Menage a T'au

 The stars have aligned, the seals have cracked, the visionaries cry out warnings and omens while only the gods pay attention. Yes, it's again time for  Da Masta Cheef and I to play a game. My first since November of '21st actually. We decided on 850 points for this match up. 

Regular readers (or a more fitting descriptor might be "irregulars") may have followed my exploits in building and painting up my Deathwatch army. And now finally I get to give them a shakedown. Cheef wanted to only play 850 points so I worked up a list. 

The Patrol is lead by my Deathwatch Librarian. Oddly I have names for the Sergeants leading my squads but not for the chaps leading the army. An oversight I must correct soon. He is armed with a Bolter and a Force Sword. He has the relic The Tome of Malcador and has been upgraded to a Chief Librarian. This allows him to know three psi powers in addition to Smite. His three powers are Premorphic Resonance, Fortified With Contempt and Psychic Cleanse. The Tau, eschewing the Psychic Phase altogether, means I will have a phase all to myself that I can exploit against him. Or attempt too anyway...

The rest of the force was gathered up. Featuring two squads of Deathwatch Veterans (Squad Chroneth and Kill Team Neverness), a Deathwatch Terminator squad with three Assault Cannons), a Veteran Bike Squad and a Razorback. It's almost the majority of the Deathwatch models I have painted in the past six months. 

857 points of Deathwatch.

All of this was packed up and ready for transport with the intention of killing Xenos when, surprise, the Adepta Sororitas showed to cut in on the action. So we agreed to a three-way tussle. But first, let's check out the Tau. 

The Tau (or T'au to you young 'uns) are known as the Dal'yth Tau Second Line Auxiliary Cadre. They get the abilities of being part of the Dal'yth Sept. They are led by Sub-Commander 'Firestorm' in a Crisis Battlesuit. He has an array of weapons (Airbursting Fragmentation Projector and a Thermoneutronic Projector; nasty!). 

A Cadre Firebaugh and a Kroot Shaper round out the Tau HQ choices. Two Strike Teams Breacher Team, Kroot Carnivores and Hogziliary Strike Team round out his troops. A Piranha rounds out the army.  They came out to be 847 points, ten point less than the Deathwatch and vastly outnumbering them. Seems like a good challenge for my Deathwatch... also, Cheef's girlfriend's son Frankie was assisting him in his first game ever. He was going to control the two Strike Teams. You can see more details regarding the Tau perspective of this battle on Cheef's site. 

Septicons unite!

...and then the Sisters show up! Mike (formally know as Rt Voril) just got this army, less than two weeks ago, and they are just coming out of the assembly stage, so excuse the lack of paint. Mike is a great painter so I have no doubt that these will look amazing in time. His force is led by the Highlord of Terra herself, Morvenn Vahl. I had to laugh at how over the top she was. I mean, her printed out Battle Scribe entry was two and half pages long!  She was joined by two squads of Battle Sisters, a squad of Paragon Warsuits, and a Retributor Squad. 

Ecclesiarchal transports are rather crude affairs.

We found a simple three-way set up on a Google search and used it to lay out our deployment zones. We chose the Storm Their Lines mission but then we decided to do something a bit silly and pull four twist cards. We got Champion, which augmented one of our Character's Wound and Attacks by 2+, and their Strength and Toughness by 1+ , System Interference which reduced the range of Auras, Indescriminate Projectiles which rained down mortal wounds every round and finally Hatred. 

Deployment.

The Adepta Sororitas went first, then the Tau and finally the Deathwatch. The first turn was mostly a movement game. Sure there were some small fire exchanges, mostly between the Paragon Warsuits and the Kroot. The Tau on my side were fixated on taking out the Razorback which they nearly did. By the time it was my turn, that poor tank was down to just a single Wound. A single one of my bikers was killed, which is actually impressive that only one died from the hail of fire that rained down on it. 

"Bring down that tank!"

With only one Wound remaining the Librarian and Kill Team Neverness bailed out of the Razorback as it's integrity was quickly collapsing under the whittling Tau onslaught. The Kill Team took the Objective in the crater while the Librarian moved to support the nearby bikers. The Deathwatch Veterans with the four Heavy Bolters almost completely deleted a Sister squad and once Morale was rolled for, they were indeed deleted. The bikers charged into the Tau squad. The Librarian was needing to do this also and botched his charge roll. Using a CP reroll he botched it further with a roll of two 1's. He was totally exposed. To my dismay only a few of the Tau died, thanks to Cheef's notorious ability to make Saves and pass Leadership tests. 

End of Turn 1.

At the end of the first Turn the Adepta Sororitas have 1 VPs, Tau have 2 VPs and Deathwatch have 1 VPs. 

Turn Two was a blood bath compared to the previous round. The Hogziliary were wiped out by the approaching Sisters. The Kroot were also targets of these fanatical warrior women, with only one left remaining. 

Nothing can save their bacon.

The Librarian was mowed down as predicted. Being left out in the open due to a failed charge, he just couldn't survive having more than half of the tau army blasting at him. The added Toughness and two Wounds only made his demise take a little longer.  It was a bummer.

But at least the bikers got to kill some more Tau in the close combat phase.

I honestly thought the bikers would've been better than this, but eventually their foes were defeated. Again, Cheef's uncanny ability to roll successful Saves stymied my 28mm ambitions...

The Tau in the tower target the Librarian, ready to remove his final Wounds 

The Terminators arrived on my turn and they mowed down the Tau squad on the hill. Three Assault Cannons in a single squad is.... awesome!

Terminators wipe out a squad of Tau.

By the end of Turn Two, the Adepta Sororitas have 2 VPs, Tau have 4 VPs, and Deathwatch have 2 VPs. 

The single Kroot holds an objective. 

We contemplated stopping here as it was getting late and Mike and I didn't suppose that we could catch up to the Tau's current points. We agreed to play one more turn. 

Turn three. 

Beginning of Turn 3. 

Turn 3 starts off with the Sisters making a bold ploy to take an objective in Tau zone. It works, as the final Paragon Warsuit kills the final Kroot and takes the objective. 

I pushed Mike in declaring a 12 inch charge ("You got nothing to lose and you'll be claiming the objective if you kill them.") And as you can see in the pic below...

Yeah, double 6's.

...the Sisters made the charge! 

There was much slapping and scratching.

Conveniently, he was able to position those models to get some of them close enough to claim that objective. 

On the Tau turn, the Strike Team wiped out the Paragon Warsuit. And the Tau also eliminated the Veteran Bikers. The Tau leader charged the Terminators, but it didn't go his way and he took a lot more damage than he dealt .

The Warsuit charges the DW Termies.

Also of note was the charge of the Kroot Shaper (painted in a fabulous red tone) against Morvenn Vahl. Hilariously, that guy was hidden from Mike's POV for the whole battle as he pretty stayed in the same sitting area at the table for much of the game. So he didn't see it nor did he know that it was even there until it jumped out and charged his leader.. It really didn't end well for that poor Xenos bugger, but the surprise reaction was quite amusing regardless.

"Surprise!" "Was he there the whole time?!"

Not much happened on my turn other than the Deathwatch Terminators killed the Tau leader in the close combat phase. 

Thunder hammers and power fists for the win.

Killed 'em dead! 

Down with the Xenos filth! 

And that was all. The Sister took those two objectives, in addition to holding one in their own Deployment Zone to accrue 5vps in this turn taking their total score to 7vps to the Tau's 5 VPs and the Deathwatch's 3 VPs.  A win for Mike's new Adepta Sororitas army!  Even if we did have more time to play I doubt the Tau of Deathwatch could have caught him in VPs let alone surpass that score.

In hindsight, I had an uphill climb from the get go. There was no cover or LOS blocking terrain in my DZ, so I felt like a sitting duck for most of the game. My army was built around the Librarian being able to dish out buffs to the other Deathwatch units throughout the game but losing him before he got a second turn was a painful event for sure. Another factor was that Deathwatch have an ability (Chapter Tactics) called Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters which allows the Deathwatch to rerolls hit rolls of a 1 in melee, but also allows them to select a Battlefield Role  (i.e. HQ, Troops, Elites, Fast Attack, Flyer, Heavy Support, Fortification, Dedicated Transport and Lord Of War) and throughout the whole battle the Deathwatch can re-roll a wound roll of 1 against that Battlefield Role. Yeah, I totally forgot that. We were amused that my Xenos Hunters were better at killing humans than they were actual xenos...

The Tau were impressive. The Sept ability to always be treated as if they were in light cover from ranged attacks was a very beneficial thing. My Warlord trait could have removed that from at least one unit at a time had I remembered it. Or, had he lived long enough for it to matter. Frankie seemed to relish blowing up the Razorback. It's a shame we weren't playing an older edition of 40k when exploding vehicles were more dramatic, and common, thing to observe. 

And finally the Sisters did very well. They took a lot of punishment but, at the end of the day, they executed the mission parameters whereas the Tau and Deathwatch were more into killing targets than they were objective acquisition. And it cost us. 

It was a fun game, and it's got me thinking about playing more with the Deathwatch and getting a better grip on their rules. 

Games here...

As an aside, there was a huge turn out at Hobbytown that night. And it was noisy! But it was very cool to see everyone and their models. I got to observe a few very hard fought and challenging games, and there was an atmosphere of fun and enjoyment in the game hall. And that is what I missed most over the past two years of lockdown restrictions and social avoidance, and I hope to be back at it again soon.

...and games there!