Well Gary and I manage to get a game in last night and decided to give Chroma's variant Tau list ago.

Photos can be seen here. I don't have an easy way to edit them so no linked photos like chroma  

I haven't got a proper list of Gary's Tau army but I'll post what I can remember/work out from the photos and memory.

Rules Used

2008 Errarta
Chroma's alterantive Tau

Armies Used

Marines - 3000 pts

Tactical - BTS Goal
6 Tactical Marines
3 Rhinos
1 Hunter
1 Razorback (Lascannon)
Supreme Commander

Terminator 1
4 Terminator Marines

Terminator 2
4 Terminator Marines

Devastators
4 Devastator Marines

Assault
4 Assault Marines
Chaplain

Land Speeders
5 Land Speeders

Scouts
4 Scouts
2 Rhinos
1 Razorback (lascannon)

Whirlwinds
4 Whirlwinds

Thunderhawk

Thunderhawk

Thunderbolts
2 Thunderbolts

Thunderbolts
2 Thunderbolts

Tau - 3000 pts

Crisis Cadre - BTS Goal
4 Crisis Battlesuits
1 Stealth suit
2 Heavy drones
3 Gun drones

Crisis Cadre
4 Crisis Battlesuits
2 Heavy drones

Fire Warrior Cadre
8 Fire Warriors
1 Stealth Suit
Ethereal

Pathfinders
4 Pathfinders
2 Devilfish

Armoured Cadre
4 Hammerhead - Ion cannon
1 Skyray

Armoured Cadre
3 Hammerhead - rail cannon
1 Skyray

Broadside Cadre
4 Broadside suits

Orca Dropship

Tigershark AX10

Barracuda Squadron
2 Barracuda Fighters

COOL!  Really looking forward to this!  

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Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Battlefield

6' x 4'; As Marines setup the table Tau selected edge deployment.
Table Setup

Deployment

Marines placed both Terminators, dev's and assault formations in reserve
Tau placed Fire Warriors in the Orca in reserve

Marines garrisoned the scouts and landspeeders on overwatch
Tau garrisoned the Broadsides on overwatch

Remaining deployment can bee seen in this and the next two photos

Actually, Photobucket, the picture hosting site I use, can do automatic resizing adjustments as desired when you upload.

Check it out!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Turn 1

Terminator One Teleport in front of the Hammerhead - Rail formation in a wood. No blast markers.

Strategy Roll: Marines

The battle begins with the whine of jet engines as Thunderbolt's one approach and attach the forward deployed Broadsides. 1 hit results in a single blast marker.

Terminator 1 fail to sustain fire at Hammerhead - Rail, take the blast marker and shoot anyway. 4 Hits kill 3 tanks leaving the lone survivor to break and move to the Tau's right edge behind a hill.

The Barracudas go on CAP.

Thunderbolts 2 go on CAP as the game becomes who has to move first!

The Broadsides sustaing fire at the land speeders after a stern word from the Shas'O. 2 speeders are hit and one is destroyed.

Whirlwinds sustain fire at the Broadsides and place a second blast marker on them.

The AX10 swoops in to attack Terminator 1. Thunderbolt 2 move forward to engage but can't hit the agile bomber. It hits with 2 MW and kills two terminators. The terminators are broken.

Tactical formation goes on overwatch.

Crisis cadre engages Terminator 1. These formations are now real nasty in FF. I didn't note each sides kills but the Tau ended up winning by 4 and wiping out Terminator 1. They used the hit and run consolidation to move into the wood.

Scouts double over in front of the Broadsides and place a third blast marker.

Hammerhead Ion advance forward to shoot at the scouts. 3 scouts are hit and 2 go down.

Landspeeder suffer a communication failure but the Supreme Commander manages to get them to double over towards the broadsides. They don't hit but the broadsides are broken and they retreat behind the hill on the tau right.

The pathfinders attempt to double into the fight, get confused and stay put removing the blast marker generated.

Thunderhawk loaded with both the assault and devestator marines decide to stand down.

Shas'O formation doubles forward into the wood were the Broadsides started. They shoot at the scouts destroying the razorback.

The empty Thunderhawk shoots at the broken Broadsides from extreme range. The barracudas move in to attack but fail to hit. It hits one suit which fails its save. One shot, 3 dead suits. Sweet  

The Orca stands down and the turn is done.

End of Turn:

The hunter kills one Barracuda on the way out. All other flyers leave safely.

All marines rally

Broadside and Hammerhead - Rail both fail to rally.

Turn 2

Terminator 2 teleport next to the Shas'O formation. They land with one blast marker for their trouble.

Strategy Roll: Marines

The setup for turn two can be seen here

The landspeeders advance behind the wood and shoot at the Shas'O. 2 drones are destroyed by multi melta fire.

After a brief check with the supreme commander terminator 2 storm into combat with the Shas'O. Picture. The combat does not go well for the Tau, with +7 on the resolution the Shas'O is no more for the loss of one terminator.

Hammerhead - Ion advance away from the anoying speeders that had placed them in their scout zoc (cheesy move on my part) and shoot them. 9 hits take out 3 speeders and the lone survivor breaks back towards the far right marine TnH objective.

Thunderbolts 2 go on CAP in anticipation of the orca landing.

The Crisis team now decided to engage terminator 2 to avenge the Shas'O. At this point Gary's dice, that had not been kind, really deserted him. This photo shows the result of his crisis suits attack. All need 4's to hit. White are normal and yellow macro. He also had an extra my to roll and that came up 3 too! Thats 8 dice, needing 4+ for no hits! To add insult to injury all the terminators hit, killing a stand and wiping out the formation on resolution. These vets rock  

Thunderbolts 1 attempt to ground attack but stand down for tea instead

The remaining barracuda also decides that a rest is probably for the best.

Whirlwinds now double forward and shoot hammerhead - Ion. No hits are scored.

The pathfinders final move and double forward to shoot at the scouts, placing a blast marker.

The scouts now marshall, moving behind the central wood and remove all blast markers.

The AX10 enters the battlefield again to target the whirlwinds. Thunderbolt 2 cap the bomber again but can't do any damage. 3 whirlwinds are destroyed and the lone broken tank retreats back to were it came from.

The empty thunerhawk hits the hammerhead - ions at long range and places a blast marker

Finally the Ethereal decides that the terminators must go and orders his orca to engage them. Photo. One Firewarrior is killed by the terminators fire. In return 9 hits are scored, but the resolute veterans refuse to fall! Even so the Tau win the resolution and the terminators are wiped out.

The loaded thunderhawk now dives in to return the favour to the fire warriors. The skyray hits the flyer twice, doing a point of damage but no critical. The assuault goes badly for the fire warriors with only a single survivor running away from the smoke. However the Chaplain and one other assault marine were lost.

End of Turn:

All planes disengaged without damage.

All marines rallied.

Tau rallied all except Fire Warrior and Hammerhead - Rail

Turn 3.

No teleports

Strategy Roll: Tau.

Setup for turn 3 can be seen here.. Things are not looking good for Gary and his Tau.

The AX10 is ordered in but fails to get the message and stands down.

The devestators sustain fire at hammerhead - ion, hitting and killing 3 tanks. The broken formation retreats behind the hill.

The pathfinders advance rewards and shot the assault marines, wiping them out.

The surviving thunderhawk arrives and kills the remainnig broadside.

The barracuda swoops in and destroys the remaining landspeeder and the Tau are out of formations.

Scouts spread out to take the Tau blitz and one take and hold objectvie.

Tactical march to hold one Marine take and hold and their own blitz.

Whirlwind fails to activate and can't march to hold the other marine take and hold.

Score:

Marines 4 (BTS, Blitz, Take and Hold, TSNP) Tau 0

OOUCH!

So, what were your thoughts on the Chroma-variant?  Looks like a lot of failed activations on both sides.

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Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

I have to say that Gary's dice started out poor and headed south from there.

Overall I think it played ok, assuming that the Tau are allowed to be a FF army. The crisis teams look really nasty on paper and are deadly in fire fight, but fold if caught in combat. Hit and run instead of jump packs was ok, but I'm a little unsure that they should be able to consolidate a full move.

Fire warriors look better now I think. The Ethereal sounds great (Inspiring, Leader and all fearless formation). He didn't really get a chance to shine in this game as he died in the thunderhawk air assault.

I don't think either of us missed the long range guided missile fire or the sentry drones.

I'm sure Gary will pop by and post some comments too.

Great report and pictures   .
Are those the marines you were working on for the D.S. GT,they look up to your usually great painting standard.

Yep, that was the army I'd planned to use at the GT. They will be on tournament début at Full Scale Assault next Feb.

Did the army "feel" Tau-ish?  Some have commented that Tau might just be "Eldar-lite" if they're allowed to firefight, so how was it when they threw down in an assault?

And get Gary in here to make a comment!  *laugh*

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

In this battle they did feel a little eldar like to be honest, but in theory the Tau should survive longer as even their grunts have saves. So sledgehammers in plastic coated soap bubbles  .

Changing the jump pack rule to hit and run was probably the biggest change that made them feel eldar like. This does nothing to help the suits avoid CC now, and they die real quick when they do.

I'd like to try this list again when I can.

Well, that was brutal! I think I have a long way to go before mastering use of the Tau    Oh well.

Mephiston played very well, using a pretty tasty list, and I never really felt in contention for a win. I’ll console myself with the fact that I did kill quite a few marines (including 40 members of the first company and one and a half Thunderhawks   ). Small and feeble victories though.

I’ve played marines twice with the Tau now, and both times I’ve really struggled. I think it’s the ability of Terminators and Thunderhawks to pretty much guarantee getting hard lads into base to base, when and where they want, that makes it so hard for the Tau. Not sure what to do about that really. Definitely more skyrays for a start (I only spotted after the battle that you can take two per upgrade in this list), but the Thunderhawks will still get through most of the time I should think.

Anyway, here’s some thoughts on the list:

1) Structure. I liked that the formation sizes are based on pack sizes. I also liked the flexibility of being able to buy small formations of things like broadsides/hammerheads/stealth, and then add to them if you want. Really adds to the uses you could put different formations to. The reduced number of unit choices gave a bit of focus to the list, but the ability to fine tune formations by adding variable numbers of different squads seemed quite fun. I would enjoy tinkering with the composition of exactly what to put in an Orca for example.

2) Guided missiles. I liked the change to the rule, so that units have to be markerlit for GMs to be used. It’s probably a good thing that the markerlight sentries have gone. I quite enjoyed using them in the past, but they did encourage rather static play and were (I imagine) quite annoying to play against.

3) Eldar-lite? The list did feel a bit like the eldar. The boosted firefight abilities worked quite well I thought (Crisis suits are pretty terrifying), especially as everything is still rubbish in close combat, so they still feel very much like the Tau in that respect. But I think the use of the Hit and Run rule made the list seem just a bit too much like the eldar. Maybe we should stick with a Tau specific special rule to deal with the jump packs.

4) Drones: The drone upgrades seem a bit good. I would definitely put loads more of these in my next list, if I had the models. You can put three gun drones and three heavy drones into a Crisis formation for 120 points, and this would add loads to its survivability and power in engagements (through weight of numbers and the 2 FF attacks the heavy drones now get), as well as providing markerlights. Maybe you could change it so that there is only one drone upgrade, something like “You may add up to 4 drones of any typeâ€Â

Historically, Marines have always done well against Tau for precisely the reasons stated - the Tau usually fold if you can get the hard lads into contact. The only viable defence here is close screening formations to fend off teleports and air-assaults, combined with good AA capability.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt