Why I dont like my Tau

I am busy trying to finish up the final little bits of my Tau army which consist of a Devilfish's engines and drones as well as 6 shield drones and I am finding it a real struggle. Honestly I cant figure out why I even started this army as it leaves me uninspired and I just cant get into it.

I have had the army for around 2 years and I have used it exactly 3 times. 2 severe beat downs by marines and one of me shooting a DH army to death. This is not exactly a value for money army with a play rate like that.

I think the reason I dont like this army is not so much the codex or the rules but rather because of these 2 reasons.

A:) Its hard to transport. I have 4 devilfish models (well 2 devilfish and 2 hammerheads) and 3 piranhas. These just refuse to go into a case nicely and have to be transported via other methods.

B:) As I said before, its just an uninspiring army. There are so few conversion opportunity I feel. Your average Tau army that you see on the board all look the same. The models all look the same. I have grown really used to being able to manipulate my marines and make them unique. Not one of my sergeants or captains has not been cut up, green stuffed, repositioned or had limbs swapped out. Not very easy to do with Tau I find. This is not helped by the utter lack of goodies on the sprue. Even if you could convert them there is not that much to convert them with.

All this just makes me uninterested in the army which is sad since when I first started it I was more into it than I was with my Ultras. Sadly that passed and I am now seriously looking at selling it to finance getting my guard army up and running.

Battle Report: Ultramarines vs Tau

Yesterday I played a 2000 point game with my Ultramarines vs Tau.

It was an objectives based game with 5 objectives, deployment was standard table edges. I deployed first.

His force looked something like this

TAU:

Farsight, 2 body guards, 2 shield drones

Shas’o, 2 body guards, 2 drones

2  - 7 Man fire warrior teams – markerlight

broadside team with 2 broadsides and  2 shield drones

2 sniper teams

Hammer head

3 stealth suits - 1 fusion balster

2 piranha – fusion, seeker missiles

Kroot – 19 kroot, Shaper, 12 kroot hounds

Mine looked like this:

ULTRAMARINES

3 tactical squads

2 rhinos

Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon

Venerable Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon

Ironclad

Drop pod

Land Raider with MM

5 Vanguard (relic blade, 3 power weapons, TH)

Cassius

Khan

Vindicator

Speeder (MM, H/F)

Attack Bike – MM

Deployment
Marines in Blue. Tau in Red, objectives are the black circles. Ruins and cover are in grey and the green areas are hills. 

First Turn

Marines -

I placed the 2 rhino with attached squads as well as the speeder in reserve. The Ironclad and pod came down and shoots at the piranha squadron with melta and heavy flamer. The melta destroys a fusion blaster and the flamer does nothing but catches some firewarriors that were in the flame path. The Land Raider moves behind cover and the Vindi angles itself so the hammerhead is hitting front armour. Attack bike moves up towards the hammerhead. Plasma shots from dreads prove ineffective.

Tau -

The ironclad is markerlighted and the Piranhas move up behind it before destroying it with a seeker missile. The Land Raider takes 2 marker light hits which reduces its cover to 6+. The 2 broadsides shoot at it, 1 shot manages to penetrate but I roll a 6 to pass the cover save. The venerable dread looses its plasma cannon to a glancing hit from a sniper squad. I forget to ask for the re-roll.

Battlefield at end of turn 1

Turn 2

Marines - 

The 2 Rhinos come on, both on the left – Marines disembark near broadsides and rapid fire, killing a shield drone. The attack bike moves forward and kills the hammerhead with a MM shot. The LR moves forward and immobilizes a piranha which dies to the squadron rules. Vindi and Krak missile from the Tac Squad shoots at at the second piranha to no effect but it is then immobilised by the second dreads plasma cannon

Tau - 

The Sniper teams shoot at the disembarked rhino squad and kill 4. They fail their leadership and fall back.. The immobilised Piranha fires seeker missile at dread but it bounces off the side armour. The Attack bike is killed by fire warriors and a Broadside kills The Venerable dread. Once again I forget to do the re-roll. His Shas'O team deepstrikes but scatters onto the LR and rolls a 1 on the mishap table – lost in warp. Farsight deepstrikes and scatters close to my   lines. He the shoots and kills 2 marines.

Battlefield at end of turn 2

Turn 3

Marines - 

The Land Speeder comes on  - deepstrikes and scatters almost off board near his fire warriors. Flames 2 fire warriors. Falling back tac squad are less than 6" from the enemy and falls back some more. The Plasma dread, vindi and krak missile fire at piranha and again fail to do anything. Long range plasma cannon / gun fire from the second rhino's fire points as well as the rhino's stormbolter kill off one of the sniper teams.

The LR  moves close to Farsight. Khan, Cassius and the Vanguard disembark. Shooting from the raider and from the squad take out the shield drones. They then assault and kill everything, loosing a single vanguard. Consolidate back towards the LR

Tau - 

The Broadsides kill the Rhino on objective, I loose 2 marines to the explosion. The snipers kill more of the falling back tactical squad.

Battlefield at end of turn 3

Turn 4

Marines - 

The Vanguard get back on board LR and the LR moves up board. The piranha is finally killed by a krak missile and its drones get off. The Tac squad rally and move back towards sniper squad. They shoot the squad the sniper squad, cause wounds and the sniper squad runs off the table. The Rhino next to his broadsides then tank shock the broadsides. One of them takes a Death or Glory shot, penetrates the rhino and destroys the Storm Bolter. The rhino squashes the Broadside. The land speeder moves and flames an entire firewarrior squad and kills them all. The Vindi moves up.

Tau - 

The Gundrones close and shot down the land speeder. The second Broadside takes revenge and kills the rhino.

His Kroot come on and assault the tactical squad sitting on the bottom objective. 20 kroot and 12 kroot hounds gave him something like 65 attacks on the charge. He managed to kill 1 marine. I killed 5 kroot. he failed his leadership and I beat his initiative roll so my squad ran them all down and slaughtered them. It was a combat I should not have won.

Battlefield at end of turn 4

Turn 5

Marines - 

The LR moves up and heavy bolters last fire warrior. The tac squad near the broadsides move up, shoot and then assault broadside. They remove a wound and the Broadside fails to wound but passes its leadership. My Vindi moves up.

Tau - 

His Stealth team come on behind the Land Raider and fires afusion blaster at it but only manages to stun it. His Broadside dies to Tac squad.

Battlefield at end of turn 5

Turn 6

Marines - 

Vanguard disembark and move towards stealth team

Vindi fires shot at stealth team and kills them all

Result: Massacre for me.

I think that this is the first time that I have ever tabled an opponent. I have had people concede when its been close before or have the game end with 2 minis on the table but never actually done it.

Lessons learned

 - I don't normally use venerable dreadnoughts so I forgot to force the damage table re-rolls. I think if I had the dread would have lived a bit longer. As it is it made no difference in the end but had the game been close it could well have done so.

- I am not convinces yet about Khan and his outflank rule. It did come in useful this game but for some reason I find it a little gimmicky.

- I am also starting to think this army list is a little too strong for pick-up games. I may have to redesign it. Perhaps drop a dread and get rid of the special characters. It will still be strong but not quite so vicious.

First Post

I am an avid Warhammer 40000 fan, enjoying both the tabletop war game as well as the Black Library literature. I have been reading the books now for over 4 years and have been into the game for a little over 2 years.

As can be seen from the Title of the blog I am a huge fan of the Ultramarines and currently posses over 5000 points of same. I also have 2k of Tau which will likely be mentioned from time to time on the page.

However the main focus of this blog will be the progress of my new guard army. For obvious reasons it will have an Ultramar base, primarily being elements of IG regiments from Calth.

The army is in its infancy as I only have 1 (2nd hand) Leman Russ painted and the 5 clip together guardsman. They have been my test bed to see if I like the army and also to get a colour scheme that works for me. This has now been done.

I am also currently working on the fluff and composition for my army. So far its going to be a combined army (with emphases on troops) with elements of the Calth 768th Heavy Foot and the 42nd Mechanised Cavalry.

Its going to slow process as I dont have access to much funding at the moment but I hope to add a unit or two each month.