How to Win at Warhammer 40K

As you may have noticed, How to Win at Warhammer 40K has been quiet lately. As my first venture into the big world of blogging, I quickly spent all the Warhammer 40K related content that was in my head to the point where I could no longer generalised about the game, it's tactics and the nefarious practice of highly suspicious dice rolling techniques.

So when it comes down to the specific armies of Warhammer 40K, that's when things get hazey -especially in 5th edition. Now I love Warhammer 40K 5th edition due to its sheer complexity. But, then downside of this, is that the only way you can learn how to beat an army and win with your own army is to have faced that kind of force before.

It's not like the old days of 4th edition when you could simply rock up with a power list and blow your opponent off the board with a little paper-rock-scissors. In 5th edition you need to understand what is in your opponents army, what he's most likely to do and what your army can do to counter it.

The game still has elements of paper-rock-scissors and the game of Chess which 4th edition devolved into, but the new deployment rules and Outflank really throws the tried an tested game mechanics into a new spiral.

The only way to overcome this is often to play a new kind of army, get ripped to shreds and come back for more until you crack them. Once you've figured out how to beat them, it's a simple case of trying out your new tactics until a new army emerges to destabilise the balance or your opponent thinks a way around what you're doing.

So the reason that I have stopped writing How to Win at Warhammer 40K is because I'm busy playing games, learning new tricks and writing my new Tau blog called Warhammer Tau, which unsuprisingly focusses on the Tau in Warhammer 40K.

I've been running a Tau army for little over a year now with a mixed bag of success. I've tested out all the Tau units, given some tournament lists a try, thrown them out the window and then remashed the force into the Tau army that suits my playing style and tactical preferences.

I took my Tau army to another tournament last month and learned a heck of a lot from the experience. That's one thing I really love about the game side of the Warhammer 40K, which is learning new tricks against new opponents. You never stop learning and a tournament is one of the places where you can learn a lot in just two days of non stop 40K.

I've never gone to a tournament to win it, but rather, to learn from it as I don't have enough opponents with a wide enough variety of armies where I live. Perhaps when that changes I'll claw my way back to the top? If you're interested in how my Tau did, then feel free to read my 40k battle reports from the weekend.

Due to the challenges of 5th edition (and taking a bit of a kicking in 4th edition) my Tau have emerged stronger than ever, making the most of a difficult situation that revolves around claiming objectives instead of killing things. But any army can adapt, even the Tau.

With a new focus on mobility and firepower rather than sheer volume of shots, the mechanised Tau army works very well due to the survivability of its tanks and the close range retaliation of its Tau battlesuits. The Tau battlesuit teams have been particularly terrifying for my opponents since 4th edition when they were more of an annoyance. Now the Tau battlesuits are deadly opponents, even in close combat against anyone without a power weapon. But when you consider how much the Warhammer 40K game is altered by perception, perhaps its my Tau battlesuit conversions which have made all the difference compared the the skinny battlesuits from straight off the sprues?

All things considered, I was suprised at how well I did in the recent tournament when I had only played a handful of games and spent two weeks frantically painting my Tau army into completion before playing 1 warm up game with it on the Friday evening before it all kicked off in the morning.

The most difficult part of the tournament was when a big crowd of tournament regulars came to watch the final turn of my game against an Eldar player. I got the impression that they were all suprised how well I was doing with my little Tau army, which wasn't particularly cheesy. One guy even contemplated taking his Tau army to the tabletop again, despite the web wide slating the Tau have received regarding their performance in Warhammer 40K 5th edition. Perhaps they just have to be played differently?

I made some small changes to my army following the tournament, having learned that sometimes it's better to not shoot in order to stay safe and wait until the enemy advance into the rapid fire range of your plasma rifles. I am forever learning how to play the Tau in many new in interesting ways. So while How to Win at Warhammer 40K dies, Warhammer Tau shall grow and prosper.

To read all about my Tau army, the games I play, the models I paint and the opponents I crush (or run away from!), subscribe to Warhammer Tau, the Tau blog with everything you ever wanted to know about playing Tau in Warhammer 40K, but were afraid to ask.