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.