Squeezing a 4000pt doubles game into a Spearhead deployment is fun, but I was air-dropped in as a last minute replacement last night over at a friends house... no piccies I'm afraid - but dynamic dialogue anyhow!
Team Rhubarb - (me and MarkC, rolling with the Tau and the Space Marines)
Za Tau... baby!
- Shas'O with Air Fragmenty Boomgun, plasma and Missile Pod
- 2 squads of 2 Crisis suits, kitted up with largely missile pods, flamers and burst cannons. 2 plasma rifles and a Shas'O Air Frag Projector special. All with targetting arrays, All units have an escort of 2 gundrones.
- 5 Stealthers with 5 gundrones
- 4 x 9 Fire Warriors with a Sergeant each.
- Kroot Horde of 20 kroot and 10 kroot hounds.
- 5 Pathfinders with a Devilfish
- Piranha (say it like Darla from 'finding Nemo' for full effect) with Fusion (meltagun)Blaster
- 2 Broadsides with Targetters and 2 Shield Drones
- 2 SkyRays with Smart Missile Systems
All vehicles have Targetting Arrays (5pts), Disruption Pod (5pts) and Multitrackers (10pts)
Za Smurfs ... bluey?
- 2 Biker Scout Squads (5ish)
- 4 Biker Squads (5ish)
- 1 Command Biker Squad (7ish)
- 10 Assault Marines
Neccies
- Destroyer Lord with Res Ord, Scythe and stuff (ok I never really saw him)
- 2 huge squads of Neccies (20)
- Unit of Destroyers (3)
- Immortals (5)
- Flayed Ones (10)
- Monolith with everything ...
D-Eldar
- 2 x AV11 multi darklance tanks (Ravagers?)
- 2 x Av10 transports (Raiders?)
- 6 Jetbikers
- 2 x D-Eldar Warrior Units
- 2 x large Evil Beast units, with warp beasts and razorwings
- Incubi unit with death weaponry
- Some mad-ass chosen dudes sporting S8 plasma guns, Eeeek!
Deployment
Table quarters and annihilation - Great! I set up my Tau behind a veritable wall of Smurf bikers. The pathfinders and the Broadsides get the high ground while the firewarriors sit in their transports and the SkyRays get their markerlights warmed up!
The Kroot horde infiltrate into the right flank building, filling all 4 stories with their smelly bodies, the Stealth team go out on the far left, deep behind enemy lines and looking to disrupt the enemies movement.
Game Highlights
First turn, They start, stealing initiative on a 4+! but Marks cunning scout move with his bikes mean that they can't get the shots and combat they want. They spend a frustrating turn killing a few Marine scouts and thanks to E-Eldar/Necron firepower (scary but VERY short ranged), I'm left unmarked.
Marks entire army races off into the wild blue yonder, intent on murder (hence I'm a little hazy on his army really). I focus on what I do best. 4 markerlights hit the Monolith, giving me a 2+ rerollable to hit and ignoring the 4+ cover save he should have. 2 shots later and the Broadsides have paid for themselves.
To follow up, the Pathfinder light up the AV11 Raider thingie and ping it with a couple of seeker missiles, only to fail. A Crisis Suit team does a duck and cover and blows it to bits with four missiles from the missile pods.
The Necron Swarms are looking threatening, until the Shas'O detachs and drops a S4 big blast causing 14 wounds into their midst! At the end of the shooting only 4 of 9 bases remain. Ignoring cover saves and dropping a template on swarms ... finger licking good! The Stealthers sneak forward and unleash serious firepower on a warbeast horde, but they only kill a couple. They retreat to the corner.
Marks Smurf Bikers make short work of the Beast Swarm on the right and consolidate towards the Necrons.
Turn 2: The Stealthers get charged by the Swarm of nine Scabbie thingies. 4 rounds of combat will result in a final ignoble death of the Stealthers ... ho hum. The Flayed ones flank and come in behind a SkyRay, stunning it. Nothing much else happens to my forces, so I wander off and make TEA.
The four unit scabbie swarmie thing I dlew up charges my fire warriors ... WS2, I2 S3 fightoff is embarressing in the extreme, but all the flapping hands goes his way, but my Shas'ui holds it together. He has many more attacks and 3 wounds each - and I have marginally better armour.
Ha, I'm back! Broadsides, all crisis suits, 9 firewarriors, 2 Smart Missile Systems, a Transport and the Smart Missile Systems on the Broadsides ALL target the Flayed ones and kill. 8 out of 10 (shouldn't that be cats?), ironically 8 out of 10 flayed ones WWB in my face - boo.
The Kroot make their first mighty move through cover roll and manage to throw 72 attacks at a 9 unit Necron horde. Cover save my ass - the Krooty muller them ... yeah! He takes 21 wounds after armour saves, and then gets kyboshed by the 21 fearless saving throws he has to take against the 2 remaining bases. The Shas'O has other problems, his move-fire-assault move jetpack thingie, back into cover kills all his gundrones ... must get new ones.
Mark's Bikers jump the D-Eldar Incubi and Lord and die tragically (but not without turning the Necron Lord into a tube of toothpaste using a powerfist - how graphic!), the rest of the bikers decide that eating Necron units is funny and get on with their job.
At this point the score is like "PURE WIN FOR THE MARINES AND TAU" - like 8-2.
Turn 3: Revenge of the Green Eyed Man/Robots...
Ok, looking good. But now we're in range and stuff gets nasty. First up, the beasts on the far left attack some bikes, but it turns out this is the command squad and its peachy. I couple of 'uber-marines' die and the beasts flee - but not far.
The D-Eldar also unleash S8 uber-plasma death on said command squad as the 'chosen' and Necron immortals in the centre get in on the game. The Destroyers blow up one of my devilfish - boo. The Flayers (all 8, fecking WBB rolls), charge the fire warriors and the warriors hold them (why can't these damned tau learn how to die properly), protecting the flayers.
They also shoot up my Piranha, which has been turbo-boosting a screen for the firewarriors on the left. Speaking of which, those FW's lose their combat to the scabs and run... ho hum.
5 incubi make a break for my pathfinders.
MY TURN! Broadsides target another AV11 Ravager (is that right?) and pop it open, S10 AP1 - yummy! The Markerlight sail into the Incubi and 2 seeker missiles make pulp of them. One is gutted by a Broadside shot (damn 1's) while 2 teams of crisis suits, a SkyRay SMS and the Shas'O manage to pulp the remaining Incubi.
The Kroot make another 'mighty' 6 inch MTC roll and assault a 6 man jetbike squad that's supporting the Flayed ones ... the Jetbikes get 1 attack each and kill 1 kroot. Unfortunately for them, 29 Kroot and kroot hounds then eat them. Mark's Assault marines valiantly come to the defence of the dying fire warriors as the devilfish moves away - denying a killpoint.
TURN 4: Last turn.
The D-Eldar and Necron have very little left. It all comes down to how much damage Marks command and other bikers have done in the DEldar and Necron backfield. Killing Destroyers and all sorts. The Terminators arrive and save the command squads, although catching those damned Beasts at I7 is tough work.
The Flayed Ones massacre the Assault Marines (eh?), I then 'bravely' charge my Kroot in, 84 attacks are stymied by the Flayed Ones 'SCARY FACE' roll. The Kroot fluff their Ld7 test and have to hit the neccies on a six. Not good, but doable. Awful rolling later and every save is passed. The Necrons kill 5 kroot in reply and suddenly I've got to roll a double 1 to not run ... with a sense of the inevitable the kroot are caught and massacred. Doh!
In any case, everybody attacked everybody else and the game ended with us winning by about 8 killpoints. The Broadsides were dependable and the SkyRays were just pure dirt against the D-Eldar.
Conclusion
Sometimes, going wappy with 4000pts on a 6' x 4' board just works. Tau are a great support army (like Guard) and work in great synergy with Space Marines and other 'attack' armies. In fact, for the most part we could play two separate games. On reflection, the Kroot were on for being 'man of the match', before being pipped by a unit of 10 lowly flanking slayers. Who killed a firewarrior squad, 28 kroot and an assault marines squad and managed more killpoints against me than the rest of two entire 2000 pt armies... (but mainly because I had a lot of bikes to hide behind).
Feed me back if you likey? Yes...?
