2500 Multiwing v. Tau Report, Complete

[Polythemus]

HI all,

Not much time spent playing but recently got a 1v1 with Tau. heres how the battle went down. Sorry no pics at this time but may vasssal some in later.

First i was late to the gaming store so my opponent set up the table with LOS blocking terrain. To make matters worse the tallest peice of terrain was on his half of the table (where he would place his one objective). there was a skyshield LP placed centrally. As i was late i felt obliged to play given the setup.

HIs list

HQ
farsight
Darkstrider (dark strider has the ability to run his squad away d6 if charged.

Farsight bomb containing at least 7 suits.
3 drones
4 fusion (melta)
6 plasma
special tech guy.
Special rules on this squad were kinda insane (hit and run, no scatter on Deepstrike, can make enemy squad w/i 12" of your squad roll gets hot on weapon type of your choice, ability to shoot multiple squads simultaneously, plus a ton of other stuff that i probably dont know.

Troops
12 FW
12 FW + Devilfish
12 FW + Devilfish

Elite
Riptide ion accelerator, plus other goodies
Stealth suit squads

FA
8 pathfinders
8 pathfinders
8 pathfinders

Heavy</p>
2 broadsides with SMS, and railgun
Hammerhead (with BS5)

My list
Sammael
libby bike, 4++ field
5 RWCommand, BoD

Troops
6 RAS naked
6 RAS naked
10 Tact squad Plascan
10 Tact squad Plascan

Elite
5 DWK, LR
5 DWT CF, AssCan
5 DWT, CML

Heavy
Whirlwind
LRC
5 Devs 4ML

Unfortunately i wasnt expecting to play 2500 pts but figured "why not?" so the list was thrown together from availible models.

I decided to try the march40k method of reserving DWT to deep strike t2 i also reserved the RWC squad with banner and sammy. Opponent had the first turn. long table edge deployment, emperors will mission (eg one objective ea.)

i tried to deploy the LRC so that it blocked LOS to a portion of my army but with all the JSJ in his list it was going to be tough. my strategy was to out flank the black knights to pressure the riptide and use the DWT to counter charge the farsight bomb when it went for the juicy target of the LRC. With the last remaing jet bike from the dark age of technology i would have to charge the units on the high tower, since there was no room to teleport in and no way to get the bikes up there. The marines were there to... Die? I still dont have rhinos for them so they can never really achieve much. The DWT were put in the list to drop on the side of a gunline. But my opponent went for mobility so i wasnt sure how this would play out.

tau1

not a terrible first turn, didnt make a single PFG save rolled 5 1's and a 2, but the LRC was still alive. i did give up first blood making it hard to come back, given the mission.

DA 1


since i was unable to do anything to the riptide i just flated out towards it with the libby hidden behind. the sky shield is pretty tall so i couldnt actaully see over it to shoot his guys from my infantry. the whirlwind went for the pathfinders on the skysheild but missed. the devs were terrible even with prescience and coulendt get past the 2+ save on the stealth suits. Not a great turn.

Tau2



again i fail all my PFG saves and the fusion blasters get 4 pens on the LRC. to make matters worse the other bike squad dies and i lose a DWK as well. at least i can charge next turn. farsight shoots at like three different units and kills all, tacts, libby, LRC. the other bike squad also dies.</p>

DA2



ok so golly gee. black knigthts and sammy come in kill the riptide. awesome. the left most tacts fire pistols at darkstrider and FW hoping to charge. WW hits killing 7/8 pathfinders (PF), and DWTs force the second skyshield PF squad to flee. the other DWT do nothing to the other PF squad, and cant do anything v the hammerhead. the plascanon on the left tacts misses and no one else does anything to farsight bomb.

In assault Darkstrider gets supporting fire from the devilfish and they rip into the tact squad killing 1, then get their d6 runaway move before i roll for assualt, eg i dont make it.

so why is their only one DWK (which looks supiciously like a hammernator)? i'll tell you, first four plasma hits on over watch and two failed saves, plus farsight swings before the DWk and they fail that save too. then i think i fail to wound so no deaths and to top it off he hit and runs away. ouch.

Tau3

there is no picture for this because...
farsight finishes off the tacts and still gets 9w on the DWK, all of which i save, grumble grumble (where were those when i needed them?) Darkstrider plus FW kill all of the other tacticals. and stealth suits smartly jump in front of the path of the black knights and sammy.

leaving me with 0 troops, no objectives claimed, and far sight bomb still alive. at this point i realize there is no point and concede, at the bottom of turn 3... the only ways for me to win would have been to achieve all of these goals simultaneously... a.) kill the linebreaker units (possible but unlikely given that the evil that is farsight is totally unscathed.), b.) kill the FW on the roof of the building,near the objective, only possible if i break off sammy, c.) get linebreaker my self and keep sammy alive (possible given the termie presence).

what could i have done differently? well i needed more mobility and probably fewer termies, on the whole my list was probably terrible. i should have charged farsight bomb with the tacticals to draw overwatch and obviously should have shot dark strider not charged him. the other thing i might have tried would have been to try to blow up the building that the broadsides were standing on and collapse it. would i have been better served with starting sammy on the field? not sure. a pretty craptastic performance by me.

[tomsev]

soooo??? how'd it go?

[elphilo]

soooo??? how'd it go?

I've been waiting on the edge of my seat for days.

Seems like Polythemus was just being a tease

[Polythemus]

Sorry been reaally short on time recently. Will get this uptonight if i can. In the mean time any guesses as to how it went?

[jeremy1391]

The glorious sons of the lion smote the blue space dolphin men obviously :)

[Polythemus]

Something wierd going on formatting wise, ill try and fix it today.

[Polythemus]

formatting fixed.

[elphilo]

So first off I just wanted to tell you how to get rid of those deployment shapes. To select them hold SHIFT and click them, then I believe its Ctl-D.

Now to the game. Those pathfinders on the skyshield, how did they get there? I'm assuming scout move right? I think they got a little farther than they should have since it was essentially in the middle of the board. And I don't know how you guys play it, but we play it that you have to be at the base of one of the legs to be able to get up to the top and then thats a 3" movement like in a ruin. Though the only time you roll for difficult is that move up.

The devilfish doesn't have supporting fire rule so he shouldn't have been able to shoot overwatch, also vehicles cannot shoot overwatch in general. The unit inside it can if there are firing points but there are none in the Devilfish. You got cheated here

Farsight bomb is really scary to go up against. But without details on his list I can't comment if his bodyguard squad was legal. They can all take Signature systems (one per army type of items) and can take up to 3 ranged weapons and support systems (so 2 plasma guns and Target Lock [the I shoot at a different unit upgrade]). Also remember that Farsight's no scatter is a one use only warlord trait.

It seemed like your opponent didn't know his rules very well and luck was not on your side with all the failed PFG saves! I know how that feels though, I played a game where I failed them all as well, very frustrating . With Tau it seems we have to play completely differently. So I would suggest another whirlwind and more black knights. They seem to be the shining beacon in our codex this edition. And taking them doesn't completely list tailor versus Tau, they're very good versus all the other armies in the game as well! Oh and make that Libby level 2 if you haven't, more rolls on divination is always good

[Darkangeldentist]

Thanks for posting up the battle report, nice read and lovely pictures. Very informative and helpful for aiding understanding of what went on.

 

I think by the sounds of it some mistakes were made, transports like all vehicles cannot overwatch, so unless Tau can over-ride that it shouldn't have been helping.

 

As to what you could have done differently... as you mentioned, the list seemed a bit thrown together. Not entirely sure why you'd bought the banner considering you put them into reserve. I would have probably deployed them with Sammael so that on your first turn your shooting would have been more significant. You probably wouldn't have taken down the riptide in the way you did but your own bikes and marines could have cleared off some more basic fire warriors on that first turn.

 

If you had joined the librarian to the tactical squad on your first turn and still sent them to cover the rear of the land raider it would have pushed the farsight module a little further back and made it harder for him to land near the centre away from your units that could effectively try to tie them up. Also would have made the librarian much harder to get at, which might have helped.

 

There are quite a lot of things that you could have played slightly differently but for the most part I don't think your plan was bad. I don't understand why you included the banner, especially considering your plan to put Sammael and the command squad into reserve. Coming on from a flank to remove the riptide was very impressive though. I doubt you could do anything better for giving yourself an effective and hard hitting reserve. I am used to playing very cavalier with bikes myself. I tend to use them as a bluff to force my opponents hand. So considering how much your opponent put into reserve I would have been very tempted to scout all the bikes forward (keeping the librarian just far enough back to give the land raider a save but basically trying to get them all into range to effectively threaten his units on the sky shield (or hide from enemy fire as it's an awkward piece for line of sight quite frequently. I'd also probably have run the tactical marines on the first turn whilst the bikes that survived his first turn of shooting would already be in range to start shooting back at his army. I would put a couple of flamers into each Ravenwing attack squadron by the way. Even if your aim is to use their bolt guns in general, flamers can hit many enemies, ignore covers saves and Ravenwing are eminently capably of getting close enough to do so. 

 

It sounds like you had a really tough match up. I'm not sure if I ever want to face Tau at that size of game....hmm...

 

Thanks again for the report.

[Polythemus]

@ jeremy - you were totally wrong but the hope springs eternal :)

 

@elphilo - hey thanks for the tip on the deployments been wondering about that. As for your comments i appreciate the tip regarding devil fish, will have to look into tau codex a bit more. And yes i agree farsight is nasty.

 

@ DaDentist - its interesting i played a team game before with the landraider contianing the banner and infantry walking behind it i didnt really work. So I thought a bike banner might be better and upscaled a "standard armylist". When i knew i was facing the riptide i knew i had to take it down. The best way to do that was the black knights and giving them the ability to operate best means outflanking. I knew it meant that i would get less ability to use the banner but i thought that maybe some troops would survive long enough to turbo boost into banner range. What i really should have done was reserve all the bikes and combat squad all the tacts that would have still given me some good ability to get those bolters firing and kept the bikes alive while giving him similar targets to shoot at. As for screening the lrc ive tried that before as well vs farsight and its not really possible cause im pretty sure hes got 9" melta range. I just basically use it as bait. Your points are well taken though, and i am on a pretty massive losing streak for my lack of tactical nous.

 

I think the other component of this loss comes down to practice and the lack thereof. Its tough when each game you play is a month removed from the last one. Thanks for the tips and comments all.

[elphilo]

@elphilo - hey thanks for the tip on the deployments been wondering about that. As for your comments i appreciate the tip regarding devil fish, will have to look into tau codex a bit more. And yes i agree farsight is nasty.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that Longstrike is the only one that can make his hammerhead join in overwatch shooting. But he's only a Hammerhead upgrade.

Can't wait till the next battle report

[elphilo]

Polythemus, I totally messed up with the overwatch thing. Apparently Tau vehicles can. They have a Vehicle upgrade that allows them to shoot overwatch but the weapons being fired can only shoot S5 or lower. Blargh total brain fart, sorry!