Cherokee Postmortem - Sam

I went in aiming for two wins, and I got three, which I am ultimately happy about. I think my biggest takeaway is that I am a much better player than I was a year ago, and that the next big event will be significantly better as well. I’ll get into my overall thoughts on Tau and my matchups, but overall my army felt strong into what I had teched for. 

Game Recap

Round One - Vs Blood Angels

I paired into BA round one- not a matchup I wanted. I end up going first. It’s a tight game, until turn three when I heroically intervene with a squad of Rampagers. They do a single mortal wound on their charge and get hewn down by Sanguinary Guard. It’s a rough debut for them in the tournament, and unfortunately the game snowballs from there. I get knocked off primary, and my secondary objectives don’t show up either. I barely score 43 points, and game one is a firm loss.

This is going to go about as well as you think.

Round Two - Vs Votaan

This is my first game versus the dwarves, and he gets off to a very good start by popping ghostkeels. My shooting does ok, but his sagitaurs overperform. He is able to crush into my side objective and knock me off my expansion, getting ahead on primary in the last two rounds. The rampagers underperform again on a charge and then get picked up. I score 62, and go into game 3 pretty demoralized. I felt pretty confident in my matchup, but I underestimated the mobility of the sagitaurs and their potential damage output, especially combined with the hekaton fortress. 

Round 3 - Vs World Eaters

I am really shaken going into this matchup. Angron is on the board, and it’s Purge the Foe which means my extremely squishy units just become primary points once the melee begins. I decide to play really cagey, setting up good sightlines and countercharges with the rampagers and just wait for the big red idiot to come in.

My opponent, terrified of my guns, lets me take control of the board. We are very neck and neck the entire game, but mostly just poking at each other until turn four when he sends in Angron to kill a ghostkeel on the middle objective. I kill Angron with a skyray and finish him off with Farsight, and nearly lose myself the game by letting a single eightbound finish off my lonespear in melee after I charge for some reason. I squeak out the win, 84-83.

Round 4 - Vs Chaos Knights

I feel ok going into this match after a win, and especially after practicing into them. It’s a weird match up, with both of us spiking and failing rolls to an improbable degree. She’s running mostly dogs, with a single rampager and some slaaneshi demons for secondaries. This is one of the first times my detachment rule has felt really impactful- she has a terrifying amount of indirect fire that she can’t get into my kroot and vespids, putting it all into a stealth suit who just refuses to die. We both struggle to score primary, killing each other’s units standing on points. The turning point comes on turns 2 and 3, when her rampager fails a big charge. Farsight spikes and overwatch and manages to bracket a karnivore before finishing it in melee without taking any losses. He then, with a sky ray, nearly kills the rampager, setting it up for a big charge with my krootox. 

I make the decision to take potshots with their pistols to make sure I kill it on the charge, and they decide they’d rather not get close. They manage to get 4 wounds and she fails two saves and the rampagers die, leaving them stranded in the midboard. It’s a nice reminder that sometimes doing the funny thing is not strategically viable. They get killed in the center, and she manages to pull out the win. It’s a really funny game, but one that I definitely lost. 

Round 5 - Vs Dark Angels

I want to quit the second I see this list. My opponent had been at the table next to me last game, and I had seen his horde of bikes and thought “I would hate to play this”. So, here we are.

This is my least favorite match of the whole event. My opponent is fine, but he has my number from the get-go. Bikes get in and just tear through me. He spikes an overwatch roll and dumpsters my vespid going for area denial, and my dice basically refuse to cooperate on anything. The rampagers finally get to show off in combat, and I do manage to pull off a cool move where I use my vespid to snipe a lieutenant attempting to sabotage. It’s a miracle I score over 50, but I feel battered after this match. His bikes just refused to die, and my skyrays and Farsight’s Sunforge Squad feel useless against this. 

Round 6 - Vs Chaos Demons

Though I’m trying to keep it together, I am fully tilted. I lost my game 4, and was completely outmatched on round 5. I see my opponents list and it’s just the biggest, baddest demons. I decide to have fun and take a gamble, so I take fixed secondaries and go for assassinate and bring it down. 

This pays off in a big way. Everyone spikes rolls, and the rampagers atone by demolishing two greater demons. Everyone chips in, and I end up maxing primary and nearly secondaries. It is a really great way to end day two, and it’s nice to see my list pop off in such a big way.

Round 7 - Vs Custodes 

I always end up playing Custodes, I don’t know why I’m surprised. We’re playing on scored earth, which is a mission I feel really comfortable on, and despite a rough turn one and a mediocre turn two, My opponent is too cagey and lets me get too far ahead on primary before attempting to contest. The rampagers show up for a final time to ruin a squad of Wardens before finishing a tank by dealing 11 mortal wounds on the charge (they needed one, but they really wanted it.)  I max primary and cruise to a win in the last turn. I feel a little bad for getting my opponent with my pathfinder drone making them harder to charge before remembering mentioning it at the beginning of the game. It was really nice to see my list performing so well into terminator bodies, and especially to get a win against Custodes for the first time.

Round 8 - Vs Blood Angels

I think about dropping to end on a win. I regret not doing it. The game is over turn 2. I get boxed in and the death company just devour my units. I basically do nothing for an hour except watch my dice roll twos and my units get swallowed by the tide. The less I think about it the better.

List Analysis

Commander Farsight was a good call to bring in. The free strat was really impactful, especially to reposition his unit to get better shots. The Sunforge Crisis Suits were a great bit of extra anti-tank that really punched up. They also managed to do work into smaller elite squads like Venetari. 

The Krootox Rampagers were wildly spikey, either taking over the game or doing basically nothing. They were incredibly fun, and the threat of the counter-charge really scared a lot of my opponents. I don’t know if they work in any list except Aux cadre, where the reroll and -1 ap strategems allow them to really overperform in melee. On the one hand, it was a little annoying to need 2 cp to allow them to go that hard, but I also wasn’t really spending it elsewhere. 

The Pathfinder Squad was really beneficial in the Markerlight Economy, but also let me do actions in the backfield and kept the home objective safe. I appreciated having an extra two markerlights to play with, but inevitably whenever I spotted with them I felt like I wish I had used a stealth suit.

Stealth Suits, for that matter, were real stars. Specifically, one stealth suit squad that absorbed two rounds of chaos knight indirect fire while keeping vespids in lone-op, and shooting from a predator and 2 rounds of melee with mephiston. Rerolling ones was huge. I don’t understand how I ever ran lists without three of them.

Sky Rays absolutely killed, unless they didn’t. They deleted big demons and knights, but had some really disappointing turns where they did managed to do 2 wounds. 

The three Ghostkeels were great objective holders, and presented a really interesting puzzle to some of my opponents. They are great into elite units, and also forced opponents to get closer for krootox or other heavy hitters. Ghostkeel Zone Defense is a really good strategy, and i think one I am going to roll with for a white

Vespid are good. No notes.

The Lone Spear was not super impactful, the reroll to hit was nice, but it kind of felt like a wast of points most of the time. I love him as a model, but I don’t think I’d run him without the krootox.

Final thoughts

I think there is something a little telling about there only being 7 other Tau players, with the best  showing at 50. Auxiliary cadre is a weird detachment, and my list really performed into the things that I had tooled against. Monsters, Demon Primarchs, and knights had a bad time, and practicing into terminators so much really helped against the Custodes, but fast attack marines just ate my lunch.

It’s hard to say if Tau feel weak- I’m not good enough to make that argument one way or the other, and my list was wildly off-meta to a comical degree. Current Terrain layouts favor melee, and the speed available to most armies means that you can have guys in your face on turn 1 or two. There are also so many crazy synergies, with marines especially, that stuff like death company just feels savage. I don’t want to say it feels unfair, but I really feel that Tau lack something in their sheet that are just good into everything.

I don’t know if there is a problem, though current win rates seem to indicate one. I also don’t know how you fix Tau in a way that isn’t just making things cheaper. I felt like I was nearly out of space in my deployment zone sometimes, and 25 units that don’t do anything aren’t better than 22 units that don’t do anything. 

I’m not good enough to make the calls, but having played mostly into elite profiles and vehicles before, I need to start incorporating stuff to kill hordes as well. Death Company really ate my lunch, and It would be nice to have something to really hammer into that - burst cannon riptides, flamer suits, and missile suits are a good call- something to practice with.

I am also probably going to pop off aux cadre- it is incredibly fun, but ultimately i think it requires too many extra units to operate at max effeciency. Rampagers are incredibly fun, but i don’t know how they feel without spending two cp to give them rerolls to wound and -1 ap. I’m going to need to do some testing before mayhem.

I just need a little more flexibility, but I also just need to get better at positioning. And maybe some new dice. Definitely some new dice.