'Tau' do you do? Grey Knights vs. Tau Battle Report
Last time, we learned that my on-a-whim decision to throw an Imperial Knight into my army wasn't the best choice. While it was really really cool, it was not going to help me cover enough ground to get points from objectives. Therefore, I needed a new strategy. Normally I'd be locked into this poor choice for the next month. However, I talked with the guy in charge of running the league and he let me get by with a free change up to my list.
Since I've not been the best at making army lists, I thought that my best approach was to test out a new list prior to my next league match. This way, I could see any faults with it and fix them before I was locked into a list again. So I got the person who's currently leading the league to run me through a 1,500 point game to help me refine my list, along with my strategies using it. Also, this guy is currently playing Tau and I have not once had a chance to play against Tau (Editor's note: those were happier times…). This match would also give me some experience with how Tau worked for whenever I faced them.
What did I end up doing list wise? For the most part, it was just an extension of the 1,000 point list I had been running:
Warlord: Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight
Brotherhood Librarian
Strike Squad
2 x Brotherhood Terminator Squads
2x Nemesis Dreadknights
Interceptor Squad
The basic additions here were the additional Terminator squad and the Interceptor Squad. I've seen a lot of people online in the Grey Knights subreddit talk about mobile and useful the Interceptor Squad is for capturing objectives. They have a 12" movement, which is a big step up from the Strike Squad (6") and the slow Terminators (5"). Given the issues I had with capturing objectives, having some quick units on the field would be appreciated. The extra Terminators were because you really can't go wrong with Terminators.
Playtest Round: Grey Knights vs Tau
Apparently the board we played on was more of a "typical" tournament style map. There were forests in each cardinal direction (North, South, etc.). Each corner of the battlefield had some ruins, with the bottom floor of the ruins having no windows. This meant that you couldn't see/shoot anything hiding in them. This will be a vital point later. Lastly there was some ruins in the middle of the board marking line of sight. Objectives were in the center of the battlefield, and then in each cardinal direction, just in front of the forests.
For deployment, my first move was to drop the Strike Squad onto the rear objective market, setting them up so they were touching the forest as well. All the other infantry went into hiding in the two buildings, with the Dreadknights up front and in the open. This way they would be able to get out and charge head first into Tau. I kept a Dreadknight and a squad of Terminators in reserves to drop in on the second round.
Aside from placing some units along the back to keep me from teleporting, most of the Tau units were stored inside the building on the far side of the map. This meant there was no way for me to shoot most of the army unless I spent my turn sprinting all my units over there and hoping they survived until my next turn. Since that is obviously a terrible idea, I went for objectives instead. The interceptor squad was able to capture the right point, while a good teleport was able to get the Terminators on the left point.
Moving the two Dreadknights up the center allowed me to capture the center objective point and get my Warlord in range to potentially charge the last point. This meant I had captured 4 of the 5 objectives, which would give me a solid lead on points if the Tau didn't do anything. My opponent had to come out of hiding in order to stay in the game and keep me from getting victory points.
Then the shooting started
I failed the charge for my Warlord, so it became the Tau's turn. Holy crap did my opponent have a lot of upgrades on them! We start each game with 12 command points, and I had spent 1-2 on some upgrades for my units. My opponent had spent half his points on upgrades. He had sticky notes with the various buffs that his Warlord was able to dish out. That plus the standard Tau abilities meant that he was stocked with rerolls, abilities to shrug off mortal wounds, etc. Not exactly ideal for a psychic heavy army!
The terminators on the left side got shredded to pieces, and the Dreadknights took some heavy damage as well. Honestly, at this point I'm a little fuzzy of what happened because A) I forgot to take more pictures and B) it's not like I did much of note during the rest of the game. I tried to hang on to points, but my shooting game was off and I couldn't pass an armor save at all. Things got even more brutal in Turns 3 & 4, as the Tau's hits now exploded on 6's & 5's (respectively), generating even more damage.
Even with the backup squad of Terminators and Dreadknight, I couldn't hit anything to do any serious damage. Any hits that did go through were absorbed by these drones that the Tau had, keeping the main models around to do any shooting. By the time my models got close enough for melee, the Tau had shredded most of them to bits.
What did I learn?
Aside from getting my butt handed to me, the army did perform well. It'll work for the rest of this batch of matches.
Grabbing points early can be a good move, just need to capitalize on it and rack up points before opponents can have a chance to respond.
I really don't like Tau….
What 40K factions do you hate to go up against? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.