1500 pt ITC "Highlander-style" Tournament Summary (aka TAU OVERLOAD)

Last saturday, I competed in a 1500 point ITC "Highlander" style tournament. It is in quotes because it wasn't strict Highlander rules; there were several modifications:

- Only one 1500 pt CAD was allowed (the TO did make an exception for one Harlie player, since they do not have access to a CAD alone).

- Duplicate non-troop choices were allowed, but only if you took a 2nd choice that wasn't the same as the first (For example, for Fast Attack, I took a venom and a reaver squad, which allowed me to take a 2nd venom for the third FA slot).

- A maximum of two troop units of any one type are initially allowed. In order to get a third, you have to take a unit of a different troop type. In order to get 4 duplicate troop units, you need two units of a different type. Obviously, these rules do not apply if your army only has one troop choice (like Sisters of Battle, for example)

- No Gargantuan/Superheavy Units. No Flyers. Flying Monstrous Creatures were allowed, but had to be in glide mode for the entire game.

- No duplcate HQs

With that in mind, I took the following list:

HQ:
Succubus - archite glaive, armor of misery, haywire grenades

Elite:
Mandrakes x6

Troops:
Warriors x10 (blaster)
Raider (splinter racks, night shield, dark lance)

Warriors x10, (blaster)
Raider (splinter racks, night shield, dark lance)

Warriors x10, (blaster)
Raider (splinter racks, night shield, dark lance)

Wyches x8 (hydra gauntlets x1)
Hekatrix (agonizer, haywire grenades)
Raider (night shield)

Fast Attack:
Reavers x6(blasters x2, cluster caltrops x2)

Venom (splinter cannon x2)

Venom (splinter cannon x2)

Heavy Support
Ravager (dark lance x3, Night Shield)

Talos (ichor injector, twin-linked heat lance)


Game 1:
I got off to a really bad start as I was paired against a Tau player. He had a full unit of Riptides, Broadsides loaded up with homing missiles, and a full unit of ghostkeels, among whatever else was there. I didn't get tabled, but came really close. I managed to get my last remaining unit (a raider) into his deployment zone on the last turn in order to grab the linebreaker bonus point.
Final Score: Loss 1 - 11

Game 2:
I got paired against another Tau army. Less Riptide spam here, and not as many missile systems. I remember that he had two riptides, as separate units, a unit of ghostkeels, at least one unit of crisis suits, and a unit of pathfinders. The mission was relic, so my mandrakes infiltrated on top of the relic (which was luckily placed between two pieces of high LOS-blocking terrain), snatched it, and held it for the entire game. He deployed his crisis suits and pathfinders to the right, along with one Riptide, and everything else to the left. I managed to shoot the riptide on the right to death with massed lance and splinter fire - the bikes tore through both the pathfinder unit and what was left of the crisis suit unit behind it on the next turn. By the end of the game, what was left of his army (a riptide and the ghostkeels) was confined to a corner of his deployment zone, while the rest of my army claimed objectives and/or tied his suits up in cc. His only point came from him killing my Succubus for Slay the Warlord.
Final Score: Win 10 - 1


Game 3:
I had to fight *yet another* Tau army. Again, more big battlesuits. A unit of 3 riptides + another unit of 1 riptide, a ghostkeel unit, and a crisis suit command squad of some kind. The primary mission objective was Big Guns Never Tire, and he had no heavy support units, so I was at an even greater disadvantage. Despite this, I managed to hold onto some key objectives. I also got really lucky: I charged 2 units of kabalite warriors (who had gotten their raiders shot out from under them by homing missiles) into the lone Riptide (it had 3 wounds left at that point), and managed to kill it (I got lucky that he managed to flub enough 2+ armor saves within 2 turns of close combat). Later, I charged a ghostkeel with the mandrakes and a lone reaver jetbike (that had lost the rest of its unit from missile fire), and killed it as well. Due to the fact that he had so few models on the table (and the riptide unit had to stay together), he mostly turtled up on one objective in his deployment zone, and was unable to shoot me off of all of the other objectives. As an aside, this was the only game of the three where my talos made it into CC - He charged the tau command unit, took 2 wounds from overwatch, killed 2 drones, and was promptly cut down by fusion blades.
Final Score: Win 8 - 3

So, I did pretty well, despite having a bad first game, and despite having to fight Tau all three games. In battle points, I came in around #7 or #8 out of 22 players (the sheet with the standings wasn't presented in score order - I counted about 14 scores below me, and I tied with someone else, but I didn't check to see if there were any ties in the scores above me).

Thanx for the write up! Good showing!

You must be getting pretty good at dealing with codex riptide after all that. How many did you face, like 9?
Got any tips for us vs tide and ghostkeel spam?
Would you change your list if you had to do it again?

Those kabies must have been blessed by the dice gods to kill a riptide in CC, they have 1 attack, 2 on the charge, need 6s to wound and he's got a 2+ and possibly FNP.

I'm impressed with your Mandrakes in game 2! Against Tau they were lucky to survive even a turn, let alone all game on the only objective!

Painjunky wrote:

Those kabies must have been blessed by the dice gods to kill a riptide in CC, they have 1 attack, 2 on the charge, need 6s to wound and he's got a 2+ and possibly FNP.

Yeah. I did get lucky. He didn't take FNP, thankfully. Also, if the riptide didn't have 2 wounds on it already, then I probably wouldn't have succeeded. I got lucky that he failed a 2+ save on the first round of attacks (which I charged, so I had double my usual attacks), and on the 2nd turn of cc, I got some really good rolls and put 3 wounds on him, and 2 of his save dice were 1's.

I'm not sure what I would have done differently, offhand. It is *really* a bad match up, any way you slice it. The Tau from the first game were just optimized to wreck anything that I could bring to the table. As (sort of a) consolation, after the game, the guy from game 1 said that he had expected the fight to be a lot easier than it was.

Perhaps a unit or two of Grotesques might have been useful. Getting the Talos into cc would have helped, but it's just too slow, and overwatch from Tau can really hurt it. However, in the first game, my opponent spent a lot of firepower targeting it because he was *really* afraid of it getting too close. So, they do still make a very good bullet sponge/distraction.

Basically, I found that if you can get into cc with the suits, even if it's just to tie them up for a turn or two, it's a *major* help. Even shutting down one riptide removes the use of a lot of firepower. Sure, they're monstrous creatures, but they also only have WS2 and 3 attacks.

Count Adhemar wrote:

I'm impressed with your Mandrakes in game 2! Against Tau they were lucky to survive even a turn, let alone all game on the only objective!

In game 2, the deployment type was hammer and anvil, with the relic in the middle of the board. With the rest of my army rushing forward into his deployment zone, he was more concerned with them than the mandrakes. He did at some point try to deep strike a unit of crisis suits near the relic, but his initial target was my ravager, rather than my mandrakes. They got shot to death by my venoms, a nearby warrior unit, and balefire in the following turn. This particular player, for whatever reason, didn't take many missile systems. He had lots of plasma gun type weapons and such.


In game 3 They hid behind a huge rock near an objective for almost the entire game. I think my opponent either forgot about them, or disregarded them... until he moved the ghostkeel over to take the objective, and the mandrakes came running over from around the corner. I got at least one wound in from balefire prior to the charge (he had already used his countermeasures earlier in the game, so they shot at full BS), and the lone jetbike that was supporting got a wound from HoW. He took another wound in cc from the mandrakes, didn't dish out any in return, failed his morale check, and got overrun.

So, strangely enough, mandrakes might have been MVP for this tourney. I just threw them in for infiltration and objective taking shenanigans.