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Last Thursday after work I headed down to my local GW to get a battle in with GoDz BuZzSaW (aka Rhys). This was the 4th time I've had the pleasure of facing off against him, in all 3 of our previous games we've tried to make a report, but every time something got in the way NOT THIS TIME!

Our first two games both ended with me getting my Ulthwe Eldar destroyed firstly by Rhys' Chaos Marines and then his Tau. Last time, I just squeezed out a win in a objective mission using the Darker type of Eldar. Now we were back with (I think) the same lists and I was looking to get the score back to 2-2.

After a quick catch up (and trip to KFC) it was game time. We rolled for Pitched Battle deployment and the mission is annihilation. Our list's were as follows:

Gorechild's Dark Eldar

HQ:
Haemonculus: Liquifier (60)
Haemonculus: Liquifier (60)
Baron Sathonyx (105)

Troops:
5 Kabalite Warriors: Blaster, Venom with two Splinter Cannons (125)
5 Kabalite Warriors: Blaster, Venom with two Splinter Cannons (125)
3 Wracks: Venom with two Splinter Cannons (95)
9 Wyches: Haywire Grenades, Hekatrix with Agoniser, Shardnet, Raider with Flickerfields (218)
9 Wyches: Haywire Grenades, Hekatrix with Agoniser, Raider with Flickerfields (208)

Fast Attack:
3 Beast Masters: 5 Khymaera, 4 Razorwing Flocks (156)

Heavy Support:
Ravager: Flickerfields (115)
Ravager: Flickerfields (115)
Ravager: Flickerfields (115)

GoDz BuZzSaW's Tau

HQ:
Shas'o Firestorm: Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Shield Generator, H/W Multi Tracker, H/W Blacksun Filter (135)

Troops:
12 Fire Warriors: Shas'ui (130)
12 Fire Warriors: Devilfish (200)
12 Fire Warriors: Devilfish (200)

Elites:
3 Crisis Suits: Plasma Rifles, Missile Pods, Multi Trackers (186)
3 Crisis Suits: TL Missile Pods, Targeting Arrays (159)

Heavy Support:
Hammerhead: Railgun, Burst Cannons, Multi, Disrupt (165)
Hammerhead: Railgun, Burst Cannons, Multi, Disrupt (165)
2 Broadsides: Advanced Stabiliziation Systems (160)

I'm packing 17 possible Kill points compaired to Rhys' 11

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Deployment

Right, here we go! As I previously said, the mission is annihilation with a pitched battle deployent. This game was the first game for my new dice, as you'll see, they dont seem to like me When rolling for first turn I got a 3 compaired to Rhys' 4, but thanks to the Baron we tied. In my re-roll I got a 1 to his 5, even Sathonyx can't make up for a roll that bad

After winning the roll-off, Rhys gave me the first turn. As I had no idea where he'd end up I deployed centrally, counting on my speed to let me get to wherever the space communists showed up, just as long as the Raiders got there in 1 piece! I rolled for combat drugs and gained re-rolls for my failled "to wound" rolls, IMO the most useful result



The Baron and his Beastmaster unit start off in a crater, in attempt to make use of the 3+ cover saves he provides. Other than that I try to spread fairly evenly, so wherever Rhys deploys something will be able to cause some trouble......thats the plan anyway.



The Tau decide to bunch up their entire force behind the big hill in the right hand corner of the board. We had a little discussion about how we'd treat the terrain, and I suggested we keep it as open, but obviously BLOS for anything behind it. I wasn't really thinking about all the Dangerous terrain test he'd take when JSJ-ing if we did decide to make it difficult, I just wanted to make sure the beasts could get over it quickly! In retrospect, I'd probably have been better off suggesting it was difficult, thankfully it didnt make a huge difference.

Ooh yeah, and that pile of models in the left of the shot are actually inside one of the Devilfish, not boldly striking out on their own



Here's my view from across the table. Basically I can see a unit of Fire Warriors and half a transport.

Rhys' attempts to sieze the initiative and rolls a 3, Dark Eldar are going first!

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Dark Eldar Turn 1

Right, so I have the first turn. My two Wych/Haemonculus Raiders move flat out, both heading around opposite sides of the hill. I've got plenty of other Dark Lances knocking around so my main priority here is to be able to get them into assault ASAP.
The beasts get a 6 for their difficult terrain test, getting them just outside of the crater. Everything else shifts up 12" in attempt to get some sort of LOS.

In my shooting phase, Baron and his beasts manage to run another few inches (3 I think) and get safely into more cover.
Okay, remember I said my new dice don't really seem to like me? In my shooting phase I fired 36 splinter cannon shots and 9 Dark Lances into the Tau lines, the net result was one imobilized Devilfish (the one on the right hand side of the hill). All 3 Venoms failed to kill even a single one of the Fire Warriors, they had no cover or anything, I was just full of fail.

This is how things looked at the end of my turn 1....


GoDz BuZzSaW: 0, Gorechild: 0

Tau Turn 1

This shot is taken at the start of Rhys' shooting phase. One unit of Crisis suits hop up onto the hill (I think its the missile pod/targeting array squad but correct me if I'm wrong Rhys ). Thankfully the one vehice I did any damage to causes a bit of a roadblock for the Hammerhead, but other than that everything just moved to the sides to get a better shot. Sorry about the blurry picture! I'm sure you can still get the general idea of whats happening though!


As my new dice were fancy custom Dakka Dice (ooh the perks of being a DCM ) I let Rhys use them too just to make sure there was no unintentional unfairness, they aren't biased in any way but when people see "DAKKA DAKKA" rather than a 6 they sometimes get suspicious . After a turn of them failing spectacularly for me, he picked them up and promptly pwnd me with them
Here's a picture of my lines after he'd opened fire....



The Ravager closest to the camera was imobilized and had its front Dark Lance bown off after me failing both flickerfield saves.
To the right of the picture is what remains of a Wych/Haemonculus/Raider unit. The transports explosion killed 4 Wyches and wounded the Heamonculus. Fire warriors picked off 2 more.
The middle Ravager (unpainted) was Wrecked following 3 more failed Flickerfield saves.
The Hammerhead on the left opened up on the Beast unit, but thanks to the fact that the Baron gives his unit stealth, only 1 master died.

Here's a quick overview of the table (featuring Rhys' crotch) at the end of the first turn:


GoDz BuZzSaW: 2, Gorechild: 0


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Dark Eldar Turn 2

Right, so I'm behind, but I was expecting that until I could get up close. With that in mind everything moves forward to try and get up in the Tau's grill ASAP. The Baron and his squad make another decent difficult terrain test (5 or 6" I think), The maimed Wych unit and their Haemonculus wander towards the Fire Warriors on the hill whilst all the mobile vehicles wander forward 12".


This turn my shooting was a little more effective. The Ravager over on the left hand side managed to bring down one of the two broadsides and the other one opened fire on the Crisis Suits that were on the right hand side of the hill. Out of the 3 shots, 1 managed to wound. Weighing up his options Rhys' rolled 2 dice to see how lucky he was feeling, he got . Taking this as a good sign, he allocated the one wound onto his HQ. When he took his invulnerable save he flipped a , I 'd, he 'd....yay emoticons!

A few of the Raiders and Venoms tried to finish off the Broadside and Crisis suits, but failed to do anything noteworthy. I decided to shoot 1 Venom at the Fire Warriors, I was pretty confident I'd get into assault either way, so why not soften them up a bit? I ended up killing too many, they took a Ld test, failed it and ran....Great, now I'm left out in the open with nothing to attack :(

This was the state of things at the end of my 2nd turn:



GoDz BuZzSaW: 2, Gorechild: 1

Tau Turn 2

Firstly, the fleeing Fire Warriors run off the board. Also the left side, another unit of Fire Warriors hop out of their Devilfish shortly before the transport turns to ram my Raider. Thankfully I manage to dogde it. Both hammerheads pop out, one on either side of the hill, giving them both a pretty clear view of basically my whole army.

In shooting, the Crisis Suits on the right kill off my already damaged Ravager thanks again to some utterly appauling flickerfield saves. The hammerhed on that side fires a plate at my two venoms, thankfully it scatters so the hole isn't over anything and I only loose a splinter cannon. The Broadside squad explode another Ravager. After all that my dice seem to warm to me, the newly disembarked Firewarriors and the other Hammerhead only inflict a couple of wounds onto the Beast squad, thank god for the 3+ cover Before jumping back behind the hill, the other Crisis unit finish off the injured Wych/Heamy squad, netting Rhys 2 more kill points.

By the end of his turn the board was like this:


GoDz BuZzSaW: 6, Gorechild: 2

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Dark Eldar Turn 3

Okay, this is where I hope to catch up!
On the left side of the hill my Raider hops over the Devilfish that had just tried to ram it, and the Wyches and Haemonculus spill out ready to unleash killy haywire goodness onto the Hammerhead. The Baron and beasts run headlong towards the Fire Warrior squad thats sitting in the front of the hill. On opposite sides of the hill, both Warrior squads pop out in an attempt to blaster some Devilfish. My Wracks (In the black partly built Venom) hop onto the hillto try and get LOS on the Crisis suits behind.

The picture below is at the end of the assault phase, so I'll sum up what happened:


In shooting the shooting phase my Warriors on the left flub it when trying to bring down the Devilfish, but on the upside, the Raider over that side finishes off the broadside squad.
Over on the left, my second Warrior squad failed to do anything to the hammerhead as well.

When it came to the assault phase, I was barely in range to get my beasts into combat with the Fire Warrior unit, but the two or three models that did get in causes enough wounds for me to win the combat. They failed their Ld check and so I made quick work of ripping them appart as they tried to flee. The Wyches charge the Hammerhead and thanks to some unusually good roll's, the one haywire grenade that hit managed to penetrate and wreck it!

I was closing the gap, but Rhys' still had the lead.

GoDz BuZzSaW: 6, Gorechild: 5

Tau Turn 3

With my forces rapidly closing in and the very high likelihood of me getting more KP's in the next turn Rhys had little choice other than to try and bring down as many of my units as possible and hope he'd be able to weather the storm.

With that in mind he trys to Tank shock my wyches with the same Devilfish that rammed my Raider last turn, I think the intention was to force my Wyches/Haemonculus away from the cover of the hill so his Fire Warriors could mop them up. I chose to Death or Glory him with a Haywire grenade and amazingly I managed to immobilize it. Phew, I'd still be getting 4+ cover and FNP.

On the other side of the hill, his hammerhead popped my Wrack's Venom after more utterly useless Flickerfield-ing, spilling out the little 3 man squad onto the top of the hill. Meanwhile one of the Crisis squad's peppered my newly disembarked Warriors with shots and took them down to 3 men, I passed the leadership test thankfully. Due to the fact I was still getting 4+ cover on my Wych/Haemy unit they lived on, I didnt know at the time, but if that DoG had a huge impact on the outcome of the game.

When the time came to assault, one unit of Crisis suits moved in towards the Wracks, the other into the remaining Warriors. After some extremely mediocre rolling from both of us, nobody suffered any wounds in the Wrack/Crisis combat, but the other unit cleaned up the remaining Kabalite's.

By the end of turn 3 this is what the board looked like:


GoDz BuZzSaW: 8, Gorechild: 5

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Dark Eldar Turn 4

Okay, from here on I need to apologize for the lack of photos. We had to rush to make sure we could pack up with enough time for Rhys to catch his bus, so I gave up taking pictures to save time. I have used my mad skills on MS Paint to try and give you a vague idea of what happened in the last turn though

So..... Up on the left hand side of the hill my Haemonculus and Wyches wandered out to meet the Fire Warriors, an AP6 shot from the Haemy's liquifier does very little, I can't remember but he may have killed 1, 2 if I was lucky
Off behind the Wyches, my Warrior squad manages to wreck the Devilfish, but other than that nothing really happened in the shooting phase.

In the assault phase, my Wyches got up close with the Fire Warriors and the Beast unit jumped into the ongoing Wrack/Crisis suit action. The Wyches killed (I think) 4 fire warriors and I only lost 1 in return, After another failed Ld test and due to the fact that Tau initiative sucks, I wiped the squad out. Up on the hill, the beasts killed all but one of the Crisis suits. When he hit back I took a wound or two on a Razorwing flock, but after yet another failed leadership and initiative test, the Crisis suits were no more.

Finally I'd caught up on kill points Time was running out but as things were so tight we didn't want to stop and pack up now. We decided we'd rush and try to get to the end of T5, as we didn't have all that much left on the table by now we'd be abale to pick up the pace a bit.

GoDz BuZzSaW: 8, Gorechild: 8


Tau Turn 4

Keen to get away from the approaching beast unit, Rhys moved his remaining Crisis squad as far away as possible, taking a brief break allong the way to explode my last Venom.
The Hammerhead moved around slighty to try and get a LOS onto my Haemonculus and few remaining Wyches over on the far side of the hill. The blast scattered slightly, scoring 2 wounds, one Wych passed her cover save, the other got blown to bits. Thankfully I passed the Ld test and they held firm.

With nothing able to assault, that was the end of a quick turn that put Rhys back on top.

GoDz BuZzSaW: 9, Gorechild: 8

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Dark Eldar Turn 5

Right, here is the heavily doctored photo to try and give an impression of what on earth was going on



My one remaining Raider moved forward from where its actually shown in the picture, got a Dark Lance shot off into the rear armour of the Devilfish I'd managed to immobilize on turn 1, and exploded it. Horray!
The Beasts started their turn up on the top of the hill, having only made a pathetic 1" consolidation move, the Crisis suits were also a little further down than shown in the picture. I wasn't certain I'd be able to make it into combat with only a 6" move and a 6" assault, so I decided to send Baron Sathonyx off on his lonesome. I was just hoping that his shadowfield would hold up if the Hammerhead looks at him funny. Then I realised he might even be able to assault the Hammerhead, he's only S5 on the charge, but why not give it a go?

As I expected, the Baron did sweet FA against the tank, but it was worth a try. Now that the beasts could use their 12" assault range I was easily able to crash into the Crisis team. Rending attacks from the razorwings alone was enough to wipe the squad.

I was winning! All I had to do was survive another shot from the hammerhead and I'd be home and dry

GoDz BuZzSaW: 9, Gorechild: 10

Tau Turn 5

Rhys just moved his Hammerhead a few inches towards my Warrior saquad and Venom. Crap, I hadn't thought about them!
He lays the pie plate right over the middle of the Venom, covering it and the whole Warrior squad. It scatters (thank god) and ends up only covering 2 Warriors, but the hole is still over the Venoms hull. The shot fails to wound one of the T3 Warriors but turns the other into a smooth paste, thankfully that's less than 25% casualties so I don't have to take leadership. The hit does manage to penetrate the Venom though, after a second of thinking "crap I'm going to loose if this blows up" I remember my Flickerfields. After a whole game of not making a single important 5+ invulnerable save I pick up a new one of my dice and for the last roll of the game I got a "DAKKA DAKKA"

GoDz BuZzSaW: 9, Gorechild: 10

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Victory for the Dark Eldar

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Thanks for checking out the report guys Let me know what you think!

Depends on who goes first, either DE got shot to bits or melt the Tau. All depends on the first move.

I predict tau win. The de have more combat and speed, but with an early kp advantage and some los blocking terrain tau can funnel de into a bad spot. If de get good combats early though, the tau firepower will quickly.decline.

Clearly whoever goes first has a big advantage but I definitely think the DE have the edge ere. The Tau list has absolutely no bubble wrap so if either of the Wych units or the Beast unit hits the Tau lines their firepower and number of scoring units is going to fall away very quickly. The Tau player doesn't actually have a huge amount of firepower in terms of the number of vehicles he can reliably drop, the Missile Suits smash up one vehicle, the Missile/Plasma Suits probably get another, but the Hammerheads and Broadsides can very easily be completely counteracted by a single 4+/5+ cover save and one turn is all the DE player is going to need to set up assaults which cripple the Tau.

I give DE the edge here. If Tau go first, then DE may have to reserve everything, but with the Baron, they have a better than average chance of going first.

Thanks for all the replies guys

It look's like I'm just ahead in the opinion poles at the moment. I'll try and get the rep up this afternoon, I might only have time for the first few turns though. It might be interesting to see if/how opinions change as the game progresses.

Thanks again for reading, keep them votes and comments coming!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: moving rep into 1st post

COME ON TAU!!!!!

First two turns are up

Let me know what you think...

All finished guys. Let me know what you think!

If the Tau were updated then they would have won.

Darkest Hour wrote:If the Tau were updated then they would have won.

If they had a new codex?!

How on earth could you possibly know that?! Theres a chance that if a new book came out that it would suck

I'm surprised Tau won the roll to go first but let you go first. Being able to fire at you with minimal cover (no flat-out cover) might have been worth you being able to react to his deployment.

Yeah just as I suspected a complete lack of any kind of bubblewrap meant that the Tau were boned the second the assault units hit their lines. Not taking first turn just compounds the issue, you literally have no reason to go second in a KP mission against Dark Eldar unless you have zero long range firepower, and Tau are the masters of long range firepower. Not sure what the plan was there.

I managed to lose track of the second unit of Wyches somehow. You mention that one had its Raider blown up turn 1, but I found it surprising that the second wasn't assaulting things turn 2 (since 24" + 12" + 2" + D6" + 6" is well into his deployment zone).

Powerguy wrote:Yeah just as I suspected a complete lack of any kind of bubblewrap meant that the Tau were boned the second the assault units hit their lines. Not taking first turn just compounds the issue, you literally have no reason to go second in a KP mission against Dark Eldar unless you have zero long range firepower, and Tau are the masters of long range firepower. Not sure what the plan was there.

I managed to lose track of the second unit of Wyches somehow. You mention that one had its Raider blown up turn 1, but I found it surprising that the second wasn't assaulting things turn 2 (since 24" + 12" + 2" + D6" + 6" is well into his deployment zone).

Let them get close then rapid fire them to death? If I chose to go first then Gorechild would've just deployed his Dark Eldar out of the way so I wouldn't be able to shoot him! So allowing him to go first means that i will be able to shoot him!

Powerguy wrote: you literally have no reason to go second in a KP mission against Dark Eldar unless you have zero long range firepower, and Tau are the masters of long range firepower. Not sure what the plan was there.

The biggest advantage was me having to deploy first. If he'd gone first I would have just gone all in reserve and known exactly where to come in. As it happened I could only really stick myself in the middle and try to get to him by turn 2-3. If I deployed on the far right so I could see past the hill all he'd have needed to to was castle up in the opposite corner and leave me to spend 4 turns getting shot at whilst I moved over the whole length of the board.

Powerguy wrote:I managed to lose track of the second unit of Wyches somehow. You mention that one had its Raider blown up turn 1, but I found it surprising that the second wasn't assaulting things turn 2 (since 24" + 12" + 2" + D6" + 6" is well into his deployment zone).

If you look in the 3rd deployment picture, the Raider between the 2 venoms was the one that got destroyed 1st turn. My only other one was off the left hand side of the picture past the crater (just incase anything deployed over on that side). It turbo boosted up to the left side of the 2nd crater (just at the top of the picture) in the first turn and moved 12" in T2 so I could fire at a devilfish to open it up.

Powerguy wrote: Tau are the masters of long range firepower. Not sure what the plan was there.

Last time I read a codex, I thought Dark Eldar were the masters of long range firepower, I'm not sure Tau have that title based on their current codex!

I like how you've edited the last picture, did you forget to take the last picture?

P.S.- I spotted my green coat in the picture!

cheapbuster wrote:I like how you've edited the last picture, did you forget to take the last picture?

Yeah, I think you guys had to run to get your bus so we didn't have time to keep taking pic's, so I had to improvise

cheapbuster wrote:P.S.- I spotted my green coat in the picture!

Woo you're famous!

Gorechild wrote:

cheapbuster wrote:I like how you've edited the last picture, did you forget to take the last picture?

Yeah, I think you guys had to run to get your bus so we didn't have time to keep taking pic's, so I had to improvise

cheapbuster wrote:P.S.- I spotted my green coat in the picture!

Woo you're famous!

Fancy a rematch this week, another Tau Vs Dark Eldar faceoff as it will be one of the last times i use them before the new book comes out and i'd like them to go out with a win!

IDK about a win, but we could have another game

Great rep! Well reported and the pics definitely help.

Look forward to the next one!