Hello everyone hopefully you tuned in last night to see the sneaky Ravenguard take on the greater good of Tau. It was a game of trickery and treachery! Make sure to watch the video and click follow if you like them! We also gave away a Tau Suit Commander to a lucky viewer, congratulations, Mako1971! Here are the post game write ups from the two players, enjoy.
The Tau general, John:
So, I think I had the right list to do the job. Just, Reece had the dice and list to fight back. The Ravenguard ability to re-roll the dice for selecting sides and rolling to go first is awesome. Especially when Reece’s re-roll came up as a six both times to beat out my fives…Really set a great tone for the evening.
The Raven Guard general, Reecius:
I think I’m in love with this new Raven Guard Detachment: the Talon Strike Force! Wow, it provides incredible flexibility a fun play style but best of all, it feels like a proper Raven Guard army should play. I loved it.
Highlights: The ability to have your entire army come out of reserves starting turn 1 is incredible as it allows you to fully null deploy, wait to see where your opponent puts his models, and then react. This gives the tactically minded general immense flexibility to put the right units in the right place to use them to maximum effect. The ability to reroll the die to determine deployment zones and first turn are also just stupid good and really came in handy this game as the reroll allowed me to win both the choice for deployment zone and first turn, beating John’s roll of a 5, twice! Lastly, being able to choose to fail morale checks to bug out of a bad situation is also very, very good.
My appropriately sneaky Raven Guard battle plan was to present John with few to no targets, and have everything come out of reserves from multiple threat angles, overloading the Tau ability to intercept every units due to target overload. With Skyhammer all coming in on the turn of my choice and the same for the Shadowstrike Kill Team (turn 1 in this case), I would present him with so many threats he’d be faced with a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario” where he simply couldn’t take them all down. Plus, having Shrouding turn 1 due to the Raven Guard CTs, and the lack of Buffmander’s buffs, the Tau army would be shooting me at reduced efficacy. The incredibly powerful pinning ability of the Skyhammer Deavstators would be particularly devastating to low leadership Tau units. I was hoping to come in, lose only a few of my assault assets, then take away Overwatch from the most powerful units with my Skyhammer Devastators, and that is exactly what hapenned!
My turn 1 was just devastating. John left a gap in his bubble wrap on a flank, and I exploited it, overloading it with threats. None of my deep striking units misshaped thankfully (although the Skyhammer Assault Marine units tried to!) and due to Shrouding and blocked LoS I was able to minimize casualties from Interceptor. Then, with Skyhammer pinning the critical units, I was able to assault taking only minimal firepower from what is typically devastating Tau overwatch.
Once my assault units got into melee, the Tau forces started to crumble. However, the Riptide went ham and started to wrack up the Kill Points as I sacrificed units to keep it from shooting! In the end though, the Tau army deployment was what let me get into the vital units and chew them up before they could bring their crazy firepower to bear on my relatively squishy MSU infantry units. I had taken Buffmander out of play on turn 1 by locking him into melee unit with a combat squad portion of my Veterans, that was critical!
Men of the match: Heavy Bolter Devastators, baby! I love saying that, lol, but it is 100% true. They just kicked ass seven ways to Sunday. Despite the fact they never actually did a wound (due to the VSG), simply targeting a unit triggers their special rule. It took away John’s over watch and pinned 4 out of 4 units I targeted, every turn for all 5 turns with a single exception. That was absolutely devastating as powerful Crisis and Broadside suit teams were effectively taken out of play for the entire game, sitting stuck while assault units chopped them up. Brual!
In retrospect, I should have used the Wayfarer ability of the Scouts in the Pinion Battle Demi-Company to bring in the Tactical Marines in from Outflank to even further overload the Tau army’s target priority choices, but I was worried I would biff my reserve rolls. That was a mistake as they then spent the game running up the field and not doing much of anything.
I think the Tau list would have benefited tremendously from an Ethereal to help defend vs. leadership attacks like my Skyhammer Devastators. But, John played a good game, he just made a critical deployment error that really cost him. He fought his way back in though, as my MSU units started to falter when focused upon. My army had to strike a devastating blow in turn 1 to keep the advantage and luckily for me, that is what hapenned.
The weakness of my list is my lack of ability to pop transports. I may need to work in some shooting units or take a normal Demi Company (which you can do in the Talon Strike Force). I would also struggle with a true Deathstar, and would have to avoid it and play to the mission to win the game. However, I dig the army and will be playing it more in the future!
Next Week:
KDK vs. White Scars Battle Company!
I am trying so hard not to start a new Raven Guard army after seeing that detachment and you are really not helping.
BTW have the new Tau won any of your games trying them out yet? A couple of close defeats is what I have seen for them so far.
Yeah, the new Raven Guard are so cool, I really dig them!
And no, Tau have lost both games so far to Necron Decurions and to Raven Guard.
That’s because Tau are so broken good they can easily handle top tier threats like Space Marines and Necrons without their Lords of War and Anti-Deathstar-nut-not-much-good-against-anything-else Coordinated Firepower rule.
Oh wait.
Lol, I knew someone would come along and try to say these two games were definitive proof, always happens.
In the first game, Frankie had never played Tau. In the second game, John got caught in a worst case scenario situation. He never even got to use Buffmander’s super buffs due to a deployment error. While both games give us good information, neither was definitive by any means.
Nah, not definitive by any means, but I do think it’s funny that your first two games after would being less than optimal in the current meta. You’d better loose to Tau using the weaker version of Coordinated Firepower soon, though. :p
Here’s something else to think about: Would you allow a Stormsurge to anchor and surf a Tidewall?
What about a DS8 support turret, or a Forge World Drone Turret? These models are normally not allowed to move, but do they count as moving when they remain locked in place on mobile terrain? Tidewall only say they are stationary for firing.
did ethereals lose that +1 vp stipulation?
also does the tau guy own any yvarhas?
Ethereal still gives up the VP, yeah.
Yea, the mass pinning from those bolters were killing me all night long….
An Reece, the Ethereal wouldn’t have helped much. It simply can give stubborn which ignores negative modifiers….but I will still test on 3D6…which was the part that was wrecking my army.
He makes them all Ld10 in his 12″ bubble, he still have that special rule =)
I really like your list. I’d love if you’d give some feedback on the RG list I posted in the forums. I went with the Demi Company for Ob Sec.
https://www.frontlinegaming.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2299
I really like the skyhammer group you have, feels really cool.
Yeah, it works great! And will give you list feedback.
Cool game. A nasty..ravengaurd list.
I’d say a raptors cad to go with the ravengaurd demi company would work really well, with lies shenanigans to get them tacs into the fight via infiltrate or reserves.
Yeah Lias compliments this army SO well.
I wonder how that would work, pointswise though. I guess two minimum sized scout units and Lias would work at just around 280 pts. Hmmmmmm.
That’s where it gets tough to do, he with Scouts is not cheap.
Also, so much of the stuff coming in from reserve does so automatically (in your build especially), so his bonus isn’t all that important (IMO). I guess if you weren’t doing skyhammer or shadowstrike he’d have more value. Like, you could go Pinion and something and the CAD with him and still have a lot of useful stuff. Giving Infiltrate to the devies is nice since he can join them and give them perma-shrouding and his 2+ armor and then you can go with multimeltas since you’re upclose?
I’m not sure, but it bears looking into. All I know is that Raptors CT with scouts is GREAT now that they are BS4. Rending bolters for 11 pts is bonkers.
That’s a good point. I was thinking it would be great to Infiltrate the Tacticals in the Pinion to get them in range to alpha strike with the Scouts, or, to increase the odds of them coming in form reserves turn 1 with the Scouts if you outflank them.
And infiltrate on the captain/chaplain and either jumpers or some bikes?
Man, I don’t know.
Lias shenanigans*
Ain’t Dat dude corax dead! ?
That game was quite exciting! The new Ravenguard detachment work so well with their fluff AND it’s good on the TT. Glad to see you get the Win with it Reece, I was not able to in my first game with the Talon SF.
I played a 2000 pt game using Doom of Myemara Scenario 2. I was facing Mechdar. Even though I could not try as much of the new abilities of the Detachment as I would have like on account of the Scenario (no more than half our units in reserves, can’t choose deployment, no Night Fight…) it was a great game! I had a Pinion demi-coy, Shadowstrike Kill Team with one big VV squad and a Ravenhawk Assault Group. The units came in piecemeal wich was both a blessing (for the end game scoring) and a curse (to kill the filthy Xenos!). But man! It was so much fun, with units Outflanking, Infiltrating on the very edge of the enemy DZ then guiding in the VV drop right on target, not to forget an all or nothing Vertical Insertion in the middle of the Eldar army with the Ravenhawk Assault Group that vaporized all but one biker and left the enemy Warlord on 2 wounds. I’m definitely painting a “Who Dares Win” motto somewhere on my Stormraven!
I will keep on playing that Detachment – it matches the Raven Guard (and Raptors for that matter!) way of war and is way too much fun to pass up. I’m still unsure if the loss of objsec will matter that much, I guess only time will tell.
Hope we can see you play the Raven Guard again Reece – that Skyhammer tactic is brilliant, congrats!
So I was unable to watch it, but I’m reading this article and John said this: “Heavy bolters against a void shield were the MVPs for Reece”
How did HBs burst AV12?
I really should FINISH the article before I comment. Never mind me lol :X
They didn’t, never did a wound. But, they forced pin checks all game (all you have to do is target the enemy unit to trigger it) and the Tau units were constantly getting pinned, unable to move or shoot well.
One thing to remember (I think I might have heard this said in the video – about the naked dev squad coming down in a pod?) is that the Chapter Tactics shrouded bonus does NOT apply to units that start in a transport, so since they start the game in the pod, they wouldn’t get shrouded turn 1.. I actually just realized this once I re-read their Chapter Tactics after finding them interesting because of this battle lol
Great match though, showing off some neat new formations!
Ah, balls, you’re right. I missed that. Oh well, it was a cool concept but didn’t actually work. Gah, why do they gimp the RG CT’s, lol, there’s no need to do that.
What about swapping some heavy bolters for some missile launchers? Krak missiles could help pop light vehicles like Rhinos.
The Skyhammer pinning thing was game ruiningly good in this game. It’s really silly that it does that the whole game.