Dealing with New Tau anti-charging gunline or 3 Shadow-Sword

[shadowfinder]

Played a 5 round GT that turned in too a RTT because lack of people.

Ran in to two list that my list had no real answer for. A shadowsunn Tau list with hitting on 5's with overwatch with re-rolls. The other was a 3 Lord of War list with shadow-swords and some troop and Sister saint gall with 4 troop units and Psyker for -1 to hit and +1 cover.


I how do we deal with 3 shadow-sword in ITC or the new tau gun-line that hits on 5 with re-roll all misses for two turns ...

All i did for two games was pull off models all game. Didn't kill any units for two whole games. Had decent too good terrain too. Was two of the worst games experience i have had in years.

I will not play the Bane-blade //Shadow-sword list ever again. With only one unit of of hive guard i didn't have the fire power to even stop one baneblade. I got it down to one wound. Terrain was a issue as there was no ruins to hide in. There was a lot of Line of sight blocking terrain. But all he had to do was poke a corner around a wall and he could shoot with everything. Even with -1 to hit some times -2 all he need was one or two hits with those crazy volcano guns. Two shots get though will on average do 14 wounds. I was picking up a unit ever time one of those tanks shot.


I tried playing to the mission but what do you do with a 20+ wound tank sitting one two of the three objective all game. That most of you army can only hurt on 6's


Lost first turn to the Tau list and lost 30 genstealer, 3 Hive guard, 6 wounds on My flyrant, and 4 venoms. Turn two i lost the tyrnat the last 8 stealers two more hive Guard, and two fex. Round 3 and 4 where mop up mostly. Never even had a chance to charge anything.

After the game with the tau player we rolled out that would have happened if i had charged first with stealers with FNP. I would have hit his light screen of drones with only 5 stealers after over-watch. If he had been charges the 2nd turn with buffs up I would have Zero left. I would have had to have a 2nd unit to charge to have tied up his line. It was crazy.


The new faq reserves coming in on turn 2 meant that my opponent could shoot me twice with no fear of attacked. It came down to first turn on both games. If i had gone first i would have had a chance maybe of using a building to charge though for the could see me charge. But that was not even possible.


Gun-lines are back in a big way. God i am hating this new FAQ on reserves.

[vejby]

What did you bring?

SMA and a full unit of shock hive guard should do on average 16 wounds to a shadow sword. Coupled with the horror, that is one tank more or less disabled. Bring in the cult with mass hypnosis and you can effectively shut one down completely.

But that kind of list still forces you to tailor to either take it down or neuter its output by either going smite/shock heavy or 1-wound critter heavy.

[kazetanade]

Thats not new - it should have been immediately apparent that Tau was back as the premier anti-melee army in the game. If your list revolves on charging, Tau will be a hard matchup always.

That being said, he has a 5+ Overwatch, not a 5+ rerollable Overwatch unless he brought nothing but suits with Counter Fire System or whatever its called. Kauyon only lasts for a shooting phase IIRC (quick check shows its end of Turn, not phase, but it doesnt carry over to your turn regardless).

Outside of being really cagey and having some durable platforms that can wreak havoc (Devilgants and DakkaFlyrants wreak a lot of havoc against Tau that didnt drop play), its hard to get into Tau. Most shadowsun double kauyon players are weak on map control - i have tied games where i lost 80% of my hitting power to a Kauyon bubble, just because of killpoints and objectives. That said, i was a turn away from being tabled. Its not a given, but its an option at least.

Note also that unless he's in an extreeeemely tight bubble, there will be outlier units that are not within the 6" FTGG bubbles. You will need a fair amount of finesse to use these outliers to tap your unit of Genestealers into the rest of the important army without getting shot to pieces, but it will allow you to tie up almost anything of value (The entire line of fire warriors and broadsides). Sadly there is no tying up Riptides and Hammerheads... thats the weakness of playing melee and you'll have to figure out how to adapt against those. At least they cop -1 to hit if thru didnt bring target lock.

As for triple baneblade... LOS blocking, Magus hypnopsis to deny OW, -1 hit spells, and as many objectives as possible really are your only answers. Assuming standard BRB objective placements, AT LEAST 1 will be in his deployment, so you need to control the others. Also, plebbing them on the damagw chart to 5+ to hit is a really big deal for triple Baneblades; with a venomthrope that means they hit on 6s, which isnt all that scary. Stack some of those -1 to hit spells and suddenly 2 Baneblades shoot on a 7+.

[pjetski]

Re: Tau & Gunlines

Gunlines have lots of shooting but tend to be low accuracy. Spam hit debuffs and out-shoot them.
Tau also have no defense against psykers, so you can use The Horror freely to disable their most expensive units (like Riptides).
Catalyst on a squad of 30 jorm termagants backed by a Tervigon is amazing. Make sure the Tervigon is either out of sight or has some hit debuffs going.

Tau really struggle to deal with Hive Guard. Not many Tau lists bring any kind of deep strike units (crisis suits suck) or planes that can fly into line of sight.
Coldstar Commanders are the best option to deal with HG but there are a few problems with that strategy:
1. It's a suicide mission. That commander isn't getting out alive
2. Target saturation. If they're using a 4 fusion blaster commander to (maybe) kill 4 hive guard then they're not using it on other big targets.
3. Unreliable - no markerlight support means the commander will be hitting on 3+ after advancing and then wounding on 3+, which is only a 44% success rate. If you throw some venomthropes you drop them down to a 33% success rate... and then they need to roll well on their damage.

Tau also have bad options for sniper weapons so Malanthropes are excellent in this matchup.

[zimko]

I also faced a 3 shadowsword list this weekend (and it was probably the same mission where there are 3 objectives, one in each deployment and one in the middle.) I managed to survive thru turn 6 and lost 27 to 25. But I did not have GSC support. It was all Kraken and Kronos. And you're right, with Trojan support (rerolls to hit) even -2 to hit on my Kraken Flyrant didn't stop it from dying as soon as it arrived. The only trick I could pull off was charging trojans with Genestealers and surround them to keep them from being shot while sniping objectives. I used Objective Secured sacrificial troops and Metabolic Overdrive to snag the bonus objective each turn I could (control all 3 objectives at the end of PLAYER turn). I did get lucky with getting turn 1 and managing to hide Hive Guard for a couple turns which allowed me to kill 1 of the Shadowswords and weaken another down 1 grade. But it only slowed the killing spree. By the end of the game I had 1 Neurothrope (warlord) and 7 Genestealers.

I also faced a Tau list but the guy was half drunk and wasn't playing a competiive sept (he had 6+ FNP I think?). He had 2 Riptides and a bunch of markerlights. I was able to pick him apart from all sides so I can't say I've really beating a good Tau list yet. I am worried about facing the 5+ Overwatch sept and a good player in the future. So with that in mind...

I'm now seriously considering dipping into GSC because this kind of list is going to be more common. It can also be useful against Tau to have the psychic powers. A battalion is really cheap and nets you 2 GSC powers and 5 CP for a little over 300 points. And the Neophyte Hybrids can take a Heavy Weapon team to make them 9 models so they don't give up Reaper points in ITC.

[nidzy]

I lost bad to a tau list at an RTT this weekend as well. It was 3 heavy burst riptides, 8 shield drones, 3 firesight marksman, a fusion coldstar and 2 storm surges. He killed all stealers/gargs on turn 1. I killed 2 surges with hive guard and mortal wounds from biovores/flyrants but he definitely did kill my hive guard with the coldstar and then held my priority objective with him while I tried to plunk away with single remaining hive guard and 2 biovores. He won the game 34-21. I got a lucky smite for 6 damage on t3 that almost let me kill a riptide and a surge on t3 that might have swung it for me. Instead, my broodlord and neuro died to riptide overwatch and I failed to get the last 2 wounds off the surge with SMA hive guard.

[mattblowers]

Apr 30, 2018 6:20:43 GMT shadowfinder said:

Terrain was a issue as there was no ruins to hide in. There was a lot of Line of sight blocking terrain.

Terrain is THE issue in 8th edition tournaments. If you know you are going to play on a poor terrain table, then gunlines win all day every day. This was true before the FAQ, doubly true now. LOS blocking terrain is not enough. It needs to block LOS of multiple angles. It doesn't truly block if all you need to do is shift 2" to the right or left to negate it.

[gigasnail]

3 effing shadowswords, lol (please do not swear) hell man.

i have no words.

[valdrog]

Im going full horde to deal with the new shooting gallery edition of 40k.
30 gargs
90 Hormogaunts
90 Termagants
4x3 reapers
3 Mawlocs
malenthrop
3 Neurothropes
2 Sporcysts

Good luck killing all that while i get board control

[kazetanade]

Where did the reapers come from?

[deshkar]

May 3, 2018 17:48:19 GMT kazetanade said:

Where did the reapers come from?

Guessing Rippers