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The Tau
HQ
Shas'el w/ missile pod, plasma rifle, multi-tracker, stimulant injector, irridium armor, drone controller, 2 shield drones

Elite
3 Stealth Suits w/ drone controllers, 3 marker drones

3 Crisis Suits w/ missile pod, plasma rifle, multi-tracker

Troops
6 Fire Warriors w/ devilfish, sms, multi-tracker, disruption pods, targetting array
6 Fire Warriors w/ devilfish, sms, multi-tracker, disruption pods, targetting array
6 Fire Warriors w/ devilfish, sms, multi-tracker, disruption pods, targetting array

Fast Attack
4 Piranha w/ fusion gun, targetting array, 2x disruption pod, 2x target lock, 1x flechette discharger

Heavy Support
Hammerhead w/ rail gun, burst cannons, multi-tracker, disruption pod, target lock
Hammerhead w/ rail gun, burst cannons, multi-tracker, disruption pod, target lock
Hammerhead w/ ion cannon, burst cannons, multi-tracker, disruption pod, target lock


The Marines
HQ
Librarian in terminator armor

Elite
5 Terminators w/ thunder hammer, storm shield, Land Raider Crusader (not sure if one of these was heavy support or not)
5 Terminators w/ thunder hammer, storm shield, Land Raider Redeemer (not sure if one of these was heavy support or not)


Troops
10 Tactical Marines w/ flamer, multi-melta, rhino
10 Tactical Marines w/ flamer, multi-melta, rhino
10 Tactical Marines w/ flamer, multi-melta, rhino

Heavy Support
Predator w/ autocannon, sponson heavy bolters
Predator w/ autocannon, sponson heavy bolters

Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Dawn of War

I win the role and decide to go fist. I deploy 2 empty devilfish up on the line he deploys a rhino at the back edge of the table behind some tree's.



Turn #1: Tau
The Tau armada moves on the table and tries some long range shots but can't see anything.
KP: Tau: 0 SM: 0

Turn #1: Space Marines
His one rhino jet's up the table and searchlights the piranha's. A few shots later and one of the piranha's goes down, the drones pass their pin check.
KP: Tau: 0 SM: 0



Turn #2: Tau
The piranha's aren't going to be able to get within 6 so they turbo boost up and block off the advance of the central land raider and one of the rhino's. Rail gun's fail to pen the land raiders, but the ion head destroys a rhino and the crisis suits immobilize the other front running one.
KP: Tau: 1 SM: 0

Turn #2: Space Marines
His center land raider is stuck by the piranha's as they nimbly skip out of it's way. Two predator's and crusader shots later and 2 more of the piranha's go down, and the last one is shaken. The immobilized rhino repairs itself.
KP: Tau: 1 SM: 0



Turn #3: Tau
The last piranha boosts back away but keeps within striking distance, I run up with an empty devilfish to force the center land raider to make a terrain check through the piranha wreckage. Both hammerheads fail to penetrate a land raider again. The ion head blows up a predator with side shots. I re-immobilize the rhino in the tree's and shake the other predator.
KP: Tau: 2 SM: 0

Turn #3: Space Marines
Land raiders continue to barrel forward, making their difficult terrain tests when needed but do no damage.
KP: Tau: 2 SM: 0



Turn #4: Tau
So I line up my shots on the raiders again. The first hammerhead hit's and roll's a one to pen. My other hammerhead, get's a hit, it pens!, and blows up the raider. The lone piranha then moves up hit's and pens the other land raider!. The ion head shoots cross table at the rhino in the tree's and destroy's it, and pin's the tactical squad. The drones light up the tac squad after wreck results and drones there are 6 left (but the sergeant got torrented). Plasma rifle's unload on one of the terminators killing 2 and they break and run!.
KP: Tau: 5 SM: 0

Turn #4: Space marines
The other terminator squad has the charge by about a quarter of an inch and kills off my commander and crisis suits. They also manage to destroy the devilfish next to them and the emerging fire warriors are pinned. The running terminators can't rally because of my advanced forward devilfish. He tries to take it out with a multi-melta but just ends up ripping off a gun.
KP: Tau: 5 SM: 3



Turn #5: Tau
To make the game more interesting instead of running away with the fire warriors I move my fire warriors up into rapid fire range and have them unload with the hammerheads and stealth suits and manage to kill off 2 of the terminators. Now you may be asking yourself why hasn't he been talking about the stealth suits, well that's because up until this turn they had only gotten 1 marker light hit out of 4 turns of shooting. That one was used to try to reduce cover on the first turn. Their two marker light hits boosted up the fire warriors helping to get the two dead terminators I did get. The drones kill one tac marine and the squad fails it's pin check.
KP: Tau: 5 SM: 3

Turn #5: Space Marines
He splits off the librarian who kills a unit of fire warriors in cover, and the surviving 3 terminators kill off the other two fire warriors squads (they lost combat and ran off the table).
KP: Tau: 5 SM: 6




Turn #6: Tau
The stealth suits mange to get 3 marker light hits! They use one for themselves and save the other two for hammerhead shots. I do 6 wounds to the librarian and he fails to saves and dies. The hammerheads both light up the terminators but fail to do any damage (In a tournament game, I would have ignored them and gone after the predator and tac squad that was down to two guys, but I was annoyed that they had made it all the way to my end of the table!). The drones shoot the tac marines, kill one, and you guessed it, are pinned again. The ion head blows up the last rhino on the table, but immobilizes itself over some terrain.
KP: Tau: 7 SM: 6

Turn #6: Space Marines
His marine squad charges the ion head and the piranha, downing the ion head. The terminators run off the table.
KP: Tau: 8 SM: 7



After action:
I still think that hammerheads suck at popping vehicle's. The crisis suits did okay with the loadout, but I find myself not really wanting to fire the pods and the plasma at the same time, especially against marines and terminators. I'm starting to wonder if I should do some twin-linking in the squad to take advantage of wound allocation, and not worry about multi-tracker's, either that or just field them with a missile pod, plasma rifle, flamer, that way they have a usefull weapon no matter what the opponent is. The ion head did great! At the end of the day he popped 3 rhino's and a predator, you can't ask for much more than that. The stealth suits with marker drones didn't really do anything, for some reason I thought the marker drones had target locks so they could shoot different targets, but they don't. Now they didn't give up their kp but I think i would have rather had the unit of pathfinders and another devilfish running around.

Great batrep! The flow of this game was really fun to watch - for a while it looked like you had a pretty handy victory and then the marine player clawed his way back pretty effectively.

I am curious if you are finding all the upgrades on your commander worth it - it seems like he dies pretty much right away every game and I am wondering if he is doing more and taking longer to die because of those upgrades or if they are just wasted points.

Good batrep.

Good game, was very destructive.

Why wouldn't you want to fire both plasma and missile pods at the same time?


Nice Batrep though.

Timmah wrote:Why wouldn't you want to fire both plasma and missile pods at the same time?


Nice Batrep though.

So imagine this scenario. You shoot your plasma and your missile pods at a marine squad thats down to 2 models. You get 3 hits and wounds with the plasma and the missile pod. Instead of instantly killing both models he can stack all 3 plasma on one guy, and then take 3 saves on the other.

I don't have my rulebook on me, so I may be wrong, but doesn't he have to spread the plasma wounds out, which negate his armor save, to one to each model before he can double them up? Then he does the same with the missile pod wounds?

Depends on whether there are any special models in the squad.

GhostRecon wrote:I don't have my rulebook on me, so I may be wrong, but doesn't he have to spread the plasma wounds out, which negate his armor save, to one to each model before he can double them up? Then he does the same with the missile pod wounds?

Roll your plasma first, if you get the wounds, dont roll for missles. you dont HAVE to fire the missiles. then there is no question as to if he can drop all 3 plasma on 1

TopC wrote:

GhostRecon wrote:I don't have my rulebook on me, so I may be wrong, but doesn't he have to spread the plasma wounds out, which negate his armor save, to one to each model before he can double them up? Then he does the same with the missile pod wounds?

Roll your plasma first, if you get the wounds, dont roll for missles. you dont HAVE to fire the missiles. then there is no question as to if he can drop all 3 plasma on 1

You can't quite do it this way, though. you have to declare all shooting from the unit at the same time. But yeah, you are better off not allowing him to stack plasma wounds if you can force him to share the love.

Wow that is the best Ion Cannon I have ever seen.

Great rep! More pictures!

That ion cannon is turning into a running joke. All the experienced players keep asking me why I'm taking it, and newer people keep asking what the hell it is. I don't think I'll be able to get the list, in it's current format into a "tournament" list. But it's decently hard and fun to play.

This actually was a bit of a frustrating game to play - not because of Warmaster, but rather simply the style of play, and he played well. The Piranha wall, for instance, was incredibly frustrating, especially since I couldn't quite take all 4 out.

Dual LR lists like this lack firepower, especially mobile firepower, which I really needed to take out the vehicles everywhere. Tau, on the other hand, have good mobility, so it was fairly easy for him to get side shots on my vehicles. Lastly, the TH/SS/Land Raider hammer isn't as good when your opponent can simply step out of the way, or has no core to really effectively hammer. Having two let me strike at two targets, but no one part of his army was really juicy enough to make it worth my while to only go after them. Really, the score could probably have been a lot more lopsided if he hadn't thrown his FW away and tried to hit more tanks.

I am debating whether it might be worth it to drop a tac squad/rhino and replace them with multimelta attack bikes/mm/hf speeders. I need the firepower more than the tac squad, I think. And if you have enough firepower to get around my two hammers and/or deal with them in some other way, I'm probably not going to be winning on objectives in any case.