A short post to finish this/last years Northern Invasion posts. As always the tournament was good fun and everyone attending seemed to have had a good time. The chat was flowing and the food was as good as ever. 

The Saturday tournament was well run, there were a few little issues but then I don't know of any tournament that doesn't have a few little issues. It feels bad to focus on the negatives when the over all experience was so good but I feel that they need to be acknowledged in order to correct them. So what were these issues? Well, there were three that I feel are in need of attention. 

Firstly, painted armies points. Some people were very strict on awarding the points, while others, including myself, were quite not. This meant that some people got points one match and not the next. Simply having all the armies judged by one of the TO's game 1 and handing out a token or similar means that everyone knows what does and does not score the points and there is not arguments or bad feelings about who gets the points and who doesn't. 

Secondly, missions. There were 8 tables, each one had a different mission set up on them and this means that your overall points score can be very dependent on which missions you ended up with. With some of the missions, it is easier to score primaries, some deployments are better than others.......I can go on and on but I feel that if everyone is playing different games that will affect the overall score. Some one may get three games where scoring primaries is easy, and someone else may get three games that are very hard. As such, I think that all the games in a single round should all be the same, so everyone is playing the same mission and deployment. Yes, secondaries will change between tables and players but at least everyone starts with a level playing field. Now I realise this is harder to sort out, with a lot of shuffling between rounds to reset tables and it's not an ITC tournament or anything but its something that bugs me. 

Finally there was scoring the games. What do I mean by this? Well a lot of games didn't go to 5 rounds, several did but not all of them. So how do you score them? Well there seems to be half a dozen different ways! Say for example a game only goes to turn 3, as all mine did, do you;

A) score turn 3 as a normal turn 3 and take the score as you would for turn 3 in a normal 5 turn game.

B) score turn 3 as if it was turn 5, i.e. score primaries at the end of the 2nd players turn. 

C) finish turn 3 but mathammer out the remaining two turns to give you a full 5 turn score.

In most games it doesn't make much difference which you do, but for a tournament where overall scores combine to give a total score which effects your final position, which method you choose does make a difference. There was no clear indication as to which method to use and so people did different things. I for one believe that the score should be taken as is at the end of turn three, with no modification to the scoring system. This means that those who did play 5 turns are not penalised for playing faster. 

Despite these minor issues the tournament was well run and there was no real issues that required the TO's to step in. 

There was only downside to the whole thing that I can say, and that is that the Sunday was a bit slow. This was not the fault of the organisers but a bit of a miscommunication between parties and the main Sunday activity, a Shadespire tournament, was cancelled fairly last minute, due to unavoidable factors. This was really the only negative point to the weekend that I can see, so not bad I think. The Sunday was not a total loss though, as idle minds create chaos, or in this case, a Knight off.

 The guard did well at the tournament, they mostly performed as intended and I felt that there was not a lot 8 could have done differently on the day. However, there were some units that just didn't pull their weight and some that really did better than expected. 

Many units, mainly the DKoK and the scions did exactly what I expected them to do, with the DKoK moving up to hold objectives and weathering the inevitable storm that followed, and the scions dropped in behind, picking up secondaries and causing problems. The Mortar heavy weapons squad also did their thing, holding the home objective and dropping random annoying shots on things. These units formed the core of the army and worked well, something else that worked well was the Deathwatch.

These units worked well in the test games and I had a good feeling for them going in to the tournament, however, one unit proved really good, the other not quite as good. The combat unit proved to be really effective, doing what was asked of them in all three games. I would have liked for them to be more resilient than they were, but a extra storm shield could solve that a little. The shooting unit were good, but another combat unit would have been more useful I think. I don't have the models to form another combat unit though and I don't think that I will look at getting another as I have a different use for the points, Grey Knights. A full unit of 10 marines plus the Rhino come in at over 250 points, which could easily pay for the 5 man unit of Grey Knight Terminators. 

On the other end of the spectrum was the Leman Russ Vanquisher (LRV) and the Armiger Warglaives. The LRV had trouble hitting anything, especially with the HK missile and even when it did it either failed to would or it was saved. I think in all the games it did only a handful of wound and generally proved pretty useless. With a tank commander or multiple Vanquishers, the effect could have been reduced, but with only one, it was not a great unit. The Warglaives were also pretty underwhelming as well, with the melta failing to hit multiple times and even when wounding failed to really do much damage. The chain swords were equally useless. Having played against a knights army running multiple Helverins, and seeing the damage done by their autocannons, I think that switching the two Warglaives for Helverins would be a better option, as well as saving points! 

A lot of the ideas for what to do with this list are however a bit of a mute point, as the guard codex is due out anything, and hopefully, I should even have my limited edition codex by the time this post goes live! (didn't get the box, just eBay'd the codex and cards). I have some ideas of what I might do, but I really need to study the new codex and units to see what I have and what I'm going to get and then I can see how the new version of this list will look.

So to finish off, here are some (not very good) photos of the army in all its glory.

With the tournament over it's time to look back over the lists and see what worked and what didn't. 

We'll start with the Tau forces. Overall the force worked as intended, and there isn't much that needs to be changed or altered. There were a few options that needed tweaking, partly because the wrong option was taken on the submitted list but also because a few didn't work as well as intended. The rampagers were very hit and miss but taking a full size unit would make a big difference, to room for 3 extra models needs to be found somewhere, possibly by dropping the strike team and devilfish. However, I think that next year my son will be taking Orks, provided he gets it all built and painted.

As for the Necrons, there will be some significant changes. The young man has some tomb blades that were not built at the time of the tournament, and while at the tournament he acquired a Doomsday arc. Combine this with the Silent King he received for Christmas and you have a very different list.

The trouble is, what do you get rid of? First up would be the wraiths and technomancer. While these are good units for holding up the enemy, they lack much punch. Replacing these with the tomb blades keeps a fast unit, faster intact, but also gives greater firepower. Additionally dropping the scarabs and the spider frees up some points. Now scarabs are useful for rear screening but in terms of output and versatility they are now lacking due to 0OC. Using the pints towards the silent king or Doomsday arc would be better I think. Additionally, removing the flayed ones and deathmarks frees up some points. The flayed ones were useful for grabbing some points turn 1 in a few games but in general I think the points could be spending elsewhere, the same applies to the deathmarks, as their shooting output is not great although they were useful deep striking for secondaries. 

There is still quite a while between this tournament and the next and there will be at least 2 if not 3 balance data slates plus we can expect a whole new mission deck around June this year, all of which will have an impact on the lists. 

Here are some parade photos of the necrons

 This post will be quite a quick one, as I don't have any pictures or even score cards for these games. I did speak to the young man about his games so have a little I can say about them all.

The first game was against Tyranids and a player well known for being quite cut throat during games, and this was true during this game. However, he was an absolute gentleman, and was giving lots of advice and encouragement during the games. There were some interesting moments in the game as well, including a saving throw needing 5+'s off 8 dice and making everyone of them including about 6 sixes. Overall it sounded like a good game, even if he was soundly beaten, he had fun, learnt a lot and it was still a good introduction to tournament play. 

He next game was probably not such a great introduction. This was not down to either player but the fact that it was a game between two very new players, both having only played a handful of games between them. This means lots of rules questions and double checking, combined with both sides having infantry heavy armies, resulted in the game only getting to turn 2. Unfortunately this lead to the young man loosing, as his Necrons are slow to start and by the end of turn 2 they are only just getting on to objectives and scoring secondaries. If this game had gone further I think he had a good chance of winning, even another turn could well have turned the score sheet in his favour but we’ll never know for sure. 

Two losses put him up against another player who had lost two from two, me! There is an another post already up on this game, so there is nothing else to add here. 

Overall I think the young man in question had two good games and one average game (only due to lack of experience on both parts). I also think that’s the whole weekend was a positive experience and there was lots of talk about next year, but I’ll cover that in a separate post.  

This time we'll have a look at my son's games and while he had the same win to loss ratio as me (1W-2L) he actually did better than me in then overall standings, placing towards the middle of the table (9th of 16 I believe). However, he didn't have as much fun as he had hoped, mostly due to his opponents, not the actual opponents but rather their chosen army. Before we even left, his hopes for the tournament included not loosing every game and not playing knights. Well, he won one game, the only game that he wasn't playing knights! Yep, out of three games and 16 players he played both (and only two) the imperial knights players and even though he lost both, they were both close games.

Hi first game was against one of the better players and it was the only game that went to 5 turns for all three of us. He played the game well but struggled to hold on, taking the early game and building up a lead before the knights came back in the late game and clinched the win. He opponent was very impressed and also said that this was probably the game he had to work hardest for the win. 

 My hope for a better match up in game three turned out to be true, mostly due to the fact I had lost two from two. As it turned out, I was up against Necrons piloted by my friends son, who we had brought down with us. I won't bother going through the army list, as there is a whole post to it. 

Needless to say I was positive about this game, it wasn't going to be easy but having played it before, I knew what I was up against and how to deal with it.

Deployment did not favour my opponent here, deploying along the short edge. He did push up his flayed ones and this helped straight off with secondaries. Unfortunately despite a good start with secondaries, they were all low scoring cards. I faired better, scoring some higher points cards. 

The wraiths showed themselves to be very fast, getting right in my lines very quickly, and then getting in to a slapfest with the Kreig, with both sides regenerating any lost wounds, keeping things in a state of equilibrium until a knight turned up to help. Not that it helped much!

The deathwatch really did well this game, being as it was the first game against xenos and them finally being able to benefit from their full rerolls!

My opponent played well, scored his cards and had a good plan going but I definitely had the edge and the numbers here. Some mistakes were made.on both sides but nothing game changing at all. 

I didn't learn much in this game that I didn't already know from our last game or from the previous two matches, and I'll do a round up of the list in another post, but what I will say is that I did have three good games and was fairly happy with how things went.

 On to game two, possibly one of the worst draws I could have, Knights. With a limited amount of anti-armour firepower, my plan was to take and hold what I could and weather the storm, which is easier said than done. 

My opponents list consisted of a Knight Castellan, a Knight Errant, a Knight Paladin, a Armiger Helverin and three Armiger Warglaives. So a pretty standard list. 

There were some shenanigans that I wasn't sure about but I was happy to go along with as it was fun. My opponent placed one of his knights in deep strike reserve using a relic\enhancement. Now I have no idea if this is legal or not but I couldn't see a reason for it not to be. 

This mission is a bit of an odd one to me, as it involves placing down objectives in no man's land but I was confident I could get a couple of objectives down and hold them. The biggest issue for me was my opponents sticky objective ability (via another relic). This meant he could sticky a number of objectives and I would not be able to take them all back,.meaning he would be able to easily score maximum on the primary mission.

At the end of the day, if the game had gone to the full length, I think I could have hung in for the win but it would have been very difficult. It is during situations like this were the old rules for reinforcements would have been very welcome, just being able to sacrifice units almost at will to recycle them back in for more points scoring opportunities. 

Again, we only got to turn 3, which was mostly down to my opponent on this occasion. He wasn't playing slow by any means, he was just a very chatty and social fellow who was down to have some fun and laughs, maybe a little too chatty at times. I would rank this game above the first game in terms of enjoyment and probably the most enjoyable game of the three. 

What did I learn for this game? Warglaives are not as good as Helverins. Even with their melta guns the auto cannons are just better all round weapons, and the chain swords are not very good at taking down other knights. I almost killed an Armiger with the Vanquisher but a rerolled save put a stop to that. If I could get more reliable hits with the Vanquisher it would do a lot better. The mission rule also favoured the knights, being able to do an action and shoot, meaning they could drop the objective markers at will for more chances to score points. 

Overall, I don't really think I could have done things much better. He had greater firepower, resilience and manoeuvrability than me. What I did have was greater numbers, which I did try to use. At this point I was hoping for a better match up for game 3.

 After a fairly gentle ferry ride, we arrived at the tournament rested and ready. After the usual admin we moved in to our first matches. Now, I didn’t get many pictures during the event, as I was pretty busy concentration on the games, as you can imagine. 

My opponents list for this game was an armour heavy sisters list, with a squad of battle sisters, a dominion squad and two seraphim squads backed up by the Triumph of Saint Katherine, Morvenn Vahl with Paragon warsuits, two casitgators (one battle cannon and one autocannon) two Exorcists and two Immolators.

All the armour was going to be a challenge for me, as I had some anti-armour but not enough for all the vehicles facing me. The Exorcists were also a worry with their powerful indirect firepower, these were going to cause me a lot of problems. 

While.i managed to make down a few of the vehicles, I was unable to really do enough damage to stop the sisters from pushing forward on all fronts. The exorcist proved themselves to be very damaging, doing significant damage to my vehicles over the course of the battle. My scions did prove themselves again though, proving they were the right choice for the tournament, dropping in behind the enemy and wiping out a squad of sisters holding the home objective. In the following turns they could have been very useful in pulling the enemy back or generally causing problems. 

Anyway, enough moaning, what did I learn from this game? The game confirmed a lot of what I had hoped for. The DKoK did their thing and were resilient, although one squad was wiped out, it took quite a lot to shift them. The Armigers weren't great and I think it was a mistake to bring them, they are just too swingy in terms of hitting and damage. Something with more reliable damage output would have been better. The vanquisher also couldn't hit a barn door. The scions did thier job though, so the was good. Overall a good game, I think I could have played it better, bulking up my anti-armour units in one group and hitting each enemy vehicle in turn rather than spreading out and trying to take as many as I could at once. 

All in all, I was happy with the first game and was looking forward to the rest of the tournament.

The rumour mills are well and truly buzzing, humming a way with unbridled passion or rage depending upon where you sit! Personally I'm sitting in the middle at the moment, there is some good and some bad, and some very very bad (poor old scions) but, I am going to wait to give my thoughts until I have the book in hand, whenever that might be, so that I can give a full run through of everything and all my thoughts on our new codex. In the meantime, there's still plenty to share on Northern Invasion 2024!

The last army to look at is the necrons. This force was very much dictated by available models, although I have been helping to guild the boy who plays them as best I can as to which units to buy in order to form a cohesive and coherent force. The force is also very heavily character oriented, mostly to get maximum use out of the detachment ability and also because the necron seem to work best with characters buffing units, far more so than the Tau or Guard.

The list itself is fairly short but is quite complex to understand how it all goes together!

DETACHMENT: Awakened Dynasty

C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer

Chronomancer

Hexmark Destroyer: Warlord, Enhancement: Enaegic Dermal Bond

Overlord: Resurrection orb, Voidscythe

Plasmancer

Skorpekh Lord

Technomancer: Enhancement: Nether-realm Casket

Necron Warriors: 20x Gauss reaper

Necron Warriors: 20x Gauss flayer

Deathmarks

Flayed Ones

Skorpekh Destroyers: 2x Plasmacyte

Canoptek Scarab Swarms

Canoptek Scarab Swarms

Lokhust Heavy Destroyers: Gauss destructor

Lokhust Heavy Destroyers: Gauss destructor

Canoptek Wraiths

Canoptek Reanimator

Canoptek Spyders

So the basic idea of the list is a slow methodical push up the board. Centre to this are the two warrior blobs move forward, one accompanied by a Lord and plasmancer with the flayers and the chronomancer with the short range reapers. These will advance up the board on to the centre objectives to take and hold them. One of the squads will also be accompanied by the  Canoptek Reanimator to boost the Reanimation protocols and boost their resilience and staying power on the objectives. Ahead of this, mainly to cause some distraction are the flayed ones, infiltrating up on to an objective early or just acting as deep strike denial. The Wraiths, along with the Technomancer, also push up early, mostly as a distraction unit. Their firepower and combat abilities have been somewhat lacking in the test games, however, their resilience has been superb. The hexmark, deathmarks, scarabs and Spyder are pretty free floating, with the hexmark and deathmarks dropping in where needed and the scarabs and Spyder being used for deep strike denial or to be generally annoying. The Lokhust heavy destroyers will stay back and hold the line, while taking pot shots at any armour or heavy infantry that decided to show themselves. While not very powerful, with only a flat 6 damage, their reliability is very good. 

That just leaves the C'Tan and the Skorpekhs. Both of these are hard hitting units that will push up with the warriors, taking out anything that decides to get two close. The C'Tan is an absolute bullet sponge, with a 4+, 4++ and 5+FNP, in addition to halving damage and Reanimation protocols. The amount of firepower needed to take him down really is something. And while your shooting him, the Skorpekhs and trundling up the board to turn you in to swiss cheese. 

Overall, I think this will be a strong list, with Reanimation protocols and stratagems\abilities meaning this army is very resilient although it is very slow, with only a couple of units moving at any speed. This means that it's not really going to come through until the late game, which may be a problem in the tournament.

So after going through the Guard list and games, I’m going to do a quick run through of the other list the boys took, starting with the Tau list. I’ll do this list, then the Necrons and then the game they played. 

Here is the Tau list; 

DETACHMENT: Mont'ka

Commander Farsight: Warlord

Darkstrider

Cadre Fireblade: 2x Shield Drone, Enhancement: Strategic Conqueror

Commander in Coldstar Battlesuit: 2x Shield Drone, Cyclic ion blaster, 2x Fusion blaster, Enhancement: Exemplar of the Mont'ka

Breacher Team: Shas'ui - Guardian Drone, Shield Drone, Support turret

Breacher Team: Shas'ui - Guardian Drone, Shield Drone, Support turret

Strike Team: Shas'ui: Guardian Drone, Shield Drone, Support turret

Pathfinder Team: 3x Rail rifle, Semi-automatic grenade launcher, Shas'ui - 2x Shield Drone, Recon drone, 

Stealth Battlesuits: Shas'vre - Battlesuit support system, Homing beacon, 2x Shield Drone, Fusion blaster

Stealth Battlesuits: Shas'vre - Battlesuit support system, Homing beacon, 2x Shield Drone, Fusion blaster

Stealth Battlesuits: Shas'vre - Battlesuit support system, Homing beacon, 2x Shield Drone, Fusion blaster

Krootox Rampagers

Broadside Battlesuits: 2x Shield Drone, Weapon support system, Heavy rail rifle, Twin plasma rifle

Broadside Battlesuits: 2x Shield Drone, Weapon support system, Heavy rail rifle, Twin plasma rifle

Crisis Sunforge Battlesuits: 3xShield Drone, 3x Gun Drone

Crisis Sunforge Battlesuits: 3xShield Drone, 3x Gun Drone

Ghostkeel Battlesuit: Battlesuit support system,  Cyclic ion raker, Twin T'au flamer

Piranha: Piranha fusion blaster, 2x Seeker missile

Piranha: Piranha fusion blaster, 2x Seeker missile

Devilfish: 2x Seeker missile, 2x Twin pulse carbine

Devilfish: 2x Seeker missile, 2x Twin pulse carbine

Devilfish: 2x Seeker missile, 2x Smart missile system

So quite a suit and vehicle heavy list. The Breachers and Strike team will go in the Devilfish, one with the Fireblade. The commander and Farsighted go with the Battle suits ready to drop in on priority targets. The Stealth suits, the Ghoatkeel and the Pathfinders will deploy up the field, ready to just on the objectives early game. The Piranhas will also push up early game, to put some pressure on the enemy and try and do some damage to key units and vehicles before being blown to kingdom come. That just leaves the Broadsides and Krootox. The broadsides, as you’d imagine, will sit at the back and hammer anything that is silly enough to poke its head out and the rampagers are the counter charge unit, ready to smash anything that tries to get to close. They can also be used to challenge weaker units on the board. 

The general idea is to push up with the stealth suits and ghostkeel, alongside the pathfinders to pressure the centre objectives early game and force the opponents to counter and push up. The Piranhas back this up by using scout moves and their good movement to push up and hit prime targets with 4 missiles and the two fusion, hopefully taking out something big before dying to a stiff breeze.

This first wave is followed up by the second wave of the three infantry squads in the devilfish and the crisis suits. Ideally the first wave will not have been wiped out completely, so the second wave will put more pressure on the enemy. The broadsides will remain back, hold objectives and alongside the rampagers help deter any enemy from deep striking behind the Tau. 

It’s fairly simple and should work well, as long as the enemy don’t play a similar game of their own, scouting up the board or dropping in on mass. If it works to plan, the enemy should find itself penned back in its deployment zone. Now, granted this didn’t happen in my game, mostly because I knew exactly what I needed to do, as I helped come up with the plan in the first place, plus I wanted to try out an aggressive stance for my list against a strong shooting opponent, but I think the theory is sound. Till and the tournament will tell us if I’m right to not.

 So after three practice games I came to a final list, I think that this is a good overall list with enough Anti-infantry and anti-armour to deal with most things that I will come up against. 

So here is the final list;

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+ FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Astra Militarum

+ DETACHMENT: Combined Regiment

+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1995pts

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Death Korps Marshal: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

Death Korps Marshal: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

Militarum Tempestus Command Squad: Regimental Standard,  Weapon, Plasma Gun, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Grenade LauncherT, empestor Prime: Command Rod, Tempestus Dagger, Warlord, Enhancement: Grand Strategist

Primaris Psyker: Force Weapon, Laspistol, Psychic Maelstrom

Primaris Psyker: Force Weapon, Laspistol, Psychic Maelstrom

Regimental Enginseer: Archeotech Pistol, Enginseer Axe, Servo-arm

20x Death Korps of Krieg: Medi-pack, 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Sniper Rifle, 2x Plasma Gun,2x Watchmaster: Chainsword, Plasma Pistol

20x Death Korps of Krieg: Medi-pack, 2x Flamer, 2x Meltagun, 2x Vox-caster, 2x Watchmaster: Chainsword, Plasma Pistol

Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Fist, Plasma Pistol

Tempestus Scions: Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Tempestor: Power Fist, Plasma Pistol

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Leman Russ Vanquisher: Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Armoured Tracks, Hunter-killer Missile, Lascannon, Heavy Stubber, 2x Heavy Flamer

Armiger Warglaive: Reaper chain-cleaver, Thermal spear, Questoris heavy stubber

Armiger Warglaive: Reaper chain-cleaver, Thermal spear, Questoris heavy stubber

Deathwatch Kill Team: 2x Astartes shield, Power weapon, Black Shield blades, 2x Deathwatch thunder hammer, 2x Infernus heavy bolter, Sgt: Xenophase blade

Deathwatch Kill Team: Frag cannon, Infernus heavy bolter, Stalker-pattern boltgun, Sgt: Combi-weapon, Xenophase blade

Imperial Rhino: Armoured tracks, Hunter-killer missile, Storm bolter

Imperial Rhino: Armoured tracks, Hunter-killer missile, Storm bolter

Inquisitor: Blessed wardings, Inquisitorial melee weapon, Combi-weapon

Watch Captain Artemis: Hellfire Extremis, Master-crafted power weapon

So the final list is pretty similar to the first list with the scions forming the final 200 odd points of the list.

The general plan remains fairly unchanged, the guard will move up to secure a couple of centre objectives while the deathwatch strike out to take on any priority targets. The Russ and Armigers will be looking to take on any vehicles or monsters. 

The guard and deathwatch elements are pretty solid I think, they have performed exactly as I wanted through the warm up games, the scions, even as a late edition have also played their part as hoped. The Russ and the Armigers however have not performed quite as well as I had hoped, mostly due to the lack of overall shots. This has partly been due to some terrible rolling, which may cause me problems during the tournament.

Overall though, I think this is a solid list, just worried about the lack of reliable anti-armour. 

 This was my last warm up game for Northern Invasion 2024 and it was against my son's Tau list. By this point all the list had to be in and so if this didn't work then I was a bit screwed. For this version of the list I took the extra Scion squads and command squad, pushing the Scion Tempestor as my warlord to grant the four Scion squads the battleline keyword. This meant that I was going to have a bit sitting off the board at the start of the game, with the scions all in deep strike and the deathwatch sitting in rhinos.

The Tau list was quite a mix bag but with a strong suit presents. There were two breacher squads in devil fish, a strike squad, also in devilfish with a fireblade. Pathfinders with Dark strider, three squads of stealth suits, a ghostkeel, two broadsides, two squads of crisis suits one with a commander and one with farsight. Two piranhas and a squad of rampagers. 

This should be a fairly strong list, with bodies to take objectives early game and some serious punch dropping in late game. I was also aware that I needed to keep them close to nullify the shooting, while not using my own shooting strength. 

The Tau came out strong but so did I. Pushing hard in all quarters, pushing the deathwatch up the wings and the guard straight up the centre. 

I also tried to manoeuvre to deny as much of the board to deep strike as possible, which worked out quite well. The Tau shooting was pretty devastating when it hit but I was able to keep a lot of my units out of sight or range. 

The Deathwatch proved themselves in this game, taking a lot of punishment and really dishing it out too. Granted the unit at the top of the board got annihilate eventually but not before pulling in multiple tau units, including farsight.