BR21: The Black Buzzards VS New Tau - 1500pts

A Battle against the new Tau Empire codex!

The Armies:

Black Buzzards (DE)

HQ
Archon, blaster, venom blade, shadow field

TROOPS
7 Warriors, blaster
Raider
10 Warriors, blaster, splinter cannon
Raider
10 Warriors, blaster, splinter cannon
Raider
10 Warriors, blaster, splinter cannon
Raider

FAST ATTACK
9 Reavers, 3 blasters, arena champion, venom blade
9 Reavers, 3 blasters, arena champion, venom blade

HEAVY SUPPORT
Ravager
Ravager

Tau Empire (TE)

HQ
Fire Blade, marker drone

ELITES
3 Stealth Suits, Burst Cannon, advanced targeting
2 Stealth Suit, Fusion blasters, target lock
1 Shas'vre, Burst Cannon, Markerlight & Target Lock, advanced targeting, marker drone

3 Stealth Suits, Burst Cannon, advanced targeting
2 Stealth Suit, Fusion blasters, target lock
1 Shas'vre, Burst Cannon, Markerlight & Target Lock, advanced targeting, marker drone

TROOPS
12 Firewarriors
10 Kroot, precision ammo
3 Krootox
1 Kroot hound
10 Kroot, precision ammo
3 Krootox
1 Kroot hound
10 Kroot, precision ammo
3 Krootox
1 Kroot hound

FAST ATTACK
5 Marker drones
5 Marker drones

HEAVY
Hammer Head, Rail Gun, twin linked smart missiles, disruption pod
Hammer Head, Rail Gun, twin linked smart missiles, disruption pod

Mission: Crusade (4 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fight on first turn: No
First Turn: TE
Warlord Trait DE: Princeps of deceit
Warlord Trait TE: Tenacity (warlord and his unit has FNP within 3" of an objective)
Combat Drugs: Adrenalight (+1A)

Deployment:

He set up his fire warriors on his home objective, and deployed his hammer heads centrally, the drones were positioned behind them. I decided to keep two raiders, my reavers and my archon in reserve. I spread out my deployment to minimise the infiltration range of the kroot, and limit fire lanes as best I could. The raiders were empty and their respective warriors started in cover near by.

Infiltration:

The Kroot surround.

Turn 1 (TE):

The Fireblade and his marker drone fire into the left most ravager, the fireblades markerlight hit. The kroot on the far left fire into the same ravager, using the markerlight token to increase their BS by 1. The krootguns failed to do anything but a lucky precision shot sniper round manages to penetrate, fortunately the cover from the trees negated it. The left marker drone team fired it's markerlights into the same ravager scoring four hits! The hammer head next to the drones fired at the ravager at BS6 and ignored cover (Thanks to the markerlight hits), the ravager exploded. The stealth team on the left used it's target locks to split fire, the two fusion blasters firing at the ravager destroying it, the rest of the squad fire at the Dark Eldar warriors in cover, the warriors went to ground for a 3+ cover save, two warriors died (the splinter cannon and the blaster, damn advanced targeting systems!). The stealth team also caused a marker light hit (the suits come with multitrackers so the shas'vre can fire his markerlight and his burst cannon at the same time). The other stealth team fired into the same squad at BS4 thanks to the markerlight counter, killing the remaining 8 warriors! The Kroot in the centre of the board fired into the left most raider destroying it. The right most kroot fire into the last remaining raider also destroying it. The second marker drone team fires into the last remaining dark eldar warrior squad scoring two hits. The hammer head fires a cover ignoring (markerlights) sub-munition round at the warriors and it didn't scatter (it scattered 4, but the hammer head is BS4). The blast killed 8 warriors, and the last two were killed by the snapshots from the twin-linked smart missile system. The Tau are victorious!

Overview

Wow table in one turn, had I deployed my whole army I can imagine I would have been tabled in two turns.

Hope you enjoyed the report!

For the rematch: BR22: The Black Buzzards VS Tau (Rematch) - 1500pts

I can so see the new discussion raging on the internet... tau are too strong.

I think it would have been ok if I went first or there was nightfight. But reserve seems too risky against tau as they can wipe out what you have on the board quite easily (flyer heavy armies beware!). That being said if you deploy your whole army then you are going to take one hell of a beating and most likely be crippled. I'm going to take another look at Dark Eldar Coven units.

Errr...wow!

Hmmmmm...this doesn't bode well does it?

Lol, I was just telling my Tau playing buddy how sweet Kroot are, and he was laughing at me. I also told him that Kroot were gonna become the go-to troop choice for Tau and he laughed even harder. You hit the nail on the head Mushkilla...

They sure are! Cheap infiltrating troops that can put pressure on your opponents objective, get a 4+ cover save in forests (2+ when they go to ground), have three move shoot auto cannons, the choice between regular and sniper ammo depending on the situation (making them rend and wound on 4+ when they need too), and best of all they benefit from marker lights. They can put a tone of early pressure on and those six S7 shots will always be hitting what they want to hit thanks to infiltrate and being able to move and shoot. With the 2+ cover save when going to ground it will be hard to shift them off objectives.

Kroot just seem miles better than fire warriors, and really help tau with the objective game and can secure the midfield really well.

Urgh, I've never seen that before.

Did your opponent tailor his list? At first glance it seems to lack much to take down flyers or punch through power armour. Haven't looked at the new codex yet, so don't have a solid impression of this yet.

Did you have any LOS-blocking terrain on the board? You should try it again when you can actually hide some of your units properly (as recommended for a fair game in the rulebook).

You never seem to get 1st turn or nightfighting or successfully seize in games vs very shooty opponents do you?! Did you not have another game straight away? Shame to have to pack them all away so soon!

Am now itching to have a crack at them!

Ouch. That was fast.

But I'm sure you've done likevice to another player with your DE

:-|

Squierboy wrote:

Did your opponent tailor his list? At first glance it seems to lack much to take down flyers or punch through power armour. Haven't looked at the new codex yet, so don't have a solid impression of this yet.

Nope he has always gone for the weight of fire approach against marines, though he is considering trying out one of the new ion cannon hammer head after this game. As he said at the end of the game: "Imagine if that was a 10 man marine squad instead of warriors and that was a cover ignoring S8 AP3 large blast from an ion cannon! These markerlights! "

Squierboy wrote:

Did you have any LOS-blocking terrain on the board? You should try it again when you can actually hide some of your units properly (as recommended for a fair game in the rulebook).

A reasonable amount (the white ruin things), but infiltrate got around most of it. It really strips most of the advantages of going second, as he got to see my deployment and then set up his infiltrators.

Squierboy wrote:

You never seem to get 1st turn or nightfighting or successfully seize in games vs very shooty opponents do you?!

Why do you think I try and build my army to go second?

Squierboy wrote:

Did you not have another game straight away? Shame to have to pack them all away so soon!

No it was a back to the drawing board moment. I hate a list that auto loses given certain circumstances, and getting tabled if I go second against tau triggered my redesign clause. So I wanted to go over things and come up with something new.

Vasara wrote:

Ouch. That was fast.

But I'm sure you've done likevice to another player with your DE

Hehe, I'm not complaining. It's just making me reconsider the portal coven based army with reaver support that I was experimenting with a while ago.

Ouch! That looked painful.

Nice pics though, how did you do them?

Mushkilla wrote:

No it was a back to the drawing board moment. I hate a list that auto loses given certain circumstances, and getting tabled if I go second against tau triggered my redesign clause. So I wanted to go over things and come up with something new.

Yes it's pretty disheartening when you lose so quickly.
I might have tried it again without reserving anything. 1st move some of those LOS blockers so they aren't hugging the board edge, as they appear to be! Use the raiders to help block LOS to the ravagers/reavers (a virtue of the raider you often espouse)...spread out to limit the infiltrators...erm, fingers crossed he can't kill all your reavers turn 1! If you have any kind of force left after turn 1, you can attack the close-in infiltrators quite well and put him under pressure.
*Shrug* - never said it was gonna be a great plan!

Maybe we just have to accept that this kind of list is always going to give us a hard time....remember all those rhino-rush blood angels armies that used to be around once upon a time? I tried so hard to get them with my eldar, but it never quite worked out.

Thanks for putting up the report btw.

Ouchy.

I met some Tau at a tournament this last week, it was funn. He was a slow player and so was I as well so we had to finish after turn 2. I managed to winn, but if the game had gone on he would have wonn. (That was the old codex though.) Night fighting can make little didference as they can easaly ignore night fighting.

But tabeled 4 raiders? Are you shure he was playing it right?

Wow...

That seems crazy that the Tau were soooo effective. Is it possible that some rules were not totally interpreted correctly?

I just picked up the tau codex today, so I need to read through it and see if any lights go on.

Nice report!

Dark Templar wrote:

That seems crazy that the Tau were soooo effective. Is it possible that some rules were not totally interpreted correctly?

No. The only new rules we were using were markerlights (remove two tokens to ignore cover, remove one to increase BS by one, markerlights can't affect their own units). The other piece of equipment that was used was the advanced targeting system which just gives precision shot to the model with it, and target locks (lets the model fire at a different unit to the rest of it's squad). Everything else was: BRB rules (infiltrate, jetpack, shooting, movement), weapon profiles and unit profiles. Really simple stuff.

Remember 50% of my army was in reserve (two raiders full of warriors, and two large squads of reavers).

Wow, that looked... painful. Despite the fact that you did have good positioning to try and block some of the infiltrating kroot, he still took out half your force in a single turn.

If things had gone better, what would you have shot and had your Reavers come on, what would you have had them target?

A lot of the threats the Tau offer I see the Reavers being a good counter too, yet at the same time I see them dying horrifically to those Markerlights.

Lurking Evil wrote:

If things had gone better, what would you have shot and had your Reavers come on, what would you have had them target?

Assuming both squads came on. Probably the marker drones (they are also the easiest pain tokens), though it would be horribly exposed afterwords, 24 shots from the fire warriors, hammer head smart missiles (ignore cover), the stealth suits would be able to support (as they would have jumped back in their previous assault phase) so thats more S5 goodness and some markerlight hits, and the kroot in the middle would be in range too. A lot of firepower on the board and the whole board is completly covered. Makes it tough, the problem is you need to take out the marker drones, otherwise the reavers are toast, but the way the tau set up those drones are the bate for a serious trap. The Tau army would be able to shoot them (even the kroot in the bottom left corner could get three krootgun hits 48" range 6" move).

Kauyon

The jump shoot jump marker drones means you can't take them out at range because they will always be out of sight. Meaning you need to go get them, or be survivable enough to ignore them (marines).

So to go back to your question I'm not really sure what the reavers would go after.

EDIT: On another note Supporting overwatch affects whole units within 6" not just models:

Quote :

When an enemy unit declares a charge, all friendly models with this special rule in units within 6" of the charging unit's target can choose to fire Overwatch as if they were also targets of the charge. Remember that a unit can still onlyfire Overwatch once each phase

So basically if a unit is within 6" all friendly models in that unit can fire supporting overwatch, as far as I understand.

Still 1500 able to shoot down 750 in one turn is just mean.

After taking out my frustration on a few tau slaves (something I recommend to all Archon's as a thoroughly enjoyable pass time), I have decided to follow Squierboy's advice and have a rematch. Same mission, same lists, same terrain, same objectives. The only thing we decided to re-roll warlord traits (as the tau player wants to try some of the new Tau traits). I know the game is very unfavourable (going second, no nightfight), but it's under the hardest conditions that we can truly demonstrate our dominance over the week willed vermin of the galaxy.

Wish me luck!

You should give your warriors an inspiring speech before the battle, like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXGUNvIFTQw
It helped the men of the west
Good luck!

Good luck and godspeed! Your target should be to make it turn 2, the reputation of Commoragh depends on it!

I seriosly doubt that shooty rosters would stand any chance against Tau, it'll probably end with using Reavers as assault unit

wishing good luck isn't quite fit our theme, so i wish your opponents' dices be cursed and never roll 6's and 5's (Vassal quite often makes such things happen).

Thanks for all the luck, I've finished the second game, posting the report later managed to get to turn 2...These Tau...

Hijallo wrote:

I seriosly doubt that shooty rosters would stand any chance against Tau, it'll probably end with using Reavers as assault unit

To be honest I use reavers in assault all the time even agianst marines, nine of them with a pain token can do a nice two turn assault, and it can keep them safe from shooting.

Hijallo wrote:

(Vassal quite often makes such things happen).

I'm just using vassel to illustrate the reports. These are real games.

Assuming the game had gone on, how were you planning to use the reavers? Best case scenario I can see is they bladevane a unit when they enter, needing to be very lucky to make their points back, then get blown off the board by a load of S5 ignores cover shots.