Woot, we got Epic players showing up all over the place now. Epic's got some mo' goin.

Anyway, Anton, one of the newest members of our group (moved down from Chicago)and I through some dice down last night and had quite the wild ride.

I wanted to start playing with a Manta because I never have and I really don't have a feel for it and what it represents.

So with that in mind, my list...

Tau:

1, Manta, 700 BTS
2, Orca, 150
3, Barracuda, 150
4, Crisis, 250, SC, 100
5, Skysweep, 250
6, Crisis, 250
7, Foot FW, 225
8, Crisis, 250
9, Recon, 150
10, Recon, 150
11, HH, 250, HH, 125

I was trying a couple of new things for me, one of which was the Manta, but also, in all my years of playing Tau, I've never taken an Orca. I have three of them, so go figure.

I put the SC-Crisis and another Crisis in the Manta and the Orca contained the FW+Crisis group, which drastically cut down on my activations.

I knew that I was going to be playing against Orks (at least that was my hope) and I was generally familiar with what my opponent was going to take, which is gobs of formations, 1-2 Fighta bommas, usually totally 9 or so, a Stompa mob with a Superstompa, possibly commandos, and quite likely 1-2 units of Storm boyz.

As the pundits are fond of saying, "No plan survives contact with the enemy", which is exactly what happened to me. So I still got to play against Orks, but Anton brought a Great Gargant supported by more of a speed freaks list. So several truk mobs, no aircraft (Thank you very much Mr. Skysweep), two flak wagons (thankfully), 1 mob of Storm boyz, and a liberal sprinkling of Odd boy/Mek boy weapons in the truk mobs, and one Boyz mob in trucks. Anton was basically playing what he had in hand vs. tuning a list to be the most effective. I on the other hand had a sort of tuned list, but tuned for the wrong person. Oh well.

Later in the game, we realized that Anton also shorted himself around 150-200 pts.

We had around 30-40% terrain on the board.

To be continued...

_________________
Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

This is what I think I vaguely remember...

T1

So, I'm excited. My army doesn't have a lot of good match ups as I had

expected to face an army with more infantry in it. The Orks are are going all

Shaka Zulu on me with the Gargant in the middle as the bulls head and two

fairly mechanized horns poised to do the inevitable surrounding motions.

We roll to see who goes first, the Orks win, but decide to let the Tau go

instead, given that the Orks had more on board activations. I had garrisoned

my two recon units on the two objectives in an attempt to slow down the

charging horns. On the right, my Recon unit singled up in ML range of a large

Blitz mob, but missed on all hits, so only one BM. The Orks respond by driving

up a Skorcha mob and immolating all but the two Tetras.

Convinced that I need to hammer the large group of gun wagons, I move up the

HH cadre and I thnk hit one or two. Not a big deal.

The Gargant moves up and spreads a lot of noise (i.e. tried to hit the Manta,

but didn't do anything). The left side horn (Boyz + truks) moves up and

secures the Tau objective on it's side. The left side Recon doubles up, and

does a little damage. The Manta shoots up the Boyz a little bit and unloads

the two crisis formations. The skysweep slides over and does squat, even with

ML support from Recon Left. The Stormboyz engage Skysweep and bite the big

one. Skysweep no mas!

The Barras fail to activate on a ground attack and decide to have another cup

of chai. A smaller gun mob scoots over at the left hand Recon and surprisingly

misses all of it's shots.

The Orca comes in, lands, unloads FW+Crisis and does some serious damage,

killing everything except the Oddboy, who breaks back to the deployment line.

None of the broken Tau rally, but decent numbers of BMs are removed. Same for

the Orks  


T2

Tau go first. The Orca loads everyone up and flys offboard. Realizing that the

big horn on the right is going to munch the HHs if I don't do something, I

seek to retain. At a -2 (1 BM + Retain) I pass and the HHs triple out of Dodge

and break to safety. The Gargant rips into the Manta and does three DC

The Stormboyz engage the two Crisis formations at the base of the Manta. This

turns out to be a bad idea, they lose and are wiped out. The crisis

consolidate into difficult terrain.

The Barras activate with 1 BM and take out the broken Oddboy in the back.

Recon Left is munched down to one Tetra who breaks and heads for the Ork

Blitz.

None of the Tau Recons rally. BMs are down to two or so on the Manta. The

crisis fms close to the Manta have 1 BM or so.

I am now close to activation parity with the ORks.


T3

Tau go first. The HH cadre sustains on the smaller blitz mob on the left and

wipe them out...er, maybe there is one left. I think that's right. The Gargant

opens up on the Manta again and takes down another DC. The Orks are starting

to run out of options. The Scorcha mob consolidates on the Tau side objective

but has enough range to wipe out the Recon right Tetras.

The big blitz doubles on the two crisis formations, kills one outright, and

reduces the SC crisis to only the SC unit. Ouch!

The Barras come on again and wipe out the Oddboy/Mekboy gocart. The Orca lands

next to the Tau blitz and engages the big Blitz in a clipping assault and wins

big, wiping it out. The Gargant barfs all over the HHs, causing them to break

towards the Ork Blitz. The Tau are desparately trying to stay on the perifery

of the the Ork firepower and stretch them in multiple directions.

HHs rally.

We are either at 1-1 and go to T4.  


T4

Tau go first. The Barras stand down for some more chai because flying is

really hard work, especially when nobody else is in the sky. The Crisis near

the blitz jumps over and shoots up the Scorcha mob a little bit. Mostly I'm

trying to get BMs on them and break them. The FWs secure the Tau Blitz against

Ork ghosts, which is hard work so they have some chai as well.

The Manta and the SC crisis sidle over to the left side objective on the Orks

side of the board. The Gargant blows HH parts all over their deployment zone.

Now it's crunch time. Nothing to rally, but the Scorcha mob removes some BMs.


T5

Orks go first. The only thing they can do is contest Tau objectives and shoot

at the Manta. No damage occurs. The Orca needs to activate and get over to the

Ork Blitz. It does. The Barras need to activate and blow away a 4 unit Scorcha

mob or at least break it. They do, they hit four times, the Scorchas lose

three and the Tau win 2-0.

Absolutely awesome, but brutal game.

Many thanx Anton! Looking forward to the next time.

_________________
Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

wow, doesn't sound like much survived! Interesting to see so many successful Tau assaults, especially against Orks (who seemed to do an uncharacteristic amount of shooting). Sounds like the Gargant was a bit of a handicap - it's shooting didn't do anything decisive, it didn't do any big engages (which should be it's main strength) and it denied the Ork player other, more mobile/ robust formations to claim objectives with.

certainly sounds as if the 'cudas gained their points worth

_________________
numquam culum es

Interesting stuff Honda.

Unfortunately an Orca can't fit in a FW formation (foot) and Crisis Suits though as the Crisis' take up 2 slots. That might've changed things a bit as the Orca attacks seemed to do very well.

I've had some good fortune using an Orca with 6 Crisis suits loaded but there's no way it can come on until most/all of the enemy AA is neutralised.

_________________
Just call me Steve.

NetEA Rules Chair
NetEA FAQ

Want to play Iron Warriors in Epic Armageddon? Click HERE
Some of my Armies.
My Hobby site.

Shuzzbutt! You are absolutely correct. My very bad. I've never transported Crisis before and that completely slipped my mind. That would have had an impact on that last clipping assault for certain. The previous assault...well, I guess it would have depended on what was in the Orca.

Here I was, thinking that I'd found a natural synergy. I wonder if bumping the carrying capacity of the Orca to 14, which would have allowed this is OTT. Will need to post in the Tau forum.





In this game, the AA was light and I think I had neutralized half of it, by the time I brought the Orca on, freeing up the left side of the board. I agree, you can't just willy-nilly fly through the board and expect to pull off an Orca air assault. I do think that they could be a nice counter punch in the Tau side of the field if they are operating within their AA umbrella.

So, this was a bit of a learning experience for me and unfortunately, I futzed up parts of it. I'll play more with these units.

My general thinking this game, and against Orks in general, is that as the Tau player, you either have to break one of the horns early in the game, or you are pretty much dead. They'll just overwhelm you and push you off the table.

This game, I was thinking that if I could keep key formations off the table, preventing their early destruction, then I could place them where I needed to support counter attacks. It was a bit of a risk, but seemed like a better option than getting engaged too early. I definitely think that it could have gone either way right up until the last turn based on one activation on either side, plus if you add back in the other 200 pts or so, and I could have been in real trouble.

So, I certainly don't feel puffed up about this, by any means.




Oh yes, it was painful looking at the casualties, though in the past, it was usually my Tau sitting alone in the casualty pile as the Orks are too busy crumpin'.



A couple of points:

1. The Ork player, though an accomplished IG player, had never fielded Orks before.

2. He was playing what he had on hand, which was a lot of vehicles, so he went with the  Speed Freak theme

3. Part of my strategy was to stay as far away from his units as possible while causing casualties and BMs. That approach often forced him to double to get close, only to have me try to skirt away. Previous experiences with Orks had demonstrated that closing to get higher numbers of shots or more efficient shots to be self-defeating.

So a combo of things were taking place to create this effect.



After the game, we both agreed that if you are going to take the GG, you have to build the rest of the army to support it. TRC seems to think that they are pretty effective, so I wouldn't just write it off.

As it turned out, the GG didn't shoot that well, or was out of range for a majority of it's weaponry, or the Tau just avoided it. I knew that I could spend the whole game trying to knock down it's shields and fail, so I ignored it the entire game and made the decision to just suffer through it's shooting. Once it got to the center of the table, as I was stripping down the other Ork formations, it became more troublesome as any large Titan might because it can only be in one place or do one thing.

I personally would probably not take one if I was playing Orks, but I do see how it could be a real pain for other more ground based armies.



Initially, I took them because I was expecting a lot of Ork fighta bomma support from the Orks. When they were essentially freed up, I just put them in places where they could help out. They never encountered flak (intentionally) and picked on broken units up until the end, where they really pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

So they did perform well in this game, but I also think there were some extenuating circumstances that facilitated that.

All that being said, I am not unhappy with their performance and think the move to the missile pack was the right move.

_________________
Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment

Ok, I don't know if there is a waiting period, or what, but the "reply" button finally showed itself! I even have a screen cap with it not there, that I was about to send you Jim.

I registered on here years ago, but never posted, and semi-randomly ran into the epic players at the LGS and got this game in against Jim.

As has been stated, I'm an IG player, and just a budding Ork player at this point. I've never even played them in 40k.

That said, I should have read their stats a little bit closer, and tried to field more boys in my guntruck formations. With them, I think that the outcomes might have been a little bit different.

Additionally, Flakwagons are cheap and just as effective as many of the other 35 point options, so many more of them would help as well.

It was still a really good game, despite both of our handicaps in not knowing our units as well as we probably should have.

I've got a fairly beat up tau army that I picked up a while back, that I'm strongly thinking about nursing back to health, that would make a minimum of three Tau players at our LGS and we could really get in some decent play-testing.

I certainly wouldn't write the GG off, they're seriously scary things, but even used well they can be ignored and/ or neutralised. I played one game against TRC where he doubled his up into 15cm of 3 objectives (his 2 TnH, deliberately placed 30cm apart, and 1 of my TnH). I shot at it once, to place a BM, fed it Rangers to force him to do stuff he didn't want to do, and then contested all the objectives it was holding. Game ended up a draw, with me winning on points

I think it's like most titans - they seem super powerful but are actually very difficult to use effectively (and that's no criticism at your opponent either) and I haven't figured out how to use them well too

_________________
numquam culum es

Sounds like a really fun game. Note the above comment suggests the Orca stayed on-board at the end of turn #1 and left at the start of turn #2 - - - presumably it actually flew on again in turn #2, collected something and left in the end-phase (possibly shooting at something).

Glad the Baras worked well - with missile packs they should perform like TBolts, and evidently earned their points even though they enjoyed liberal amounts of tea (two turns)

I would agree that the stand-off strategy would seem to be the Tau initial strategy, then some lightning strikes as the Orks close (with the Orca) which packed a punch - but what about the Manta?? How did it fit in with this approach, and how did you both think it performed?

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

Sorry, just saw these comments...



Considering everything else I hosed up, I may have missed this as well. So, no, the Orca did not fly off at the end of the turn. It landed and the transported units disembarked to fire. Then in the next turn, everyone jumped back on board and it flew off.



The Manta performed Ok, C+/B-

The Manta was originally going to pick on the commonly seen Stompa mob (in the other guy's list) and remove that as a threat, then shuttle crisis around as needed.

I posted in another thread that, the Manta got ripped up pretty good (4 DC damage) by a G.Gargant and since the Orks aren't necessarily known for their inventory of long range TK weaponry, I wondered how it would do against a solid IG list. I should find that out this coming week.

So, it got the job done in spite of the rookie Shas'O flying it around.

_________________
Honda

"Remember Taros? We do"

- 23rd Elysian Drop Regiment