First "real" Game: Xenos Tau Frustrations...

[Prot]

So if you've seen any of my stuff in the other sections of the forum, I typically like to do lightly detailed batreps and include some pictures. However this was a short game, and I am proxying a lot of stuff right now to figure out what I like and what works.

 

I'll tell you guys up front I play in a no holds barred environment so what you may see here may make you gag a bit. ;)

 

I played a full 1850 game using a hodge podge of stuff. I told this to my opponent as I am testing a few things out. I quickly wrote out a list that was basically a BEEFY Black Spear Detachment.

 

My detachment was too beefy but like I said I really wanted to see what was what, and I had NO expectation of winning. Here is the very basic run down:

 

My Black Spear:

 

Watch Master w/basic toys + Beacon Angelis (he joined the Strategium HQ formation in a Pod)

 

Beefy Strategium Command led by Artemis, and featuring an Aquila Kill Team with a POD (There was an ML 2 Libby in this squad and a juicy load out of vets)

 

I had 2 basic (one Frag Cannon each) Veteran Kill Teams

 

Dreadnought Venerable (the named one from the Death Masque box) in a Pod. (he's over priced... for that invuln never saved me squat. lol )

 

One Aquila Team with a Termie LIb with the Dominus Aegis (ML 2) This was a super beef squad with 4 ! Frag Cannons.

 

One Corvus Blackstar (vanilla but with the Infernum Halo Launcher)

 

 

The Salmon of Tau: Primarily Fish and Chips formation. (Tau and Kroot)

 

Hunter Cadre Formation with Buff-mander w/drones.

 

Stormsurge

 

2 x Riptides

 

5ish Drones

 

2 squads of Pathfinders (one had an HQ imbedded in it)

 

Kroot with some leader Kroot dude.

 

the Stealth Cadre formation. (6 of those fusion/plasma stealth suites and the Ghost Kheel)

 

Breacher squad in a Fishtank (whatever their foul xenos transport is called)

 

 

Game Start:

We usually play Maelstrom and I got first turn! He tried to seize after deployment, but his foul treachery did not pay off and I got first turn.

 

 

I will say I did put my largest Aquila Squad with LIby and his Aegis in a corner... hidden. But he took the bait and deployed his Stormsurge and 2 Riptides right across from them.

 

Opening Turn:

 

Then in my first turn my massive HQ came rumbling down in a Pod, and proceeded to disembark on an objective I needed on the opposite end of the table from his Stormsurge and Riptides.

 

I intentionally made sure he had no LoS on the Strategium Drop Pod squad for Interceptor.

 

I allowed him to then use interceptor which he passed on because he had so little LoS from his heavy hitters but I was just across from a fist full of Pathfinders and his entire Stealth Cadre in ruins.

 

Since we passed his Interceptor phase, I elected to use the Beacon Angelis and I immediately transported my large Aquila Squad with Libby (Aegis) and the 4 Frag Canons from the opposite corner of the table.

 

This felt like the right move as 1. I did not have an answer for Stormsurge + Riptide, and 2, I could buy some time because they were so far out of the action, they'd have to shift quite a bit to get LoS on my limited deathwatch force. (we had building ruins inbetween us).

 

I rolled on Telepathy (hoping for Invis, but didn't get it) And I used Psychic Shriek on one of his Stealth Cadre squads of 3 Stealth Suits. He could not block this, and he rolled high, instantly frying the 3 hard shelled fish. The smell of freshly boiled lobster was in the air, but it was about to go downhill from there....

 

I did get off Divination on my big shooty Aquila squad but they only took down about half of the pathfinders in the same bulding as the Stealth Cadre.

 

I did get my objective point, and First Blood.

 

Tau Turn:

 

- He shifts everything, predictably towards my beefy squads on the other end of the table. His cards are only somewhat doable, and he would get one point.

 

- He has no reserves, and his shooting is good.. marker lights, and random firepower, stealth suits shoot, and then jetpack back into cover (he takes a dangerous terrain wound from his filthy xenos technology getting snagged on a window frame or something.)

 

- I take quite a bit of damage, every wound hurts, but the Watch Master and Artemis are still alive, even though I lost most of the special weapon vets.

 

- He tries shooting up my Big Aegis Aquila squad but his LoS is quite limited, still I take a horrendously unlucky AP2 giant template, and fail my Invulns (4+) from the Aegis! The rest of the squad somehow manages to make a massive amount of normal armour saves.

 

- The rest of his army has shifted over quite a bit.... my time is limited. I need to kill stuff ASAP.

 

Deathwatch:

 

- I have one card I can do.... I'm up 2-1 but I can see this is do or die time. I have 2 of my 3 reserves come in. BUT I get risky with the Shotgun squad ( I had wanted to flame to death a bunch of his Buffmander drones) and they Misshap! They end up in Ongoing Reserves.

 

- The Dreadnought comes in, and I can tell he needs an objective on my side. I drop the pod, and the Dread gets out, and with all the "overcharge" crap I can't get through the uber invuln on his Riptides, and the subsequent Feel No Pain saves. My dread is obviously in trouble, but I need to stall his getting the objective.

 

- My shooting is bad.... we have a big misunderstanding that has me believing that my Auspex will affect his Stealth Cadres' save in the ruins... I take the poison round, instead of Deny cover rounds, but the Auspex actually has zero effect because of his stacking stealth.... so his save is still 2+ and really it didn't make much a difference, but no wounds go through.

 

- I make a second minor mistake... I shoot the fishtank, and the occupant's FAIL the Snap Fire test, so I move on from the Fishtank thinking he can only Snap Fire. I totally forgot he can use the Marker Lights to pretty much negate the Snap Fire, so the unit I deep strike in front of him is now in big trouble.

 

- I have to slightly hold back the Watch Master because I have to get that same objective marker for a point, yet I want to assault the ruins. The problem is the Tau are much faster than me, and I don't have the units to hold anything AND persue the fish. Still I 'run' the Watch Master's squad, and try to get closer.

 

TAU TURN:

 

- As mentioned he shifts one more time, kills the dreadnought easily, and then kills the Kill Team I deep striked with the Shotguns (in front of his 'shaken' fish tank). The squad was lit up with Marker lights, the Breachers get out, increase their snap fire to hitting on 3's and at AP3 he erases my squad with ease.

 

- The attention turns to the Aegis LIbby squad with 4 Frag Cannons. He still can't get a perfect bead on them due to my clever deployment... but enough junk gets through that I lose about 3-4 members of the squad, including one Frag Cannon (down to 3 now).

 

- He gets the point my Dread was on, and it is now 3-2 for me.

 

Deathwatch Desperation Time:

 

- My reserves all come in, the Corvus Blackstar fires 3 missiles and the twin assault cannon at his Stormsurge and 2-3 wounds get through unsaved from FnP.  I drop a bomb on the Riptide that killed my dread (hey why not?) And nothing happens.

 

- My Aegis Libby Aquila squad is stuck. If they advance, they are stuck in front of Buff mander in an open fire lane with a second Riptide and the Stormsurge waiting to kill me. If I stay put I am risking a lot.... never the less I roll difficult terrain to advance and only get a 2 so that makes the decision easy: I shoot at Kroot, half die, but don't run!

 

- I shoot away with the remaining Watch Master Command Strategium but the special ammo just isn't doing anything,and too many of my dudes are dirt napping.

 

- Backing up a bit, this psychic phase I roll a '6' for the comunitty dice and decide to throw a FIST full of dice at Psychic Shriek since it's all that actually is killing anything.... 1 DICE passes the test out of the fist full... he denies it on a 6! ugh.

 

- So I kill almost nothing.... and get no points.

 

Tau Turn:

 

- He shifts enough over that I am pretty much in full line of sight. He roasts 2 full squads, and a remnant squad. The only thing he's missing at this point is 2 hullpoints from a fish tank, one Stealth Suit squad (One turn of shooting I got 'counter measured' so the only damage to that squad came from the Psychic Shriek).

 

- Riptides shoot, Buffmander Shoots, they used their combined fire trickery and at the end of it I just had to concede.

 

So I made it 3 turns, and killed very little with the army. Maybe 10 cheap models in total (I'm thinking Pathfinders).

 

This is probably the worst loss I've had to Tau in the last year or so.

 

Lessons Learned:

 

-When making the army, I was shocked how fast it got so small.

 

- I'm not sure I like the Black Spear. I don't want to judge it so harshly as I was obviously playing a 'fun' list and my opponent was using one of the strongest builds in the current meta, but that being said, the army prides itself on positioning properly. So one of the biggest advantages of the Black Spear is deep striking for 'free'... but too many times I did not get deep enough to use the Frag Cannons properly.

 

In my fairly significant experiences against Tau, I would say Pods are nearly mandatory to 1: Mitigate Interceptor and 2: make sure Frag Cannons hurt. So where does that leave Black Spear?

 

- I LOVE the look and feel and background of the Corvus. I think it suits the army a lot, but in a pricey army, this is a difficult call for me. I want to continue using it but it MUST be in play quickly. I'm actually thinking of using the 3 Corvus flyer formation from Death from the Skies flyer supplement to increase reserve rolls to a 2+.

 

- I know the situation was lopsided from turn 1, but I have to wonder how competitive this can actually be? Purely from that point of view I can't seem to find a lot of ways of improving the situation that happened in that game, but I do know the Black Spear might be a red herring. Some of the sub formations within it are very good though... the Aquila and command Aquila Strategium is actually quite nice, but what you get is so minimal this might be one of the worst "decurions" to come out in the last year??? Thoughts? Am I missing something?

 

- The 'trappings' of flexibile squads is in their.... flexibility. It's so easy to make a tiny list that can do anything but will most likely accomplish nothing. It's almost an army that you don't want to put an HQ into just because it appears the basic army has to do most of the heavy lifting.

 

- What's missing?

  - I actually didn't feel like I had the right tools to deal with Tau. The Stormsurge and Riptides were pretty much free to do what they wanted. I wish the army actually had a 'stealth' to Interceptor because it's very intimidating with a small marine army. (with my Battle Company it can take a good wack on the chin and still deal damage, this is too small)

 

  - I feel like a good counter to some bigger nasties might be a sort of.... 'Nemesis Dreadknight' for Deathwatch. Literally the Stormsurge is going to be a big problem. It's something Deathwatch should be 'good' at. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

  - Mission Tactics for Super Heavies. I pondered this during the game, but I don't think anything helps against the Gargantuan Creature category? Weird since that's a major problem for the Imperium. ;)

 

  - The automatic thought is: Take a Knight. I'm not so sure because in non-ITC format the D easily konks Knights out of the game in my experience, and besides that a Knight turns a smallish model count into something too small.

 

Any ideas or thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[Indefragable]

Technically speaking, whatever FOC slot the MC's/GC's fall into would count for the purposes of DW's re-rolls, right? Other than LoW you can re-roll against Elites or Heavy Supports as needed. 

[Vash]

As a Tau Empire player my self I know them inside and out. And scanning through the Deathwatch codex over and over these days since it was released I have a decent understanding of the deathwatch I want to field. 

 

As you said, the units you chose were way to expensive. But in your defence, it was due to a fun aspect of trying out all the new toys. Problem with this... is that you won't be able to try out the toys since they will be obliterated before they can be used against the Tau ;) 

 

The Black Spear Strike Force formation offers little compared to a CAD. The only thing I am remotely interested in, is the changing of mission tactics. But I went around that and added Artemis to get that extra change. 

 

The Watch Master... a pricy guy. And yet again, the one reason I would take him (personally) is to get the change of mission tactics. His wargear/items are not really interesting for me. Sure an AP2 close combat weapon is nice, but its a huge price tag for that. His debuff affects only vehicles... and he doesn't want to fight vehicles. Sure the unit he joins can use it, but then he is in a place where he does no real use (close combat vs infantry). 

 

One thing we tend to forget, me included, is that the standard deatwatch veteran is a really deadly soldier on his own. His boltgun loaded with special issue ammunition is an answer to most things. 

 

Gargantuan creatures are though, as they should be. But if you know your facing these bad boys, bring along s few heavy thunder hammers, or a Black Shield with thunder hammer and lightning claw (2 specialist weapons so you will get the extra attack. Sure that black shield will be expensive as hell, but he will get a whooping 8 attacks on the charge, possible re-rolls. 

 

Versus stealth units, as you did mention your self, ignores cover rounds is the way to go. Usually the stealth units are not so tough as the Ghostkeels (oh yes I use the Optimised stealth Cadre my self, fully loaded), and the ignores cover rounds should do the trick. 
This is where the frag cannons come into play. Good strength, able to wound the Ghostkeels on 3+ with no cover saves, and a chance to rend the armour. Considering, a full unit of Ghostkeels, there will be 6 drones attached, there will be a tone of wounds, unless he has spread out across his deployment in a conga line. 

Again, the heavy thunder hammers will do much good. But be prepared to lose some veterans to the onslaught that will come before they can strike. 

 

When I built my list, I aimed for a Watch company (and one extra formation of any kind, allied or what not). In the Watch Company I aim for maximising the squad size. Thus cutting back on the "bling bling". Once I am done with the unit composition I add the necessary special/heavy weapons. And if there is points to spare, I add the bling. 

[leth]

One hing to remember is that you played intercept wrong. Intercept is at the end of the movement phase so the teleporting trick would not have worked as well.

 

Second I agree on the tau issues, I think unless we have really good terrain it's just game over against them. That being said I think that deathwatch is a "lots of practice army" to get used to all the special rules and playing right. I plan on having either an allied IG detachment or a Demi company for OS to my black spear

 

Thanks for the battle report!! The experience is much appreciated.

[Prot]

I'm kn my phone right now and plan to respond later but to anyone with the codex: I can't take a heavy hammer on a Black Shield can I?

 

I am thinking Vanguard Vet with Heavy Hammer might be a great add on for such a squad though.

 

Black Shield with normal hammer as mentioned and if this was a Strategium Command then the best fit might be a Chaplain in the mix pouring out of a Corvus. This could hurt just about anything in the game without having to resort to my own Superheavy. Not sure though...

[Wrath of Bruinen]

Thanks for the write up, Prot. I'm a big fan of your past work, so I'm looking forward to what you can come up with for the DW.

 

Some points or questions I have are:

 

1. The aegis only works if the unit didn't move, I think. It's a little hard to tell from your write up, but it seems that the squad moved first turn (relocating via the beacon) and then claimed 4++ the next turn (not that it seems to have mattered, as you say you failed the saves anyway)

 

2. I would have though DW would be reasonably well equiped to deal with tau monster mash - poisoned 2+ rapid fire bolters will put a lot of wounds on a riptide (especially if in an Aquila to reroll 1s), while frag should do ok on a stormsurge. Granted, delivery (especially with interceptor) is a massive hurdle here, but I think we can do ok. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that though.

[Prot]

Technically speaking, whatever FOC slot the MC's/GC's fall into would count for the purposes of DW's re-rolls, right? Other than LoW you can re-roll against Elites or Heavy Supports as needed.

 

 

 

Actually I don't know. I mean as a LoW there isn't a category for that, is there? Nor is there a formation except perhaps the Aquila that allows to wound rerolls? I'm not sure.

 

 

 

 

As a Tau Empire player my self I know them inside and out. And scanning through the Deathwatch codex over and over these days since it was released I have a decent understanding of the deathwatch I want to field. 

 

As you said, the units you chose were way to expensive. But in your defence, it was due to a fun aspect of trying out all the new toys. Problem with this... is that you won't be able to try out the toys since they will be obliterated before they can be used against the Tau ;) 

 

The Watch Master... a pricy guy. And yet again, the one reason I would take him (personally) is to get the change of mission tactics. His wargear/items are not really interesting for me. Sure an AP2 close combat weapon is nice, but its a huge price tag for that. His debuff affects only vehicles... and he doesn't want to fight vehicles. Sure the unit he joins can use it, but then he is in a place where he does no real use (close combat vs infantry). 

I suppose that's true. He's a very cool model though, but he's no Draigo, that's for sure. However he does have a potentially amazing ability in block. Could you imagine blocking a Wraithlord's D attack with that Custodes spear? How cool would that be? Fat chance I suppose! Lol also I do like his extra wounds and the 2+ save. However overall the codex does have a scarey lack of survivability items and relics. Also everything else is so elite this codex kind of reminds me of old Chaos where the army did the heavy lifting and perhaps the HQ just filled the force org.

 

 

One thing we tend to forget, me included, is that the standard deatwatch veteran is a really deadly soldier on his own. His boltgun loaded with special issue ammunition is an answer to most things. 

Absolutely. I can be very quilty of this.

 

 

Gargantuan creatures are though, as they should be. But if you know your facing these bad boys, bring along s few heavy thunder hammers, or a Black Shield with thunder hammer and lightning claw (2 specialist weapons so you will get the extra attack. Sure that black shield will be expensive as hell, but he will get a whooping 8 attacks on the charge, possible re-rolls. 

Nice idea. I was defaulting my Black Shields to storm shields and Maces, but this is interesting. I wish they could take a heavy hammer but as mentioned above I think a Vanguard might be great in that role too. Between the two of them there's real potential for damage there.

 

 

Versus stealth units, as you did mention your self, ignores cover rounds is the way to go. Usually the stealth units are not so tough as the Ghostkeels (oh yes I use the Optimised stealth Cadre my self, fully loaded), and the ignores cover rounds should do the trick. 

This is where the frag cannons come into play. Good strength, able to wound the Ghostkeels on 3+ with no cover saves, and a chance to rend the armour. Considering, a full unit of Ghostkeels, there will be 6 drones attached, there will be a tone of wounds, unless he has spread out across his deployment in a conga line. 

I think I am playing my Frag Cannons wrong. I have not been applying special ammo rules to them.

 

 

One hing to remember is that you played intercept wrong. Intercept is at the end of the movement phase so the teleporting trick would not have worked as well.

Second I agree on the tau issues, I think unless we have really good terrain it's just game over against them. That being said I think that deathwatch is a "lots of practice army" to get used to all the special rules and playing right. I plan on having either an allied IG detachment or a Demi company for OS to my black spear

Thanks for the battle report!! The experience is much appreciated.

Thanks. You're right. I think I know why I miss played the interceptor... With my Grey Knights I always pull Draigo Gate in the psychic phase, outside of the Interceptor phase....good thing it had literally no bearing in this game.

 

 

  

Thanks for the write up, Prot. I'm a big fan of your past work, so I'm looking forward to what you can come up with for the DW.

Some points or questions I have are:

1. The aegis only works if the unit didn't move, I think. It's a little hard to tell from your write up, but it seems that the squad moved first turn (relocating via the beacon) and then claimed 4++ the next turn (not that it seems to have mattered, as you say you failed the saves anyway)

2. I would have though DW would be reasonably well equiped to deal with tau monster mash - poisoned 2+ rapid fire bolters will put a lot of wounds on a riptide (especially if in an Aquila to reroll 1s), while frag should do ok on a stormsurge. Granted, delivery (especially with interceptor) is a massive hurdle here, but I think we can do ok. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that though.

Thank you. As far as 1, you'll see the Aegis mentions moving in the movement phase as being the only restriction so I thin were good there.

 

As far as 2, yes I thought so too but I have to say the random deep,striking without the advantage of pods is really limiting that. In part it's why I fading on the Black Spear, but it's still early. We'll see. ;)

[SyNidus]

Great to see your first thoughts, I'm looking forward to hearing more (and posting some of my own soon enough).

Anyway, I liked the little trick you pulled with the beacon. In general i can see myself using something like that, although with perhaps a barebones 10 man squad. The power of suddenly dropping 20+ shots out of nowhere is pretty intense.

 

That being said, i don't think the tactics used were optimal against your opponent. Vash raises great points. Do you think that podding directly into the face of these big guns is a viable strategy?

Perhaps this is my GK/RG background playing up, but i want to pod directly in their face.

Did you feel the lack of grav?

[Prot]

The Beacon Trick:

 

Actually originally my idea was to 'hide' a squad in a Landraider, drop pod in, then "beacon" them to Landraider and passengers right over to the pod.... I ran out of points so early in my list building I had to do the discounted version.

 

 

Perhaps this is my GK/RG background playing up, but i want to pod directly in their face.

 

 

The Pod thing... yes I do feel that works... or would work. That's kind of what I was hinting at but it's counter intuitive to the Black Spear because you're cashing in your ObSec CAD for this Detachment to get 'free' deep striking.

 

The problem is with Tau.... The Pods are just that much better because they allow you to drop to 1" of their feet, this makes their targeting riskier with Templates (they can't hit themselves and with my Ultramarines I'm so close, they are afraid of deviation with Templates.

 

The way it works with my Ultra's is I have a massive model count in Battle Co. Deathwatch don't have near that. So if I drop Pod in on Tau with Ultra's two targeting decisions usually happen: 1- they can target my beefiest Grav Cannon squad but it is usually 'tanked' by a Cata-Captain or similar with Eternal Warrior Shield. (Deathwtach appear to lack good tanking options.) 2 - if the Tau player does not want to deal with the Tanky-Grav Cannon squad, they usually are stuck trying to piece meal out my other grav/melta in smallish, cheapo Tactical squads, so it barely seems worth it to them.

 

But with the Deathwatch I felt as if it was a flip of the coin. I really felt like the squad landing has to be 100% in position like my Ultra's. Otherwise you risk far too much death AND being out of position for super vital template weapons not to mention getting off "Impact" with the Frag Cannons.

 

 

Did you feel the lack of grav?

 

 

That is an excellent question. I pondered this myself going into the game. But it's a tricky answer because as you know I play a fair amount of ITC style, or top tiered competition and I admit I had to lean quite heavily on Grav.

 

BUT Grav is a weird thing because 4 Grav Cannons in a Dev squad is one thing, but add a Cataphractii Captain.... or put the Grav in Skyhammer and it's a very different effectiveness, isn't it? (night and day to me)

 

I did not miss the Grav. I found the Frag Cannons not quite as punishing a 24", but the flexibility of the rounds was a good exchange. I did miss the 'immobilize' feature of Grav but I truly wish GW would get rid of that (different topic though.) ;)

 

The problem is you can't spam it. Our base troops is too expensive. You can't spam pods, you can't really spam bodies. I have to find a different way.

 

Right now I'm concentrating on making a very potent squad to come out of the Corvus Blackstar (for now - until I can figure something better out... the Landraider Beacon Angelis would be another idea). This squad MUST take advantage of our mixed squad abilities and the Heavy Hammer. It has to be able to bash Wraithknights/Stormsurges/etc in the face very effectively or I might as well run my own Knight (at 350- this becomes a real option).

 

So my next game I will have to actually pair down the Frag Cannons, and try this squad out as long as I can keep it Economic.

 

HQ is another problem. I have no idea what to do. I was very hot on the Watch Master, and now I'm just thinking of tossing Artemis in there and leaving the heavy lifting to the Heavy Hammers.

[Vel'Cona]

Thanks for the batrep! Without a more comprehensive army list it's hard for me to provide specific advice, though I'd say Tau are a tough match up for ANY MEQ army, as they have the custom tools to lock us down and tons of options to counter our best strength against them: Drop Pods. It seems in general that your army was mostly set up to try a little of everything in C: DW; I'd suggest throttling back the expensive "fun" stuff for a bit more of the solid stuff and a bump up in numbers. I look forward to the next one!

[Prot]

Thanks. You're right it was a bit of everything. I've gone back and forth and part of me thinks that might be a good way to play deathwatch.... just more economically than I did. Stalkerbolter squad, shotgun squad, Frag Cannon squad... they all do what they're supposed to pretty well.

 

As far matching up against Tau, I do play against strong Tau lists a lot... Multi Surge, Riptide Wing, Drone Commander, Buff-mander, Hunter Cadre....  I have beat it often enough to know when I have the right idea. I have beat it quite thoroughly with Ultramarines, and my Khorne Daemonkin. But in all honesty, this army never had a chance.

[Icechiang]

I played a tau list almost exactly like you did this last Saturday. Except no storm surge. We played at lower points. My list was also lackluster because I was trying stuff out. The named dreadnaught didn't do too much and I had a bigger squad that was more cc. Never made it there.

 

The command squad with a librarian, two stalker bolters, and an infernus did great. They wiped out a pathfinder squad in cover in one round of shooting and then took out a squad of outflanking kroot. Love that unit.

 

I agree with you. At low points levels deathwatch will be tougher to play and you really need to focus your squads. Definitely need some mobile help. I'm writing up a new 1000 point list and I think I have a better one in the works.

[jpwyrm]

Hey Prot! Thanks for the batrep and excellent feedbacks on the ups and down of Deathwatch. Your input will help a lot of us in building better list and coming up with cleverer tactics!

 

I had this idea to tackle Stormsurges/Riptides and the likes. The premisce of my thoughts is using a CAD - as you said, the BSSF seems to lack some ways to protect de DS Deathwatch kill teams other than piling lots of stormshields and/or terminators in each of them. But I digress, here's my general idea:

 

3-4 Terminators with hammer and shields, joined by a Libby with the beacon Angelis and mounted in a pod - 1st turn drop

 

Aquila/Dominatus Kill team, with 4 frag-cannons, 4 melta(or grav, or plasma, to each his own I guess)+bolters, sergeant with auspex, ML2 librarian

 

So the general idea here is to drop the Terminators and beacon librarian in your target's face turn one. Than kindly teleport in your Aquila/Dominatus KT right were you need it. Since Interceptor only works against units that come in from reserves, the scary Aquila/Dominatus KT will be safe to wreck havoc on its target for this turn. You could also pull off this trick in the psychic phase if your podded unit survived and switched place with another unit with a libby casting Electrodisplacement. This second unit should off course be geared to assault the big threats, so a lot of bodies, a black shield with fist and claw, a couple of HTH. You get the idea.

 

Still a bit pricey I guess, but I think this could be a good way to kill the hard targets with Interceptor.

[Silverson]

great report thank you, i'm very curious to how you will build you cc unit for you corvus blackstar as I have done a unit that i haven't used yet and really wanna make them work even if I need to add/change a few models. keeping the points down is hard :)

[Vel'Cona]

As far matching up against Tau, I do play against strong Tau lists a lot... Multi Surge, Riptide Wing, Drone Commander, Buff-mander, Hunter Cadre.... I have beat it often enough to know when I have the right idea. I have beat it quite thoroughly with Ultramarines, and my Khorne Daemonkin. But in all honesty, this army never had a chance.

Man that stinks. They're easily at the bottom for codices that I don't like playing against. At least Eldar will put things in CC with you.