Tau vs. Tyranids Capture and Control - Introduction

Tau Briefing

Badelaire: The Tau have never faced the Nids before in our gaming circle, so this will be a first.  I intend to bring with me a core of four fire warrior squads, since with their powerful pulse weapons, they'll be delivering lots of wounds and cutting down the little bugs easily, and even the big bugs will fail a save now and then.  I'm putting on of the squads in a Devilfish (rather than pathfinders), for some added mobile firepower and objective-grabbing if need be.

Beyond this, I'm taking two units of crisis suits - one for up close fighting packing flamers and fusion guns, the other for long-range combat using missile pods and plasma rifles.  My commander with take a plasma rifle and the new airburst fragmentation projector, all but tailor-made for taking out light infantry in cover.  My hammerhead with submunition will also be good for hosing lots of light models, and can still put a hole in monstrous creatures if need be.

My only real unusual unit will be my Stealth Suits + Drones "super unit".  I noticed that Stealths can take up to two drones apiece with their support systems, so seeing as one of the problems I've always seen with the stealth teams is that they are small and a little too fragile, I've given them a swarm of 12 gun drones to not only greatly boost their firepower, but also serve as ablative wounds during assaults and under heavy fire.  I'm also going to bring this unit in on reserve, so that I can either deep strike it in, or attempt an outflanking maneuver.

With regards to tactics, I can only hope I can cut down the fast moving light infantry quickly enough that I can earn myself breathing and maneuver space to wear down his mid-sized models and the monstrous creatures.  Everyone complains that Tau are junk in assaults, but I am giving every fire warrior squad photon grenades to lessen the impact of a charge, and if I can whittle down the enemy numbers with enough fire, it's possible (but not likely) that my 4+ armor saves can at least buy myself enough time to maneuver to gun down any enemy unit that destroys one of my own in an assault.

Tyranids Briefing

Darkwing:  I have played Tyranids only a handful of times, while Badelaire has only played Tau a handful of times, so this fight would be a learning experience for both of us.  My first inclination, of course, was to load up my army with close combat monsters such as Winged Hive Tyrants, Hormagaunts, and Genestealers, and swarm all over the Tau and tear them apart.  But I knew that Badelaire would be expecting that, and I could just imagine him gleefully dropping railgun submunitions on units of tightly packed Genestealers, wiping out large portions of my army.  My depleted forces would then crash into his lines, destroy his first line of defense, and get pummeled again by the Tau firepower.  I might be able to pull off a win this way, but since Badelaire would be expecting it, I decided to try something else.

Rather than swarm him with the hordes, I would try for a slower, slightly tougher army with lots of template weapons to take out his neatly organized firing lines.  For my HQ I chose a Hive Tyrant with Venom Cannon, Scything Talons and Psychic Scream, with three Tyrant Guards.  Even with Tau firepower it would take a while to blast through that unit.  For elites I took two units of Warriors, one geared for close combat (Rending Claws, Scything Talons, and Leaping), and one geared for ranged combat (Rending Claws, three with Deathspitters, one with Venom Cannon).  I also took three Lictors, who would undoubtedly give Badelaire some nasty surprises.  For Troops, I got myself two units of 8 Hormagaunts and four units of 8 Termagants.  I wanted to maximize my troops choices so that I could use them to claim objectives and keep them flexible.  For Heavy Support I got a pair of Carnifexes with Barbed Stranglers and Enhanced Senses, and two Biovores with Bio-acid mines that should frighten even Crisis Suits and Tau vehicles. 

I intended to split this force into three assaults groups—the Hive Tyrant with 2 units of Termagants, the close combat Warriors with the 2 units of Hormagaunts, and the ranged Warriors with 2 units of Termagants.  Each group would go after objectives as necessary, or just focus on the Tau forces if we rolled an Annihilation mission type.