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Trying something new for this one as I'm getting to learn how this whole software works so please be patient with subsequent turns as I generate them somehow...
Anyways -
SM (Shooty Foot Marines)
List:
captain with combi-plasma (warlord) Nicknamed "Lysander"
Tac squad with plasma cannon
Tac squad with plasma cannon (get's confusing on the picture as the 2nd squad is on the ground floor and the plasma cannon is on the top floor)
Tac squad with plasma cannon
Tac squad with plasma gun (combat squadded out from a 10 man unit initially) (sarge has a plasma pistol)
Tac squad with plasma gun (combat squadded out from a 10 man unit initially)
Tac squad with plasma gun (combat squadded out from a 10 man unit initially)
Land speeder with MM+HF Land speeder with MM+HF
Predator with TLLC's + sponson LC's
Predator with AC + HB's
Iron Clad Dread with underslung melta gun
Dreadnaught with TLLC arm and flamer underslung
Storm Talon with AC+LC's
VS.
Tau (with allied eldar trickery)
I'm still stripping paint on the models so forgive the poor paint job on some of these guys.
HQ - Shas with air burst frag cannon and ion gun and 2 shield drones (warlord)
allied HQ - farseer with runes of warding and spirit stones (powers for this fight was precience (reroll misses) and forewarning (4+ invul) ) - subbed in a metal old style Etheral model
Crisis suits with plasma and missles (3 suits and 2 shield drones)
Fire warriors with sarge 9 man total (Tau HQ attached)
Fire warriors with sarge 9 man total (Farseer attached)
Fire warriors with sarge 9 man total (deployed inside the devilfish)
Dire avengers x5 man (subbed in as unpainted metal vespides)
Devilfish
Tetra
Tetra
Tetra
Broadsides x2 guys in the squad
Hammerhead with burst cannons (H3)
Hammerhead with smart missles (H2)
All the vehicles have disruption pods and black sun filters
Mission - Relic
Warlord traits - helps with reserve rolls for both sides (didn't have any effect for either)
Nightfighting was on turn 1.
Servo skull marker in the middle of the bridge is the objective
SM gets first turn, Tau fails to seize the initiative.
Storm talon and crisis suits in reserves respectively. The central area is a bridge that we decided was 4+ cover if you were inside and difficult to get into it but can move freely if you were inside already. The river was mysterious river.
Both sides have deployed and a wayyyy we go.
(View of the SM deployment on the table.)
(from SM side of things)
(Tau hunkered in the corner)
BTW, is there a button in battlechronicler that makes it give me a jpeg of the current screen? I hate having to crop the picture out of print screen each time.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2012/11/17 08:58:22
+ Thought of the day + Not even in death does duty end.
Hmm, the Space Marine list looks like 1850 points to me, and then you mention a Stormtalon which wasn't in the writeup... are you sure this was a 1500 point game?
Kingsley wrote: Hmm, the Space Marine list looks like 1850 points to me, and then you mention a Stormtalon which wasn't in the writeup... are you sure this was a 1500 point game?
Pretty sure it's 1500 both sides but good catch on the storm talon missing. I added that back up there. I just went over the pics and I had misplaced one of the land speeders and tetras on the initial deployment pictorial. I'll go fix it later today.
Initial Tactics Discussion:
SM - It's the Relic mission so essentially no penalty for MSU shooting. Combat squad out the plasmaguns and have them close on the relic. The plasma cannons will stay put and get range on tau units. Getting close to Tau will be important to either melee them with dreads and to get rid of their advantages with their disruptor pods. Plasma will make short work of their units. Also lacking any objectives that can give skyfire, the skytalon will be able to go and do as it likes. It'll be hard for the Tau to gun down as they have essentially no anti-air and even with presence, not too much high powered shooting. Rail guns only get 1 shot each so not much volume of fire to threaten fliers either. Also no psykers so that runes of warding does no good for them. It is night fighting so the tau will have the initial advantage but first turn is mine so things should still die given how much firepower is on the board already.
Tau - Cower in the corner and shoot the SM off the objective is an option. There's little in the way that can grab it from their list so might be worth it to grab with fire warriors and then drag it back onboard the devilfish to hide in the corner with shrouding. Hopefully with marker lights buffing shooting accuracy as well as divination, the rail guns will demolish the enemy tanks (bs 5 rail gun hammer head, twin linked broad sides, and divination hammerhead). Will focus on the infantry after the tanks go down. The Land speeders with their fast multi-meltas will be very dangerous as they can bypass the shrouding range very easily so if they get close, will have to focus fire them. Hopefully the crisis suits can get in and kill off the plasma cannons in the ruins before they take out too many units. As there's little in the way of sky fire ability, will just try to ignore the storm talon as much as possible.
SM turn 1:
Spoiler:
Most things moved up, two plasma cannons fired on the fire warriors in the ruins and despite a 2+ cover save from night fighting, they lose 4. Thanks to the attached farseer, they are Ld 10 and hold their ground. One of the land speeders moved to behind the house to block LOS and the other moved up to shoot at the devilfish with the multi-melta but unfortunately gets a 1 and missed. The other plasma cannon takes a pot shot at the devilfish too but fails to get past the night fight cover save. Predators and dreads pop smoke as nothing was really in range and he didn't want to suffer damage from return fire. Plasma gun glances off the front armor and does nothing. The rest of the infantry runs up.
Tau turn 1:
Spoiler:
Going for an early objective grab, the devilfish moves up and drops off the fire warriors near the relic. They'll be able to reach it next turn but satisfy themselves with rapid firing at the approaching space marine captain and his plasma gun squad gunning down 3 even with rapid fire. Other return fire was fairly effective as well. With markerlights from Tetra 3 stripping off jink cover and upping BS for the broadsides, they bring down the land speeder. Tetra 2 and hammerhead (H3) bring down the predator by again stripping off cover and getting 6's for pen and explode. The farseer made the hammerhead twin linked which made accuracy not a problem. The explosion fails to do anything.
The other hammerhead (H2) and tetra however, fail to much to the other pred getting just 2 markerlight hits and despite making BS5 and cover of 6+, only manage to strip a hull point by rolling a 3 for pen. The remainder of the fire warriors in the building focus on the northern plasma tac squad and kill 3 with both squads firing. They pass morale. The dire avengers failed to wound anything in the southern tac squad and the one drone that can fire from the devilfish fail to do anything. First blood goes to Tau!
SM turn 2:
Spoiler:
Payback time! Things generally advanced. The iron clad tried to move through cover and ran but didn't get too many good rolls. The SM captain and residual squad pushed up but also rolled badly over difficult terrain and didn't get too far. The other squad did better and closed to rapid fire range. The tau got greedy and forgot to move their squads out of range of the plasma cannons. Squad 1 scored a direct hit and took out another 3 more fire warriors with 4+ cover bringing the squad down to 2 guys and the farseer (thankfully still able to make their leadership). The other cannon gets a hit as well on the ground floor unit and take out 2 guys. Pct2 (plasma cannon team 2) got a direct hit on the dire avengers who promptly goes to ground getting a what we agreed to be 4+ cover since they were partially behind the devil fish. The other plasma guns instead of shooting at the fire warriors tried to finish off the dire avengers. After the dust settles, they are down to 1 guy but miraculously rolls a 9 and passes morale barely. The 2 reduced tac squad shoots at the fire warriors with rapid fire as he doesn't think he can make the charge and kill just 1 (rolled 2's for plasma guns). The ironclad gets a good move through cover but fails it's assault into the tau across difficult terrain.
The strom talon also came on the board and tries to take down the hammerhead but only manages to glance it stripping off a hullpoint getting past the 3+ cover from disruption pods. The hidden land speeder moves over the house and gets within 12' of the hammer head (H2) hoping to get past the shrouding save but the allied eldar thought of that and already buffed the hammerhead with the 4+ invul negating the penetrating melta. The LC predator gets some hits off at the hammerhead then trying to kill it but only strips off a hull point and gets a stun. The las cannon dread takes a shot at the devilfish side armor and gets a shaken.
Tau 2:
Spoiler:
The fire warriors in the middle move and grab the relic but holds their ground hoping that firepower will rid them of all the choppy comming their way. The tetras all shuffle around and light up the land speeder, the iron clad, and the captain's squad of depleted marines. The devilfish moves to screen the survivng dire avenger who is still on the ground. (not sure why as it's not a kill point game). The fire warriors in the ruins don't want to eat any more plasma so they move back a few inches via pre-measuring to get out of 36' of the plasma cannons. Luckily they roll decently and get off the top floor. The farseer breaks off and joins the bigger squad while the Tau commander breaks off to try and do something but not exactly sure what to the foot marines. The hammerhead that can move shuffle around a bit to get disruption pod save as well as rerolls from the farseer. The stunned hammerhead gets the 4+ invul save from the farseer.
Shooting sees the broadsides failing to kill the landspeeder due to abysmal rolling but does stun it. Fire warriors don't manage to do much either to it despite markerlights. The other hammerhead does kill the ironclad with assistance from the other tetra. Last tetra buffs the middle fire warriors who gun down the captain's squad to just the captain via rapid fire. The crisis suits also arrived by deep strike and despite being able to reroll scatter due to tetras only scatter 3' so just takes it and guns down 3 marines in the ruins despite 6 plasma and 6 missles going into them. They make morale. The devilfish doesn't do anything and the dire avenger doesn't do anything useful either. The crisis suits then 2d6 into the trees for some cover from the inevitable plasma cannon fire.
SM turn 3:
Spoiler:
Movement - the strom talon moves up another 18' while the captain who is all alone now closes with the tau squad that have the relic. The LC dreadnaught moves up a bit towards the fire warriors too just in case the captain fails his charge somehow. The northern depleted squad moves to range of the relic holding tau. The 2nd squad of plasma cannon marines in the north moves out of the building as there's not many good targets anymore. The top squad of plasma cannon rolls pooly and fails to get off the top floor of the ruins.
Shooting - eastern plasma cannon shoots at the crisis suits and miss horribly. The LC dreadnaught takes a pot shot at the southern hammerhead and fails to penetrate the cover save. The predator shoots at the left hammerhead and fails to get past the invul save. The Storm talon does better though and gets a pen and a glance through the cover save on the other hammerhead. Pen results in a shaken unfortunately. The plasma squad in the squad shoots a tetra but fails to do much of anything due to poor pen rolls even with str 7. The depleted plasma gun squad on the bridge however does better and kills 2 including the relic holder. The captain doesn't fire and goes in for an assault.
Assault - well finally we get to some choppy action. Despite some 3 overwatch hits and wounds, the captain's 2+ relic armor holds up and he takes no damage. The Tau here make a facy choice here and decide to hang out in the middle facing off against overwhelming SM agression. Not sure if sane, the Tau 'sarge' challenges the captain with what I hope is his bonding knife. The SM capt is alone so has no choice but to accept as he is a single model unit. In case you were wondering, the 2 man plasma gun squad did not join the attack in case of getting stuck in and wanted to grab the relic then run away with it as the Tau just dropped it. Despite the overwhelming odds, the SM capt wiffs horribly and only gets one wound! He also didn't buy a power weapon so the Tau actually saves with his carapace armor. To add insult to injury, the sarge actually manages to get in a wound on the captain with his morale reroll despite 2+ armor save
The captain is pissed but makes his leadership easily but is locked in with the tau. Not all bad though, his men can get the relic next round and he is safe from incoming fire.
Tau turn 3:
Spoiler:
Movement - the Tau Commander moves up trying to get in 18' range of the airburst frag launcher and ion gun. The devilfish moves a bit to screen against the already damaged hammerhead from the dread. The left side hammerhead moves a bit just to activate disruption pods. Tetras almove move about a inch each and line up shots. The dire avenger gets back up and moves a bit to possibly help the melee in the middle. Crisist suits on the far side manuver around the ruins and gun down the remainder of the plasma cannon team. Assault move takes them a bit furter north to get rear shots on the dreadnaught next turn.
Shooting - Despite 2 markerlight hits, and divination buffs, the left hammerhead fails to do anything and misses with rolls of 1 and 2 for hitting. Forgetting to activate the markerlights was a big error here. The other tetra helps the 2 man fire warrior squad in the corner to gun down one of the plasma tac's. The other tetra (T3) helps the big block of fire warriors to gun down the southern intact 5 man plasma gun tac squad. They survive with just one man who fails morale and runs. The Commander also shot at the squad and fails to do anything with his str 4 large blast and str 3 ion gun. The devil fish also shot at the squad but fails to do anything. The boardsides take out the stunned landspeeder with ease from railguns and smart missles.
Assault - the challenge goes on! The commander again fails horribly with rolls and gets just one hit and wound but the Tau sarge saves it again! History goes to repeat itself as somehow against all odds, the sarge manages to poke the commander through an eye slit and the captain looses combat by 1 despite 2+ armor save @$!%#!@ He passes morale and they stay locked in. Morale boost by having exactly 5 guys unengaged was very very useful here.
SM turn 4
Spoiler:
Movement - not too much stuff to do now but some interesting choices were made. The storm talon instead of possibly flying off the table and only getting in a single las cannon shot, the storm talon goes into hover strike mode so assault cannons stay in range. As this isn't a kill points game, it's not that big a risk overall as he really wants the hammerheads dead. The dead moves around the melee having thoughts of joining but not totally comitted. The surviving plasma tac sarge manages to snag up the relic. The southern plasma tac squad rallies and moves towards the middle to grab some cover but with a plasma gun he still wants to use it so doesn't go that far. The northern plasma cannon AGAIN fails to roll high enough to get off the top floor and stays put. As he didn't move them, We just decied that they counted as stationary despite attempting to move.
Shooting - The northern tac plasma cannon gets a partial hit on the crisis suits squad and takes out a shield drone. This unfortunately is enough to test morale and they roll a 9 but with Ld 8 (crappy elites) they fail and fall back. The relic carrier fails to get far on a bad run. The combined fire of the storm talon and predator guns down the previously damaged hammerhead (H3). It wrecks by 2 glancing hits by rending assault cannon fire ultimately despite resisting a bunch of las cannons. The sole surving southern plasma tac squad gets off a single plasma hit on Tetra (T3) and immobilizes it. The LC dread couldn't resist itself and takes a shot at the broadsides but the broadsides make their ruin's cover save, also the captain figures that if he can't kill a damn tau in assault by himself, he'll quit the force.
Assault - The captain's turn to put up or get out and gets 2 hits but only wounds just once again , though luckily or unluckily, the Tau sarge rolls a 3 and then a 2 for his rerolling armor (morale boost from spectators) and finally the challenge ends. The rest of the tau however makes their leadership 6 roll and they stay locked in still. 3 rounds of combat is just silly for a squad of fire warriors to stick raound but anything is possible I guess.
Tau turn 4:
Spoiler:
Movement - Tau commander move to get some shots at the plasma cannon squad in the open. The crisis suits zip around to try and get rear armor shots on the dreadnaught. The Devilfish moves into terrain to try and gun down the lone tac marine with a plasma gun but manages to immobilize itself on the bridge lololol. The lone dire avenger moves up to maybe try joining in to save the fire warriors still locked in with the captain. The other tau vehicles shuffle around to get shots or just activate their disruption pods.
Shooting - The Tau commander continues to do absolutely nothing desite hitting everything. Just can't do enough damage with low strength weapons and good armor saves. The left most tetra fails to hit anything and the left hammerhead failed to pen the predator even with a good hit via psychic powers. The immobilized devilfish fails to wound/hit the lone tac marine in the bridge but the dire avenger with his shiruken catapult manages to kill the guy The Crisis suits despite rapid fire and rear armor and markerlights hitting, fails to pen armor 10 with 6 str 6 and 6 str 7 weapons hits
Assault - The captain and the fire warriors keep swinging at eachother. another 2 hits but 2 armor saves do nothing. 3 hits back and 1 wound gets saved by relic armor. They stay locked in lol. The commander and crisis suits make some assault moves but otherwise nothing special happens.
SM turn 5:
Spoiler:
Movement - Really fast now. The back up plasma cannon crew run up trying to grab the relic. The dread moves closer to get within 1 inch so he can't fail the assault as he is just sick and tired of the fire warriors in the middle alive after some 4 rounds of combat.
Shooting - SM guns finally warm up and the pred takes out a tetra in one hit. There just isn't that much left to shoot however so we move into assault.
Assault - the captain does better and kills 2 fire warriors this time (bad armor saves finally) and then the dreadnaught gets in and completely destroys the rest of the squad. They consolidate a bit and hope to survive the tau shooting phase yet again.
Tau Turn 5
Spoiler:
Movement - I made a mistake in how the crisis suits rallied the prior turn so just bear with me as the results don't change what so ever at all. They are still roughly where they end up with on the map at this point. The tau commander moves up to get into range of the plasma cannon team in the river (which turned out to be toxic slime that gave 5+ cover and kills you if you go to ground in it). The surviving tau vehicles that can move, shuffle around a bit. The big firewarrior squad moves a bit but stays inside the ruins.
Shooting - The tau commander is sucking as bad as the SM captain and fails to kill a single model with his shooting. The crisis suits fail to do anything to the dreadnaught still (last turn was actually fail to hit with snap fire, this turn, it's fail to pen with all it's weapons but end result is that nothing happens). Fire warriors try to gun down the SM captain but all the bullets bounce off the relic armor. The dire avenger moved up to try and grab the relic for a last turn win but fail to reach it. He tries to shoot the captain but fail to wound. Nothing dies! The hammerhead + tetra + divination does manage a glance on the predator who is down to 1 hull point but is still shooting.
Assault - some assault moves. Nothing happens.
We roll for next turn and.......... we get a 5 and it goes on
SM turn 6
Spoiler:
Movement, the dread and capt move to assault range of the devilfish and dire avengers respectively. and that's about it. The last surviving tac squad tries to get up to the relic but fail due to really bad movement rolls yet again >.<
Shooting - the Predator hits the hammerhead and fails to pen, the plasma cannon hits the crisis suits and kills the last shield drone. The dreadnaught blows up the immobilized devilfish and the gundrones pile out.
Assault - The dread then assaults them and kills the 2 drones off easily. The captain instead of shooting kills the dire avenger in combat.
Tau Turn 6
Spoiler:
Movement - things that can, just shuffle around for better shots. Crisis suit gets in range to hit either the dread or survivng tac squad. The commander gets in to shoot the tac squad and secure line breaker just in case.
Shooting - the commander shoots and yet again fails to kill a single model. no casualties caused all game, he's like the most friendly commander ever @_@. The fire warriors combine shooting along with the bigger squad getting farseer buffs along with tetra support to dump some 12 wounds on the tac squad who all die surprisingly enough. The Hammerhead and left tetra bring down the predator finally. (glanced to death with another 3 rolled on the pen table....) The broadsides take out the commander with AP1 fire and a failed iron halo shot. The crisis suits now get to shoot the dread on the side and take him out with missle and plasma rapid fire. They jetpack move for fun after.
We roll and there was a turn 7 but it was pretty obvious at this point so SM concedes.
Tau wins 3:0
First blood, linebreaker and slay the warlord. 3:0 No one controls the relic.
This message was edited 23 times. Last update was at 2012/11/17 09:00:04
+ Thought of the day + Not even in death does duty end.
Well the poor SM couldn't stand up to that amount of shooting with of course some help from the battle brother Farseer
The stars themselves once lived and died at our command, yet you still dare to oppose our will. 3k Eldar project, slowly painting up a Biel-Tan army 1.5k Custom Tyranid Hive Fleet Myrmecoleon
Ratius wrote: Better going second here as SMs? and counter deploying VS Tau heavies with LSMMs and ST? - Fast and hard Vs them?
An aweful lot of mid Str anti armor (plasmas/ACs) for the SMs? Did you know the matchup before?
Am I right in thinking only Troops can carry the Relic?
Nice rep though.
We did not know the match ups actually. Both sides went into it blind. The commander Tau had was set up as anti-horde for example and essentially showed how effective it did vs power armor lol. The SM was also going for a generalist approach trying to rely more on shooting than mech assault. Plasma heavy was a typically good strat as we're MEQ heavy in the local meta just like most places I'd imagine. The problem SM really had I think was lack of very long range shooting. Psychic buffs may have also helped some but that's one of the built in Tau counters. He had good armor saves but Tau countered with alot of volume and cover stripping marker lights really threatened the main way his armor survived.
Only troops can carry the relic, you are correct.
Thanks for the nice comment as this new program is still pretty new to me and I just really need some practice with it. This report took about 4x as long as my regular picture reports but I think it's just a problem with being familar with the software. Incidentally, did the shooting lines help or hinder the report? I only marked in effective shooting and misses/failed to wounds I just left out.
Well the poor SM couldn't stand up to that amount of shooting with of course some help from the battle brother Farseer
The farseer or Eldrad has been integral to my Tau army now. Being able to get Ld 10 for some fire warrior blocks really help (the commander Tau in the other squad). It's 2 squads now that I don't have to worry about running off the table very much. Psy defense is good to have and it's one way to make hammerheads twin linked so quite nice. The tau list still has very little to deal with fliers unfortunately and I am not sure where to get it from honestly right now. Quad gun is about all I can spare (didn't use in this fight as I was trying out tetras alot) but flier heavy armies like necrons just roll over my guys. Doom scythes are such !@#% as they typically can get close enough to negate my shouding too. BTW, tetras really are amazing. I really love those things.
+ Thought of the day + Not even in death does duty end.
Weird question after reading the whole report, but can you run when you have the relic?
Also awesome to see the tetras do well!
And finally wooo 100 posts!
Successful Trades: 2
"The human body is a paradigm of perfection and purity. Its makeup is an example to all lesser creatures and races (and be assured, all other creatures are less than human) that our place as dominators of the galaxy is right and just.” The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer
4TheG8erGood wrote: Weird question after reading the whole report, but can you run when you have the relic?
Also awesome to see the tetras do well!
And finally wooo 100 posts!
lol, gratz on the 100th post. The tetras really do very well but I'm still debating on 2 or 3 of them. 3 has some extra redundancy but it is another 50 points somewhere else potentially. Also I completely forgot that it comes with gun too but it's probably not a big deal either way.
You can never move more than 6' with the relic and it specifically says no running that's why the fire warriors just stayed to shoot.
The SM list is actually 1400pts as you have it listed.
No offense it's just broken down a bit odd.
ahh sorry, it really is 1500, he had a bunch of upgrades and such on his vehicles that I didn't put down. I'm e-mailing him for a better upgrade list and will update once he sends it to me.
+ Thought of the day + Not even in death does duty end.
In SM Turn four you wrote this under the shooting phase:
"The relic carrier fails to get far on a bad run." - That's why I asked!
You are right about the redundancy though, with AV 10 it seems like one could get popped rather easy, And poof goes half your ML.
I look forward to you repainting your troops and posting another BR!
Successful Trades: 2
"The human body is a paradigm of perfection and purity. Its makeup is an example to all lesser creatures and races (and be assured, all other creatures are less than human) that our place as dominators of the galaxy is right and just.” The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer
He passes morale and they stay locked in. Morale boost by having exactly 5 guys unengaged was very very useful here.
3 rounds of combat is just silly for a squad of fire warriors to stick raound but anything is possible I guess.
The stars themselves once lived and died at our command, yet you still dare to oppose our will. 
