Tau about that?

Deploying in cover.

Taking a break from painting a sea of green (more on that in a future post) I found myself scrambling an army together and marched over to HobbyTown-USA in Johnson-City where Da Masta Cheef and I decided to give his girlfriend's newly constructed Tau army a workout. It was my 1st game against the new Tau Codex, so I was expected to be gunned to death. We both took pics and are both writing battle reports  (in fact, he has beaten me to it, the-first-engagement-of-my-gfs-tau-army. (kinda of bold using 'engagement' and 'GF' in the same sentence, but that's the Cheef's fearless tendencies for you).

To make this fun for us, I have intentionally not yet read his battle report, just for the sake of perspective and to make it fun to compare and contrast the two against each other.

1500pts of Ultramarines

 So once again I mustered the ultra-flashback.army but with a few unit adjustments. This time I wanted to use both Legion of the Damned and Sternguard, but I was limited to only 5 Legion of the Damned. The whirlwind ought to make a mockery of the Tau's pathetic attempts to stay at arm's length from me. Muhahaha!

The Tau assemble.

The Tau totally camped out in this building. We suspect it is a brothel...

The Tau deploy the big guns. They never tire apparently, which is why they weren't allowed in the brothel...

"Sarge! Xenos scum have taken the brothel?! They're ruining our shore-leave!"

Once again we had diagonal deployment and once again I rolled Master of Cities for my Warlord trait! This is becoming a trend, but one that I like (so long as I am playing on this board). I tried to position the Whirlwind so it could strike deep into the Tau position but not be so easily picked out by his big guns. The Landraider was packed with Sternguard.

"Concentrate fire on the brothel, we MUST retake it!!!"

 We had 4 objective markers scattered about the board, in the pic above there is a building with black and white tiles to the right of the Land Raider. On the opposite side of it is an objective marker. On this side of it there is a squad of Tactical Marines that will quickly take it.

On the 1st turn, we just moved in a bit, taking objectives and getting our shots lined up. Tau has the first turn, where he attempted blast the Land Raider but failed to do any harm to it. He killed these marines:

The first to go to Ultramarine Valhalla!

The two on the bottom are from the squad that was stacked up in the tall building, the in the middle was in the squad under the squad in the tall building and the guy in the rear was sniped by from the squad that too the closest objective to my line.

On my first turn we killed only 3 Tau, one from a bolter shot and two from the scattering whirlwind.

Turn two would set the stage for who was going to have the toughest uphill climb...




The 1st stealthsuit unit enters the Tau's zone, while Da Cheef premeasures his target...



The 2nd Stealthsuit arrive in the Utlramarine DZ.

 These Stealthsuits changed the game for me, taking away my biggest gun by blowing up the Whirlwind! And getting the First Blood VP!!!

The Sternguard React.

On my turn two, after watching most of my other units getting picked apart by Tau firepower, my reserves arrived. More on that in a sec; check out how the Land Raider Turned around and discharged the Sternguard....

The results of the Sternguard reacting!

 ...it was a thorough and deep cleansing as they mowed the Stealthsuits down!

They arrived, with a boom box blasting 'Maiden's Children of the Damned.

The Legion of the Damned arrived, and they blew apart the Devilfish! On turn 3, they would be completely blown away by the Tau big guns! (Da Cheef hates metal and would have none of that racket in his DZ!) I think I stated that a 3+ invulnerable saves looks good on paper, but I can't roll anything higher than a 2, it doesn't matter anyway. Not seeing how they earned back their worth in points, when I might've had the same result with a lame scout squad! LOL!

The Librarian and his Terminator Squad arrives! "Focus on the brothel men, we must save those ladies!"

My Librarian shows up, focusing on dealing with the concentration of xenos filth that infests this particular zone. They dumped everything they had at the Crisis Battlesuit in the ruins, and managing only to knock out his drone...(Arrrgh! Frustrating dice!!!)
 

Imagine LOTS of tracers, lasers, missiles, bullets, women's undergarments, and obscenities blasting the terminators!

The rain of firepower that was dumped into this Terminator squad could've wiped out an Imperial Guard unit! Some how the Librarian lived, albeit with a single wound, and two terminators.

"Take the brothel! You are expendable, it is NOT!!!"

Notice in the pic above that there is only two terminators now? The other was shredded by the utterly INSANE amount of overwatch fire that this unit endured! It is a miracle that any of them survived. To add insult to injury, the Terminators failed to wipe this squad out on the charge and would be stuck in combat until the top of turn 4.

"HA! We did it!" "Sir, what about the other squad?" "...sigh.."

The Tau army warlord would come around the corner and kill the Librarian, earning the Tau a Slay the Warlord VP, while the remaining terminator would kill the Tau commander's partner and then charge the Tau commander, who in turn kills the terminator with overwatch shooting!

The sole survivor of the squad that started on the burnt out rhino.

 This guy would have his unit gunned down by Stealtsuits and Drones, but manage to dive into the door of the Shrine of the Aquila where he could see the objective on the other side of the door and the Tau squad holding it. He threw a frag grenade, which scattered and killed a Pathfinder...

"Liquidate him.:

 ...not taking that crap, that squad would line up, and gun down the trooper, who never lost sight of the goal while never seeing the odds stacking up so badly against him...

Moving up the street...

 This pic shows the crater, where for about 3 turns of the game I had a unit holding this objective. The big guns of the Tau reduced them to ash. just to the left there is another set of ruins where the surviving Sgt from the squad that was holding the tall building was hiding out, waiting for a last minute grab for this objective, however he was spotted by that gun drone and was killed.

"Sir, they just won't give up that brothel; it must really be the best in the sector!"

The Sternguard had deployed from the Landraider and tore apart the Tau that was on the upper level of the ruins, but they did not break, but instead went down stairs to claim the objective! ( !@#$% BASTARDS!!!!) while their Commander wandered over to see what the big deal was about these Sternguard. He even killed one! My Landraider killed that last Crisis suit, and turned it's attention on the Stealtsuits...

 ...while the machine spirit targeted the unit holding the objective at the Shrine of Aquila. The shots on the Stealthsuits failed to kill anything.

"Ignore him and he'll go away!"

The Sternguard ignored the tasty targets of the Tau Commander and the Stealthsuits and instead fired long range at the Tau holding the objective at the Shrine of the Aquila. Although they killed a good chunk of the unit, they just couldn't kill them all and the Tau simply refused to run away!

"We held this useless ruin for 6 rounds and NOW you tell us that the other place was a brothel?! Damn it!"

 This squad above held the objective for the whole game, taking only a single casualty on turn one. They shot down a lot of drones in this game and made a lot of saves! Well done men, you earned us our 3 VPs! While the Tau took two objectives, plus two secondary objectives to earn 8 VPs total!

So, my thoughts on Tau? They finally live up to their hype as the best guns in the galaxy! OMG -the amount of firepower! Staggering! Especially on the overwatch reactions! This would've been a sick game if I had brought the orks (which I almost did). The markerlights have always annoyed me, but in this game they didn't make too much of a difference. The shoot-around-corners missiles were a surprise but not one that felt I could do anything about. The Tau's use of cover saves was impressive as well. I look forward to seeing more of this army, and I wonder if Da Cheef's gal would let me paint a Crisis suit (simply because I have never painted a Tau model before)?

The sternguard, again, I love this unit and SO wish the Space Wolves had something this awesome!

All in all, a good game, although I kept wondering how the Space Marines earn the background they have when their in game performance would suggest otherwise? A rant for another time...

The cruel tutelage of Screech.

Over on the other table Screech has been showing Jim how to maximize the cheese in his army list while showing him that he can do the same with his. I hear it was a total bloodbath!

Honorable mention to Ben who showed up in the beginning to wow us with his High Elves! I hope to be sacrificing Orcs to him in the near future...

Till next time!