Raiding the New Tau

I'd been looking forward to this one for ages!
Obviously always scary fighting Tau, or any new codex lately, so this was almost worrying.
Anyway:

The armies

Archon/Shadowfield/Agoniser/Phantasm/Armour of Mis/Venom
4 Incubi
4 Mandrakes (to limit his infiltration)
2 fully splintery gunboats (racks + cannon)
Naked RJF
2 x 3 caltrop reavers
Haywire scourges
Spirit Probe Dark Artisan


Optimised Stealth Cadre (two stealth teams and a ghostkeel)
These get +2 cover if 12+" away, ignores cover and +1BS
A different cadre involving:
Crisis Commander + two crisis mates, bursts and fusions
Two breacher teams (nasty new short range power Tau)
Vanilla Fire warrior team
Hammerhead
Riptide
Pirhana
These can overwatch for each other within 12"

The set up:
We rolled the first Maelstrom mission, and agreed only one marker in each DZ. I placed my first marker near the right-hand table edge of his DZ in cover, assuming his Stealth Cadre would go there, and got the rest as far from there as I could. It worked and he set up his cover-ignoring 2+ cover saving cadre where I could basically ignore it until I saw fit.

My other markers were in the open, so I could use jink saves where he wasn't ignoring cover, and he wouldn't get to boost his cover more than I wanted him to. Since he took the bait with the stealth guys he wouldn't be infiltrating, so my mandrakes were plopped 18" away in covered plain sight just to see how much fire they'd take. Everyone else gathered on the left flank and got ready to jink railgun fire.

THE FIGHT:
Straight away we both drew "hold some objectives" cards. I didn't have to travel far for mine, but he did, and I was shocked to see a bunch of fire warriors running towards me with short range assault guns blazing. These guys are seriously weird. Lost the mandrakes to the combined fire of the hammerhead, crisis team and backfield fire warrriors, so they were a good distraction for one turn. Lonely stealth cadre forced some jetbikes to jink. My scourges (the only source of anti-tank because I hadn't expected a hammerhead!) failed at the one-bomb, and took 2HP.

Next turn, the riptide tried to deepstrike and screwed up. I'd tried to create one obvious deep striking "safe zone" around an objective I didn't need, within charge distance of several units, so I'd be able to tie it up after one round of shooting. It mishapped into Ongoing 3 times in total, so we'll hear from the ripper in turn 4. The crisis team legged it past a raider and blew it up, but the 4 survivors were ready to kill, and ended one breacher team with the help of the Archon's venom. The scourge survived another turn of return-fire with the Hammerhead by some kind of miracle. The stealth cadre were still not doing anything, on the other side of the board with nobody bothering to engage in a firefight.

Turn 3, the crisis team and breachers somehow have my left side surrounded (!) and I've lost one squad of my reavers. The razorwing appeared, followed by the DA. This was the change to engage the stealth suits and I popped the monsters down behind them, confident they could weather the storm. The batplane hosed down most breacher team no.2 which ran thanks to my Archon's miserable presence, and even took a couple of soulfright wounds (at -3 Ld, since the DA weren't too far away.) Archon proceeded to charge and wipe the third fire warrior squad, and head starboard, toward the stealth cadre. The scourges, still alive, finally finished the hammerhead. The surviving gunboat grabbed another objective, outmaneuvering the envelopment of my flank, and did a huge amount of damage to the crisis team. Most of my VPs that turn were from "kill something somehow" cards.

T4 had the riptide come in. My opponent must have seen the end, because he used all that firepower on killing the remaining 3 scourge. It was promptly poisoned to death by the survivors of gunboat one, the entirety of gunboat two and the Venom. I didn't get to use my multiple assault tactic on it, but I'm sure it would've worked. I at least got to dictate where he came in! The DA, who had taken not a single wound from the stealth guys' shooting, stormed in for a multi-charge and killed or overran every stealth suit and drone there. The RJF had done a quick "seeya later" to angle back for a quick strike on the pirhana that had just arrived from reserve, but the incubi charged and killed it anyway.

T5 was just the cleanup. A couple of falling back fire warriors/drones and the ghostkeel went down to the full force of my army, even as they were in position to get that turn's objectives.

Aftermath:
This was really my first time messing with objective placement for a purpose, and I think it worked. It helped that he kept drawing "take Obj4" when that was the one his stealth cadre was on.
Duly wary of moving units out on their own, he had hundreds of points sitting on that one marker, and though their firepower is terrifying for a paper army that has to jink, they did next to no damage.

In contrast, the other flank had no ignores cover at all, except the SMS on the riptide that kept missing its Deep Strike. I think my objective placement helped there too. Placing objectives in the open, surrounding the only open area, I tried to guarantee the riptide would be in the most danger when it landed. It did turn out that way, in the end.

Anyway; on this cover-respecting, crazy-overwatching side of the board, charging was the last thing I wanted to do before the enemy were whittled down a bit. The aggressive breacher team tactics, though shocking at first, made it easy to break his formation's coherency by baiting them forward and killing enough of them to force a fall back. Once nobody was overwatching, the Archon and Incubi could go to work. I lost a couple to S6AP3 shooting, but overall it was alright. It might not have worked on a more experienced player, but it's worth a passing thought if you find yourself having to mess with Breacher formations.

Thanks for reading! Obviously feel free to ask away. I sincerely apologise for the lack of pictures, but we had a lot of games to fit in that day.

EDIT: Duh, the actual result. I won 13-3 on VPs (and all my D3 rolls were 1s!) and also got to table him in turn 5.

I am going to be honest, at first I just skim read this thinking you would loose. But:
WELL DONE SIR!
That is all.