Holy crap ya, I haven’t posted battle reports for ages. This was from the HH Invitational back in May… so before Eldar and Space Marines were released.

Okay so serious Tau allies now that several games have been played with them(yayaya, the battle reports are way behind, bite me) but I’m taking Grey Knights still here as the primary. Nice gradual move to full Tau or Tau + allies rather than jumping in head first! This was an invite only event (yay?) of 16 of the better players in the area for a four round tournament with the fourth round played by only the two remaining undefeated players and there was a prize pool involved. Despite this, I went in pretty laxadazy to the event and was really just working on the Tau I wanted to start to use in a purer/parent form.

So round 1 is against Stuart aka lords2001 with his Purifier spam – something I keep telling him (and the Internet) isn’t great. Time to put my money where my mouth is! I’m dealing with 50 Purifiers decked out, Coteaz, Crowe and a Henchmen squad for a large blast and some backfield loons. While running the below myself:

Coteaz

2x10x Strike Knights w/2x Psycannons, Rhino

5x Strike Knights w/Psycannon, Psyback

2x Psyfledread

Commander w/PENchip, Drone Controller, 2x Marker Drones, 2x Missiles, Target Lock, Iridium Armor

Riptide w/EWO, Ion

6x Fire Warriors

5x Marker Drones

2x Broadsides w/Velocity Trackers

Aegis w/Quad Gun

Deployment

Okay so why don’t I rate this list? On paper it’s pretty daunting; it has a lot of Marine bodies and a lot of shooting capable of stripping hull points and forcing tons of wounds on infantry and it handles itself in combat fairly with both MEQs crying with Force Weapons and Hordes with Cleansing Flame and nearly every dude is Fearless so you have to kill every, last, one. However, it’s so friggin’ slow and has no ranged weapons outside of 24″ beyond the Psykers. This means the army is forced to go into the middle of the board to begin and is therefore really hurt in one deployment, moderately in another and not so much in the final but is nearly always restricted in terms of its beginning placement – in the middle. This gives fast and more ranged armies options to pick away at one side and whilst its difficult to avoid all the shooting (move + run x2 will do that), you can refuse flank and get in amongst one flank whilst the other is plodding along to catch up. So that’s what you would expect to do to win against this army.

Its Dawn of War – the least impactful deployment on the Purifier army and I made him go first which allows me to refuse flank if he screws up his deployment or avoid shooting Turn 1. He weights one side but that’s the best side terrain wise for me so I’m not going to avoid much shooting and thus weight that side as well but spread out so I can avoid being shot Turn 1 and encourage the Purifiers not to run into my corner but come at me across a line. I want to do this as my main targets on the left flank are very durable so any firepower going into them needs more than 1 or 2 Purifier squads to do anything and it gives me more movement options later in the game to get to the objectives which were set along the central line.

Purifier Turn 1 – All the Purifiers run at me, the Psykers launch a blast which drops the Rhino on the far right for First Blood despite an insane cover save due to Night Fight. Annoying! The Purifiers spread out with their run moves. The Purifiers don’t run directly at me but spread out to the flanks as well which limits my ability to hide from them in on-going turns.

GK/Tau Turn 1 – Lots of Purifiers in front of me and there’s really one range I care about – 24″ and where are those Psycannons. Psycannons standing still are twice as effective at killing things dead so I want to stay 24.1″ away from them as much as possible whilst remember killing ranges (i.e. my own GK cannot kill those Psycanons if they are out of range). Likely some of them can stand and shoot but I want to dictate those targets so, lots of fiddling to get where I want and minimise return fire. Further to this, we want to make sure squads are being wiped out as the Psycannons are obviously tucked in the back of squads so keeping small squads alive leaves the majority of his firepower there to hurt me.

So, there’s a squad on the right – they’re yellow; we want to blast the crap out of them with the majority of the firepower I have and then move onto the next squad on that flank whilst dropping a few shots into the Psykers to try and make them cry and run away like little babies (or just reduce the AP of that blast). The guys on the left flank aren’t going to be able to avoid the firepower on that side but again, we want to make them as tough as possible and force the units there to waste shots or continue running. The main thing is we want to stop them shooting at the Grey Knights in midfield.

So with all of this in mind, the midfield Rhino/Razorback dump their Grey Knights out and then scoot up to the Aegis on the left with the aim to limit shooting back at those Grey Knights from that flank. I’ll forego shooting to flat out (as they didn’t move before the guys got out). The big GK unit on the right moves up into the ruins with the Fire Warriors supporting them on the Quad Gun (no Commander needed here as there are no flyers). There’s a big clump of Purifiers in the middle so the Riptide gets a bead on them with all the Marker Drones manoeuvring to shoot through the window gaps and let the bullets unleash.

The Riptide + Marker Drones cause a massive hole to appear in the middle of the Purifiers as the Riptide drops around nine Purifiers from two squads; ouch. Two of the psykers drop so it’s no longer a scary low AP blast but they stick around. The combined fire of everything else basically takes the two squads on the right to half strength – unfortunately LoS blockers and range bands made it difficult for me to bring multiple full effect squads to bear on the one so I elected to go for more kills rather than trying to drop a squad off; a rookie error…

I also shoot the Psyback rather than making it go flatout which leaves a hole for my central Strike Squad to be shot from the left flank…

Purifier Turn 2 – I did a fair amount of damage, roughly 20 Purifiers but they were spread out over four squads; part of that was inevitable with a large AP2 blast ignoring cover finding the best spot he can and destroying everything but the rest of my firepower got a bit messed up with a few wobbly movement choices and order of shooting – woops. This leaves the door open for the Purifiers to do more damage than they really should…

All the Purifiers move up with only a handful Psycannons being able to stay still and shoot something (it should have been zero but again, didn’t wipe that squad) with the main focus on starting to eliminate my Troops – which obviously win games and outside of the Riptide, are going to be causing the most damage here. Given my mistake with my vehicle movement, there’s a lot more shooting directed at the central Strike squad than there should have been which ends up losing six guys however; a lot of other Purifiers can only see the Rhino/Psyback or the Commander w/Drones and thus are “forced” to shoot the Rhino who shrugs off an amazing amount of glancing hits and lives with a single hull point remaining. The Strike squad on the right also suffers three dead dudes but everything else is sweet as chips.

The squads that were forced to shoot the Rhino, I really would have run. Although there was a very good chance they were going to destroy it (and obviously Stunning isn’t what it needs to be with Fortitude around), the central guys ended up quite clumped meaning they were a prime target for the Riptide next turn and the central building + mobile Psyback (and potentially Rhino) could stop a lot of LoS if used properly whilst running them would have spread them out for the Riptide and gained more shooting advantages later.

GK/Tau Turn 2 – So let’s compare – Purifiers lost roughly 20 guys, I lost roughly 10 and given that I messed up and allowed access to a bunch of my guys from the left flank, that’s solid and where the limited mobility and range of foot Purifiers comes in. Anyway, the Rhino attempts to move and explodes itself with a Perils…which Coteaz also does. Nice guys. The Psyback therefore moves up against the wreckage of the Rhino to get that LoS blockage I needed last turn whilst the Grey Knights in the centre shuffle to make sure they are well hidden from that flank. Grey Knights + Dreadie on the right move up to get as many guys in range whilst the Riptide keeps bouncing around the back waiting until he can move up.

Shooting sees the big clump of Purifiers in the middle get blasted again by the Riptide and Crowe gets caught in the blast to fall over – not as many die this time as there was some scatter but still get five + Crowe. The rest of the torrent sees one of the weakened squads on the right wiped out and the other reduced to just three guys giving me solid control on that flank and solid protection on the left flank with the LoS blocking vehicles/terrain.

Purifier Turn 3 – Purifiers on the far left moved up and pressed into my lines where my vehicles were whilst the Purifiers in the middle kept hanging out and the few guys left on the right also moved up to try and pressure my guys on that flank (but with so few models, it was unlikely). The Purifiers in the middle were hanging sort of stuck where their options were limited when they really should have been pushed up further the turn before (via running) and pushing onto or past my Aegis Line currently (depending upon run moves). Given their limited mobility and range and that their buddies were dropping like flies, keeping them un-aggressive let me focus on different targets as needed.

Shooting saw the squad with Coteaz lose all but one guy, the Dreadnought on the right was shaken and lost a hull point (obviously) and the Psyback survived a whole lot more shooting through some insane cover saves but it was doing its job by protecting the Strike Knights behind it so as long as it didn’t blow up – all good. This forced lords2001 to assault it and rather than swinging at just S4 (one hull point left), brought in some Krak grenades and exploded it leaving the Purifiers nice and clumped and right in front of my army… The Purifiers on the right attempted to assault the Dreadnought but were out of reach and lost their Knight of the Flame to Overwatch.

GK/Tau Turn 3 – Charging and using Kraks was a big mistake as it easily led me to blasting the Purifiers there to bits. Not exploding wouldn’t have protected them from the Riptide really with the new blast rules killing models out of LoS but it would have made it more difficult and there was less room for deviation error, etc. As it was, the Dreadnought there moved up to tackle them in combat just in case they lived whilst all the Strike Knights started moving up. The lone Psycannon from Coteaz’s squad ran behind the Rhino wreck to hide and stay alive whilst Coteaz joined the remaining central squad. Guys on the right + the Dreadnought finished off the two remaining Purifiers there and the Riptide assploded the Purifiers sitting on my lines. Incidental firepower plinked at the remaining Purifiers but didn’t really do anything.

We called it here as lords2001 only had 6 Purifiers + Coteaz and the weakened henchmen squad left whilst I had a lovely place to hide my lone Strike Knight to hold the backfield objective and had enough guys + Riptide to push up and either destroy the remaining Purifier force or contest/control the central + farfield objective.

Conclusion

Not killing the Marker Drones (or putting any pressure on them) let the Riptide run riot and despite always recommending being aggressive with the Riptide (and not making it a 190 point backfield large blast lobber), this was a great example of when this can work early and pushing up later as contesting was needed and the threat of instant death via combat had alleviated somewhat. Regardless, this combination plus being able to pinpoint squads and reduce firepower on some flanks with vehicle LoS blocking allowed me to maintain a firepower advantage from Turn 1. It wasn’t pretty as my army took quite a bit of damage but the end result was nearly all the Purifiers dead and the GK + Tau pushing forward. The Rhinos took a lot of punishment with the Aegis stopping a ton of shooting but they were placed in a way which really reduced the shooting on that flank and meant I did not have to deal with so many Purifiers all at once and that’s what happens when your army isn’t mobile. Even with a couple of movement/shooting order mistakes myself in that initial turn, the firepower needed to bring to bear on the rest of my army struggled to materialise.

Further to this, it didn’t take me long to wipe most of the Purifiers out – I was helped by them clumping up in combat for the Riptide to smack a whole squad with but lots of MEQs doesn’t mean your scoring is the be all and end all – particularly when there’s nothing else to distract me. Simply getting Rhinos for everyone and shoving them up the field Turn 1 would have made it a lot harder to deal with as then my firepower would have needed to wiggle around to get more shooting to bear, etc.

Anyway, gg to lords2001 and a very good highlight of how important those first turns are to setup the on-going game. This was also the first time I went and ran around with marker support for a Riptide as allies – best scenario ever… It obviously did great.