Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I ran and took part in a tournament this weekend in Partick (Glasgow, UK). The games were at 1000 points and were played as regular games of 40k, rolling for missions etc. 4 games in a day made for some very ad hoc mental notes about the fortunes (or otherwise) of El’ Quixo’s Borkan cadre! However some very fun games were had, and I will reconstruct these as accurately as possible over the coming day or two (before some much needed R&R!).

Game 1 – vs. Chris’ Necrons



We rolled for dawn of war and 5 objectives. I placed my objectives just in front of the gun line whereas Chris set his up near the cover of a ruined church. Early events looked good for the Tau – the long range missile pods of the crisis team took out 3 of the 4 destroyers, and the heavy destroyer was annihilated by a direct railgun hit. However, the Tau looked on incredulously as all but one of the ‘crons got back up!

Early running:



The middle part of the game saw the Necrons start to take charge. The warriors managed to immobilize the sky ray on the Tau left, and the destroyers pumped shot after shot into the crisis team. El’ Quixo’s elites hit back by dropping the entire unit with rapid fire plasma, only to see them all get up again on the next Necron turn! If this wasn’t enough, the monolith stepped proceedings up a gear- causing large casualties in each unfortunate fire warrior unit, causing one to flee off the board! Moroc and Antoch, the two broadsides, were clearly too busy discussing Tau history and failed to find their mark (despite the monolith offering a rather large target area!)

Midpoint:



The Necrons punished the profligacy of the Tau firstly by annihilating El’Quixo and his crisis team (combined fire of the cursed destroyers and ‘crons), and even more disasterously, by breaking or wiping out the remaining Tau scoring units (monolith again). Belatedly the monolith was demolished by the broadsides but in the end it was an easy victory for the ‘crons!

Endgame:


Afterthoughts –
1. Needed to drop the monolith…. didn’t… lost!
2. Destroyers are quite good


Points List

Tau-
HQ El' Quixo, plasma, pod, MT, array, stim
Elite 3 crisis suits plasma, pod, MT, leader with 2 gun drones
Troop 3x 12 fire warriors
Heavy skyray, disruption pods, pair burst cannons, targetting array
Heavy moroc (broadside), shield drone
Heavy antoch (broadside), shield drone


Crons-
HQ Lord with res orb
Troop 2x 10 warriors
Elite? 5 destroyers
Heavy heavy destroyer
Heavy monolith



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh - forgot to say! The rather awesome skull icon, I got that for free here:
http://dustinevans.blogspot.com/2008/01/free-skull-icon-and-avatar.html

Game 2 – vs. Stuarts’ Space Marines – Sun Dragons
Ah the old adversaries fight again, this time in a container ship dock!



We rolled for dawn of war again and 3 objectives this time. I got to place 2 and Stuart 1, both outside the cargo containers. I deployed a unit of fire warriors on each objective and kept the 3rd unit in reserve. Stuart had his rhino with combat squad and librarian commander on his objective. His scouts, including Tellion, infiltrated into the open space on the Tau right flank.
As the sun Dragons had 2 drop pods, the first dreadnought made an early appearance. Now in our warm up games, the drop pods had hardly ever scattered significantly. However this time the pod scattered its max distance into the container! The fire warriors still got toasted by dreadnought Eliabs’ heavy flamer but were largely intact because of the scatter. Moroc and Antoch stunned and immobilized the dread in the following turn. The scouts and crisis team traded blows from long range, with the sky ray offering markerlight support.

Early running:



It really started to kick off in the middle part of this game. Because of Eliabs’ misfortune, the 1st fire warrior unit could advance towards the marine objective safe in the knowledge that another unit would be turning up to take their place. The crisis suit firepower was too much for the scouts at close range, especially without a decent cover save. The sky ray got 2 markerlight hits on the rhino and wrecked it with seeker missiles, forcing the tac squad and librarian to disembark. They also failed their pinning check (11)! Eliabs assault cannon arm was blown off by the broadsides, and the advancing bikes got a volley in the side from the 2nd fire warrior unit.
Now this was looking very good for the Tau. Lashings of luck had helped of course. However despite the Sun Dragons misfortune, they still had dreadnought Cyrus in a drop pod to come down. He could easily deny the Tau an objective, plus the razorback still had its scoring (tac 2) unit intact.

Midpoint:



The endgame was in sight!
The tac squad and librarian could do nothing as the fire warriors and skyray advanced. The marines were obliterated by the combined fire. The 2nd tac squad had decided to disembark from the razorback, moving onto the objective. This gamble could have worked however the game went on to turn 6, giving the crisis team time to pick their way through the wrecked rhino and annihilate Tac 2.

The marine assault continued to wobble on other fronts, as the remaining bike assaulted Antoch, having been frustrated with poor multi-melta accuracy. However he had not counted on a kroot being inside a broadside suit! Antoch avoided the blows of the two marines and used his servos to squash them both!

Finally the second marine pod showed up. It was placed right next to a fire warrior unit and objective… and scattered again! Dreadnought Cyrus raged as his heavy flamer caused minimal damage and even with the assault cannon casualties, the 3rd fire warrior unit didn’t run (this is really very unusual)! His bad mood didn’t last long as Moroc blasted him to the warp with a direct railgun hit.

Endgame:



Afterthoughts –
1. Terrible luck for the Sun Dragons
2. Drop pods do occasionally scatter after all…
3. Great to see the Tau triumphantly advancing on the enemy for a change!


Marine List-
Librarian
2x 6 Tac squad
Scouts with Tellion
2x drop pod with dreadnought (assault cannon, hvy flamer, power fist)
3 bikes with multimelta
Rhino
Razorback

Good going David.

The tourney was a blast.

The quick bat rep setup is nice as well.

I'm looking forward to more, I may put up a less detailed one as well as I didn't take notes.

BTW - I may be taking this the wrong way but the way you've written it makes me wonder. When playing Necron - they don't get a WBB if there are no other necron units of the same type on the board. So the destroyers would not get a WBB if their squad was wiped out - same for the heavy D.

Ah - I don't really know the Necron rules! Will look it up, I'm sure if there was a mistake it wasn't intentional on the part of Chris!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Game 3 – vs. Jamies Nurgle Palgue Marines – Brotherhood of the Fly

Yet again we rolled for dawn of war, but mission was capture and control this time. I got a huge break early in this game as the sky ray spotted CSM rhino on turn 1. The skyray illuminated the target, allowing Moroc the easiest of tasks to explode the transport! The fire of the crisis team was pretty superfluous in the early turns. The plague marines advanced ominously on the Tau lines…

Early running:













After the destruction of the transport, the next priority was to get rid of the daemon prince. Being a Tau, the scariest thing on the table is a mobile CC monster. He had to be taken down, and so all Tau fire was focused on him. Dispite several wounds caused, he emerged still living, psychic energy emanating from him! He channeled this energy by using warptime and assaulting the suits, annihilating them. The vindicator and obliterators blew up the skyray, while the plague marines continued to advance on the fire warrior objective.

Midpoint:








It was bad, very bad for the Tau. And it only got worse. The fire warriors displayed ballistic ineptitude at close range against the advancing plague marines. The 3+ 4+ save of the plague marines really told against the small arms fire, as they charged and routed two units. Daemon prince exctretos, covered in the blood of dead Tau, wasted no time in wiping out a nearby fire warrior unit. Not even the broadsides were spared this time as they were taken out by the CSM long range guns.

Endgame:



Afterthoughts –
1. How humiliating was that?!
2. Chin up: another game in tem minutes!

CSM List-
Daemon prince, wings, warp time
2x 7 plague marines each with rhino
Vindicator
2 obliterators

It was indeed an awesome tourney!

The fact that my DP survived the mass firepower of your gunline was definitely the turning point. Due to the DoW set-up, the rest of my army had a long way to go, particularly as I needed to leave one of my PM squads to hold my own objective. Had Excretos died, it would have been definitely in the balance, especially as we know how much damage your suits can do to PMs when they get in RF fire.

As it was, his survival could even have been ok for you if your darn suits hadn't decided to hang around in combat with him after he slaughtered El Quixo! The one time you want your suits to run...

It was a good battle though and one that demands a rematch. I certainly think it's quite a hard match up between our forces for you at smaller points totals, so maybe a 1500-2000 war might be needed to see what difference larger lists make...

Congrats again on a fantastic event!

troy_tempest wrote:Ah - I don't really know the Necron rules! Will look it up, I'm sure if there was a mistake it wasn't intentional on the part of Chris!

I'm sure it wasn't m8. I played Chris as well and found him a good guy.

Game 4 – vs. Andys Guard



Finally, pitched battle deployment! Capture and control for the second time today! I was looking forward to seeing how the Tau coped with the combined mass infantry and heavy Imperial armour.

Well I got to start first which is always an advantage for a shooty army, especially when facing an equally shooty army! As Andy had deployed second, he had lined up a chimera containing psyker and guard unit on the Tau right, which was pretty sparsely populated as you see below. Also I was quite worried about the Leman Russ on the other flank. So these were the 2 targets for the broadsides.

Well, its hard to emphasise just how lucky I got here. Moroc hit, penetrated and exploded the Chimera. As if that wasn’t enough, the explosion killed all 10 guardsman (yes you did read that right), and to show bad luck sometimes comes in threes, the psyker failed his morale check and fled off the board! Antoc, not to be outdone, blew off the battle cannon of the Leman Russ! The guard responded by pounding heavy weapon fire into the sky ray, but to no avail… AV13 really helped in this respect. The rest of the guard offensive capability was directed to bringing down the suits. Pretty much every armour save was passed. Great start for the Tau!

Early running:




Hmm well it seemed clear that my right flank was fine after all, so the second fire warrior unit ran out of the temple toward the guard lines. The skyray advanced under heavy fire from the guard heavy weapons teams, and was immobilized. The crisis team again took huge amounts of lasgun fire and pretty much walked through it (T2 style). When the guard fire ceased, El’Quixo spotted the commisars command squad and directed the crisis fire toward them. Again fortune favoured the Tau. As well as inflicting 7 wounds, the command squad failed every single cover save (no I’m not joking!). The guard just seemed to be doomed!
To get some revenge, the hellhound drove forward and engulfed Antoch in flames! But no! He emerged, bloodied but unbowed!

Midpoint:




Well, I’m guessing you think the Guard were due some luck in this game. That’s pretty much what I thought too. But it went from bad to worse as you can see below (apologies for showing the skyray moving – it was immobilized by then!). Basically all Tau units advanced on objectives or guard units. The fire warriors gunned down the heavy weapon troopers with rapid fire. El Quixo left the crisis team and finished off a guard unit. The crisis suits were quite literally relentless, and wiped another squad out, the ratlings trying in vain to stop them. They just would not fail any armour saves! The peripheral action saw the hellhound turret blown off and the Leman Russ destroyed by the broadsides, who performed well in this game. I’m pretty sure the crisis team fled near the end of the game due to heavy lasgun fire, but it was in vain as the Tau commanded the key objectives!

Endgame:




Afterthoughts –
1. Finished on a high
2. Passed a lot of armour saves!
3. Turn 1 massacre defined the game


Guard Point List-

Commisar and command squad
Heavy weapons team (2 autocannons, 1 hvy bolter)
Leman russ
Hellhound
Chimera with psyker and 10 guardsmen
5 ratling snipers
3 units of guard, assorted heavy and special weapons

Great report! I guess you didn't play the Eldar army that was in the turny?

Noc

No, though Brother Bartius and me are old sparring partners and occassional allies!

Yep. Glad I didn't face you that day troy as out of everyone who was there I've probably faced you the most.