Tournament list – Farsight Enclaves and Space Wolves – 1850pts

I have not been posting much lately, as all my time is taken up with commissions and job searches.  I will be posting pics of 7 more Nurgle bikes in the next few days, all that's left on them is basing.

But anyway, I'm here to discuss the latest incarnation of my Tau and Space Wolves army list made for a tournament next month, The Guardian Cup.

Here is the list:

Primary Detachment: Codex: Farsight Enclaves
HQ: Ethereal

Troop: 3x XV8 Crisis Suits.  6x Burst cannon, 3x Early Warning, 3x Bonding Knife Ritual, 3x Marker Drone
Troop: 3x XV8 Crisis Suits, 6x Plasma Gun, 2x Early Warning, 1x Vectored Retro-Thruster, 3x BKR, 3x Marker Drone
Troop: 3x XV8 Crisis Suits, 6x Missile Pod, 3x Early Warning, 3x BKR

Fast: 6x Pathfinder, Shas'ui, 6x BKR

Heavy: 2x XV88 Broadsides, 2x HYMP, 2x Velocity Tracker, 2x BKR
Heavy: 3x XV88 Broadsides, 2x HYMP, 2x Early Warning, 2x BKR

Allied Detachment: Codex: Space Wolves
HQ: Rune Priest, Runic armor (JoWW, Living Lightning)
HQ: Wolf Lord, Thunderwolf mount, Saga of the Warrior Born, Wolf Tooth Talisman, Storm Shield, Power Fist, Runic Armor

Troop: 10x Grey Hunter, 2x Meltagun

Fast: 2x Thunderwolf Cavalry, 2x Storm Shield

Heavy: 6x Long Fangs, 5x Missile Launcher

I've played 3 games so far with this list, and I have to say I'm pretty darn happy with it.  The only thing is two of those games have had a Land Raider in it, and I really don't have a lot to deal with that in this list, but I don't want to add in Fusion Blasters anywhere either..so I guess I'll have to live with the Thunderwolf Lord and the two meltaguns.

Probably the first thing that sticks out is the Ethereal.  He really is the lynchpin of the Tau, as the bubble of LD10 and whatever element I use are almost required to make the detachment effective.  Zephyr's Grace is probably the most powerful of the 4, basically giving the Tau the equivalent of Battle Focus. Sure they are snapshots but with markerlights..who cares.  Plus being able to move, run, shoot and then jet pack means the suits are fast and still effective!  However this means I'm also much more hesitant to deep strike the crisis suits..after all they are my scoring units.  And if I keep everything together I have a better chance at a decent amount of supporting fire should something get close.

The Thunderwolves are great fun, for sure.  I always send them strait into the thick of things, as they are a great disruption unit. As one of my opponents said, he had to turn his whole army to deal with 3 models..and that really isn't an exaggeration.  If there is a piece of LoS blocking terrain in the middle, even better as they can hide the first turn and then run up right into my opponent's backfield.  The Wolf Lord isn't afraid of anything..swarmlord, wraithknights, blood thirster, etc, etc. Challenge? Sure go for it. The only time he has really failed is when going toe-to-toe with Abbadon.  After rolling a 1 with the demon weapon he still got 2 wounds..with two wounds left.  Roll stormshield saves...a pair of 2's. Great.  Well Abby was then out in the open and sucked 12 BS6 plasma gun shots the next turn..hehe.

For the Rune Priest, I keep thinking about taking Njal instead. The primary purpose of the Priest is of course, the runic weapon.  The 4+ no you don't get Iron Arm is absolutely fantastic against Demons (especially FMC's) and Njal is only better at doing that. Plus the extra storm table thing is just icing on the cake. But at 130 points more it's hard to make room.

Since my army likes to keep things at a distance, I've decided to discourage the deep striking and outflanking that could really ruin my day with a whole crapton of interceptor.  One game, 5 Chaos Terminators deep struck right in my backfield, only to perish before getting a single shot off after two broadsides and 24 burst cannon shots.  Just having the interceptor can alter the way an opponent plays..especially flyers. Sure I don't have skyfire on the interceptor but I can put out enough shots to knock down most flyers..and even more so if I roll Echos of the Grandmaster on the warlord table and take Tank Hunter.

The biggest problem with the list is it is only medium range, with most of my shooting 36", and the most powerful shooting only 18-24".  Zephyr can mitigate that some, and I have the marker drones on the short range suits so they can at least do something if their guns are out of range. Plus having the drones means that grav guns wound those units on 4+ instead of 3+..hey it's something.  I found this especially problematic with the Hammer and Anvil deployment.  In the future I will need to be more aggressive with deployment and consider deep striking suits in that situation.

Right now, deployment is my weakest link in playing the list..making sure my bubble is effective, dealing with reserves and mostly having better anticipation of ranges.

So that just about closes out my thoughts on the list.  I have 1 battle report with the list up, and another ready for editing. Comments welcome as always.