Venom

I've been largely missing lately. The old story of new job means less time to think about 40k. Part of me wants to sell off the tau after Chaos Day at the end of the month, cunningly organized to occupy me during the royal wedding. Chaos Day is something I have only just started playing in. Last year I turned up having not played 40k in a long time, had been playing flames of war, with brand new tau - still in their chic all black vogue. This year I'm taking the same Tau but their painted - hows that for longevity.

A good friend of mine Simon who I met through my gf Elle, she plays 1k sons, runs Chaos Day more or less. Though our jobs and other lives keep us from playing I know he has a new Dark Eldar army going down which I'm looking forward to playing against. Anyway this post is largely a shameless plug for his blog over at <a href="http://simonfisherlol.blogspot.com/">A Taste of Venom</a>.

In the mean time let me say that if I don't post before the weekend of the Royal Wedding will be a busy one as I intend to cover Chaos Day somewhat and interview some people about their forces, well the ones who don't play power chum.

James

Turning Japanese

Everyone loves eastern tactica. When I think about where military strategy comes from I think of China and Japan because of the long tradition. I think there is a lot to learn from Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. Here is my top three things and how they apply to 40k.

First up is the idea that a commanders main role and skill is in "making a monumental icon from a minuscule figure". This is my first principle. Look into the detail of things and make it work for you. For me in 40k this is two things - first points and second anticipated friction, both of which appear as ideas in earlier posts. I think if you just look at the bigger picture of units and army books you are bound to miss things, things which could win you games.

Second is the idea that you practice all of the things involved and not just the most difficult. If you just focus on complicated ideas like deployment to the detriment of things like target priority your mind will ignore simple solutions and present complex ones - and complex solutions are often fragile. The classic example is people going into autopilot for model spacing and arrangement. You need to place your special weapon and power weapon well and if there are no opposing templates a tight formation is best so why go 2" apart?

Third is the idea of "swordlessness". This means to use what you have and not over specialise into a perfect solution. You need to be familiar with your units and their ability in all capacities to do this, something I covered in my last blog post somewhat. This will win you a lot of games for two reasons - one you will see solutions even when plan A goes wrong and two you won't get mad when your units required for plan A die.

So that is it for today. I've tried to be in keeping with the tradition of eastern strategy and keep it brief but thought provoking. Next time I'll be talking about Marker Lights.

James

Have you played Knifey Spoony before?

Here is the whole idea in Orc-Pie-Room format. "To eat soup you need a spoon. But all you have is a knife. You want to eat the soup."

First you could get a spoon. Maybe you take a hammer to your knife, by which I mean you get new models for your existing army that spoonify it. Maybe you go out and buy a spoon, by which I mean you go out and buy a spoon and trade it for models.

Second you carry on using the knife until you can get the job done. All the while looking over at the other guys spoon in abject disapproval. Toiling into the wee hours of the morning alone in a darkened room without so much as a picture of a picture of a picture of boobs, from the side, to keep you entertained

I see a lot of people dogmatically buying new spoon-like objects. "Well I could use more mobile firepower in my list to sort out Eldar so three Landspeeders. Better get those bought." Next week "hmm my Speeders are OK but really they need support so what about some Vanguard Vets with anti tank stuffs, that way when I play guard I can simply lay the pwn down. Get those." Now your problem is what is a spoon to Eldar soup is a Knife to Nid soup.

Really this is an article against min-maxing. The more focused your list is the less adaptable it probably is. What you want really is to arrive at the game and have your knife be blunt enough to eat soup with but sharp enough to still be a knife if you push the right way.

I am not suggesting you take a little from all boxes here. Pragmatically I assign primary and other role to all my units. XV88's. Primary role is blowing up tanks. Secondary role is moving up and using they're cheap plasma to melt attacking element face. Another secondary role might be absorbing non-power weapon low strength high attack mobs in close combat. Compare this to a Hammerhead. Primary role is blowing up tanks. Secondary role is providing mobile cover to stuff and being shot at. I know which I prefer.

When your opponent presents a certain kind of soup, no vehicle soup for instance, you just switch to secondary. I mean when was the last time you used your strength 7 Plasma Gun to shoot a rhino? Well sometimes you should be because sometimes that is the best path.

By all means go out and buy cool stuff but don't expect it to solve all your problems - just one or two narrow ones. At the same time if you use the same stuff in the same way your life is going to be dull and repetitive. Get yourself a knife that is just sharp enough and is a serviceable spoon to boot and I promise you will have fun and win more games.

Jomini and 40k

You know how people talk about refused flank and stuff like that. "Oh yeah the guy castled up in a corner and I couldn't weed him out with my Vypers" or "Yeah well I like to concentrate on a thrust for objectives in the last turn while scattering my army until then". Jomini is where it is from for me...go Google it.

OK so here are his 12 'orders of battle', formations or deployments in 40k, and how you might see them across the table plus the bonus info of how to oppose them. This really helps you with Friction, ironic since C-man and J-dude were pretty unfriendly when they hung out together.

1. Parallel Order. To Jomini this is the worst order. It introduces no sophisticated tactics it just smashes line on line until someone wins. Trouble is the reason that is bad is that forces were relatively evenly matched, in terms of tech, training etc, at the time so realistically since this isn't the case in 40k we can write that off somewhat.

You see this one most from armies with high resilience, low mobility and high destructive capability in close. Deathwing Terminators and Necron Phalanx spring to mind as well as foot Wolves, Wolf Wing, ThunderWolves or shooty Wolves. This is mostly used by people who believe the "its the list stupid!" theory of 40k, or worse "its the codex creep stupid!". The point is they have no decisive plan other than to close and bring force to bare evenly relying on inbuilt advantages to see them through.

You combat it by first deciding if you win the brawl and second using one of the more sophisticated plans if you are less than sure you do.

2. Parallel Order with Defensive or Offensive crotchet. You reduce the length of your line and form either an offensive or defensive base on one side, dictated by terrain usually. Normally this is a defensive position because you don't have a lot of paths to exploit weakness when your superior force element is in a corner.

You see this all the time. People pick a side and put down the stuff they wanna use in an attack there. It's intuitive. What isn't necessarily intuitive is why this is usually a defensive order. Lines of exploit are golden and when your strong point is the center you can exploit in all directions, which is why it's the best place to start in games like connect four and 40k when all other things are equal. You can see these lines as fire lanes or movement paths.

This one combats the first by basically forcing them to change formation to deal with you. A classic play with a maneuverable army is to deploy as order 1 then move fast vehicles to the side to resemble fig 2 before thrusting on the flank before your opponent can move to counter.

3 and 4. Parallel Order with Reinforcement on Flank (3) or Center (4). This one is quite subtle. Rather than use stronger units to concentrate your force you use waves of unit. It works well for forces that have high impact but low survivability like Stealer lists or Tau. It is my preferred order of battle to use one of these two. Against a force where I expect multiple exploits to become available I use 3, because I can diverge from the stronger center, and against forces who have monolithic units I use 4, and feed the unit my army.

You see this one less frequently. People seem to not like placing units behind each other during deployment, which I find odd. Mid battle however this one becomes popular as people consolidate force elements into a defense of objectives x and y or an attack on objective z. The beauty of this one is given sufficient mobility you can adapt to more or less any other order inside a movement phase.

You counter this by attacking the weak line while avoiding the strong reinforcement, its quite instinctive.

5. The Oblique Order. What people in 40k call flanking. The aim is to move at an angle to the opposing line and expose uneven mobility in order to concentrate superior force. The subtle fact here is that most armies don't have uneven mobility - they are either all mounted in rhinos, yawn, or move at a similar pace on foot etc to the rest of the army. You therefore must create it by shooting them out of their transports or anchoring your weak center with terrain in most cases.

This works with more or less any force with an element that concentrates well. So blast template shooting, any assault force or close range shooting like Sisters. The key here is that your units are synergistic on the front end of the line so that fighting is decisive.

You counter this by either withdrawing into a reverse of their order, out lasting their attack at the decisive point or preempting their attack with one of your own so the opposition is in a more favorable position for the remainder of your force to come into play.

6 and 7. Perpendicular order on one (6) or both (7) wings. So this is what your doing when you outflank, deep strike or play Daemons. The idea behind 6 is to roll the enemy up, rather like cavalry used to do in classical battles where as 7 is designed to divide the enemy so that you can react to mistakes. As a purely offensive position this order always gives you first strike potential which can be significant in 40k.

Guard with the Taliban dude do this superbly. Tau can get it done well as well as can Blood Angel jump pack lists. Obviously all Daemon armies do it instinctively and forces based around Crushers, Defilers and Prince are generally attempting 6, or should be, where as forces based on troops, esp Slaanesh based forces, should go for 7 instead.

The counter is very difficult. You generally hope they roll poorly for reserves or deep strike scatter and you try to take them out piecemeal. If that doesn't work you need to make a concerted attack on the weaker side, if they're doing 7, or provide a sacrificial element to the attack if they use 6 and then try to separate the force.

8. Concave in the Center. What people in 40k call double flanking. This is actually best used as a transitional plan. That means you start off defensively then at some decisive point you switch to offense and surround the other guy or move for objectives.

Best performed by shooty infantry based lists you want to present a slightly weaker center which is further back. You want the enemy to form into order 4 and attack your center at which point you have him because his strength is committed while yours is not. The danger here is that your units will be unable to reinforce one another from left to right because of the central battle or that the central battle will be over too quickly. Both of these mean that assault armies can't really use this one. Static Guard, Foot Eldar, Shooty Marines and Tau use this well.

You counter this one by being too strong on the attack essentially. Or outlasting the defensive phase so that the other guy blinks first and moves.

9. Retired Center. Is basically the same as 8 except there is a more dramatic difference in distance between the center and the wings. The idea here is that your sacrificing the center to trap the opponent against your own board edge and isolate his force there. It is best when there is terrain in the center - Agincourt style.

10. Winged Echelon. This is the perpendicular order (7) for armies without access to Outflank, Deep Strike etc. Orks with Scout moving choppers are the classic because they don't want to reserve stuff but the do want to try to divide the force before the battle wagons get there. Counter in much the same way - with difficulty or preemptive attacks.

11. The Lance Formation (Central Echelon). You basically have order 3 but with an even faster center to compensate for the lack of direct reinforcement by line. Three Landraider Inquisition forces, Orks with Bikers instead of Choppers and the like use this regularly. Your faster force hits the middle and divides the opposition with a breakthrough. Your stronger but slower stuff hits the sides and you win. Counter as you would 4.

12. Columns. The height of Jomini era thinking. Sadly it doesn't translate well to 40k. Too much of your force ends up as a mobile reserve and you either win or loose on the strength of the front of your columns. I've included it mostly for completeness. 

So there you are. I personally don't think there are any formations of deployment and attack that I've seen in 40k that Jomini didn't cover, smart guy I bet he didn't play Marines - probably Guard of some sort. The best part is now that you've seen all the options and know what they do and what to do to them you can respond better. Yey Anticipated Friction.

James

Piranha 101

The fantastic South Park operation hide behind the darkies joke rings in my mind every time I deploy my Tau. Sometimes it's Kroot, who are much more conventional bullet magnets, but mostly its the Piranha I'm thinking of.

Lets talk about configuration. The deal here is you get two gun drones, worth 24 points if you actually paid for them, a burst cannon, worth 8 points or so and a FA11 fast skimmer, worth around 40 points based on comparison to a land speeder. 72 points of vehicle for 60 points.

It is better than that though because these vehicles, with their FA11, their access to excellent vehicle wargear and their large wingspan are ideal for the job of Darkie. First up the most quantifiable element of this hidden discount - wargear.

A fusion blaster for 5 points represents a 7 point discount, which is roughly the cost of the burst cannon you gave up. That on its own is a rarity upgrades are not normally discounted to factor in the cost of the lost weapon system. It gives you tank hunting potential. It would be a good call if you didn't have broadsides seeping out of your heavy slots and instead had glass-hammerheads.

DPod's exist but like I said a few days ago you don't take them here because you expect to close to within 12" of enemy guns, you can hide half your squad to get a cover save and your low target priority on deployment.

Flechette Dischargers are fairly awesome but they're 10 points each. You probably want some sometimes against some opponants which means you need to consider what I said about Friction and decide if being assaulted by the likes of Orks, Nids and Dark/Eldar falls under Anticipated Friction or not.

Seeker Missiles. Here is the dope. Some games with Tau depend heavily on a single turn of shooting. Shooty Marines, less shooty shooty IG and shooty eldar is where I am at here. In most of these cases your relying on taking out vehicles through a burst of firepower before those vehicles prove useful. What seekers do is allow you to have more firepower in the critical turn and in exchange they require markerlights and cost points. Again this is a Friction call.

So FA11 is the new 3++ which is the new black. Reasoning here is simple - bolters are strength 4, as are most basic weapons. Where your newly arrived space wolf gaggle and their rhino have a very good chance of fudging up armor 10 they're not so hot against armor 11 - and when I say not so hot I think here of Dawn French in Antarctica with only a pair of nipple tassels for warmth. This forces the wolves to assault you, where they're on 6's to hit 6's to do anything and may loose a few to flechettes. It is hard to say how many points this is worth because effectively it eliminates a whole category of weapons and relegates your opposition to shooting real weapons at you or charging.

Last in the value area is the wingspan. So your piranha squadron gets its coherency from the edge of its model. The wing span on a Piranha is like 5-6" vs a Landspeeder's 2-3". That means you have a much larger footprint on the battlefield which translates to more safe troops behind your Darkies who provide their 4+ invulnerable save. This is pretty much why you don't take these in squadrons of one, that and you want a functional drone squadron to add yet more Darkie footprint - who by the way can disembark from the open topped piranha and assault, for you know extra range and stuff.

A lot of people here would mention contesting quarters or objectives or cheese and Branston sandwiches. All of which are fine an dandy but frankly you won't have your piranha's at the end of the game unless you reserve them. If you reserve your Darkies you suck unless your reserving everything else ninja style at which point you rock because there is nothing more ninja than Darkie piranhas jumping on the board and contesting while providing their cover saves.


So they're good but how many is enough? We don't want to spend too many points on Darkies because they don't kill stuff. I own exactly three. In all my games of 1500+ points I have used exactly three. I use them in one unit. If I owned four I might use two units of two though. Those are the configurations that work in my opinion. So your looking at spending at least 180 points on Piranha. Start thinking about how many AP3 S8 shots that deflects every turn on your other stuff and consign those points to room 101 because you won't be getting them back.

James

The Bigger C

Combat? No. Chance? No. Cancer? No. The bigger C here is Clausewitz. Go on Wiki if you need to...back? Good.

So lets talk about friction, this big F made big by the bigger C. An object wants to go where force tells it; you throw your dice it wants to go on forever. It gets stopped though. Mostly by terrain or your opponents lovingly crafted cheese infested models of doom, trademark there, but also by friction. Little by little the force you put on depletes into the environment until the dice goes Emu and doesn't wanna roll any more. Team Jacob.

So the idea is pretty simple really when you direct force things stop it working properly. Not just your opponent but things like bad dice, rules misunderstandings and well bad dice really. I'm sure a lot of people will have heard the maxim that to march an army in a straight line for a long way is you know not easy.

I like to think of it as having two parts, and I'm relating it here to 40k so any officianados in the audience you know chill out. Part one: unforeseeable friction. The number one killer in the jungle is dead-fall, that is logs etc falling on peoples heads from their tree branch homes. It's pretty unforeseeable. I mean sure you don't camp under one but when your moving around in the environment there are a lot of trees and watching the trees rather than where your going is a bad deal, because its a jungle out there man!

Here are what your after in part one. Chance outcomes with a close to 50:50 outcome on which your force depends heavily. Classic example is you need 4"+ to move through the jungle in order to be in charge range of your target. If your short your hurting and the outcome is unforeseeable. Next is what you will face at the tournament. Now a lot of people are going to scream "but the metagame!". I'm here to break it to you - there is no metagame. Unless you literally know the armies of everyone turning up there is not enough information to make the concept of a metagame useful. Last, but not least, are human factors like how well you get along with the other guy. If its well you dice stuff off when you dispute, unforeseeable, if its poorly you call whatever passes for a judge over who makes a shocking ruling, equally unforseeable.

When it comes to unforseeable friction here is the secret weapon. Don't plan for it. Acknowledge its existence in a French way then in an equally French way get on with wooing its attractive, but tall, wife Anticipated Friction.

Anticipated Friction decides a lot of games. It accounts for three main elements of the hugely important conflict your waging on the table top against the 3+ scummers, or for them whatever.

First your ability to anticipate your opponents play. Poker tells exist in 40k. They're unsubtle - people usually swear and yelp when you ruin their plans. Aside from that I suggest you take their list, their standing in the group and how ninja like they look and make a decision if you think they're better or worse than you are. If they're better oppose everything they do - restrict their options and play for the mission. If they're worse make a plan and stick to it forcing them to react, badly. It's like an argument - the worse a position your in the better off you are listening and disagreeing only with the most important bits. If your winning however just keep at it until you win.

Second is your ability to predict the dice. Pray to the God of dice here or just do some statistics in your head and realise what an unusual result will do to your plan. This has been talked to death so I'm stopping there.

Finally is your ability to predict the terrain and real environment. I once saw a guy, at a Magic Tournament, order a burger and chips table side. See his opponent had complained about being hungry. So he ordered the food and left it there. Serious distraction. It's underhanded but there was money, you know real money, on the line. Since then I always bring snacks to things so that if I get hungry I can eat. The bigger half here though is predicting the terrain. Some armies perform better on different terrain. Kroot without a forest are wounds waiting to happen for instance.

So what am I saying? Well this guy Clausewitz popularized this idea Friction. I think friction is a big concept. To make it work for 40k it needs simplifying and dividing. Recognize that some things that cause friction are unforeseeable, you can't work them into your plan, and that others can be anticipated, but often aren't. If you work these into your plan it has two outcomes. First your less likely to get mad and loose track of whats important when friction happens. Second your able to exploit your information and turn it into an advantage against people who don't have the information. I swear its Piranha next.

James

Eldar vs Tau 500pts

I'm in a 500 point campaign of sorts right now which is pretty casual, and is turning out to be fun. Tomorrow I'll post up the rules etc we use - I encourage you all to give it a go.

We rolled up Annihilation and Spearhead. My opponant won the roll and sensibly choose to put me in the corner with least terrain. Here is the deployment shot.

As a wily Eldar player Jon has kept most of his army in reserve. Here is a shot.

Turn 1

I lurch most everything forward toward the Pathfinders. With a 2+ cover save from most angles its either flamers or combat to weed them out. Jon picks off one of my Monat teams and in return I nail a scout. Pretty lucky both ways. Here is the result.

Turn 2

A lot of Jon's army arrives - Autarch induced. For a second I panic at the Hawk Grenade pack but it deviates and gets only a single Kroot. I get in on the Pathfinders, hop up and down the hill to shoot the jetbikes and rapid fire the Hawks. It goes well resulting in this.

Turn 3

The last of Jon's army turns up and he valiently goes for my XV8's. Killing 2 drones and putting a wound on one for the return of nothing. I pass tests. In my turn I pile what feels like my whole army onto his squad. I do ok and remove the squad plus 2 wounds on the Autarch, who's power weapon proves unable to roll to wound properly.

Turn 4

I finish off the Autarch who finished off my Shas'el. Jon throws in the towel.

James

Rounding the Wagons 2.0

For the uninitiated, or simply forgetful, rounding the wagons is using your ability to JSJ with your XV8's and your ability to move 12" and shoot some stuff with your Hammerheads in order to either LOS block or provide cover to your XV8's.

I have a problem with this tactic: it means I have to take Hammerheads. I pretty regularly fill my heavy support choices with Tau. No surprise there. However the hammerhead just doesn't float my boat. It doesn't have the firepower or durability of an XV88 and it doesn't have the sneaky ninja potential of Sniper Drone Teams, who we will talk about next time.

Yesterday we saw how good a deal an XV8 is. An XV88 is just as good despite costing a whopping 70 points per model. I mean a TL Railgun is just better than a regular one right and SMS as backup weapons rocks when your defending a position. The rub here is what do you have as the extra system, well maybe later - I like to keep these rants readable in one sitting.

So premise is that Hammerheads just don't do it. Sub munition is cool don't get me wrong but since we have a weight of dice provided by the XV8's that your average Blackbird plasma list doesn't have they're less of an essential function. So what do we round?

Well we could use normal fish. I have no arguments with normal fish. If you want to LOS block they're your option. I suggest carefully manipulating the height of your guys and your tank and giving it a go. I mean on the neg side they make your fish even more of a target priority - as your only way of realistically gaining distant, read not in your deployment zone, objectives I don't think your fish want that attention.

In fact what if your fish don't even want to be on the board. Whether your ninja'ing or just relying on regular reserve rolls fish don't do a lot of damage per point anyway so why have them on the table? I think if your LOS blocking on your XV8's your suffering anyway and heres why.

You ever play whack a mole? You know they pop up you knock them down as fast as you can. Easy when its one or two out of the twelve or so holes. When it's twelve you aren't getting them down. You may even do what my nephew used to and just freeze up trying to decide which to whack or what I used to do and go for everything but hit too lightly and have to go back through. Or be Chuck Norris and just roundhouse the machine.

So I'm talking here about target priority. When you have fewer viable targets your decision making structure is easier. Even the worst player will make the right decision if there is only one realistic option. I mean only pro's play Zangief if SFII right?

My suggestion is to allow your opponents to make mistakes. Provide targets. Make them deceptively difficult to eliminate. Sun Tzu might have said, I mean it's so long ago who knows right, that where your enemy appears strong that is where he least expects attack. In other words he does not expect you to move your entire army in range of his guns. He has based his plan on you not doing that.

So here is what you do. Take Piranha's. Detach the drones. Put your suits behind. Now he has to penetrate multiple layers of defense. Take them and go straight into optimal range. Isolate and segment his line in other words. Don't worry your broadsides and Monats will eat his rhino based mobile reserve before he can manipulate them to his advantage.

I'm going to do a piranha review because they are a bit of an art form due to their high footprint and numerous vulnerabilities to Blackbirding.

So what am I saying here? Well don't round the wagons. It gives your opponent control of the initiative and its what people expect AND it relies on sub par unit selection or employment to function. Instead ride the wagon straight into bat country.

James

XV8's: A Study in Crazy

OK so earlier I said that non 3+ save armies should do crazy. They should bend what the opponent expects and play, in some ways, non-interactively.

If I had a pound for every time someone said "man JSJ is sick" well I'd have at least ten pounds...possibly substantially more. But why is it so good?

As readers will be aware my approach is to look at the detail of things. I want to know why things are good and I get there through examining the game on a low level, machine code stuff.

At the binary level shooting has a few fundamental rules. The one we're interested in is "the closer you are to getting spanked in hand to hand the better your shooting should be". Rapid Fire. Melta. Flamers. Generally weapons that are good at range are on vehicles, vulnerable troops or hideously efficient long fang packs.

So what if you got to cheat on that basic rule? Well XV8's do. You just jump into optimal range and then hop back out of optimal before your opponent gets to react. The price for this should be massive right? Wrong.

You suit is 25 points, naked as the dancing ladies in your dreams - a tassel perhaps thrown in. You get a lot for this. You get your guardsman stat line, which is about 5 points. S5, which we're going to call 2 points because its fairly useless here. T4 which is worth about 3 points. A wound that is at least 5 points. A sort of jump pack, which runs at least 10 points. And an incidental bump to a 3+ save which we don't especially care about. That is 25. Now add on fantastic weapon options and the ability to fire heavy weapons, thats a fair few right?

The other half of the cost is weapon systems. I'm going to say that the best by far is the 12 point Missile Pod. 2 shots S7 AP4, which might as well be AP6 for all we care. What it does is makes mince meat of tanks like Rhino's. The same rhino's the other guy is using for all his tactical play.

Aside here. 90% of 3+ save army tactics are in Rhino use, or Rhino like vehicle use. It's the ubiquitous lynchpin of strategy from 'drive, get out, shoot' to 'drive, get out, assault' through to the more complex 'form conga line for cover save purposes, get out, do stuff'. End aside.

Next up in weapons for me is a Burst Cannon. Mathammer dictates that one of these does more damage than a Plasma, on a marine even. I'll run you through it quick and dirty. 3 x 0.5 = 1.5 x 0.666 = 0.999 x 0.333 = 0.333 vs 2 x 0.5 = 1 x 0.833 = 0.833 x 1.0 = .833. Hang on a sec I seem to have forgotten to factor in two things - points paid and cover save. Cover Save means the plasma goes down to 0.415. Divide our .333 by the 12 points it costs is 0.0278 and our 0.415 by the 20 it costs for 0.0238. That's with the plasma in rapid fire, which you know is more dangerous than hopping in and out of 18" because its closer to having your face chewed off in assault or by return rapid fire.

Sensibly my fave is to pair these weapons and add in the ability to shoot both at the same time. Bending binary rules or what? 50 points per XV8. Don't bother with a leader upgrade, leave your shield drones at home. 150 points gets you 6 S7 AP 4 and 9 S5 AP5 shots.

As an aside I said I would talk about my second fave configuration. TL Flamer and Missile Pod in groups of one. This unit has three roles. First up mash other armies that rely on cover saves. Second tie things up in CC after plinking away with the Pod for a while. Third, and mostly, Deep Strike in through the Positional Relay when I'm fighting guard - who by the way you can't out shoot with Tau.

James

Don't be a Blackbird!

The internet is awash with fantastic Tau resources. I don't want to simply repeat what is already out there so please check out ATT and Adam's site at least.

Tau are very much seen as a lower tier army. They suck in CC. They have odd weapon options, their weapons generally are either too costly or have poor AP. Their transports are over priced by a fair margin, worse even than the Eldar ones.

So why are Tau an army that experienced players get attracted to? I mean you can bet that when someone in a tournament puts down Tau they've been playing a fair while. It's not just robot fan-boy syndrome, though frankly this doesn't hurt - despite being old the models are great in my opinion.

Primarily its because they do funky things.

From deep strike fake outs via 'ninja tau' to JSJ crazyness to Flechette Discharging vehicles and 2+ cover save Kroot Tau do crazy better than Britney. The problem people have here is what I call Blackbird syndrome.

Its nasty. I've seen it in Dark Eldar lists, Nid lists heck the world is riddled with Blackbird Blood Angels lists. See a blackbird likes shiny things, its a meme we all know and love from nursery rhymes. Blackbird lists gravitate toward these elements irrationally.

What do I mean here? Well here is a perfectly irrational choice I see a lot. BA Sgt's with Power Fists. See conventional wisdom says a Fist is good but sadly since your squad has Krak grenades and the potential to get to magic initiative of 5 what does your Fist do for its ten extra points than that nice simple blue sword is? Sure monstrous creatures and doubling out characters. How often does that come up for you?

In lists without a 3+ you have to think all these things through because the advantage you have is in points. Yesterday when I talked about how over priced power armor is what I didn't voice out loud is that these wasted points are a weakness in those armies waiting to be exploited.

Heres another example, this time Tau. D-Pods on Piranha's. I mean its sacrosanct to take a D-Pod right? Sure I agree 5 points for a cover save at 12"+ is possibly the best item of vehicle wargear ever.

My Piranha's are in two board positions. Right after deployment they're vulnerable and greater than 12" away. Fantastic time for your D-Pod. Well I personally think people won't shoot them much but if your worried why not park at least half of your unit behind terrain, or tougher vehicles, like everyone else's army has to.

Later on the game they're up field providing a cover save to things behind and blocking advances your opponent is making towards CC, as well as shooting stuff. At this point your D-Pod would be fairly useless.

So don't be a blackbird! Make sure you have a plan for your units, buy items and models that suit the plan and most importantly make sure you do the funky things that only your army can do. What 3+ armies have going for them is they're generic efficiency - they play very well by the rules. So if your not interdicting that your not playing right.

Later today I'm going to introduce the iconic unit of Tau. The XV8 Crisis suit. I want to talk about my fave two configurations a bit and also there will be photos of my units.

James

It starts with Observation

This blog is here because of observation. Here it is:

Most people who play 40k havn't realized that power armor sucks.

I see you in your seats now leaning back in horror. Hear me out on this because you could very well gain a lot from it, whether your save is 3+ or not.

There are three things that have made power armor sucky. First up is the most simple - ability to spam weapons that penetrate it. Everyone has seen this right? You put down your lovingly crafted Space Wolves of doom but across from you is IG melta spam, I5 Power Weapon BA or heck other marines with even more AP 2/3 weapons. When people say this codex is sick, like Inquisition rumors or IG leafblower, this is what they are talking about.

Second cover saves are a lot better and easier to get than ever. Want a 4+ cover save? Just put something with coherency between you and them. Or make use of the over used area terrain rules, because everyone calls it before they start and no one can be bothered to say that things are anything but a 4+ cover area terrain in my experience. There a proxy for this as well - the prevalence of vehicles, aka portable cover. Put simply there are fewer occasions where your 5+ or 4+ save gets penetrated that a 3+ would save you from.

Finally power armor is over costed. Feels strange to say that because a marine is a fantastic deal because of his weapon access, transport access, and generally fantastic stat line. Think about your guardsman vs sister of battle. Transport access is equally good. Weapon access favors the guardsman. The stat line is comparable, a BS is worth a couple of points for sure though. Your 11 point sister has faith points as well which is probably worth a point. The rest are what power armor costs. In other words a marine in flak armor is going to be around the ten point mark. Take a second to think about what that would do to the game.

So thats my philosophy. In this blog I will be showing you all manner of ways to play non-power armored troops to their full potential so that the saving you get in points is maximized. Tune in tomorrow for an introduction to Tau, the first army I want to spend time on.

James