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Well, look who it is. It's me, Gunum! I'm finally back with my Hear Me Out series after a long break. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, here's a quick refresher: In Hear Me Out I build lists. I'll typically start with an underappreciated unit that I think has some real Gold-Star potential that you could bring to any competitive event and has a real shot at doing well, then build a list around it and test it, usually at an event. As I go through this, I'll share my thought process, usually with another hapless member of the Goonhammer Competitive 40k Team, and have them offer feedback. Through this painful thought process, you'll be able to glean some insight about how to good lists even with suboptimal units or ideas - and how to take that battle plan to an event and see it through. Most of my lists tend to be Dark Angels-focused, but I play a wide variety of armies and will explore this format often. This particular Hear Me Out will be different some of the ones I've made in the past, as my normal test game area will be a bit of a tournament report. Double the content for twice the fun!
Now, after saying all of that. I've been explaining these thought processes for over two years. Pitching ideas to anyone who would listen, and in that time, I have literally only ever talked about Dark Angels. My Outer Circle bois have been a force near and dear to my heart. There have been many updates I've had around the chapter, and I'm very thankful to our great community for all the help they've given me with improving them! I talk about successor Dark Angels so often that I think it's starting to infect my artwork around here at the Goonhammer offices. My office is still as broody as ever, but I guess maintenance let my fluorescent lights burn out, and now I have to write everything by candlelight. So here I am, sitting in the dark and straining my eyes, searching the depths of my mind trying to identify what my next adventure will be. All I can hear is the dripping of candle wax and the sobs of my neighbor Greg as he realizes I'll be getting even more Dark Angel games in before he can play even one. When I started writing this I had a GT coming up - Bugeater GT in Omaha, and I still wasn't sure if two Dark Talons or three was the correct answer. Something started to feel off...
I asked myself: "Why am I putting up with these working conditions? Why am I okay with Dark Angles fans being stuffed in some basement to make content about how awesome our faction is?!" I must have faith in my process and I must have faith in the codexes. These are two cardinal principles. If I doubt these principles, I'll accomplish nothing. All of my HMO progress, every slightly significant achievement I have made in list construction, has been the expression and result of my countless terrible domestic struggles. I'm looking at you, Cyle.
That's when it hit me. An idea is so crazy, so dynamic, that its entry into my mind empowered me to strike out against my masters. I e-mailed the number 6 player in the ITC, my fellow Goonhammer author, Lt. Cmdr James "Boon" Kelling, to be my right-hand in this endeavor with fevered haste. My Hear Me Out lists have always been received with skepticism, but the experimental energy they generate can be very infectious. Which is good because I need someone to be my voice of reason and offer counterpoints to my madness and attempt to talk me out of my crazier missteps. With a foil in mind the time was right to fight back against the God-Emperor and bring ruin upon the peoples of Nebraska. Not for the Warhogs or Goonhammer, but the Greater Good. That's right - let the editor classes of Goonhammer tremble at the hands of this new Gunum-led T'au revolution.
Boon: There I was, just idly flipping through the Goonhammer discord chats like an indecisive night hunger, going chat to chat and reading the random chatter without finding anything that caught my fancy. Then I saw Chase was playing TTS with Tau, posting screenshots, and generally doing HMO type things. Interesting stuff. Then he posed the fateful queston, "What should I play for Bugeater?" With absolutely no thought, and I mean zero thought, or any attempt to talk anyone out of any kind of upcoming madness I reflexively saved a screenshot of Chase's cyber Tau and reposted it to the chat and tagged him. Thus the Gunum Greater Good revolution was underway.Okay. So Farsight Enclave Tau isn't anything new to anyone who has been following along with the competitive community at large. These kinds of lists stand out because, well... there usually are only one or two Tau players at these events as of late. Tau has had a tough time locking down the primary mission of this edition, and just having to deal with the Battlesuit/Drone keywords has been a weird situation. "Gunum," you are probably thinking to yourself, "Tau? What the heck, how did you even get here from you're beloved Dark Angels." that is a very fair question. When it comes right down to it, I got into the army very quickly from some pals giving upon them. As I do with any army I play, I started to dig through all the different options I could find in the book, and, My God, do Tau have an almost endless amount of options. These are shown in no small detail with the Tau Crisis suit.
These cool and chunky boys have an almost endless amount of choices for weapons and war gear that can make every single suit you bring feel unique from the next one. Is building a nearly infinite amount of suits a good idea? No. It's not. BUT if you are looking at getting into this army and want to explore the options available, magnets will be your friend. I can't think of an army more attuned to mix and match all the weapon options, especially if you're looking at Crisis suits.
But why did I pick these guys as my focus? As I was very inexperienced in Tau, I realize that this is the meta choice for a competitive Tau list, which is unlike me with my options. As I was doing lore reading, exploring how all the different Septs played, and exploring current rules, I landed right on top of Farsight Enclaves (FSE). FSE had a collection of stratagems and rules that benefited from going heavy into the XV8s. First, a 5+ ignore wounds stratagem to some actual close combat options with a Hammer of Wrath stratagem that applies mortal wounds on a 3+. BeMakinghem into a 3+ BS is a massive boon for an army plagued by a 4+ BS. Next, FSE provides us with some great chapter tactics unlike anything else in the Tau book, focusing on being close to our enemies. With our Tau treating every unit within 12" as already having a Markerlight applied is a massive deal and allows us to not need as many marker lights as other Sept. Most of the time, we're looking just apply that single marker to give us the re-roll 1's. With a 40k edition that is so close to each other, this provides us with a tremendous strategic advantage. The next thing FSE gives us is the ability to re-roll 1's to wound in the shooting phase if a unit is within 6" of us. Another reason we need to build our Tau with this idea in mind. We're going to be up in the thick of the battle.
Boon: The last time I played a game that involved Tau, level one ruins still blocked line of sight and something like 40 shield drones, a lot of Riptides, missile commanders, and absolutely no shame was the meta play of choice. So I think it goes without saying that I'm eminently qualified to hear this out. After doing some mildly shallow thinking on what Chase had proposed and searched deep into my heart and the BCP app, I found the answer I was looking for and copy-pasted lovingly crafted a thoughtful counter.
As you can see above in my list, I'm choosing to build this unit as a sort of death star that can deal with many issues. So we have some light infantry shooting with the bursts, some elite infantry shooting with the plasma, and anti-everything with the fusion guns. Using shield drones as protection, though expensive, seems like an excellent investment as I plan to keep my crisis suits on the table.
(At the time of this article, Mr. Siegler had yet to shock the Tau community with his Crisis Pod. That is a list that Wings covered via the ACO event, and I would highly recommend people check out his hot takes on the list.)
Next, let's check out what I think was the whole reason to take this Sept, a man with a plan. While we were all studying to hold primary objectives, he was studying the blade. The Lord and Savior of the Mont'ka. Loving known as Fall Out Man for giving our death star two opportunities to fall out and shoot. Commander Farsight everyone:
When I was first building lists, I had a tough time not building a fusion cold-star commander and a backline missile commander. FSE has a remarkable ability to be able to take two commanders in one detachment. They were coming in at 175, 160, and those costs were just brutal to feel good about in the greater scheme of the list. Especially when one of their jobs is to jump out and, well... die. In comes Farsight. I rarely play named characters nowadays, especially with Outer Circle not having access to any of the favorite Dark Angels lads, so I didn't look at Farsight right away. But after talking to people in the community (Looking at you Ruleshammer Kai) and learning how vital Mont'ka can be for a Tau force, I realized just how strong Farsight is to a Tau game plan. So I quickly windmill slammed him into the list and off to the races we went.
The other thing about my list I just wanted to touch base on is the Breacher teams and their accompanying Devilfish. In the world of 9th edition, building your lists to try and claim primary is a core part of the game. Gone are the days of major Tau castles doing well; we need a mobile force actually to engage with the game. An excellent change from the days of the Tau castles that I had zero interest in playing. With having two stratagems to give Breachers reroll all wounds, I couldn't bring myself to run them in the MSU style we see today. Running them in blocks of 10 has some downsides, but being able to spend 1CP to give my 20 shots reroll-all wounds just seemed way too good to pass up. When looking at Devilfish, the common choice seems to be gun drones instead of SMS systems due to the extra unit attached to the transport. Devilfish will die, and they will probably die early, so I see the additional objective coverage making a lot of sense here. I decided to go with the SMS because of the sheer amount of shots coming out of the transports. Having the eight shots that ignore line of sight is excellent, and I felt that they would help my first turn presence. Using their shooting to target squishy infantry that might help challenge objectives makes much sense to me.
Boon: What I like about Chase's list is the heavy reliance on a death star of Crisis Suits and only a single Riptide, what I dislike is the utter lack of DX-6 Remora Stealth Drones. I'm going to be honest, I don't actually know what they do and it's possible this is the first time I have ever heard of them - but my miracle list that I definitely didn't rip off from any great players has two of them and that seems like a good reason to have taken them, and thus, I think Chase is making a big time mistake. Also, if you look closely, you'll notice that Chase has a very distinctive lack of anything not robit or Tau related whereas I have Vespid's. Everyone knows that the best part of Tau is the not-Tau stuff. I have gone to great lengths to explain this in my writeup on the Tau fleets in Battlefleet Gothic. All that said, Chase seems to have crafted a very well though out list - the use of transports to pop out objective coverage is an Aeldari classic so that gets my full endorsement. I'm not certain what Chase is looking at on secondary selections here as the Breacher teams feel too large to effectively manage act on things like Scramblers as they'll give up a lot of shooting (exactly 5 more bodies than needed) to do it - and they'll likely be sitting objectives in their transports.
The Bois mustered for battle
Boon: Few things on Earth are more annoying than to travel to a big tournament, far from your local meta, just to play someone round 1 with whom you could have played a Saturday afternoon game. While Chase has little experience with his list and jumped fully into it with next to no convincing whatsoever, I like his chances in this matchup. Even without the base 2 damage for not being named "melta", the Tau fusion blasters can make very short work of a list anchored by four T7 bodies not capable of issuing the same damage in return - and in reality, Chase should nearly always be getting the first shot here with his Crisis suits. While DKoK units can be a nuisance due to their surprising durability, speed, and surprising combat punch the amount of firepower Chase can bring to bear is more than enough to clear out the ponies by the fistful - it's a game where I think both lists generally struggle on the primary - but the reality is that I think Chase can protect his units better than his opponent and deal the damage necessary to maintain an edge. I give the win to Chase.
Boon: Let's assume for a moment I don't know how this one turned out by virtue of nearly playing Ben Neal in round 6 - these lists are very similar. What I will note is that Ben has the aforementioned DX-6's which I have spent absolutely no time looking up since the last time they were discussed up-column but stand by them nonetheless. Additionally, he has the non-Tau units that are so critical to a cool and good Tau list. If that weren't enough to get my vote on the win the fact that those Vespid's are likely near guaranteeing a Deploy Scramblers secondary and doing the lord's work for Engage on All Front likely makes up for the lack of durability that Tau hold on primaries and which Chase is making a passing attempt to lean into. I think the calculation here is to ensure secondary's and take primary opportunistically - and because he does it more purposefully than Chase, I give the win to him.
Going into this game, I was pretty nervous to be straightforward here. This was my first event with Tau, I have been playing them for under a month. Mr. Niel here had just been spoken about doing well with Tau in a different event and clearly knew the army way better than me. I felt if I was going to win, it was going to come down to a clash between our two Crisis suit bombs, then the other person would be acting without any issues just deleting the opponent's army. The thing that I wanted to do was pressure those middle objectives as hard as I could, pray that my Riptide can hold up to his, and space out my forces in a way to try and deny any objectives he took. He took While We Stand, We Fight, Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers. I took WWSWF, Engage on All Fronts, Vital Ground. The way I wanted to win here was to force primary/hold mores and sneak out the W.
The game itself well, it didn't go as well as I wanted. I got the first to turn for this game, but I did hardly any damage. My Ion-tide gently touched a devil fish and I pushed my suits up to the middle to entice him to bring his own unit out but to also make sure they were exposed. He takes the bait*(This ended up being a terrible choice) and killed all my drones and 3 suits, a devilish and the 10 guys, + 2 drones inside. He pushed up all of his units to challenge the objectives and was playing my own game plan against me. My turn was a real chance to make the game swing my way, I jumped a squad of 10 breaches out of a ride, got 5 markers on his suit block, and lit them up. By the time I was done shooting with the 10 guys, the Riptide, and my remaining suits I killed almost all of his drones, and 3 suits. Fairtrade? Noootttt really, as it took almost 1700 points to accomplish what he did with 500. Also, I rolled a snake eyes for my boost move on my riptide, not getting far enough behind obscuring terrain, leaving me wide open to his Riptide.
Okay, so I forgot to take a picture of the full deployment zone. Gosh.
10 Breachers placed at 3.1 inches from a knight, moments before it explodes for 3 inches, only hurting his friends.
`
So. This map was one of the worst maps I've ever seen for a knight player. The image I included here gives a good feel of just how claustrophobic this game was for him, and against my wall of 2+ to hit, rerolling all wounds melta guns. The need for him to go first was massive. I took Banners, WWSWF, and Titan Hunter. He took WWSWF, Engage on All Fronts, Direct Assualt.BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... n.
It wouldn't be a Hear Me Out if I didn't lose it on the very first one. Boon did a great job checking out he listens and comparing it to what the matchup would be, and I really enjoyed having somebody else's eyes on these games. This is the first version of this list for this new year/new season post-pandemic, and I'm gonna be honest, I enjoyed getting out and throwing down with my Pandemic project. Now, Boon taking the win might be a little tainted due to him being AT the event with me. But, approaching this as he did from just a list perspective lets any decent player get a good read of the land early on. Overall, the Bug Eater GT was an absolute blast, and The Warhogs love going to it as much as we can. This makes six years running I think, and the T.O, Tim Royers, runs a hell of an event. My team has won best group there 3 years out of the six we've been there, and man. We really did try this year but over all my team got slaughtered here like it was bacon season. Heater, yeah to put it lightly.Tags:
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