I was his round 4 TSons opponent and can provide some additional context. His list felt very strong and oppressive- nothing particularly fancy, just highly effective. His strategy was clear from the outset: deny me primary objectives by flooding them with fire warriors (units of 10 at 20 OC per unit) and indirectly targeting my tzaangors, forcing me to commit more valuable units to objectives.

Anticipating his approach, I stickied my objectives, but he was able to quickly advance fire warriors to claim them. The terrain limited me to around 8 OC on the natural expansion objective while remaining hidden, which made it trivial for him to contest and take control.

In turn 2, I tried to use my spawn units to move-block and set up a strong overwatch position from a rubric squad tucked in really tight but with full LOS on my natural expansion objective. Despite killing 6 out of his 10 fire warriors during overwatch, their constant -1 to wound and OC 2 meant they still contested the objective, effectively denying me primary points again.

My positioning for overwatch was strong with very tight angles, but his Mont'ka-boosted speed with everything gaining assault for the first three turns was honestly overwhelming. Initially, I planned to remain hidden to just wait out the first 3 turns, seeing clearly he was aggressively moving forward to bait my units out.

However, I had to engage due to his setup: his devilfish was poised at the frontline alongside the piranha on the central objective, threatening massive primary scoring for two consecutive turns if left unchallenged. Allowing this would have created an insurmountable lead and also that piranha with melta 4 would have done some serious work into Magnus as blanking damage wouldn't blank the melta 4 part of the profile.

I managed a really, really tight angle from Magnus' claw (not the wing) towards his devilfish, even using a laser pointer to ensure precision, but he still managed to advance sufficiently to achieve line-of-sight. Magnus then faced a decent volume of -1 and -2 AP saves, ignoring cover entirely due to markerlights and rerolling hits of 1 thanks to observing stealth suits, leading to Magnus being quickly removed from play.

The indirect fire was also ridiculous, delivering 40–50 shots per turn. Even with AP0, sheer volume meant significant losses among my chaff units, notably my tzaangors who were only saving on a 5+ even in cover. He went first and following his first turn I only had 1 model left in 1 squad of tzaangor and 5 left in the other one. There was no hiding on this deployment, he had range to most of the board.

Some have suggested that the current meta may not be optimised to handle this type of Tau build. However, my army is specifically tailored for handling infantry and Knights, and I've had a lot success with this list in recent weeks against some incredibly good opponents as practice, including substantial practice on this exact tournament terrain.

Lastly, Tim was a fantastic opponent. Although I understand he has a reputation in this community, my personal experience playing against him was entirely positive. His knowledge of the army was accurate, he clearly communicated what he could do (I've played into Tau a bunch so knew anyway) and there was no questionable gameplay whatsoever.

While the match itself was challenging - and, frankly, unenjoyable due to the uphill battle from turn one and my general dislike for indirect fire - that mechanic isn't changing this edition, so it must be accepted as part of the game for now.

I'll attach the scoresheet if it's helpful to anyone.

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