On Sunday 28 November, I competed in the Boss Badrollz 40k tournament at the excellent Element Games up in Stockport, UK.
This event was organised by Jonathon Harrop from the Throwdown Gaming Community. Jonathon did an absolutely cracking job with this event. From table setup and terrain placement to submitting scores and refereeing games, Jonathon had everything sorted. This event wouldn’t have happened without his dedication. Thanks, Jonathon!
First things first, how did I do? All things considered, I’m pretty happy with my performance. I won one game and lost two. Out of 33 players, I finished 22nd.
In fact, my goal for this tournament was to win at least one game, and one out of three ain’t too bad, especially considering the models that I had at my disposal and the general state of the faction in 9th edition.
Let’s begin with my army list. I discussed what I would likely take to this tournament in an article that I wrote last month, and aside from a couple of tweaks here and there, I pretty much went with the list that I wrote about.
I’ll briefly sum it up here. I took two Enforcer Commanders, each armed with three Cyclic Ion Blasters and an Advanced Targeting Array, and one Coldstar Commander armed with four Fusion Blasters.
In the Troops slot I took four five-man units of Fire Warriors. For my Elites I went with two Riptides, one armed with the Heavy Burst Cannon and the other armed with the relic Amplified Ion Accelerator, two three-man Stealth Suit units, and a Ghostkeel.
I also took a Remora Drone for the style points, which, to be fair, gave me some play with the Engage secondary.
Finally, the list was rounded out with 18 Shield Drones, all in two-man units, spread across the army.
Simply put, then, this was not a particularly competitive T’au army. It had some teeth, sure, but overall this army wasn’t going to do anything special.
And it didn’t. While I did manage to win one game with a comfortable margin, the army nonetheless performed about how I expected it to perform.
And what did I expect? The Commanders, for example, did some solid work when they got into range. CIBs and Fusions hitting on 2s can do the business. Of course, D3 damage can be tricky, and the 18″ range of both of these weapons can be limiting, especially when I have my only BS2 models sitting out of range behind character-blocking Riptides.
Against most MEQs, T’au Commanders really shine. Hitting and wounding on 2s with reasonably powerful guns is always good. In my second game of the day, I used my Commanders to great effect by concentrating their firepower against Plague Marines. -1 damage makes CIBs significantly less effective, but when leveraged in force, there’s certainly enough there to get the job done.
What else? My Riptides performed about as well as I expected. Their main defensive function is to character-block for the Commanders. While Commanders do have a reasonable defensive profile, any concentrated firepower will comfortably destroy them, so it’s essential that they be untargetable for most of the game.
T’au players will have noticed, moreover, that this list doesn’t feature any Markerlights at all, which means that these two Riptides would be hitting on 4s against most targets. Each was equipped with a Velocity Tracker, granting +1 to hit against Fly-keyword targets, but this was only relevant in a handful of instances throughout the day.
That is to say that I was reliant upon the dice gods to really make my Riptides sing, and they performed about as well as you might expect given those circumstances. The best I could hope for was using the Aerial Targeting stratagem to drop one Markerlight on a target, allowing me to reroll 1s.
Hitting on 4s and rerolling 1s is hardly going to get the job the done.
And let’s not even discuss shooting over or into dense terrain, taking my Riptides down to 5s.
As I side note, I think that in the new codex all Battlesuits should entirely ignore any and all negative to hit modifiers. I don’t think that all Battlesuits should necessarily hit on 3s, but I do think that they should hit on no worse that 4s.
My Stealth Suits and Ghostkeel performed roughly as expected as well. The Infiltrator rule is always useful. Deploying reasonably tough units in advanced postions on the board can be quite a good play, espcially if those mid-board objectives are available.
With that in mind, then, let’s get onto the games themselves. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I won one game and lost two. My first two games were against Death Guard and my last was against Blood Angels. My one victory came against one of the Death Guard lists.
In round one, I played against Paul Budge. His Death Guard army was painted particularly well, and he had taken the time to convert a few choice models, adding a nice bit of flavour to his army.
Paul was an excellent opponent, and a great player with whom to begin my 40k tournament career. He knew his faction back to front, and he explained all the Death Guard-specific interactions well. Most importantly, he was a great chap, and we had a great game.
What’s more, he brought a strong list, and one that I knew my particular flavour of T’au was going to struggle against.
What kind of Death Guard list did Paul bring? He brought a couple of units of Poxwalkers, a unit of Cultists, two units of three Deathshroud Terminators, three Contemptors, three Plagueburst Crawlers, a Chaos Spawn, a Tallyman, a Lord of Contagion, a Daemon Prince, and a Foul Blightspawn.
I didn’t, of course, commit Paul’s list to memory. We used Best Coast Pairings at the event, which very helpfully retains everyone’s lists after the event.
The mission was Battle Lines, mission 22 from Chapter Approved 2021. Battle Lines features a short-edge deployment and four objectives; one in each deployment zone and two on the mid-board. Primary points were awarded for holding one objective, two objectives, and more objectives that your opponent.
For the secondaries, I took To the Last, Stranglehold, and Retrieve Octarius Data. Paul took Grind Them Down, Engage on all Fronts, and Bring it Down.
T’au into Death Guard is seldom an easy task for the T’au, and this match was no exception. With so much -1 damage around, it can be very tricky to really put the hurt on some targets.
And that turned out to be a theme of this matchup. I struggled to do much damage to his Terminators and his Lord of Contagion until my Commanders got into range, and even then it wasn’t the most effective showing. D3 weapons into -1 damage Terminators isn’t a particularly cheerful prospect.
What’s more, my Commanders didn’t get into range until turn three, which meant that my two Riptides were my main damage output. The Ghostkeel weighed in with a few wounds for a couple of turns, but it didn’t have enough to cause a significant problem for Paul’s units.
With limited shooting, then, I could do very little against Paul’s advance up the board onto the two mid-board objectives. Indeed, by turn three, Paul was taking a healthy 15 points on the Primary objectives.
And all credit to Paul. He played an excellent game. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of his key assets and used them accordingly.
The final score was 37 to 79. I was comfortably beaten by a strong opponent. Paul went on to finish a respectable 13th, with two wins and a loss, and a total of 204 points.
I began the tournament with a loss, but I had a great game, and at this point I’m looking forward to getting cracking with the next round.
And the next round would be against another Death Guard list played by Ian Riley.
Ian took a Lord of Contagion, a Malignant Plaguecaster, two seven-man units of Plague Marines, a twenty-man unit of Poxwalkers, a Biologus Putrifier, five Blightlord Terminators, three Deathshroud Terminators, a Noxious Blightbringer, a Foetid Bloat-drone, three Myphitic Blight-haulers, and a Plagueburst Crawler.
Ian’s armed looked excellent arrayed on the battlefield. He went for the classic Death Guard green, and a few little flourishes on the character models really made them stand out.
As I said earlier, T’au into Death Guard can be quite tricky. I was, however, slightly more confident going into this game. I thought that the mission and the deployment would favour my quicker army with its forward-deployed elements.
The mission, then, was Vital Intelligence, number 13 from Chapter Approved 2021. Vital Intelligence features corner deployment zones and six objectives, with players getting points for holding two objectives, three objectives, and more objectives than the opponent.
For the secondaries, I took To the Last, Retrieve Octarius Data, and Engage on all Fronts. Ian took Raise the Banners High, Bring it Down, and Behind Enemy Lines.
This mission particularly favoured my Ghostkeel and Stealth Suits. The ability to put reasonably resilient units on mid-board objectives was crucial.
What’s more, Ian’s army was relatively slow — Death Guard lists usually are — which made it more difficult for him to leverage effective firepower on my forward-deployed units.
Indeed, my Stealths were able to hold the mission’s corner objectives for the entire game, allowing me to score well on the primary from turns three onward.
I was also able to effectively screen out Ian’s deepstriking units. Without an option in my deployment zone, Ian’s Terminators were forced to come down in the mid-board, with few useful charge targets.
The Blightlords certainly could’ve charged my castle, but with the amount of Overwatch that the charging unit would’ve taken — probably destroying a couple of models — it wasn’t a particularly attractive proposition. Moreover, at that point in the game I had plenty of Shield Drones protecting my key assets, so he wasn’t even guaranteed to destroy a Riptide or a Commander with his melee attacks.
This is one of the few strengths of the faction in the current meta. Charging a T’au Sept castle is still a difficult task. Of course, many armies can negate the Overwatch threat to one extent or another — denying Overwatch entirely or stopping one unit from shooting — so it’s not always a great strategy, but it certainly has its uses.
Once more, I was able to hold up his three Myphitic Blight-haulers for a couple of turns in combat with the Shield Drones that deployed with the Stealth Suits. Using Drones to tag units in combat can be a great way of diverting the enemy’s firepower in the following turn, and I found this tactic to be particularly profitable in this game.
Throughout this game, I was able to direct firepower to where I most needed it. For example, in my first turn I managed to leverage enough firepower on a unit of Plague Marines to destroy it entirely, allowing me to contest a key mid-board objective with Drones, models which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to take the point, lacking the objective secured rule, of course.
What’s more, I was able to keep my castle relatively intact for the entire game, meaning that I scored the full 15 points for To the Last. Unfortunately for Ian, his list simply didn’t have the right tools to break my castle. With my Shield Drones defending my key assets for the entire game, I was able to easily shrug of most of Ian’s high-damage firepower.
The game, then, ended 33-90 in my favour. I was pleased to get my first win at a 40k tournament, and it was a great again against a solid opponent to boot.
At this point, I’ve won one game and lost one game, and I’ve only played against Death Guard. If I were offered that at the beginning of the day, I probably would’ve taken it.
For my third and final game, I played against Blood Angels, a matchup that, since the beginning of the edition, has been a very difficult game for the T’au. Quick, resilient, Fly-keyword infantry are hard to stop at the best of times, but when Blood Angel’s combat prowess is added into the mix, we’re really on the backfoot.
However, when you’re playing against an army as beautifully painted as Miguel’s, it makes the whole process a lot easier to take.
There were some finely painted armies at Badrollz, and Miguel’s Blood Angels was probably in the top three.
And Miguel is an excellent opponent to boot. Not only does he know his faction back-to-front, but he also knows the game very well, which makes playing a game with him all the more enjoyable.
Here’s Miguel list. He took Dante, a unit of four Infiltrators, a unit of five Death Company, a Sanguinary Ancient, a Sanguinary Priest, a unit of five Intercessors, two Redemptors, three units of five-man Sanguinary Guard, and a ten-man unit of Vanguard Veterans.
All in all, then, this army was very quick and very killy.
The missions was Overrun, number 31 from Chapter Approved 2021. Overrun takes a long edge deployment and players are awarded primary points for holding two objectives, three objectives, and more objectives than the opponent.
As for secondaries, I took To the Last, Engage on all Fronts, and Retrieve Octarius Data, and Miguel took Raise the Banners High, Engage on all Fronts, and No Prisoners.
In this mission, I knew that I was going to struggle to do meaningful damage to Miguel’s key assets before they got into combat, and this, broadly speaking is how the game would turn out.
Miguel skilfully manoeuvred his Veterans and his Sanguinary Guard up the field, using cover and obscuring terrain to limit my firepower, and was able to make some key charges on turns two and three that settled the game.
Without Farsight, I’m only able to fall back and shoot once, which left me with very few options when Miguel charged multiple key units in one turn. To be fair, I was able to survive much of the Blood Angels assault thanks to Saviour Protocols and the Riptide’s 3+ invulnerable save, but once I was tagged in combat, the game was effectively over.
Indeed, I knew that the game was beyond my reach by turn three, but it would be at least a small moral victory to kill Dante. Once the Lord of the Angels became a viable target, one of my Commanders raised his three Cyclic Ion Blasters and pulled the trigger. White-hot pulse blasts erupted from the weapons, spelling certain death for Dante.
I rolled well, scoring eight wounds on my target. With each unsaved wound dealing D3 damage, I was feeling pretty confident about my chances. Miguel rolls his saves.
And comes up eight 4+ saves, leaving Dante completely unharmed.
The Emperor protects.
To be fair, I did manage to get him on the following turn when my Riptide could help out, but it was one of the best moments of day nonetheless.
The game finished 87-55 in Miguel’s favour. Miguel played his list very well indeed, and he deserved his victory. I was quite happy to take 55 points from a game that I knew I had a slim chance of winning.
And that was that. Three great games, three top opponents, and one brilliant day of 40k.
Before I finish, I want to briefly mention just how tiring playing 40k can be. As I mentioned earlier, this was my first tournament, which means that it was the first time I had played three games of 40k in one day. I had previously played two games in a day — with a break of a few hours between the two games — and that was very tiring.
And, unsurprisingly, three games was certainly very tiring. But I found that there wasn’t really much time to be tired. The games came thick and fast, with roughly 45 between the first and second games and only fifteen minutes between the second and the third. Once I had gone to the loo and got a cuppa after game two, for example, it was practically time to get started with game three.
Over the course of a longer tournament — a weekend event in which players would play five or six games, for example — I could well imagine that mental and physical fatigue would be a factor, especially for the players competing for the top spots. In those games, even the smallest mistake can cost points, and even a meagre loss of points can swing a game.
I’m looking forward to playing in my first two-day tournament, which will be the Manchester GT coming up in March, and I can well imagine that it will be a much more demanding affair, especially if the new T’au codex is any good and I’m gunning for a strong performance.
But Boss Badrollz was a brilliant introduction to the world of competitive 40k. I was pleased with my overall performance, but, more importantly, I was particularly happy to be playing 40k with a great bunch of people at a brilliant venue.
My thanks again to Jonathon for organising the event and for Element Games for hosting. These events don’t happen without dedicated people putting the work in, and that’s exactly what Jonathon did. I’m looking forward to playing in Throwdown’s next event, whenever that will be.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
