Fishing for Pigs

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.

Let it begin… The Return of Hear Me Out:

~Farsight Enclave T’au~

The List

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

The Tactics

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.

Totally not Richard Siegler's ACO list, I promise - Click to expand

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.

Omaha, here we come.

Boon: Omaha, here we come.

The Field Test: The Bug Eater GT

As this has gotten a bit long for a HMO, the game breakdowns will be a little shorter to save us all time.

Game One: David Arimond on Retrieval Mission

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

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.

As Boon pointed out, Mr. David here is a local to me and one of the T.O’s of the marvelous Renegade Open circuit of tournaments. I’ve known him for the better part of a decade now and honestly, playing a familiar face round one is actually pretty nice when one is coming out of the darkness of the pandemic. As you can see from the picture above, the table was set up in such a way that both sides got a strong L blocker position and we were both able to hide our big guns pretty well. Unlike the Missle Suit Bomb, my list is slightly hamstrung by having a tight 18″ range, so David was able to deploy at his max range and threaten the majority of my army. David won the roll off for sides and picked While We Stand We Fight, Engage on All Fronts, and Deploy Scramblers. I took While We Stand, We Fight, Bring It Down, Engage on All Fronts.

The game was a pretty straightforward brawl. David got first turn and took an early aggressive lead with his Horses, eating up all of the objective space on my side, using his HQ horses to hold back objectives. His Armagers doing their best to shoot at devil fish and it was fine. My counterpunch was killing off an entire unit of horses and leaving another unit on 2, their ignoring wounds on a 5+ really coming into style as my breaches dumped tons of shooting into them.  I did expose my Suits and my Riptide at this point to try and get damage in. Davids two was responding and killing a couple of suits and bringing my tide down to 3.
I hid him the rest of the game and he took no damage, never going down.

By the end of it, with some aggressive play with my suit’s bullying objectives, and my Devilfish rushing out to charge anything and everything, I just barely eeked out a win at 78 – 66. I was able to deny Davids’s scramblers and any 3 point chances at quarters. It was a dogged game, trying to get meaningful damage through for either one of us was tough and it came down to me having the bottom turn scoring on 5, snagging a much-needed 15.

Boon- 1
Gunum- 1

Game Two: Ben Neal on Battle Lines

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

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.

His turn 2 was killing my block, killing my riptide, all my Devilfish, and uh.

Well that’s enough, isn’t it?

Ben wins – 79 – 31

Boon – 2
Gunum – 1

Game Three: Jason on Priority Targets

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

Boon: This is a tough one – on the one hand, it’s Priority Targets so it’s going to be a high-scoring affair where every point counts. On the other, it gives Chase an easy secondary. I think both of these lists play very similarly to each other. Since draws are the coward’s way out, I guess I’m forced to pick….  and I choose you Gunum-chu. While I think the marine list is better able to cover the board, hit hard on an alpha-strike, and can lay some hurt into Chase’s damage dealers, ultimately I think it’s going to come down to some key dice rolls and who can better command their army into a tight matchup. I trust Chase in all his wily, insanity, and his knowledge of Marines to carry the day over an opponent who likely has not seen a Tau list in many a moon.

This was another game I was really excited about, (Three in a row!) because it was against a gentleman who I have seen around for years at Bugeater, but never got a chance to play. His brother is an excellent Deldar player and being able to throw down vs Jason was pretty sick. As you can see from the map above, as my first game, we were able to hide the most important parts of our armies behind walls, and at the same time look to threaten the middle. This was a pretty cool table, to be honest, but with Priority Targets, we were both going to be able to just exist in our little safety zones. The thing I was worried about with his list was that biker brick of guys, as well as the Invictor Warsuits being able to threaten everything that matters to me. With that in mind, I deployed with my Devllfish in the areas where I think i would be vulnerable to be charged and put everything else I had back behind Obsecuring terrain. For secondaries, I took WWSWF, (See a pattern yet?) Domination, and Priority Targets. He took Oaths of Moments, Priority Targets, and Engage on All Fronts.

He got the first turn and rushed up the table. Putting his Rhinos on the SE objective, his invictors into my top left devilfish, and dropping his Multi-melta/Grav team in the middle of the table, filling the two gaps around the Goo-silos He killed the Tan Devilfish up top, then charged the red devil fish. His dev team killed the Tan one on the bottom and its contents. This close combat almost killed the Red-fish but it lived to swim upstream to the close objective. And that was it. Could have been a much better turn for sure, but he did demech me a little. Though, my counterpunch was a different story.

I killed every Dev, both invictors, and took the three objectives that I could by advancing up obsec units to touch the middle objective.

And that was pretty much it? I had started Farsight off the table so Jason had held his Jump chappy back to keep his home base safe, but with that being done, there was no more threats really to stop my Crisis bomb. I just pushed up the middle of the table and Fusion gunned his entire planet. Jason held his side of objectives, Got 3 turns of Priority objectives before I was on him, and got a few points in his other secondaries.

Chase Wins – 100 – 66

Boon – 3
Gunum – 2

Game Four: Trent on The Scouring

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

Boon: Had to double-check which Trent this was. Trent of the Northern Steppe or Trent of the Eastern Lands. There were simply too many Trent’s claiming cardinal directions in their surnames at this event – one of which I know to be a very shrewd and slightly drunken opponent, while the other I’m not familiar with. In this case, it was Trent, the latter. 

Let’s pause for a moment and pour one out for Retibrutor squads, eh? Being brutalized by Ben Cherwien’s Black Templars on a few occasions has led to a deep, abiding respect for just how fast these Marines can be as they push, devoutly, across the board – if anything, they lack in the reach out and touch you at range department, but fortunately for Trent, he’s got that covered with a detachment of Murderously Descending Seraphim and aforementioned pre-Sister’s codex Retributors. What Chase DOES have going in his favor here is that there isn’t a strong unit that Trent can walk into and tie-up with the strat that prevents a fallback. Chase just has so few exposed INFANTRY keyworded units that won’t just get immediately murdered by any unit carrying something more than a Fisher-Price knife set in close combat – that’s actually a fairly big advantage as it takes away a major crutch of the Black Templar offensive – the sheer presence in your zone that you can’t shift because they’re locked up with you, more resilient in combat, and able to bust out next turn and wreak havoc. I think if Chase can hold the Black Templar rush at bay he stands a chance in this – but there’s too much short-ranged fire in his army to effectively take both the Sister’s and Black Templar components I think. I give this to Trent of the Eastern Lands.

So this is my worst mission, I just want to get out there and lead with this. Tau on Scouring is -really- hard and when I saw this list I was playing against I knew that I was going to be covered in Obsec bodies, and I just don’t have the MSU to deal with that. I needed first turn on this game to be able to eat up as much of the middle area as possible. This map was very wide open in the center except for two LoS blockers in each of our areas. Trent took Grind Them Down, Deploy Scramblers, and Engage on All Fronts. I took Engage on All Fronts, WWSWF, and…uh…Raise the Banners…?

Okay, okay, Hear Me Out here… I know banners were probably really bad in this matchup. BUT what I figured is that I could run up, slam a flag down with my infantry, get killed off the objective but still get points to cause the flag would still be there. Rinse and repeat for the NW and SW objectives on my side. I knew with meltas staring down my face, that I couldn’t let my riptide be too exposed unless it was to kill Retributors, and those things would be cleansing my objectives of any life with every shot they could. Also, this mission was a hold two, hold three one, and man. I just… I didn’t know how I was gonna do that unless I went first. I had to go first to have a shot.

I’ma just… Well. He went first.

92 Trent – 34 Gunum – I got 5 primary points total. Rough. Great opponent, but I just couldn’t content with his board presence that was covered by Muti-meltas that I couldn’t reach. His Seraphim came down and put my riptide to 2 wounds, so I wasn’t going to expose him ever.

Boon – 4
Gunum – 2

Game Five- vs Daimon Surround and Destroy

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

Boon: This just feels like a lot for Chase to take on – the Custodes bring some durability that is most subject to hot-or-cold dice as to how well Chase can deal with them. 3++ storm shields can swing both ways pretty fiercely, and when they do it’s usually costly. With Chase, a single round of hot dice by his opponent could spell disaster due to the concentrated nature of the types of weapons able to handle the Custodes component. I’m not going to dig in to figure out why Ezekiel is there, but I’m sure there’s a great reason, and I like the flexibility of the Scions and full payload Manticores – it’s a well-balanced list that offers some advantages over Chase’s. That said, I still trust Chase to play the better game and surprise his opponent with a Tau trick or two. Tough call, I think this game probably comes down to just a few dice rolls – Chase has been solid so far, let’s give him the win.

This game was against a great opponent. We were both feeling -mega- fresh after our day one break from the four-round slog that we had just gone through, and I was excited about this matchup. When I saw this pairing, I honestly felt really good going into it. With Mont’ka I wasn’t that afraid of his bikers, and the ever-present threat of Manticores threatening my Riptide was a real thing to keep in mind.  I took WWSWF, Raise the Banners, and Assassinate. This mission felt really good for banners, as I had objectives that were well hidden, and I didn’t think I would be running into many challenges of my home deployment zone. Daimon took Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers, and WWSWF.

The game honestly came down to how Boon predicted. My opponent got the first turn and set up in counter-charge positions in the middle. His Manticores went hard into my Riptide, but he only rolled a total of 9 shots for them, doing 3 total damage to my big guy. My counterpunch was jumping my block up, killing 3 out of 5 bikers, and getting all of my flags down. I pushed all of my Devilfish hard up the sides as they could go, and just existed. This was a game that really showed that even though my rides don’t kill anyone, they definitely still exist and are able to charge into things like Manticores, to prevent them from shooting. My Crisis block existed in the center of the table, tempting fate by trying to go toe-to-toe with the custodes and failing on turn 3. His terminator custodes came pouring out and punched my suits until they were all dead.  Sadly, this was the only thing that went his way this game as I swallowed up the board, the objectives, and just kept jamming flags into everything. The game ended up 94 – 61 in my favor, as the hold mores, Flags, and 15 assassination points just sealed the deal.

Boon- 5
Gunum– 3

Game Six- vs. Eric on Sweep and Clear

~Enemy List~

Hear Me Out, Boon! - Click to expand

Boon: Knights. They just feel like skew: the faction. They’re certainly at a disadvantage in 9th, and definitely, on 6-objective maps – it bodes well for Chase. So too does that Crisis death star armed to the teeth with Fusion. I like Chase’s chances in this one for a lot of reasons, and I’m also tired of trying to guess how these turn out based on lists – so let’s just call it for Chase and get out of here, shall we?

`

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. 

He did not go first. We called it at the bottom of 1.

Chase 100 – Eric 12.

Boon – 6
Gunum – 4

~The Winner~

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.

As far as the HMO list goes, I loved it. Breachers felt -great in all games. The Death Star vibes were amazing as I missed that kind of playstyle a lot, as my Khorne Daemonkin days can attest. The only thing that felt bad was the 10 man squads of breachers. I think I want to run a single ten-man and split the others into 5s. The Pathfinders were okay? I found that FSE has so many in-built rerolls, that the need for marker lights is negated by quite a bit. My whole army wants to be within nine and twelve inches, so the marker lights were just… redundant. That’s how I felt about the Vectored thrusters on the Crisis suits as well, (re-rolling all 1’s in shooting) it just felt redundant. I already had all of that provided by my chapter tactic. Moving forward, I think I’ll be changing the Ion-tide to a burst cannon tide to try that out, and maybe try and fit in some stealth suits? Who knows. It’s a new codex for me so I get to really explore and stretch my Xeno’s legs. Thanks for hanging out with me, this article ended up substantially longer than I had intended, but to be honest, it was nice to get all these thoughts out into the world.

The day of Tau Castles are dead, all hail the Deathstar.

Good Game.

That concludes the return of Hear Me Out with Gunum. We hope you guys didn’t mind reading about Tau, they are much lamer than Dark Angels but are still pretty fun.  As ever, if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, then hit us up in the comments below, on Facebook, or e-mail contact@goonhammer.com