40K BC Comix Tournament Recap

On Saturday I played my first Warhammer 40k tournament with the new Tau codex at BC Comix.   The last tournament I played in was the team tournament at Adepticon with the old codex.   I have still been trying out different unit combinations with what models I own while still assembling some of the new stuff.  The tournament was 1850 pts with standard FOC plus 0-1 Forge World/IA model in it's own slot.   I liked the format as it allows for Forgeworld to be used without upsetting the "Codex-Only" model crowd.   There were seven players total so we had a bi-rounder.   The armies were: Tau (me), Tau + Space Marines, Chaos Daemons + Chaos Marines, Chaos Daemons, IG + Grey Knights, Dark Eldar, Orks + Necrons.

I have been enjoying 40k lately along with other games but really still prefer casual games over tournaments. With the increased frequency of Codex releases the "meta" game has not really caught up with the usual net-listing that happens often at tournaments.   I brought what I thought was a pretty balanced take all comers list with no duplicate choices outside of troops.   

Tau 1850 (1850pts)

HQ

• Commander
  Drone controller, Fusion blaster, Neuroweb System Jammer, Plasma rifle, Puretide Engram Neurochip, Vectored retro-thrusters, XV8-02 Crisis 'Iridium' Battlesuit
  • 2x Marker Drone, 2x Markerlight
• Ethereal
  Failure is Not An Option, Independent Character, Invocation of the Elements, Stubborn

Elites 

• 1x XV104 Riptide
  Early warning override, Ion accelerator, Riptide battlesuit, Riptide Shield Generator, Twin-linked Fusion blaster
• XV8 Crisis Team
  • 3x Crisis Shas'ui
    Crisis battlesuit, 2x Missile pod
• XV8 Crisis Team
  • 3x Crisis Shas'ui
    Crisis battlesuit, Fusion blaster, Plasma rifle
  • 6x Gun Drone, 6x Twin-linked pulse carbine

Troops

• Fire Warrior Team
  12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades
• Fire Warrior Team
  12x Fire Warrior Shas'la with pulse rifle, Photon grenades
• Kroot Carnivore Squad
  1x Kroot Hound (Acute Senses), Sniper rounds
  • 11x Kroot,11x Kroot rifle
• Kroot Carnivore Squad
  1x Kroot Hound (Acute Senses), Sniper rounds
  • 11x Kroot,11x Kroot rifle

Fast Attack

• Barracuda Air Superiority Fighter [FW] (IA3: Taros Campaign)
  Ion cannon, 2x Seeker missile, 2x Sponson burst cannon, Twin-linked missile pod, Decoy Launcher
• Pathfinder Team
  Photon grenades
  • 8x Pathfinder Shas'la, 8x Pulse carbine with Markerlight

Heavy Support

• Hammerhead Gunship
  Blacksun filter, Ion cannon, Two Gun Drones
• Hammerhead Gunship
  Blacksun filter, Railgun with submunitions, Two Gun Drones
• Sniper Drone Team
  • Firesight Marksman
    Drone controller, Markerlight, Pulse pistol
  • 3x Sniper Drone
    3x Longshot pulse rifle

Fortification

• Aegis Defense Line
  Gun emplacement with quad-gun
  
  
  
  

I changed original list up a bit by dropping a Skyray Gunship and some Kroot to try some new things, an Ion Cannon Hammerhead and a Sniper Drone Team.   My 0-1 FW model was the updated Barracuda from IA:3 2nd edition.   I wanted to bring some new missile broadsides but elected to bring a fully painted army instead.

Game 1: Big Guns Never Tire
Dawn of War Deployment
Tau vs Chaos Daemons (w/ Allied Chaos Marines)

My opponent had driven down from the west side of the state to play in the tournament.   He had 5 Monstrous Creatures (3x Flying Greater Daemons, 2x Great Unclean Ones), a Heldrake (of course), and minimum troops choices (Beserkers, Cultists, and Plague Bearers) and some sort of portal spawning thing that made troops each round.   We were on a terrain heavy board with lots of LOS blocking buildings.  I won the roll off but let my opponent go first.   I center castled and tried to cover the fire lanes through the terrain.   We had rolled five objectives to capture.   I have not played against the new Chaos Daemons much but there is a LOT of book keeping that needs to be done between Psychic powers, Chaos Gifts, Daemon weapons, etc.   The game started 20 minutes late since my opponent had to roll up and get everything set up.   It wasn't his fault and he did have a nice system of labelled poker chips to keep track of everything.   But every turn for him seemed long as he had to go through his series of psychic powers before movement.

My opponent did a good job flanking me both sides and using the terrain for cover.   Since FMCs don't have flight stands he seemed to always be getting cover saves from the buildings due to true line of sight.   Couple that with all the Biomancy buffs and I was snap fire shooting at Swooping, toughness 6-10, FNP, regenerating, shrouded fliers that kept getting a 2+ cover save (ruins cover + shrouding).   He also was passing all of his grounding tests which made my ground fire ineffective.   I quickly realized that without skyfire markerlights to remove cover this was not going to go well.

The Heldrake showed up turn 2 and caused me lots of grief of course.   I did get a penetrating hit from interceptor but only managed to knock a hull point off and stun it which it quickly shook off thanks to a 2+ Daemon roll (bleh).   I really think that thing is very overpowered.   My Barracuda showed up and did manage to take out one of the FMCs by itself but I probably needed two more fliers to have a chance this game.   Unfortunately do to our late start, 2 hour time limit, and long turns we were forced to finish up on Turn 3.  I did get first blood and one objective, but my opponent had four objectives and line breaker.   So he won 13-4 on VP at the bottom of turn 3.   He was a good player and good sport.

Game 2: The Relic
Dawn of War Deployment
Tau vs Dark Eldar

For game 2 I played against a Venom heavy Dark Eldar list with Wyches, Ravagers, and lots of Dark Lances around.   My opponent won the roll off and rushed forward towards the Relic.   He focus fired a lot of his army at my Commander in the first turn.   Of course, I put my commander out front because with Iridium armour and Look out sir rolls to drones I want him to take shots.   After all the poison and Lance shooting my commander was down just one wound and I had lost 3 drones.  He had also hit my Ion head with a pen but only managed to get a hull point off and kill a gun drone.   There was more open terrain on this board and my shooting was devastating to his force.   I used markerlights to remove cover and boost BS and blew up a lot of Venoms and troops.   My opponent was not getting any flickerfield saves at all and it was pretty one sided from there.

His Wyches had briefly grabbed the Relic, but by turn four my Firewarriors ran forward and picked it up.   I ended up tabling him on turn 5 for max points.   I won 6-0 on VP.   It was a bad match up for my opponent but he was a good sport about it and the fact that I was quote, "NOT a dick-headed Tau player".   I think it was a compliment, LOL.

Game 3: Purge the Alien
Dawn of War (third game in a row randomly rolled)
Tau vs Tau (w/ Allied Space Marines)

The third game for me featured the only fully painted army on army match of the day (yay!).   I played against Yancy S from Grand Rapids.   Yancy has often posted on the Facebook forums about his Tau models and  tactics.   I commended him on his well done paint scheme and display board.   He said he was up to 4 am the night before painting Gun Drones for the tournament and then made the drive down.   His list was pretty terrifying to me (Farsight + Fully Bodyguard with split fire + Full Drones + Shadowsun + Terminator Librarian (Null Zone and Gate of Infinity) with one Kroot mob, Fire Warrior team, and Marine Scouts as troops.   The "Shadowsight Bomb" with Gate of Infinity gave his non-scattering deathstar a lot of options to move and shoot.   He only had 7 Kill points in a Kill Point mission.  I thankfully won the roll to go first and that helped me a LOT for this game.

Thankfully everything had night fighting for me as I was able to target his deathstar with templates across the board.   Yancy had some horrible luck rolling 1s on 2+ cover saves (Shadowsun's stealth) and I was able to kill off a few drones and insta-kill two battlesuits.    On his turn he used Gate of Infinity and positioned to shoot at my Riptide and Command unit.   I had used the Riptide's Nova charge to give it a 3+ invuln save for the turn in anticipation of all the melta and plasma coming it's way.   The dice favored me greatly as I rolled TWELVE 3+ invuln saves in one turn of his shooting to keep the Riptide alive.   The next couple of turns my dice rolls were hot while Yancy continued to roll poorly.   By Turn 3 the game was clearly going my way as I continued to launch long range templates at his deathstar.   Once I insta-killed the Librarian I knew his mobility was gone.   The game ended on turn 5 with me getting first blood and line breaker for a 5-1 VP win.    Yancy was a good opponent with a bad dice day.    I think that list is pretty scary though.

So I ended up 2-1 on the day, not too bad for my first tournament using the new codex.   The MVPs for me were the Riptide, the Ion Cannon Hammerhead, and the Barracuda.   I definitely think a Skyray, Missile Broadsides, or more fliers would have helped me in that first game.   The first place player won with IG+Grey Knights against the other Chaos Daemon MC heavy list.   Here's a few more pictures from the day.

Nicely painted Dreadknight

Monstrous Creatures and tokens

Ork mob with Kan Wall and Necron Allies

Chaos Daemons vs Chaos Daemons Flying Monster Mash

Thanks for reading!