Hello ATT,

I recently came home from university and plan to get a lot of games in. The purpose of this thread is to document my tactical progress and battle reports over the coming months to allow myself a chance to learn my mistakes with the help of my fellow generals here at ATT.

I’ve played one or two games almost every day at my local GW, and I’m trying hard to improve my army list, my deployment strategies and my play style. I have yet to win a game, but each time I play I do come closer to success. I’d like to share these battles, what I have learned, and hear your opinions on how I can improve my lists, deployment, and tactics further. I will be continuing to add more battles as they happen. Please comment, ask questions, and enjoy!

Game 1 5th edition: Dark Eldar
My first time returning to my local GW, I had brought a single carrying case containing my original 1000 army. I realize the list was not entirely optimized, but I figured I would start somewhere and work my way up to optimizing my list. It is as follows:

Shas'El
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT
-HWDC
-2 shield drones
3 XV8 'Helios' Battlesuits
-3 plasma rifles
-3 fusion blasters
-3 multitrackers
2 XV8 'Deathrain+' Battlesuits
-2 TL-Missile pods
-2 TAs
2 XV8 'Deathrain+' Battlesuits
-2 TL-Missile pods
-2 TAs
6 firewarriors
Devilfish
-multitracker
-disruption pod
6 firewarriors
Devilfish
-multitracker
-disruption pod
Hammerhead
-railgun
-burst cannons
-multitracker
-disruption pod

As you can see, while not a bad start, some areas were still lacking a little bit (including a lack of proper wound allocation shenanigans on the battlesuits).
My first match up of the day was against a Dark Eldar player (who was also just getting back into the game). His list was approximately like this:

Archon
Haemonculus
5 Incubi in a Venom
10 Trueborn
10 Warriors
10 Wyches in a Raider
5 Scourges

We rolled up kill points and table edges. I lost the roll for deployment and he chose to deploy first.
His warriors and trueborn deployed behind the cover of some ruins, while his Raider and Venom took up opposite flanks with scourges flapping about behind some cover in the middle of the field.
I split my force into two with the hammerhead and shas’El, and one deathrain team on one side of my deployment zone, and the 2 devilfish and remaining two battlesuit teams on the other side. I failed to steal the initiative and we were off.

Turn 1:
In his first turn he scooted the raider up 24 inches to sit right in front of my commander and hammerhead. The venom moved up 12 inches into range of the devilfish and deathrains. And the rest moved into the cover of the ruins (two of the scourges falling to difficult terrain). Shooting from the venom took out one of the deathrains, and the second failed leadership fleeing off the board.
Everything in the Tau army shuffled around without really going anywhere. All my vehicles moved 12, and my suits followed after them, to find firing lanes. The hammerhead fired at the raider and missed. My shas’el fired at the raider and missed. My remaining deathrain squad fired at the venom and exploded it, while the helios team melted some of the incubi who came out, managing to kill two. The devilfish fired at the warriors, wiping out the whole lot of them. This was followed up by a quick jump back into the cover of vehicles and buildings.

Turn 2:
The raider dropped the witches off next to my commander and scooted off to get behind my devilfish. The incubi walked over to the devilfish and waited for it to pop. The scourges closed in on the hammerhead. The first devilfish fell to the trueborn’s lance weapons. The second fell to the raider’s dark lance. The fire warriors that came out were charged by the incubi who ate them all for breakfast. The hammerhead was blown up by something similar to our EMP grenades from the scourges. And the Shas’el was charged by wyches losing both his drones but passing leadership.
My deathrains tried to put some space and difficult terrain between themselves and the incubi, while the helios followed suit, moving away to 12 inches where they opened fire and failed to wound a single one. The deathrains fired at the raider but failed to pierce the flickerfield. The shas’el was finished off in combat.

Turn 3:
The incubi moved 6, ran 6, and charged 6, catching my helios, while the freshly freed wyches charged the deathrains. The results of combat leading to a tabling.

I had actually expected this result given that I had not played in close to half a year, and I was using a sub-optimized list, so I wasn’t surprised. Thinking about what I learned and what I could do differently I came to a few conclusions:

I felt I was lacking a lot of light infantry fire power. I had the ability to pop tanks, and the ability to melt heavy infantry, but not a whole lot in the way of taking down the 4+ or worse save group. To address this, I intend to add some kroot to just get a few shots on the board
Accuracy was a big problem. I’d definitely consider either adding markerlights or upgrading the battlesuits to take better advantage of the ranged weapons.
Wound allocation would have made the suits go a little bit longer.

Game 2 5th edition: Necrons
Immediately after my Dark Eldar match up, the Dark Eldar player asked me to team up with him to play a 2000 point match against a Necron player. I’ve never found synthesizing armies randomly (without a lot of planning) to work well... so I wasn’t expecting much. I won’t go into detail about this game since we had to cut it short (the store was closing)... but we likely would have been tabled. The game was 2 objectives with table edges deployment. Mostly it was Dark Eldar doing crazy silly zippy moves with no visible tactical advantage, while the Tau ate up incoming fire with their tanks while trying to wade toward the necron objective and defend their own at the same time.
I didn’t really gain much insight in this game. But while it was going on, the store manager was playing a game against Necrons as well (I would really have liked to see it as he is a very good player). Apparently he won his match by a fair deal. This inspired me to look up some nasty Tau tactics for use in competitive games... which brought me to start including piranhas in my lists...
Piranhas appeared to have all sorts of nasty tricks, such as blocking the exits of a rhino and then destroying it to kill the squad inside, or working in tandem with a devilfish to tankshock a unit to its death (by forcing it to move away from its board edge, thus causing instant death).

Game 3 5th edition: Necrons
The next day, I brought along an extra case of kroot and piranhas, to work on while I waited for a game. I had just finished one piranha and was getting close to finishing the second one when I was challenged to a game. I only play with painted miniatures, and my opponent wanted to play 1500 points, so I scraped together a list with what I had, and even included the freshly painted piranha!
My opponent asked if he could record the game and post an online battle report, so I’ll let him do the talking for me. The list is very sporadic, and suffers from having Farsight in it (I was about 100 points below where I needed to be with the shas’el, and since I only had 0-1 of all his limitations anyways, I figured why not have some fun).

Here’s the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7Wi3ZyZm8&feature=plcp

Not quite a tabling, but pretty close to it. But again, I learned some things, and think I can improve my game based on them.
First things first, I felt very much outgunned and overrun. I think some kroot may have been a help at that, and some movement blockers might have helped (except that everything with the exception of the warriors could just ignore road bumps and movement blockers with flight/phase moves).
Piranhas need a target array! If I’m not including marker lights, then I definitely need a way to get above that 50% success rate, it’s too much of a gamble for something so expensive and fragile not to be taking out its targets.
Helios suits work well on the deepstrike, but require support to be truly effective and survive the return fire they will receive after they fail to kill their target. However, their arrival needs to be better controlled, maybe I’ll add a positional relay.
Wound allocation is fantastic, as are drones for keeping everything alive well past its life expectancy.
There are situations where Tau will not be able to stop an enemy advance before they reach your lines. In that case, I feel it may be better to ignore that advancing target and take care of what you can (such as using the broadsides against some of the vehicles, and the hammerhead’s submunition shot to put a dent in the warriors on the far side of the table) while evacuating what you can (without drawing too much attention to the fleeing units).

Game 4 5th edition: Chaos Space Marines
With two Piranha’s finished and a third well on its way, I brought in my amended 1500 point list, along with a boat load of kroot to paint. I didn’t get through all the kroot, but I did manage to get 10 kroot and 5 hound done in time for the game I was to play that day. My opponent for the day was testing out his tournament list for a large tournament taking place in my city in the next couple weeks. My list was as follows:

Shas'El
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT
Helios Bodyguard
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT
-HWDC
-2 shield drones
Helios Bodyguard
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT

2 XV8 'Deathrain+' Battlesuits
-2 TL-Missile pods
-TA
-flamer

2 XV8 'Deathrain+' Battlesuits
-2 TL-Missile pods
-flamer
-shas’vre
-positional relay

6 firewarriors
Devilfish
-multitracker
-disruption pod

6 firewarriors
Devilfish
-multitracker
-disruption pod

10 Kroot 5 Hounds

2 Piranhas
-2 fusion blasters
-2 TA
-2 disruption pods

3 Broadside battlesuits
-2 TA
-target lock
-team leader
-HWDC
-2 shield drones

Hammerhead
-railgun
-burst cannons
-multitracker
-disruption pod

I just realized this list is 1 point over cost, so I’ll drop a kroot hound and add a HWTL to the broadside team leader for the next time I use it. Other than that though; every suit is different for wound allocation purposes, and all of them are geared to be accurate and powerful. I have reserve control thanks to the shas’vre deathrain with positional relay. I’ve got more bodies on the field than usual. The piranhas have target arrays and are in a large enough unit to start playing nasty cheesy tricks. I’ve got 4 railguns, one of which can move 12 and fire a big blast! I think the list is pretty good.

My opponent was using something along the lines of this:
2 Daemon Princes with wings
3 units of 7 Plague marines in Rhinos
3 Obliterators
5 Havocs with autocannons

We rolled 4 objectives and spearhead deployment, and he took first deployment. I tried to position the objectives out in the open where he couldn’t enjoy cover against my heavy weapons. He tried to position his objectives in cover where he could. The end result was one in the center with no cover, one in his corner with no cover, and two in buildings (one in my deployment zone, and one across the short table edge from his deployment zone).
He deployed with the heavy weapons sitting in terrain at the back, and the 3 rhinos leading the charge to provide cover for his daemon princes.
I left all my troops in reserve, along with my shas’el team and piranhas. The hammerhead was placed to roll up the short table edge, with a deathrain team (with pos relay) in behind it, while the broadsides and second deathrain team hung out in some ruins at the opposite point of my deployment zone.

Turn 1:
The rhinos move toward the 3 objectives and pop smoke, the daemons jump along behind them. Shooting is pretty uneventful thanks to the broadside’s armour and the hammerhead’s disruption pods.
The Tau shuffle about a little bit, and manage to explode one rhino and immobilize another.

Turn 2:
The remaining mobile rhino scoots forward another 12, with the daemon prince following behind. The team from the exploded rhino walk to the objective they were after (the one across from his deployment zone) and take a seat in the cover there. Shooting is again uneventful.
I use my positional relay to bring the piranhas on. They scoot to surround the rhino, and release drones to full encircle it. I rolled very very badly, and it takes my entire force to wreck it... but it goes down! Unfortunately (I’m not so sure about this... but I wasn’t going to argue) my drones, blocking the third access point were right up against the door, so when it was destroyed, he was allowed to deploy them beyond my drones... so it took a full turn, and the marines were just fine... but I know better for next time.

Turn 3: The immobilized rhino repaired itself and drove onto the midfield objective. The first daemon prince ate my broadsides, while the second one ate my deathrains behind the hammerhead. The plague marines used their meltas to destroy one piranha, and then multicharged the second piranha and the drones.
With the positional relay gone, all my reserves arrived. The kroot showed up in his deployment zone, and the fish scooted on 12 inches each to start shooting up the plague marines from the first destroyed rhino. The helios team came in next to that same team of plague marines, but scattered 12 inches away to actually be standing next to the havocs and obliterators. The surviving deathrains nuked a daemon prince, but he survived the barrage with 1 wound remaining. The hammerhead exploded the final rhino (which unfortunately left a 4+ cover save directly on top of that midfield objective from the crater). The helios easily mulched the 5 havocs (4+ cover save and all).

Turn 4: Only the daemon princes moved, chasing down the battlesuits now scattered to the wind. The first one killed the last two deathrains, and the second, was clearly coming after the helios team, but couldn’t get there yet. The plague marines nearest the devilfish punched it with a powerfist and exploded it. The obliterators killed all but 5 kroot with plasma blasts (I only managed to get 7 of the 15 in cover... so I got no cover save).
The Tau returned fire; pumping everything they had into the plague marines on their nearest objective, but they didn’t wound a single one (not even the helios suits due to the 4+ cover and some bad rolls on my part).

With that we called the game. So another loss, but I felt it was a lot closer than my last few. Above all, I learned that the piranha’s nasty tricks are more difficult to pull off than I had first imagined. I won’t be making that mistake twice though!
I’m not sure how I felt about the kroot. Maybe it was the lack of cover near the board edge they came in from... but those 100 points just dissolved nearly the second they arrived, and they really were not quick enough to get out of harm’s way with a 6+d6 move the turn they arrived. I’ll try some different tactics for them in future games (maybe start them in cover).

Game 5: Space Marines
Returning again the following day, I immediately found a game against a Space Marine player. He told me how he hadn’t played in a few months and was testing out his army list before going to the local tournament that everyone is gearing up for. We agreed on 1500 points, and set up on a table absolutely packed with terrain!

My list was the same as the day before (as I hadn’t really picked up any major flaws with it during the last game, I decided to try it out again). His list was a Dark Angels Deathwing list. I’m not sure exactly what was in it other than having a lot of 5 man teams of fearless missile launching terminators with storm shields (that was actually all there was... just unit after unit of terminators with storm shields and missile launchers).

Sadly, as I started writing this, I realized that it just wasn’t worth writing about. The entire game ended up being him hiding tiny squads of 1 or 2 surviving terminators from me... I’ll summarize the game and get straight to my thoughts. We rolled up Kill points and Dawn of War he deployed first, and I held everything in reserve. Turn 1 both our armies come on and I take the lead in kill points. Turn 2 we traded shots but I came up short killing all but 1 terminator in a unit. Turn 3-5 nothing really happened... we played an intricate game of cat and mouse in which we were both the mouse. In the end I managed to kill that single terminator, but it cost me my shas’el and his bodyguard (and unfortunately the piranhas who I tried to use as movement blockers to protect the shas’el and his team) due to a very bad deepstrike roll (yay 12” scatter right next to an entirely different squad of terminators!). In the end, I lost by 1 kill point. Pretty close

My thoughts on this match...
I’m still not sold on kroot. Yes, they spent 4 of the 5 turns in a forest where they got a 2+ cover save once they went to ground... so yes, they absorbed a lot of the shots that would have otherwise been aimed at suits and vehicles... but I’m still not entirely sold on them. Outside of sitting in a forest I can’t see too much of the benefit, and yet people rave about these guys like they are Tau troop gods. Maybe I’m using them wrong?
I’m also not sure how I feel about piranhas here. I tried to use them as movement blockers after my terrible scatter to protect my commander and his squad... but all that ended up happening is they got blown up by other squads and then the commander and his team got charged. Again, I wonder if I’m using these wrong...
With so much cover on the field, I was really considering adding some marker lights. I don’t know where I’ll find the points... but that 4+ cover is the difference between a dead marine squad and a 50% marine squad who kills you the next turn.

Game 6 5th edition: Dark Eldar
The final game of the week took place in the last 45 minutes before the store closed. It was fast, furious, and 1000 points! This game was actually made quite annoying to play, as a young tyranid player was watching. This in itself was not annoying, as I have nothing against young blood or tyranids. However, he didn’t quite grasp the rules and was very vocal about his ideas that were impossible such as demanding we shoot at things when it wasn’t our turn to shoot, and when we told him we couldn’t he threw a tantrum (happened 3 times - no parents in sight).
I still haven’t come up with a finalized 1000 point list yet, so I played something along these lines:
Shas'El
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT
Helios Bodyguard
-plasma rifle
-fusion blaster
-TA
-HWMT
-HWDC
-2 shield drones

3 XV8 'Deathrain+' Battlesuits
-2 TL-Missile pods
-TA
-2 flamers

12 firewarriors
Devilfish
-multitracker
-disruption pod

10 Kroot 5 Hounds

2 Piranhas
-2 fusion blasters
-2 TA
-2 disruption pods

Hammerhead
-railgun
-burst cannons
-multitracker
-disruption pod

My opponent was the same Dark Eldar player from my first match, but like me he had been playing lots of games and rearranging his list... from what I can tell it was about the same except that he had added way more vehicles. I think it was something like this:
Archon
Haemonculus
5 Incubi in a Venom
10 Trueborn in a raider
10 Warriors in a raider
10 Wyches in a Raider
Ravager

We rolled up kill points and table edges and he chose to deploy first. Deployment was pretty simple, just 5 vehicles lined up across the board with the venom on and ravager on the right and the raiders on the left.
I deployed the kroot in a forest on the right, and the rest behind a big building on the left (entirely hidden from line of sight), with my Shas’el in reserve. I failed to seize initiative as per usual.

Turn 1:
Everything except the venom moved flat out and was in my deployment zone sitting next to my units. The venom moved 12 inches and tried to shoot the kroot, learning that kroot in a forest are inconceivably hard to kill.
I played the Tau army shuffle, moving all my vehicles 12 inches to enjoy 6’s to hit in the coming combat, and moving my suits into firing lanes. I surrounded one raider with my piranhas and drones... and blam! Exploded killing half the squad and pinning them. The deathrains popped another... and while the brave fire warriors tried to fish of furry the contents... it was more a tickle fight of inaccuracy (oh fire warriors... I should never trust you to get any job done)... they didn’t manage to drop a single wych with their 24 shots. And of course the hammerhead’s big blast drifted off to the land of lost blast templates.

Turn 2:
The venom moved another 12 and deposited its contents next to my kroot... who were promptly flamered and then charged. The kroot fought valiantly... but didn’t kill a single one, and then were wiped out entirely in return. The unharmed wyches from the raider the battlesuits had destroyed waltzed up to the piranhas... and through sheer luck managed to land double 6’s on 2 haywire grenades exploding both (and taking all but 2 casualties in return). The raider full of trueborn blastered the deathrains to death. Oh, and the ravager killed the hammerhead.
Realizing this was the last turn... the shas’el and bodyguard appeared and popped the ravager with ease. The devilfish killed the remaining 2 wyches. And the fire warriors managed to finish off the 3 of the 4 remaining warriors (but sadly the sybarite passed his leadership and stuck around).
For my first draw of the season

So a really quick, really brutal game, not sure how the next few turns would have changed the outcome (probably badly for the Tau).
I was definitely underwhelmed by the kroot’s performance this game. Really just not sold on them at all. If anyone has some tips and pointers here, that would be great.
I still have yet to pull off an effective ‘trap the unit inside’ attack with my piranhas... but this time was close.
I did make use of the devilfish as a movement blocker this time round, and it worked really well (the fire warriors didn’t get charged once). However, absolutely dropping 6 fire warriors and just leaving them in their devilfish for next time... I can spend those 60 points on something that will actually net me a killpoint instead.

Might I suggest splitting this into separate topics? It's a little daunting reading the giant wall of text...

I had considered breaking them up at first, but I figured since they are all working towards the same end it might be better if I just made a single thread (rather than 6 little threads) to discuss my endless gaming grind and provide updates as I play further games. This way readers are able to more easily see the progression from one game to the next as I get more experience and try out new techniques. If others feel it is too daunting, I'd be happy to break it up into 6 posts.

Game 7 5th edition: Eldar

Still looking for any feedback, tips, hints, tricks, or criticism you guys have got

I’m particularly proud with today’s match though! I feel all this practice really is making me better at playing and it’s nice to see the reward of that effort. While yesterday, I just watched a game (Tau vs Blood Angels... very interesting), today I needed a change of scenery from my local GW, so I went to visit some friends out of town and went to their GW instead. I’m pretty sure it is less competitive than my usual one. With most of the store tied up in an apocalypse game, I sat down at the painting table to work on a 1250, 1750, 1850, and 2000 point list (all of which are point values I’d like to have on hand since they are pretty frequent game sizes in my area). I got talking to a new and very young Tau player who was painting at the table. I was just discussing why he should consider railguns instead of a skyray when the guy across the table told me “railguns are overrated because Tau die too quickly.” After asking him what fictional universe he was playing in, we set up for a 1000 point game. Apparently he and his forgeworld army was considered pretty good by the local players there; their comments of “those poor poor unsuspecting Tau” a clear indication of who the crowd favoured to win the fight.

My list was as follows...
Shas’El – 127 points
- Plasma rifle
- Fusion blaster
- Target array
- Hard-wired multi-tracker
- Hard-wired drone controller
- 2 shield drones

2 Helios Battlesuits – 139 points
- 2 Plasma rifles
- 2 Fusion blasters
- Multi-tracker
- Team leader
- Target array
- Hard-wired multi-tracker
3 Deathrain Battlesuits – 158 points
- 3 Twin-linked missile pods
- 2 Target array
- Flamer
- Team leader

6 Fire Warriors – 60 points
Devilfish – 95 points
- Multi-tracker
- Disruption pod
16 kroot – 106 points
- 10 Carnivores
- 6 Hounds

2 Piranhas – 150 points
- 2 Fusion blasters
- 2 Target arrays
- 2 Disruption pods

Hammerhead – 165 points
- Railgun
- Burst cannons
- Multi-tracker
- Disruption pod

The Eldar list consisted of something like this...
Farseer
5 Dire avengers
10 Dire avengers in a Wave serpent
6 Fire dragons in a Wave serpent
2 Hornets (I think... forge world things... lots of S8 shots)
1 ??? (it was like a Fire Prism but it shot big blast templates of super instant death that glanced vehicles on a 2+)

With a pretty good sprinkling of small ruins and forests (I specifically placed the forests in the two opposite corners of the board for my outflanking kroot), we rolled off and got 2 objectives with spearhead deployment. I won the roll off, but let him have first deployment. His objective was on the top of a ruin in the middle of his deployment zone, and mine was in the middle of the open in my deployment zone (10 inches from a forest). He set up the squad of 5 dire avengers in the ruin on his objective and then clumped his vehicles around them.
In return I placed my hammerhead and deathrains in my corner, and held the rest in reserve. As expected I failed to seize initiative

Turn 1:
A whole lot of movement and not a lot of damage. The elder tanks zipped all over the place, dropping big blast templates and firing off handfuls of S8 shots at my hammerhead... all of which either missed, bounced off the front armour, or was saved by the disruption pod. Who dies too quick now eldar?
The return fire was pretty solid on my part. Scooting the devilfish 12 inches, and jumping the deathrains into position, I pummelled the hornets with knocking off a weapon from one and stunning the other, and even blew a bright lance off the wave serpent with the dire avengers in it. All before jumping my suits safely back behind the hammerhead

Turn 2:
Sadly, the luck was not to last. Fire dragons rushed forward in their wave serpent and unloaded directly in front of my hammerhead, blowing off the railgun, while the hornet’s single useable gun (for that turn) sniped a battlesuit (I failed my cover save ) and then the whole group failed leadership with a 12... Then ran an incredible 18 (that’s right... 5 6’s in a row).
In response... none of my units came in from reserve... the hammerhead did what it could, firing at the fire dragons with its burst cannons but not doing much damage.

Turn 3:
The Eldar really didn’t have much to do. Everyone shuffled about (though no attempts were made to take my objective which I felt was strange...), the fire dragons got back in their transport and then all the shots went into the hammerhead wrecking it.
The entirety of my force came out of reserve. With piranhas zipping 12 and cooking one of the two hornets with the melta shots. The kroot snuck into the forest next to my objective from the table edge. The devilfish didn’t make a big fuss (it tried to shoot... but must have felt sorry for the eldar because it missed with every shot)... it just slipped onto the board quietly, moving 12 inches towards the other objective... no big deal. And the command squad deepstriked in behind the mysterious instant death blast machine and blew it to pieces with an outstanding 9 of 9 hits, and 4 of 9 pens.

Turn 4:
The Eldar closed in on my units again. The hornet tried to take out the suits, but learned just how powerful a defense a pair of shield drones are, they absorbed the damage without a scratch. Likewise, the piranhas took a beating from everything else with a gun, but shrugged it off thanks to disruption pods.
The devilfish cruised up a little further, missed with everything again. The merciless Piranhas chased down the fire dragon’s wave serpent and wrecked it. The kroot began their movement onto the objective, keeping half in the forest for the cover save. The commander and co. fired on the dire avengers on the objective, slaughtering 3 of the 5.

Turn 5:
The hornet continues to harass my commander, taking out a drone, but otherwise not worrying me. The fire dragons melt the piranhas, exploding both. I really have no idea what the wave serpent full of dire avengers was doing (trying not to be shot in the rear by crisis suit fusion blasters I suppose) but zoomed off in a random direction (not onto my objective).
In response, my devilfish cleared the last two dire avengers off their objective and parked itself nicely in their place. The battlesuits taking pot-shots with their plasma rifles, but generally just waiting behind the fish in case anything nasty came after it in the next turn. The kroot moved a bit more, ensuring their hold on the objective. At this point I had both objectives, uncontested!

Turn 6:
Sadly the game kept going. My opponent moved his wave serpent with dire avengers flat out to contest his old objective from my fire warriors in their devilfish, and the hornet zoomed off flat out to contest the kroot objective. Meanwhile the fire dragons shot at and assaulted the kroot, dropping 4, but taking 4 in return.
Try as I might, I was unable to move those vehicles from my objectives. The kroot demolished the last fire dragon with their massive weight of attacks, and then consolidated back onto the objective... which was contested by the hornet.

And there you have it. Another draw! And definitely good to show the Eldar player that Tau are nasty little blue fish people!
If there was one thing I wish I could do over, it would be to have popped the gun drones off the piranha. Since it was objectives, they wouldn’t have mattered, and they would have provided a screen for the kroot that would have held up the fire dragons. With the fire dragons out of the way, I would have at least had a chance to glance the hornet to death with a billion kroot attacks. Ah well. I feel I played the rest really well though! Definitely learning. Feeling a little better about the kroot... I think having a mindset of “these are like fire warriors... useless... scoring... but safe inside that fish... I mean forest” is not a bad one to have for them.

Game 8 5th edition: Grey Knights

I notice not many people are commenting, I assume this is because words are boring and scary and there are a lot of them in the first post, so I’ll try to include some pictures when I can. With that in mind today’s game happened in the comfort of my own home.
Around the winter holidays I played a game against Grey Knights with my friend (Link found here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18199&hilit=1000+grey+knight ). At the time it was a crushing defeat for the Tau. Feeling wiser, and with a more streamlined list, I decided to have at it and try for a rematch. So I called up my friend Simon and asked if he wanted to use my Grey Knights again. The 1000 point rematch was on!

Throughout my weeks of practice I have been tweaking my Tau lists to make them the best TAC lists they possibly can be... unfortunately... a few pregame drinks makes one forget exactly how many devilfish one is supposed to be fielding in 1000 points... so I was actually playing with a 1154 point army (no harm done in the end... likely detrimental to me as it dealt no damage and cost me a kill point... ah well). Here’s the list:

Shas’El – 127 points
- Plasma rifle
- Fusion blaster
- Target array
- Hard-wired multi-tracker
- Hard-wired drone controller
- 2 shield drones

2 Helios Battlesuits – 139 points
- 2 Plasma rifles
- 2 Fusion blasters
- Multi-tracker
- Team leader
- Target array
- Hard-wired multi-tracker
3 Deathrain Battlesuits – 163 points
- 3 Twin-linked missile pods
- 2 Target array
- Flamer
- Team leader
-Hard-wired target lock

6 Fire Warriors – 60 points
Devilfish – 95 points
- Multi-tracker
- Disruption pod
The extra 6 Fire Warriors – 60 points
The extra Devilfish – 95 points
- Multi-tracker
- Disruption pod
15 kroot – 100 points
- 10 Carnivores
- 5 Hounds

Piranhas – 75 points
- Fusion blasters
- Target arrays
- Disruption pods
Piranhas – 75 points
- Fusion blasters
- Target arrays
- Disruption pods

Hammerhead – 165 points
- Railgun
- Burst cannons
- Multi-tracker
- Disruption pod

The Grey Knight list was the same as last time, which is as follows...

Crowe

10 Purifiers
-2 psycannons
-psybolt ammunition
-MC Daemon hammer

10 Purifiers
-2 psycannons
-psybolt ammunition
-MC Daemon hammer

Dreadnought
-2 TL autocannons
-psybolt ammunition

Dreadnought
-2 TL autocannons
-psybolt ammunition

We decided to make it a true rematch we would play the same mission we had done before, so we plan to play annihilation with spearhead deployment.


I won the roll off and decide to deploy first taking the ‘forest’ for my kroot and doing a pretty good job of concealing softer things (such as battlesuits and piranhas behind tanks and terrain). Simon likewise digs in, using the craters in his deployment zone to provide cover for his marines, and his marines to provide cover for his dreadnoughts.

Turn 1:

To be absolutely honest, I didn’t quite know what I should do with the piranhas. I rushed them flat out towards the Grey Knight fire bases, so they’d get a 4+ cover save even within 12, and the next turn they’d be ready to melta some dreads. Almost immediately after the move I wished I hadn’t zipped them out into the line of fire and instead tried to hide them a bit (it was more than a little silly of me), but there was nothing I could do about it by then. I had a very successful round of shooting... but Simon had an equally as successful round of cover/armour saves. All 6 missile pods hit and penetrated the dreadnought on the right! Then it made all 6 cover saves. Simon has some real luck with cover on his dreadnoughts! The hammerhead dropped a big blast template and scored a direct hit, wounding 5 more marines, and killing 2.

In return the Grey Knights really did a number on those two piranhas. It wasn’t so bad initially... one lost a weapon to the dreadnought’s barrage and the other escaped entirely unscathed. But then the psybolt bolters started up and some gigantic number of glances later, both were down. One exploding from psycannon fire, and the other taking so many weapon destroyed and immobilised results that it overloaded and crashed.

Turn 2:

The helios came in a little earlier than I had hoped. I had wanted to move the fish up more to provide them with cover, but ah well. I did my best given the terrain. And between them and the devilfish, they managed to kill 5 more grey knights! The deathrains had no luck against the dread this turn... but the hammerhead’s big blast found itself another 3 casualties from the second purifier fire base.

Shooting from one dreadnought slayed a devilfish, while the other exploded the hammerhead... even disruption pods can’t keep a vehicle safe forever against that sort of damage saturation. Crowe pulled off a very impressive move through cover, rolling 6 on the move and then 6 on the charge to just barely scrape into combat... where he didn’t manage to do a thing...

Turn 3:

The devilfish continued on the hammerheads work... firing on the pathfinders to little effect. Realizing that my suits would be in real trouble if that daemonhammer made it into combat, I switched the focus of my deathrains from the dreadnought to the diminished purifier squad but only managed to take down 1 of them. leaving. The combat went nowhere! Crowe’s rending attacks falling on the invulnerable drones who shrugged it off and then hit him in the face only to be blocked in turn by his armour.

The purifiers and the dreadnought unloaded into the last devilfish but only managed to stun and shake it a few times. Meanwhile the daemonhammer purifier made it into combat... but the Tau fought back! They wounded Crowe and killed the psycannon marine. They lost, but did enough damage to not suffer a huge leadership drop, and thus held on for another round.

Turn 4:

Running out of targets, the deathrains nuked the dreadnought, exploding it 3 times over! And then even better news, when a stray punch in combat connected with the daemonhammer wielder, killing him before he could get his attacks in.

The final purifier squad began to advance on the devilfish, hoping for an easy CC kill since it hadn’t moved. Luckily they found themselves too tied up in the crater to get into combat... but unfortunately psycannons managed to immobilise the poor vehicle... it wasn’t going anywhere! Worse still, Simon realized he could see the front edge of my deathrain with his dreadnought and opened fire. Even a 3+ wasn’t enough to save them, and 2 suits went down to instant death. The last held his leadership, but the damage was done.

Turn 5:

Not wanting it to happen again, I retreated my suit into more suitable cover and waited for a better chance to strike... it never came. The devilfish was unable to escape, and its shots did little to stop the incoming marines.

Walking up to the devilfish, a quick hammerhand and daemonhammer combo smashed it to pieces, exploding the vehicle and killing 4 of the 6 firewarriors within. They passed the pinning test, but likely wouldn’t get far the next turn. And finally Crowe died, squashed under the clumsy foot of a battlesuit. He tried to drag the helios suit with him, but rolled an 12, his brain exploding moments before his body hit the ground.

Grey Knight Victory 5 Kill Points to 3.

A fun game as always. We had a good laugh at turn 3 when I realized I had one too many devilfish present. Not a competitive game by any standards but I still learned a few things.
I learned a valuable lesson about piranhas overreaching and will be more careful with them next time.
I think I should have placed the forest a little closer to the center so that the kroot could have taken a more active role in the shooting phase rather than just existing.

Hope you enjoyed it! Please leave comments, questions, etc.!

I've been enjoying you reports anyway, but pics are always appreciated.

I've been worried that Piranhas and Hammerheads would be a little underwhelming to use compared to battlesuits. The mobility is obviously a nice advantage, but would you say they hold their own weight in your list?

And I was wondering if you were going to add more Markerlight support to your list. Maybe some Tetras if your opponents allow it?

It looks like you're having to work hard, here's to victory!
Cheers!

The battle reports are great, and yes I am one of those people who have a hard time commenting if there are not actually pictures as I can't imagine positions well with just writing and I think we can all agree that Tau tactics basically boils down to positioning.

I don't have much to comment on for strategy as you pretty much hit it right on the head with the number one golden rules of piranhas which is don't block you firing lanes the first turn. If you could have denied that dread (Can't really tell from the overview but I'm not entirely convinced he should have gotten one as a piranha wing is about a crotch level for a dread) it's cover saves for all those penetrations the game might have gone differently. If you got both of those dreads down you would have reduced the max range of the enemy to 36" and forced him to come to you by just dropping 72" pie plate and jumping in and out of death rain range. The Psycannons range is cut in half on turns they move. But otherwise you where at a severe disadvantage for this fight with

- 5 GK killpoints to 11 Tau WOW talk about objective disparity
- No line of sight blocking terrain (People desperately like to say this hurts shooting list but Tau have the mobility to use it against the enemy and scoot around it to fire especially with JSJ). Also just noticed the 3 brown mesas in the top left hand it might have been good to hide your suits there and play peakaboo with the grey knights until they finally decided to walk out of cover.
- No markerlight support, heavy AP weapons platforms like helios are severely hampered by cover saves (An 8 man team with of path finders will give you about 4 markers. One to achieve BS 5 and 3 for the cover = a very dead unit of anything but hordes)

Thanks for the comments guys, I’ll try to continue the provide visual aids in some form or another from this point onwards.

I’m quite on the fence about markerlight support. On the one hand, I would love to remove cover saves. If not for cover, I feel I would be sweeping squads off objectives rather than battering them violently with battlesuit barrages until they eventually (and slowly) disappear. On the other hand, the survivability/cost of the codex markerlight units is not something I can readily synthesize into my current playstyle. I am not a big fan of using forgeworld units, so I would be using one of the codex choices to provide lights. Obviously the most cost effective way to provide markerlight support is from teams of pathfinders, but those fall over from a light breeze in almost every phase (shooting, assault, and even movement if you count tank shocks scaring them off the board). Then there is the SMT, but the cost is massive for the amount of lights they put out in a turn. Sniper drones are neither low cost, nor a very effective use of my heavy support slot, and the skyray though an AV13 skimmer platform is the same. That leaves fire warriors, who I won’t be fielding in any great number or outside of their devilfish. I did try all sorts of markerlight support back when 5th edition first came out but I was always disappointed by how quickly they were eliminated. Since then I’ve tried to make my force self reliant, so target arrays and twin-linked weapons whenever I can afford it, and indeed if it were not for the cover saves it would deal a ton more damage. Maybe I will try to fit some pathfinders in again.

I think the piranhas and hammerhead absolutely hold their own against battlesuits, they just fill different rolls in my list. I’ll start with the hammerhead which has the least cross over. Since my army lacks a lot of anti-horde having a low model count and high strength weaponry I feel the pie plate really bolsters that side of my combat, it also works nicely as mobile cover for the battlesuits which is something battlesuits can’t really do for themselves. The piranhas are actually very similar to battlesuits in their damage output, they can take down a tank pretty well, or even go after some heavy infantry with pretty high rates of success. Suits are a little more ‘survivable tricky’ against shooting (since a lot of the time I can hide them entirely behind a vehicle, but piranhas get some nice bonuses against close combat and can block movements which is great. They are both roughly as survivable against heavy weapons (which cause instant death on suits, and can actually damage a piranha). When all is said and done, I’d say all 3 have a place in a list.

I’ll see about adding some pathfinders though I’m, not sold on the idea, and I’ll try to build more solid cover for my home field for next time. And maybe some real forests.

Just a suggestion about the pathfinders. I was having the exact same problem with them just getting annihilated and running off the board so I attached a shas'el with 2 shield drones and iridium armor to the group (I run him with twin fusions/target lock for deep striking dreads) not only does it put the moral break up to 3 deaths (At a reasonable moral) but gives it a forced overkill potential. If the opponent wants them gone he either has to drown it in anti-infantry shooting which at least 3 shots will be eaten and laughed at by the commander group or they have to fire anti tank weaponry at pathfinders (In which case you go okay fine take a pathfinder I don't care because your not instant killing my other battlesuits).

Of coarse I also run my group with full 8 pathfinders and everyone calls me crazy but that's just me cause I want BS 5 AND no cover mmmmmm cake and I'm eating it too. It might not fit your style of play as it looks like you prefer to have an offensive commander but give a whirl and see if you like it.

I don't find huge walls of text that repulsive, and the long posts don't really bother me much (as long as there are paragraphs and nice spacing, which yours do). Like the others though, I do find pictures help a lot!

On the gaming front, you seem to be coming closer. I would say markerlights are worth it, mainly in the form of Pathfinders. I include one per FW squad, purely to give their Fish something to do, and they are always useful. They always seem to require a lot more than what you paid for them to remove (my friend once launched 150 ish point Vanguard squad on 5 of them, using Superman Assault to get them on the strike and wipe them out. Then my 3 Helios ate them ).

Just my thoughts...

Game 9 5th edition: Dark Eldar

Another battle! Sadly no pictures as I forgot my camera at home. It wasn’t a hugely eventful game though, so I don’t think you’ll be missing much. I played the other Dark Eldar player of the GW near my house (I hadn’t had time to play him yet. He’s a bit better than the other one. We played a 1500 point game on a very busy board roughly half covered in line of sight blocking terrain (which was a bit of a curse when trying to get a clear line of sight to anything).

My list was the same as in game 4, except I had split the piranhas into 2 separate units.
His list was something like...
Archon with 10 wyches in a raider
10 Wyches in a raider
5 Warriors in a venom
5 Warriors in a venom
5 Beastmasters and 10 razorwing flocks
5 scourges
Ravager
Ravager
Ravager

We rolled kill points and table quarters. He won the roll but gave me first deployment. I put my kroot in a forest near the short board edge and the broadsides up on a tower in the corner which gave them two main firing lanes, one along the long board edge and one along the short board edge on my side of the board. My devilfish, hammerhead, and deathrains bunkered down behind buildings near midfield and my commander and piranhas were placed in reserve. In return he placed the 3 ravagers behind a building in his corner so that I couldn’t spot any of them with anything and a unit of scourges on the opposite side of the midfield building that my devilfish and hammerhead were behind in midfield (it was a big building).

Turn 1:
The game began and with a little manoeuvring I... well I couldn’t do very much... I managed to get the deathrains into line of sight of the scourges, but they missed royally. And after jumping those suits back into cover that was my turn.
The ravagers and scourges responded by firing all sorts of shots into my vehicles, the scourges shooting at the devilfish to no great avail and the ravager’s attacks bouncing off the hammerhead.

Turn 2:
No reserves arrived, I decided not to use the positional relay... but rolled triple 1s anyways. My 2 devilfish and a squad of deathrains went after the scourges, scooting up and unloading all their shots... and dealing no damage. The hammerhead and second deathrain team drifted out of cover and immobilized one ravager and shook the other. The suits jumping back into cover, I awaited the dark eldar retribution.
None of the Dark Eldar reserves came in either. But the scourges did manage to shake a devilfish. Meanwhile the immobilized ravager immobilized my hammerhead right back... so an eye for an eye I guess.

Turn 3:
My commander and his retinue come in next to the immobilized ravager and take it down without any trouble. A piranha also comes on and moves within range of the second ravager, but it had some item which makes all the shots an extra 6 inches away, so it turned out I was out of range. The deathrains mopped up the scourges and the devilfish backed away from the Dark Eldar table edge preparing for the reserves.
Sadly it doesn’t matter how far away from a table edge you move when playing DarkEldar... The wyche squad without the Archon zoomed on in their raider, moving 12, disembarking 2, running 6, and assaulting my commander 6 for a mighty 26 inch threat range. Meanwhile the beastmasters moved on 12, ran 6 and assaulted my devilfish 12 for an equally mighty 30 inch threat range. Neither was as effective as expected though. The devilfish having moved 12 dealt with the 60 rending attacks pretty well only being shaken, stunned, immobilized, and without weapons. The commander and his unit though... really the champions of that round. Didn’t lose a single model, and killed 2 wyches back! The wyches didn’t break but it was quite the showing. The kroot took a bit of damage from the combined 48 shots of the venoms... but only lost 1 hound thanks to the forest. Lastly, the raider which the piranha had gone after fired back at it, immobilizing it, and taking off its fusion blaster.

Turn 4:
The second piranha arrived, and not falling for the same trick as the first one, simply turbo boosted behind some cover. The immobilized hammerhead, only having the one ravager in line of sight continued its barrage, but that thing just kept making saves. The deathrains popped a venom, and the broadsides, having nothing else to shoot at took down a beastmaster. Then during the combat phase, the devilfish was wrecked, the firewarriors cracking under the pressure and making a run for my board edge. Meanwhile the commander continued to tie combat.
The Archon and his wyches joined the commander brawl, dealing 1 shield drone worth of damage, while the battlesuits dealt 3 more wyches a crushing blow. The venom unloaded its warriors and found some cover for itself while the 2 blocks of 5 warriors went inside a bunker. The beastmasters again moved like lightning, 12, 6, and 12. They played a nasty trick where they entered the forest on their run move and thus I didn’t get to go first in combat with my kroot. And because the unit was so wide, they managed to multi assault my fleeing firewarriors too. They dealt 11 kills before I landed a hit. Needless to say, I lost combat.

Turn 5:
The second piranha moved into 6 inches of the ravager, and missed... but the hammerhead finally flattened it. The deathrains and broadsides opened up on the beastmasters, but the 4 up cover from the forest kept them all alive. My commander finally went down in combat.
The Archon and 2 mobs of wyches consolidated towards my immobilized hammerhead, and then in their own turn assaulted it, blowing off all its weapons. Meanwhile the beastmasters multi assaulted roughly half the table, charging the deathrains, a devilfish, and another squad of deathrains. They were stretched thin, so the battlesuits actually managed to tie combat, dealing 4 wounds to the 4 wounds they had received. Shooting out of the bunker the warrior squads wrecked my poor piranha, while the raiders took potshots at the immobilized.

Turn 6:
The devilfish escaped the combat zone... but did not damage to anything. The broadsides were forced to fire at wyches 40 inches away... so not a productive turn. And then lots of losses in combat where the hammerhead went boom and the battlesuits went down.
With nothing else in range or line of sight to act, the beastmasters assaulted the broadsides, who promptly curbed stomped them, 60 rending attacks and all. The beastmasters fled, but the game was over.

So getting right down to it, the things I learned.
I should make my kroot take up more of the forest so that enemies can’t run into the forest and then assault me with no penalties.
While the flexibility of having 2 separate piranhas is nice, they are less reliable as tank hunters on their own, and give up more kill points.
For deployment I need to think more about firing lanes and specifically, ensuring that no stone is left unturned for when shooting comes, otherwise I’m wasting points.

1) How did one of your devilfish wreck in assault on your turn? Tanks don't get locked in assault like infantry do. (This is a reason for using piranha as blockers; they don't get locked so you can shoot whatever just assaulted your poor little tank.)

2) If he runs into the forest, and then assaults through the forest, he still rolls difficult terrain and thus goes last in combat. There may be an exception if he was only 1" away after the run, but I'd need to check that. (Or they could have some special rule I suppose?)

3) I tend not to run piranha as tank hunter, but if you do, your assessment is accurate. Piranha tend to be much less useful vs (Dark) Eldar, as all of their tanks have Skimmer and thus can go right over our blocking piranha. Instead, in this situation, I would use them to try and block off assaults, or reduce return fire lanes. They can't kill tanks, as you found, can't block tanks, so instead use them to block infantry. (This is one of the reasons I use flechette on one of my two piranha... If they have nothing else to do, they can ruin some large mob's day.)

I believe the rule for assaulting vehicles is that so long as the vehicle didn't move out of base to base contact (which mine couldn't do being shaken stunned and immobilized with no guns left) then the assault my continue. They aren't locked in combat so I could still shoot at whoever was going after them (but giving a 4+ cover save from the vehicle), but they can still be attacked during the assault phase.

I have no answer for question 2, though he did get parts of the unit within 1 inch during his run move, so that might be why.

I initially took the piranhas as movement blockers against tanks... but after doing that I immediately stopped playing any armies with tanks to block, just skimmers. In that case, they are falling to their secondary role as tankhunters. I haven't had too many opportunities to use them as infantry movement blockers since they tend to not stick around all that long/my enemies can fly, but I'll keep trying. I've been considering flechettes... since everyone is always assaulting my vehicles... but I partially feel that that is my fault and if I just manouver better my vehicles wont be assaulted at all and I can save 10 points a piece... I may still try them though.

My vehicles are assaulted rarely...
I currently run two piranha, not in a squad. One has a fusion blaster/TA, the other with burst cannon/flechette. The FB one runs up and gets in tank's faces, the other tries to block off infantry to an extent. There is only one opposing army with skimmers around me, and it is also dark eldar. I personally use an AFP to make them cry, as most of their saves are Cover anyway... You could always try ramming their skimmers and hope they fail their 3+ to avoid it?

If I recall correctly (don't have the BRB with me), it is a difficult terrain test that triggers the initiative penalty. In the BRB it says something along the lines of that 'Units within 1" will always be able to make the assault even if they roll a 1.' (or something to that effect.) However, it does not mean that they ignore, or will not have to make the difficult terrain test. The players can decide to forego the formality it since it is a guaranteed success, but I'm pretty sure that the Dark Eldar unit still would have sustained the initiative penalty.

Great battle reports and thanks for posting. I recently brought back my Tau after about ten years and it's great to be back playing with the Greater Good. I was curious about your Helios suits and how you employ them. Do you like them better than Fireknife? How well are they performing for you? I know there are a lot of articles I was just wondering your personal experience since you have been playing recently. I've been running two deathrain teams with gun drones, a fireknife team with gun drones and my commander and bodyguard are fireknife. The change I made is I twin link all the missle pods I can, the only crisis suits that don't have twin linked missle pods are two of the fireknife suits from my elites choice ,the team leader has one and a hard wired multi tracker. Just something different I'm using. I've never tried the Helios pattern and I was just wondering how you think they are doing.

I used to play fireknife pattern battlesuits, but found the meta of the area I had been playing to be so heavily FNP MEQ that the missile pods were just a right off. Unsupported by markerlights, they were not strong enough or accurate enough to take down the tanks, and they didn't negate armour or FNP well enough to stop anything bigger than a fire warrior.
I shifted 2/3 of my suits into deathrains, who have a much greater accuracy and thus get the shaken, stunned, and immobolized rolls on transports that I am looking for.
The final 1/3 I made into helios. Initially I did not like them. 12 inches is very close, and without pathfinders I was finding they were just missing everything. I did some research and shifted them into the HQ position, where they could take advantage of TA and HWMT combos. This really worked the magic and put the fate of their kill power back in their hands (which is something I like better than needing markerlights).
I originally deployed them with the bulk of my force, but found that they never did anything. Everyone just avoided them like the plague until they could be killed. I started deepstriking them as a reactive unit, and this worked much better for me. Using Pos-Relay they come in turn 2 or 3, dropping into the rear of enemy units where they get lots of choices for targets (often melting a squad the turn they show up, and then picking off nearby vehicles afterwards) and draw attention away from my firing line.
I'm still getting the hang of them, and I'd say half the time they are worth above and beyond what I put into them and the other half they are not. I can clearly tell that this is my tactical flaw though, since it's usually just a matter of finding the right place to deepstrike to make them really worth their points.

I'm entered in a kill team tournament for the 21st. My local GW is putting it on as a celebration of the flyers and a final good bye to 5th edition. The rules follow the battle book, so 200 points from 0-1 elite, 0-2 troops, and 0-1 fast attack with everything acting on its own with 3 models getting a universal special rule. The tournament also allows 1 flyer or fly like object worth up to 205 points in reserve (so far I've heard a winged daemon prince of nurgle, and a grey knight stormraven will be there).

My list as it currently stands is goung to be 3 piranhas! All of them will have fusion blasters. 1 will have a disruption pod and the stealth USR. 1 will have scout USR to turbo boost the scout move and get a 4+ cover. 1 will have tank hunter to help deal with the stormraven/claw who remove the extra d6 from a melta attacks. Not sure what my flyer equivalent will be yet as I do not have any forge world items. Maybe a ionhead with all the trimmings or maybe a skyray... but just not sure.

Tell me your thoughts and I'll keep you all posted on the tournament!

Hey Everyone! Todays update brings you my first 2 matches from the kill team tournament at my local games workshop. As you know I entered with 3 piranhas as my kill team and an ion head as my flyer (shame a lot of the tournament rules seem to be against this list... including “if you have a painted army, you can give an extra member of your kill team a special rule... but having only 3 members... yah...). To add a little interest the store has 3 extra missions on top of destroying the enemy (every building is an objective, drop a bomb off in the opponents base, assassinate a selected model). The board is also different (6 by 2, an L, or 4 by 4). We’re pared into teams based on our race. Being the only Tau player, I am lumped in with other xenos and am playing for team Eldar. Each player earns points for his team (based on mission objectives) as well as individually (based on activities such as destroying tanks, or killing monsterous creatures). All members of the kill team must start on the board, all fliers are held in reserve. So with the ground rules down, I’ll get right into the games!

My list more exactly is as follows...
Piranha 1 – fusion blaster, disruption pod, stealth
Piranha 2 – fusion blaster, tank hunter
Piranaha 3 – fusion blaster, scout
Hammerhead – ion cannon, burst cannons, every upgrade (even the ones I won’t need, like target lock)

Kill Team Game 1

Opponent: space wolves
7 marines
1 marine – meltagun, infiltrate
1 marine – plasma, tank hunter
1 marine – feel no pain
Rhino
2 thunder wolf cavalry – shields and hammers?
Mission: every building is an objective, take control of as many as possible (2 points for having the most objectives). Game ends as normal kill team mission rules (1 points for breaking the enemy).
Deployment: 6 by 2 board.
Space Wolves deploy first, putting 8 marines in a forest at 12 inches up, plasma one in the rhino at 12 inches up, and melta infiltrates into a building in the middle of the field.
Tau sit back in their deployment zone and make a conga line starting with the piranaha with a 3+ save, then the tank hunter, and then the scout. In the scout move, the scout piranha moves flat out towards the building in the Tau deployment zone.

Turn 1: Space Wolves move forward and pop smoke on the rhino.
Tau turbo boost all 3 vehicles (1 next to the building in my deployment zone, one next to the building in the middle of the board, and 1 onto the building in between the two others)

Turn 2: No reserves arrive, melta and plasma units close in, but fail to damage the 3+ on the stealth piranaha.
Hammerhead comes in. Drones from the scout piranha deploy into the building in the center of the board, drones from the tank hunter piranha deploy into the middle building. 2 piranhas (stealth and tank hunter) move to destroy the rhino and both miss. Ion cannon explodes the rhino.

Turn 3: First thunderwolf arrives, moves, and runs a total of 11 inches (1 inch short of reaching charge range of the piranhas). Plasma and melta combine forces to disable one of the piranahas (tank hunter) and blow its weapon off.
Stealth piranaha moves 12 inches and meltas the plasma marine to death, while the scout piranaha scoots up to midfield, taking cover to spring out at the melta marine the next turn. Ion cannon absolutely melts the thunderwolf cavaly, and the burst cannons down a couple of regular marines.

Turn 4: Next thunderwolf comes on, but is played more carefully, taking cover in the forest with the 6 remaining marines. Meltagun finishes off the tankhunter piranaha.
Ion cannon fails to wound the wolf, but another 2 marines die to burst cannon fire. Piranha misses its attack against the melta marine.

Turn 5: Thunderwolf pulls off a 24 inch move run charge move and attacks the hammerhead, and immobilizes it. The meltagun takes the fusion blaster off the piranaha.
The wounded piranha retreats to safety, while the ion head proceeds to devour the last thunderwolf in firepower, landing and wounding all 9 shots.

Turn 6: the meltagun goes after the piranaha again, but doesn’t cause any damage. While the remaining marines in the forest, make runs for buildings to claim objectives.
A pair of stray gun drone shots down the melta marine, and the ion cannon and burst cannons from the hammerhead clear the remaining marines from the table.

Final score
Tau: 3 team points (1 for breaking the enemy, and 2 for winning the mission objective), 7 player points (1 for D3 participation, 2 for completing the objective, 1 for killing more than 5 marines, 1 each for killing 2 creatures with T5 or better, 1 for killing the rhino)
Space Wolves: 0 team points, 2 player points (1 for participation, 1 for killing a piranaha)
Tau victory!

Kill Team Game 2
I moved straight into my next match (who had been waiting since he finished the last mission in a couple turns). His team you ask?
2 reavers
1 reaver with blaster and tank hunter
1 reaver with blaster and stealth
1 reaver with scout
1 reaver with feel no pain
Dark Eldar flyer bristling with guns?
Mission: Drop the bomb! Get to the enemies deployment zone, and on a 3+ drop a nuke to win the mission. -1 to the nuke roll for every enemy unit still in the zone, +1 for every friendly unit.

Deployment: L shape. I deployed my 3 piranhas clustered around my home base. I has actually planned to get this done turn 1... scout move 24, then on my first turn move the final 24 and drop the bomb... but it didn’t play out that way.
Dark eldar deploy their reavers about their deployment zone in no particular order and scout move one bike into my deployment zone (an eye for an eye style).

Turn 1: foolishly deciding to rack up some points before finishing them, I melta the nearest jetbike, killing it with no problem. Meanwhile my other 6 drones on the other piranhas disembarked into my deployment/bomb zone and the piranahas sped off into the fray.
The only problem with that was... I thought it was a blaster jetbike... and when it wasn’t, the real blaster jetbike got me, taking out the piranaha and killing its 2 drones in the explosion. Now fun fact... this forces the break test (because I only have 3 models in my kill team... and when the drones died with the piranaha, I lost the equivalent of 3 models... so I started taking leadership checks every turn.

Turn 2: No hammerhead. Piranhas manage to kill 2 more reavers, but (due to range issues) couldn’t take out the blasters.
In return a blaster took out another piranha, while a spare reaver began trying to drop bombs in my drone filled deployment zone (failing to set it off, but killing a drone anyways).

Turn 3: No hammerhead. Last piranha falls back to safety, while the drones fail to deal any damage to the reaver hovering around my deployment zone.
The 3 reavers, now in my deployment zone, went about clearing out the drones by driving over them. They succeeded in killing all but 1, but still couldn’t get the bomb off.

Turn 4: The hammerhead arrived! And missed all its attacks! Seeing my chance, the piranha made a beeline for the enemy deployment zone. Didn’t quite make it... but soon my pretty soon! It should be noted that, despite having been taken leadership checks (with a -1 penalty for every turn played after the first check), I had not run off the board!
In return, the hammerhead ate lance and exploded (despite all its bells and whistles). Meanwhile the Dark Eldar flyer came in, and bombarded my little piranaha. 2 lances, a 4 bombs, all penetrating... and 6 cover saves were made that day!

Turn 5: In an empty deployment zone, the piranha limps home, and drops the nuke!

Final score:
Tau: 2 team points (2 for meeting the objective), 5 personal points (3 for D3 participation points, 2 for completing the objective).
Dark Eldar: 0 team points, 8 personal points (3 for participation, 3 for my vehicles, 1 for killing more than 5 models, and 1 for doing so with a single model)
So a win for team Eldar... but also for the Dark Eldar...?

Stay tuned... maybe next time I won’t get so excited I forget to take pictures!

Nice work. Remind those 5th ed codexes that they still have to work for their wins!
Just thought I'd chip in to say that I do read these, and find them useful. Carry on!