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Hello again people!
So, another epic mayhem went down in the far north of Sweden this weekend and boy oh boy, was it a massacre! Now, as gracefully as anyone I´ll accept a defeat but this was absurd. OK, we fielded each two 8000 p armies, enough (we thought) for at least two days of epic entertainment. Since we talk epic all through the semesters but can only play once every six months we had geared up big time. I had prepared a lot of scenery (Pettan can show you some photos) and so on and so forth.
I played Tau, a new acquaintance, an army that could be difficult to play but had a lot of heavy hitting fire-power to back the lack of CAF. Pettan ran his old Squat warmachine, a cookie that could be more than a match, but I thought, not unbeatable. I was wrong.
Actually, the odds were theoretically at my favour, we had plenty of forests and also a deep gorge running through the middle of the field with just one bridge. Some scattered buildings and each one hill in the deployment area. So I thought, that this will be easy-peasy. I did everything right in the movement phase, eased in the battlesuits into cover just after they had unleashed some fire on the fly shots at a surfacing mole, nudging my other armored units into cover, waiting to get a clean shot. I even set up the stealthed units correctly poising them to use their markerlights. A manta and four (4!) moray support ships hovered ready to unleash hell. Then the squats started to shoot.
We just played out the first turn, after where half of the Tau force was doomsday cannon fodder.
I will not whine at the chagrin of defeat but to make it an even match something has to be done either to the Squats (overpowered) or to the Tau, in this case both outgunned and outCAFed.
1. First of all the Tau support ships stay on low altitude, making them ripe targets for virtually all enemy units, forfeiting the bonus of the +25 cm.
2. The Tau deflection shields, whith one in every three shots going in, a volley of battlecannon shots suffices to bring them down.
3. Not being able to use markerlights on the fly, something that makes the stealth suits useless. There will always be units close enough to see them, directing barrage (bikes in this case). Obliterating them before they have chance to act.
4. Lack of real murderous firepower. The Tau should have an equivalent of the Cyclops/Magnus the red/Titan plasma destructor, something to really deliver a threat to all the heavily shielded units out there. Something to outweigh their measly CAF.
5. Not being able to transport the Kroot in any way (because of unit size constraints), making them nice christmas cinders in the rear.
To home in on the squats,
1. The Overlord Airships, virtually unreachable, indestructible flying battlestations. They take out all aircraft within 75 cm, with their first fire, no negative modifiers policy. +25 cm for all units because they fly high, so infantry never will come close enough. Not counting their staggering rate of fire 10 5+ shots. I´ve never liked this unit because of it´s invulnerability.
2. They are mobile as well as _extremely_ shooty. The Praetorians move and shoot in first fire, they have highly mobile, cheap troops with high CAF as well as skimmers with the same capabilities, the list goes on and on.
Well, am I the only one to experience this or was this battle just a fluke?
Cheers
/j
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Of course, it means we don't have anything to fix either. I have admittedly taken 2 Rough Rider companies before,(and that is pretty harsh 
), but I think the Guild Bikers are a lot better than the Roughies!