So, trying out the manta drop under the new rules.

Played the game a while back, been to busy to post stuff.

In essence the tau plan was to drop the manta end of turn 1 and then clean up. Remember that strategy...

Army lists

Tau
650 Manta
200 Hero
150 Barracuda
400 5 Crisis, 1 SC
350 6 FW, 1 Leader, 3 DF, 1 SR
300 4 HH, 1 SR
225 8 FW
200 4 PF, 2 DF
175 3/3 Recon
175 3/3 Recon
175 5/1 Recon

WRAITHGATE - 50
AVATAR - 0
GUARDIAN WARHOST - 300 Farseer 7x Guardians +3 Wraithguard
GUARDIAN WARHOST - 300 Farseer 5x Guardians 2x Heavy Weapon Platform +3 Wraithguard
ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST - 350 8x Warp Spider +2x Exarch
WINDRIDER TROUPE - 200 5x Jetbike Vyper
ENGINES OF VAUL TROUPE - 250 Storm Serpent
ENGINES OF VAUL TROUPE - 250 Void Spinner
RANGER TROUPE - 150 6x Ranger
ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST - 400 8x Swooping Hawk +Exarch +Autarch
FALCON TROUPE - 250 3x Falcon 2x Fire Storm
WINDRIDER TROUPE - 200 5x Jetbike Vyper
NIGHTWINGS - 300 3 Nightwing Interceptors

So, the plan was to drop the manta end of turn 1 to avoid all fire.

This was the map created by Eugene.

You have the EUK Eldar lists?

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

So turn 1 hawks appear on flank with a bunch of bm's, Eldar win init, void spinner has a go at the hammerheads then hawks assault them wiping them out and losing one hawk in the process.

Then the tau activate the hero! I couldn't wait clearly, plus both of the eldar WE were in the open. Two lucky shots later and both lay dead.

The Manta was targeted on the middle clump of trees for the main reason that with the funny round thing it looked like a natural aiming point. As it was it drifted south and east a bit.

The the void spinner gone the mech tau came out of the manta in close formation and since I had the re-roll retained to double and break the jetbikes, lighting up the falcons in the process.

It all looked pretty good for the tau at this point, the hammerhead lose completely forgotten

Sadly el hammerheads had drifted to within 42cm of the gate.

Activation 1 - the falcons moved up and shot at the beast. Activation 2 - the guardians doubled up and the wraithguard scored a bunch of crossfire hits (note we wrongly applied -1 to the invulerable save). These 2 reduced the manta by about half and knocked the shield out. Activation 3 - the warp spiders infiltrate up, shoot up the manta and with the supporting fire reduce it to 2 dc taking no casualties in return. broken manta retreats as fast as it can go.

Rest of turn featured the tau trying to kill what was in reach. The recon set the hawks up for a slaughtering crossfire from the crisis, only to kill one by accident and break them so they ran away. The crisis doubled up to do not much to the jetbikes. The rest of the army hit the falcons and redeployed. At some point the Eldar realised not only had all the tau flak got broken or moved to the corner of the board, but the tau player was obsessed with revenge and forgot to set up a CAp with the off board and out of sight and mind barracuda. They promptly killed the manta, only to them get pounced on by barracuda and lose two of their number.

Whoops, sorry Ben, trying to figure out how to use Eldar in tourney at weekend -meant to say the same list we can use then rather than any new list

Very oddly it seems two objectives are missing from the map. The middle hill had one as did the hill in the bottom left.

The Eldar went first again, with jet bikes popping out on a ranger prepped reinforced crisis formation, wiping them out for no loss. The guardians occupied the wood and opened fire. The hawks tried to do something clever probably
Sadly this time despite local success the Edlar attack was a bit more piecemeal, still the tau were set up well for turn 3 eldar pouncing wise. the tau mech were slowed down by the loss of a devilfish, limiting their part this turn.

Turn 3 the Avatar appeared and the Eldar went first.

The avatar charged the prepped recon in front of him in the centre of the board. Sadly he was a crosseyed farm boy and over 3 rounds of combat only managed to hit 2 recons. Ultimately he deservedly lost

Other Eldar attacks were more sucessfull but a combination of tau formations and air power managed to clear the way to the blitz and a recon spreading out in all directions captured 2 tau objectives and an eldar one.

Tau, Blitz, take and hold, defend the flag
Eldar, BTS

The disappearing objectives is a problem if you use the purple ones. If you both use the grey one's its fine. Must be a bug in the layering of the purple objectives.

Nice report by the way!

Cool report.

Anythoughts on the list, Chris?

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Some mistakes above, hope people can still follow it! Can't edit it for some reason, whenever I try I get logged out.

I really should have dropped at the end of turn 1 That Manta was supposed to be using its markerlight and AA, not just getting shot up

No real concluesions yet playing only a couple of games against the same player and race! Still I'm confident against infantry the tau can move, even double, up and have a strong chance of breaking them in a single round of fire. This is a lot more fun than having to risk assualting stuff Of course this can make it tricky to finish them off as they have ran!

The hammerheads are good, I would go for them over the broadsides due to the skyray upgrade mainly, even without it as the duel use of the weapons appeals not to mention the mobility. And those ignore cover SMS combined with the nearby skyray are an awful thing to face!
For 300 points for 5 including the skyray they are an excellent medium tank formation in the vien of falcons and would happily stack them up against heavy tanks like leman russ.

The best formation in terms of utility are the recons and I''ve yet to see a report where the enemy makes them a priority target.

The markerlight set up is interesting and adds an extra level. Then again with the ease of getting markerlights inside formations its not as vital as perhaps it should be.

The Tau do seem to crumble in assaults, though I had quite extreme luck one way or the above in the above game. Still fast assault troops can pick stuff off which is exposed in some way and supporting fire just seems to give you more blastmarkers.

The army I would hate to play most against the Tau is probably the guard as they seem to comprehensively outclass them in my head at least. They are very good against mech formations and most typical guard builds have to leave the arty and similar at home to try and combat other opponents the list is likely to face.

Still I’d have to play a few more games against different armies before I get to make too many sweeping statements!

I agree that Tau have it easiest against typical tournament Guard builds.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

interesting report chris.

seems like the Manta drop plus the loss of the 2 SHGT forced Eldar to stay within it's own table half and fight what came to it rather than what it wanted to.

High-Tech vs. Higher Tech ... Nice Graphics too !!

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Hey Chris,

Have to say, losing both WEs before the storm serpent had even activated was a bit annoying. Particularly as I had taken the SS as I had never used it before and wanted to see what it could do. Must put terrain in deployment zone.

No SS then meant the guardians et. al couldn't move fast enough to get into assault, though they are surprisingly durable when in cover. and behind Wraith Guard. Still plan some day to take the Phoney Bombers but to be honest I'm not sure what they can do better than lance armed Nightwings.

Can't remember much else about the game now. Everything in the Tau army seems to have markerlights, so without transports getting in range to assault meant getting in range of markerlights. Was supremely annoyed that the bloody Recon spread halfway across the map to claim all those objectives, thought it was going to be a draw, forgot about them. In hindsight I should have blocked everything off with the scouting Hawks, even if they were my BTS. The Avatar was puny as well, three rounds vs prepped opponents and goes down with a whimper.

If you fancy facing a different race I'll take orks next time, bought a load of them on ebay before coming to Germany without using them, so I'd like to see what they are like. Not sure if I can do this weekend though, going away for the day on Saturday and not sure what time I'll be back. I'll let you know.

Also:

Anyone have any comments on the Eldar list? Mechanised guardians? 2 SS and no VS? War Walkers instead of Rangers? All comments welcome.

I think it was a pretty decent list. I would have dropped one of the vyper formations for something else and I wouldn't have had the autarch in a swooping hawk fm. One option would be a mechanised aspect fm (dark reaper exarchs/ autarchs, some fire dragons, perhaps a couple of dire avengers). You could also have used the spare vyper points for a vampire to put the warp spiders in - that's a seriously nasty assault fm. In fact, the storm serpent + wraithed up guardians and vampire + warpspiders is a nice dilemma to put your opponent in

I also like more falcons for AT and AA, which is pretty handy if you're using a vampire (you can use the falcons/ firestorms to provide anti-CAP for your vampire)