Tau Tactica: The Sea Turtle (working post)

So - Warhammer 40k 6e has shaken things up a tad, and I seem to have stumbled upon a new tactic that we've decided to name the Sea Turtle.

There are two variants - one that allows for your fire warriors to advance while remaining well protected, and one that keeps them static.

As soon as I have access to Vassal 40k I'll try and do more detailed work on this.

The Basics

The main thing about the Sea Turtle tactic stems from the simple fact that, as a transport, there's little use for it once its deployed your fire warriors.  On top of that, if you're running a Pathfinder team then you have this giant hunk of plastic that you really don't need except to provide mobile cover.

The mobile cover tactic is where this comes in.

Effectively you can have a unit - most notably our squishy fire warriors - that starts deployed just behind the devilfish.  The fish moves at an angle to allow the fire warriors to advance forward and then fire, then move back into a position to provide them cover.  Alternatively you can simply move the devilfish behind the fire warriors then use your flat-out move to return it to its original position.

The Math

It's actually really simple when you break out your high-school geometry book (or google).

We want to open up 6" of space for our fire warriors to advance.  That means our move needs to be broken up across two moves that each open up 3".  In addition we want to open up as much space as we can for them, meaning that we move our devil fish as far as we can.

Finding the Right Triangle

The key here to figuring out your movement is thinking of it as along a right triangle in each phase.  You have one side that is 3", and the hypotenuse (long side) is the movement your vehicle makes.  That means you can also calculate how much space you're opening up.

It's as Easy as 3-4-5

If you really remember your Pythagorean Theorem (a² + b² = c²) and game with a calculator you can quickly figure out your movements.  However there is a quicker method.

Remember - we're wanting one of the two sides of the triangle to be 3".  If we do our movement at 5" that will put the center point of the devilfish 4" to one side of its starting position, giving the fire warriors a fair amount of space to move.

Repeat the same process and it returns to the same point relative to the fire warriors it begn its movement with.

Behold the handy-dandy diagram.

Now - of course there may be terrain to consider.  You can also actually do your movements in different angles to allow you to adjust course rather than advance in a straight line.  This is just a basic overview of how the system can work to allow you to provide basic cover to your fire warriors while they rapid fire their way up field.

Misconceptions and Weapon Choices for Tau

I keep seeing a lot of... well let's just say bad advice for potential Tauists out there. The largest of them seem to be in the form of weapon choices, and all seem to stem from a few major misconceptions. Let me key them up here:

1. Tau should never be "in assault range" for an opponent. We die quickly
2. 5th Edition is heavily focused on both Troops and Mech. That means Transports
3. You're going to be fighting a lot of MEQs. Marines are just the most popular army out there, deal with it.

So then - if I'm facing a lot of mechanized marines, but need to stay at least... oh let's say 13" (assuming they roll a 1 on their run roll) from my enemies at all times what are my options? Well we need to evaluate them on four different prongs of points of criteria. The more we acheieve, the better the weapon

• Range
• MEQ Killing
• Rhino Killing
• Land Raider Killing

So I'll be revisiting my earlier attempts at evaluating each weapon, plus discussion potential synergies along the way. This will be a fun ride.

All my mathhammer is caculated on a spreadsheet that allows me to take a given combat situation (BS, Weapon stats, # shots, #target models in unit, save of target, and toughness of target) to calculate the number of shots landed, # wounds dealt, and number of unsaved wounds. For vehicles it will calculate the percentage change of glancing and penetrating hits.

The Unforgiven Angels

Yeah I seem to open more blogs up than is neccessary. Today I'm starting a blog for my Ravenwing army for Warhammer 40k, which more often than not I may just model/paint Ravenwing and play as Codex Marines.

About my angels:

I'm going to be playing fairly heavy Ravenwing style: mostly bikers, play it fast and play it hard. If I'm not wiped off the board or I haven't won by turn 3, then I'm doing something wrong. I plan to run a few different vairants on the same army them, as I buy the models:

Fast
This variant will emphasisze speed over everything else. In my mind it's going to be an HQ slot plus 6 slots of three bikers and 3 fast attack slots of attack bikes for SM or for DA just do 6-9 slots of Bikes + 1 attack bike. Six bikers with Plasma, Six with Plasma. Attack bikes with Multi-Melta.

Hard, Fast, Kinda reckless. As I move up in points in this army style I'll likely end up playing DA over SM, so I can bolster each unit up to six bikes, then add on a Landspeeder which for DA would count as a scoring unit. Mech on an objective baby.

Fast & Hard
As above but this time I'm looking at scaling down some of my bikes and adding in a unit of Terminators. The bikes engage quickly and violently, but when the Termiantors come on the teleport to a hot zone around the bikers and wreak havoc.

Heavy Guns
Ahh.. this is where it can get fun. Adding in two land raiders with multi-meltas gives me three major benefits:

1. I give my opponent some big & scary AV 14 to waste time shooting at.
2. I can close off traffic lanes to enemy movement
3. I can give my bikes some nice cover.

The plan in this scenario is to park the tanks in the middle of the battle field near an objective, preferably with the objective behind the tanks! If I'm playing Codex SM two taking one of each of the terminator squads will still allow my teleport backup (as above) and still give me flexibility. As I go into the game, I simply ask if they have anything to screw up deep strike and if they do, the termies deploy in their dedicated transport. If not, then they teleport in with the transports starting on the board Turn 1, along with everything else but the terminators.

Fast, hard, and relentless. Like I said I expect no game to last beyond Turn 3.