2024 League Tau Vs Grey Knights

 So this was my son's second game in less than 24 hours! After the previous nights marathon game we were hoping that this game would be a lot quicker. The opponent for this game was playing Grey Knights with a baby carrier heavy list. 

The list contained 5 carriers, including ......

You might notice some different terrain on the boards. This was at the request of the opponent, as with his mostly mech suit army it would have been difficult to get in to the building that were on the board, so he fetched some of his terrain to use. 

My boy deployed quite well, using his infiltrators to screen out any possibility of the Knights deep striking up the board and this did give his opponent some issues during his first turn. 

And that's all the photos I got! Deployment and scout moves! Again I was pulling double duty with child care and various errands, so was only popping in occasionally to see how things were getting on. 

The main issue faced by my boy this game was the same as he faced against the Custodies, a 2+ save and 4+ invulnerable, meaning that his big guns with their -4ap were negated a lot of the time and his little guns were struggling to do anything. In turn 1 he encountered another problem, the teleportation shenanigans of the Grey Knights. After taking one down to just a handful of wounds, three I think, it jumped across the board and hid away from more shooting, getting healed up the the Tech-priests. On three separate occasions he got a dreadknight down to just a couple of wounds (a single wound on one occasion) for it to just away and get healed up. 

There is no doubt that his opponent did play well, and was lucky in some long bomb charges and on at least one occasion my son was very unlucky with his dice rolls. Dropping in all his suits on one flak to overwhelm the 4 voidsmen, two Grey Knights and an injured Dreadknight (on 7 wounds). With 36 burst, 6 fision, 2 plasma and 3 ion blaster shots he managed to remove a single voidsman and drop 3 wounds on the Dreadknight from a single fusion shot. To top it off, he failed both charges including using a reroll for one of them. 

He did play very well and made very few mistakes this game, maybe just being a little too aggressive in his deployment being his biggest. All in all though, despite the final result and the fact that he was tabled turn 4, the opponent said that he did not find the game easy. A lot of the time my son failed to get his cards by the narrowest of margins and then was denied by the Knights shenanigans, such as bring it down where he got the Dreadknight down to a single wound before it jumped away and hit. 

Despite the lost again both players seemed to enjoy the game and despite to loss again, his third in a row that is now his hard games done. Two of these the players, this one and the custodies player, are two of the best players in the club, one winning 4 out of 4 games (3 major and one minor victory) and the other having won 4 out of 5 games ( 2 major and 2 minor victories and the loss being to the minor victory for the other player!). His remaining two games should be a little easier and even if he doesn't win then they should be a lot closer. 

2024 league Tau Vs Ultarmarines

 This was my sons second game in the 40k league and it was a mammoth one, after 7 hours and approaching 11 o’clock, we called the game at the end of turn 4. My son did very well to keep his concentration for as log as he did but there were quite a few errors made, due to both a lack of concentration and also tiredness as the game was played on a Friday night after a full week of school and clubs. This will also be quite a quick write up as I wasn't pulling double duty, keeping an eye on the games, babysitting the youngest and also dealing with general house stuff.

The ultramarines army was a fairly troop heavy army and contained a lot of proxy units. The army was lead by Roboute Guilliman, with Marneus Calgar and Cheif Librarian Tigurius, backed by a nameless Lieutenant. Two ten man Tactical squads, loaded with grav, three 5 man Scout squads, a Sternguard and Devastator squad (also with grav) made up the bulk of the troops along with the Company Heroes. These were backed up by a Land Raider Redeemer and a Whirlwind.

Deployment was a tactical battle in itself as both of the players tried to out manoeuvre each other with their infiltrating units. 

The game started well, with the land raider getting knocked down to just a single wound, where it remained until its demise in turn 4. 

It was in turn 2 that the first mistake from my son popped up. He deployed both his crisis suits in a very bad position at the front of his lines, mostly due to the fact that there wasn’t anywhere else to drop them. He could have placed them on a flank and done some more with them or just have waited until turn 3, but we had been played for the best part of two hours by this point already and he just plonked them down without much thought. 

Unfortunately placing the crisis suits down without thinking left him open to quite a difficult second turn with his opponent making the most of it and destroying a number of vehicles and gaining quite a few secondary points. This was a theme through our the match, with my son just plonking units down with our thought and suffering for it.

There were also some unfortunate dice rolls, with farsight charging the remnants of the stern guard and librarian only for his opponent to make four 6 up saves out of six dice.

The Ultarmarines ultimately gained the momentum early on in the game and never let up. 

By the end of turn 4 the Tau were on the ropes and I suspect that if we had gone to tur. 5 it was have been a tabling, as there was only dark strider and two broadsides left on the board. 

The ultramarine were really geared up for a vehicle heavy army, with all the grav, cannons, guns and pistols, which for a very vehicle heavy list like the Tau, is deadly combination. Combine this with the fixed secondary of bring it down, which count per model and not per unit, means that there is a lot of point up for not a lot of effort. Each crisis squad with character gives up 8 points for bring it down and 4 for assassinate, for a total of 12 points or 24 for both squads, all for 495 points. Over half the available points for just two units and a quarter of the army points.

Overall I think this game was a very bad match up for the tau list, the number of grav weapons with the anti-vehicle 2+ and the number of vehicle models in the army combined with the fixed secondaries was always going to make this a hard game. As far as I know this is the only player in the tournament to take fixed secondaries, so hopefully that should not be a problem in future games. 

The game was not a great game for my son, with several movement and tactical errors, most of which were due to tiredness and lack of concentration over the mammoth game, which might well have ended up being a 8 plus hour game if it had gone to it's conclusion. His next game is against Grey Knights and will be another hard game as his opponent is another very good player.