For the Greater Good

• Thursday, June 17th, 2010
• 750 points
• Tau (Wadmaasi) vs. Space Marines (amrbean)
• Mission: Seize Ground
• We rolled for maximum objectives (7), but due to the lower-than-standard points limit we decide to just go with 5.  amrbean wins the objective placement roll-off and when they're all on the table I've done the one on the hill in the center and in the crater in the bottom-right and he has done the cluster of three that are generally in the top-left quadrant.
• Deployment: Spearhead
• I take the bottom-left quadrant and amrbean claims the top-right.  I win the roll-off and elect to have amrbean go first (and thus deploy first)

Deployment complete.  amrbean has a Drop Pod ready for a Drop Pod Assault with 10 Tactical Space Marines embarked, but Combat Squadded into two 5-man units and a Land Speeder in reserve.  The Rhino is also carrying a 2x5 arrangement.  I have a Devilfish with 6 Fire Warriors embarked in reserve.

End of Turn 1.  The Drop Pod crashed to the earth wreathed in a haze of ionization* scattering almost directly on top of an objective and blocking LOS from one of the XV88 Broadside Battlesuits to the Predator, while the Rhino moved up with an eye on the objective in the crater and popped a very effective cloud of smoke.  The Predator took some shots at my shas'el, causing 1 wound.  I poured torrents of fire into the Rhino from almost every type of weapon I fielded, but the God-Emperor was with its Machine Spirit that day and it passed a ridiculous amount of cover saves losing only the Storm Bolter.  Since the Drop Pod was blocking the Predator from view, the Broadside with no line of sight to the Rhino punched a railgun slug straight through the SM Captain in a glorious, gory spray as his Iron Halo failed to protect him.  Three wounds, you say?  Meet the Instant Death rule!

*Drop Pod Assault rules specify that it must open and all embarked units must deploy immediately, but neither of us were aware of that.

End of amrbean's Turn 2.  The crew of the Land Speeder were still getting into their power armored skivvies and didn't show up.  The Drop Pod opened one of its deadly petals (for our purposes thus becoming Open-Topped) and disgorged a 5-man TSM Combat Squad.  Promethium is some seriously nasty shit when your troops are only T3 and 4+ save; the 7-man FW squad was reduced to just the shas'ui in a single, searing blast of roiling flame.  He was merely enraged at the slaughter of his bonded brothers-in-arms, though, passing his Morale test and standing firm.  Another 5-man TSM Combat Squad disembarked from the Rhino, but in such a position that they weren't quite in rapid fire range of the Sniper Drone Team and XV8 Crisis Battlesuit team on the plateau.

End of my Turn 2.  The Devilfish arrives and, in a fit of panic at seeing all the smoking Fire Warrior corpses, the pilot doesn't move far enough forward and ejects his passengers out of rapid fire range of the disembarked TSMs.  To help cover for this gaffe, both the shas'els unleash plasma and missile fury at them, killing 3 of 5 (I think)*.  One of my Broadsides earns his points by smashing a railgun slug deep into the Predator, reducing it to wreckage, while the other fails to hit the broad side of the Rhino, which the Sniper Drones also plink ineffectually at it with no help from the team leader's markerlight.  The Deathrain XV8 team has good shooting luck, decent wounding luck, and horrible saving luck, not harming the lascannon-including Combat Squad near the crater objective.

*We were also playing And They Shall Know No Fear incorrectly, so they didn't take a Morale test.

End of Turn 3.  We started getting sloppy with the picture-taking, so a lot is missing.  The Land Speeder arrived by Deep Strike, coming down almost where the Devilfish is in the picture, but the crew were so happy to've gotten dressed without the God-Emperor's help that they flubbed their multimelta shot at the Devilfish, which was just inside half-range of the Multimelta and thus also too close for its disruption pod to've had any effect.  The Rhino turned and moved toward the Tau position, but twin-linked S10 AP1 shots are not to be trifled with and it detonated in spectacular fashion, though all of its troops were unscathed.  The Land Speeder met an identical fate.  With their path forward clear, the Fire Warriors embarked into their Devilfish which zoomed off toward a far objective.

I think we didn't take a pic at the end of Turn 4, so I'm hazy on the details.  The TSMs move + assault out of the crater, making sufficient difficult terrain tests to easily cover the distance, tying up a Broadside in melee but causing no wounds.  The lascannon-wielding TSM takes the last wound from the shas'el that was on the central plateau, inflicting a "wasted" Instant Death shot.  The Drop Pod also erupted in a shower of shrapnel; I think one of the TSMs was lost in the metalstorm, but they were not pinned.  The Devilfish swims a bit more towards the top-most objective, disembarking its drones first so they can attempt to contest the objective.  Lots of consolidation toward the control points that are in play.

End of Turn 5.  The Sniper Drone Team gets so electronically excited at just 1 SM remaining on the right that they whiff every single shot.  The Deathrains have no luck punching through power armor and sidle forward for a possible assault + contest, while the remaining shas'el bears down on the same target behind an ineffective fusillade.  We roll to continue or end the mission...

..and we continue into the middle of Turn 6, after amrbean's player turn.  The TSMs continue their desperate struggle against the Broadside, but 2+ is a tough armor save to crack; the Broadside endures it all and actually connects with a few wild swings to bash some SM heads in.  In exchange, though, the lascannon melts the shas'el limb-from-limb, marking the first time amrbean has killed both HQ choices.  I don't recall what the TSM squad in the drop pod crater did; looking at the picture they must've finally put an end to the Fire Warrior shas'ui.

End of game.  The Devilfish moved up to claim an objective, disembarking the FWs within control-distance but out of rapid fire range. I'm no good at judging distances.  The Sniper Drone Team leader finally finds his range with the markerlight again, allowing his drones to riddle the lascannon-wielder with holes and sending him to meet his God-Emperor face to face.  A similar fate befalls the remaining few TSMs as the Devilfish, Broadside, and Deathrains fire, fire, and fire again, whithering them away to nothing.  To add insult to injury, the XV88 Broadside seems to get the hang of this clumsy hand-to-hand stuff and puts down the remaining TSMs who had engaged him.  The mission ends in tabling that did not come easily.

Victory is Mine

amrbean and I played our fourth match Monday, 2010/05/31, and the luck of the die (and a bit of tactical fumbling on both our parts) brought me an incontrovertible, but hard-fought, victory.  We rolled Capture and Control for the mission and Spearhead for the deployment, with 750 point armies (my cadre list is in the sidebar).  amrbean won initiative, choosing to go first (and thus deploying first).  We deployed, with amrbean  putting it all on the line while I reserved my Devilfish with embarked 6-man FW squad.  I failed to seize the initiative, and the game was afoot!

We tried to livestream the game over justin.tv, but the broadcast quit after 20 minutes or so and I have no idea why.  We didn't bother with trying to get it working again.

Turn 1: I believe this is in the midst of my movement phase at the bottom of Turn 1; I forgot to take a pre-game/post-deployment picture.  The first turn was a bit of shuffling around and some ineffectual shooting on both our parts.  In subconscious penance for being at 759 points during our last game (SMS instead of burst cannons on my Hammerhead), I forgot that my XV88 had a targeting array and thus played with BS3 and 739 points.  And I know for a fact that I rolled a few 3s during the game that would have been hits if I'd remembered that TA.  *sigh*  I don't think his (twin-linked!) railguns managed more than a weapon destroyed and an immobilized all game.

Turn 2:  My reserves failed to arrive.  Volleys of fire splattered 2 Kroot Carnivores and nicked the armor on my forward-most shas'el.  From off-screen, the Predator manages some nice long-range shooting and immobilized my Hammerhead almost right on top of my objective.  Lots of wild return-fire from my units in the thick of the scrum had no effect beyond destroying the Rhino's storm bolter.

Turn 2: Up at the top of the battlefield, though, amrbean 's Predator swung wide and is ready to come charging down the edge; its placement will cause me some panicked indecision later on.  My Stealthsuits with their combined total of 18 shots per turn have managed to gun down the foolishly heroic Captain.  I mean, really, what was he going to do, play ring-around-the-rosie with them?  They were hopping up and down the piece of tupper-terrain, there, staying out of line of sight of the scouts and out of melee range of the Captain.

Turn 3: I'm not sure exactly when this picture was taken; itmust be in-between player-turns in turn 3.  From the time-stamp it's several minutes later, but look how far forward my Stealthsuits are from the last pic.  It's before my player turn 3, though, as my Devilfish has not yet arrived from reserves.  So I'm not really sure WTF is going on here.  The Dreadnought smells blue blood and is bearing down on the wounded shas'el and the Rhino is trying to get its embarked 10-man SM squad as close to my objective as possible, but other than that I have no recollection.  Looking at the next pic in line amrbean is still moving his units, as the Dreadnought winds up in a different place.

Turn 3: This is the end of the turn.  My Devilfish+FWs have arrived and made a cruising-speed move directly toward amrbean 's objective.  They've tantalizingly stopped in front of the Predator, blocking one of its lascannons and tempting it mightily with a side-armor shot.  I believe I scored another weapon destroyed on the Rhino, which upgrades to an immobilized in the absence of more than 1 weapon.  The Kroot are guarding the objective, the Stealthsuits are looking to mow down some scouts (having taken a casualty but holding firm), I don't recall what I did with the Hammerhead, and the Broadside keeps not blowing up the Rhino.  Also, amrbean is playing host to a chest-burster, apparently.

Turn 3: Effectively the same picture?  Timestamps bear that out.  Maybe I was trying to get the flash to work, I dunno.  I'll leave it here for posterity!

Turn 4: End of amrbean's player turn.  ASMs have been in hiding most of the game, locked in combat with my shas'el.  They've managed to take him down and the survivors are looking to do the same to my 2nd one. Look how dejected amrbean is that his Rhino has failed to repair, and his TSM squad has disembarked + run at my Kroot.  I'm pretty sure the Predator took a snapshot at my Devilfish as it swam past and blew off its  nose-mounted burst cannon.

Turn 4: I dispensed a lot of death on this turn.  The TSM squad was on the receiving end of the brunt of it: the Kroot rapid-fired their rifles, the Hammerhead blasted away with both burst cannons and the ion cannon, the Broadside put a railgun slug straight through someone, and the Devilfish squirted forward only to belch 6 Firewariors who took aim with their pulse rifles. Results: even with a 3+ armor save, that's a lot of weight of fire to try and survive, and only 3 did.  One guy with a lascannon, one guy with a flamer, and one guy with a bolter.  My surviving shas'el gunned down the ASMs while the Stealthsuits riddled 3 scouts full of holes and continued forward to try and contest the objective.

Turn 5: We got so wrapped up in it that I didn't take any mid-turn pics.  amrbean's flamer-armed TSM took out all but 3 of my Kroot with a single shot (no armor saves, damn useless Kroot!) but somehow they held the line and the objective.  He gambled on a turn 6, assaulting his scouts off the objective and into my Stealthsuits, managing to bring them both down but leaving the objective uncontrolled.  The centrally-placed Fire Warriors turned their iron sights on the no-longer-in-melee scouts and managed to put one of them down.  My Devilfish rammed the throttles to the stops, ejected the drones, and sent them forward to contest the objective come turn 6.  Between the Kroot, Hammerhead, and shas'el (who'd played a near-thing game of chicken with the Dreadnought) the remaining TSMs were buried 6 feet under.  Mike rolled for continuation-of-mission and...

It's game over, man, game over!  Look at that thousand-yard stare.  With my Kroot on my objective and amrbean's lone surviving scout about 3.5" away from his objective, victory is mine.  It was an intense game that could've gone either way; amrbean's dice went completely cold for his Turn 2 or 3 shooting phase, and my mine were almost on fire for my corresponding shooting phase.  Rules-wise we did very well, I think, the biggest blunder being some incorrect shooting-then-running and moving + firing heavy weapons, which we were able to immediately redact so they didn't affect the final outcome.  I got REAL lucky with the flamer template needing to be placed at the shooter's base, not the barrel of his weapon, or all of those Kroot would've been dead.

Just another end-of-game angle.

Just another end-of-game angle.

It was a gg all around and left us feeling comfortable enough with our grasp of the rules that we'll be playing a full 1,000 point game next, whenever that may happen to be.

Victorus aut Mortis!

Chapter Master,

With heavy heart I must report I have failed the Emperor and disgraced the Raven Guard chapter. My unit made contact with a Tau force in a Spearhead deployment. It was clear from the get go they were after our Comms relay and we were after there objective. I had the Rhino with 10 tactical troops inside up front, along with a predator and dreadnaught. I kept the sniper scouts back near the Comm relay and the Captain stood near the side waiting for a flank. Luckily, we had the drop on them and moved into position first.

Since the Rhino and 'naught were out in the open, I ordered both to pop smoke right away. The dreadnaught fired at one of their damn mechs causing a decent amount of damage. What may be our failing was that the predator, equipped with an autocannon and two lascannons, fell just short of its target.

The Rhino continued to move forward; B-lining for their objective. A lascannon on the hammerhead knocked out an engine on the enemies hammerhead, causing the vessel to become immobilized. The assault marines continued to do what they do best, assault causing a wound to another mech.

Sadly, this is where things begin to turn around for us. Since the Rhino became immobilized, the marines shuffled out and ran for the objective taking heavy losses. The snipers again couldn't see any targets, but the predator destroyed the weapon systems on the enemies devilfish.

Hoping that the combat would continue, I ordered the snipers to move off the objective and engage our attackers. They succeeded in their attack, but were unable to reclaim our objective in time. This was our failing. Our final few tactical marines worked on clearing out the enemy objective which was surrounded by disgusting Kroots. Our flamer laughed as he took out 7 of the 10 units. But in the end it was too late. We failed to even contest their objective. And while they failed to get close enough to ours, I had ordered the snipers to move away; which lead to our defeat.

One thing I need to work on Chapter Master: Paying closer attention weapon types.

I hope my next engagement with the Tau will be a larger one and I will not fail the Emperor.