The worst army list ever?!?!

A Tau player came 3rd at Blog Wars. Think about that sentence. It isn't one you're likely to hear very often. Now don't get me wrong, as a Tau player myself I know what they can do to the unsuspecting. However, thanks to an outdated codex they usually struggle in a tournament setting. I accept Blog Wars wasn't your usual tournament (that was the idea!) but even so I was pleased to see the Tau do well.

It reminded me of a conversation Matt, Darren and I had in Bugman's after the doubles tournament back in February. We were saying that people who play the generic cheesy tournament lists that usually end up on the top tables should be made to play with something different in future tournaments. Obviously I was feeling a little bitter at the time but it ended up being a funny conversation about which codex offered the very worst, legal, army list that you could enter into a tournament. The idea being that no matter how well you played, how good your rolls were or how bad your opponent was, you'd have no chance of winning. After a brief discussion about grot armies etc. we came to the conclusion that only Tau could do it a truly awful list. This is largely down to the fact that technically battlesuits don't even need to have weapons! The only condition is that you have to select something from each FOC slot. Here's what we came up with:

1,748 pts of Tau - Blinding Light
Shas'o Commanders w/ multi-tracker, shield generator & target lock plus bonding knife, drone controller and 2 marker drones each
2 Crisis Bodyguard w/ shield generator, target lock & targeting array plus bonding knife, drone controller, a marker drone each and hard-wired multitracker
Shas'o Commanders w/ multi-tracker, shield generator & target lock plus bonding knife, drone controller and 2 marker drones each
2 Crisis Bodyguard w/ shield generator, target lock & targeting array plus bonding knife, drone controller, a marker drone each and hard-wired multitracker

3-man Crisis team w/ multi-tracker, targeting array, target lock and team leader shas'vre w/ marker drone
3-man Crisis team w/ multi-tracker, targeting array, target lock and team leader shas'vre w/ marker drone
3-man Crisis team w/ multi-tracker, targeting array, target lock and team leader shas'vre w/ marker drone

6 Fire Warriors w/ photon & EMP grenades plus team leader with marker light, bonding knife & marker drones
10 Kroot w/ Krootox rider & shaper

4 Gun drones

1 Sniper drone team

Basically, we didn't want to give them anything that might be decent. If we could've had more suits to eat up the points then we would have! All of the crisis teams would hit with unerring accuracy if it weren't for the fact they don't have any guns! There's tons of upgrades on all the suits that just waste points. The kroot are only there to make it a legal army and we decided that the Krootox Rider and Shaper were just too crap to pass up!

The gun drones make a nice fast attack choice because they'll be easy to deal with. The only difficult choice was heavy support because most of the options here are pretty good. However, the sniper drone teams puts out the minimum amount of fire from all of them so it made it in.

Imagine showing up to a tournament and your opponent unpacking all these beautifully painted battlesuits and then handing you that army list with a big grin on his face! You shrug and wonder if there's some master plan afoot. He places his army, you place yours. Then he advances towards you (strange for Tau) and blinds you with a crapload of markerlight shots! The sniper drone team has a go but will only kill a couple if it's lucky. Everything else is rapid fire so won't be hitting you after moving. On your turn you focus your fire on the fire warriors, kroot and sniper drones and probably have enough to finish them off.

The only difficulty is that the battlesuits will hold on pretty well in combat with their S5 and 4++ saves. Mind you if you just avoid charging I'm sure you'll be able to whittle them down with some firepower!

Can anyone else come up with a worse army than we did? I defy you to try!