Birthday Bloodbath

Today, what little is left of it, is my 40th birthday.
Thank you, thank you!

 

I have had 3 birthday parties over the past week or so, but the one that was held on Saturday was a complete and total surprise! Redbird orchestrated a daring surprise party to be held at the local Hobbytown in Johnson City during what is typically our game night. She plotted this since July. Da Masta Cheef baked the cake and Rob decorated based on the design on my WHFB Orc banners. I saw all of the usual gamer gang and a few I haven't seen in years (Scott and Roscoe). Krishal gifted me with two models: an Ultramarinc dreadnought and a Marneus Calegar in Terminator Armor (bad ass! And thanks!). I got lots of great gifts (thank you all!), and I'm not discounting those, but the dreadnought in particular will have a bearing on the title of this post...

With what we thought were an odd number of players, it was decided that I would match up 2K points worth of Ultramarines up against 1k each of Cheef's Eldar and his GF's (Wolfwalker)'s  Fem fatau. Now that I think I about it, this army did poorly against both of these forces when they fought one on one, but now that they are teamed up...yeah, I dunno what I was thinking either. Oh, I forgot to mention that this game is my final send off battle for the 5th edition Space Marine codex. Krishal had a copy of the new one and all of use drooled on it before the games began.


A rather bold battleline for Space Elves. Make you wonder if they discovered spinach between editions...

They one the dice offs, and we ended up with the Tau's favorite board layout (the long end deployment zones) and the mission where we both have an objective worth 3 vps each.

The Tau defend the objective.

And a near bird's eye view of the Xenos line

Ultramarine deployment. Objective place in front of the Whirlwind.

 So, I chose to teleport in the terminators and bring the scouts on from reserve. Hopefully I could take the objective as it was easy to see that getting across the board in a conventional sense was far from likely to occur.

So on the 1st turn the xenos filth blast away. With 1st blood being claimed for the killing of my dreadnought! I haven't even owned the thing for an hour and they murder my birthday present!!!

...well, at least it will provide some well need cover saves!

 They also immobilized by venerable dreadnought and killed murdered a few battle-brothers as well. My turn rolls around and I tried to give back as good as I got. I tore off a brightlance from the viper, and killed a few eldar from some of the units running around, but no total unit kills.

The trees that I claimed for cover would become a battleground unto itself: The Battle of Keebler Park

Another battle squad dies to horrible die rolling...

Did I mention that I was using new dice? I switched out all my GW dice to a rather generic set of casino style dice, and well, my luck is my luck regardless of the quality of my dice it seems.

At some point on turn 2, my Landraider is brightlanced to death (hate those things!) and my sternguard are ejected. Wisely, Da Cheef has his wraithguard (i.e. the lizard riders) move into the woods for some cover. The sternguard failed to kill any of them and it took a shot from the devastators (proving all game why they suck with exception to this lucky shot) to fell one. However I did get the two survivors of a battle-squad to assault them.

These woods with flow with space elf blood!

All the marines in this pic just took part in the slaughter of an Eldar unit that got too close to the objective!

 On turn my Terminators led by my Librarian arrived but scattered way off the mark to end up in front of the building containing the other objective. I got to use a rather sweet psychic power that caused the Tau squad holding the objective to pretty much kill each other, while the terminators dealt with the rest. On turn 3 my scouts arrived and tried to claim the objective.

Let's get the thing!!!

The scouts would all die by the time the game ended though, as the Hammerhead sent a brutal blast of death their way that their BMX gear/armor failed to protect them from. So much for me claiming that objective!

No, THIS is my BOOMSTICK!!!
 

In the final round of the game my Librarian slaughtered the remain Taus troops, but they themselves couldn't claim the objective.

You'll never take us alive

 On my side of the table, the Waveserpent had let a squad of Dire Avengers out and final troop unit that was holding the objective was locked in combat with them when the game ended, thus leaving that objective contested as well.

In a final act of futility the last 2 Sternguard attempted to kill the Devilfish....and failed.

So in the end the Xenos filth won 2 VPS to my 1VP (we both had linebreaker and they had First Blood). It was a really tough match, and clearly the new changes to the Eldar have made them bad-asses, even a "fluffy" army as Da Cheef's Exodite Elves. The Tau are just bad-ass, but had her dice been rolling good (some of her rolls were on par with mine) this game would've ended even sooner.

Now with the new Space Marines codex out (and me itching to get it with my b-day money) I am eager to see how this army will do against these xenos now that I will have a sprinkle of "codex-creep" on my side! /)

(Note: Da Cheef wrote a report as well called surprise!)