I went off to Gaelcon with my fluffy and friendly army, packed to the brim wih narrative.
Somehow, despite only being able to play four of the five rounds, I managed to sneak into 2nd place.
First thing I noticed about this army as a whole is that it lends itself very well to the corner-hammer style of play, almost too well.
Bunkering up in fortified terrain and picking off anything that came to close proved to be fairly effective, to the point where I ended up staying in cover when there really was no need to.
Being able to vaporize any unit that ventured within 24" allowed me to create great board control. The main downside was that as soon as a few of the opposing forces had been taken off the table, opponents quickly backed off and started taking pot shots from outside the death zone. A general lack of mobility meant that there was little I could about this, other than stay put and point some guns at objectives.
Let's start the quarterly performance evaluation, starting form the top:
Tiggy. So this guy, whilst sometimes being a liability, was generally pretty awesome. I got the exact powers I needed every round, which was a huge help in some of the more worrying match-ups. Everyone knows Divination is a pretty good discipline, but a few of the powers become game-breakers in a low unit count army like this. The real winner was Scryer's Gaze; with so few scoring units, having absolute control on when they arrived from reserve was crucial for late game objective grabbing.
So overall this guy was pretty good. My main concern is that he starts to become a huge crutch for the army, to the point where getting the wrong powers can cripple the list before the game starts. A list should still be able to make use of his abilities without solely reliant on him.
Chapter Master... what exactly is it that you do? From a really critical perspective, not much. His main use was to blow something up on turn 1, then sit in front of the Centurions until he eventually dies. Now this sounds unkind, keeping the cents alive for a few extra turns was a very important task, but it just didn't feel like it was worth the points. He was an investment as a safety net for certain situations, but never really got used.
Scouts. These guys generally did their job. In fact, all the troops choices were surprisingly good, considering I had so little faith in them. Outflanking, combined with both Tiggy and Scryers Gaze, meant that they were always exactly where I wanted them. Not necessarily amazing, but grabbing and clearing objectives is all they needed to do to win games.
Kroot, again similar role and performance to the scouts. A handy combo was to rapidfire a squishy unit down to size with these guys, so the scouts could charge in to combat and safely mop them up.
Tactical Marines. These actually lived up to their name for once, and were very tactical. Their killing power isn't great, particularly as I hadn't actually given any useful guns, but they could take a little bit more punishment than the other troops.
The great trick these guys performed was to combat squad, but still stay inside the one Rhino. They could stay off the board (thanks Tiggy) until turn 4, then flat out in between two objectives. Next turn, 5 guys would get out one side and run to an objective, and the other 5 would wonder off in a different direction to the next nearest objective. This allowed the single rhino to cover a huge area in terms of objective grabbing, and proved to be very handy in almost every game.
The Thunderfire cannon. Or should I say, blunderfire cannon. This guy was not consistent. He did manage to do a lot of damage, and was great at blowing away enemy troops on the far side of the table, but it wasn't always that particular unit that I was aiming at. Overall he did pull his weight in terms of dealing damage, but it would have been nice to have a bit of control over what he decided to shoot at each turn.
The fortified terrain was a great bonus, especially when the riptide starting taking several lascannons to the face and had to hide behind a small reinforced bush.
Centurions, the heavy hitters. Ok, so there is good and bad news about these guys. Good news is they were generally pretty awesome, did a lots of damage, shrugged off most incoming fire, and gave great board control. Just about worth the points invested, and kept the army chugging along.
The bad news, they were not mobile enough to do the real damage that they should have been able to. No more than three of hem got to shoot at a time. Now just three was enough to kill whatever they were shooting at, but it did mean there was a lot of points invested in ablative wounds. Getting these guys up the board where they can do more damage and pose a bigger threat is the next big challenge.
And now onto the real heroes, the Tau.
Commander Helpful. Such a hero. Due to Tiggy getting good powers most of the time, Helpful usually got to go off on some adventures with the riptide. Highly mobile, effective tank killing, and being able to stamp on troops on objectives made this pair great fun to use.
The Riptide. So these things are pretty good. Someone should try using thee of them sometime just to see what they are like in large numbers. Yeah, no one has thought of that before...
And finally the Skyray. This was a great addition. Didn't deal huge amounts of damage, but was great at adding in extra bits of firepower and markerlight support, in addition to blowing up the odd flyer.
The Tau actually did most of the damage each game, the longer range allowed me to get at all the enemy units running away from the Centurions, and the faster riptide was good at jumping onto objectives late game. I can see why so many people like using them...
So that's the list. Very quirky, with little room for error, but has all the tools for the job.
The games themselves were a lot of fun, and required some tactical thinking to get the most out of the list, as opposed to the good old fashioned NextVenomSameTarget. The real challenge each game was making the most of my long rage firepower, which usually boiled down to what is the best way to keep the Riptide alive.
Next up, we take a look at how to get the grav-weaponry a little bit more mobile: White Scars!
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