It has been a decade, give and take a little, since our last tabletop bout. Everyday life, and all that, has come between us and a table, a piece of green cloth, dice and models. Actually, we have tried to schedule a game since January. Finally, we’ve reached an accord. This coming Tuesday, we are on – 4K points Tau vs Dark Angels. The table has already been set up, the armies selected, the dies have been tested and we are ready to rrrrrrumble!

So, I thought I’d share the fun with a short pre and after action report.

Firstly, it’s not only been a while, I’m also fielding a Tauforce for the first time ever. So that will be an interesting experience. This is also part playtesting (I seem to recall that we also did a lot of playtesting back in the day.).

I would also like to point out that there are several differences between our Tau rules, and the ones found in NetEpic gold both with regards to army composition and unit stats. On a whole the “to-hit” and “#-of-attacks” values are generally lower in our houserules. For instance Fire Warriors are 50cm, 4+, 0 in Gold – in our houserules they are 75cm, 5+, 0. Markelights follow the units attack characteristics rather than having its own stats. Unit sizes also differs – again with the fire warriors, we have 6+3 for a mech detachment, where Gold has 4+2.

However, I think that the applied tactics would not differ much. They still have much of the same strengths and weaknesses, they are just not as good at what they are good at in NetEpic Gold.
Miniatures are a nice combination of GZG (Firewarriors, Kroot), Ral Partha (Battlesuits, Krootox) and Forge World (Vehicles). One note though, I use a Tirger shark as a Mantis Missile Destroyer proxie. For two reasons – Back when I bought these minis I found it excessively expensive (taking into account that tax and clearance fees in Norway would double its original cost) and I also think it’s far too big compared with the scale of other praetorians in the game.

So what have I deployed for 4K

A Tau Hunter Cadre, comprising a pair of Shas’el Commanders and 3 detachemts of fire warriors with their Devilfish transports. In support, I have a couple of stealthsuit teams, a crisis battlesuit team (Flamer, Burst Cannon), and a Shas’O Commander special card.

Then we have a Hammerhead Cadre – 2 x Ion Cannon and 1 Rail Gun, supported by 2 tetra detachments, a piranha detachment and the Mantis.

Finally a Kroot Carnivore Horde bolstered by a couple of Krootox detachments.
My opponent will be fielding

A tactical company, an assault company, a battle company, a land raider company, a pair of warhounds and the raven wing.

I’ll get back to you with thoughts on tactics and stuff tomorrow (or today as I just fount out – time flies when having fun)

I tried to upload an image of the battlefield, but it failed. I’ll try to give a short description though.

As seen from the Tau’s set up zone:

The left flank is urbanized. In reality it is 2 or 3 separate towns but they grow together to create a continuous urban area across the entire battlefield.

In the center we have some woods almost midway across the field, and then some ruins between the woods and my opponent’s setup zone.

To the right we have an open area on my end of the table, then a small city and at the far end towards the Marines end, we find a couple of hills.

All-in-all it is quite a varied scene with some different challenges. The objectives are spread throughout the center of the board. 3 objectives are positioned on the left flank, 3 in the center and 2 on the right flank.

My opponent has chosen quite an infantry heavy force with 3 different marine companies. Wich is a challenge I must admit. Especially the 4 detachments of assault marines causes me some worry. I was also a bit surprised when he chose a pair of Warhounds over a Warlord or a Reaver. However it will mean that he will have a challenge with regards to my Mantis. He has equipped them with a multiple rocket launcher and a turbo laser destructor.

I think I will divide and reorganize a large part of my force into two hunting parties and go Mont’ka rather than Kauyon in my approach to the game. Offensive from a distance - is the key phrase. The remaining units will be divided into assault or support roles. I’ll be looking for ways to exploit the enhanced range of my Firewarriors trying to create areas of overlapping firearchs around enemy strongpoints. I think it will be important not to get to bogged down in close combat on the urbanized left flank and perhaps not focus to much on objectives in the beginning, they may always be picked up at a later stage.

One final thought Tau are supposed to be a shooty army. Looking at the NetEpic Gold rules that is certainly true. There are a lot of 4+ or even 3+ “to-hit” values. Combined with successful markerlights, that would give infantry type units 3+ or even 2+ “to-Hit” characteristics. That seems excessive, and it was the main reason for us to impair the shooting characteristics of the Tau army somewhat. It still holds a punch, however it is now much more reliant on doing the markerlight job correctly.

Does anyone with experience of playing or fighting Tau have any reflections on this?

Hi!

Well it seems it will be two of us putting in a game after a long hiatus.

I'll set out my stuff to play one this weekend, so we're in the same boat.

Tau are the only force I have no experience with. I haven't even put it together yet.

Their vulnerability, as you probably figured out is close combat. I think only two armies can sit and trade blows at a distance, that would be Eldar and perhaps Squats. If the opponent is any other, they would do well in closing the gap and engaging them up front.

A chaos or tyranid army can be very effective against tau, so long as the player focuses and continues to advance.

I think orks, due to the size of their hordes can be quite difficult for a tau player too manage, providing the ork player is skilled enough, otherwise the tau can rip them to shreds before they close.

Each of these armies has ways to close without suffering crippling casualties (ork deflektor shields, tyranid drop spores, chaos cards and CSM fliers). The tau will be in trouble if the opponent of these forces gets any sizable threat too close to valuable assests.

The best you can do is secure which ever objectives you can reasonably get to and hope your withering fire takes care of them. Its hard for the tau to go for far away objectives since they can be cut off and overwhelmed.

You could so it if your opponent is eldar or squats though. They have the same issues of numbers. Of course watch out for jet bikes and squat trikes! You don't have much of a counter for them.

Looking forward to your report of the game, have fun!

Primarch

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Hi,

Thanks for the intel. It was great fun to play again!

Here is the after action summary.

Turn 1.
SM won the initiative. However, first the TAU Stealth suit commandos and Kroot infiltrated the left and center, capturing a couple of objectives. The SM struck back launching an assault into the TAU left flank and engaging the Stealthsuits in close combat. While carefully moving their infantry up through the urban area as support.

2 Tau firewarrior teams took up good shooting positions in the buildings closest to the TAU set up zone on the left flank. In the center Tau took up positions in the woods, preparing to launch their own offensive in turn two. SM moved into the ruined buildings directly in front of the woods trying to force a standoff. The imperial Landraiders were positioned on a hill in the middle of the SM player’s setup zone. But set on FF orders and thus was not able to contribute much in the first round. The warhounds advanced onto the field, and on the right flank SM captured a town watching as the Mantis advanced towards them from the TAu’s end.

Shooting commenced and the Tau Mantis hit wit all of it’s arsenal at the SM line. Killing a wooping 2 infantry stands… The Stealths in the center managed to markerlight 1(one!) SM infantry detachment. A combination of Krotox and Firewarrior fire hurt but did not cripple one of the warhounds. The SM player did a good job at keeping his infantry concealed from the Tau units. The warhounds fired barrages at the Kroot, shaking but not stirring the horde.

The close combat on the left flank was a draw. However, the Stealthsuit unit was broken, as where a detachment of Tetras caught out in the open while trying to grab an objective.

Score:
Tau 10
SM 24

Turn 2
SM won the initiative again.The Kroot continued their advance through the urban area on the left flank, aiding the Stealtsuits pinned in CC with the Marines. A Tau Tetra squad swooped forward launching an assault deep into the left flank thus luring out the ravenwing landspeeders hiding there. The second Ravenwing Landspeeder squad counterattacked and engaged the Kroot. Tau Piranahs advanced into firesupport. The Mantis withdrew somewhat, to move out of range for the imperial Landraiders now advancing down the center of the board. The Crisis suits moved out from cover in the woods advancing on the SM units in the ruins only to be cut off by a detachment of imperial bikes.

Again - the Mantis failed in the shooting face, killing nothing. The same for the Hammerheads, I don’t think they killed anything in the two first rounds. The various CCs on the left flank ended in a draw. However the second Tetra detachment was broken in the process. Meanwhile, the Landraiders where successful in shooting down the Hammerheads, breaking that company. The Crisis suits got broken by the bikes, and even though the remaining stand hit 3 bikes wit tis flamer template, 2 of them saved… In the end phase, several Tau detachments failed their morale and went on fallback. Leaving the battlefield to the Kroot, and a couple of Firewarrior detachments. So we decided to call it a night and declared at SM Tactical victory.

Score:
Tau 10
SM 37

It was a long time since our last game and we both made mistakes, like forgetting to give units orders. If that wasn’t enough, Lady Luck decided to take a dump on my fortune. The dice rolling were abysmal. We wanted to test whether we had reduced the “to-hit” roll with to much, but wether you have 5+ or 4+ doesen’t really matter when you’re only rolling 1s and 2s, with the occasional 3… On the other hand – my opponent was doing a good job of keeping his infantry concealed, so I ended up taking potshots at titans and the odd Rhino instead of focusing my firepower as I had planned. Some reflections though:

Tau are quite fragile. My army composition played to that weakness with less company cards and more support cards that easily could be broken.

Markerlights are difficult to utilize. However, they are effective at for instance reducing the effect of cover!

Kroot works nicely. Krotox are quite badass.

Move is limited – I thought Tau was quick, but compared with the Marines I came up short. I also had fewer detachments than my opponent making him outmaneuver me.

Tactically I should probably have used the Mantis differently, moving it into the urban area where it could have used all its burst cannons.

My opponent did a decent job and played far better than me.

Dice sucks!

Good Luck Peter! Hope you do better than me! (What will you be playing?)

Welcome back @ringo! Great to see another NetEpic player getting back into the fray!

I was in a similar situation to yourself this time about a year ago, but since I've been back I've been even more involved in the game than ever!

Thanks for posting your battle report, great to read even though it sounds like you had a hard time of it. Still, a heavy defeat makes victory in a rematch all the better! Hope you get to claim your revenge soon, and when you do, be sure to let us know about it!

Cheers!

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