Deathwing Assault and Tau Interceptor Drones

[sethmac]

I am playing my first game with the new DA codex.  I am playing a pure Deathwing list at 1200 points against the new Tau Codex.  I was planning to Deepstrike a 10 man Terminator Squad with Belial.  My opponent will be using Interceptor Drones to counter this.  Anyone have any experience with Tau Interceptor Drones?

 

-Thanks

[[TA]Typher]

I played a Pure DW army vs Tau last Friday. I got slaughtered. DWA really isn't great IF you use the reserve rules if the Tau castle up.

 

What I learned from my game is that I should have brought a landraider Redeemer or Crusader. Then place Belial with a unit of DWKS in it and run it up as fast as you can on turn 1.

 

Taking the Landraider as a heavy choice gives you three units on the board, which lets you take up to 4 units with DWA.

 

IF it survives to turn two... use Belials Homer to bring your DWAing terms down where you need them (using Vengance Strike of course). Belial and his DWK unit can hopefully charge.

 

That is the only way I think a pure DW army can work vs castling tau. But, I dunno..... maybe there is some ninja move that I can't think of.

[Disruptor_fe404]

I avoided Interceptor by using terrain to block LoS.

 

On the first turn, I managed to get my 10-man squad + Belial + Libby behind terrain and move, shoot, charge the next turn; the other unit dropped behind different terrain, didn't scatter, and got a side armour Cyclone missile into a Hammerhead and wreck it.

 

Still lost the game though, since I rolled abysmally for some armour saves (six ones from eight armour saves hurts!).

[carmachu]

How exactly do intercepter drones counter DWA?

[march10k]

Anything with the interceptor special rule gets to shoot at enemy reserves at the end of the enemy movement phase on the turn of arrival.  So, in other words, shoot the deepstriking deathwing BEFORE they themselves get to shoot!

 

Two counters to this.  One is to deny LOS to the tau shooters (only those with interceptor matter).  The other is to overload their targeting matrix, assuming that the ruling by most tournaments (GW hasn't yet ruled) that DWA units do not count towards the 50% max reserves cap, by DWAing EVERYTHING, together, on the bottom of turn two.  They get one turn to shoot at your 30+ termies, after that, it's assault, assault, assault.  Even eating the interceptor fire, you take far less pain than you would take if you walked across the board towards them...and stormshields are your friend here! 

 

Make that two and a half counters.  Belial's unit gets to drop without scatter.  If you can manage to shoehorn them in between two tau units, they will not be able to use the termie-busting boosted pieplate from the riptides, at least against that unit, because they won't be able to lay the template without touching their own models.  Of course, the bigger belial's unit is, the harder it is to do that...so I recommend Bels+6. 6 makes a single concentric ring around bels.  There will certainly be room somewhere to squeeze in 1-2 more termies in a second ring without encroaching on the enemy, but that dramatically raises the chance that precisely those in-excess-of-6 termies in the outer ring can be targeted without touching a tau model!

 

All that said...two crusaderloads of assault termies/knights, and bob's your uncle.  Any DWAing termies can then use the crusaders to break LOS if it's that huge a deal (which, to me, it only is in the case of riptides)