Showing posts with label Tau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tau. Show all posts

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Battle Report Marines V Tau

Battle report

7th edition has been out a while now and I have not yet tried using an Unbound list. I have read the usual whinging on the web that hey are over powered and cheese lists destined to bring the end of the universe, but I wanted to try them out for myself.

I think the first major thing was to let my opponent know what I was thinking, he agreed so he knew I was taking an unbound. We also agreed we would be playing maelstrom missions, as these I think are the best to play and would balance the unbound potential to take whatever I wanted to its lack of having objective secured.

My list was:
Chapter Tactics – Salamanders
BRAY'ARTH ASHMANTLE
5 Assault terminators (5*TH/SS)
5 Assault terminators (5*LC)
5 Assault terminators (1*TH/SS, 4*LC)
5 Terminators (no upgrades)
5 Terminators (Assault Cannon)
5 Terminators (Heavy Flamer)
5 Terminators (Cyclone Missile Launcher)
This was a venerable dread leading members of the 1st company in to battle, hopefully more Tesco cheddar than some Colston Basset Stilton.

My opponent (Wulfen_Kind) list was:
Dark Stider
4 *12 Firewarriors in Devilfish
Stealth Squad
Pathfinder Squad
2 Hammer heads with Ion Cannons
TAU XV107 R'VARNA BATTLESUIT

We played mission 1 where each turn we had to have 3 objectives to get, and the set up was diagonally. I won the roll and set up 3 squads and Ashmantle, the 3 Assault terminator squads and the heavy flamer squad went in to reserve (forgetting that they are not Deathwing and would not start coming in on turn 1)
Another slight hiccup in my plan was WK stealing the initiative and getting to start he shooting on my straight away.
I am only going to do highlights as I did not take detailed notes throughout the game

Turn 1 – I only lost 3 terminators to shooting, most of it was out of range, but one squad did kill 2 of the terminators. 2 1’2 on 3 dice rolled.....I had a horrible feeling 1s would haunt me all game! More importantly he picked up all his objectives. In my turn I was only able to achieve 1 of them. 3-1 WK

Turn 2- a stellar turn from WK. He drew objective 46 (control all objectives and gain 3+D3VP’s). He had enough objective secured stuff to sit next to my squads and still claim the objective. He got all of them, and 4 VPs in addition to the 2 other ones totalled 6 for that turn. This move did leave his forces spread out and close to my units. I only lost another 3 terminators, so still no first blood. In my turn all of the assault terminators turned up and dropped close to his lines. I got first blood, but managed to lose a remaining terminator in a squad to over-watch fire!  I got another bonus VP for Ashmantle killing a vehicle in close combat. The score was 9-3 to WK

At this point my big problem was covering the board (and on one turn I got a real duff objective or destroying a building) being able to collect the objectives if and when they came up. I changed tactics a bit and went for the kill. If I could kill enough and stop him scoring more I may be able to get objectives to kill thing and get lucky on being near an objective.

This was going to plan, and by the and o nturn 5 I corned his big battle suit and killed a drone in combat.....he failed the following break test and ran off the board! He only had a fleeing pathfinder, a Hammer Head and a devilfish (down to 1HP) left on the board. I still had 10 terminators and Ashamantle left, but the score was 12-8 WK. I could just do this with another turn.......YES!

Turn 6 – he got no more points and tried to manoeuvre stuff away from my guys. In my turn I drew objectives I was near and I had linebreaker, so the game was 12-12, but I was able to take out the last of his stuff and clear the table of Xenos scum.

In the end it turned out to be a very close game indeed.

What have I learnt?

1. Mobile units with eth objective secured rule are a must have!
2. Big expensive models don’t really get their points back. Both Ashmantle and the big suit killed a bit but were generally ignored and didn’t make their points back. Ashmantle could do with a drop pod but in the current marine codex that is unavailable for him without ally BA/SW shenanigans. He got a bonus VP and may have done more against a more aggressive army
3. Unbound can be fun and not necessarily chesses fests. They are hard to play with against Battle forged list and playing Maelstrom mission. They would probably be quite strong in the older Emperors Will games
4. Maelstrom missions are a great leveller, and I think they are the best part of 7th edition, to win games it is not about just killing the enemy (difficult to say when I won the game by killing all the enemy!) but other games that I have played have showed this. Previously all the other missions you would sit about killing each other for 4 turns then go grab an objective with what was left. Now form turn to turn things can change and you always need to be able to get around the whole board on any given turn.
Pictures

Battlefield

The Boys


The Enemy


 
 
Mid Game
 


Not sure how i won with dice rolling like this....

A close up of my current terrain project:
 
Must get on an finish off Ashmantle, and the terms, and scenery and......on and on and on.

Saturday 22 June 2013

Tau Riptide - Sexy Beast - Gangnam Style

Hi All,

RedMist here, been quiet for a while again... but not idle. As you know the new Tau Codex came out last month so I bit the GW bullet, bought the book, and dusted off my Tau army, which has sat in a box for over 5 years, and so begins my 3rd sphere expansion.

What a change has been made, a competitive army at last, 3 games down and 2 wins under my belt, against the might of Hendrix's Imperial Guard and Extreme's Grey Knights.

Now Worcester War 13 is looming, next Saturday to be precise, and so I wondered what I wanted to take, well no worries there Tau it is.

Well I love a big beast so what better than to lead my army to total victory than the new XV104 RIPTIDE, and what a monster it is...





My that's a big one...

As you can see I've mounted him on the flying base, why not, after all he has a jump pack. And he's so big anyway that he can't hide on a battlefield.

I chose a clean, crisp look to my Tau, battle green colour scheme with boltgun metal detail. No fancy Tau markings on mine, these are battle suits.

Here are a couple of shots of one of my Crisis Teams, never leave your colony without them...







Next up was Pathfinders, the new box set was full of new goodies, gotta love all those new drones, so built a few to add to my metal existing ones, and a few new metals thanks to Hendrix's son Z.






I started my Cadre as a Firewarrior only one, but with the addition of sniper round upgrades for the Kroot it just seemed rude not to have some, so ebay purchases later and a box from Z again... I have Kroot, and I love these guys, cheap as chips, and can be devastating, just as Hendrix!

So here they are, no cadre should leave Vor'La without them...






One last thing, I'd never been a lover of Ethereals but these guys now add a couple of nice buffs to your army, so in he goes, Honour Blade and all; as if he's gonna be fighting hand to hand LOL. If he does, I'm done anyway, for as we know, Tau don't do hand to hand!


Well that's me signing off for now. Looking forward to seeing you guys at WW13, new and old, and let battle commence... ion weapons to maximum charge.

Red Mist... out.