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Hey all,
As noted in the stealth thread, I got in 4 quick games this weekend. None of them were huge and each was specifically meant to look at some areas I was interested in myslef as well as see if I could beat some old nemesis with some new formation tactics.
In effort of time, I'm going to get down to just some summary points. Busy week for me this week - but some points of interest follow:
In game 1
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1650 points
Tau vs. SL IG
Results:
W - IG 2 objectives (blitz & capture the flag)
L - Tau: 1 objective (blitz)
IG player, long time Epic vet, long time IG vet in epic and 40K, very wise player and has good knowledge of Tau past and present. I had my hands full here.
IG player only had a limited time and wanted to see if he could get a quick 1500 point game in... except when he built his army, he wanted another 150 points... lol, so 1650 is where we landed. We agreed to no fliers.
IG:
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650 Leman Co (10 tanks)
500 Shadowsword Co (3 SHT w/3DC each)
500 Reg HQ (13 infantry with SC + 7 chimeras)
he rolled a 7 for commissars
Tau:
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425 AMHC + 2 swordfish replacements
425 4x rail-head Cont., +2 Rail-head upgr, +2 swordfish replacments
200 8 FW Cadre
600 4x Crisis Cadre, +2 crisis, + SC, +3 stealths
I wanted to see the armored cadre and the crisis as infantry with the stealths.
IG wanted to kill the tau quickly.
4th turn End game situation:
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TAU
- Tau had 2 HH in one formation and 3 HH left in the other, both were broke on turn 3 and didn't rally for turn 4 action - so were sitting ducks. They were positioned to contest the IG's land grab actions in turn 4 and were even outside of 30cm for optimum rally potential, but it was not meant to be... so both sat on turn 4 while the IG went stretch crazy with the Reg HQ.
- The crisis suits held the enemy blitz objective just after breaking the leman formation which was now down to 3 tanks and was holding the IG blitz and one other obj on the IG side. I don't recall them losing any units.
- Tau FW formation just died bad inbtween turn 2 and 3.
SL IG
- Leman co broke in turn 3 but rallied and trippled to hold the IG blitz obj and even got hidden pretty well, with 4 models he had 2 blast markers on him (the commisar had died in turn 2). The stealths & crisis, after giving up on trying to hurt the shadowswords on turn 2 and turn 3, doubled over to the lemans on turn 4 to kill a single leman and break the formation thus holding their blitz.
Shadowswords... my nemisis. I didn't have enough to take out the lemans, much less deal with these guys. I pounded the lemans with both hh formations and tried to stay out of the shadowswords range but the terrain didn't allow it. A sacrifice manouvre had to be made - hope for hull down, and engage the lemans in a FF... the result was the lemans almost dieing but making great rolls in turn 3 but making average rolls needed to keep them alive. RA 4+ is tough. The shadowswords would find their mark - even if I was in cover, I had to close to them to engage the lemans... and they would blast 2 to 3 tanks per shot. All 3 shadowswords would remain in the end game, and one had 2 wounds on it from the crisis which attempted to kill them straight away on turns 2 and three with no real progress.
The Reg HQ was the least of my concerns so remained fully intact. My FW's were going to deal with them as they were dug in to some terrain, but after a pounding from the lemans, plus reg HQ, plus follow-up in next turn by reg HQ after they wer broken - they just dissipated - even with cover. The reg HQ's huge size proved valueable as it was able to stretchout to claime all three objectives on the tau side of the table with a well executed triple on the 4th turn.
Fun game actually.
The Crisis as infantry didn't prove any significant threat to the IG at all. I don't believe they were ever even fired on actually. The IG had more than enough to deal with them - they just hadn't proved to be any threat to the IG's plans. The shadowswords on overwatch were scary to deal with in such a small game. The crisis doubled to fire at them once, and then sustain fired at them a second time. If it wasn't for the macro-weapon shots - I'd have done no damage. The only 2 damage these things had came from the crisis - but after two turns of firing at them - it wasn't proving worth it to stick around on turn 4 when the game and land grab was underway. I was actually very dissappointed in the formation as a whole against the shadowswords, but in retrospect, although I had 100 more points fireing at 500 points, the crisis were just not going to be able to handle that formation. The IG's saves were doing pretty good as well. Perhaps the crisis formation just bit off more than they could chew in this engagement. On the other hand, their stealths with them made for easy marking as they jumped forward. But GM's were not going to win this affair by any stretch of the imagination.
The HH cadre and contingent both equalled out to be the same size. In this game, I didn't have a great amount of opportunity to make use of pop-up attacks, not because of terrain, but because the shadoswords covered the hot zones of where I needed to be in order to do damage to anything. Skirting the edge of its zone, I was able to get into position with the hh and dump on the lemans a bit to do some good turn 1 damage on that formation, but the shadowswords would move up and just wreck and break the first of the HH formations by killing 3 of them... MW 2+ vaporized and broke that formation immediately. The second HH contingent with bolstered ranks would also put the hurt on the lemans in turn 1 and turn 2 before the shadowswords fired up again, but when they did - 3 more HH's dead would break that formation... the other would rally to work on the lemans again but the reg HQ would break that formation by killing one. It would stay broke. The HH cadre formations were fragile with 6 tanks and no RA, so that's something to consider, but their FP was effective when the formations were live. So all was encouraging.
Win / loss - what can you say. The IG took really large formations by comparison and if I had scrapped the 200 points in FW - I could have had larger formations too - but playing kill of the hill with IG is a losing proposition for Tau - that's for sure. Tau have to get the FP in position and use the tricks like pop-up to deal.
As a lower point games, I also think Tau were at a bit of a disadvantage without more heavy hitters to break all that armour. As such, 2000 point games are recommended. With another 350 points, I could have at least purchased a moray to help out.
Very fun game nonetheless. We had a heck of time laughing some events that happened in this one.
Cheers.
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Rob
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?but then a good bit of luck comes my way... the rolls for TK are 2, 2, 1... ?
?So total damage was 3. (IG player proceeds to chuck the dice in the trash can!)