Email in: Muffin's tournament report

"I'll put an addendum on this: I shouldn't be entering tournaments yet. I'm an old bastard; 2nd Edition born and raised and I've been on a gaming hiatus of about 3 years. Only in the last 2-3 months have I started playing again and I'm still not entirely used to the edition or my army.

Game 1 was vs Deathwing. Footslogging, entirely. I lol'd heartily and set about the table being a clever chap and systematically taking him to pieces. Or I would have, had not a single unit in the entire 1750pt army passed night fighting, almost every single terminator unit managed to run 6 and the two that didn't managed to make my kroot shields run away by causing the bare minimum or casualties. Turn 2, I was completely fucked. The mission's 'thing' was that scoring units were worth 3 KPs each and by the end of turn 2 I'd lost four of them. Massacred by footslogging deathwing. I killed four in the end. Four terminators. In a 7-turn game. Luckily my opponent was a nice guy. If he'd been smug I'd probably have beaten him to death with a statue of the dice god.

Game 2 was vs chaos demons. The mission was that there were 5 enemy units we designated as kill points and nothing else was worth anything. There were also 5 objectives. Can't really blame the dice on this one, although it was close: I'd taken out all of my designated targets and he'd only taken out 3. I feel awful stupid right now because we wrote down that I lost, but it was actually a draw. I had 5KPs, he had 3KPs and 2 objectives. He said he claimed 3, but one was contested. Bugger. Discovery. Thoughts;

-Assaulting with detached vehicle gun drones is actually not useless. I managed to knock him off an objective on turn 5 by swinging a piranha up to a beaten up unit of horrors, blasting them with the carbines then assaulting the one who remained and taking him out. Piranha guns 12" and (since it's open topped) you get an 18" assault. If you fail, they're just gun drones.
-Tank shock is broken. I'm not one to say that rules are broken often, but I've found that tank shocking devilfish have been significantly game-changing in at least half of the games I've played. You swing in last turn and push enemy troops off the objective. If you're half-clever (I.e. IQ above room temperature), you'll do it so your own troops grab it and theirs can't contest. Sure everyone's packed to the gunwales with anti-tank, but we're talking turn 5-6 here. Any unit sitting on an objective has probably been targeted enough that their special and heavy weapons have gone splat.
-As someone who's just played their first game against demons, I can't help but wonder why they caused such a clamour on their release. The entire army is based on luck. Even the best general in the world is likely to lose from time-to-time with demons because they're just too random to be used effectively. Like I said, I drew my very first game against them ever. Never seen then before, never read tactics against them or even given them a thought. All things considered, I should've lost horribly. I just clumped in a corner to prevent DS chickanery and forced him to drop down miles away and spend 3 turns footslogging his was over to me.

Game 3 was vs mech Eldar. Some lucky night-fighting rolls and I managed to cripple two of his vehicles turn 1 (advanced stabilisation is amazing. I retract my previous derisive comments) Once again, tank shocking fire warriors to the rescue, riding in hard to steal an objective on turn 5. I should get Ride of the Valkyries and blast it whenever I tank shock. If only my hammerhead had managed to survive one more turn it would've been a draw as he was contesting an objective (vehicles could contest in the mission). Alas, a (very lucky) haywire grenade managed to bring him down which meant instead of 1 contested, 1 held by me, 1 by him it was two held by him, 1 by me.

Rightyho, here's the finalised list I used;

XV8 Commander Shas'El
Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker, Bonding Knife

2 XV8 Crisis Battlesuits
Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker

3 XV8 Crisis Battlesuits
Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multitracker, team leader w. bonding knife

6 Fire Warriors

10 Kroot, 7 Kroot Hounds

10 Kroot, 3 Hounds

11 Fire Warriors
Shas'Ui w. bonding knife in/
Devilfish
Smart Missile System, disruption pod, multitracker

8 Pathfinders
Shas'Ui w. bonding knife in/
Devilfish
Smart Missile System, disruption pod, multitracker

Piranha Light Skimmer
Fusion Blaster, disruption pod, targeting array

Hammerhead Gunship
Railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, multitracker

Hammerhead Gunship
Railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, multitracker

2 XV88 Broadside Battlesuits
Advanced Stabilisation Systems, Team leader w. bonding knife, hard-wired target lock, hard-wired drone controller
2 Shield Drones

Edited for PG: Muffin disappeared for Day 2.

As an aside, some of you way have seen Sirath's wonderful Tau army over on ATT. Courtesy link of an awesome Tau army. He was there, and he sat that army down on the table next to mine and damn near made me want to cry.

Muffin
Out"

Thanks for the report Muffin and sorry to hear you missed day 2 (notice HOW got edited out :P lol). Not playing much of 5th edition, especially Tau, isn't a great idea but you sounded like you knew how to do it. Do you have any pics at all or your army at least? can replace the random pic ^^. Play more and let us know how you go & yes tank shocking is a very good rule. I should write up that article on it some day...