1000pts versus Tau

So I don't know anyone in the hobby so rely on there being someone around willing to give me their time and patience at the local GW. The kind soul tonight was a chap called Neil with 1000pts of his Tau.

To keep it simple for we just played for victory points destroyed, so no objectives or anything just straight up mash there face in.

My list was:

Baron

1 Helliarch with stun claw
13 Hellions

9 Kabalites with splinter cannon
1 sybarite with venom blade
Raider with dark lance, splinter racks and flicker field

3 Trueborn with 1 dark lance

1 Klaivex with demiklaives and onslaught
4 Incubi
Venom with dual splinter cannons

6 Reaver Jetbikes with 1 Heat lance and 2 x Cluster caltrops

All in all coming to 999 points if I have done my sums correctly (anyone care to check?)

Neil had (as far as I remember):

1 Ethereal
1 Darkstrider
6 Vespids
2 medium squads of pathfinders
1 large squad of fire warriors
1 medium squad of firewarriors
and 1 medium/large squad of drones and commanders

The deployment was as this:



Both my incubi and kabalites were loaded in there transports, with the help of the Baron(ess) I got first turn and there was no night fight.

I rolled my warlord trait as all models have move through cover (ruins) and stealth which makerlight negated) But HUZZAH! I rolled 6 for my combat drugs

On my first turn I moved the raider up into cover and shot into the pathfinders with all my squad snapshotting and the single dark lance wounding and killing 3-4 of them. The reavers jumped down behind the ruins and both the venom and the hellions worked up the other side of the board with the venom entirely out of view and the hellion half and half.



Neil's first turn involved stripping 2 hull  points of my raider (I think I passed 4 flickerfield saves out of 6), killing 8 Hellions 3 of which FNP brought back from the brink, and picking of the lone dark lance Trueborn who I had forgotten was there and hadn't shot with him in my first round.

My second turn movement phase... The reavers turboboost diagonally across the board and claim 7 firewarriors lives with the remainder scarpering after rolling 12 for leadership even though in range of the ethereal.

The venom moves out to unload Dakka and allows the incubi to 6 inch dismount ready for assault. The remaining hellions and baron move around the ruins to assault the small pathfinders and drone squads. I left the raider where it was as I felt the rapid fire range shooting with splinteracks would be worth them going up in smoke..





So the splinter racks reeeaallly helped thin the racks of the large fire warrior squad:



And the hellions minced the rest of the fleshy tau before getting into a protracted fight with the Drones:



At the same time the incubi charged the vespids who took 3 down with overwatch (AP3 guns apparently!), and the vespids subsequently hit and run in neil's next go to the other side of the fire warrior.

In Neil's second go he wrecked by raider by stripping the final hull point wrecking it and providing cover to my kabalites (I think this was what should have happened i seemed to go to easily on my warriors, any comments?) And he polished off my incubi with no trouble whatsoever.

We traded a couple of injuries a piece in the combat with hellions and drones and remained tied.

In my third go the reavers turboboosted back across the board demolishing eve more tau! The Venom moved over the kabalites to pour more poison into them and the warriors did the same by skipping over the wreckage for rapid fire range shooting:



The shooting further reduced the squad while the combat ended in a draw with no wounds.

In Neil's third go dark strider the remaining warriors and the remaing vespids piled shots into my kabalites who were thinned by 3-4 but passed there leadership test on a 9 so kudos to the Sybarite!

In my fourth turn the reavers turboboosted again (we lazily only hopped them over the units as there wasn't a great deal left of his army), again nicking 4 or so souls to oblivion, the etheral took 3 splinter cannon and 3 rapid firing splinter rifles to remove him! And the combat ended in a woundless draw again.



Essentially Neil tried to shoot me again further in turn 4 before being wiped by my shooting in turn 5 and the final combat:



Was resolved in my turn 6.

This left me with my venom, all 6 reavers, 5 kabalites including my sybarite, 4 hellions and the Baroness on the table and Neil's Tau all wiped out.

It was great fun (Neil had only just returned to 40k with a WHFB hiatus) and the most pleasing thing was the beastmen player on the table next to me telling me my army was pretty

I forgot to mention FNP pain saved a lot more of my hellions in the combat and was a very helpful roll on the combat drugs chart.

The majority of his army was wiped out by the reavers.

I had a large slice of luck but I like to think that a little bit of the victory came from just getting up into his face so early on that he couldn't shoot everything which allowed my reavers to run rampant and bladevaning everything in the face.

I hope I didn't write to stultifyingly and hope the pictures are ok and easy to follow

Dragon

Great fight!

One lesson learned for the future: Ask your opponent what his units can do. Finding out the painful way after Ap3 overwatch ist bad . It might also be good for another unit to tank overwatch for the incubi who you really want to preserve.

I am quite surprised your hellion squad made it this far, they're kind of made of paper and have a huge "hit me" sign above them. Congrats on making these work.

Yeah that was a painful lesson! Especially as they're the prettiest models/conversions in my painted army... Completely blanked the concept of tanking overwatch thanks for reminding me.

TBH the Hellions would have been considerably poorer had it not been for rolling 6 on combat drugs so they could take feel no pain, handy that almost all of his weapons were strength 5.

Getting them into combat turn 2 certainly helped!

Thanks for comments

Props on the win, and your army IS pretty!
Nice to see DE beating the silly Tau again. When your raider got wrecked and your kabalites got cover, sounds like you did it right. Not sure what you're asking about for that one. The only time it would be worse for your kabbies is if the raider exploded.
I've also experienced success with Reavers vs Tau, though in my last game mine got killed as soon as they turbo-boosted. Props to you for keeping them alive!
And it's awesome to see someone using Hellions successfully! How did their assault 2 shooting work out for you? Did you shoot before charging?

Regarding your list, having the Klaivex with Onslaught & Demiklaives may potentially be a bit of overkill IMO. I'm not sure how you feel about it, but that's 50pts potentially you could be using to either add a Dark Lance to that trueborn squad, or straight up buy a haemonculus to give the hellions a pain token on deployment then stand in front of the trueborn to tank shots. Just my 2c.

Thanks LC, I'm glad my painting is meeting approval!

Regarding the wrecking in my head I thought they would still take damage from .. falling or something but I found the bit in the BRB that covers why they don't.

The fact that he has all is guys in a line on one table edge meant I could just zip over him repeatedly

The assault 2 shooting with the hellions actually nearly took me out of charge range! I used the same blob against Eldar yesterday and they lasted till the end (2 + Baron) and did away with a whole squad of warp spiders after killing the autarch and a wraithguard. They did roll FNP again in that game but in general I've had good success with them!

Your dead on with the Klaivex, at the time I was trying to use mostly painted stuff so opted to flesh points out with upgrades rather than add other models.

I now have a whole host of trueborn converted from old incubi and painted (soon to be shown in my lovely project log hint hint hint   ) and they did very well against the Eldar all things considered

Thanks for the comments