Saturday 27 February 2010

Battle report: Tau vs Death Guard (Reloaded)

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I managed to get a quick 1500 point game in against my friends plague marine army last night. Last time I played against this army with my tau I lost loads of models and the game, while barely making a dent in his forces. This time I made a few modifications to my list. One of my main mistakes in the last game was to try and play like a space marine army. With my previous army for the last few years being Black Templars I was trying to play the Tau  like I played them.
It wasn't pretty.
This time, with a few more games under my belt, I was hoping the result would turn out differently.

My List:
Crisis Shas'El with Missile pod, plasma gun, Multitracker, Hard wired drone controller and 2 shield drones bonding knife.
2 x Crisis Suits with missile pod, plasma gun and multitracker
3 x Crisis Suits with Missile pod, plasma gun and multitracker, leader with bonding knife HWDC and 2 gun drones
Pathfinders x 4, Devilfish with flechettes and disruption pod
Pathfinders x 5, Devilfish with flechettes and disruption pod

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, flechettes, multitracker
Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, disruption pod, flechettes, multitracker

Broadside Vre, Plasma guns, HW targetting array, HW MT, DC and 2 shield drones, bonding knife

7 Firewarriors, Shas'ui with bonding knife
7 Firewarriors, Shas'ui with bonding knife
7 Firewarriors


Plague Marines

5 plague marines, 2x plasma gun, champion with power weapon, rhino transport
10 plague marines, 2x Flamer, Champion with power weapon and combi flamer, Rhino transport
10 plague marines, 2x Meltagun, Champion with power fist, Rhino transport

6 Terminator Champions heavy flamer nurgle icon
1 Terminator lord

3 obliterators

Mission: Capture and Control, His objective is in the building to the left of his rhinos. Mine is opposite with a squad of firewarriors sitting on it
Deployment: Pitched Battle, Plague marines win first turn, I fail to seize the initiative.

Plague Marines 1
The Plague marines deployed as above. The rhinos were laden from left to right as follows: Plasma, flamer, melta. This was a short turn for the plague marine player as his rhinos charged forward 12" and popped smoke.

Tau 1
I started by trying to get a chance glancing hit with the objective holding firewarriors, I manage two but both are turned aside by the smoke. The Pathfinders open up on the rhinos, the first squad try to mark the melta gun one only to miss 5 of 5 marker light shots. The other squad manage to get 4 hits though. The Battlesuits with my commander manage to destroy the rhino killing a single plague marine in the process. The rest of the army try to take out the flamer units rhino but they are either turned aside by the smoke or ignored because of possession (grrrr).
 Plague Marines 2
The obliterators turned up and destroyed one of the devilfish. The firewarriors escaped unscathed though. The other two rhinos moved up and killed one of my firewarriors holding the objective, however one of the plasmagunners killed themselves (two down 23 to go)

Tau 2
The firewarriors on the objective fired on the rhino again with no effect. The pathfinders put a total of 7 markerlights on the obliterators. The firewarriors from the destroyed devilfish, shuffled around to get a shot off at the obliterators.

Although it took most of my army to kill the obliterators they eventually fell over. The Rest of my army managed to immobilize one rhino. It was essential that these were killed as I was planning on sweeping my devilfish diagonally across the field to grab their objective.


Plague Marines 3
The plasma gun squad dismounted from their rhino and shot at the firewarriors on the objective, leaving one alive. The Flamer squad dismounted their immobile rhino and managed to shot one of the nearer pathfinder squads who promptly ran off the table. The meltagun totting plague marines killed 2 of the firewarriors by the destroyed devilfish.

Tau 3
The Tau redirected their fir at the meltagun totting plague marines leaving 2 alive. The sole survivor from the fire warrior squad on the objective forgot to fire his gun this turn. Obviously daunted by the approach of the plague marines out of the setting sun.
The drones from the downed devilfish moved up to the two surviving plague marines to prevent them closing too quickly.





Plague Marines 4


The flamer bearing plague marine squad advanced on the other pathfinder squad in the crater, felling all four of them. The plague marines from the other squad killed the two drones in front of them. The still mobile rhino moved up towards my castle.

Tau 4
The Tau divided their fire between the two plague marine squads, wiping out the last to marines from the meltagun squad and knocking the flamer squad down to 6.

Plague Marines 5
The terminators finally arrived, deep striking within 6" of the flamer bearing plague marines. They opened up with their combi bolters at the crisis suits moving towards the plague marine objective. Their heavy armour protected them from the light shells though. The flamer squad fired on the firewarriors near the wrecked devilfish killing 3 of them. The 2 remaining firewarriors legged it from the field.




Tau 5
The Massed firepower from the tau killed off 3 terminators and most of the plague marines from the flamer squad. The Firewarriors embarked on the devilfish continued their advance on the enemy objective. With nothing able to stop them.



We rolled the dice it came up a 6. So we would have carried on into the sixth turn.
However because my friend had to go and collect his wife we ended the game at this point calling it a draw.

Had the turns continued, the plague marines wouldn't have been able to reach my forces, and would have been subject to massed fire from the tau forces.

From the position that we were in at the end of turn 5. I think I would have continued to dominate the nurgle forces. He couldn't catch up with my forces, and couldn't match my maneuverability or firepower. If it wasn't for his uncanny ability to make 5/6 normal armour saves and 3/4 feel no pain saves. His forces would have been almost exhausted by the end of the game.
I was quite pleased with my performance in this game. I lost a combined total of 14 firewarriors, 9 pathfinders and a devilfish (plus drones) this was 6 kill points of 15. The plague marine player lost 3 of 8. So I am quite pleased with this performance especially when compared to my last game.

Monday 22 February 2010

Winds Of War

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The Winds of War tournament went alright this weekend. With a few minor things that could have been improved on with regards the missions such as clarifications on how reserves worked and any special rules that were in play etc. For example the second mission only allowed one troops choice, then everything else in reserve. What wasn’t mentioned in the briefing was that everything else could come on from the second turn dawn of war style and that only one troops choice quite literally meant only one unit of troops. So that instead of 3 squads of guardsmen with missiles and 3 chimeras my firewarriors would have been facing 1 squad of guard. Aside from this though however I think a good time was had by all of us that went.

Game 1:
The Set-up for the first game was pitched battle set-up with a 12” square in the middle. Each player could set-up their forces to each side of the square without mixing their forces. Night fighting for first turn.

The First game that we played was against a pair of dark eldar players. From my memory they had 3 raiders with two units of warriors and wyches on them and 2 ravagers with so many pinning weapons they even brought a pile of their own pinning markers (which were some rather cool looking space marines with actual pins stuck in them).

They won the first turn and elected to go first. First turn was very brief for both armies, with them zipping across the field to surround our objective almost straight away. My fire warriors managed to roll a 3 for distance they could see. (I think given my average rolls for night fighting my tau are extremely short sighted). Ginges men mounted the Chimera and started heading towards the objective in the middle of the enemies deployment


Despite a strong start the dark eldar started to lose a lot of momentum as more reinforcements showed up. The most effective unit for us turned out to be the crisis suits with missile pods. Which took out 1 ravager and 2 raiders, not to mention numerous wyches. The other crisis suits took out the other ravager as they arrived but were then killed by the wyches.

All in all the game ended in a draw. With the dark eldar players having nothing left to claim our objective and our scoring units being a good two turns short of reaching theirs.

Unit of this match for me had to be the missile pod crisis suits. They were pretty much unstoppable and took a heavy toll on the dark eldar.


Game 2:
This was a very confusing mission set-up with facts left out of the briefing that could have been handy from the start. We played against a combined guard and space marine army. This game went pretty badly for us, with our reserves turning up piecemeal and everything seeming to go right for our opponents. We pretty much got our asses handed to us.

Game ended in a loss for us shockingly enough.


Game 3: Dawn of war. (or rather Yipee nothing for my firewarriors to shoot at in the first turn)

In this game we played a rather annoying sisters and guard team up. Who tried to claim that tanks could climb vertical faces to get to the second level of a four tier building. Also that I couldn’t shoot at him because I had to shoot through 2” of area terrain??? Anyway, this game took the longest by far. With lots of shooting at immolator spam causing no real damage. My battle suits once again proved their worth by taking out two immolators and a heavy weapons team, as well as some guard and sisters of battle.
Of special note has to go to the gun drone in one of the crisis squads, having charged a unit of sisters this gun drone decapitated two of them, flying saucers of doom indeed.


Game 4:
Another imperial guard and space marine pairing, this time wolves and a fast guard player with some very nice rough riders.

Game was kill points and table quarters. Finally a game where I can deploy my entire army and no night fighting or objective grabbing to worry about. They had a total of 8 kill points to our 10

Game started badly with the wolves player managing to seize the initiative. They took full advantage of this. With the rough riders wiping out one of the penal squads and my burst cannon crisis team fleeing the field after the drone and one of the suits was killed. Meaning that we had lost a considerable portion of our firepower and were 2 kill points down, instead of having the chance to thin out their numbers before they got close. This was going to be tough. The return fire was enough to send the rough riders packing and put a single wound on the attack bike. Not enough really. The space wolves second turn saw the destruction of our chimera by the attack bike charge forcing the embarked storm troopers to get out. The storm troopers returned fire on the bikes and thanks to some excellent rolling by ginge only two of their number remained alive. The third turn saw them charge and destroy one of my firewarrior squads. Only to be killed in return by my other squad (who put 9 wounds on them). The crisis suits finally took out one of the chimeras, and spent two turns thinning out the squad that hunkered down in the crater. The unit of the match though had to be the penal legion squad though that took out the grey hunter squad then went on to get the long fangs in an epic fight.

The game ended in an extremely well fought draw. With our opponents agreeing that it was probably the closest fought game throughout the tournament.

All told it was a fantastic day with a lot of extremely close games and some great opponents to play against. I’m quite happy with our overall position of 12 out of 24. Being as our lists were fluff based.

If I had to change my army list I would have done the following: Dropped the crisis suits with twin linked flamers and burst cannons and replaced them with another team with missile pods and black sun filters dropping some of the firewarriors to pay for it. The missile pod armed crisis suits were awesome and worth every taking a heavy toll on most opponents while surviving quite a bit in return. The Suits with the burst cannons on the other hand didn’t perform as well as expected. Their short range proving to be their undoing, with only getting a couple of shoots off during the course of the tournament.

Anyway, hopefully be doing escalation next.

Thanks to BFG for hosting the event I had a great time, also congratulations to my team mate for winning one of the best army awards for his aliens based army.

Friday 12 February 2010

Tau: Barracuda

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Admittedly I am going to be late with my tale of four gamers this month. So i have been working on my barracuda instead as this is going to be more interesting then painting pathfinders.
I am intending to paint the top of it in the same colours as my second hammerhead with the bottom of it painted in sky colours.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Winds of War

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On the 20th of this month, me and a few friends are heading to Bracknell to participate in their Winds of War competition. This is made up of two allied 500 point armies based on gamesworkshops rule-set for combat patrols (no 2+ saves, no more then 2 wound models, no combined armour value greater then 33 Front +side +rear etc)

Because of these limits I expect to see lots of horde and light vehicle armies. So my list will consist of the following:

8 x Firewarriors, Shas'la with bonding Knife ..............95
9 x Firewarriors, Shas'la with bonding knife ...............105
3 x Crisis Suits, Twin-linked missile pod & flamer, Leader with HWDrone controller 1 gun drone and bonding knife............................................161
3 x Crisis Suits, Twin-linked flamer & Burst cannon, Leader with HWDrone controller 1 gun drone and bonding knife............................................137

total 498pts 4 kill points.

Any thoughts?

Monday 8 February 2010

ToFG Month 3: Another Failure

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Unfortunately for this months ToFG requirement I have been unable to meet my requirements again. However despite not meeting my target I am still more then pleased with the progress I am making with my Tau. Never before would I have been able to paint an army up in such a short time span. Going from nothing painted at the start of November to a nearly fully painted 1500 point army in 3 months is nothing short of a miracle when compared to my usual painting ‘speed’.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Tale of Four Gamers: Tournament army list

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For the third month of the tale of four gamers, there was a mini tournament between the competitors; GingeSoundwave & Noveltyboy. Full details of the tournament rules can be found here.

For this list I would be using the models that I have painted over the last three months. So my list for the tournament was as follows:

Shas'el: Plasma Rifle, Missile pod, multitracker, hardwired multi tracker with 2 shield drones, bonding knife 122pts

Crisis Team 1: 2xShas'ui with plasma rifle and  TL missile pod

Crisis Team 2: 2xShas'ui, 1xShas'vre, 2flamers and TL missile pod on the ui, AFP, missile pod, HW drone controller with 2 gun drones, bonding knife and multitracker on the vre.

Firewarriors x 7 shas'ui with bonding knife (x2)
Firewarriors x 7

Pathfinders x 5 railrifle x1  (x2)
Devilfish, disruption pods, flechettes (x2)

Hammerhead, railgun, burst cannons, multitracker, flechettes, disruption pods (x2)
Broadside shas'ver, plasma rifles, HW targetting array, HW multitracker, Drone controller 2 x shield drones bonding knife.

This was the list i took to the tournament. Think i might have to mix it up a little for the apocalypse game.
Any thoughts?