2nd Place - Austin, TX Regional June 2016

Tau Space Marines

This deck saw only minor adjustments from the deck that I won the Austin store championship with (largely because there've been almost no worthwhile Tau cards printed lately). The regional saw 11 players, with a mix of local Austin players, and players from Dallas, San Antonio, and Oklahoma. The composition was:

4 Space Marine (2 Mavros, 1 Cato, 1 Ragnar)
2 Chaos (1 Zarathur, 1 Ku'gath)
1 Tau (Shadowsun)
1 Dark Eldar (Salaine)
1 Tyranid (Subject Omega)
2 Eldar (2 Eldorath) [I think, I know there was one Eldar deck, but I can't remember for sure if there were 2]

After my first round bye, I went undefeated, facing off against Mavros, Zarathur, and Subject Omega. I had some great luck in all of these games, having strong opening featuring my heavy hitters like Caius (my opening play of him against Zarathur was described by my opponent--good-naturedly--as a "dick punch"), Pathfinder, and BAV. The round of the day probably came in my game against Mavros, where I was able to use both of my For the Tau'vas to deal over 35 damage in a single combat round (my side included Shadowsun with Command-Link Drone, Caius with Auxiliary Armor, Pathfinder with Aux Armor, and BAV with Ion Rifle [those last two attachments might've been the other way around]).

I was top seed in the cut to Top 4, which was Shadowsun, Omega, Mavros, and Salaine.

First Top 4 game was against Salaine. This deck was played by my friend, so we were both extremely familiar with each other's deck. I had a poor opening, and about halfway through the game we both agreed that it seemed I was going to lose. But I was about to hold out (a cancelled Klaivex with Communication Relay went a long way), and I was eventually able to kit up the last unit in my hand, a Trailblazer, with Aux Armor (needed the extra health, would've rather had Stealth Cadre) and two Gun Drones to wipe out everything at the win condition planet (my friend had unfortunately missed that it was my winning planet, and made some poor plays because of it, though I'm fairly sure I would've have still won either way).

The final game was against Omega, a rematch of our last game in swiss. I had a lot of capping units in my opening hands, but struggled to draw my needed combat units and Omega's command game quickly outpaced me. I also quite critically misplayed sending my warlord in the first round; my opponent quite cannily outfoxed me on the planets. I went to Tarrus to prevent him winning that planet; had I had to the first planet, where he sent Omega instead, I would've had a Marksman equipped with a Stealth Cadre and For the Tau'va in my hand. I doubt I could've actually bloodied him, but I would have had much more momentum going into the later rounds, and might've been able to stay in the command game. I eventually conceded at the beginning of the fourth round, when my HQ draw netted me none of the units I needed to stay in the game (winning it was highly unlikely).