WH40K Tau experiment

So I played a "quick" game of Warhammer yesterday with my brother. Quick is that I threw together an army of less than 1300 points and didn't bother to double-check what options I gave my units (such as forgetting to add extra drones, or multi-tracker hardware, etc). But I played Tau - the army I'm most familiar with against his new Imperials. It was a grand experiment - he played with more Troops than ever before, while I attempted to make a fast-moving hit-and-run style army (a single Hammerhead tank and no Broadside battlesuits to speak of)... believe you me, I was having second thoughts when he started bringing out all those tanks and transports.

As it happens, I was fielding a freshly built Pirhanna model - it's one of the new unit types for this year's expansion. Kinda like a jet-bike, it's meant to be fast and be able to bypass terrain... the catch, I was stupid enough to pass on it when it first came out. Yes, yes, there was that 3-pack for a limited time and I kick myself everytime I remember deciding I didn't want 3 for the price of 2 for some strange reason.
So it was a single unit... and was blown away on its first turn... by a huge Landraider tank. Great. Lucky shot.

We played a recon scenario - the goal: to get as many scoring units into the oppoenent's deployment zone as possible within the 6-turn limit. I held him off from advancing thanks to some agressive deployments covering as many firing lines as possible. But Sentinel walkers tied up both my Hammerhead and Devilfish... leaving them frozen for most of the game (the Pathfinders escaped the burning transport wreckage and as luck would have it, I decided to field the rail-rifles this day... they spent the rest of the game taking pot-shots at the Sentinels.
The Hammerhead in the meantime, having been reduced to a "immobilized unit," took shots at pretty much everything on the field within its ridiculous 72" scale range of fire.

But as turn3 rolled around, things were looking bleak. My Stealth team was laid to waste and Kroot mercs were dying by the boatload... they had tried to rush a forested area where a unit of Stormtroopers had been holed up for most of the game thus far.

However a series of lucky rolls turned the tide of battle. A group of lucky shots from my Hammerhead, the rail-rilfe-carrying Pathfinders, the Devilfish's remaining Seeker missile... both of the Sentinels were down, an Exorcist went up, and a Chimera transport fell to pieces. And the poor troopers who poured out of the disabled transport? Fodder for the Firewarriors who I had advanced earlier hoping to outflank everyone - was it luck or strategy at work? I prefer devine intervention for the way things worked out.

When turn 6 finally came to an end, the official score was 1 to the Imperials (he had a witchhunter retenue dropped off in the scoring zone from earlier in the game - my Firewarriors were in position to score but I think by the book, they were just a few inches shy of being in the scoring area). But the real result of the grand experiment? Well, both sides were thoroughly decimated even tho I'm quite surprised I lasted as long as I did (I was about ready to call the game until that string of lucky hits).

As my brother pointed out, perhaps we really are playing smarter. The Sentinels aren't meant to be tank killers - just annoying, tying up the big guns with a constant barrage of lascannon fire. Kroot teams have to keep moving... no matter what. Stealth teams need to Deep Strike to get the best hiding positions to snipe from... The things you learn.