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.
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!