Welcome my friends. Prepare for a punishing round of battle reports. I faced tau three times in a row at Nova Open....it was pretty brutal. Here is how the games went! (all fantastic opponents, just index orks vs codex tau is brutal unless you are running a particular list).
Off to the races, lets see how those green skins did!
Tau vs Orks: Game 1 Comms Array
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First matchup vs tau was on a 4x4 board at 1k points. Was feeling pretty confident here. It looked like just a riptide, commander, and a nasty rail gun. Orks got this! I really needed to go first to get a good alpha strike. (primary objective was securing the building).
I win to go first, but then John seizes. That's ok because I'm mostly out of line of sight....until the commander moves 40 inches on top of the build, the riptide shoots to the side, and the rail gun terrain moves to get sight on the gorkanaut. Oh oh. Gorkanaut goes down almost instantly, and most (if not all the boy) die in a horrible fire.
The HQ is hidden in the fortification, so no way to get to him, and I lost 50% of my army in the first shooting phase of the game. I quickly do the only thing I can do (being kunnin today). I concentrate all my remaining firepower onto the comms array...if the orks can't have it, NOBODY CAN!. I succeed in destroying it, and getting a few secondary objectives, so I'm not completely wiped out. John laughs at my kunnin, as destroying the array also denies him primary points as well. (playing for the team here!). It's a sound win for John though, as the orks are wiped out to the boy!
Tau + Tau vs Orks + Ravenguard Game 2
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Game two was live streamed! I played with Dan and his gorgeous ravenguard, vs Chris and Mark and their awesome looking Tau. You can see the stream here.
The game was shuttle crash, and we started at a major disadvantage. I'm an index player, Dan's playing ravenguard, and our opponents have lists that share the same keyword (so overlapping overwatch, powers, can share marker lights etc). It's gonna be a tough game.
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So Mark and Chris castle in one corner, opposite of where the shuttle is coming in. Dan and I setup roughly mid of the table, with as much los blocking between us and tau as possible. Tau has everything from automatic hitting marker lights, to 6 inch longer pulse carbines. Endless boons and bonuses! We win to go first, and choose to go second (since its an objective mission).
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First turn goes by. Tau shoot us for at least 15 minutes. About 50% of the boyz die, as well as a slew of hellblasters. The gork makes a KFF save. Dan and I discuss that there is absolutely nothing we can do vs the tau. We'd just get annihilated out in the open. We enact plan RUNAWAY. (Or more like run to the objectives).
I use the weird boy to da jump the boyz over to the objective...and it so happens the that shuttle crashes right next to a LOS blocker. So we shift our armies to go for the shuttle. The tau are forced to redeploy their entire castle as all their guns are out of range. We eliminate about 50% of their shooting by shifting the army.
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We spend the next turn moving our entire army behind the LOS blocking building where all the objectives are. I bring in the buggies and hide them as well. The weediest player I have ever been!
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As a last ditch effort to stall the tau advance (the suits are fast even if the firewarriors aren't), we throw the orks and walkers at the tau suits, finally getting to do something other then run away. We use the buggies to grab all the objectives, and snag every possible point we can.
We kill the commander, and take the stealth suit to 1 wound (he made 7 saves on the last wound!). Big blue finally killed something though! We here the call for time, and the game ends at the bottom of three. Win for orks and ravenguard! Had it went another turn (or to its conclusion), I have no doubt tau would have won, as there was no way we could match the suits firepower or mobility. Out in the open the gorkanaut wouldn't last a single phase. Had the tau players castled in the center, and not a corner, we wouldn't have had a prayer.
Tau vs Orks Game 3
The next game I played was vs Chris (from the previous game). Great looking army, he also provided all the new terrain for the narrative, which was fantastic! I really didn't luck out here. Not only was Chris's list designed to kill knights (everyones was), but our deployment was hammer and anvil (whatever the furthest away was) and there wasn't any LOS terrain that could block the walkers.
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The entire game was a mad dash to see if I could blow up his transport (game was convoy), before he blew me up. I conceded turn 2 because I only had gretchin left on the board. Need CODEX! :) (or maybe not mono build lists!!).
Chris was a wonderful guy though, and offered a kill team game afterwords. Taught me kill team, then we played a nice short game. (Orks won that, but I think he felt bad :) ).
Chris was a wonderful guy though, and offered a kill team game afterwords. Taught me kill team, then we played a nice short game. (Orks won that, but I think he felt bad :) ).
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Some kill team shots for you! Look at that boy go!
Thanks for stopping by and reading about all the orks being shot up :). One more set of battle reports next week!
Thanks for stopping by and reading about all the orks being shot up :). One more set of battle reports next week!
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