Tau Many Broken Hearts in the World Eaters: Tau vs World Eaters

 The World Eaters are still hungry. One is never enough, I guess. 

What's the best way of dealing something big? Bringing something big too to shoot it!

Kraken and Kas here, another training session for the chaps in red. 

Tau Young to Die

I'm trying out the Septs for a first stab at how they feel. And I'm bringing as much fusion and anti-tank as I possibly can - that Lord of Skulls is not living through this one. If I'm lucky, I'll pick off Angron too, but maybe not until late enough in the game that he won't regenerate!

A Hammerhead, Broadsides, a Stormsurge and a Tidewall Gunrig have my rail guns. Very swingy indeed, these, but most of these guns come on frames that are specially there to hit enemy tanks. Lots of rerolls and bonuses to hit against vehicles. The Gunrig is completely inaccurate at BS 5+, and can't be markerlit these days because it's a Fortification. But it is a decent open-topped transport too, and very cheap at 90 points. 

That's the heavy guns - my short-range fusion melta guys are a pair of Pirhanas (who have a cool new drone harassment ability I forget to use), a trio of Crisis suits led by a Coldstar Commander and the Ghostkeel, which has had quite a glowup. It's stealthy and a Lone Op now, plus can shrug damage a couple of times, making it a nasty threat. 

Finally, guiding all of this in (although they all guide each other these days) is a pack of Pathfinders with small railguns and a pair of Tetras. And because it's all so cheap, a Breacher Team led by an Ethereal and mounted in a Devilfish - vicious short-range firepower with some durability and a nice strategem combo. 

Kauyon Detachment, 2000 points

• Coldstar Commander, Warlord, Exemplar of the Kauyon, shield generator, three fusion guns, two shield drones, leading the Crisis team
• Ethereal leading the Breachers
• 10 Breachers
• 10 Pathfinders, three with railguns
• Hammerhead with heavy railgun, two twin smart missile systems, two seeker missiles
• Devilfish with two twin smart missiles systems, two seeker missiles, burst cannon
• Ghostkeel with twin-linked fusion guns and fusion collider
• 3 Crisis suits, one with weapon systems and triple missile pods, two with shield generators and triple fusion guns, six gun drones
• 2 Broadside Battlesuits with heavy rail rifles, smart missile systems and battlesuit systems, 4 missile drones
• 2 Piranhas with fusion guns and 2 seeker missiles each
• 2 Tetras
• Tidewall Gunrig with massive dock-off rail cannon
• Stormsurge Battlesuit with literally all the guns (destroyer missiles, cluster rockets, two twin smart missile systems, a pair of flamers and the pulse driver cannon)

Boy Eats World

Kas has brought his list of horrors back for round two - all the biggest, angriest men he can carry. He's been experimenting with a list that doesn't have the Lord or Angron too, but this one still merits practice. I mean, I guess? 

It's always good to face different armies, and different opponents when testing; and extra games also reinforce rules/stats in memory so can be quicker when playing. 

Seems like the tactic of running forward screaming and murdering everything worked pretty well last time! 

Yep, will be doing that again! And for this game, Angron is no longer in sprue-gray.

Berserker Warband, 2000 points

• Angron
• Lord of Skulls with Daemongore and Gorestorm cannons
• 3 Eightbound
• 3 Eightbound
• 3 Exalted Eightbound
• 5 Berserkers
• 5 more Berserkers
• a Master of Executions, with the Berserker Glaive, leading one of the Berserker squads
• a Rhino with combi-bolters and havoc launcher transporting one of the the Berserker squads
• a Forgefiend with triple exoplasma cannons

Mission and Terrain

It's a Leviathan mission, as follows:

So get in there, kill everyone, don't use the teleporters for heaven's sake, good luck, have fun.

I'm taking fixed objectives! (why?!) Bring It Down and Storm Hostile Objective, partly to check my instinct that this is a worse way to play the game (no swaps and less points), but partly because it tallies with the primary mission fairly well and is very much what I'll be trying to do throughout anyway. (ah good logic, can claim victory if they work, and moral victory if they don't). 

If I had a dollar for every moral victory I’d ever won, I’d still have lost every military campaign I took part in.

Deployment

The map is the same as last time, or at least the photo of the map is the same as last time. The objectives have actually moved about (see the mission map), but I was too lazy to change the file in Battle Chronicler. So imagine that the objectives you see here are in a straight cross rather than the diagonal one shown!

I think a couple of buildings nudged to make sure happy with altered deployment zones and the angle of buildings, but any changes were minor and agreed before we rolled sides. 

Having misunderstood the scrambler fields somewhat, I opt to put nothing in deep strike. Instead, I deploy fairly deep in my zone, lining up shots for first turn where I can but also hiding behind buildings just in case I'm second. The Breachers are in the Devilfish. (I had no idea you were under this understanding until far too late and we read in later turns; and just assumed you were going for deep shooting position and had plan). 

A what?

Kas does likewise, sticking the big chaps behind a giant line-of-sight blocking building at the very back, with pretty much everything else going forward. (totally trying to hide as much in turn one, you have one phase as Tau and if I can negate any of it when don't roll first turn, then I will take that!) There are Berserkers in his Rhino. 

Alas, Kas has to go first - run towards the guns, Khorne Boys!

Let's stop hiding and go!

World Eaters Turn 1

They can do this pretty handily, grabbing all three middle objectives with toe-holds on the nearest edges. The Lord of Skulls peeps forward and knocks nine wounds off the Stormsurge with its main gun, and the Forgefiend slags a Pirhana, but that's pretty much it. 

Good turn anyway - he's scoring, with an early Deploy Teleport Homers in the middle. 

Tau Turn 1

Everything shuffles about so they can see the Lord of Skulls, but my middle gets in a bit of a tangle. Tau are rather less swift than before - they can't move and shoot as well as before, having lost Assault on several weapons. Perhaps the codex has plans for that? Ah well. 

I start observing and guiding, going along the battleline and picking a unit to shoot/spot a target so that the next one gets a boost to hit. Takes a bit of planning and getting your head around, but I rather like the system. 

I don't like my rolling, though. Worst offender is the Hammerhead, who is a specialist armour hunter and therefore hits on twos when guided. He fails to wound the Lord of Skulls at all with any of his hefty weapons. Two seekers wasted! At least he slightly makes up for it by battering a nearby Eightbound with smart missiles. 

So it goes across the line, sadly. My original plan was to use the heavy guns to try and take out the Lord of Skulls and still have plenty left for the Rhino, but that fails. The Stormsurge and Broadsides also fall pretty short when Kas's saves go well, and most of my fusion guns are out of range of the Rhino, which is merely scratched. 

There's a moment of glory when the Gunrig actually connects! I have to reroll the damage, using up my precious command point, but it finally sneaks through and takes a chunk out of the Lord of Skulls. Eleven wounds down, but plenty to go... It's pretty much half down, that's not a bad outing

World Eaters Turn 2

Now they're in easy range for charges. The Exalted teleport in but fail theirs and end up stuck in the middle. Berserkers pour out of the Rhino, dodge some overwatch from the Stormsurge (one lone wound! Aaargh!) and pile into the Broadsides. 

Angron is bounding forwards, there are Eightbound assaulting the Crisis teams, I'm on no objectives and the Lord of Skulls really hammers home some excellent shooting. The Stormsurge just barely scrapes through on a single wound left, and that only when I pay the strat for Stimm Injectors and manage to save three of twelve wounds on FNP. Yikes!

Combat goes just as well as you'd expect. The Broadsides evaporate, the Crisis team lose two members but somehow punch a couple of wounds back. But overall, I've been spared, mostly because Kas's charge rolls don't go well. 

I am however pinned in my deployment zone and definitely feeling the pressure. Kas is scoring well on primaries and secondaries and I'm already about twenty points behind. Counterpunch time!

Tau Turn 2

The Devilfish streaks forwards and pukes Breachers out all over the middle objective. The Pathfinders pull back to reclaim my home zone from the Eightbound (currently tied with the Crisis team), and the Ghostkeel, Tetras and Pirhana nab the right side from the Rhino. 

There's no way to fall back and shoot for the Crisis Teams, I didn't give them the right gear. But their Commander lets them access the army bonus one turn early, and they are vehicles who can shoot into combat. Fusion guns blaze, but it's only enough to take down a single Eightbound and wound the last. 

The artillery duel between the heavy walkers carries on, and this time the Lord of Skulls takes a beating. The Hammerhead and Stormsurge between them land a series of heavy blows, and it's only the Wrathful Devotion from the Blessings of Khorne that somehow keeps it standing on a last wound. But the damn thing is alive, and I have nothing left to finish it off! Trading blows, first turn salvos dropped us each to 11, and second turn: both to 1.

The Rhino gets shredded by my forward elements, then the Breachers open up on the nearby Exalted Eightbound. Great shooting, but I've misapplied it - if I'd shot the Berserkers on the middle objective instead, I'd have had rerolls to wound. The Exalted live, and then when I foolishly tag the Berserkers with spare shots from the Pirhana, they bounce forward and into combat with the Breachers!

Disaster - Kas also pays to let the Exalted Eightbound intervene. Rather than using my strat combo to pile the Breachers back into the Devilfish, they instead get pulverised in combat. Elsewhere the last Crisis suit is pulled down by Eightbound and the Gunrig is torn apart by Berserkers. 

Did the devilfish charge in to berserkers to help? did you try tank shock? I hope so, otherwise I could not have heroiced. 

 Nope, I was out of CPs. This isn't looking good!

World Eaters Turn 3

Sure enough, this proves to be the last turn. 

The Stormsurge takes a final blast from the Forgefiend and keels over, Angron eats the Hammerhead, the Coldstar Commander gets a rolicking from his Eightbound pal. Berserkers and Exalted handily cleave through the Devilfish and last Breachers, and I'm really left with very little indeed. 

I'm also way behind on points! After a bit of number crunching, I call it - I'm not going to be able to score much over my next turn, maybe eight to twelve points again, Kas has a huge advantage on table presence and surviving units and I'm not feeling lucky enough for a Gambit. 

Result: World Eaters Victory, Many Points to 22 (55:25)

Locker Room

O hindsight, you useless bugger. What I should have done was ignore the Lord of Skulls early on and piled firepower into that Rhino, then shot up the survivors, shifting my whole line right as I did so. The Crisis Team should definitely have been in deep strike too, able to leap in behind (say) the Forgefiend, nuke it and distract the World Eaters from their fast advance. 

But no! I played right into Kas's hands - tie up the big guns on the big dude who could take it and let all the little stuff run forwards until they could murder me in melee. Not a great showing on my part, and not all the dice's fault by any means!

Deal with the big thing, the little things get in; deal with the little things, the big thing shoots you. 
 

Great fun though - the artillery duel between the titanic units was a blast. I was a bit surprised I didn't take it down, really, but there's always next time.

Yeah, was good fun, and one fewer save, or one more hit either way would have shifted the battle.

Tau feel... okay? I think they're still good, and Kas assures me their shooting is still extremely daunting to face. They're rather slower than they were in terms of movement, especially if you're expecting them to leap around and still shoot. The Ghostkeel is great, and Piranhas are also nice, and I'm a big fan of the way Drones are now a built-in unit bonus rather than the infuriating ablative armour they were before. 

The Markerlight replacement system is effective but a bit slow. Too much of a thinking tax for my poor brain, anyway! And although the army rule is powerful, it comes into effect far too slowly. Perhaps a more patient hunter than I would have made better use of it, hiding and lurking in buildings at the far back before shooting out a storm later. But what kind of game of 40K would that have made?

Exactly! and when a rampaging cacophony of Khorne muscle is running at you I can understand the desire to do more than just hide.

I'm definitely on for trying this list out again, now I have a better handle on it. And I'm not giving up until the Lord of Skulls dies! 

Absolutely up for that!