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The Lists


Tau
Primary Detachment : Farsight Enclaves Combined Arms Detachment

HQ: Fireblade (Warlord)
Troops: 3x Crisis Suits w/ double missile pods and interceptor
Troops: 1x Solo Suit w/ double cyclic ion blasters
Troops: 1x Solo Suit w/ double burst cannons

Lord of War: Unit of 3 Stormsurges w/ pulse blastcannons, interceptor, 2 shield gens and skyfire

Formation: Drone Net
5 units of 4 marker drones

Assassin Detachment
1 Culexus assassin



Chaos Daemons

Primary Detachment : Omniscient Oracles Formation
Fateweaver (Warlord)
Lord of Change w/ Grimoire of True Names

Chaos Space Marines Combined Arms Detachment
HQ: Be'Lakor
HQ: Slaanesh Daemon Prince w/ lvl 3, wings, spell familiar, burning brand

Troops: 2 units of 10 cultists

Lord of War: Magnus


The Setup

Hammer and Anvil deployment, Maelstrom mission #1.

Tau win the roll to deploy and go first.

He very aggressively places his unit of 3 Stormsurges right in the middle of his deployment zone the full 24 inches forward. Directly behind them is the unit of 3 missile suits and farther back is the Culexus. Off to the left and right sides of the Surges are all the marker drones. The 2 solo suits and Fireblade are in reserve.

The Tau have first turn and are capable of an extremely brutal alpha strike and I have very limited line-of-sight blocking terrain on my side. I am only able to hide Fateweaver and the LoC which are on opposite sides of my deployment zone so I hold everything else in reserve in an attempt to mitigate his alpha strike.

I fail to seize even after the Omniscient Oracles reroll.


The Game

Tau 1 : The unit of Stormsurges moves forward to take control of the center of the table. The missile suits and Culexus follow behind and the drones kind of fan out diagonally. Due to me only places 2 models on the board out of LOS, he can't do much else. In his shooting phase, he anchors down the Surges and 2 of them are within range of Fateweaver to fire their smart missile systems and cause 1 wound.

Daemons 1: Fateweaver lifts off and flies to where the LoC was and the LoC lifts off and flies to where Fateweaver was. They basically switch spots in order to continue to stay out of LOS and to count as Swooping. The LoC activates the Grimoire on Fatey for that rerollable 2++. Fatey casts Endurance on the LoC. With Fatey's warp storm reroll I get Glorious Rot which kills 2 marker drones and a missile suit!!! Nice

Tau 2: His Fireblade walks on from his table edge and hides, neither one of his solo suits comes in which is to his advantage. He moves and runs the Culexus so he is kind of diagonally in front of the Surges. He still doesn't have much to shoot except for the same 2 Surges with smart missile systems, except this time they can double-tap. Not wanting to waste his shots on Fateweaver's rerollable 2++, they target the LoC. After some bad to-wound rolls and thanks to Endurance, the LoC is unscathed

Daemons 2: Thanks to Omniscient Oracles reroll to reserves, everything comes on. I feel like I'm in a good position to do some serious damage and highly anticipating to see what Magnus can do. All of my big bad flying daemons move to within 18 inches of the Surges. I use the Grimoire on Magnus which fails but then succeeds thanks to the Staff of Tomorrow, Whew!

After my movement phase, the dreaded Tau interceptor phase begins. Ugh, here it comes... As expected, all of his marker drones try to light up Magnus. He scores 3 hits which he uses for 3 D-missiles from the Surges with Velocity Trackers at BS 3. 2 of them miss and the one that hit rolls a 5 on the D table which is promptly saved by rerollable 2++!!! Jeez that was close. He then fires 16D6 + 16 (!) BS 3 shots and 8d6 + 8 snapshots at Be'Lakor to get rid of Invisbility. He dies even after jinking for a 2+ cover save. Firstblood goes to the Tau.

Losing Be'Lakor immediately to Interceptor sucks but I still feel like I still have most of my psychic might. In my psychic phase I roll a 3 for the warp dice for a total of 17. The first thing I try to do it cast Doombolt from Magnus with a single dice. My opponent tries to dispell and fails. It instakills the Culexus and knocks a wound off a Surge. Magnus then uses 5 dice on Treason of Tzeentch on the Surges. I use the massive firepower of his 3 Surges to destroy ALL of his drones and the missile suits. This was pivotal and I felt the momentum of the game swing in my favor. I use my remaining 11 dice on Gaze of Magnus and Prismatic Gaze, landing 2 D hits on the front Surge. I roll a 1 and a 4 on the D table, and use Fatey's reroll on the 1 which comes up a 6, deleting the Surge.


Tau 3: Realizing that his 2 remaining Surges cannot shoot this turn due to firing Interceptor and having wiped out the rest of his army, he concedes the game.




So I was really sweating the Strength D interceptor but due to all his markerlights having to Snapfire and then only having BS 3 on the D missiles, Magnus was able to shrug it off. Granted, I can't think of a more perfect unit to cast Treason on than 3 Stormsurges so that was convenient but dang, Magnus is really, really powerful. I don't see how an army with more conventional weaponry such as Battle Company, Imperial Knights, WarCon or even Eldar could even hope to compete.

Wow very funky armies and yeah being able to cast treason on 3 surges is pretty fun!

Just a couple of things;
-Surges can't anchor after moving
-did I miss something? Why can doombolt hurt the Culexus? I don't think it mattered as you could have killed him with treason.

EDIT: had some free time, looked it up; A Culexus Assassin can never be targeted or affected by psychic powers
So 2 small mistakes, otherwise really shows the power of Oracles.

 Fruzzle wrote:
Wow very funky armies and yeah being able to cast treason on 3 surges is pretty fun!

Just a couple of things;
-Surges can't anchor after moving
-did I miss something? Why can doombolt hurt the Culexus? I don't think it mattered as you could have killed him with treason.

EDIT: had some free time, looked it up; A Culexus Assassin can never be targeted or affected by psychic powers
So 2 small mistakes, otherwise really shows the power of Oracles.

If the Culexus is located near the stormsurge. Killing him with Doombolt is the huge huge flaw that may totally turned the result of the game. Not only the Assassin himself cannot be targeted by psychic power, but also all blessing and malediction type powers are nullified when he is within 12inch range of the magic powers' targets So if he is standing near the Stormsurge, Magnus cannot mind control the big robot to kill Tau's own units, the Primarch can only fire the Str D witchfire at the GMC to try to kill it........

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 Fruzzle wrote:
Wow very funky armies and yeah being able to cast treason on 3 surges is pretty fun!

Just a couple of things;
-Surges can't anchor after moving
-did I miss something? Why can doombolt hurt the Culexus? I don't think it mattered as you could have killed him with treason.

EDIT: had some free time, looked it up; A Culexus Assassin can never be targeted or affected by psychic powers
So 2 small mistakes, otherwise really shows the power of Oracles.

If the Culexus is located near the stormsurge. Killing him with Doombolt is the huge huge flaw that may totally turned the result of the game. Not only the Assassin himself cannot be targeted by psychic power, but also all blessing and malediction type powers are nullified when he is within 12inch range of the magic powers' targets So if he is standing near the Stormsurge, Magnus cannot mind control the big robot to kill Tau's own units, the Primarch can only fire the Str D witchfire at the GMC to try to kill it........

I'd agree with that but....

Any blessing or malediction psychic

powers affecting a unit immediately cease to be in effect if the unit moves within 12" of a Culexus Assassin or vice versa.

which means you'd still be able to cast them, so than the question is, with things like the mind controll power, it's not a continuous effect, presumably they both happen immediantly, one could argue that the active play could decide the order.

I agree it shouldn't/doesn't work, and I'd avoid playing with people who argued this, but it might happen.

Why did you take the Slannesh DP?

I think that Nurgle or Tzeentch would have served you better.

Nurgle gets his 2+ Jink and Tzeentch is also decent with some good powers.

If the Culexus is located near the stormsurge. Killing him with Doombolt is the huge huge flaw that may totally turned the result of the game. Not only the Assassin himself cannot be targeted by psychic power, but also all blessing and malediction type powers are nullified when he is within 12inch range of the magic powers' targets So if he is standing near the Stormsurge, Magnus cannot mind control the big robot to kill Tau's own units, the Primarch can only fire the Str D witchfire at the GMC to try to kill it........

Thank you for pointing this out. We did know that the Culexus nullifies blessings/maledictions in his radius and cannot be targeted by powers. But Doombolt is a beam so we figured since he is not actually targeted it could hurt him. We both accidentally overlooked that he is completely immune to psychic powers period.

This would indeed have made the Stormsurges immune to Treason of Tzeentch as the Culexus was within 12" of them.

However, the front-most Stormsurge would still have been deleted by the D powers and he still would not have had a shooting phase in his 3rd turn due to everything including the Drones having fired interceptor.

He would still have been a sitting duck either way in my next turn without any retaliation which is what ultimately made him concede.

Still a good catch though, thank you


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Darksider wrote:
Why did you take the Slannesh DP?

I think that Nurgle or Tzeentch would have served you better.

Nurgle gets his 2+ Jink and Tzeentch is also decent with some good powers.

Well, Be'Lakor can provide pretty much my whole army with a 2+ jink by casting Shrouding.

The reason for a Slaanesh prince is due to the Slaanesh primaris power, Sensory Overload. This power is pretty much a hard counter to Tau Monster Mash lists, although it did not come into play this game.

I use the Slaanesh Prince as a near-guaranteed application of the Blind rule. Markerlights can only boost the Ballistic Skill of Snapshots, however Blind simply sets the unit's BS to 1 so cannot be boosted. Being that Stormsurges and SuperTunas are Initiative 2, they have an extremely high chance of being reduced to BS 1 that cannot be assisted with markerlights.

Thanks for sharing.


Magnus is a very polarizing figure. As good as he was in this game, he could be just as crappy in another game.

I have a friend who ran him Magnus and the Omniscient Oracles formation. He played against my other friend, who ran a shooty Eldar army. On Turn 1, Magnus, Fatey and the LoC all got shot down.

 jy2 wrote:
Thanks for sharing.


Magnus is a very polarizing figure. As good as he was in this game, he could be just as crappy in another game.

I have a friend who ran him Magnus and the Omniscient Oracles formation. He played against my other friend, who ran a shooty Eldar army. On Turn 1, Magnus, Fatey and the LoC all got shot down.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Sounds like the Magnus player didn't do anything to mitigate the alpha strike. I'm becoming a serious proponent of keeping Magnus in reserve. That way there is never an opportunity for the opponent to shoot him on the ground and you can get Grimoire on him

Magnus is still a daemon of tzeentch, so grim works on him just fine.

Also note in turn 2, you used fatey's reroll twice (once on grim, and once on rerolling the D shot from a 1 to a 6), which is illegal. Only one reroll per game turn, not phase.

Nah the formation bonus let's you 're roll 1's on loads of things. It's crazy.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
Nah the formation bonus let's you 're roll 1's on loads of things. It's crazy.

He stated it was Fatweaver's reroll

Well...kind of a bad tau list. If you are gonna bring 3 SS - you should totally bring the Heavy retribution Cadre. Your strom Surges end up being twin linked vs anything within 12 inch of the ghost keel. That is a big deal when it's destroyer missiles. He was also quite Dumb to attack magnus and not FW with his first round of fire. FW enhanaces magnus by a high degree and hes MUCH easier to kill (esp in this situation).

 Rypher wrote:
Magnus is still a daemon of tzeentch, so grim works on him just fine.

Also note in turn 2, you used fatey's reroll twice (once on grim, and once on rerolling the D shot from a 1 to a 6), which is illegal. Only one reroll per game turn, not phase.

It's actually once per player turn, but other than that, yeah, you're right.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Well...kind of a bad tau list. If you are gonna bring 3 SS - you should totally bring the Heavy retribution Cadre. Your strom Surges end up being twin linked vs anything within 12 inch of the ghost keel. That is a big deal when it's destroyer missiles. He was also quite Dumb to attack magnus and not FW with his first round of fire. FW enhanaces magnus by a high degree and hes MUCH easier to kill (esp in this situation).

They might be playing ITC rules (or most other tournament rules in the US), in which case the Heavy Retribution Cadre would be illegal (can't have more than 1 unit of super-heavies, though you can have 1 unit of 1-3 surges in the ITC).

slobulous wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
Thanks for sharing.


Magnus is a very polarizing figure. As good as he was in this game, he could be just as crappy in another game.

I have a friend who ran him Magnus and the Omniscient Oracles formation. He played against my other friend, who ran a shooty Eldar army. On Turn 1, Magnus, Fatey and the LoC all got shot down.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Sounds like the Magnus player didn't do anything to mitigate the alpha strike. I'm becoming a serious proponent of keeping Magnus in reserve. That way there is never an opportunity for the opponent to shoot him on the ground and you can get Grimoire on him

This is due to mainly 3 factors - 1) this was my friend's first time running Magnus and the Oracles, 2) he over-estimated their durability and 3) he just couldn't make a save.

I think Tzeentch players are going to want to run those pink horrors. They're great as anti-alpha-strike units. Wipe them out and at the end of the phase, they turn into blue horrors. You can just reserve your FMC's against alpha-strike armies if you needed to.

It is Legal to bring a unit of 3 SS in ITC? Really not sure why this list wouldn't be making top tables. I thought the rule was 1 super heavy only - not 1 unit of super heavies.

 Xenomancers wrote:
It is Legal to bring a unit of 3 SS in ITC? Really not sure why this list wouldn't be making top tables. I thought the rule was 1 super heavy only - not 1 unit of super heavies.

Imperial Knight armies, Renegade Knight armies and a unit of 1-3 storm surges are exceptions to the 1 Super-heavy rule in the ITC.

And you don't see them at the top tables because they aren't that great. 2 is probably the most you will see in a balanced Tau army.

What about the supremacy suit?

Martel732 wrote:
What about the supremacy suit?

Not allowed in ITC because it is a Warhound sized titan

slobulous wrote:
Magnus then uses 5 dice on Treason of Tzeentch on the Surges. I use the massive firepower of his 3 Surges to destroy ALL of his drones and the missile suits.

Granted, I can't think of a more perfect unit to cast Treason on than 3 Stormsurges so that was convenient but dang...

Legality aside, that was definitely awesome.

 jy2 wrote:
They're great as anti-alpha-strike units. Wipe them out and at the end of the phase, they turn into blue horrors. You can just reserve your FMC's against alpha-strike armies if you needed to.

You'll need to be careful with this tactic. The Split rule says that if the whole unit is removed, then the new unit is immediately created, rather than at the end of the phase. So a list like Eldar could easily destroy the Pinks, then Blues, then Brimstones in a single turn.
But if you place at least 1 Pink in LoS blocking terrain so that it cannot be killed, then yes Horrors can be used as a great anti-alpha strike unit.

As for using Treason on the Surges, I think you can use it due to sequencing. The controlling player would get to chose the order of the rule. So you could says Treason's effects are resolved, THEN the Culexus nullifies the Malediction.

-

So as already mentioned, the Surges can't move and anchor in the same turn; they anchor during the movement phase. Also, afaik, if they're anchored they can be tank shocked...

One thing that confuses me, I'll have to look at my codex @ home but I'm not understanding how during Interception his marker drones had any actions to spend, unless it was a drone network formation bonus or something. Marker Drones are basic kids that float and have a markerlight, they don't have the interceptor rule, so I wager your deep strike should have gone more smoothly.

 Overheal wrote:
So as already mentioned, the Surges can't move and anchor in the same turn; they anchor during the movement phase. Also, afaik, if they're anchored they can be tank shocked...

One thing that confuses me, I'll have to look at my codex @ home but I'm not understanding how during Interception his marker drones had any actions to spend, unless it was a drone network formation bonus or something. Marker Drones are basic kids that float and have a markerlight, they don't have the interceptor rule, so I wager your deep strike should have gone more smoothly.

One of the Tau formations involves taking 4+ Drone units, which (among other things) grants those drones the Interceptor rule. That formation is found in the Warzone Damocles: Mont'ka rule book.

Ah. Yes, the book(s) that should have been the 7E codex but they sold the 7E and then you open it up and "psyche, pay us more money scrub"

Quite a deadly formation upon lookup, might actually have to assembly a shed load of drones now.

Question? Does Treason allow you to fire all weapons or just one? We played it as just one because it says "you may make a shooting attack"

 nintura wrote:
Question? Does Treason allow you to fire all weapons or just one? We played it as just one because it says "you may make a shooting attack"

Pretty sure it's however many weapon systems you can shoot normally, except for the 'One Use' ones...

Thinks *I should get back into playing 40K - batreps really got me into the game, I'll read a few to get inspired.*

...aaand we're done here.

Good report, well written, just reminded me why I don't play. $300 worth of rules to plop down some giant models and end on turn 2. Granted not every game is like that, but miniatures involve so much effort I find a I need some guaranteed return on investment.

 kestral wrote:
Thinks *I should get back into playing 40K - batreps really got me into the game, I'll read a few to get inspired.*

...aaand we're done here.

Good report, well written, just reminded me why I don't play. $300 worth of rules to plop down some giant models and end on turn 2. Granted not every game is like that, but miniatures involve so much effort I find a I need some guaranteed return on investment.

Here's an idea. Don't play a 650 point model while there are attacks that can remove a model from play with no skill required.

 kestral wrote:
Thinks *I should get back into playing 40K - batreps really got me into the game, I'll read a few to get inspired.*

...aaand we're done here.

Good report, well written, just reminded me why I don't play. $300 worth of rules to plop down some giant models and end on turn 2. Granted not every game is like that, but miniatures involve so much effort I find a I need some guaranteed return on investment.

Just my opinion, but I wouldn't let something like this ruin 40k for you. There are soooo many ways to have fun with this game, even cheaply believe it or not, it just takes active participation and planning. Make your own limits and scenarios and you will see that the game has limitless possibilities. Sure you may never play competitively or in a tournament but that's not fun for most anyway.

That's why I'd advocate to include Fateweaver in any Magnus list.

That potential one-shot save may need that re-roll.

He could have targeted the culexus with the treasonous surges, so the mistake isn't a big deal.

Well, if you place the horrors on a area terrain they will have a rerolled 2+ cover save...and the blue if is totally destroyed will appear on the same area...Is had have so much anticover shots even for an eldar.


also I am the only one who find dirty as hell allied a cullexus on an Tau army? Maybe is just me because hate odd antilore alliances thinking on win...