So last club night, Shaun arrived with his Tau'formers in his personal transport. This awesome little in progress army are based on the Farsight list of the Tau forces, with all the paint schemes based on Transformers. If you don't know already, I love Transformers, and my old Tau army was based on another awesome cartoon and toy line, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... it seems the Tau are well suited to all things good in the eighties!
Shuans exact list I'm unsure, but he had 3 crisis suit teams, one with his Starscream warlord, 3 broadside teams, 2 with all missiles and skyfire one with railguns, all with marker drones. Also included were three Riptides. This made it 2000pts.
Above you can see Optimus Prime, Cliff Jumper, Jazz and Bumblebee, along with the soon to be riptides of Megatron and Galvatron.
Starscream with bodyguard, and some of the Constructicons.
When Shauns finished the army I'll be getting him in to do a nice photoshoot of his force, along with his Imperial Fists.
Back to the batle, my list consisted of a lot of grav guns, bikes, and a stormraven with chapter master and honour guard. I also took a Callidus assassin, although the vindicare was tempting.... I was able to set up first, my bikes as far foward as possible (then scouting ahead) and everything else ready to pounce.
In typical Kev shooting, I miss with an awful lot of dice. 20 grav shots, I only hit with half.... that shout have been one dead riptide but has three wounds left! Another 9 shots at another along with bolters from a bike squad strips one down to just one wound, and the other loses 2 wounds from my second bike squads gravs. The scouts are out of range, the assassin kills a couple of drones and thats about it. Not a good first turn!
In return Shauns firepower is tremendous. Missile pods galore, bikers die in droves and the battle looks over not long after this! I try to damage a riptide in combat, but do nothing, the Legion of the Damned arrive, kill a broadside and some drones but then in turn die themselves from loads of firepower. Shaun, I think feeling sorry for me deepstrikes his warlord and promptly scatters and rolls a one on the mishap table... which was jolly nice of him! My scouts do well holding off two crisis suits in my deployment, and the sternguard do well to survive a few turns also.
Stormraven turns up and gets blown out of the sky, chapter master and one honour guard surviving. Not good! I was hoping to get him in combat with a riptide, alas it did not happen. Khan however did kill the Optimus Prime riptide with his instant death sword, which was a nice moment!
In the end I'm almost wiped out, tactical objectives not being very friendly to me, although not as unfriendly as those bloody Tau! I think a better first turn would have helped, but its tough seeing a way to beat this list fair play. I'll no doubt have to try again, I've got a challange and I want to beat it! I think the vindicare would have been a better choice, he could have stayed far back and wounded suits from afar, the callidus, while in theory could have destroyed the Tau in combat, getting into it isn't easy. Overwatch will hurt a lot!
Have you guys played a list like this? What tips would you have?
