Today has been a good day for the Tau in the tournament (and by extension for some reason... the eldar?). I played against 2 armies, a marine player, and a Dark Eldar player. The marine player even offered to take a video battle report, so I’ll post that up as soon as it’s up on his youtube channel.

Before I jump right into the Dark Eldar report though, I’d like to give some thoughts on the army thus far. Since we are allowed to swap out anything we want at any time during this tournament, I actually decided to drop tank hunter USR and instead take swarm (this was mostly so I could yell “there’s so many of it!” every turn), which gives me a +1 to my cover, a vulnerability to blast templates, and an inability to provide cover for units (which is actually kind of funny).

Now, for anyone who plans to play a piranha kill team, let me say this... if you don’t have an ionhead backing you up (which would be pretty rare unless you’ve got rules like this tournament), it’s going to be very very difficult. The best strategy I have found so far is just to wait around until the ionhead shows up. Once that happens, I have the firepower to start making a push forward. The piranhas are acting solely as fire support for the ionhead, and to capture the tournament objectives (which even then they are hard pressed to succeed).

So...

Kill Team Game 3
Playing against Dark Eldar, the army contained a void raven (I learned its name today) as the flyer, along with 5 wyches and 4 incubi and 3 scourges... I think. There was a blaster in there somewhere with tankhunter (though it was the haywire grenade that got me)... and I’m pretty sure everything had either haywire grenades or haywire guns... but the rest clearly wasn’t important enough for me to remember... so sorry about the shaky enemy army list, guys.
We were playing 2 by 6 deployment, with the drop the nuke rule again.
I won deployment, stacking up the stealth piranaha with disruption pod in front of the piranha with swarm, and the scouting piranha behind it. My scout move took the scouting piranahaup the board to a building around 24 inches from my deployment zone (fancy that).
Meanwhile Dark Eldar deployed their forces around their bunker in their deployment zone.

Turn 1: Becoming more cautious in my experience, my first turn was all about moving flat out to end up behind hard cover (such good cover in fact that nothing could see me!).
The Dark Eldar rushed forward as far as they could, without much heed for cover.

Turn 2: And then the ion cannon showed up. The piranhas essentially swapped places in the heavy cover, and the ion cannon proceeded to obliterate anything it could spot (which was an incubi, a scourge, and a wyche.
The void raven came on in return, deepstriking into midfield and opening up with everything it had on the ionhead. This was a lot of big blast templates hitting on rear armour... but 2 lances and 5 blasts later, I was shaken and stunned... no worse.

Turn 3: Defending the queen (AKA the ionhead) the piranhas tore out of cover to bring swift melta and drone based retribution to the enemies of the Tau empire! They missed of course...
The void raven continued to lance my hammerhead, but just couldn’t break through the armour and cover saves. Meanwhile my piranhas got charged by the 2 incubi, 2 scourges, and 2 wyches. While the 6’s to hit protected them well, one haywire grenade snuck through, rolled a 1, which thanks to tank hunter was bumped up to 2, causing a glancing hit, which wrecked my piranha (though the other 2 were just fine).

Turn 4: Awakening from a brief slumber, the ion cannon tore apart the void raven, while the burst cannons chewed through 2 wyches and 2 scourges (they were getting close to my deployment zone!). Meanwhile one piranha fell back to help defend my deployment area, and the other made a run for the enemy deployment.
At this point, there was nothing the Dark Eldar player could do, he just made a run for my deployment zone.

Turn 5: with a pair of incubi, 6 inches away from dropping the bomb at the end of their turn, the hammerhead and piranha still in my deployment zone formed up an impassible wall of skimmers and then blew them to pieces. Meanwhile the second piranha scooted over to the enemy deployment zone, popped off its 2 drones (which each killed a wyche), and dropped its bomb (on a 3+ with +2 for having 2 friendly units within 3 inches!).

Final score:
Tau: 2 objective points, 9 personal points
Dark Eldar: 0 objective points, 4 personal points

Yay Tau! A solid victory for the forces of the Eldar, and for my own army.
I'll get that other report up as soon as its posted.

Kill Team Game 4

Another game from kill team, this one against that same Dark Eldar list as the second round. The result actually turned out pretty much the same.

Our mission was assassination (I had to assassinate a reaver jetbike with stealth and he had to assassinate my gun drone with FNP on the stealth piranha). We rolled a 4 by 4 board, with table quarter deployment, Tau going first. Lots and lots of terrain!

As always the piranhas stacked up, with the stealth and disruption pod one in front providing cover for the ones behind. On my scout move, the scout piranha moved across the board into some heavy cover. In response, all the dark eldar clustered up in a corner.

Turn 1: The piranhas all move 12 inches into range of a couple bikes, making sure to stay out of range of those jetbikes with blasters... and then miss all 3 fusion shots, and 6 drones shots.
In response, the jetbikes all turbo boost. No shots fired by either side.

Turn 2: The ion head comes on, and aims for the blaster wielding reaver with the ion cannon from 60 inches away. 3 shots connect and wound, but the 3+ cover keeps him safe. Meanwhile the piranhas continue to move flat out to stay safe.
The void raven does not come on and the reavers all turbo boost again.

Turn 3: The ion head fires again, but fails to beat that 3+ cover on anything. And just like before the piranhas shuffle about to keep up that cover save.
The void raven arrives! 2 lances and 4 big blasts later, my stealth piranha is wrecked, and it’s drones are running for their lives as splintercannons from the reavers pummel them (no wounds though).

Turn 4: Knowing my drone won’t survive another round of that madness, the hammerhead closes in on its target, unleashing its 3 ion shots, 1 hits, 1 wounds... and with a 2+ cover save... the reaver fails his save rolling a 2.

Final score:
Tau: 2 objective points, 3 rep points (really low again... since there was nothing I could do to score any rep points against his army... this will come back to bite me next round, since based on our rep points we can purchase upgrades for our squads.)
Dark Eldar: 0 objective points, 5 rep points.

So just like last time, Team Eldar wins overall, but the Dark Eldar beat me on an individual basis.

Still waiting on that videobattle report, but I'm done the first round of the tournament now!

Today I learned that 40k, despite its tactics, and army list schemes, sometimes just comes down to luck.

I played 3 tournament games and honestly have never had such bad luck. Now, I understand, that some of you will be skeptical. When I see players saying something is bad luck I say "yah that's how the game is... but probably you could have played better." The same is probably true for me... but I'll write the reports and let you decide.

Before I begin, the new round comes with a few bonuses. First, we get to spend our reputation from the previous round, I had 30 points, which let me give one of my piranha twin-linked shots! Yay! There are also new missions available! These include:
'Paint it Red' - Your kill team pretends they have a trail of paint behind them, every time they move over a piece of terrain they 'paint' it for their team. When the other team moves over it next, they paint over the terrain for their team. Person who paints all the terrain first wins!
'Deliver the bomb... part 2' - Like a harder version of the previous deliver the bomb. 1 kill team member is tasked with delivering the bomb. If he dioes, the bomb is dropped where he died and some one else has to go and pick it up to become the new bomb carrier. Get the bomb to the base and make it go boom!
These missions have been added to the previous ones, so all missions are still in effect from before as well.

Round 2 Kill Team Game 1

I started off against a Chaos Space Marine player. He's notorious at our club for playing the cheesiest lists he can think of, and this tournament is no exception. So his kill team is 4 terminators with combi plas x3 on 3 and autocannons on the 4th. His flyer is a tricked out daemon prince.

We rolled up for mission and deployment and got table quarters and kill the king (assassinate the chosen model).

He deployed first, putting everything as close to the center as possible. I deployed second staying away from the center and then scout moving one of my piranhas away from the pack.

Turn 1: The plasma terminators walked forwards 6 inches (1 in the direction of each piranha and the king, the autocannon hiding behind a building). They shot their combi plasma, 1 shot each on the front armour of each piranha. 3 hits, 3 penetrating hits, 3 failed cover saves (2 3+ and 1 4+), 3 explode results, 6 drones wounded in explosion, 6 drones fail armour saves, 1 drone fails (universal special rule) feel no pain.

As my kill team had been tabled and the flyer does not count towards our score for purposes of deciding breaking point, I broke on a highest leadship value of 0, and lost.

Total score:
Tau: 0 objective points, 1 rep point (rolled on a D3)
CSM: 1 objective point (for breaking me) and 13 (2 for each vehicle, 2 for every 5 models, and 5 for not losing a single one).

Law of averages dictate that the next game could not possibly go as badly, and to be honest (spoiler alert) it didn't. That said, I'm still not proud of it...

Round 2 Kill Team Game 2

I was playing against Blood Angels. He had a squad of 5 sanguinary gaurd and a storm raven as his flyer.
We rolled L shaped deployment and paint it red.

He got to deploy first, and placed everyone in a big line along his deployment zone. I did pretty much the same thing, and then scout moved over the first 2 pieces of terrain claiming them for my team.

Turn 1: The jump pack marines jump over the terrain, claiming 3 pieces for them.
Tau vehicles move flat out across more terrain, claiming a total of 5 (all piece of claimable terrain now claimed).

Turn 2: No Storm Raven. The marines jump over the buildings again and claim 2 of my objectives, can't shoot my front armour and can't reach me to assault.
No hammerhead. The piranhas move to melta the marines... and miss with everything (what a surprise).

Turn 3: A wild storm raven appears. It fails to damage any piranhas... The sanguinary gaurd CC the nearest piranha and manage to immobilize it and blow the burst cannon off.
The hammerhead arrives and then fails to kill anything. The piranhas move about and claim back my 2 previous terrain pieces that I had lost the turn before.

Turn 4: The storm raven drops its first piranha (the immobilized one), and the sanguinary gaurd move to claim back those same 2 objectives and then charge all my vehicles. This time, the 2 piranhas lose their fusion blasters, and the hammerhead loses its ion cannon.
Realizing I'll no longer be able to take down the fully armed storm raven without the fusion blasters or the ion cannon, and that it can wreck all my vehicles in a single turn of shooting, I book it. I like the movement phase, because no matter how badly I roll elsewhere, I don't need to roll there... sort of... the 2 piranhas move flat out in opposite direction, retaking my 2 objectives yet again, and then claiming my opponents original 3 with the other... sadly, I had to end both moves in terrain (because of the distance)... then rolled double 1s and was immobilized... which moving flat out means I crashed both of them... So I won the objective... but lost my whole kill team.

Total score:
Tau: 2 objective points, 2 rep points (D3 plus 1 for winning objective)
BA: 0 objective points, 9 rep points (2 for each wrecked vehicle and D3)

Needing to get 5 games in today (I failed to accomplish that goal... store closed...) I played my 3rd and final game, forging on in the hopes that my luck had to get better, because it couldn't get worse.

Round 2 Kill Team Game 3
My final battle was against a friend of mine, with Grey Knights. I didn't think he'd be so devious! He had 6 interceptors with psybolt ammo, a hammer, and a relentless psycannon.
We rolled table quarters and paint it red. He got to deploy first, and basically put 1 interceptor behind a line of terrain across the field... I took cover in my side of the board, and scouted out to claim 2 places.

Turn 1: All 6 interceptors shunt 30 inches. Claiming all 10 objectives. Game over. Beardy.

Total score:
Tau: 0 objective, 1 rep
Grey Knights: 2 objective, 4 rep.
Beardy...

And that's been my day. So some pretty bad luck, with my highest roll being a 3 (and my average roll being a 1). I'm sure I could have done something better (like hidden my piranhas entirely from total line of sight), but sometimes it really is just bad luck... and beardy friends.

I'd question if a teleport move counts as "moving over" terrain for the Grey Knights guy. That's a little ridiculous.

Bad luck, man... you've now worked up a lot of karma, go forth and spend it on our foes with miscellaneous-energy-weapon-related death.

Game 10 5th edition: Dark Eldar

Played a regular game yesterday because no one wanted to play kill team. My last 5th edition game. It would have been a nostalgic moment... were I not still on the worst luck streak I've had since 3rd edition.

I faced off against my usual Dark Eldar friend. He's been steadily adding to his list... so our 1500 point game was full of voidravens, venoms, and raiders (never found out what was in them...). My army was the regular 1500 from above. We rolled up table edges and kill points, and got down to it.

I won the role to deploy first, carefully placed my railguns and missile launchers for maximum effect regardless of where he put his paper thin vehicles, and my kroot infiltrated their way into a nice cozy forest just a little infront of my deployment zone... left my HQ and Piranhas in reserve... and passed it over to him. In return, I was greeted by a skimmer wall... classic dark eldar.

Turn 1: Everybody hopped out of cover and unloaded into his vehicles! 8 missile pods and 4 railguns later (many of which were either twin linked or BS4)... I had taken 1 dark lance off of 1 raider... yep... that's right. Missed all the railgun shots... failed to pen on anything but a single missile shot... and then rolled the 1 thing that wouldn't actually slow those guys down.
The dark eldar responded by exploding my 2 devilfish (1 lance each)... and then the hammerhead (yay for having lances to spare!). In a way this was comical because they were pretty close together... and first, the one exploded and killed 4 of the 6 fire warriors inside... then the next exploded and killed the last 2 from the first one along with 1 more of its own, and then the hammerhead exploded and killed 2 more of the fire warriors from the second devilfish, forced a leadership check which they failed causing them to run off the board... ha... ha... Meanwhile the void raven blasted my broadsides apart with bombs... which didn't go so badly... until the drones met an unfortunate end to failing their 2+ armour saves... and caused the whole unit to flee off the board. And finally, the venoms drove up, unloaded some incubi, shot down my 4 deathrains (who now had no vehciles to hide behind) with potshots, and then had the incubi charge my kroot in the forest getting a 6 for their run move and a 6 for difficult terrain (to which I was thrilled... until I lost combat by 9 and was run down).

So by the end of turn 1, it was as though my army had never been on the board at all, just 3 craters and 9 kill points for the Dark Eldar player were all that remained. I even tried to play another turn because there is no point setting up all your models and not seeing things to the end... but...

Turn 2: Commander and bodygaurd deepstrike in... scatter 12... land on a venom... and... roll a 1... to get destroyed. No sign of the wise piranhas who knew what would happen to them the moment they moved onto the board... so I threw in the towel.

Maybe it's a sign that I need to move on to 6th edition

My First 6th Edition Game! Imperial Guard

Yep, that's right, my first 6th edition game. Entirely out of the blue, and entirely unplanned. Just happened to be driving out to check on some business out of town, had my tau in the back, spotted a GW, went in just to chat with the store owner about the new edition... and the next thing you know I'm fighting a 2500 point battle against Imperial Guard.

As always when I am challenged to a game that I didn't expect to have, I throw tactics to the wind and drop a Farsight bomb in the list! The whole game was very good natured and relaxed pace. And when I say relaxed pace I mean slow... between the two of us working out all the new rules and his 300+ guardsmen to be moved and fired every turn... it took 6 hours! I'm not really sure what all he had other than the fact that he had no tanks. Just men and heavy weapons teams.

I on the other hand had Farsight, and the bomb. 2 units of 3 deathrains, 24 firewarriors in a pair of fish, 3 piranhas, a broadside and an ion head, allied to a farseer with prescience (proxied as an ethereal), 10 pathfinders (proxied as pathfinders...), and a fire prism (proxied as a skyray)!

We rolled up hammer and anvil deployment and crusade mission. 3 objectives. He placed 2 and I placed 1. He won deployment and immediately filled his entire deployment area with guardsmen (taking 2 of the objectives... forever...)... and still had 3 squads in reserve.
Meanwhile I deployed my tanks in a big triangle behind some cover so that everything covered everything else. We both rolled useless stuff for our armies in the warlord traits and nightfight happened! The game was on!

Turn 1: Nightfight was a real blessing since the guard force couldn't see me but I could see them. So I took potshots from over 36 inches away and they couldn't do anything about it. First turn was pretty uneventful though. The guard couldn't even see my Tau and only my long range weaponry was in range... and it was made mostly for tanks.

Turn 2: All of his reserves arrived. 100 guardsmen arrived right next to my left flank and shot the place up. Meanwhile the other 200 pushed forward. Devilfish were glanced, fire prisms lost all their weapons! A squad of deathrains disolved under the weight of 100 flashlight shots. It was a rough turn. But the Tau struck back... albeit badly... With no weapons, I decided I might as well tank shock my fire prism through the 2 50 man guard blobs that had just arrived. This didn't go well... a melta took the fire prism down in a blazing wreck... though the explosion killed 20 guardsmen... so... meh... Farsight and the piranhas both showed up, but farsight scattered away to a harmless distance, and the piranhas were not really geared for anti-geq combat. Firewarriors disgorged from the two devilfish... and proceeded to kill all of 2 guardsmen (they might be better in this edition... but non of that matters when you roll 17 1's).

Turn 3: the nearest 50 man guard blob charges my broadsides and the farseer... they win combat by 1 (they killed 1 shield drone... I killed nothing). I roll leadership 12... and my 400 point unit flees off the board. 12 of my fire warriors get vapourized by flashlights, while the other 12 get charged and tie combat with another 50 man blob. One devilfish gets glanced to death and the other becomes immobilized. At this point things looked bad... but it was actually quite an epic scene. An absolute sea of bodies held back by a wall of wrecked skimmers and battlesuits leaping back and forth behind them. People thought the game was lost, but I still saw hope! And with that, Farsight went on the offensive. The piranhas played the angles and sniped the meltas out of the nearby guard unit, pinning them with pulse rifles on the drones, while a combined offensive between the flamer of the remaining deathrain squad and Farsight's bomb pumping plasma and fusion into the nearby guard squad broke them. Farsight's charge range was abysmal though... 4... not getting into combat like that...

Turn 4: the battle was grim, but the tide was turning strange enough. The guard couldn't reach the battlesuits, couldn't stop the jink saved piranhas, and couldn't break the fire warriors in CC... some were pinned, some were fleeing. An entirely ineffectual guard turn. Not so for the Tau though! The piranhas swept around another 50 man gaurd blob and killed some more meltas... and some characters... and thus pinned them again... while Farsight swept in and absolutely ate them for breakfast in close combat.

Turn 5: My fire warrior squad finally broke, and were run down, and my piranhas squadron took an outright barrage that knocked it down to a single hull point on a single model... and the ion head was finally glanced to death. The fleeing guardsmen rallied... and were promptly trampled by the Farsight bomb.

The game ended in an epic scene... Farsight charging across no mans land, 10 battlesuits (between his bomb and the deathrain team) in tow, barreling down on a wall of guardsmen. Given a couple more turns I might have been able to clear off his second objective and maybe even kill his warlord (I was killing 50 guard a turn... and there were just 50 more between me and the objective... and with it his warlord!). But as it was, I lost 3 to 7. I had 1 objective worth 3 points and he had 2 objectives worth 3 and got first blood when he killed my deathrains. Overall a fun game with a really good guy. I'd look forward to playing him again sometime.

My thoughts on 6th edition...
Vehicles are definitely softer. With a smaller cover save, and hull points making glances a big deal... my tanks were just getting hammered.
The game is slower. This is partly because of the size of the army I played, and partly because we had to stop to check rules... but having a model by model check every shot and CC definitely slowed it down.
Battlesuits are beasts with the random J-S-J. And Farsight, thanks to allies and the new style of force organization chart is a very solid character in my opinion.
Having the black sun filters on everything made 1st turn less of a waste... though for hammer and anvil deployment we were both so far away we were next to useless on turn 1 anyways.
Farseer didn't really live up to my expectations... prescience didn't really add much to my shooting. Fire prism didn't hurt anything because of nightfight... and the pathfinders were very very expensive for what they did (which was sit on an objective in the back). I don't know if I'd take eldar as allies again.

Excellent work Carrelio, I did notice 2 things from your 1st post in this thread 1- A dark eldar unit moved-ran-charged- in 6th you cannot charge if you run, fleet now gives a re-roll on charge distance. 2- you talked about using piranhas to block a vehicle exit to kill the squad inside- you can't do this in 6th because they can do an emergency disembark from the vehicle ( kind of auto pinning but not killing them ).

As another poster suggested you should get some tetras- the Tau need all the force multipliers we can get till we get a new codex, and they are legal ( I carry a copy of the rule update with the 40k stamp on it if anyone questions them, so far no one has disputed them ).

Thanks for the read the first 10 battles (along with the kill team reports) were played in 5th edition. I may buy some tetras yet... but the hull points of 6th edition (as I discovered in my most recent game) makes me very uncertain about taking any kind of vehicle since they have definitely become more fragile.

Tau Vs Dark Angels - 1850 points

Sorry for not keeping this up to date. I have been playing some games, but I’ve been too busy to write them down. Today I lost one and I know exactly what went wrong so I will write about it in the hopes of learning from it and hearing what other people think.
The game was 1850 points, Mechanized Tau Vs Deathwing Dark Angels
Recently, I’ve been running a throwback to 5th edition list; I am very pleased with it as it grants very high mobility and moderate hitting power, and it takes full advantage of 6th edition rules and the most recent Tau errata. The 1850 list is actually a trimmed down version of my 2000 point list, but in some ways does an even better job of abusing the rules. Here it is:

HQ:
Helios Pattern Shas’el – 127 points
- Plasma rifle
- Fusion blaster
- Target array
- HWMT
- HWDC
- 2 Shield drones

Aurora Pattern Shas’el – 130 points
- Plasma rifle
- CIB
- Target array
- HWMT
- HWDC
- 2 Shield drones

Elites:
3 Deathrain Pattern XV8 Crisis Battlesuits – 166 points
- 3 TL missile pods
- 2 Target arrays
- Flamer
- Team leader
- HWBSF
- HWTL

Monat Helios Pattern XV8 Crisis Battlesuit – 77 points
- Plasma rifle
- Fusion blaster
- Target array
- Team leader
- HWMT

Monat Helios Pattern XV8 Crisis Battlesuit – 77 points
- Plasma rifle
- Fusion blaster
- Target array
- Team leader
- HWMT

Troops:
11 Fire Warriors – 133 points
- 11 pulse rifles
- Shas’ui
- BSF
- DC
- 1 Gun drones
Devilfish – 85 points
- Disruption pod

10 Fire Warriors – 133 points
- 10 pulse rifles
- Shas’ui
- BSF
- DC
- 1 Gun drones
Devilfish – 85 points
- Disruption pod

11 Fire Warriors – 133 points
- 11 pulse rifles
- Shas’ui
- BSF
- DC
- 1 Gun drones
Devilfish – 85 points
- Disruption pod

Heavy Support:
3 Broadside Battlesuits – 278 points
- 2 Target arrays
- Target lock
- Team leader
- HWBSF
- HWTL
- HWDC
- 2 Shield drones

Hammerhead – 170 points
- Railgun
- Burst cannons
- Disruption pod
- Multitracker
- Black sun filter
Total: 1999 Points

Hammerhead – 170 points
- Railgun
- Burst cannons
- Disruption pod
- Multitracker
- Black sun filter

Total: 1849 points

My opponent was playing an 1850 Deathwing list. On the site I use to build my army lists, this type of list had been discussed as something I would struggle against, so I was really glad to finally have a chance to demonstrate that it wasn’t as big a worry as everyone thought (shame I messed up so now it looks like I did struggle with it). I don’t know the exacts... but it was something like this:

Belial
Librarian (with divination; prescience and perfect timing)
4 x 5 assault terminators with missile launchers, and a mix of claws and hammers
2 contemptor dreads (1 with autocannons and missiles, 1 with assault cannons and missiles)
2 landspeeders with missiles and meltas

We rolled up purge the alien, and vanguard, and for tactics we both rolled useless powers (I got master of ambush... but none of my units outflank, and he rolled something that he never used either).

We rolled a lot of terrain... It was basically a city fight. My firing lanes were good, but when I won the roll to deploy and pick my corner first I made the mistake that would ultimately lead to my ruin. My opponent had lined up a wall of... walls... in 1 corner. I figured I would castle up behind them on turn 1 to avoid the Deathwing assault on the first turn. I deployed with all of my models (except broadsides who found a lovely tall tower to stand on, and the shas’el+helios suits who were in deepstrike mode) entirely out of line of sight from any firing lane I had set up to his side of the board. In return he placed the two dreads on top of buildings in his deployment zone with his librarian along with a unit of assault terminators, and landspeeders in the firing lanes coming up the middle of the board.

He failed to seize initiative, and the slaughter began.

Turn 1:
No night fight. I drifted my hammerheads out into the firing lanes, moved my deathrains to the rooftop... and mulched me some Dark Angels! The librarian ate precision fire railgun to the face, failed his LOSir and died. The first land speeder was slammed by missiles, and the second came down with a couple of pens from the hammerheads (the first one rolled a 1 on the table). One of my devilfish broke ranks and went along the long board edge, using terrain to keep it safe from fire. Anything that hadn’t shot moved flat out, and I spread out within the little enclosure of buildings to discourage deathwing deepstriking in turn 1.

It worked... sort of... Belial and his unit were unable to jump straight in, instead being forced to land outside my little wall of buildings and waste a turn doing nothing. The dreadnoughts ran for cover, and the terminators with the dead librarian began to make their way up the field. Not a model was lost on the Tau side... yet...

Turn 2:
My CIB shas’el and his helios elite showed up, aiming to land behind Belial... and scattering way off course (11 inches), but thankfully missing the terrain. I started to move out... but realized too late that the little bastion of buildings I had used as cover were a trap. I couldn’t get my vehicles out fast enough. A hammerhead made it out, a devilfish not far behind... The other hammerhead and devilfish were forced to try and break the line of terminators, skimming over them and moving flat out to gain some distance before the rest of the terminators arrived to close the net. The devilfish that had left the enclosure the turn before continued its trek. I put everything I could into Belial’s squad who had landed pretty close to my lines, and entirely wrecked his unit, killing 5 terminators, and wounding Belial once.

2 more units of terminators showed up and completely trapped my remaining devilfish, hammerhead, and deathrains. They still couldn’t hurt me, and the dreadnoughts couldn’t beat the cover saves of the vehicles... but my doom was in motion. Belial tried to charge the broadsides but failed his difficult terrain check rolling double 1s.

Turn 3:
My helios shas’el and his elite helios arrived, making the perfect landing... but then missing all their shots against Belial. The devilfish which had left my area on turn 1, arrived at the other end of the board, unloading fire warriors into terrain there. The escaping hammerhead got free of the buildings, and zoomed away across the board. The second devilfish moved to where the hammerhead had been... and immobilized itself... completely sealing the only ‘safe’ way out of the ‘net’ of buildings. The remaining devilfish, hammerhead, and deathrains, now surrounded by assault terminators were forced further back into the corner... Shots were fired, but nothing changed. Further bad news came when my commander bombed his second jump, rolling double 1s he was now standing 14” from Belial, with no cover in between...

Everything got charged. Belial charged the shas’el and helios. A unit each of assault terminators charged the hammerhead, the devilfish (multicharging the deathrains behind it), and the broadsides (making an amazing 12” charge through cover). The hammerhead exploded, and actually killed one of the terminators, the devilfish exploded, killing all the fire warriors inside, the deathrains lost combat by 3 and ran off the board., the broadsides lost 2 suits, and then fellback. Belial and the Shas’el began a very very long combat, where no one died; drones took hammer hits without damage, and the Tau dealt no wounds back.

Turn 4:
I moved what little I had left away from the killzone, and unloaded my fire warriors from the immobilized devilfish. The hammerhead’s big blast template and burst cannons scored 9 wounds against the 5 man squad that had taken out the devilfish... but was answered by 9 saves. The single broadside stopped fleeing but missed its snap fire shots. The second shas’el kept plugging away, but just had no luck hitting the terminators (he did get 1 hit with the CIB, but it wasn’t AP1, so it was saved with a 2+). The combat raged between Belial and my Shas’el... no wounds on either side.

The assault terminators closed in on the immobilized devilfish and the fire warriors, charging the devilfish, exploding it, and killing 5 fire warriors in the blast. The unit that had started its fight with the broadsides went to finish him. Snapfire downed 1 more, and the broadside actually won combat by killing another in CC... but all it meant was he was locked in combat with the last terminator in the unit for a turn.

Turn 5:
No night fight. Things looked bad for the Tau here. There really wasn’t much I could do, except keep what models I had safe. The hammerhead downed a dreadnought. The fire warriors rolled well, but couldn’t crack the armour of the terminators, and the shas’el outside of combat couldn’t get through the storm shields. A drone wounds Belial! That same drone dies to a thunder hammer attack.

Not much left for my opponent to do, he mopped up the depleted fire warriors with a squad of assault terminators and hid the rest behind buildings. Belial kills another drone but the Shas’el holds in combat.

Turn 6:
Still no night fight. Using the hammerhead, the second shas’el, and the unit of fire warriors, I manage to get a second unit of terminators down to 1 model. My Shas’el accepts Belial’s challenge, kicks him in the teeth, and kills him. Too little too late though. Without drones, he’s still stuck in the open and surrounded by assault terminators.

The shas’el gets charged, and I lose my warlord and his elite helios to an avalanche of lightning claws (something ridiculous like 20 wounds).

Turn 7:
No night fight. All the units with 1 model were wisely hiding. I fired the railhead’s template and wounded another 5 terminators, but still didn’t kill any thanks to the 2+. The CIB shas’el couldn’t even see a model (excellent hiding job on my opponent’s part).

My opponent couldn’t reach anything, so he didn’t do anything.

Game ends: Victory Dark Angels!

Points:
Tau – 9 points - Slay the warlord, First blood, Line breaker, Belial, Librarian, 1 x assault terminators, 2 x landspeeders, 1 x contemptor dreadnought

Dark Angels – 11 - Slay the warlord, Line breaker, Helios Shas’el, deathrains, helios, 2 x firewarriors, 2 x devilfish, broadsides, 1 x hammerhead

Comment: So there we have it. The game was still surprisingly close despite the massacre that went down in the second half. It was also a really good game. I lost because of a tactical mistake on my part, not because his army was better than mine, which is exactly how I want to be playing my games. I will now discuss in detail where I went wrong in the hopes of consolidating the mistake in my own mind and warning other who end up in my situation in future.

The entire issue in my opinion stems from a 2’x2’ section of board. Because this might be difficult to visualize otherwise, I have provided a picture:



As you can see, as the Dark Angels forces closed in, the only applicable way out was through the bottom left. Skimming over the walls in any other direction would land the vehicle or battlesuits directly next to a unit of thunder hammers, lightning claws, or a dreadnought with a giant number of shots. The issue was, obviously, that the single escape route (through the forest and behind impassible terrain) did not provide enough space for all my units to get out quickly... and once a vehicle became immobilized in the forest, there was even less chance of the others getting away. The end result was that my units bunched together and then all got hit at once.

To avoid this next time, the answer is obvious, don’t deploy there! Other than that though, I am happy with how I played. I do wish I had been a little more aggressive with my CIB Shas’el and his helios elite, since I felt he was dealing more pot-shots than surgical strikes, but part of that had to do with the massive scatter taking him a long way from where I had originally wanted him to be.

I hope you enjoyed the report, and learned from my mistakes in placement.

Questions and comments are appreciated!