So... yet another heroic battle ,that will echo in eternity, went down in Pettans dad´s garage yesterday (yes... we´re 35 years old the both of us, but still use our parents gear).
Three thousand points of Khorne supported, Nurgle madness ripped into a 3000p stalwart Tau battleforce. In brief, the first round went rules-wise OK. The Tau Moray drop ship totally fried the long range traitor Reaver titan after some softening up by the command group of Shas´el and Shas´vre Crisis suits. The head bridge was breached by heavy rail gun blasts and toppled over to the cheering of the Tau troops. The Tau made surprisingly few maneuvres, and both a hitch hiking Mortarion in a Plague tower and a Troll warband could close in into close combat with a surprised Kroot tracker horde. The second round saw mass carnage as a warhound titan with a chain fist charged past the frantic melee into two skyrays who both went down in sawed up pieces.
Now we ran into some issues; a) Which type of units gain cover bonuses for terrain? This is not stated in the rules, we ruled so that titan and praetorian class units don´t gain cover bonuses, but all other units do. This becomes important for the Agile Warhound titans since they already give a -1 mod to units shooting at it. b) What type of template is used for the Shamblers toxic breath? A detachment of Shamblers were beached by Dreadclaw transports close to a bunker guarded by Tau fire warriors.
The third round ended in a spectacular explosion as the Moray was shot down by a Dreadclaw transpot (sic!) from the rear, and the chaos troops reveled in a well deserved victory.

That sounds like an awesome battle but seriously one of you thirty year olds is gonna' have to buy or bring a camera next time and get it typed up as a batrep. No Pics, no help with questions. Sorry but I feel like I just missed out of the best BBQ this year and got left to do the dishes.  

EDIT: Oh, make no mistake I can help you folks out. I know the answers to these questions.  

P.S. I like the Tau but it's nice to see them get their greater good handed to them once in a while, come on the Chaos!

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

That sounds like an awesome battle but seriously one of you thirty year olds is gonna' have to buy or bring a camera next time and get it typed up as a batrep. No Pics, no help with questions. Sorry but I feel like I just missed out of the best BBQ this year and got left to do the dishes.  

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"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the "real Marines". " Major General Chesty Puller, USMC

Ok, ok, I wont whine no more but I'll give you an Internet Cookie each for a Batrep. It'll be good to see your Epic Battles. Oh and I'll answer your questions too.

I know what you mean about the 3000 point size. It's a hard choice no matter what you take. After your next try out with Tau be sure to let us (ok me) know what you think of them. I've been wondering about getting some. How do they play in NetEpic?

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

I think its a really nice army that works like no other that I can think of now anyways. Their negative as I see it is that they are really bad at CC and if no trees close by even their allies the Kroot become sucky aswell. So its a really defensive force that has some of the coolest dudes around. These are Tau commanders in suits that has  "fire on the fly" and whips away about 3 attacks/stand with a mixture of 3 and 4+ tohit. After their bombard they can jump back into the forest. (sneaky cowards) Their "Titans" are the Floating/Flying Manta pretorians that shoot some really big guns but still I dont really like them.

Something I noticed when I did the army is that I found it quite hard to build a different army than the last time if I still wanted it to be fairly good. So in the end I ended up with more or less the same sheit. This is kinda booring.

The army is built around a

Cadre of Tau in their rhino-look-a-like 650
Hammerhead Cadre                         500
Manta                                         800
Kroots                                         600
Fliers (fighters that shooooot alot)    200
Aleast one unit with markerlights       150-250
This is about 3000 and even if I take the smaller version of the manta I save 300


We did play a 3K battle tonight and took some pictures. Johan said he will write a battlerep about it but due to some technical issues (no way to transfer pics from camera right now) you will have to wait atleast 2 weeks. After that you can start whining again.  

Be well.

/Pete

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"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the "real Marines". " Major General Chesty Puller, USMC

It's a hard choice no matter what you take. After your next try out with Tau be sure to let us (ok me) know what you think of them. I've been wondering about getting some. How do they play in NetEpic?

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"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the "real Marines". " Major General Chesty Puller, USMC

Thanks Pettan, that's some good Intel. I like the idea of the Tau genre and all but I think I'll stick with Eldar for now. I think all the armies can become stagnant once you find the sweet army choice for you. I notice that a smaller army limits you to what you know works and makes you leave the experimental fun stuff behind.

Two weeks, ok I can wait for that and thanks again to you both for putting up with the whinging.

Yeah, I could proxy some stuff and play a game but haven't had a battle in months (feels like years) or even had time to look at any of my epic so I've gone off the boil. I don't think I'll manage to do anything any time soon either. Need money so need to work need. love family so need to spend time with em, need Epic so need more than 24 hours in a day.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

a)Cover for Titans/Praetorians. Ok, it's not as straight forward as you might think so this will be a long reply. From the tables in the rules it says Titan/Praetorians get mods for being in cover, However remembering back to the old book you could only target locations in LOS and unblocked by terrain. I would say some common sense is required. If it's a Warhound in a forests then yes give it the -1 BUT you may only target the locations not blocked from LOS. If it's a Warhound in a crater that clearly doesn't reach up to it's little toe then obviously that wouldn't get a modifier to be hit and is unlikely to have any locations blocked by LOS. Remember if a hit on the location template deviates to a location blocked by LOS then it's a miss. (Unless it was a Warp Missile as they skip in and out of reality so would miss the cover and still hit, arguably).

b) Shamblers Template attack. It fails to say in the rules as you know, but usually if they intend for the smaller Greater Daemon of Nurgle template to be used they mention it in the description and stats. So I would take it to mean that the larger template is ok.

Anyway, I hope this all helps or gives some food for thought in any case, remember I'm not a designer or expert I'm just a slightly older player who has been around, Epicwise.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

To answer the questions:

a)- Units with a hit location template you play WYSIWYG.  So, if the location you are targeting is in cover it gets the modifier, if not, then no mod.  So a Warhound up to it's hips in a forest would get the cover modifier if you targeted the feet/knees/hips, but not if you shot at the head.

b)- I don't know....what do people think?  Small teardrop?

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy

A) So what happens when a target is initially aimed at a location outside  cover and the hit scatters onto a location in cover? The old rules says this is a miss, it impacted in the cover, does this then refer only to buildings now?

B) Normal Flamer Template. It's not a Contagion weapon so why the debilitating smallness to make it less effective.

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My head is full of War...

[img]http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/kk120/Warhead40k/Tyranid%20Swarm/DSC02262.jpg[/img]

A) If it scattered into the area in cover, and the to hit roll was still high enough then a hit, but if not high enough for the adjusted to hit value, misses.

B) Just looked at how good the Shamblers are, what was standard for Nurgle and came up with a guess.  No real science .  Was just a suggestion as denoted by the question mark.

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy

A) If it scattered into the area in cover, and the to hit roll was still high enough then a hit, but if not high enough for the adjusted to hit value, misses.

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"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the "real Marines". " Major General Chesty Puller, USMC

Nice to see you got back up north Pettan, for some games!

Coming back south with your armies later on even?

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It would be nice to get lightspeed,
so far we can only reach slight speed.- Erik M
092b85658e746a91d343e53509d357744e56f641

Was thinking about it. Might bring along a few stunties..

/P-man

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"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the "real Marines". " Major General Chesty Puller, USMC