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This is only a brief write up and not a full battle report, as requested by a member after I posted my proposed list to take to the battle for review. And this is my first attempt at this sort of thing so be nice, here goes.

The battle was a Spearhead - table quarters battle, with three objectives, one in each players quarter and one in the middle, we also played with a kill points scoring system. One point for each unit, 2 points for each nominated 'army leader' and five points per objective.

Blood Angel list:

HQ
Commander Dante
Mephiston
Troops
Assualt Squad 10 marines, powerfist, storm sheild, 1 x meltagun, melta bombs
Assualt Squad 10 marines, powerfist, storm sheild 1 x meltagun, melta bombs
Sanguinary Guard, chapter banner, power fist
Sanguinary Guard, infernous pistol
Elites
2 x Sanguinary Priest, Jump pack
Fast Attack
Vanguard Veteran, 10 marines, jump packs, 4 x powerswords, powerfist, infernous pistol, melta bombs x 2
Total = 2000


Tau list not exact, as this is from memory but it was something like this
HQ
Commander crisis suit, with two crisis suit body guard.

Elite
3 x crisis suits (as a unit)
1 x crisis suit( solo)
1 x crisis suit (solo)
Troops
2 x 12 man Fire warrior teams (i think) one with devil fish
9 x kroot, with kroot sharper
Fast attack
Pathfinders with Devilfish
Heavy support
Hammerhead with ion cannon
Broadsides x 2
Sniper drones teams x 2

And some Vespids but not sure where they fit in.


I lost the roll off for deployment and got nominated to go first, I reserved everything. Tau deployed in their quarter with Hammerhead, one devilfish fire warrior team, the three piece crisis suit team and one of the single crisis suits around the objective in their quarter, the two sniper drone teams infiltrated into the two neutral quarters. Everything else was reserved.


Turn 1
I didn't have one

Tau moved hammer head forward slightly, crisis suit team moved forward, Devilfish with fire warriors moved into the neutral quarter.

Turn 2
I rolled for reserves, Vanguard Veteran with re-rolls arrived to perform Heroic intervention, deployed in combat squads one around the back of enemy objective, one into a position to assualt the crisis suit team. Dante with one assualt squad and sang.priest arrived behind the hammer head. The second assualt squad arrived to the side of the devilfish with fire warriors. One sanguinary guard arrived behind one drone squad, and the other deep struck near the central objective. First vanguard veteran squad assualted and destroyed crisis suit team, second vanguard assualted and killed something can't remember what. Dante's squad meltagunned and infernous pistoled the rear of the hammer head destroyed! Second assualt squad failed to kill the devil fish managed to crew stunned, sang.guard shot and killed one sniper drone.

Tau failed to bring on any body except the vespids, which arrived from his own table edge near the vet squad that had just killed the crisis suit team, Pathfinders moved towards central objective to contest. Both sniper drone squads, devilfish's and vespids unleashed around of firing on various units, resulting in two vanguards killed by the vespids, which then assualted the vanguards and got killed! BONUS!

Turn 3
Mephiston arrives from reserve right behind the sniper drones, sang guard leave the drones to head towards enemy objective, assualt squad begin moving between cover towards my objective. vanguard vets shot/assualt second sniper drone squad no prizes for guessing results there. Dantes squad jump over devilfish with pathfinders to get behind it and between the objective, meltagunned it result, immobilised.

Tau turn.
Pathfinders jumped out of devilfish, broadsides and hq crisis suits arrived from reserve and fire warrior team arrived down far edge of the board. drones tried to suit meph, but failed. Dantes assualt team took fire from broadsides, crisis suits and pathfinders, resulting in two wounds on dante, and assualt marine with storm sheild dying. think that was all that happened.

Turn 4
Dantes team finished off the devilfish, destroyed and explodes, tau suffered wounds to pathfinders and a fire warrior team. vanguard vets head towards newly arrived fire warrior team. meph jumped towards devil fish with fire warriors. Nothing much else happened.
Tau turn, kroot infiltrated behind tau objective where the san guard were holed up, shot at them killed one, then assualted, assualt drew. After tau round of firing Dante's assualt squad was killed, dante and sang priest survived.

Turn 5
Meph moved to assualt pathfinders, dante and sang priest split, dante into assualt range with hq crisis suits. priest towards vanguard in assualt with kroot. vanguards assualted fire warrior team, killed them off. One vanguard left after that assualt. Dante killed hq. assualt squad reached my objective, veterans finished off kroot, meth killed off pathfinders.

Tau turn
Remaining crisis suit in reserve arrived via deep strike right in front of my objective, remaining crisis suits tried to finish off dante but ended up being finished off in assualt.

At the end of this turn all tau had left were two broadsides, a fire warrior team contesting the tau objective, and the crisis suit that had just arrived.

Rolled and game went to turn 6.

I threw everything into assualt, dante and meph assualted the two broadsides, the ten man assualt squad assualted the one crisis suit, and the sang guard with the spare priest assualted the fire warriors killing them off.

Game ended with Wipeout, I controlled all 3 objectives.


This is a very rough report, I wasn't intending on doing one so didn't take any notes. Please forgive any wholes in my story.

Hmm.. overall, detailed report, but unless the SM codex you are using is different than mine, there seemed to be a heck of alot of illegal assaulting going on by those Deep Striking units.
You can't assault on the same turn that you DS. Seems that the Tau player tried the same thing down in turn 5 on Dante and got eaten.

It's a blood angels codex, and the only thing that deep striked the turn they arrived were the VV's who used heroic intervention. And the tau part was two different Crisis suits, just my poor writing, one crisis suit that was already on the field was the one that got eaten by Dante, and another arrived via deep stirke to contest my objective but got charged by the assualt squad I had moved down there.


Thanks for reading and commenting though.

PoetNWar: Even your vanilla 'dex has Heroic Intervention for Vanguard Vets.

Eldercaveman:
Your tau buddy really messed up, tactically:
1. Pathfinders *starting* in the d'fish? (if I read that correctly)
2. Not having his Railhead's backside to a table edge?
3. Not 'circling the wagons'?
4. He had kroot for bubble wrap and didn't use 'em.

Tsk, tsk.

Nice write up, though.

I did catch him off guard with his list a bit, and he is still getting to grips with Tau tactically. But we have had more competitive games than that in the past, but I have leant towards a more hybrid list, and this was the first time I ran an entire DoA list. He was a bit shell shocked to say the least.

Yes he seems like a new Tau player...for one he shouldn't have assaulted those VV's with his vespids. Sure they woulda been killed next turn instead but that's really their point: to be bubble wrap with a big scary AP3 weapon so that people willl go for them. Plus if you had assaulted his vespids thats one less unit that was actually critical that you could have assaulted.
Taking those pathfinders and not scouting them into a support position was also a problem...he should have used them and the sniper team as a support unit rather than a contesting unit...they're both the sniper of the tau army, you don't throw a team of aussies at your control point and win you let the demomen and the soldiers do it and pick off those pesky heavies and their nice big heads as they run by...
With such a DS heavy army on your end he really should have turtled...since they're the equivalent of a Drop Pod army...he shouldn't have taken anything in reserve, just bunched into a nice big corner, broadsides at the back, kroot at the front, and waited for you to try and DS him lol...first turn you arrive and I can all but garuntee (since I know from experience my VV's would kill my Kroot any day) that Dante and those VV's are eating it turn one lol. Plus if he had done it properly you would be in rapid fire range, but not a safe DS range between his lines...

Still, against Dante AND Mephiston, he was really in for a beating...I mean that's an obscene amount of wounds right there, and his list just wasn't optimized for MEQ...he needed fewer gun drones and more plasma rifles honestly...ignore the pathfinders and the sniper teams and the gun drones and just load up on crisis suits. This is one of those times I really wish stealth teams could take plasma guns (something I really hope they can do next codex)

Excellent report nonetheless and congrats on kicking tau butt

To be honest we both started up at the same time, sort of got each other into the hobby, and that was only 6 months or so ago. So we are both relatively new, its was the first time he had used his vespids so I think he was just testing the waters with what they could do, their weapons do cut down marines quite nicely though. I do agree though, Tau are a lot scarier to fave when they are spammed up with suits.