Mont’ka: We Will Strike the Killing Blow (redux)

After a week in Kauyon education, it's time to give the counterpoint I should have given.

There's no denying that trying to stall out your opponent with walls of sacrificial Kroot can be an effective strategy. They can be used to close off routes to both infantry and vehicles, and by being able to infiltrate, they can be placed in response to your opponent's deployment. With intelligent use of cover, the otherwise-fragile Kroot can be surprisingly resilient. Behind those walls, a mix of (mostly) stationary Broadsides and mobile Crisis Suits can operate with some impunity thanks to the cover the Kroot provide. It's effective. But is it perfect? There are a number of weaknesses:

• Tethered to Cover: To get the most out of a Kroot wall, it needs to be able to hide (at least 50%) in cover. With the average wall being between 13 and 17 Kroot (including a handful of Kroot Hounds), it can be hard to both keep a unit in cover and stretched out in wall form. This can also make it hard to move the wall forward and maintain that cover save. This is especially true with one of the common tactics with Kroot, going to ground. It can maximize the wall's cover save, but it can lock them in place until they fail a cover save. If you're trying to both keep your Crisis Suits behind the wall and to keep them moving forward, this can hamper your attempts to advance them across the board.
• Fire Bad: One common criticism Kauyon players raise about the Mont'ka style is that skimmer walls are weak against increasingly-common melta weapons. This is true; most melta weapons are most useful inside the 12" cover offered by disruption pods. Kroot walls, however, have their own silver bullet - flamers and other template weapons. A well-placed flamer template or two can inflict heavy casualties and flush the Kroot out of their cover.
• Assault Worse: Kroot are better at assault than almost anything else in the Tau codex, but they're still unable to go toe-to-toe with most dedicated assault troops. Again, this is a situation where cover won't aid them, and by assaulting the edge of the Kroot line an assaulter can force the rest of the unit to pile up out of cover, possibly opening a gap in the lines. While this won't allow another assaulting unit to get past them that turn, it gives the assaulting unit control over where the defensive lines are. It also allows them to assault somewhere where they won't suffer from assaulting in difficult terrain. Granted, if the Kroot lose, it leaves the assaulter out in the open on the Tau player's turn, but a smart player will try to consolidate into the very cover the Kroot just lost.
• Around, Over, or Through: Anything that can move over the wall - jump infantry, jetbikes, and skimmers - or can just deep strike behind it counters the strategy. Outflanking scouts and infiltrators can have a similar effect. The counter to that usually involves deploying the Kroot as a loose cloud around the static firebase. It's somewhat effective, but it also makes it harder to use the Kroot as mobile cover, as they have to stay in place to keep the area safe from invasion.
• Fire Lanes Required: Having a static firebase means you'll need to have clear firing lanes available from the start. Your heavy guns won't have the freedom to reposition themselves easily, so a good initial deployment is absolutely key to success. In a situation like a Spearhead deployment, where your opponent can put you into a less-than-stellar table quarter, or Dawn of War, where you're walking your guns onto the board, this can leave you in a bad situation. Advanced Stabilization Systems on your Broadsides can help, but you can't quickly relocate them as needed. If you have fire lanes available, you'll be reliant on your Piranhas to force your enemies to use them over alternate, safer routes.
• Support Dependency: Most Kauyon variants run at least one, if not two, units of Pathfinders in order to maximize their firepower; they may run fewer guns, but those guns are more likely to hit. Pathfinders, unfortunately, need to stay stationary to use their markerlights, which just compounds the firing lane requirement. They also increase the area that needs to be protected behind a wall, possibly stretching the Kroot defense (who also can't benefit from the Markerlights) a bit thin. A canny opponent will realize that the Pathfinders by themselves are no threat and go after the other guns instead.
• An Objective Too Far: Finally, the core vulnerability of the Kauyon style is its very static nature. To maintain a solid castled formation, the Kauyon player's firebases need to remain relatively stationary, or at best move slowly forward. While this can make holding an objective inside one's own deployment zone very easy, it makes it difficult to capture other objectives. Using troops as ablative cover increases this difficulty, as your units that can capture are likely going to either end up breaking or going to ground. They won't be easily crossing the field to capture points. A minimum-sized unit of Fire Warriors in a Devilfish can help somewhat, but it'll be required to go outside the defensive perimeter, where it will lose the benefits the rest of the army is built around.

Interestingly, the Kauyon style can mitigate some of these shortcomings by playing a variant Mont'ka game. Some may trade a Broadside unit out for a single Hammerhead, or may drop the walls and instead outflank with the Kroot, keeping their Crisis Suits on the move and hiding behind LOS-blocking terrain whenever possible. However, it can end up being a poor-man's version of the Mont'ka strategy, depending on how many points are tied into slow-moving/stationary units.

On the other hand, the Mont'ka strategy addresses most of those issues:

• Making Our Own Cover: With the focus on skimmers, Mont'ka armies depend on disruption pods for cover. While this doesn't help at short ranges (which is why melta weapons are so strong against the style), it guarantees a cover save even when a unit is wide open. Those skimmers can also be used as mobile terrain for Crisis Suits trying to Jump-Shoot-Jump across the field.
• Assault Not As Bad: A mechanized army has less to fear from assault for a number of reasons. For one, as long as the vehicles are staying mobile and moving at Cruising Speed or better, enemy assaulters will only be hitting on a 6, which greatly reduces their chance of damaging a vehicle. Also, skimmers can't be locked in combat, or even boxed in by infantry, but can still tank shock other units off of objectives. Finally, even if an assaulter does manage to destroy a vehicle (keep an eye on power fists and thunder hammers), it's not considered a win in assault, meaning the unit doesn't get to consolidate. They're stuck just where they were.
• Making Our Own Fire Lanes: A Mont'ka army can deploy first turn in a spot where the enemy can't draw LOS to it, knowing that it can move to a clear shot next turn. As the enemy moves, the Mont'ka force can easily reposition to maintain clear lines of fire, and (with Crisis Suits) can move during the assault phase to deny the same to the opponent.
• Support-Independent: Mont'ka armies don't often run Pathfinders because of their stationary nature. This frees up points for either more troops for capturing objectives, or more Crisis Suits/Hammerheads/Piranhas for hammering the enemy. In actual effectiveness, it's probably a wash - more shots for Mont'ka v. fewer but more reliable shots for Kauyon - but it also means that the Mont'ka player doesn't have to worry about keeping an otherwise-harmless unit alive and can focus on pressing the attack.
• Capture and Contest: While the Kauyon player can have trouble dealing with far objectives, a Mont'ka player has far less trouble dealing with capturing, or at least contesting, points all over the table. Typically, this involves spending the first few turns trying to clear out the enemy, and then rushing in with troops in transports, usually kept in reserve, at the last moment. Of course, the Mont'ka player will often abandon their own objectives in order to go after the opponent's.

I find the Mont'ka style to be more flexible, especially when oddball deployments come up, such as some of the missions in the Battle Missions book. By being able to quickly shuffle itself about, it can overcome poor deployment options and keep itself alive by constantly moving whenever possible. It is a bit more fragile, as vehicles can be one-shotted, but I consider it a fair trade-off for the resiliency of a more static army. A mechanized list can still castle up, of course, just as a castle style can switch to mobility, but neither will be quite as good at it as an army dedicated to the tactic.

In the end, it comes down to the style you prefer. Do you prefer the flexible, quick-moving style of the Mont'ka? Or the static, tenacious style of the Kauyon? Both are effective, and each can easily take lessons from both - I'm contemplating adding Kroot in my mechanized list as cheap outflanking contesters. Which one works for you? For me, make mine Mont'ka.

And I think that's my last post for a long while on this entire debate. It's been a fun week or so, and very educational. I'd like to thank Old Shatter Hands for getting the ball rolling, Aloh'Nan'El for holding my feet to the fire, and for everyone who's visited and commented during the entire debate!

Mont’ka: Clarification and Addendum

Well, in the last 24 hours I've been given a thorough education in the Kauyon/Kroot Wall strategy, and I want to thank everyone for contributing and pointing out issues with my counterpoint to Old Shatter Hands. I particularly want to thank Aloh'Nan'El from Shoot Tau Thrill; I've been having a series of discussions with him about his counter-counterpoint, and along with everyone else's commentary it's been very enlightening. With the new information I have, I feel it's important to clarify and revise my commentary.

One point that several people have brought up is that I seem to ignore long range, high strength, low AP weaponry, such as lascannons and krak missiles. It's true, I didn't really take those into account. The reason for this is that I don't really come across much of it. Most of the armies I play in my local play group are short range assault armies, and any armor-piercing weaponry tends to be used at melta range or shorter. This is starting to change, however; our Space Wolf player is starting to run Long Fang squads full of missile launchers, and our Eldar player is adding Wraithlords and Vypers with Brightlances and Star Cannons to his list, along with a pair of Fire Prisms. The time is coming when I'll need to start adjusting to the new threats on the field.

Another criticism is that I underestimated the utility of Kroot, especially in regards to Kroot Hounds and how they make up for the Kroot's low initiative problem. This is a fair complaint; I completely overlooked hounds. Mainly, this is because I've never used them, and have only rarely used Kroot for that matter. The couple of times I have used Kroot, they made a decent entrance, but have gotten wiped out shortly thereafter. Using them as a wall, as fragile as they are, never occurred to me, and I'm still dubious about how well they work. Hounds would definitely help, but I think the assault troops I run across - Howling Banshees, Hormagaunts, and Blood Angels with Sanguinary Priests - would tear through Kroot and Hounds alike.

(Also, as a side note, I don't own Hounds because they're ridiculously expensive. Two for $14? Seriously? And I'm supposed to be running 10 to 14 of these? Most of my money has gone towards mechanized elements instead.)

My support of Jump-Shoot-Jump tactics to break line of sight, rather than settling for just hiding them in cover, has also raised a few arguments. One comment I read was that LOS-breaking terrain was uncommon at many, if not most, tournament tables. Is this really the case? On our tables, we're not running hyperdense terrain, or even anything as busy as a Cities of Death table, but there's still no lack of terrain for blocking sight lines. Between two-level hills, bastions, ruins, and other buildings, there's no lack of cover tall enough to hide my Crisis Suits. On the other hand, there's hardly anything in the way of trees, so the Kroot's fieldcraft ability doesn't come into play. Is terrain on tournament tables really so short and sparse that hiding behind Kroot is the only option for avoiding enemy fire?

I'm also curious about whether or not this tactic would be effective below 1750 points. Most lists I'm seeing that utilize Kroot Walls are built for 1750 to 2000 points, common sizes for US tournaments. However, at 1500 points, our most common game size, I'm dubious as to whether I could shed enough points from my army to pay for a couple of units of Kroot without sacrificing killing power. I could drop my Ionhead, which would pay for two units of 10 Kroot, but they'd be prey to all the Kroot weaknesses without Hounds (which I don't own; see above side note). Note that that still doesn't give me any points for Piranhas; they're in my larger lists, but they just don't make the cut at 1500 points. Smaller games also mean smaller armies, which means smaller overall footprints, which means more room for maneuverability. At 2000 points, I could definitely see spending points on blockers and screeners, but I think 1500 points is below the Kauyon sweet spot.

Along these lines, I'm also a bit surprised at how little difference there is between the Mont'ka and Kauyon lists. Looking at Old Shatter Hands' 2000-point Kauyon list, it's very similar to one I've put together. Both lists feature elite slots full of Deathrain and Fireknife suits, fast attack slots packed with melta-packing Piranhas, and a unit of three Broadsides in one of the heavy support slots. The main differences are that I run a squad of Pathfinders and two Hammerheads, rather than a second Broadside unit, a third Piranha, and two Kroot walls. Other comments I've seen talk about how that, in cases where the Kauyon technique won't work (say, against a barrage-heavy army), the Kauyon army can shift into a Mont'ka mechanized form, with the Kroot acting as outflankers. I think it could be safely argued that these Kauyon lists are really just Mont'ka with extra padding. If the points are available, I can see tacking on some Kroot as defensive filler (another reason why I think the sweet spot for the list is above 1500 points), but really, we're playing the same tactics with slightly different tools.

My final argument against the Kauyon strategy is one that has no tactical or strategic footing, but it's one that's build more on fluff, battle philosophy, and personal feelings. Using Kroot as sacrificial stalling units seems antithetical to the Tau battle philosophy established in the fluff, and that the castling deployment somewhat sacrifices the traditional Tau strength of maneuverability. It doesn't feel, to me, like it's the most Tau-y of strategies. However, from the comments I've received, it seems to be a response to powerlists in the tournament scene, and fluff is often sacrificed to combat performance in such an environment. A number of people have stated that they enjoy playing a mechanized army more, but that they have a better chance of winning with the more static style. Some, such as OSH, have gone as far to say that they would continue to play a mechanized style in friendly play, but shift back to the Kroot Walls in tournament play. I don't think there's really a wrong way to play, and it all comes down to the environment you play in and what you're wanting from the game.