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Well I can't say I put up much of a fight in my first game of 7th edition.

I kept hearing all about how Tau was nerfed so imagine my surprised when I was tabled, easily, by turn 4. Granted, I'm not exactly a tactical genius, but I was hoping for something a little more balanced. I took a bit of an eclectic mix of things that I wanted to try in 7th so my list might look a bit scattershot, but I attempted to choose some of the stronger units from my 6th edition lists.

My list was IG 1000pts:

CCS plasma x4 in Vendetta
Inquisitor ML1 Divination
Veterans 3x Melta Chimera
Veterans 3x Melta Chimera
Hellhound
Manticore

His list was Farsight Tau

Commander 2x Missile pods w/Markerlight Drones (Preferred Enemy)
3x Suits with missile pods
3x Suits with plasma guns
Hammerhead (with special character, BS5, Tank Hunter/Monster Hunter, Preferred Enemy)
Riptide

Deployment was lengthwise, Tactical Objectives (draw more as the game progresses).

First turn was reasonable, killed a few drones with the Hellhound and moved up Chimeras. Manticore killed a suit.
Things went severely southbound when His suits, Hammerhead, and Riptide started tearing through tanks like they were wet paper bags!
I was hopeful when the Vendetta arrived, but Skyfire from the Riptide brought it down easily, along with my poor HQ (immobilized, wrecked, explodes, and hull point loss all seem to cause "Crash and Burn" to zooming flyers [S10, AP2 on everyone]. Very nasty).
The rest of the game was basically just mopping up the rest of my troops with various ignores cover weapons, high strength, and/or large blasts.

I definitely walked away with a bit more respect for the apparently 'nerfed' Tau, but other than foolishly putting my HQ in the Vendetta (a.k.a. deathtrap) did I make serious mistakes or was it more of an unfortunate match-up? The deployment certainly favored a long-range shooting army, but he really only had 15 or so models on the table and the Manticore is a pretty strong long range weapon. I wasn't particularly aggressive with my Chimerae and I'm thinking that could have been a factor. You certainly learn more from a loss than a win, but other than tailoring the list to fight this particular enemy (something I'm rather loathe to do), I'm somewhat stumped.

Any pearls of wisdom from the Dakka community? Thanks!

DoW

To clarify, TauDar got nerfed, not Tau. Ignored cover os still brutal, and Tau are still great at Hull point removal.

I think the problem is that you have mostly short ranged anti tank, and he has mostly long ranged anti tank.

To be fair, 1000 pts is only about 60% of the usual points limit and hardly comparable. It benefits armies with few expensive but very strong models (Riptide) and is less beneficial for armies that need to have several models with similar firepower (IG).

 DogOfWar wrote:
tactical genius

You called?

Sorry...

I have like a compulsion to do this...

Yeah, I can't help but feel some AV14 would have served you better then that Hellhound or Vendetta or Manticore.

What was the terrain situation for the game? Sometimes if the terrain is sparse, it'll also swing towards a more long range snooty army.

I prefer large line of sight blocking types of terrain, to give a dilemma for static gun line armies. But YMMV

hmm. a lot of ATT stuff in his list but low model count. out number him with masses of guardsmen and sit back 2 leman russ's.
left over points- take some psykers to find invisibility... if guard can take telepathy? Sorry, not an IG player but an old Tau player

Hey thanks for the great replies (we were even graced with a REAL tactical_genius!), let me reply to each:

@jifel - Ah, that makes much more sense. I never had the 'pleasure' of playing a TauDar army so I didn't have much to compare. I knew Tau could bring some big guns to bear but I think the only S5 in his list were the Smart Missile Systems!

@Sigvatr - Very true. With a Farsight list of all Battlesuits the 'herohammer' situation was pretty evident. To be fair, we wanted to play a smaller game to jump into 7th (he hadn't played since 5th... I know, even MORE embarrassing!) so it was more for convenience than anything else. Still, I think you're right that a 1500-2000 point game would be a very different ball of wax.

@Tactical_Genius - You have a lot of explaining to do with regards to your new rules, Lord Castellan...

@Mavnas - Agreed. Surprisingly, he was actually rolling quite poorly on his penetration rolls so AV12 Chimerae were just being wrecked by hull point removal. The Hellhound was probably the MVP thanks to the Torrent Template (those markerlight drones didn't stand a chance!), but a Leman Russ would have still been a very welcome sight.

@milkboy - Terrain was somewhat sparse, but not terrible. It was all rocky blobs on a Citadel 'Realm of Battle' modular table. No real LOS blocking, but 25% cover wasn't difficult to get until you reached the middle of the board where it turned into somewhat of a killing ground. Certainly not favourable to a short-medium range anti-tank army. I would definitely have liked some ruins, buildings, or battlements (then again, I could have taken an ADL if I was that worried).

@Wilson - Funny thing was that he said he was expecting a horde army so he brought anti-tank to make it more friendly. Quite the irony. Unfortunately IG can't take Telepathy on Primaris psykers but Inquisitors certainly can. I've been reading about the new Invisibility and it certainly does seem pretty powerful. A nice, big blob of invisible Guardsmen could be a nasty surprise.

Thanks again for all the advice/comments. We'll probably play a higher point game this weekend (or switch up our lists a little) so I'll do a follow-up. In his defense, he's actually a very nice guy and was quite remorseful about bringing such a hard counter to my list (not remorseful enough to not argue about my cover saves... I'm kidding). I can't vilify him too much! Damn, dirty, space-communist...

DoW

Interesting mini-batrep. I can't help thinking the Manticore was a bit too specialized to fit in such a small game -- as folks are saying, the Leman Russ is much more of an all-rounder.

Tau lost its Riptide-Commander 'sharing is caring' relationship, but aside that its mostly the same.

You lost because his list hard-countered yours; it's not even about specific armies. He could have taken any army. A lot of your points were tied up in three unreliable vehicles (unreliable because the manticore relies on blasts which are unreliable by nature, the hellhound is short-ranged and the vandetta relies on reserves which is unreliable by nature), while almost everything he had in his army is good at knocking out vehicles.

So the battle might as well have not even had IG vehicles. It was basically just two veteran squads versus a riptide and 6 crisis suits.

Nothing you could really do. Your list wasn't *bad* and his wasn't even all that cheesy. His list was just lucky enough to have all the answers to yours.

Mech-Guard have it tough against Tau in general. Tau outshoot an army that's built around shooting. If you had been playing horde IG or a horde army like 'nids you'd have probably creamed that list.

 Vector Strike wrote:
Tau lost its Riptide-Commander 'sharing is caring' relationship, but aside that its mostly the same.

Tau also lost their Space Marine Librarian Gate of Infinity buddies, which were what made Farsight and his 8 bodyguard suits and 16 drones into something good. Losing the ability to join a Buff Commander to O'Vesa and another Riptide also hurt. However, gunline Tau can still put 100+ wounds a turn downrange using Ethereals and lots of Fire Warriors. Against an army loaded with light armor like yours, Tau are going to flat out faceroll.

that's cause his list is way stronger than yours and actually counters it. Besides, who told you that tau got nerfed? Scoring riptides and hammerheads. Eradicator is really much better than a hellhound for a job of ignore cover ap4 stuff. And it packs 9 heavybolter shots and way tougher at range with a slightly higher cost. Before the new allies matrix i used to take Pasknisher with LC and MM Shonsons + HB Eradicator to help out my orkses. That's a very good combo.

Manticore and hellhound are not that great vs massed 3+. Manticore is actually not bad if you get a shot but all his army is mobile, can move in assault phase to spread out and minimise casualties and deepstrike to kill a manticore outright. Now if you had something more frightening for 1/3 of your points it'd be another thing.

I think the eclectic nature of your army is what really did you in. More so than his army. Guard need a lot of symmetry to work well. Some armies can work on a squad level, Guard on the other hand should always operate on at least a platoon level or larger if they want to be successful. I find IG hard to play at less than 1500 pts. When you build your army for the next game consider the role of each unit and what help they will need to achieve their goals. Your opponent will have quality, you need to counter with quantity.

What purpose does your CCS serve other than giving away Slay the Warlord? His job is to hide and make other units better with orders. If your officer is in range to use his pistol than your battle plan is in serious danger of collapsing. If you really want to keep the squad the way they are I would run them in a chimera to stay with the veterans.

An Astropath has Telepathy and if I remember correctly he is much cheaper than an Inquisitor.

I love Hellhounds, but rarely is it useful against Tau. It is much better at burning Boyz and Bugs. Tau want to stay away from you so range is the better choice.

A manticore is a bad choice in low point games. It has limited shots and is expensive.

Look like you lacked force concentration. You had 3 units (vets & HH) that needed to be close, artillery that needs range and a vendy that shows up late to the party.

Against dedicated long ranged AT you have to offer target saturation or each bit will get picked off piecemeal. At the end of the day though it does look like this was a bad matchup and you would have struggled regardless.

Was there not much terrain?

As said above multiple times "who said Tau got nerfed"?

Bears repeating because this is the only place I've heard it.

Codex wise they are fine.

Only tau players that believe we got legitimately nerfed were the tau-dar or buffmander + riptide users. The rest of us that dont rely on ultimate cheese actually got buffed in the end.

Also low points = tau are nastier than you'd think. Before mentioned reasons.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Only tau players that believe we got legitimately nerfed were the tau-dar or buffmander + riptide users. The rest of us that dont rely on ultimate cheese actually got buffed in the end.

Also low points = tau are nastier than you'd think. Before mentioned reasons.

Honesty on Dakka?!?! Have an Exalt on me!

More thoughts, thank you!

Sister Sydney - It's certainly not the first choice for a 1000 point list, that's for sure. It was our first game of 7th and I wanted to try as many combinations of things that I used quite a bit in 6th, just to see if they had changed significantly. It was his first game in 5 years so he brought the killiest thing he could. I can't really blame him for that.

BlaxicanX - I think that's probably part of it, but I can't argue with those who have pointed out the errors in my list. I certainly wasn't looking for the most focused list, but I thought it had some good units to compete with a selection of targets. But, as you say, an entire army of long range anti-vehicle makes for a rough day in the Guard.

DaddyWarcrimes - Glad to see it was expected and it wasn't all my inadequate commandering!

Koooaei - It does seem to be a bit of a mismatch, I agree. I certainly didn't take a 'fluffy' list (I was hoping to give him a bit of a challenge, but not necessarily beat him his first game in 5 years), but the imbalance of power was very quickly evident. I think the 'nerfing' talk regarding Tau comes from (as others have mentioned) those who relied on the cheesier aspects of TauDar and the allies shenanigans. Of course, such people are often quite loud (at least figuratively, on the Internet) and, naturally, you don't hear any of the Tau players who aren't saying anything. Surprisingly the Hellhound and Manticore were the only things that actually did any damage. Both of which were responsible for all but one of the kills (7 drones, 2 suits, 2 wounds from the Commander) throughout the game. It could have been luck, I suppose, but I will certainly be taking the Hellhound again. It was excellent.

Crimson Devil - You're absolutely right. As I mentioned in a few other responses, my goal was to try out as many of my favourite units from 6th in our first game of 7th. I assumed that I would probably lose (it was his first game in 5 years, after all, and I didn't want to be a jerk) but I wanted to give him somewhat of a challenge. I would definitely agree that 1000 points of Guard suffers against a more elite army that can bring so many high strength, high save units to bear. I had amazingly good performance from my plasma CCS in the previous edition. Drive by plasma death (admittedly somewhat nerfed now that Chimera only have 2 fire points) was wonderful. They often caught a ride with a Valkyrie and were dropped into cover right next to a MEQ/TEQ squad, which very quickly evaporated thanks to Orders. I don't think I ever played a game where they didn't make their points back unless I was really unlucky. What really killed them was the new rules for Crash and Burn. To be fair, that's exactly why I wanted to try as many things as possible in 7th, but it was a hard lesson to learn. The Inquisitor is a 3 wound model for 64 points with a Force weapon, Ld10, WS4, BS4, and Divination (really for the Gets Hot! rolls). The Astropath is 30 points and doesn't bring nearly as much (although Telepathy is admittedly nice).

stripeydave - It was a bit eclectic, you're right. I had a lot of positive results with similar "melta vets and artillery w/air support" lists in 6th (although at the 1500-2000 point levels) because it seemed to balance my ability to counter a variety of threats. I suppose the goal was to try a lot of the units I have had success with in the past to see how they have changed with 7th rules. I actually didn't know what kind of army he was going to bring (he owns several) and I was very surprised to see him using the special Farsight Detachment rules. I can't really blame the table too much, but it was high ground on one side (his deployment edge), no ruins or modular cover (just big rocks), and no full LOS blocking cover for my big, fat Chimera. Add the lengthways deployment and you're looking at a very sad Dog of War. The Vendetta was definitely a poor choice and I won't be making the mistake of taking him as a transport again. I might as well present victory points to Tau on a silver platter!

PipeAlley - I've seen it discussed more than once, on several forum sites. As others have pointed out, however, it seems to be the cheesier sort of players that are complaining that their roflstomping lists aren't quite so roflstompy. I think I mistakenly took that to mean that ALL Tau took a big hit in 7th. I might have taken a slightly more focused list if I'd realized that. In all honesty, probably not, because I didn't really want to beat him on his first game in such a long time. I did want to make him work for it though, so that was the disappointing aspect.

Thanks again for sharing/commenting. Much appreciated!

DoW