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shas'el, twin plasma/missile/HWMT - 98
shas'el, twin missile/plasma/HWMT - 97
6 stealths - 180
4 stealths - 120
4 stealths - 120
10 FW, inc shas'ui, Devilfish DL,MT, 205
10 kroot - 70
10 kroot - 70
hammerhead, railgun, SMS, DL,MT,TL - 180
hammerhead, railgun, SMS, DL,MT,TL - 180
hammerhead, railgun, SMS, DL,MT,TL - 180

1500
Epistolary with force weapon, frags ccw, Fear and Fury - 131
command squad with 4 bp&ccw, 2 meltagunners, apothecary, vet serg with fist, drop pod - 225

tac squad - 2 plasma, 5 bolters, apothecary with power fist and drop pod - 231
tac squad - 2 plasma, 5 bolters, apothecary with power fist and drop pod - 231
tac squad - 2 plasma, 5 bolters, apothecary with power fist and drop pod - 231
tac squad - 2 melta, 5 bolters, Vet serg with power fist and drop pod - 205

Tornado - 80
Tornado - 80
Tornado - 80

Total 1494.

mission is gamma, seek and destroy, i lose choice and he makes me go first.

erk. this is probably the harshest challenge for my tau i've faced in a long time, equal to necrons and iron warriors on the chart of 'really bad match-ups'
lets recap why its so harsh;
-gamma means all my tanks start on the table, which i dont want (if they started off, and come on from reserves after drop pods it means i can bring them on outside of his range)
-him giving me first turn sucks as my reserves will come on first, with no significant targets to shoot at, and then his reserves come on afterwards and shoot at me. so i can't avoid him. and he'll get the first shots in.
-seek and destroy means i just have to duke it out with him, i cant win via the objective, i also can't force him to chose between dropping on the objective or dropping near me, also means his lack of mobility is no disadvantage
-librarian FEAR and FURY, both powers built almost specifically for tau
fury sucks as it lets him target my otherwise unreachable shas'els, or stealths if he feels like it, and also forces me to consider my spacing at all times so he can't draw the line between more than 1 unit, and also can't get it to any rear armor.
fear sucks as my army has rubbish LD and so it means i can't castle my infantry or they'll all just break and run off.

-apocatheries. arrrgghh nightmare. they let units within 6" ignore shooting casualties. but worse, once per game turn each apoc can ignore a failed armor save within 6".
this sucks! my army is based on making marines take loads of saves so they'll fail enough of them eventually, while i dance away and deny return fire, repeat over several turns to grind away at the key threats. drop pods negate my manouver, and apocatheries negate any casualties i manage to inflict, damnit. i only have 2 plasma rifles and 3 railguns that actually manage to deny armor saves, the rest of my army is built on massed firepower rather than low AP.

so with multiple apocatheries he can put them all in the same area, and if i pepper him with shots he just ignores them. if i focus on one unit and dump all my fire into that, potentially he can ignore the first 4 failed saves (!)
Such is the horror of The Network of Apoths?
if he overheats his plasma guns, he can even choose to ignore that save and keep the plasma in the game to melt me in the face with next turn, (although apoc can only ignore 1 failed save per game turn not per player turn, so he can't do both)

ok enough grumbling / sympathy-mongering, on with the battle!

 

gamma, seek and destroy, MY FIRST TURN. i opt to deepstrike all my stealths and shas'els. this leaves me with 20 kroot and 4 tanks, i decide to castle them up the right side edge in the left corner with a kroot screen, to prevent meltaguns getting within 6" of my tanks.
i position such in deployment so that after i move 6" in first turn, i'm in the castled formation i want in 2nd turn to face the pods coming in, kroot buffer is about 5" thick to prevent melta getting both dice, and its thinner at the sides to hopefully lure pods onto the edges > off the table

he deploys 3 speeders hidden, in HIS FIRST TURN he boshes them forwards, gets no shots though.

MY 2ND TURN, i get 1 unit of 4 stealths (woot thats only 1 out of 5 reserves, phew)
i drop it behind some ruins in the middle of the table approx, it scatters into the ruins, i pass all the dangerous terrain rolls and am 18.5" from the speeders.
my castle slides 6" further up the side flank, my front hammerhead is 24.5" from the speeders.

HIS 2ND TURN, he gets 3 out of 5 reserves, librarian and 2 plasma squads. they drop all safely right in front of my castle. librarian boo's both squads of kroot off (1 squad completely off the table, other squad running but within 6" of a pod so can't rally) and his melta buddies kill a hammerhead with a glancing 6 outside of 6". speeders shake the front hammerhead. plasma overheats but apocathery saves it.

MY 3RD TURN. i get 1 shas'el and another 6 stealths. they drop safely in the middle/left of the table, scattering though.
i get 1 HH, 1 DF, 7 kroot rapid firing as they flee, and he passes all his armor saves. along with the 4 stealths and a shas'el i killed 2 guys total.

HIS 3RD TURN, he gets the 3rd plasma squad, drops it in ruins near my stealths. kills half the 6 man squad but they hold. plasma overheats but apocathery saves it.
his librarian squad kills another hammerhead with meltaguns with a glancing 6 outside of 6".
the plasma squad near my castle kills the devilfish (plasma overheats but apocathery saves it) and kills 1 drone and 2 firewarriors to entanglement
speeders fail to hurt the front hammerhead

MY 4TH. balls. my castle has been owned, my battlesuits are ok but it's cost me a great deal to keep them safe and they've not earnt any points back yet and there's still another pod to arrive.
i get my final reserves of 4 stealths and they also drop safely on the left hand half of the board. my suits position to dump fire into the nearby middle plasma unit, and then back away. he passes ALL the armor saves and only loses 2 guys to my shas'el's rapid firing plasma. balls.
front hammerhead moves to the far right corner and rail-subs the librarian squad, he passes all the saves though.

HIS 4TH. he gets the meltagun squad, drops it in the far left corner, to cut off my battlesuit retreat and pin me with crossfire. he shoots it at a unit of 4 stealths but i only lose 1
in the opposite corner (nearside right) the librarian FEARs the drones & firewarriors as they're behind the wrecked devilfish, drone runs off but firewarriors hold.

(when do you stop being pinned? if in turn 3 he entangled the unit, are they still pinned in his turn 4? or do they become un-pinned at the end of turn 3 and therefore able to run if they fail LD to fear in turn 4?)

speeders stun the front hammerhead and take its railgun off, it just wont die (to anti-infantry mini-guns, boo hoo)

MY 5TH. all the reserves are in now, my castle is dead apart from 8 firewarriors. they jump onto the wreck of their transport and rapid fire the librarian squad, inflict 3 casualities, apocathery ignores 1 of them.
2 stealth units and a shas'el shoot the middle plasma squad, inflict few/no casualties, other stealth and other shas'el shoots the middle melta unit, kill 2 guys.

HIS 5TH, libby charges firewarriors, i strike first and kill nothing, he wipes me out and consolidates backwards towards the front hammerhead to lend apocathery aid to the plasma unit which is going to rapid fire its side armor.
plasma unit spots that a stealth unit is caught between them and the melta guys, and can charge me. i get 6 attacks before he strikes, kill 1 or none, i pull casualities to deny the fist swinging (stupidly)
melta unit fails to hurt the shas'el which is now in his dzone

MY 6TH, i pull 2 stealth units away from the combat and into my left corner. shas'el kills a speeder with a shot along his long table edge.
stealth v plasma combat, he wipes me out with the fist, consoldiates towards my shas'el on the left hand board edge.

HIS 6TH, he charges the shas'el on the left and crushes it with a fist, if i'd not have pulled a stealth casuality to deny the fist swinging i would have died in that combat phase, and then been able to shoot his unit, and also not got the shas'el charged. bollocks.
his speeders/plasma guys probably kill the last hammerhead, i didnt care by that point.

so. i only managed to kill 6-7 guys in total, and one speeder.
he overheated plasma guns and failed the armor save 4 times, and used apocatheries to ignore 3 of them. he also used apocatheries to ignore about 10 other failed saves from my turns. he also passed about 90% of the armor saves i made him take.

i lost 4 stealth, 1 shas'el, 20 kroot, FW unit, and 2-3 hammerheads. brutal.

My [opponent's] version of events.

I deployed my speeders hidden on the opposite corner to his castle. First turn they jump forward behind more terrain to support my drop pods landing next turn. Deepstriking landspeeders? No thankyou.

Drop pods start to arrive. Playing reserves the proper way, roll for one, deploy, roll for next etc. One plasma squad turns up, tries to go in front of kroot and get plasma on side armour. Instead it scatters back 7" and out of LoS of any HHs (might be able to get some kroot). Melta and plasma squads dont turn up. Other plasma squad turns up nearer Petes board edge on the other side of his 'blockade', with plasma within 12" of the 'fish. Libby squad turns up as well with meltaguns within 12" of the middle HH. Kroot stop the 6" of pain though. Speeder squadron moves over the rocks to nail the nearest HH with the option of nailing the kroot in woods (should have taken heavy flamers!!).

Their drop pods block off the first squads LoS mostly though, only allowing a couple of bolters and one plasma gun to shoot the kroot. They kill the three though. Drop pod storm bolters fail to hit or wound the kroot....mental note, never play orks, i'll suck. Speeders manage to stun the HH with the one rending shot the 12 shots manage. Boo-frikkidy-hoo. With no other anti-infantry left, Boo is activated. Both kroot run like the space chickens they are. One completely off, the other never going to regroup. Epistolarian command squad warms up its meltaguns and smegs a HH (6 on a glancing). Pushing my luck, plasma guns warm up a bit too well and fail to hurt the 'fish but the one overheat fails its save but the apothecary has two thumbs and doesnt give a gak. Drop pods of apoth are working very well so far.

Pete looks flumuxed now - not really suprising. He deepstrikes all his suits in the middle left of the table - out of my range for the minute. Out of his too. The remaining mobile HH and the 'fish try and get away from my network of apoth and move to his table edge but dont deploy. Submunition round goes over both my epistolarian squad and my plasma squad but fails to kill any thanks to my command squads apothecary. The original stealths and twin-plasma Shas'el manage to kill two though.

Turn 3:

Other plasma squad turns up. I decide i need to do something about all the suits and deepstrike it down to use terrain to block LoS from the rest and isolate the 6 stealth squad. Command squad moves towards the nearest HH, sacrificing any psychic powers this turn due to LoS of the pod as i wanted at least one melta in 6". Plasma squad moves up alongside them to try and get the 'fish again. Other plasma squad makes a token move towards the suits though gets nowhere near where i want with a shoddy difficult terrain roll. Speeders dance around the stricken HH hoping to finish it off.

Shooting commences with the speeders once again stunning the HH - due to lack of attention i gave an obscured roll to pete and he made it and saved his railgun for now. Meltaguns manage to down the other HH - jammy rolling here as the one not in 6" managed to get the requisite 5 to glance. Even luckier, the plasma guns all hit and 3 glance the 'fish out of the sky and 4 FWs and a drone dont make it out of the wreckage alive. When the luck goes my way, it really goes my way!! The other plasma squad on their own manage to riddle three stealths with plasma and bolter fire, though they remain true to the greater good and hold. One plasma gunner gets a bit too excited and has to be saved by the apothecary.

His turn 4:

Last suits turn up and head towards my table edge or something. Mass firepower of 7 stealths and rapid firing crisis suit account for just two marines. Armour saves are on fire at this point - the only casualties were from plasma out of cover. He does his run away thing.

Librarian squad tries to close with the FW squad hiding on the table edge but wont be in range this turn. Instead he sends a fiery construct across the table through the 6 man stealths (more VPs) but does nothing. The plasma squad moves towards the HH with the speeders but fail to do ANY kind of damage. hmm faulty 3rd ammo i think!! The other plasma squad continues its fight with the stealths and manages to melt the one in range but they're too rugged. The remaining melta squad came down as well next to the other stealths and crisis near my table edge. Feeling im pushed my luck too much, i aim for the stealths rather than the crisis suits (stealths dont stop IC sniping) and manage to kill one again. So thats all stealths at 3 models and not giving up any VPs atm. Gah so much for professing concentrated fire.

His fifth turn:

He tries to run the stealths i shot with my meltas away from them but ends up closer to the stealths. Combined fire takes out one of them. Other stealths and crisis try to lay into the plasma squad over there but my dice dont like pete and he kills one only. The HH makes a break for it and goes for the command squad but misses - chump.

For some reason the stealth squad i shot with my meltas is left in charge range of the plasma squad - enter some comment about bull and red flag here. Everything on my left flank lines up the HH but fails to do anything but stun it AGAIN. Gah. Libby squad charges the FWs and forces them off the table thanks to the powerfist. Other combat fails to kill all the stealths thanks to pete's casualty removal. No VPs from that squad then.

His sixth turn:

HH sits around wondering wtf these marines are playing at. Crisis suit on the right tries to get away but just sits on the table edge. Other stealths cower in the corner of the table. Combat gives me 6" of massacring goodness so ill be in assault against the crisis my turn if i roll average. The other suit wings one of the speeders out of the sky and is now virtually on my table edge in the middle, out of range of everything.

Blasted speeders and plasma squad only manage to take the railgun off hte HH and stun it AGAIN. Fury does nothing to the stealths again. Plasma squad roll high enough and smeg the suit thanks to the mighty powerfist. Rugged.

End result: Flawless victroy thanks to the ridiculous amount of armour saves i made and the network of apoth. Really hope no one else uses this sort of list as its proper annoying.

uhm silly question:

its gamma mission, stealths have infiltrate, why are they staring off board?

Because otherwise i drop pod in and boo them off the table or introduce them to hot plasma. The idea was to deepstrike all the suits to know where the drop pods are going. Like using infiltrate normally, you 'set them up' after the other persons stuff to gain the advantage. The unfortunate side effect of this is it just saves them from dying from boo or rapid fire for the most part - they dont tend to get many shots in from last nights experience anyway.

Got to say i dont think i can think of a worse list to play against your army, pete. Maybe if i was really unlucky with scatters and saves and shooting etc then you'd win but dice rolling aside, i cant think of many ways to beat the drop podders in gamma missions. Try an omega level mission at some point.

what he said. i opted to deepstrike them.

Wow, that really blows. A tough list compounded by a tough mission and even tougher luck. My hat's off to you for being a good sport at the end of all that, Spook.

Yeah that marine list seems pretty nasty. Great Idea on the Apothacaries. Hopefully the new 'Dex will have some goodies to help counter stuff like that.

Thanks for the report.

How much is the Apothecary gear again? 30pts? I'm just thinkin, "cheesy" as it may look on paper, wouldn't you be better of with two more marines in each squad. No ignoring wounds, but 2 extra wounds and more shots/attacks too. Couple of people here have been toying with the idea, I rather buy more marines.

no the apothecary gear is slightly less than two marines. The reason i decided to take the apothecaries rather than just normal squads is to keep me alive for much longer and be a much bigger pain in the donkey with those squads which stay scoring for much longer. Also keeps my plasma gunners from killing themselves - i think the first time i fired the plasma squads, one idiot managed to kill himself but be saved by the apothecary. Its a nice list that im going to have a go with for a bit to see if it works against everything else.

As to the game, it was spookeh and mine's idea to make it delibarately challenging for himself. You learn more about your own army from getting your donkey wipped than from wipping someone elses i think.

against shooty armies, the apocathery is better than 2 marines.
he saves the plasma guns, and you can't have more than 2 of those per squad anyway
and he can save marines in squads other than his own, in this list it'd be possible for him to save the first 4 wounds i do to a single unit, due to the 'Network' effect of multiple, local apocatheries. multiple apocatheries work well with drop pods, as they tend to drop quite close anyway, so it helps with the network.

against choppy armies, the apocathery is not as good as 2 marines, as he doesnt work in combat.

my tau are shooty, obviously, and the kroot units both fled straight away anyway as soon as BOO came down. but not only that, i have very small amounts of fire that ignores saves, so apocatheries work extra well against me, as my army is built on massed str5.

Could you have tried getting some Pen 5's and 6's on his Drop Pods? It's kind of an odd way to do it, but it sets off my FPS instincts... "Shoot the barrels!"

railgun at pod, 5/6ths to pen, 2/6ths to explode (opentopped) 10/36 chance of exploding, once hit. if assume all guys are within 1" then they'll all be caught in the blast, wounded on 3/6ths and save 4/6

rail submunition round wounds on 5/6ths and save 4/6

so if you can get 3 guys under the sub, its equivalent to getting 18 guys in the radius of explosion.
(3 guys under sub = 5 guys in blast, * 10/36 = 18)

so no, shooting pods is bad, railguns are better used to sub the squads.

I played seek and destroy gamma, I sent you the email spooky. I didn't deep strike my stealths or crisis, and I came out better. Maybe that's significant, maybe not.

Apothecaries still work against tau plasma. Due to the AP, the save is automatically failed, but the appothecary can still deny the wound.

blah, my opinion is this:

"if the weapons Armour Piercing value is equal to or lower than the model's Armour Save, then the shot is sufficiently powerful enough to punch straight through the armour and the target gets no save at all"

there's no issue of 'failed' or 'auto failed'
its not that you cannot roll enough, or that you auto failed your roll
you simply do not get an armour save against plasma, so apocathery cannot help you.
i think its a leap of logic to connect 'not getting a save at all' to 'getting a save but failing it automatically'

At least pods are a lot more interesting to fight than necrons =)

Posted By Spooky on 02/03/2006 5:21 AM
blah, my opinion is this:

"if the weapons Armour Piercing value is equal to or lower than the model's Armour Save, then the shot is sufficiently powerful enough to punch straight through the armour and the target gets no save at all"

there's no issue of 'failed' or 'auto failed'
its not that you cannot roll enough, or that you auto failed your roll
you simply do not get an armour save against plasma, so apocathery cannot help you.
i think its a leap of logic to connect 'not getting a save at all' to 'getting a save but failing it automatically'

If you play by that concept then a model that suffers a wound by a Lascannon (or other low AP weapon) that doesn't get a save doesn't suffer instant death from that wound, as the rules specify that to suffer instant death a model must "fail" an armor save.

The reality is, that no save=a failed save. The same concept was upheld with Tyranid Rending claws and implant attacks in the last FAQ, as well as the previous version of the IG FAQ concerning med-packs (that work nearly identically to Nartheciums).

In the end, there is a definition of "fail" that means "to omit to perform". In other words, if you do not make an armor save you have "failed" to save.

The alternative is pretty much unplayable, so no matter how powerful it makes Apothecaries you should probably play that way just for consistencies sake.

 

That was a tough matchup, BTW. Good job on the battle rep. I liked reading both sides perspectives.

 

gnnnn how annoying

are GW consistent enough for one rule's specific phrasing to affect a seperate rule in a different section of a different book? imo it'd have been just as likely for them to have written "doesn't pass their save " rather than "fails their save" in that instant death section, which wouldn't affect the apocathery rule. sux. oh well