Tedwin's Tip of Thursday: March 19.

[tedwin183]

Hello again,

 

So this week's games were interesting ones. I played a game against inquisitor/daemon host daemonhunters, a completely non-competitive army. I also played against a tank heavy Tau competitive list. This week, I am deciding to talk about the Tau game. I was having a horrible time with my dice this week. I was rolling well under average for all rolls, all game. I actually lost to the inquisition army because I just couldn't wound and couldn't make saves. The Tau game was funny, however. First, let me give a small background of this Tau player. From here on we will refer to him as "Tau Player". This guy preaches to everyone how bad the Tau codex is gimped because of 5th ed. and then proceeds to tell everyone that he wins so many games because he's really, really good at the game, despite his army being "bad". Then, a few weeks ago, after I got done rolling another Tau player into a little ball and swallowing him, I walked over to the table where "Tau Player" was and began talking about the game I had just played. His response was simply: "You should play my army sometime. You'd get boarded because Tau are Space Marine killers and I've never lost to a Space Marine before." I asked if he was joking, to which he replied: "No, you'd lose." Fast-forward a couple of weeks and here we are. I set up a 1500pt Vulkan list with flamer spam and not quite enough meltas. I combat squad 3 tac squads, have telion, 4 snipers and a ML along with an ironclad and an all las predator. It was a very vanilla list for me. He ends up blowing up my rhinos, but not before they get close enough to start assaulting. Once again, my all-star scouts came in on the side I wanted them to, almost single-handedly winning the game for me again. I ended up boarding the guy and winning, while taking only 2 rhinos and 7 or 8 space marine casualties. I kept every unit in perspective this game. Every turn, I asked myself: "Is this unit doing what it's supposed to be doing?" A resounding: "Yes!" was always the answer.

 

Here's the tip:

 

If you build a list you like quite a bit, but you end up losing with it more than you'd like, try switching up your level of aggression. For example, in the list I used last night, it was only effective if I was throwing cc combat squads at units while all my shooting in the back took free shots without retaliation. The game before it, I tried to turtle up and ended up losing tempo to my opponent and thus losing the game. So, approach your list from different angles. Sometimes a list may not be performing well strictly because you're not being aggressive enough/too aggressive. It was a stark contrast for me last night, going from a loss to a bad army to a commanding victory against a much better opponent.

 

Hope it helps.

[Banville]

To tell the truth Tedwin, as a Tau player myself, the rhino-rush is always the best tactic against the little blue fish faces. Any kind of hand-to-hand and they're toast. "Turtling" up, or attempting to out-shoot Tau is a recipe for disaster. Playing aggressively against Tau will win you the game, playing "aggressively" against Orks will get you chopped into teeny weeny pieces.

 

And you should tell your "mate" that his tank-spam is not competitive anymore. Drone-heavy lists which use the drones as mobile screens and assault "shock absorbers" are now the way to go. If mine or your marines dash forward to engage a unit of Firewarriors screened by a unit of gun drones with supporting marker drones in a tall piece of terrain somewhere then our tacticals are dead meat.

 

I'm happy you beat "Tau Player" as his arrogance and unimaginative use of the Tau Codex in light of 5th Edition deserved it.

[minigun762]

To tell the truth Tedwin, as a Tau player myself, the rhino-rush is always the best tactic against the little blue fish faces. Any kind of hand-to-hand and they're toast. "Turtling" up, or attempting to out-shoot Tau is a recipe for disaster. Playing aggressively against Tau will win you the game, playing "aggressively" against Orks will get you chopped into teeny weeny pieces.

 

This is one KEY thing that people have to remember about marines (of all variety) is that you're a balanced, all around flexible unit. This means that while Tau will typically outshoot you, you can easily outassault them and the reverse holds true for assault units.

 

Whatever their weak against, you need to exploit that.

Put another way, deny them their strengths because all of your units are more balanced then theirs.