1000 points to go up against Tau Battleforce (Battleforce out of box)

I've been reading Mushkilla's battle report and I'm very inspired by the Reavers.

I have a friend who bought the Tau Battleforce (we're both beginners) and we're going to try a match.

Here's what I'm aiming for:

HQ - Succubus {Venom Blade} = 70
Troops - 9x Wyches (Hekatrix {Venom Blade, PGL}) {Haywire Grenades} = 133
Dedicated Transport - Raider (Flickerfield) = 70
Troops - 10x Kabalite Warriors {1x Splinter Cannon} = 110
Dedicated Transport - Raider (Flickerfield, Splinter Racks) = 80
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Heat Lances} = 249
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Caltrop Pods} = 273

985 points total

I don't know if I should have the Raiders have the Disintegrator Cannons or the Dark Lances or one of each.

Alternately, I could have the Reavers with the Caltrops drop the Caltrops in favor of the Heat Lances, which would give me 39 points to add one additional Reaver to one squad or to upgrade the Succubus a bit or put some upgrades on the Raiders.

Alpha strike with everyone on the board. Get the Warriors into shooting threat range. Double bladevain a unit to get one of the Reaver Squads a Token. Get the Wyches in threat range to charge a softened unit, maybe the unit the Warriors fire at. Have the Warriors sail around and shoot at range as much as possible, possibly even screening for the Wyches as much as possible. The Reavers will always be looking to end their move in cover as much as possible. Hopefully at 1,000 points, 4 squads (2 Raiders and 2 groups of Reavers) will be enough for target saturation. If the Warriors can disembark and camp an objective, then that would be 5 groups to saturate (although I don't know if this is the most efficient use of the Warriors and/or Raider).

These will be my target prioritizations per squad:
Reavers - Heat Lance Tanks/Mech, bladevain Infantry
Warriors - Infantry, GEQ, MEQ or small TEQ squads with the Raider Disintegrators
Wyches/Succubus - softened Infantry or Tanks/Mech

Are there any glaringly obvious gaps in my list?

Any comment and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Oh dear! I have got someone to irresponsibly spend their money on those expensive reaver models (I should really put a disclaimer in those battle reports).

It looks like you have a reasonable core army list there.

A few pointers:

1 ) Flickerfields are not really needed any more because of the Jink rule: your skimmers get a 5+ cover save from moving (a 4+ for moving flat out) and raiders only needing to be 25% obscured to get a cover save. So you can save yourself some points there.

2 ) Darklances or Disintigrators is really something you should tweak from experience, it depends on your local meta game and whether you think you already have enough anti-tank.

3 ) Reavers don't need to be in cover any more again due to jink & skilled rider: meaning they have a 4+ cover save for moving and a 3+ cover save when turboboosting (this is why the big squads work this edition, and why heatlances/assault are a lot less risky).

4 ) Caltrops or Heatlance, honestly I would go for more heatlances as they are a fantastic all-round weapon (against tanks and terminators). That being said a unit of 9 with caltrops reliably kill 5-6 marines a turn or 12+ fire warriors. I don't think the champion is necessary if you go for caltrops. Again I prefer flexibility over the raw killing power of caltrops. I also think in that with haywire wyches and 6 heat lances you would have more reliable anti tank. That being said the TAU battleforce only comes with a devilfish so your friend might not have much in the form of armour (though tau normally load up on hammerheads and piranhas).

5 ) Read and re-read the rules for transports, exploding and wrecked vehicles. Your raiders will get destroyed that is a dark eldar fact of life (everyone walks home) so it is important to get the most out of them when they do. When a vehicle explodes it leaves a wreckage which on page 105 is described as area terrain giving you a 4+ cover save, this can be a nice impromptu bastion for your warriors. For wyches it can be used differently, if you move your raider flat out and about 1" away from the unit you want to engage (don't do this with nasty assault units), this can do two things: Firstly the explosion will force any model within d6" to take a S3 hit (so you get a little bit of damage out of it). Secondly when it explodes your wyches are now in a wreckage, so 3+ cover with the PGL against anything that's within 8". The fire warriors won't be able to move back to get out of that 8" bubble (1+6= 7). Now depending on how far they decide to move away from you can choose to stay in the wreckage and charge out of it to get a 3+ cover save against overwatch although you will be charging through difficult terrain (remember fleet lets you re-roll any number of dice which makes it great for charging through difficult terrain). Rather counter-intuitively when a raider gets wrecked it does not leave a wreckage, it instead stays on the board (take it off it's stand) and counts as difficult and dangerous area terrain with a 5+ cover save (depending how you place it it can also block line of sight), the advantage of being wrecked over exploding is you don' take casualties and you get a 3" disembark move.

6 ) Fleet lets you re-roll one or more dice when charging. A rule of thumb here (unless you are charging ridiculous distances) is if you don't make the charge re-roll any dice that is 3 or less (of course you should re-roll both if say you have a 4 and a 3 and you need to charge 11 inches, as a 4 and a 6 would not be enough).

7 ) Venom blades are a personal preference thing, I find they are great all-round weapons and for the price of an agoniser you can get 4 of them. That being said agonisers are still a great option on a succubus so again it comes down to preference.

8 ) Night fight is your friend so learn those rules as well. Unfortunately it is also TAU's friend if your opponent takes Night Sun Filters (check your friends list for these, if for whatever reason he doesn't take them you have a huge advantage). Night fight gives you stealth/shrouding depending on how far away from your enemy you are, what's great about this is it combines with the jink saves that a lot of dark eldar units get.

9 ) When setting up terrain make sure you have line of sight blocking terrain you can deploy your raiders behind.

10 ) It's a common misconception that DE always want to go first (I generally prefer to go second), it's important to learn to play both!

Hope that helps!

Thank you so much for your advice.

I'm excited to give it all a try. I'm pretty sure that after I get my first game under my belt, that I'll be wanting to tweak things.

Thanks again.

Ok, so retweaking a bit:

HQ - Succubus {Venom Blade} = 70
Elite - 8x Hekatrix Blood Brides (Syren {Venom Blade, PGL}) {Haywire Grenades} = 145
Dedicated Transport - Raider = 60
Troops - 5x Wyches (Hekatrix {Venom Blade, PGL}) {Haywire Grenades} = 85
Dedicated Transport - Venom = 55
Troops - 10x Kabalite Warriors {1x Splinter Cannon} = 110
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Heat Lances} = 249
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Heat Lances} = 249

1023 points total

So here I've traded the Warriors' Raider for 5 more Wyches and a Venom, and upgraded the primary Wyches to Blood Brides. (I figure with the same load out of a "captain" with Venom Blade, PGL, and all around Haywire Grenades, the difference between Wyches and Blood Brides is only three points per Wych, and those three points per Wych buys an extra wound and an extra attack. Is there a down side?)

So now my Warriors can camp an objective and still put up fire support at 36 inches. And the Wyches can run screening for the Blood Brides as they both try to double team and overpower units. And all of this will be supported by the softening-up by the Reavers.

So I guess now I just need to find somewhere to trim 23 points. (One less Blood Bride puts me at 1008.)

This also puts five more sets of feet on the ground, but at the expense of the strength of a scoring unit of troops. But given the casualty rate one would expect in a Wych unit, this may not make a big difference. I'm not sure.

What do you think?

VoidDragon wrote:

Is there a down side?)

Yes, and it's a big one, they are not scoring. Five out of the six missions in the book revolve around objectives. This generally makes wyches more useful then Blood Brides/Gore Grooms.

Mushkilla wrote:

VoidDragon wrote:

Is there a down side?)

Yes, and it's a big one, they are not scoring. Five out of the six missions in the book revolve around objectives. This generally makes wyches more useful then Blood Brides/Gore Grooms.

Ok, final re-tweak (and this one takes my existing models and my budget into account, to build a decent size starter army at 1,000 points):

HQ - Succubus {Venom Blade} = 70
Troops - 9x Wyches (Hekatrix, Venom Blade, PGL) {Haywire Grenades} = 133
Dedicated Transport - Raider = 60
Troops - 10x Kabalite Warriors {1x Splinter Cannon} = 100
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion, Venom Blade) {3x Heat Lances} = 249
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion, Venom Blade) {3x Heat Lances} = 249
Heavy Support - Ravager (Shock Prow, Enhanced Aether Sails, Flickerfields, Night Shields) = 135

996 Points Total

The Battleforce Box Set has a big chunk of this in it already. Just need to get some more Reavers and the one Ravager (and the Succubus).

I think this will be my core base army, and as I get more experience, I can start expanding components I like and adding new components for higher point games. This feels like a lot of firepower for 1,000 points and makes me feel like I've just consumed a few hundred souls from a grueling massacre.<evil grin>

Mushkilla,
I'm very interested in the Seer Jet Bike Council you've alluded to in other posts. If you have the time, could you PM me with some more details (or refer me to another post if its been described elsewhere)? (I don't have the Eldar codex yet. I may have to get that too, at some point in the near future.)

Thanks again for the wonderful community support here at the Dark City. You guys are awesome!

The "Shock Prow, Enhanced Aether Sails, Flickerfields" are a waste on the ravager, I'm a bit worried the warriors don't have a raider, but that can always be fixed later I guess.

As for the DE/Eldar list...

Here is my 1000 point Doom Reaver list (experimental):

HQ
Haemi

TROOPS
5 wyches, Haywire
Raider, Disintigrator
5 wyches, Haywire
Raider, Disintigrator,

FAST ATTACK
9 Reavers, 3 heat lances, arena champion, agoniser
9 Reavers, 3 heat lances, arena champion, agoniser

ALLIES

HQ
Farseer, jetbike, doom

TROOPS
3 Guardian Jetbikes, cannon

The haemonculus goes with the reaver unit that has the farseer (to give them a pain token, he can the join the wyches or hide somewhere) this forces your opponent to make a tough choice between shooting the FNP reavers with the farseer or the regular reavers. The Guardian jetbikes hang back and shoot, and can capture an objective towards the end of the game. The farseer casts Doom(all attacks against the target re-roll to wound) on stuff before the reavers bladevane things (increases their damage by 25%). The reavers have agonisers because they work well with doom in CC. All in all Doom just makes reavers a lot scarier.

The problem I have with this list is it all relies on Doom too much, you have to pass a psychic test and units also get a 6+ deny the wych save against it (5+ if they have a psyker). So its not always reliable. Brutal when it works though.

Mushkilla wrote:

I'm a bit worried the warriors don't have a raider, but that can always be fixed later I guess.

How about if I break down the Ravager to pump up the Warriors' unit to two Venom Warrior units:

HQ - Succubus {Venom Blade}
Troops - 9x Wyches (Hekatrix {Venom Blade, PGL}) {Haywire Grenades}
Dedicated Transport - Raider
Troops - 5x Kabalite Warriors
Dedicated Transport - Venom (Dual Splinter Cannons, Night Shields)
Troops - 5x Kabalite Warriors
Dedicated Transport - Venom (Dual Splinter Cannons, Night Shields)
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Heat Lances}
Fast Attack - 9x Reavers (Arena Champion {Venom Blade}) {3x Heat Lances}

1,001 Points Total

(Are the Night Shields worth the points on the Venoms if the Warriors are trying to hang back and shoot from range?)

This gives me more multiple small units (and plenty of Anti-Infantry to boot) and all of them scoring, with regards to objectives.

Side note:
I picked up a Succubus blister over the weekend. (Its a really cool model, by the way!) But it only came with an Agonizer in one hand and a spear (I'm guessing a close combat weapon) for the other hand. How do you represent a Venom Blade for the model? (Since you technically have a Splinter Pistol/Close Combat Weapon, and you would upgrade the CCW to a Blade/Agonizer and potentially upgrade the pistol for a Blaster, why doesn't the model have a pistol in at least one hand?)

This is compounded by the fact that in a box of Wyches, that the Hekatrix options on the sprue are only an Agonizer or a Power Sword. There is no Venom Blade in the box. There are plenty of sword/dagger type weapons in the box. I could use one of them and try to green stuff the capillaries and toxin reservoir (but that's a lot of very small detail work, not that that won't stop me attempting it). But how do you represent Venom Blades on the models for "what you see is what you get"?

I'm curious as to how you have assembled your Succubi models?

(Also, I do plan on magnetizing the arms, so I can trade out upgrade options.)

Mushkilla wrote:

Battle Report 7

Your newest Battle Report was quite excellent! (As always.)

Thanks!

That wouldn't be a bad idea, you could always get a ravager when you expand to 1500-1750pts. The night shields work well on venoms when you keep enemies at 24".

I use the powersword as a venom blade as it's very similar to the venom blade in the book. You could give you succubus the powersword and the spear (she could always have the pistol in a holster). Then you could just give your hekatrix a normal blade, she will have a phantasm grenade launcher so will stand out anyway. I normally paint the edge of poisoned weapons with some bright green and give the weapon a green ink wash, that way it looks poisoned and some highlights.

Or you could use the spear as a venom blade (again using green to show that it's poisoned), and give her a pistol. As a general rule the pictures of the weapons in the book are just examples (the agoniser is normally a whip, but can come in many different forms, sword, axe etc). The only one you need to be careful with is power weapons (personally I think this was a bad move by GW).

Hope that helps.