Now that i'm back and somewhat recovered, here's how my games went.
I took tau this year, using a list i've had reasonable success with in it's 3-4k variants over the last couple of years. It's very mobile, can hit hard, and has a very durable and if need be quick BTS which i don't think i've ever lost as yet. It is however very Eldar like in it's durability, which does mean it needs to do quite a bit of hiding away normally to survive contact with the enemy.
Game 1: Martin (Black Legion) - German 1.
Martin had a solid Chaos army, replete with double death wheels and some solid retinues. The game played pretty cagey for turn 1, with a bit of sniping from both sides. Martin got the jump on me turn 2, which saw the kroot holding a key peice of ruins taken out, however this was initiated by his BTS, which had left it's cover to do this. I managed to get a couple of infantry units up to counter this and managed to annihilate his supreme commander's retinue and break the BTS, which did put Martin on the back foot somewhat. His efforts to swing this around a bit were hampered going into turn 3 when his terminators teleported in, and tried to assault some skimmer tanks. Some poor dice saw the assault bounce however, and in retaliation i was able to get a sweet crossfire on one of the death wheels, breaking it and taking it down to a single wound. I couldn't take out the BTS, but i did however manage to take the blitz and some other objectives for a 3-0 win.
Game 2: Per (Knights) - Sweden.
This game was a bit frustrating, not because of Per, but because almost nothing activated during the game. Certainly for me personally i've never had a game like it, with an activation rate of something in the region of 25%. Half my army never made it out of the deployment zone, with a couple of units not activating at all in 4 turns. Ended up a winning draw to Per, although i think with some more aggressive play it could have been a big win to him. Not much to say about this one really, as nothing really happened!
Game 3: Dennis (AMTL) - Sweden.
This one started similar to the previous, with me failing the first 3 activation rolls of the game - somewhat key as i was trying to get some of the hammerheads on overwatch in case Dennis ran at me with his warhounds. Cover proved problematic for me in this game especially, as it was lots of tiny woods - great for the titans, not so great when you're trying to hide a unit of tanks from a plasma totting warhound... I ended up playing very defensively for the first couple of turns, then once his BTS reaver came forward went full on at it, getting some solid crossfires. Some good saving kept it in the game, and he managed to repair the crit as it sat on 1 wound broken on his blitz. Ended up a 2-0 win to me turn 4 from blitz and take and hold.
Game 4: Matthias (Minervans) - Germany 2.
The fully armoured list was an interesting one, although for me it did suffer from a lack of durable formations. However, Matthias had some stellar rolling, starting with winning the strategy rolloff all 3 turns - not something i wanted to see with 2 units of manticores, and he sensibly broke 2 of my tank formations. I did my best in return to take out all of his smaller activations, however despite getting stuff within 30cm, they kept rallying regardless with impressive regularity. Plays made for the start of turns 2 and 3 were foiled by losing the strategy ratings, including a nice crossfire planned for the BTS from a macro unit, but such is life. The only positive with all of this was Matthias was often sustaining on my units, and so made little headway towards my half of the board. Ended up with all objectives in my half and none shall pass for a 2-0 on turn 3.
Game 5: Ben (Orks) - UK North.
Ben had taken an interesting list, although it did have a lot of fragile ground activations, which i did my best to take advantage of. We both had a very mixed set of dice, for instance my BTS advancing on a warband sitting in a ruin, doing 8 hits... which were all saved, and Ben then assaulting them and doing no wounds whatsoever, but breaking me anyway despite me being up 2 on the roll. In fairness i was just glad we hadn't gone to a second round of combat! It was however the Kroot which were the real stars, despite failing to activate for the first 2 turns, on turn 3 they finally assaulted the first set of big gunz, and then followed up in turn 4 after i won the strategy rolloff again taking out the other unit and blocking the way for the gargant to get back to the blitz. Ben made some solid attempts to clear units there, but in the end he didn't have the activations to do it, and the game ended a 2-1 to me in turn 4.
Overall an interesting tournament! I was overall reasonably pleased with how the Tau performed, even with the terrain giving it some serious issues (as there were very limited places you could hide even a unit of 4-5 tanks), hence the pretty grim looking VP balance.
Personally i'm not particularly keen on the scoring system (3pts win, 2pts winning draw, 1pt straight draw, 0pts losing draw/loss), as i both don't find it granular enough, and means if you have a particularly rough game (such as my game 2) and you still manage to hold it to a draw you still get nothing for it.
The tournament however was well run, and there were some good lunch options available as well, so i think overall Germany did a great job