Iron Hands First Loss

So today my Iron Hands suffered their first loss against James Allen's tournament Tau list. Some poor rolling didn't help but neither did some of the tactical choices I made.


The first one was Chapter Master out front. I placed him there with the idea being his 2+/3++/6+ would keep the grav squad he was with alive from firewarrior shots so they could deal with the riptide. Poor rolling didn't help either as a load of 1's showed up where they weren't welcome.

The other main one was the Thunderfire. It got to fire twice and between 8 rounds of ammo it killed a single firewarrior. It was, however, incredibly effective in combat and managed to down an (albeit injured) riptide and the Cannon itself was a fantastic shield for the Techy who ended up wandering around burning firewarriors. Apologies to James as well as it's not a heavy flamer just a normal one.

I think the last one was probably dropping the second squad close to the gun line (not that the scatter helped). Nearer the Tau board edge would probably have been better to get linebreaker and to attempt to take out the Pathfinders.

Once again though it was a fun game. I now know that against numbers my list doesn't work so well and that Thunderfire's work as not only shields but in combat too. Oh and putting the good save guy first sounds like a good idea but against a large volume of shots probably not.