OSH, NOCKER, AL, Rathstar, Gredus and any other Tau bloggers

Wouldn't it be awesome to try to have a Tau blog tournament? Where all the Tau bloggers try to get together and have a tournament with only Tau? No worries about using a codex slightly behind the power curve and everyone is familiar with the army being used. Yeah it might be kind of silly, yeah it might be logistically impossible, but it still would be a fun community building experience.

I just want to get a feel for where everyone is at. Maybe it would not be possible to get us all in one spot for a weekend, but it may be possible to get some matches down individually, then we could put together some sort of macro blog post.

Out of all the different warhammer races that have blogs the only race that I have seen more bloggers than Tau is SM. Maybe if we had this little community building experience we could have a greater voice overall and actually influence the future of Tau in the 40K world.

Just looking at the back and forth of Kauyon and Mont'ka (which I was mostly not a part of due to playing too many video games and getting my classroom ready for the beginning of a new school year) I really feel that we could have a lot of fun trying to do something like this. Let me know what ya think.

-Krox

I have gone InSaNe!!!!

Alrighty, some list building things, and some assault questions that tie into it. I have decided to be insane and build lists for fun. Tau can win with a mono Tau build and that is competitive. I have not been to a lot of super competitive arenas so maybe I can get away with doing silly stuff maybe I will just get completely crushed.





One of my list ideas was to go back to a seeker missile style list, but instead of doing it in a sane way, just going crazy with 3 skyrays and full pathfinders.
the supporting units would be three units of death-rains and three squads of fire warriors who get to dork around in the pathfinder's devilfish (which have sensor spines by the way, been having lots of fun with sensor spines)

Yeah I don't have a lot of plasma but I can get rid of a good chunk of my opponent's army with 24 seeker missiles and 30 markerlights. Having 6 tanks is nothing to sneeze at. IG, BA and DE can easily have more but with disruption pods and sensor spines tau vehicles are always a PITA for opponents.

An obvious drawback is that if I start losing the pieces of my puzzle my ability to get those seeker missiles into my opponet's forces lowers rapidly, a problem I discovered with my original seeker list army.




Answers to the questions in the video provide some reinforement on my second army idea. A nearly complete infiltrating list.

Death rain commander
1 squad of FW
3x6 stealthsuits with targeting arrays, team leader as TL and a FB
3x10 Kroot
3x3 Broadsides

Would I get crushed? Probably, would it be fun to play? Yes. I think so anyway. It's an all foot list which I have never done, and it is pretty suicidal, but it doesn't have to be.

I will be posting some battle reports with these lists soon. I have been pretty busy going to weddings playing video games and hanging out with people I haven't seen in a while, but soon enough I will get back to the (at least)1 battle report a week schedule.

-Krox

Kauyon vs Mont'Ka

Apparently everyone is debating this now, and I have been playing Disgaea 3.


Basically what it comes down to is that there are alpha strike lists, and run away+ speed bump lists. Alpha strike lists generally have a lot of fire power with Broadsides, Crisis teams, even my crazy seeker list I use sometimes is definitely an "Alpha Strike" style list.

Then there are the runaway speed bump lists, with kroot speed bumps and lots of transports, no static anything (sniper drones, broadsides) everything is always moving and staying away until the perfect time to strike happens.

It is fun to discuss theory and all the nerdie "what ifs?" Basically it comes down to this: Tau don't have any tricks that have not been seen and people are looking through their codeces to try to figure out some weird new thing to exploit. Yes you could spam Vespid or take 7 firewarrior squads in devilfish (one with the Ethereal) and you opponent would be confused, but it's not gonna be a crazy "OMG I discovered a new Tau strat!"

Instead of cementing your brain meats into one play style or another, cement your opponent's brain meat into the style you want to play against.


This past weekend I was in a tournament at Phoenix games here in Minneapolis. It was a very fun tournament and there is always a crowd of diverse players. I did not take my camera because it seems impolite to take time to record during a match where you have a limited amount of time to play.

The TO used the Adepticon mission scenarios for the different matches and it was a lot of fun. My first game I played against another Tau player, my first time fighting against Tau. He couldn't have been more than 11 and was super spazzy. He brought a Farsight list and his list was not valid. Instead of just disqualifying him I helped him re-work his list before the match. I did not take him very seriously and I lost the match, mostly because I did not deploy as well as I should have and did not put much thought into tactics because I didn't give my opponent enough credit. (It was still a really fun game because the kids commentary was hilarious)

My point being, your demeanor and attitude can change how your opponent will play the game. Psychology wars are the last tricks Tau have to play.

Saying that you are killing blow or patient hunter just locks you in to a mindset that prevents you from adapting to the changing battlefield. It is good to have an organization process for list building but maybe you should make sure your list can do both. I am still working on that last one in my list building, but I am having a lot of fun doing it and that's what matters. (That and playing Disgaea 3)

P.S.

My other 2 opponents were Grey Knights and Dark Eldar who I won against. The grey knights tried to play the sit back and shoot game, and the Dark Eldar player only managed to kill 2 crisis suits with his 28 dark lances, not because I had awesome skills, but because he couldn't roll to hit or to wound 80% of the time.

-Krox

Dastardly Tricks!

I practice boxing in real life. It's a lot of fun and it is all about precision of movement. Well I had a good boxing point in this match, however it was boxing of a different type.

Another game versus my venerable CSM opponent. This time it was seize ground (3) and dawn of war.

I liked my deployment and being able to go second in this type of scenario is always a plus, it was DOW so an alpha strike didn't really matter. I deployed with a 2 firebase strategy in mind (there ya go Pavonis). Jimmy and I fight a ton of games against each other and we are getting to some pretty serious knowledge of each other's armies as well as our respective play styles. You would think that would create blander and blander games. However it seems like we are always coming up with new weird things to try out even though our army lists stay generally the same (with mine being more mercurial than his). Check it out, it was a fun game.