Show Notes
7-2-13
News
- Daniel Smith from North Carolina sent us an awesome letter saying his local group used the BAO format for their tournaments and that they his group really enjoyed them. We always love to hear that kind of thing.
- Sean Rivas from back east wrote us saying his D-Scythe Wraithguard army in Serpents has been a two-edged sword. They hit like a freight train, but get tar-pitted in combat too easily.
- Anime Expo has about 6 spots left! Get those tickets this is going to be a fun event. Also, we will be out of the shop from Friday, July 5th through Sunday, July 7th. The shop will be closed and we won’t be able to return any calls until we get back.
- Toughest Girls of the Galaxy is kicking ass, about to hit half a million! They say they have over 150 sculpts, so this could be a really cool release of some awesome, unique models to add to your various collections.
- Bolt Action releases a free PDF of the Italian faction rules as well as a new Italian Armored car and Tank commander models.
- Scibor releases a new Town Guard model which looks pretty cool. Great for D&D or Pathfinder.
- Graven Games out of the UK launches a nice looking Tsunami Portable Missile Launcher.
- Team America 40K posts their lists! Awesome art for our team, haha!
Rumors
Rant Session
- GTA’s tournament. Kevin Brown’s (Janthkin) Daemons/Chaos first, Jason Rockhill’s Eldar/Tau 2nd, William Websters GK/Necrons rd. No Forge World in the top 3. Lyzz Foster went 2-1 with horde Slaneesh, something like 150+ models? Jy2 went 2-1 with quadruple Land Raider Space Wolves/Marines.
Rules Lawyers!
- Did you guys know Flyers have to declare if they are firing AA or ground fire at the beginning of the shooting phase?
- Turkeys and Vector Strike
List Review
Hey guys,
I’m new to Tau, been playing Marines for a while. I haven’t played in any tourneys with this list yet but it does very well against the local guys. The list is built to be flexible and relatively consistent with answers for most things (ie 40 sniper rifles for MC’s 6 Fusion blasters for AV 14, and a high volume of fire for horde)
The list rocks 13 marker lights which may be a little low but other than that let me know what you think.
Tau
Ethereal -62
–Shield Drone
–Warlord
3×10 Kroot with sniper rounds – 210
3 Crisis Suits (2 fusione blaster, plasma, target lock 2 shield drones, 2 marker drones)(1 fusion blaster, plasma Marker drone, shield drone, drone controller) – Bonding knives -249
1 Riptide ion, fusion, Interceptor, Skyfire -210
Broadside (2 rail gun, smart missiles, 2 missile drones interceptors)(1 railgun, smart missile, 2 marker drones , drone controller( for the markers, doesnt work on missile drones) – Bonding knives -246
2×4 pathfinders – 88
Skyshield -75
Space Marines -608
Lysander -200
8 Tactical Marines, SGT has a power weapon and melta bombs -158
Landraider Redeemer – Multi Melta -250
Total – 1748
So I have an effective fire base that can put out enough shots to clean house if enemies get close. I have a strong counter assault / objective claiming unit / fire Magnet, some anti flyer capabilities, 13 Marker lights spread across squads, 4 troops (38 models). I dont like that my ethereal is my warlord but I should be able to hide him on the skyshield. Also because he is an ethereal with no shooting weapon and not jet pack I cant have half of the Tau warlord traits which gives me a higher probability to get the ones that would greatly benefit my army.
List 2
1850 Drops the 2 ion rifles on the path finders and adds a Skyray with the overwatch and dark sun filter upgrades
Hey guys,
Got a list I believe to be one of the nastiest 40k lists going at 1750pts. I challenge Reece to beat this with his footdar…
Tau with eldar allies (obviously)
Commander 2+ armour and FnP with neurochip (tank, monster hunter etc), multi-spectrum sensor suite (ignore cover – with broadsides), drone controller. (also 2pt neuroweb system jammer)
3 kroot x 10 – one team has sniper rounds
2 riptides with burst cannons and interceptor
1 riptide with Ion and interceptor (with precision shot)
4 marker drones x 2
1 skyray
3 broadsides with missiles and plasma (2 with target lock – to fire at different unit) – with 6 missile drones
Eldrad
2 x 3 bikes
I went with Eldrad over a farseer due to the redeployment, allowing me to make sure the uber unit of broadsides is where it needs to be as it really kicks out a lot of damage – 24 str8 ap4 and 3 (or 6) strength 6 AP2 shots that ignore cover with tank or monster hunter. This unit can easily delete 2 monsters a turn or 3 vehicles.
Having 2 riptides twinlinked due to Eldrad is just amazing. Also other potential buffs he may give.
Marker drones hide behind the skyray or another LOS blocking terrain piece. Troops are in reserve unless I need to bubble wrap or protect from scout moves (daemons or dark angels ravenwing etc)
Cheers
All have SMS
You do NOT need grenade. They changed it IN 6th to not needing them – in the past, you always have. I’m at work so I don’t have the rulebook pages!
That is what I thought, thanks Mike!
Havent listened to the cast just yet but the wave serpent Dcythe army just need to add a cc wraithknight to add some kick to combats was already thinking of a list like that cause you need that down field blocker that can keep up so avatar isnt going to do it and neither is a wraithlord, I ran a unit of Dcythe in serpent and am a big fan, I think one is the magic # though, was a terrible match up for my 1st list trying out eldar, played against Great unclean one, 80 plaguebearers and 20 chaos marines with 2 plas a squad, I was running Spiritseer 5 dcyths wraithgaurd, 40 dire avengers, 4 serpends with tl Scatterlaser/shurikan cannons, and two barebones wraithknights, I went in feeling that I had wasted about 700 points on things i just wanted to have fun with, but proceeded to learn about the new deamons and lovely shrouding on 20 mand deamon squads with shrouding in cover, FOCUS FIRE boy, did a great job witttling on them all and could have deffinatly done a few tactical things to help but overall was a great fun game and nearly killed enough silly deamons to win, if it had been any power armour army the would have been tabled turn two, my 6’s where literally that hot, 6 out of 9 to wound we started to joke i was getting more blade storm wounds than regular wounds and that was true for 3 turned of shooting REDICULOUS and awesome that Phil followed in Matt wards footsteps of :if you roll 6’s GOOD $hIT happens”, also I spent the whole game blastin off serpent shields just for fun they are awesome
Yeah, Serpents are amazing!
But that was basically our advice, too. We said he should take a speedy assault unit to bail them out of tarpits.
I thought fateweavers reroll was once per turn not once per phase?
Ach! It is per turn, not phase, my bad. Thank you for pointing that out, I will be sure to mention that on the next cast.
Hey Guys! Thanks for reviewing my Tau /SM List.
I played this at a local tourney. Crushed BA, SW/IG and went toe to toe with Necrons flyer list. The flyers got me because we didnt get to play turn five and I had been planning my strat on a 5th turn. Thats my bad.
So I modified the list, I dropped some drones and a marine to squeeze sky fire onto some more units.
I’ll be playing this at the feast of blades qualifier in spokane this month.
Nice one, well played! Would you be interested in writing up a bat rep or tactica for the site on your list? Don’t worry if writing isn’t your forte, I can edit it. I am curious to hear more about how this list plays.
Yeah dude, no problem. I work some ridiculous hours so it might be a minute but I’ll through together the refined list and break down of play style and games so far. After the qualifier I’ll through a bat rep together for the qualifier.
That would be awesome, thanks! I am sure people would be very interested in learning more about it.
I was in the tournament ran by GTA (I laughed my ass off when he told me how you coined his new nickname). I had brought a list intended to face off against Helldrakes and Gun line tau. I faced neither of those that day. Instead I drew an all start line up of opponents.
My first round was against JY2 with the 4 Land Raiders. Not just 4 Land Raiders, 4 Forge World Land Raiders. They had fun stuff like Ceramite Armor, a Thunderfire Cannon, a Whirlwind Launcher, Twin Linked Multi-melta sponsons, etc. He was very cool about it. He had the forge world books with him, and even took the time to let me look over the entries and explain exactly what each one did. All those av14 Tanks laughed at my 3 Thunderfires. And my 6 Hyperios Launchers (S8, Ap3, TL)? Well, I did 5 rounds of shooting with those averaging 4-5 hits per turn. Would you believe I did not get even one 6 so as to cause a glance. I did manage to kill one with a lucky conversion beam shot. But that was about it. Still Jim is a fun and gracious opponent, and the winner of last year Golden Throne, so despite the beating I walked away feeling good about the game..
My Second Round was against Liz and her Demon Hoard. Once again, she was a fun and skilled opponent. I appreciated how she took the time to show me some of the rules in the Demon Codex. You know, the ones that where I just pick up groups o Marines. We did not quite get to round 5, but it was obvious that the Demons would have tabled me in another round or two. Again, I do not really feel bad about being beaten by the reigning champion of this years BAO. Solid player, and a fun Game.
Both are top notch players and really fun people to game with. None the less, it was a rough day for my space marines. My third round was a bye, and for fun GTA and I played. Do I even need to say what his Eldar/Dark Eldar shenanigans did to those poor Marines. I still had a lot of fun, and had a great opportunity to test my skills against 3 top notch players.
Thanks to GTA for running the tournament and making it such a fun event. The fact that it was for charity and that we all got to help our Troops that are overseas just made it all the better.
Glad you had fun, John! We were bummed we couldn’t go, but we had to tend to the shop. And yes, hahaha, it seems like GTA has stuck, which amuses me to no end!
Yeah, you played 3 top-notch players, no doubt! We have found that Marines really struggle this edition without a really well rounded list. They went from the best beginner army to an army that requires a lot of skill and knowledge of the meta to be able to play well.
I don’t know man, I think you’re allowing your bias against heldrakes to cloud your judgement! The Vector Strike rules don’t say anything about having to move completely over and to the other side of, it just says you have to move over it at all. Also, it’s also not like a flyer actually stops in the air at the end of it’s movement, it’s in constant motion, where it ends at the end of the movement phase is just where it happens to be in the snap shot of time that the end of a turn represents. And if at that moment in time, the wings of a Helldrake are impaling your Wraithknight, it’s not going to be hugely important how far through it’s torso the wings happen to be. 🙂
Also, consider this, if the opposite is true, then the safest place to be is under a Heldrake, since it wouldn’t be able to move completely over a model in it’s movement phase that already started under it… and that is just silly.
I hate them damn Turkeys!!!
Haha, you make some sound arguments, and perhaps my bias is clouding my judgement. But, it is another huge advantage to the stupid bird of death.
I am finding tau to be pretty amazing TBH, even without allies.
They are arguably the most powerful book in the game right now, for sure.
The Eldar/Tau list (Jason) had a single Forgeworld model, the Nightwing Interceptor. So almost no forgeworld 😉
Nice catch! And I really like the Nightwing. I think it is superior to the Crimson Hunter as it is soooo much more durable and still hits pretty hard.
The Nightwing is an amazing flyer with its 2+ jink save (less spectacular against Tau of course), and a true work horse flyer for the Eldar 15 pts cheaper and much more resilient than the cheapest CH.
You guys love my ghetto army and you know it!
If by love you mean laugh at, yes!