good thing. I also love AV 13 walkers near my marines as they make great tarpits against things like seekers and hounds.

Not as easy to play Quad-tide Tau as one would think. It is a finesse army that requires some amount of experience to play. Like all unbalanced armies (IMO taking 4 riptides unbalances the Tau army), it can do well against most armies, but it also has weaknesses that can be exploited by some. An alpha-strike White Scars list just happens to be one of them.

Very well played by marines. Now the question is, can they pull this off consistently? That would be the sign of a truly great TAC list.

 Red Corsair wrote:

thanatos67 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

thanatos67 wrote:
Did the commander/burst tide attempt to hit&run out of combat with the chapter master?

Getting farsight and friends into the backfield looks good. I usually stick him in with the ovesa star for his combat potential/initiative 5 for hit&run. Interesting to see him used to precision drop a troop unit into the backfiield.

Without far-sights initiative its actually terrible odds on that.

Shielded missile drones are I4. Not really terrible at all.

Yea and what happens when that CM beats you by 3 and he sweeps you anyways. Trouble with buying as many models for that unit as you are suggesting is it wracks up an incredible toll for a none fearless unit. Heck even terrify can win you the game in one casting.

Well against the OP's army, and most marine armies for that matter, I'll never not be stubborn thanks to the chip. Theres not alot of vehicles and no mcs so i wont often need tank hunter. Also 4D6 to deny coupled with ld 10 makes terrify breaking the ovesastar off the table unlikely. I mean bad luck happens so sure if you count on the CM winning and breaking a stubborn 10 unit then sweeping them at even initiative (as I said earlier farsight always sticks with my ovesastar) or me failing initiative 5 hit&run then by all means. Similarly with failing a ld 10 check to terrify after also failing a >50% chance to deny. I'm just saying theres some hopeful dice rolling involved in either scenario.

Well a seer council will have no problem. Horrify will likely be rolled of 1 or more warlocks which sets you to LD6. I see your point though, I don't think the 4d6 deny can be called consistent but it is nice.

To be honest the list I find the most busted an toughest to beat is the farsight bomb. Even against 4 riptides I feel that unit will shred them. I honestly have no idea what in the marine codex can beat that unit as well. It can DS in and wipe out multiple bike squads, and with HaR off farsight that CM won't tar pit it. I honestly think that unit has more merit then these multiple riptide builds. I seriously think riptide offense is WAY over rated. Yes they can be a pain to kill, but if a single long range pie plate was so good, the leman russ wouldn't be laughed at like it often is.

 jy2 wrote:
Not as easy to play Quad-tide Tau as one would think. It is a finesse army that requires some amount of experience to play. Like all unbalanced armies (IMO taking 4 riptides unbalances the Tau army), it can do well against most armies, but it also has weaknesses that can be exploited by some. An alpha-strike White Scars list just happens to be one of them.

Very well played by marines. Now the question is, can they pull this off consistently? That would be the sign of a truly great TAC list.

The real question is can the paint tubes evolve to become bikes?

The paint tubes will eventually evolve into the forgeworld bikes painted up tron/light up style (at least for the CM, the others may not light up).... so they may stay paint tubes a while.

Thankfully my opponent has DA bikes so there will be much fewer paint tubes next week, he just forgot to bring them this time.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Well a seer council will have no problem. Horrify will likely be rolled of 1 or more warlocks which sets you to LD6. I see your point though, I don't think the 4d6 deny can be called consistent but it is nice.

To be honest the list I find the most busted an toughest to beat is the farsight bomb. Even against 4 riptides I feel that unit will shred them. I honestly have no idea what in the marine codex can beat that unit as well. It can DS in and wipe out multiple bike squads, and with HaR off farsight that CM won't tar pit it. I honestly think that unit has more merit then these multiple riptide builds. I seriously think riptide offense is WAY over rated. Yes they can be a pain to kill, but if a single long range pie plate was so good, the leman russ wouldn't be laughed at like it often is.

Horrify is tough to get to work though, only 18 inch range and its a malediction so that means i have to let you be within range after a move/jump. Also IDK how that spell works vs stubborn units. I know the NOVA FAQ says weaken resolve doesnt work vs stubborn but IDK if horrify was ever touched on. Incidentally I played my buddy's seer council round 7 of the NOVA open and killed it in combat, like a boss.

I'm interested in this farsight bomb everyone on the web raves about because i havent actually seen one in competitive play yet. I agree that in theory its really good, but the fact that its mostly T4 kinda sucks the wind out of the sails for me. Compared to the 22 majority T6 wounds an ovesastar has with most of the unit packing invulns, it feels a little soft. But it does have alot of potential IMO.

thanatos67 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Well a seer council will have no problem. Horrify will likely be rolled of 1 or more warlocks which sets you to LD6. I see your point though, I don't think the 4d6 deny can be called consistent but it is nice.

To be honest the list I find the most busted an toughest to beat is the farsight bomb. Even against 4 riptides I feel that unit will shred them. I honestly have no idea what in the marine codex can beat that unit as well. It can DS in and wipe out multiple bike squads, and with HaR off farsight that CM won't tar pit it. I honestly think that unit has more merit then these multiple riptide builds. I seriously think riptide offense is WAY over rated. Yes they can be a pain to kill, but if a single long range pie plate was so good, the leman russ wouldn't be laughed at like it often is.

Horrify is tough to get to work though, only 18 inch range and its a malediction so that means i have to let you be within range after a move/jump. Also IDK how that spell works vs stubborn units. I know the NOVA FAQ says weaken resolve doesnt work vs stubborn but IDK if horrify was ever touched on. Incidentally I played my buddy's seer council round 7 of the NOVA open and killed it in combat, like a boss.

I'm interested in this farsight bomb everyone on the web raves about because i havent actually seen one in competitive play yet. I agree that in theory its really good, but the fact that its mostly T4 kinda sucks the wind out of the sails for me. Compared to the 22 majority T6 wounds an ovesastar has with most of the unit packing invulns, it feels a little soft. But it does have alot of potential IMO.

IMO, if they ruled that Weaken Resolve doesn't work vs Stubborn, then it would be consistent if Horrify didn't work as well. Frankly, I am of the opinion that it does work, but I suppose that this topic belongs more in YMDC instead of here.

I must admit that I am not all that familiar with the Osheva-star, mainly due to not having the digital codex, but I do like the Farsight bomb a lot. IMO it is a very good build and if I were running Tau, it would look somewhat like this:

Farsight
Shadowsun
Farseer on jetbike w/Shard of Anaris
Farsight's 7 buddies with some drones

3x Riptides - 2x HBC w/EWO + skyfire, 1x IA w/EWO

2x10 kroots w/1x hound each
2x3 jetbikes

Any left-over points will go towards some skyrays.

I personally like the farsight bomb much better, the ability to deal with so many threats just makes it way easier to play.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Bike armies will only be around until the horde armies get new books (which is when they died in popularity last time around...then Dark Eldar and Necrons release sealed the deal) like Orks and Nids. Eldar shuriken will punish bike armies in the current meta. Its very matchup dependent just like a 4 riptide army.

6th is definitely still the age of xenos, tho i think bike armies are easier now that their points have gone waaayyyyy down.

I dunno, i like my hyrbid army approach so far becaus eit in theory has an answer to most everything (mechdar i still forsee being a real struggle) and no real hard counters (nor is it a hard counter to anything). But i just need to do more testing vs more opponents to really see