1850 Battle Report: Dark Angels vs. Tau

Brother C here with another Battle Report.

This time is my new favorite army, Ravenwing, against the new Tau. This is my first game against the new Tau book and I'm hoping to learn much about how the army works and what they are really bringing to the table as well as hopefully learn what NOT to do against them, heh. 

Game was 1850, The Scouring, Diagonal deployment. 

My list looked something like this:  (a version of my 2k list without the Eldar Allies)

Sammael
Command squad with dakka pole in land raider
9 man Black Knight squad with 2 nade launchers
2x plasma bikers with attack bike with multi-melta
2x flamer bikers with attack bike with multi-melta
dark shroud
dark talon

Very elite army, very fast army, lots of dakka. The dark talon usually zooms in the turn it comes on from reserve and hovers near the raider/dark shroud to pick up the pole and the cover saves

Tau list: (this will be a close estimate from what I remember)

commander and unit with like 8 marker drones
ethereal
6 fire warrior squads
3x 2 man crisis suit teams
2 man broadside squad
squad of armor drones
6 man path finder squad
2x hammerheads

He will roll, deploys in the corner, I deploy as far forward as I can get. No night fight.

I scout up, move the black knights around the side where his suits and broadsides are and away from the fire warrior barrage.  Plan is to shove the raider into those and flank with the attack bikes and the black knights.  I do not steal.

Turn 1: My blackknight squad gets mowed down from missiles salvos from just about everything. He takes down all but one biker and Sammy. Ouch. Picks off a biker here or there with fire warriors but most are out of range. He throws his command marker lights at the raider, and fails to hit with one hammerhead. Go go rolling 2, 1s in a row, and fails to pen with the other.

I retaliate and take down 4 marker drones and put 2 wounds on the commander from sammys plasma cannon (too far out to get a good assault into the suits)  raider moves up and removes a suit squad, bikes remove path finders and 2 fire warrior squads. Some other deaths here and there, everyone passes leadership thanks to ethereal bubble.

turn 2. More of the same.  Finishes off the lone black knight and puts 2 wounds on Sammy. (completely out of los I might add behind a bastion). He takes down some bikers here or there, fails to do anything to the raider again.

Dark Talon comes in for me. Sammy moves up to assault the broad side squad, shoots into it but scatters off. Storm bolter does nothing. He loses too more squads of fire warriors and commander has no more drones and just a single would left.  Sammy charges into the broad sides, everything over watches and kills him.  Lone flamer bike takes down a fire warrior squad and assaults and finishes off the ethereal. 

Turn 3. He pretty much cleans up most of the rest of the bikers. Starts ignoring the raider and is putting the str 10 shots into the attack bikes.

Raider just stays put with the dark talon and dark shroud hovering behind. Lighting up more fire warriors and suits. He is making saves like crazy and I'm running out of bodies.

Turn 4. More of the same, just some shuffling around. He throws some wounds on the attack bikes, but they are holding strong, I pull one back to capture an objective in my deployment zone.

I manage to take down all the remaining fire warriors.

Turn 5: he takes down all the remaining attack bikes (one was threatening his 4 point objective) save the one in my deployment zone. And finally takes down the raider.

Dark talon moves onto an objective in his area. Dark shroud has line breaker. We finally take down the commander and a few misc. suits but DA just has nothing left in the tank.

Game ends on turn 5 with DA holding a 3 and a 2 point objective. Tau holding zero objectives. We both got warlord, and I have line breaker on him. He took first blood. 

Great game, got to try out the raider/talon/shroud combo. Which worked very nice. My opponent (dan) should have probably tried to knock the shroud out early with marker lights but he didn't really know what they did and he had some many more threatening targets. I was very surprised how easily he took down the black knights. I think I will play with their formation. I tried to run them as a larger unit to hopefully absorb some shots, but still get there, and boy did they not do anything but drop. I need to get them in a few more games at that squad size to really know what I want to do with them. I'm rethinking the eldar allies as well. I could have had a full 2 squads of bikes (minus the attack bikes). And taking plasma bikes was a mistake. I should just take melta and flamers as most of the time, they will be just using the bolters, and the black knights really have all the plasma I need.

Thoughts on the new tau:

Simply put, they are absolute brutality. They had to do nothing but sit there and just unload everything they had, over and over and over. Dan could have used his ignore cover marker lights to better effect in my opinion but it simply does not matter, there is so much shooting taking place that I don't even know where to begin. I thought I could roll up and sit back at 24" and just trade shots for shots, but he was winning that fight hands down.  If he did not have the high point objectives in his deployment area, I could have made him come out of hiding and probably been more competitive. Take him down piece meal.  The strategy worked though, bum rush up the middle, park at range and unload with the dakka pole and capture objectives late. Looking forward to facing dan again when he has some of the new toys and knows what is coming. Great game man, finally got to play ya! Looking forward to the next one.

Brother C out