Here is a fairly tight report on a skirmish between my Chaos space marine army that did pretty well in a friendly tournament a few months ago and my first draft T'au army for the 2nd
episode of the same event. This event is 75PL with ITC missions. for this match I used mission 6. Last time
CSM beat Primaris by making 2 deepstrike charges and my opponent forgetting about
auspex scan (none of that can happen now), outscoring custodes on maneuverability while being on par in strength overall, and dying a horrible death 5-42 against Alaitoc (no need to explain right?).
I decided it might be polite to not use stealth suit spam for the upcoming event since deepstrike is nerfed and I don't' want to rub it in, so I kept my tanks and decided to max out commanders without
sufficient coverage and see how people work around it.
Chaos list- secondary objectives: Head Hunter, Big Game Hunter, Old School
T'au list- secondary objectives: Titan Slayer, Old School, King Slayer
Deployment was 24" zone on either short end of the table. Chaos deployed in the "front" along the deployment line, skewed to the left. Tau deployed in the "rear" with a pyramid of hammerheads around longstrike against the rear center. Ruins to the left
overlook the Chaos Priority Objective, holding rail and
ML pathfinders, rail on top and
ML below, as well as a unit of fire warriors protecting the rear left. A fusion commander protects rear right from behind huge terrain
and ion pathfinders guard the Priority Tau Objective slightly forward and right of that against the terrain.
Turn1 Chaos
One unit of raptors advanced to midboard woods along with sorcerer
Other unit of raptors moved to hold front objective (cap 1 scored)
Bikes moved forwards to mid-right woods
Knight moved forwards between woods
Terminators in teleportarium due to beta rules.
Sorcerer succeeded on delightful agonies on raptors (saves 2) with 1 wound from perils, smote one fire warrior.
Sorcerer used Eye of Knight to deal 3
MW to Longstrike
Knight fired Stormspear and Termal into Longstrike, 1 of each made it through for 2x10 damage.
-Longstrike dies without explosion. Headhunter, Big game hunter, old school (first blood), kill 1 scored.
Knight shoots avenger gatling cannon into railrifle pathfinders killing 3. Stubber misses, big surprise.
Raptors shoot at penalty to fire warriors killing 1.
Bikes shoot at railrifle pathfinders killing 2 and finishing the unit. Kill more scored.
Raptors fail 11" charge to fire warriors with no casulty.
Turn1 Tau
Ionrifle pathfinders duck out from hard cover keeping 1 shas'la on the point (cap 1 scored).
ML pathfinders replace the dead rail unit atop the ruins.
Fire warrior unit on ruins moves up to the front.
Left Hammerhead move left to cover the area behind ruins from deepstrike.
Missile commander moves back to near center-rear where longstrike was.
Fusion commanders stay in right corner to negate deepstrike and the other in Manta hold due to beta rules.
Ionrifle pathfinders fail to mark, but make 1 kill, vs raptors in center.
Fire warriors kill 1 more raptor in center.All 3 missile pods wiff on the bikes.
Fireblade marks Knight,
ML pathfinders make 1 more mark on knight- buffed to 4 with uplinked marker light stratagem (5 lights on the knight is bad omen for it).
First hammerhead deals significant damage with ion cannon and seeker missiles to the knight due largely to markerlight stacks. Triggers Focused Fire T'au sept stratagem.
2nd and 3rd hammerhead overkill the knight with their full arsenals thanks to the
ML and stratagem Scoring Kill1, old school (first blood), and 3 for Titan Slayer.
Missile commander takes out 1 biker.
Summary T1: 6 to 6, knight and longstrike are out! Good thing for chaos that they got first turn. T'au infantry and chaos bikers are about equidistant from the chaos
Priority objective in left field, the T'au Priority Objective is out of the way in right field. T'au might have benefited from using a
cP to reroll a 5+ save on longstrike
since the damage dealt was exactly enough to kill him but are down to 6 from 10.
CP reroll of saves wouldn't have saved the knight, chaos still has 4 of 4. Helping elite armies get
CP eh?
A unit or two of cultists would actually be decent for capping, instead of the 2nd raptors now that I think of it.
T2 Chaos
Bikes moved onto their Priority objective to keep it secured. (scored more caps)
Raptors in center moved into crater in front of fire warrior pile along with sorcerer.
Terminators deepstruck next to bikers 9" away from ruins occupants, 12+ inches from left hammerhead.
Sorc fails prescience, passes delightful agonies (i forget to roll them, every darn time)
Sorc shoots into injured firewarriors, eliminating the unit and scoring kill1.
Raptors shoot into forward hammerhead dealing 1x5 damage.
Bikers use flamers and bolters to kill 3
ML pathfinders
Terminators get stratagems for +1wound, reroll 1s to hit, shoot a 2nd time. They split fire and don't do much the first round, 1dmg to hammerhead, 1 shas'ui of each
ML and
FW unit.
2nd round of termies they eliminate both Shas'ui units, 2 Shas'la of the remaining center unit, 12 wounds of overcharged plasma killing the left hammerhead scoring big game hunter.
Raptors and sorcerer charge the firewarrior/blade in crater taking no wounds.
Raptor with power sword deals a wound to fireblade, sorc kills 3 remaining warriors, securing kill more (5 units total killed)
T2 Tau
Fusion commander moves towards crater
Injured Hammerhead moves back
Ion pathfinders shuffle around to get in range
Orbital ion beam stratagem deals 3MW to bikers and terminators.
Sa'cea stratagem used to markerlight everything. (I forgot to use the rerolls, sigh)
Ion pathfinders follow up and due to the
ML get one raptor down.
Missile commander splits fire, misses bike, kills a raptor, kills 2 terminators
Hammerheads use
sms on raptors/bikers, ion cannons on terminators. last bike dies, last raptor (excluding the ones in dz) dies, 1 more terminator dies.
Deepstriking Fusion commander takes out 1 terminator and the other puts 4 fusion blasters into the sorcerers face for OOOOVERKILL! and Kingslayer 2/old school.
T2 Summary: Terminators got a lot of little kills just barely by using 4CP. 6 Termies left. a Hammerhead with 13 and another with 8 wound remain, 3 commanders and fireblade live still.
The score is chaos 11 to Tau 12. A fusion commander is between the capping raptors and the terminators so that could give a headhunter and kill point easily. The fireblade is an easy target as well.
Ion cannons however are excellent terminator killers.
Turn3 Chaos
Terminators shuffle around for positioning around their objective.
Raptors string out towards the fusion commander from their objective.
Raptors deliver 1 melta wound that gets saved due to iridium armor.
Termies deliver 1 overcharged plasma wound that deals 2 damage to the fusion commander and 2 wounds for all 4 remaining damage from the fireblade securing a kill point.
Turn3 Tau
Slight moving upfield from the rear fusion commander
Combined efforts kill 3 terminators, leaving one alive.
The deepstuck commander only lands 1 wound of the raptors.
T3 Summary: 4 raptors keep a point, a lone terminator holds the other. 2 hammerheads and 3 commanders are skattered around. Chaos 15 to T'au 13
Turn4 Chaos
The raptors regain coherency and deliver 1 hit, 1 wound, and the required 3 damage to a fusion commander securing a kill point and headhunter.
Turn 4 T'au
The injured hammerhead fails to deal damage, the intact hammerhead kills the last terminator with smart missiles securing a kill point.
Missile commander deals the 4 necessary wounds to kill the raptor unit securing more kills.
Ion pathfinders secure an objective.
T4 Summary: Chaos is tabled. Chaos 18 to T'au 17 however T'au would continue to get objectives in turns 5 and 6 for a crushing victory.
Post game impressions: Knights are so infuriating, they seem like a good investment (especially since renegade get 27PL worth of dakka for 23PL) but without
sub-faction coherency it gets stuck without any buffs or stratagems and degrades to a load of gak if it survives the first turn. Some of that is my luck not rolling
enough 5++ saves (i think only 2 invulns passed, but it took 4dmg from
SMS). Also Terminators are too expensive, they are insufficiently mobile, and although their
defense is decent I still lose many each turn. Their offense is ok if they get in range but relies on buffs otherwise, which is odd for an
OP weapon.
Raptors are nice but everything in this codex is so pricey I just don't have the volume of bodies without a major overhaul.
Tau on the other hand held up nicely. They got slightly unlucky in terms of rolls to lose longstrike and a hammerhead by just exactly enough damage. I had done well enough in
saves for the fire warriors and pathfinders did alright too. The army wasn't super durable but it didn't give in easily either, and certainly had the guns to reinforce its cost.
Stratagems were plentiful enough and I should have used network jamming to give -1hit to the terminators T2. I forgot when but I did get 2-4
CP back from puretide engram and made command rerolls
On top of all that though I forgot to consider some of the options like Bork'an stratagem,
sa'cea rerolls, purtide reroll, and a few other stratagems. Missile pods did nothing so I'm glad they're free for
PL.
I think this list should be ok for the event. It did very T'au like things... focusing down the big threat, area denial to protect back field, being tricky without resorting to eldar shenanigans like dealing 6MW to
my stealth suits on the first movement phase (that salt was hard to swallow, but I kept my cool at the table). Since Chaos managed to keep up in points I think my opponents should be able to score plenty
since that list is now obsolete if it was ever any good at all. Do you think anything should be changed for sportsmanship? Efficiency?
