State of the Tau

I finally threw down my Tau in a tournament. I felt it went well, even though I place 32nd out of 47. At the end I wasn't in a terrible mood, I was even in a good mood.


Game one was against Vince. This is starting to become a theme. It was a much better game than Tacticon, it was a very good game to be honest. This game went almost identical to the last one. He went all reserve, I brought almost everything walking on for Dawn of War. His army came in piece meal again, all the razorbacks, while the land raiders came in on 3 and 4. This time however, I was much more capable of destroying them. It also ended on 5 rather than riding till 7. In the end, I lost the primary, but won the second and tertiary(with 2 drones) with enough bonus points to come out with a 19-17 win to me.

Game two did not start off well. My opponent was playing Nids. It started off with him placing spores mines after I had deployed. I said I didn't think that was right and his reply was that his last opponent said he did it that way. Easy enough fix, let's look it up. He hrmph emurmph doesn't have his codex. Fine, Troy is there and has his, I snag it, I was right. Suddenly out comes my opponent's codex, weird. He also doesn't have a list for me. Already I'm expecting a rough game. It didn't turn to be bad, as I think he saw that I knew his codex a bit, and wasn't going to just roll with whatever he said. The game came down to me forgetting my plasma squad, which allowed him to move onto the objective through assault and consolidate, costing me the primary. My 3 twin linked broadside rail guns failed to hit his broodlord even once, costing me secondary. In the end it was a 17-21 loss for me, completely due to mistakes on my part. Ah well. It did seal my fate though.


Oh, crap, I'm in trouble. When I get my table assignment, it has my opponent's scores; 39 round one, 0 round two. I'm thinking, walked through round one, bad match up round two, WAY out of my league. When he walked up with DE venom spam, I knew I was right. Turned out Dragowing Grey Knights for his round two. I'm in trouble, lots of targets for kill points, but I can't negate the invuls. I reserved almost everything, leaving a firewarrior squad behind a pathfinder devilfish to load up, the pirana, and both scout squads. The hope was to draw him forward, while not relenquishing my side completely. Everything died. My round two wave also had rough luck, almost all dying. Round three started to see my heavy hitters, and thing began to turn. However, it didn't turn enough, I was making kills, but not enough. He just had to much on the table for me to make a big enough hole in. On turn 5 all I could do was deny him points, I could gain no more. I didn't fight terribly hard to do so. My only mistake, excepting not concentrating more fire to completely destroy vehicles, was to mention my kroot. They had come in on his back edge for tertiary, behind a large canister silo. My opponent took one of his transport trays and set it on the silo, blocking HIS sight of my kroot. Had I kept my damn mouth shut when a friend asked me how it was going, they would have likely set there all game and got me tertiary points. Ah, well.

All in all, I was happy with my first Tau showing. Malifaux was more fun, so I don't plan on bringing them back to the cons, but other tournaments like feast will likely see them in play. I don't think I am at a level in either Warhammer where I can do well enough in competitive play as to justify giving up other things to go get waffle stomped.