Finally Got This Written Up!

The last tournament I attended was a mandatory-Allies event, which hardly presents a problem at the specified 2000 point level. Who isn't bringing at least some sort of Allied unit along at that level? Certainly my Tau no longer venture out to seize Imperial planets or cleanse Ork and Tyranid infestations without the support of their experimental battlesuits, which just so happen to have the same statlines, points costs and weapons options as Blood Angels. Funny thing, that. And added to them this round were some Fire Warriors toting a bit of experimental gear around, Fire Warriors who just so happened to synch up perfectly well with a squad of Space Marine Scouts with a missile launcher and sniper rifles. Because unlike the shas'ar'tol, my Tau understand the worth of integrated weapon loadouts in their infantry squads.

Anyway, enough of my fluffy justifications. I took the following list:

Shas'El w/AFP, Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

3 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker, Team Leader, Twin-Linked Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Multi-Tracker, Team Leader, Twin-Linked Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pods, 3 x Flamer

9 x Fire Warriors

9 x Fire Warriors

9 x Fire Warriors

5 x Pathfinders w/Devilfish, Disruption Pod

2 x XV88 Battlesuit w/2 x Advanced Stabilization System, Team Leader, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter, Hard-Wired Target Lock

2 x XV88 Battlesuit w/2 x Advanced Stabilization System, Team Leader, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter, Hard-Wired Target Lock

Hammerhead Gunship w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter, Disruption Pod

Blood Angels Captain w/Jump Pack, Power Sword, Plasma Pistol

6 x Assault Marines w/2 x Plasma Pistol

5 x Scouts w/Missile Launcher, 4 x Sniper Rifles, Camo Cloaks

Aegis Defence Line

It's not actually what I'd originally intended, but unfortunately I managed to forget my scratch-built Tau quad gun on the shelf at home, and had to scramble to fill in those fifty points with other little odds and ends I had on hand. And I was pleased enough with the results, though I admit I was more than a little nervous about flyers without that quad gun along. Yes, four twin-linked S7 shots aren't that impressive, but when it's the only Skyfire you're going to get in a 2000 point game, its absence leads to a certain trepidation. Still, I could hardly pop home and pick it up, what with my ride having already left and the store being a good half-hour bus ride distant from the house, one-way. So there was nothing for it, then, but to bite the bullet and get down to it.

Round 1: Andrew Swanson (Necrons/Dark Angels)

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Mission: The Relic

Secondaries: Slay the Warlord (got), First Blood, Divide and Conquer

Warlord Trait: Legendary Fighter

Destroyer Lord

3 x Wraiths w/Particle Whips

20 x Warriors

5 x Immortals w/Night Scythe

6 x Immortals w/Night Scythe

2 x Annihilation Barge

Belial

5 x Terminators w/3 x TH/SS, Assault Cannon

5 x Terminators w/Lightning Claws, 2 x TH/SS, Apothecary, Banner

Land Raider Crusader

Oh, Land Raiders. My ancient enemy. The store-made secondary in this game, Divide and Conquer, was good for a VP if you could destroy either the entire primary or Allied detachments. And the presence of that Land Raider, even more than Belial and the Terminators it was full of, made me more than a little certain I wasn't going to be pulling that particularly objective off.

Andrew won the roll-off, and opted to take the side of the table with a single large ruin, rather than the one with several smaller pieces. This wasn't a bad strategy for him, as it allowed him to deploy his Annihilation Barges out of LOS, protecting them from my railguns in the event that I managed to seize. He also stuck his Destroyer Lord, with Wraiths, in the ruin for cover, with his huge Warrior squad pushing up towards the edge of his deployment zone in the centre and the Land Raider, with Belial and the special Terminator squad, on the right. The Night Scythes and their units remained in reserve, of course, as did the Assault Cannon-wielding Terminators. Satisfied, he passed it over to me, and I established my beachhead. The scouts dug in to a forest a few inches in front of my Aegis line, which stretched through the middle of the board. It's a pity; Hammer and Anvil is a great 'sit at the back and shoot' mission for Tau, but to really pull this out I'd have to deploy aggressively to keep my scoring units close to the Relic. With my captain and assault squad in reserve, I spread everything else out across the board, with one of my XV88 squads hiding on top of a bastion being used as terrain. For once I managed to seize, which would turn out to do me exactly zero good.

There was really only one thing to shoot at turn one; the Land Raider. My scout's missile launcher, all four XV88s and my Hammerhead opened up on that thing, and not one of them managed to so much as glance it. I loaded one of my squads into the Devilfish and had it scoot forwards, just about on the Relic already, but dangerously close to the Warrior blob. Despite the best efforts of my non-AV14-affecting weapons, I only managed to keep a handful of Warriors down, nowhere near enough to really impede their efficiency. In his turn Andrew sent the Land Raider cruising forwards, close enough that Belial and company could pile out the front and, with some good luck on their charge range, make it clear into contact with my scouts. Unsurprisingly, my scouts proved unequal to the task of taking on a superior number of better-armed and -armoured models led by a special character, and were promptly killed to the last man. That gave Andrew First Blood, and put those Terminators worryingly close to my lines.

Turn 2, my captain and assault squad arrived promptly from reserves. While the Fire Warriors reluctantly disembarked from the Devilfish, which had shifted forwards to let them grab the Relic by coming out the back, the rest of my army lined up their shots. Again, all available weaponry railed to so much as scratch the Land Raider, and this time I couldn't even content myself by shooting at the Warriors, as most were blocked from view by my Devilfish's rather ample backside. I turned my firepower on Belial instead, but while he did fail a Look Out, Sir! and the subsequent armour save, nothing else got through. My Tau shooting was downright fantastic, however, compared to my Marines; the sergeant and captain both managed to have their plasma pistols overheat, killing the former and wounding the latter, and leaving the one functioning weapon to accomplish precisely nothing against the rear armour of an Annihilation Barge. I hadn't realized how much I took safe Tau plasma weapons for granted until I tried to use someone else's! In response, Andrew gaussed my Devilfish to death with his Warriors, killed half the Marines with the Annihilation Barges, and deep struck his second Terminator squad in behind my lines, the assault cannon ripping clean through both XV88s. Belial and his squad got hung up on terrain in the forest, leaving them well out of position to actually accomplish anything, but they were still pushing forwards to catch me in a pincer.

The rest of the game unfolded as my poor luck and terrible tactics ensured it would. Amazingly, I actually did manage to destroy the Land Raider, thanks to the XV88s in the bastion, while the rest of my army dealt with the assault cannon-bearing Terminators with relatively few losses. Belial went down in a hilariously unlucky manner; he failed exactly enough Look Out, Sir! rolls, and their subsequent armour saves, to die from the fire. Amazingly, Belial's tactical dreadnought armour provided exactly no protection. And my remaining Marines even managed to assault one of the Annihilation Barges to death (thank you, lucky Red Thirst rolls!) before sole survivor had to withdraw to protect himself. I'd rather not give up the Divide and Conquer secondary, thank you!

Unfortunately, while I was pretty handily winning the shooting war across the board, Andrew had picked his targets better. His Overlord remained out of sight pretty much the entire game, denying me the Slay the Warlord point for myself, and between his possession of that and First Blood he finally beat me out. I just couldn't get another scoring squad up to the Relic in time, though admittedly I didn't prioritize advancing after the first team to put their hands on that thing were brutally disintegrated by Warrior-toted gauss rifles. I fell an inch short of an attempt to move through difficult terrain to claim it last turn, which was annoying, but I shouldn't have let it come down to a single dice roll anyway. And my target priority was off last turn, too; I focused on killing the Warriors, who were unlikely to make it to the Relic, rather than dealing with the handful of surviving Terminators. If I'd poured everything into them, Andrew's luck that game dictated they'd likely have died, giving me the Divide and Conquer point and a draw. Oh well; this is how one learns, I suppose.

Result: 2-1 loss on secondaries, no primary points

Round 2: Tim Little (Necrons/Blood Angels

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: The Scouring

Secondaries: First Blood, Linebreaker, Battlefield Superiority

Warlord Trait: Immovable Object

Overlord w/Resurrection Orb, Staff of Light

Royal Court w/2 x Harbinger of Destruction, Eldritch Staff, Harbinger of Storm, Voltaic Staff, Lightning Field

10 x Warriors

10 x Warriors

10 x Warriors

10 x Warriors

6 x Scarabs

Monolith

Reclusiarch

8 x Death Company w/Drop Pod

Death Company Dreadnought w/Drop Pod, Blood Talons, Melta, Heavy Flamer

Furioso Dreadnought w/Drop Pod, Blood Fists, Melta, Heavy Flamer

This one was going to be nasty, I knew that much just from looking at Tim's list. Two Dreads with melta and a Reclusiarch and unit of Death Company, all in Drop Pods? I was actually less worried about the Necrons; yes, there was a Monolith, but no aircraft, no Annihiliation Barges and no Doomsday Arks, not even any of those so-troublesome Wraiths to deal with. Gun to gun, I felt pretty confident in my chances going up against a Necron shooting list. But those Blood Angels...

I won the roll-off for sides, and opted for the one with the greater amount of stuffed cluttered around it. The less room there was for those drop pods, the better. Unfortunately, there was a high-sided bridge running diagonally through the centre of the table which badly hampered my starting sightlines, and sort of made my Aegis redundant. I placed it as best I could, along with my army; the scouts hugging the edge of the bridge on the left, with one of the XV88 units beside them, then the Fire Warriors spread out through the middle to try and block deployment options, the Hammerhead and the Devilfish trying to cover each other's backsides, and the other XV88 unit on the right flank. My commander and the Deathrains hung around the middle-rear, while the Marine-suits once again went into reserve, this time along side my two Fireknife teams. I was trying to maximise early striking power and minimize early vulnerabilities, a difficult task. In response, Tim spread his Warrior squads out across the board, with his Monolith on the right and his Overlord in one of the units towards the back, and the Scarabs hanging out as far forward as they could get. Someone wanted a turn one charge opportunity. From the start I had good proximity to most of the objectives, though unfortunately it turned out the 4-point one was hanging out towards the back of Tim's deployment zone, meaning I'd have to push in there anyway. Good thing those Marines were in reserve. Now, to survive Tim's long enough for it to matter.

Unfortunately for me, Tim won the roll-off for first turn. Before I'd had a chance to fire, or generate any cover saves for my skimmers beyond their disruption pods, the two Dreadnoughts crashed into my rear area. The Death Company Dread landed with a depressingly good angle on my Hammerhead's rear armour, while the Furioso planted itself on a small ridge near my right flank. Amazingly enough, while the heavy flamers did make something of a mess out of my poor Fire Warriors, those so-scary meltas managed to fail to hit the Hammerhead, and to wound the XV88s. That could definitely have gone worse. The rest of Tim's firing amounted to little, with his movement seeing his Warriors spread out towards the objectives in mid-field and his backfield, and the Monolith rumbling towards my lines. In response, one of my XV88s exploded the Death Company dread, while the others immobilized the Furioso; given that everything had already backed out of melta/flamer range, this meant it was basically a non-issue. The rest of my army peppered the Necrons with long-range fire, but while a few went down, most of them got back up again. Most annoying.

Turn two started off poorly for me, with the Scarabs making an absurdly long charge to get into combat with my left flank XV88s. And because they were coming from around the edge of the bridge, there was even a limit to the amount of Overwatch damage I could have done. You know, assuming I hadn't whiffed every roll. While the Scarabs and the XV88s clashed, I manoeuvred my Hammerhead for a good shot on one of the Warrior squads, angled my commander and the Deathrains to set up some decent Focus Fire lines to really make the most of their AP4 weapons, and generally did my best to get nice lines of fire on everything. Unfortunately, while the commander and his accompanying squad did do some serious damage to the closest Warrior squad, my unengaged XV88s failed to put a round through the Monolith, while the Hammerhead's submunition scattered well off the mark.

Turn three saw the Death Company squad, with attached Reclusiarch, land pretty much smack-dab in the middle of my surviving Fire Warrior lines. Tim could not have gotten luckier with the scatter dice. Knowing the resilience of FNP Marines to standard arms, and having none of my plasma weapons available, I knew that was going to be a problem. The rest of Tim's turn was actually rather low-key, save for the enraging one-shot one of his Crypteks managed on my Hammerhead. I really needed that AP4 large blast weapon! In the combat phase, the XV88s, who had managed not to fail any of their saves last turn, continued to stand strong, managing to inflict a wound on the Scarabs, who of course hung into the fight. This combat would eventually conclude with the death of the Scarabs, after they'd eaten my XV88s' armour off, with the assistance of the Scout squad. By that time, however, it wouldn't matter, as they'd be locked until the last turn.

The rest of the game continued to slide sideways out of my grasp, despite a few promising demi-rallies. One of my reserve suit squads dropped within melta range of the Monolith and took care of it with a single shot, while another squad moved to deal with a particularly tenacious Warrior squad. My captain and assault squad dropped towards the back objective, but after some particularly effective Overwatch and some really lousy rolling by the captain and his power sword, they just could not take out the Warriors guarding it. The Death Company, meanwhile, wiped out pretty much every infantry unit near their initial drop point, with the assistance of their pod's weapons. I just could not deal with those guys without plasma, and all my plasma was busy trying to deal with other, objective-holding problems.

We actually ran out of time, but since I had the bottom turn Tim offered to let me do any quick last-minute contestations. A pair of gun drones flitted over to crowd up one of the objectives, but it didn't make any difference, sadly. I had the 1 and 3 objectives, but Tim had the 2 and 4 objectives sewn up neatly, his superior number of more resilient Troops units serving to tip the balance. It wasn't all one-sided, though, as I did get First Blood and Linebreaker, serving to save me from the pity-points of 'lost' and 'played the game'. You take your victories where you can, sometimes.

Result: 6-4 loss on primaries, 2-1 secondaries in my favour

Round 3: Micheal Plowman (Dark Angels/Blood Angels)

Deployment: Dawn of War

Mission: Purge the Alien

Secondaries: First Blood, Linebreaker, Cut off the Head

Warlord Trait: Legendary Fighter

Ezekiel

10 x Tacticals w/Plasma Gun, Plasma Cannon, Power Sword

10 x Tacticals w/Plasma Gun, Plasma Cannon, Power Sword

10 x Scouts w/Missile Launcher, 9 x Sniper Rifles

Predator w/Autocannon, 2 x Lascannons, Dozer Blade

Aegis w/Quad Gun

Mephiston

8 x Death Company w/Land Raider, Twin-Linked Lascannon sponsons

Chaplain

Stormraven w/4 x Bloodstrike Missiles, Twin-Linked Lascannon, Twin-Linked Multimelta

The amount of plasma and missile launchers, not to mention yet another Land Raider, really had me worried going into this game. Thankfully, Dawn of War ameliorates those worries somewhat; there's not a lot you can do when you just deploy in a line across from each other, with plenty of room to spread out for best angles. I deployed first, holding my captain and assault squad in reserve as usual, with everything else going down behind terrain, or at least another squad or unit behind terrain. Michael followed suit, spreading out in a gun line opposite mine, a particularly welcome sight; gunline to gunline, Tau usually have an edge over Marines. They just don't have the specialized long-range firepower that Tau armies fear. I won the roll-off for first turn, and proceeded to set the tone.

This game was pretty much a slaughter, start to finish. Michael had deployed with too much of his army within range of my force, which admittedly is hard not to do when you're talking about Tau, and turn one my shooting just ripped through him. He never really recovered from that rather withering fusillade of firepower, particularly when I managed to wreck his Land Raider halfway across the table, stranding his Death Company in no man's land. Caught between a flanking squad of Fireknives and a Fire Warrior team on that side of my lines, they were simply slaughtered without causing a single casualty. The main force of my army, meanwhile, continued to hammer away at Micheal's army, cutting Marine after Marine down in a hail of pulse fire. When my assault squad and captain dropped near to his lines, but safely out of line of sight of anything first turn, they just added to my advantage, cutting down a squad of tactical marines hiding in a building which meant the entire right half of the table was now under my control. The only real threat emerged on turn four, when Mephiston arrived in the Storm Raven. Shot out of the air, he landed right in front of my lines, and proceeded to make a mess out of a unit of Fire Warriors and one of my XV88s. Honestly, he was a beast, and if he'd made it into the fight even a turn or two earlier, he might have presented a serious challenge. As it was, though, time was called after just a single turn with him on the board, while the Marine gunline was down to a handful of Marines and Ezekiel.

In addition to the primary, I picked up First Blood and Linebreaker, though Mephiston's toughness meant I couldn't claim Cut Off the Head. Still, a pretty nice way to end a day that, otherwise, had been maddeningly full of 'close but no cigar' moments. Sometimes it's nice just to mop the floor with someone, y'know?

Results: 7-2 win on primaries, 2-0 on secondaries

Overall Results: 6^th of 12

2K Tournament - Round 3

Round 3: Chris Bader (Imperial Guard)

Deployment: Vanguard Strike

Mission: Purge the Alien

Secondary Objectives: First Blood, Linebreaker, Battlefield Superiority (control 2+ table quarters)

Company Command w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Officer of the Fleet, Straken, Chimera

Platoon Command w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Chimera

Infantry Squad w/Flamer, Missile Launcher

Infantry Blob Squad w/Grenades, Autocannon, Power Sword

Commissar

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Missile Launcher

Platoon Command Squad w/Vox Caster, Meltagun, Lascannon, Chimera

Infantry Squad w/Flamer, Missile Launcher

Infantry Blob Squad w/Plasma Gun, Lascannon, Power Weapon, Vox Caster

Commissar w/Power Sword

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Missile Launcher

Vendetta w/Heavy Bolter sponsons

Vendetta w/Heavy Bolter sponsons

Manticore w/Heavy Flamer

Imperial Bastion w/Quad Gun

Yes, it's the Imperial Guard, yet again. Fewer tanks and no Allies, but a couple of Flyers, my first matchup against such units in 6^th. I can't say I was particularly optimistic about this, especially since it was kill points; infantry blob squads with attached Commissars take a heck of a lot of killing for one point, and Guard tanks can inflict some pretty serious casualties, especially if, as Chris did, they win the roll-off.

Chris elected to go first, and deployed pretty well strung out along his diagonal; Bastion in the middle, with the two small squads inside and on top of it, command squads in their Chimeras around it, Manticore towards the back, and the heavy weapon teams and blob squads on the wings. Unfortunately, poor terrain placement left my own deployment somewhat hamstrung, with my Hammerhead, commander and Deathrains behind a huge building smack-dab in the middle of the table, a Devilfish full of Firewarriors, a Fireknife team and an XV88 team on the left being hassled by some craters (skimmers and jet packs don't like difficult terrain tests) and a mirror group on the right trying to hug a forest and small outbuilding as much as they could. Sadly, the BKG guys had decided not to allow for Night Fight this round, so if I failed to seize, my Devilfish were going to be stuck out with pretty minimal angles of cover. And so I did fail to seize, that's exactly what happened.

First round, I lost both Devilfish; a 5+ cover save is nice, but not really enough against the kind of firepower a Guard list can put out, even with the Vendettas stuck in reserve first turn. Though sadly, in both of the fateful fails, having the 4+ Flat Out save would have made the difference. Alas! Even more unfortunately, hampered as I was by the giant building in the middle of the table, which prevented my two wings from supporting each other (what good is superior Tau range if you can't get LOS?), my own shooting was too scattered to really crush any one thing in return. We traded shots, him shaking my Hammerhead, me managing to hit the Bastion with it anyway but only glancing it, a Chimera for a Devilfish, a few Guardsmen for a few Firewarrior squads. Unfortunately, while I was chipping away at models, he'd removed several units, putting him up to start with. And it only got worse when one of his Vendettas arrived second turn, and immediately lascannoned my poor Hammerhead straight into the ground.

I got my revenge, though, and let this be a lesson; always, always understand the rules. So, I hit the Vendetta with a couple of missile pods, and managed to lock its speed with the damage, forcing it to go 18" straight. Not exactly devastating. But then I realized I still had one Devilfish left, which hadn't fired yet, and whose 6" Flat Out move could basically put it exactly where the Vendetta's flying stand would have to be. The stand can't end its move within 1" of an enemy model; the Vendetta can't turn, or go further than 18"; and any Flyer that can't travel a minimum of 18" is automatically wrecked. Which is to say, with a conveniently placed Devilfish, I managed to turn a mere locked velocity roll into the destruction of the flyer. Not bad, not bad one bit.

Unfortunately, I wasn't having too much luck, otherwise. My entire right flank basically disappeared, save for the experimental XV25s who dropped in, only to be caught completely flat-footed when the nearby blob squad charged them. I'm used to my enemy's charging Tau units, but I must admit, I completely failed to anticipate that anyone would want to voluntarily charge a BA Captain with power sword and five Death Company. Unfortunately, while my Allies were grinding down the blob squad (both Chris and I having completely forgotten Challenges were even a thing), they weren't doing it quickly, or without casualties themselves. The game ended on account of time before the combat could be resolved, but it was depressingly clear that the quality of those counts-as-Marines simply wasn't going to match up to the quantity of all those Guardsmen. I did, however, take out one of the Chimeras before I went down, and more dramatically I managed to blow up the Bastion, which did impressively terrible things to the units inside and on top of it. Fortifications really are unforgiving if you can put them down, especially if you've only got t-shirt saves on the units embarked in them.

Unfortunately, even with the other Vendetta counting as a kill point for being off the table when the game ended, things went as I'd feared. Chris had won overall, and scored First Blood, while neither of us had Linebreaker or Battlefield Superiority. So while he only scored fourteen for his victory, I escaped with just a measly three for participation.

If only that blob squad had let me get the charge off, instead!

Still, ultimately I was pretty happy with how the tournament went. I had a pretty solid grasp of the new ruleset, I completely dominated that first game, and I even scored 'best presentation' again, which is always nice. Even nicer, though, I came in fifth overall that day, a new personal best and definitely something worth celebrating!

2K Tournament - Round Two

Round 2: Jamie Goddard (Imperial Guard/Blood Angels)

Deployment: Dawn of War

Mission: The Emperor's Will

Secondary Objectives: Slay the Warlord, Thin the Herd (kill three Troops units), Secure the Archeotech

Company Command w/Master of Ordinance, Officer of the Fleet, 2 x Bodyguard, Camo Cloaks, Vox Caster

Platoon Command w/3 x Flamers, Meltabombs, Vox Caster

Infantry Squad w/Meltagun, Meltabomb, Vox Caster

Infantry Squad w/Meltagun, Meltabomb, Vox Caster

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Lascannon

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Lascannon

Heavy Weapon Team w/3 x Autocannon

Veterans w/2 x Plasmagun, Vox Caster

Colossus

Lema Russ w/Lascannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons

Leman Russ

Dante

Sanguinary Guard w/2 x Infernus Pistol, Powerfist

10 x Sternguard w/4 x Combi-Melta, Lightning Claw

Drop Pod

Apparently, the Blood Angels were a little conflicted about who to support this time around; ultimately, they seem to have decided to split the difference, and send Allies to both sides. A bit of bad form, really, for the boys from Baal...

I'm never happy to find myself coming up against Guard, since they basically do everything I do, but better. Still, no sense calling it before the ball drops. We rolled off, and Jamie opted to go first, deploying nearly everything. His Colossus and solo Leman Russ marked the left flank, while the two Leman Russes anchored the right side, with his infantry spread out between them. The Marines, befitting their fluff nature as a rapid reaction force, opted to stay in reserve, the Sternguard in the Drop Pod and Dante and the Sanguinary Guard formed up together. In response, I spread my XV88s out on each wing, with the Hammerhead towards the middle, and did my best to get my Devilfish, Firewarriors and Allies into decent cover. Between our two armies was the archeotech secondary objective, a huge pumping station that provided no small amount of LOS-blocking through the centre of the table. We each got an objective to deploy, as well, putting them well back in our respective zones. Finally, satisfied I'd done as much as I could, we rolled for Night Fight, and man was I happy to see it come on first turn.

It's not the save that really mattered, though that was nice; XV88s being protected by a 2+ cover save against lascannons makes them pleasantly survivable, for a change. No, the big benefit to Night Fight was that it meant his Master of Ordinance and Colossus literally could not fire; with no units within 36", they were incapable of selecting a target. My army weathered the storm pretty comfortably, since nearly everything had a 2+ cover save (no Chimeras, no searchlights), but his Sternguard dropped nearly on top of my right-hand XV88s, and those melta guns were much too close, and firing at the wrong angle, for my poor '88s to stand a chance. Of course, that meant two five-man squads of Sternguard standing pretty much out in the open, so it wasn't exactly a totally one-sided strike. Before I could get to them, though, I had to deal with the Colossus. Against an MSU T4/3+ army, something that drops AP3 large blasts that wound on 2's and don't allow cover saves is just devastating. Jamie completely agreed, and wasn't at all surprised when I made it the focus of my first turn's firing, since as he put it that blast would otherwise have just walked along my army line, killing everything it hit. Thankfully, not only did I manage to put that down, I also blasted apart the solo Leman Russ, though that took pretty much all my anti-tank firepower. With those dealt with, it was time for threat number two, the Sternguard. A Fireknife squad and supporting Firewarriors managed to wipe out one of the combat squads, while the other was left for my own Allies, who unfortunately suffered two casualties, despite the captain striking first with a power weapon and the protection of FNP. Still, it meant they were dealt with, which removed a serious threat from my army's vitals.

Unfortunately, as I said, the Guard do what I do, but better. With my only assault unit pinned down in my deployment zone it was down to a shooting match, and the result of that is usually going to be safe to assume. Things only got worse when Dante and the Sanguinary Guard turned up, finishing off my other XV88 squad (though not before they managed to pop one of the two remaining Leman Russes) and hanging dangerously close to my objective. Sadly, the Fireknives in the area rolled poorly, only managing to kill two Sanguinary Guard with their plasma rifles despite being in rapid fire range, and for obvious reasons they didn't get another chance to shoot. While Jamie cleared out my objective with his surviving Allies, a squad of Guardsman hustled forward to take the archeotech, which turned out to be a psychneuin hive; as neither of us had psykers, that didn't much matter. He also managed to finish off my Death Company, which meant that, combined with the Firewarrior squad he'd killed to clear my objective and a second team lost on the right flank, he'd achieved the Thin the Herd secondary. Fortunately, though, I wasn't completely out of the game. Since there was no chance I could finish off the Sanguinary guard and get my objective back, I opted instead to shoot the Guard off the archeotech, and claim that one, instead. A combined Devilfish and Firewarrior assault managed to either kill or displace enough Guardsman for them to be out of range of the thing, while my Firewarriors were right inside the envelope to catch it for themselves. Thankfully, time ran out before the turns did, because it was still entirely possible for Jamie to have shifted me off that thing; while my army was pretty much a broken ruin, he still had plenty of infantry to throw at me.

In the end I scored a measly six points, three for showing up and three for claiming the Archeotech, while Jamie was just a slain Warlord away from sweeping with a perfect 20, finishing up with 17 points.

Night Fight continues to be the best thing Tau can hope for; cheap blacksun filters mean that your anti-armour will be unaffected first turn, while the enemy's is likely to be far more restricted. And good heavens, was it nice to be able to weather a first-turn barrage of firepower without losing much of anything, for a change! Jinking saved my transports more than once, though if they hadn't been protected first turn there might not have been many of them left to save. I still say dropping disruption pods to save the points is a viable strategy, but it can be a little nerve wracking at times. Warlord traits, on the other hand, have singularly failed to impress. I don't even remember what either of us rolled, since neither of us had any use for it. I have a sneaking suspicion I may have gotten the Furious Charge one, which is particularly useless for Tau...

Having barely survived the crushing power that is the sledgehammer of the Imperium, the numberless masses of the Imperial Guard, my Tau cadre pressed on to the final round, for a confrontation with...

Oh, come on!

2K Tournament - Round One

Vs. - Aaron Plate (Orks)

Deployment: Hammer & Anvil

Mission: The Scouring

Secondary Objectives: First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker

Warboss w/Power Klaw, Cybork Body, 'Eavy Armour, Bosspole, Attack Squig

Warboss w/Warbike, Power Klaw, Cybork Body, Bosspole

7 x Nobs w/Warbikes, 3 x Power Klaw, 4 x Big Choppa, 7 x Cybork Body, Painboy, Waaagh! Banner

9 x Nobs w/5 x Power Klaw, 4 x Big Choppa, 9 x 'Eavy Armour, 9 x Cybork Body, Painboy, Waaagh! Banner

Battlewagon w/Kannon, Armour Plates, Grot Riggers, Red Paint Job

30 x Ork Boyz w/Nob, Power Klaw

15 x Lootas

15 x Lootas

Ah, Hammer & Anvil; a shooty army's best friend. Sure, there's the same two feet of no man's land between deployment zones as in the other two missions, but here your deployment zone is twice as deep. If you've got the range, and Tau most certainly do, you can put a solid three feet of distance between yourself and your on-the-line enemy, and still be in range. Which, after winning the roll-off, is exactly what I did. Everything went onto the table, except for my Allied unit, which hung back in reserve. I spread out as well as I could, a unit of Firewarriors on either side shielded by a Devilfish and supported by a Fireknife and XV88 team, while in the middle the third unit of Firewarriors and a Devilfish were sharing space with my commander and the Deathrains, the Hammerhead at the back, and the Pathfinders up front. In response, Aaron deployed his Nob bikerz on the line in the centre, with the Battlewagon and non-biker Nobz behind them, the two squads of Lootas on the distant edge, one of them standing on a hillside and the other against the table edge, and the large mob hanging out down on the side closest to me. Aaron failed to seize, which was bad news for him, but not as bad as Night Fight coming on first turn.

Of course, Night Fight doesn't bother Tau. My commander, Hammerhead and two XV88 squads have Blacksun Filters, the commander passing it along to the Deathrains, and Pathfinders no longer care about Night Fight at all; 36" is the limit of their range anyway, and you can't take saves against markerlight tokens. So, turn 1 was predictably devastating for poor Aaron. With an assist from some markerlight tokens, the XV88 squad closest to me put a round clear through the Battlewagon, blowing it to smithereens, earning me the First Blood secondary and killing five Lootas in the process. Sadly, my Hammerhead could not keep up, its large blast scattering not just off the Lootas on the hill, but clear off the table. The others added their firepower, wounding Nob bikerz and picking away at the big boyz mob and the unwounded Lootas. I'd deployed a little badly, my Firewarriors too far back to get their shots in first turn, but I certainly wasn't unhappy with it. In return, Aaron sent his bikerz up the middle, opening fire on the Pathfinders and killing all but one, who bravely kept his post. The dismounted Nobz trundled towards one the far Firewarrior squad, while the boyz mob spread out, heading towards a 4-point objective. I myself only had two 2-points in my deployment zone, with the rest being on Aaron's side of the table, behind his advancing horde. Aside from the Pathfinders, his shooting accomplished nothing, with my extremely well-protected Devilfish (4+ Flat Out save, +2 for Night Fight distance) easily shrugging off the Lootas' firepower. At the end of the turn I was cautiously optimistic, though still wary of what kind of damage those bikerz would do if they hit my lines.

As the game went on, however, it quickly became obvious the Orks were fatally outgunned. With no more vehicles to shoot at my XV88s started popping bikerz, and while it was lucky if one shot per team got through, Aaron's Look Out, Sir! rolls weren't so hot; he lost his Warboss to an early hit, giving me Slay the Warlord as a second secondary, and when bikerz weren't being one-shotted by railguns they were being whittled down by the pulse rifles of my close and central Firewarrior squads and the missile pods of my commander and his Deathrains. The Lootas on the hill, meanwhile, weren't so lucky a second time, and lost six more to a railgun submunition. Meanwhile, my distant Firewarrior and Fireknife squads traded fire with the more intact Lootas squad, who got pretty lucky in only losing a few at a time; bad to-hit and to-wound rolls on my part, while the only unit that could engage the boyz mob was my Fireknives, whose firepower was too strong and not plentiful enough, picking away just a couple of boyz a turn. Aaron's only attempt to get his Nob bikerz into close combat ended poorly, with a charge at my commander and the Deathrains not only falling short, but earning the squad another couple of wounds, though no deaths, from their flamers' Wall of Death effect. And for the rest of his force, well, things were bad, and about to get worse.

My Allies remained in reserve until Turn 3, somewhat disappointing but hardly catastrophic. When they dropped, they landed near Aaron's table edge, on my near side, a bit back from the boyz mob. Aaron tried to shoot the 'experimental XV25s' away, but between 3+ and 5++, not a one of them went down, leaving the full force of them to crash into the edge of his mob next turn. Between their Hammer of Wrath attacks, their Rage bonus and the number of base attacks all the models had, they easily cleaned out a 3" circle of bodies around them, leaving no Orks close enough to consolidate back into combat. Unable to get a hit in, the Orks lost combat by seven, and since there were only ten of them left, and no Nob (he'd gone down to plasma rifle fire earlier) they quickly broke, ran and were swept. Nearly twenty boyz, killed by six models. For a Tau commander, it was so awesome as to be a little baffling, frankly. And more importantly, they were the only squad on an objective, meaning we'd suddenly gone from being tied to me being up 4-0.

By the last turn, there was really only one question left; could I kill enough of his walking nobz to keep him from being able to get the Linebreaker secondary? Well, I gave it the old college try, but between their regular saves, their invulnerable saves and their FNP, I just could not put enough wounds onto the squad. I whittled it down, but not enough, so at the end of the game Aaron had a scoring unit in my deployment zone, earning him six points; the basic three for playing through the whole round, and three for the secondary. I, meanwhile, had pulled off a perfect twenty; three for playing, eight for achieving the primary, and nine for achieving all three secondaries.

Not bad for a first outing with the new rules.

I didn't get a chance to put everything I'd worked hard to remember into action, this battle. While I did make extensive use of the sea turtle trick (moving Devilfish out of the Firewarriors' line of sight, shooting the Firewarriors, then Flat Out-ing the Devilfish back in front of them to give both units maximum cover), some of the new rules just didn't come up. I didn't really get a chance to use Focus Fire, since usually there was either no cover for the Orks or so much cover I'd have only been hitting one or two of them, and the 'no wounds on models out of sight' did bite me a little with the boyz mob; most of them were hidden from my Fireknives, the unit primarily tasked with dealing with them, by a hill for much of the game. I also didn't score any precision shots, which isn't surprising, since my commander is the only character in my army, and he's only got the two missile pod shots and an AFP he can't score 6's to-hit on. On the other hand, the closest-to-closest removal was just as brutal as I'd expected it to be, though if Aaron had remembered to Turbo-Boost his nobz no amount of failed LO,S! rolls would've saved me from losing a unit or three to those monsters. Of course, now I have monsters of my own, and I really could not have been happier with the way my Allies performed. Yes, they're about four hundred points, and yes, even with 3+ Reserve rolls they took their time getting in, but once they hit they hit hard! Hammer of Wrath is a serious boon to jump pack assault units, letting them start the fight with a kill or three in their favour, and jump packs rerolling charge distances took me from getting two or three models into combat to getting the full six-strong squad in there. Coupled with the changes to Rage, and those boyz never knew what hit them. Which was a pleasant change, since usually I'm the one who's concussedly ignorant of preceding events. A very nice chance, indeed.

So, flush with the greatest possible victory I could achieve given the scoring framework, I headed into the second round the consummate optimist. Unfortunately, that optimism lasted just about as long as it took me to find myself face to face with Jamie, and an army practically tailor-made to hurt Tau.

2K Tournament - Prologue

I tried to get a couple of practice games in, but ultimately I just couldn't manage to fit in a full-length outing; the best I got were a few turns during the open gaming periods at Black Knight. That meant the three-round tournament on the 28^th would be my first real foray into 6^th edition 40K, and my first chance to put all the theory I'd been absorbing as fast as I could from the 40K blogosphere into practice. It would also be a 2000 point tournament, with no artificially-imposed restrictions on what the players could bring; double FOC, Allies, and Fortifications were all in. Which made it all sorts of tempting to just go crazy and bring along everything and the kitchen sink, throwing all sorts of strange new units and tactics and combinations onto the field and seeing what worked and what didn't. Ultimately, though, my natural inclination towards moderation won out.

My Cadre:

Shas'el w/Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

Blood Angels Captain (Allies) w/Power Sword, Jump Pack

3 x XV8 w/3 x Missile Pod, 3 x Plasma Rifle, 3 x Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Missile Pod, 3 x Plasma Rifle, 3 x Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pod, 3 x Flamer

8 x Fire Warriors w/Devilfish, Flechette Discharger

8 x Fire Warriors w/Devilfish, Flechette Discharger

8 x Fire Warriors

5 x Death Company (Allies) w/5 x Jump Pack

5 x Pathfinders w/Devilfish, Flechette Discharger

2 x XV88 w/2 x ASS, Team Leader w/Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

2 x XV88 w/2 x ASS, Team Leader w/Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannon, Multi-Tracker, Blacksun Filter, Disruption Pod

So, just two Allies units, a Captain and 5 Death Company, and nothing else. I was hoping to have a Tau-designed Aegis Defence Line ready to go, but alas, it was not to be; converting the 'experimental' XV25s to stand in for a BA Captain and Death Company took more time than I'd expected them to. I also went back and forth on the nature of my allies for a while. Captain, or Librarian? Death Company, or Assault Squad? Sanguinary Priest? Ultimately, I decided the Captain's invulnerable save outweighed the Librarian's psychic powers, and that while a Sanguinary Priest could pass FNP to the HQ choice, he could also be sniped or challenged out of the squad, while the only way to deny FNP to the Death Company would be to hit them with S8+ weapons. Finally, I squeezed a power sword onto my captain, so his superior initiative would allow him to thin out any power armoured herds the unit might get thrown against, leaving the whopping five attacks per Death Company model, on the charge, to simply overwhelm the survivors through sheer weight of numbers.

As for my core force, there were just a few changes from my usual 2K list, discounting the units dropped to make room for Allies. The Tau FAQ has removed the battlesuit Target Lock, so that fell away from my commander and XV88s, and the new Jink save for skimmers meant the disruption pod was mostly unnecessary, especially on Devilfish, who could go Flat Out in the shooting phase for a save that was actually superior to that provided by the wargear at the cost of foregoing shooting I rarely used, anyway. I wavered on the Hammerhead, but ultimately decided to leave it's disruption pod on, to defend against the threat of alpha strikes taking it out before I had a chance to get it moving. Hull points already make vehicles more vulnerable, no sense making the risk any greater than it has to be.

My plan, generally speaking, was to play a traditional Tau shooting game; spread out, hug the edges, use superior range to inflict significant casualties. With Firewarriors now able to walk and shoot their full 30", they could finally contribute alongside, well, everything else in the army; missile pods, plasma rifles, markerlights, SMS and railguns. And with the drop in cover saves and the introduction of both closest-to-closest casualties, Focus Fire and Overwatch, I had some confidence that my units would be able to reliably put down even large foot lists before they could get the majority of their units up into my face. And for those armies that did have either the speed or the deep strike capabilities to get up close and personal, I had a new weapon in my arsenal, an actually competent assault unit. Six jump packs mean six Hammer of Wrath attacks from the get-go, plus five power weapon attacks from the Captain and twenty-five followup attacks from the Death Company. Combined with 3+ armour and FNP, even if it is 5+ instead of 4+ now, and not only could they dish it out, they could take it, too. True, they wouldn't be any real help against Terminators and Monstrous Creatures, but that's okay; those things would be the province of my guns, not my swords, if they dared to show their faces. The experimental XV25s, which just happened to have the same points costs, statlines and special rules as a BA Captain and some Death Company, were for handling large units of weak troops or small units of mid-level assault troops, and within that role there was every reason to expect them to be able to perform to my expectations.

So, that was my army, and my strategy. And how did it work? Well, since this tournament represented my first real outing with 6^th, I've decided to do something a little different. Instead of rolling all three fights into a single post, I'm going to break them up into their own posts, and try and justify that by going into greater detail about what worked, what didn't, and how all the new rules shook out under the circumstances. So, join me next time, when we see whether the cold, precision fire of Tau Empire can stand off the hot-blooded fury of those great 5^th edition boogeymen, Nob bikerz!

Yeah, Well, My HQ Can Beat Up Your HQ!

Black Knight Games is hosting a rather unique event this coming Sunday.  Billed as a Collosseum Eternal Mega Battle, the game will be a one-board free-for-all fight between as many players as show up.  The forces?  Each player is allowed to bring one single HQ model, worth an unlimited number of points, even going so far as to allow you to field a single model from within an HQ unit.  The only restriction is that you can't put down more than one model on the board, and once it's gone, so are you.

Normally, I don't go all-out on equipping my command suit; neither version has the punch to play 'Herohammer', and many of the points that would be spent on making a slightly sub-par hero who's still extremely vulnerable to the omnipresent S8 fire could be better spent elsewhere.  This time, however, there's nowhere else to spend those points, and very little danger of S8 fire; there aren't a lot of krak missile launchers floating around the HQ slot, after all.  So this is what I've been thinking of taking, though it's still preliminary; I haven't quite nailed down exactly what I'll most need to be prepared for, yet.

Shas'o - 70
+ Plasma Rifle - 20
+ Missile Pod - 12
+ Shield Generator - 20
+ Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker - 5
+ Stimulant Injector - 10
Total: 137

Far more than I'd ever spend on a command suit, otherwise.  But for all that, I get a fairly decent solo combatant; a 4+ invulnerable save and Feel No Pain, along with the usual S7 AP4 and S6 AP2 guns, both of which can fire at the same time.  I can hurt dreadnoughts, I can go through Terminator armour, I'm not tied down to cover and with a 3+/4++ and FNP, I'll be largely immune to most of the shooting HQ units can bring.  Close combat will be a horse of a different colour, of course, but no Tau commander expects to last long, there.

The one thing I can't quite decide on is Iridium Armour.  It would increase my commander's regular save to 2+, making him that much harder to shoot off the board.  On the other hand, it would drop my guaranteed-6" assault move down to just D6", and that 2+ is just as useless as a 3+ in the face of power weapons and orbital strikes.  Decisions, decisions...

Movin' On Up, a-To the East Side!

I actually attended this tournament a couple of weekends ago, but between one thing and another it's taken me this long to actually get everything down in text. It was a really fun weekend, and marks my new personal best in terms of overall placement. Which, of course, only means I need to try even harder next time, in order to surpass myself. That bar's not going to get any lower, at least if I have anything to say about it!

Round 1: Mitch Breton (Black Templars)

Deployment: Dawn of War

Primary Objective: Capture and Control

Secondary Objective: Marked Man (nominate one model in your army; the enemy gets the Secondary if they kill that model)

Castellan w/Lightning Claw, Storm Shield, Artificier Armour

Emperor's Champion w/Accept Any Challenge, No Matter the Odds

Grimaldus

5 x Assault Terminators

5 x Assault Terminators

6 x Sword Brethren w/Terminator Honours, Lightning Claws, Power Weapon, Frag Grenades

9 x Crusaders w/Power Weapon, Meltagun, Drop Pod

10 x Crusaders w/Power Weapon, Meltagun, Drop Pod

Land Raider Crusader

Land Raider Crusader

So, on the one hand, it's a list full of Land Raiders and drop-pod melta; on the other hand, it's a predominantly close-range list with very little ranged firepower. Pros and cons.

Mitch won the roll-off, and elected to go first, which was fine by me; no Tau player worth his salts wants to go first in Dawn of War. He reserved his two Crusader squads, loaded the Assault Terminators into the Land Raiders and drove them onto the board on my right flank, and had the Emperor's Champion, Castellan and Grimaldus join up with the Sword Brethren, hanging out behind the two tanks on the right. In response, I went for a moderately refused flank. I sent my AFP commander, a squad of Fireknives, two XV88s and a Devilfish up on the right, while everything else walked or cruised onto the left hand side of the board. I hoped to use the longer range of my guns to soften him up, while forcing him to deal with a bit of serious firepower close in, so he couldn't just charge off blindly across the board.

And brother, did it work.

For once, the Land Raiders did not prove the invulnerable railgun-magnets they so usually are; the first one went down first turn, thanks to the low Night Fight rolls needed by the XV88 squad on the right flank (another reason they were there), and the second one followed after the very next turn. Both Land Raiders gone, and both Terminator squads stuck slogging across the board. In response, Mitch's drop pods deployed the nine-strong Crusader squad right smack-dab into my lines, but thankfully his melta gunner was having an off day, as he failed to draw a bead on the Hammerhead sitting right in front of him. He held the second Crusader drop pod bad, landing it on his own objective, while the first squad rampaged through my lines; by the time they were finally brought down, they'd slaughtered the Firewarriors on the objective, the Pathfinders, and torn the railgun from my Hammerhead. Their rampage almost ended up costing me dearly, as my other Firewarriors were so thoroughly out of position that it took me clear until Turn 4, and a bit of fancy manoeuvring with a couple of Devilfish, to put a squad back on the objective. Close, but not close enough!

But since both of us had thoroughly protected our 'Marked Men' (he by nominating Grimaldus and hiding him in that squad, me by nominating one of the three Deathrains and just having them hang well back of anything that could threaten them), if I wanted a win, I'd have to do something about his own objective. Sadly, attempts to charge up on it met with failure, as some very favourable rolls let him shoot down my Piranha and, contrary to what I'd thought, it turned out the Terminators were close enough to charge a Devilfish I'd sent in there to try and tank shock onto the objective. With no way to get close enough to contest, it all came down to shooting, and the shooting all came down to the wire. Man by man I whittled away at his Crusaders until, with literally the last gunshot in the last turn we'd have time for, the very last Marine died. Victory for the Tau Empire!

Result: Major Victory

Round 2: Kyle Beveridge (Dark Eldar)

Deployment: Pitched Battle

Primary Objective: Annihilation

Secondary Objective: Forward March (+1 point for each of your Troops in the enemy's deployment zone, -1 point for each of your Troops in your deployment zone)

Asdrubael Vect

3 x Ravagers w/3 x Dark Lances, Night Field, Flickerfield

Venom w/2 x Splinter Cannon, Night Field, Flickerfield

2 x Raiders w/Dark Lance, Night Field, Flickerfield

2 x Haemonculus w/Hexrifle

4 x Trueborn w/4 x Blaster

20 x Warriors w/2 x Splinter Cannon

20 x Warriors w/2 x Splinter Cannon

10 x Warriors w/Sergeant, Splinter Cannon

9 x Wytches w/Hekatrix, Shard Net & Impaler, Haywire Grenades, Phantasm Grenades, Agonizer

9 x Jetbikes w/3 x Blasters

This was my first fight with Dark Eldar, and man was it fun! Unlike entirely too many brick-like Marine builds, the Dark Eldar were so shooty, and so fragile, that the fight was always completely up for grabs. That's the kind of uncertainty that makes for a great game!

I knew Dark Eldar were fast, but I admit, I wasn't prepared for how good their shooting can be! On the first turn I lost a Devilfish and my Hammerhead to all those Lances, the latter a serious blow indeed given how tailor-made the S6 AP4 large blast submunition is for dealing with the T3 Dark Eldar's FNP-boasting troops. Ah well; nothing for it but to soldier on. And despite the viciousness of that particular loss, I was far from out of the game. At the start of his turn one, Kyle had 3 Ravagers, 2 Raiders, a Venom, 9 jetbikes and 9 Wytches; by the end of my turn one, he had no Ravagers, a Raider, a Venom, no jetbikes, and 4 Wytches, thanks to a hilariously bloody-minded scatter roll on my AFP (though, I have since been informed that blast weapons can't scatter past their maximum range, which this did; it wouldn't have changed much, but it would've been less hilarious). Glass cannons, those Dark Eldar.

Unfortunately, I pretty much suicided my entire right flank, with some terrible movement. Forgetting the Dark Eldar are Fleet I left my AFP commander close to the Wytches and Vect, with the intention of catching them once more with the Dark Eldar-killing large blast; unfortunately, he was too close, and never got the chance. With him dead, I then let a Fireknife squad fall back too close to an XV88 pair, allowing Kyle to multi-assault the pair of them into the ground. Three kill points off those Wytches and Vect, alone! Things went better on the left, with my other XV88s dealing with the last Raider and then using their SMS on the survivors, while my Piranha got clear up into the Venom's personal space to use its fusion blaster through that most annoying '+6" to shoot at them' field. Of course, the Piranha then went down in a hail of blaster fire from the surviving Trueborns, so possibly it wasn't the best tradeoff. Still, I'd managed to shoot down every vehicle Kyle had, while retaining two of my own Devilfish full of troops, which made me pretty confident.

Which is probably why I lost my dang mind. On Turn 4, with both Devilfish safely on Kyle's side of the line, I opted to disembark one of my squads and fire into the Warriors advancing onto my side. The Firewarriors were within rapid fire range, I rationalized, with nice clear cover-free sightlines and their AP5 guns meant no armour saves. And if I could break the Warriors, Kyle would only have one squad on my side and one on his, giving me the minor. Of course, those of you more experienced at fighting these particular xenos than I will notice I forgot two key things; pain tokens give FNP, and pain tokens give Fearless. I actually managed to kill a good six Warriors with my Firewarriors, but their return fire cost me the squad when it broke, and was too close to the surviving Warriors to rally in Turn 5. What's worse, it turned out the other Warrior squad wasn't even halfway over the line, meaning it counted as being on Kyle's side; I could've had the minor with no effort on my part. All my actions had served to do was cost me those easy points, which I needed since despite slaughtering much of Kyle's army he was still two kill points up on me when it ended. Well, live and learn.

Result: Major Loss

Round 3: Dalton Nash (Eldar)

Deployment: Spearhead
Primary Objective: Seize Ground

Secondary Objective: Kill Points

Avatar

Farseer

20 x Dire Avengers

17 Guardians w/Warlock

Falcon

10 x Howling Banshees w/Wave Serpent

6 x Fire Dragons w/Wave Serpent

4 x Dark Reapers

Wraithlord

The terrain on this last table was a little unbalanced, which Dalton took full advantage of when he won the roll-off. While I got a bit of ruin, he got a lot of ruin, spread out on either side of a forest section. There was so much cover there that he had room for the Guardians, the Dire Avengers, the Farseer, the Wraithlord, the Dark Reapers and the Wraithlord, all of them nicely protected by cover from my return fire. I, meanwhile, used the tried and true Tau tactic of hiding my suits behind my Devilfish, and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately, the best was not what the dice had in mind. Hampered by the Eldar's ability to reduce my railguns to S8, while at the same time reducing my Hammerhead's front armour to AV12 for their own shooting, I struggled to put down those three tanks, while they blasted my Hammerhead to smithereens first turn and claimed one of my Devilfish. When I eventually did remove the transports all that happened was that the Fire Dragons and Howling Banshees inside started charging and shooting through my lines, costing my a Fireknife squad, an XV88 squad and my Pathfinders. In response I opened up on those units with most of my short-range firepower, but the Banshees had cover from their exploded Wave Serpent's crater the first round of shooting, while the Fire Dragons were on the other side of my own cover, instant death-ing my battlesuits and passing their own cover saves with relative impunity. Things only got worse when his Avatar came on from reserves and crashed into my rear lines, though in my defence Dalton had been remarkably unclear about leaving that thing in reserves; he hadn't even had an army list, so I could know it was coming! He'd made some sort of weird joke, but he was constantly making weird jokes about things that weren't true. Well, just goes to show how important it is to ask for a rundown of the opponents army!

Anyway. The Avatar actually caused relatively little damage, taking out my plasma-armed 'el and his bodyguard, and nearly dying to mass pulse rifle fire. The real problem, though, was that he was able to walk up and onto my objective, contesting it from the Firewarriors hanging on for dear life against the stubbornly-surviving Fire Dragons, while I had nothing that could do the same to Dalton's objective. And of course, the Minor Objective was always going to be a disaster, since Tau really couldn't be worse suited for Kill Points missions if they'd been specifically designed for them. Ultimately, Dalton had most of his army sitting in cover around his objective, while just a few of his units had torn through my own lines, costing me vehicles, battlesuits, and worst of all, the objective. The game was a consummate disaster, from start to finish.

Result: Major Loss

Overall Result: 13^th of 18

A Statistically Perfect Spread of Results

After a month's hiatus, caused in part by a personal matter and in part by the last tournament's being way up at 2500 points, I headed back up to Black Knight to once more throw my Tau's lives away on the field of battle. The game was set for 1500, a point level I much prefer, and I went in cautiously optimistic. After all, I had a major win in the team tournament, and a minor win on my own at the game before that; it certainly seems like I'm getting better. Hope springs eternal, if nothing else!

My army:
Shas'el w/Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Missile Pod, Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/Twin-Linked Missile Pod, Flamer

8 x Fire Warriors w/Devilfish, Disruption Pod, Flechette Discharger

8 x Fire Warriors

5 x Pathfinders w/Devilfish, Disruption Pod, Flechette Discharger

Piranha w/Fusion Blaster, Disruption Pod, Flechette Discharger

2 x XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Disruption Pod, Multi-Tracker

I don't usually go with unbalanced units; call me anal, but they just bug me.  But I had a feeling I'd need more anti-tank this game, and the fusion blasters on my shas'el and Piranha have never really been what you'd call reliable.  Also, they're criminally short-ranged, meaning they're basically suicide weapons.  So, one XV88 in, eight Fire Warriors out.  Let's see if I turned out right, or if I could have used those extra Fire Warriors more, after all.

Round 1: Mark Hillman (Chaos Space Marines)

Kharn the Betrayer

4 x Terminators w/Heavy Flamer

5 x Terminators w/3 x Meltas, Chainfist, 2 x Lightning Claws

10 x Chaos Space Marines w/Flamer, Lascannon

10 x Chaos Space Marines w/Flamer, Lascannon

Land Raider w/Possession, Combi-Melta

Land Raider w/Possession, Combi-MElta

Predator w/Twin-Linked Lascannon, 2 x Lascannon Sponsons, Dozer Blade

Deployment: Dawn of War

Major Objective: Capture & Control

Minor Objective: Big Game Hunter (1 point for every HQ unit, vehicle, MC and walker)

Ahh, my old enemy; the Land Raider. In all the games I've seen those behemoth metal boxes on the other side of the table, I have managed to down exactly one of them. And this, despite pouring quite liberal amounts of railgun fire into their heavily armoured hides. For all that people talk smack about these things online, I've personally found them nothing but trouble to deal with on the tabletop.

Mark won the roll-off to deploy first, and opted to push one of his squads clear up to the midway line, aggressively encroaching on my deployment zone, while the rest of his army hung back off the table edge. In response, I left my entire army off the table edge, and this time thankfully remembered not to try to seize. Mark brought his Land Raiders in together on the right side of the board (all 'sides' will be from my perspective, for the record), both loaded with Terminators, and Kharn bulking up the four-strong squad, his Predator in on the centre and sent his other Chaos Marines to the left, towards his objective. In response, I walked my XV88 duo on to the right, with the Fire Warriors clumped in front of them, the Deathrains to their left and the Piranha moving flat-out up the right board edge, while my 'el jumped up behind a ruin, on the far side of which was Mark's aggressive side, along with a squad of Fireknives, and the two Devilfish screened the second Fire Warrior squad and the Pathfinders while they hustled for a trench, the other XV88 and my Hammerhead anchoring my left flank along with the second Fireknife squad. The Night Fight rules turned out not to be much of an impediment, given how forward Mark had sent his one squad, and a torrent of close-range fire knocked four Marines out of it right from the start. In response, Mark managed to take out one of my two XV88s with lascannon fire, and that was it, everything else either falling short of seeing their targets or being blocked by disruption pods and cover. Unfortunately, that favourable exchange did not remain in force for long.

I blame the Land Raiders. I don't know what witchery enchants them, but they seem proof against all I can throw at them. My Piranha even managed to get close enough to give them a shot for once, and even scored a hit, only to roll a grand total of 4 on 2D6 for penetration. So much for the unstoppable power of melta! I did drop the forward Marine squad down to two models, who broke and ran, and shot the other squad down to just three Marines. Unfortunately, the Land Raiders, assisted by the Predator, managed to kill off all my XV88s, my Deathrains, the Piranha, my right-hand Fire Warrior squad and immobilize one of my Devilfish, while the four Terminators chainfisted the other Devilfish and shot up the left-most Fireknife squad, with Kharn himself making quick work of my 'el. While I still had a respectable amount of army left on Turn 5, with a full-strength Fire Warrior squad stuck in their immobilized Devilfish, the full-strength Pathfinders hiding in the trench, and my untouched Hammerhead, along with most of a Fireknife squad that had managed to reduce the weaker Terminator squad to half strength, Kharn was sitting on my objective, the three remaining unbroken Chaos Marines were on Mark's, and my Hammerhead didn't have the range to contest before the game ran out. Having lost control of my own objective and failed to shift Mark from his, I'd conceded the major objective, and with his unscathed Land Raiders and Predator compared to an exploded Devilfish and Piranha, I'd lost the minor objectives, as well. Having done a better job of playing to the mission than I, Mark walked away with a Major Win, and started me off with an inauspicous Major Loss, against one of the oldest and least well regarded codexes in the game. It wasn't WD-Sisters or Chaos Daemons, but still...

Round 2: Graham Wilson (Grey Knights)

Brother Champion

5 x Purifiers w/Halberds

Vindicare

5 x Terminators w/Psycannon

10 x Strike Squad w/2 x Psycannons, Psybolt, Rhino

10 x Interceptors w/Psybolt

Stormraven w/Twin-Linked Lascannon, Multimelta

Dreadnought w/2 x Twin-Linked Autocannons, Psybolt

Deployment: Pitched Battle
Major Objective: Seize Ground
Minor Objective: Moral Victory (destroy the opponent's most expensive Troop unit)

I'd been looking forward to a rematch with Graham, a friend from the old Mohawk anime club, since he just managed to squeeze out a Major Victory on me last game with a fair bit of luck. And having suffered a crushing defeat of his own first round, it seems we'd both been matched up against each other in the lower tiers of the competitors, which was just fine by me. Graham won the roll off and opted for his side, with a bastion-tower and maze-like ruin flanked by smaller ruins towards the edges of the table, while I got a tall radio tower, a shallow arc of three-storey ruins, and a loading dock full of to-scale boxes and shipping crates. All told, this was not a bad deal for me, since the radio tower and the ruins both provided excellent vantage points for my XV88s, and the shipping crates were just the right height to completely shield a trio of battlesuits. Graham wisely set up in as much cover as he could, his Rhino with the Strike Squad (the Moral Victory target) hiding in the maze-ruins, his Terminators, Dreadnought and Stormraven with embarked Purifiers behind the tower, his Interceptors off to the right in a bit of ruin there and his Vindicare down in the ruins on the left. As mentioned, I put my two XV88s on the multi-storey ruin, with the Pathfinders on the floor below them, and my lone XV88 on top of the radio tower, with a unit of Fire Warriors. The Hammerhead hung out on the left-most board edge, while in the centre my two Devilfish and the Piranha served as a wall of cover for both Fireknife squads and my 'el, with the Deathrains off on the right, behind the shipping crate. Lacking anywhere good to put them, and worried about shunting Strike Squads, I left my second Fire Warrior squad in reserve. We both rolled up two objectives, which we placed in areas of heavy cover close to our respective edges, and with my failure to seize the initiative, Graham made his moves.

The game started off with a fairly even trade. He managed to pop one of my XV88s and suppress most of my vehicles thanks to his psybolt-enhanced Psycannons, stunning a Devilfish and immobilizing and weapon-destroying a Piranha; in return, I shot down his Stormraven, blew up his Rhino, and killed a guy in the explosion. Unfortunately, the Purifiers who'd been in the Stormraven used their Deep Strike disembarkation to actually scatter ten inches closer to my Hammerhead, but for the rest of it I was pretty satisfied. The only problem? With the Rhino gone, the Strike Squad were now hidden behind a wall just a little taller than themselves, making them impossible to target. So much for the minor objective this round! On the other hand, with the Strike Squad completely obscured they couldn't shoot out, either, which meant two fewer Psycannons to deal with. Graham and I continued to trade fire, with my Fire Warriors taking three turns to get into position and put down that Vindicare, my solo XV88 actually taking three turns to do anything at all to the AV12 Dreadnought (though it was wrecked once I finally did), and my Deathrains and 'el popping up to pepper the Interceptors. The Interceptors opted not to sit back and get shot, however, and advanced into midfield, intent I suspect on shooting my 'el to death (his indirect-fire weapon could theoretically have picked away at the Strike Squad, and with some truly awful luck on his part even have taken them to half-strength or briefly broken them off the objective), shunting up to annihilate my Deathrains, and then sitting on my objective and forcing me to dislodge them, a difficult task. I say I suspect, however, because they didn't really get past step one. Exposed by their advance, the squad was blasted to pieces by both Fireknife squads, leaving my Deathrains unmolested and my own objective free for a Devilfish full of Fire Warriors to cruise over and claim. Graham's last chance came in the form of his Purifiers, who attempted to advance around the radio tower and climb the ladder to contest the objective on top, and despite the best efforts of two pairs of Gun Drones and both of the remnants of the Fireknife squads, it looked like he might just make it. But then, he failed to get close enough to the ladder to make it clear up, leaving him out of position when the game ended on Turn 5. With both of us sitting on two objectives, and neither of us having managed the minor victory (he only lost the Rhino and one guy, I didn't even lose that much), it was a straight draw, clean down the middle.

A word on the game's MVP; it really has to be Graham's Dreadnought. That thing took round after round of railgun fire, only dying in Turn 4, and before it went it helped dismantle most of my floating cover (my second Devilfish and Piranha) and clipped one of my Fireknife teams, taking out a member and nearly breaking them. More importantly, however, the damn thing tied up my sole surviving XV88 for almost the entire game, distracting it from putting railgun rounds into the Terminators on top of the bastion tower. While I did manage to pick off one or two with other weapons, I could never quite marshal the firepower necessary to deal with such a distant threat. Yes, it's important to play the mission, but you still have threats you have to address, too.

Round 3: Doug Simmons (Necrons)

Anrakyr the Traveller

Harbinger of Destruction w/Eldritch Lance, Solar Pulse, Gaze of Flame

Triarch Stalker w/Twin-Linked Heavy Gauss Cannon

Triarch Stalker w/Twin-Linked Heavy Guass Cannon

9 x Immortals

10 x Warriors, Necron Lord w/Warscythe, Harbinger of Destruction w/Tachyon Arrow

10 x Warriors

10 x Warriors

5 x Scarabs

5 x Scarabs

5 x Scarabs

Doomsday Ark

Deployment: Spearhead
Major Objective: Annihilation
Minor Objective: King of the Hill (objective in the centre of the table)

Ah, Necrons. I don't care what anyone says, Necrons are a good matchup for Tau Empire. As if to balance that out, though, I managed to fail the roll-off for the third and final time, letting Doug decide which quarter he wanted. This table was a particularly sparse, a desert table with a large Imperial military outpost off-centre and some low hills arranged fairly equitably around all four quadrants. Doug's choice was pretty arbitrary, mostly just setting up where he happened to be standing, though he did get the military outpost for one of his Warrior squads, so that worked for him. He placed his Doomsday Ark in the corner with a nice field of view, and arranged the rest of his army along an arc, close to the 12" line from the centre of the table. The terrain encouraged him to break up into two fire bases, with Anrakyr, a Harbinger and an Immortal squad close to the centre, the second Warrior squad in a small ruin just to the right and back from them, and the third squad on the far side of the ruin from me, with a Triarch Stalker on either side of the ruins and the scarabs spread out to go around the military outpost and ruins, poised to sweep pretty much anywhere on the board. In response, I hung back towards the edge, my XV88s in a bit of area terrain along with my Pathfinders, my vehicles arrayed to give cover to everything else. Failing once more to seize, as well, the fight was on, with Doug going first.

The early Necron shooting was pretty ineffectual, with no serious casualties. The biggest thing Doug managed, in fact, was to stun my Hammerhead, which proved more telling than might have been imagined when, on turn 2, he tore its railgun clean off and immobilized it; given the heavy emphasis on 4+ saves in Doug's army, not to mention all those lovely little T3 swarm-style scarabs, the loss of that S6 AP4 large blast was actually pretty serious. And of course, my first round of return fire was pretty weak, with that Solar Pulse forcing Night Fight onto me and some bad rolls crippling my range. I poked away at a few threats, sent my two Devilfish racing off into the two adjacent quarters and hid my Piranha way up in the opposite left quarter. But the loss of my Hammerhead's railgun ultimately proved to be the most telling blow Doug struck that game, and soon enough I was teaching him that ancient weapons are no match for the most modern of technology. My XV88s blasted the Doomsday Ark to pieces on Turn 2, and my XV8s began to lay waste to Doug's squads, wiping out the Immortals, along with an attached Anrakyr and a Harbinger, and chipping away at the Warrior squads. His Scarabs did manage to eat both of my Devilfish, actually taking one of them clean down to AV0 on the back in one charge, with little damage from my flechette dischargers, but ultimately that just left them out in the open and ripe for the shooting. One squad was obliterated by the combined firepower of my 'el and a Fireknife squad, while a team of Fire Warriors forcibly dismounted from the upper-right Devilfish actually charged in to support a lone XV8, the two squads managing to tear through the little metal buggers for only the loss of the XV8, after which they went on to reinforce my duo of XV88s who were also fighting off the scarabs. That's right, not only did I actually charge something with Fire Warriors, not only did I charge something and win, but I then went on to charge something else with that exact same squad, and win again. I could not have been prouder of those guys, I tell you what!

There was relatively little play for the minor objective, until the tail end of the game. Doug had proximity to it with most of his squads, but taking it would mean moving out into the open, something his 4+ Warriors were reticent to do in the face of so many AP4 missile pods. I actually ran a single Fire Warrior, sole survivor of a squad gaussed into oblivion by the Warriors in the military outpost, onto the objective at the end of turn 5, but the dice weren't with me, and he died a totally expected death when Doug started up turn 6. On the other hand, despite putting a full-strength squad of his own on the objective, Doug simply couldn't hold it; with the combined firepower of my 'el, a Fireknife squad and my Deathrains, I managed to shoot the whole lot of them to death over the course of just that single turn. With no squad to reanimate into the Warriors were removed for good, leaving the objective wide open and unclaimed when the dice decreed the game was done. When the smoke cleared, it turned out that Doug had scored six kills, while I had scored seven; combined with Doug's inability to hold the secondary objective, that meant I had scored my first unassisted major victory.  

So, a loss to Chaos Space Marines, a draw with Grey Knights, and a major victory over the brand new Necrons.  You'd think it'd work the other way around, but I'll take my victories where I can find them!

Overall Results: 12th of 16