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Hi

So the last couple of months I've been getting increasingly excited about attending a few tournaments on the bounce, which can be rare enough for me. The first two are certainly the more competitive of the lot - firstly the UK GT Heat 2 in Mansfield, England at the excellent (if cold) Sanctuary gaming centre. And the second of them the only really competitive event in Scotland - Rapid Fire, hosted by Stirling Wargamers.


UKGT HEAT 1 - Mansfield

For GT, the rules were that your list is 1500 and pretty much take anything you like as long as its battleforged - including 'experimental' FW stuff. Only restriction was Come the Apocalypse allies.

6 games, and missions would be a mix of Eternal War and Maelstrom. Actually now I think about it, only two were Maelstrom. The names escape me as I haven't played much 7th ed.

My list was as follows:

[b]Farsight Enclaves : Commander Nightfury's Montka

Commander, XV84 suit, EWO, drone controller, missile pod, Mirrorcodex, marker drone 195pts

Troops
3 dual plasma XV8, EWO 174 pts
2 dual plasma XV8, EWO 116pts
2 dual flamer XV8 66 pts
1 dual fusion blaster XV8 53 pts
1 dual fusion blaster XV8 53 pts
- All Crisis Suit unit prices include bonding knives
10 Kroot 60

Fast Attack
4 marker drones 56 pts

Heavy Support
Sky ray, SMS, BSF 116 pts

Firebase support cadre - Tau Empire

3 Broadsides, High Yield Missiles, SMS, EWO 210 pts
3 Broadsides, HIgh Yield Missiles, SMS, EWO 210 pts

Iontide, EWO, twin linked fusion blaster 190 pts

1499 pts



I was about as happy as I could make this - sticking to Tau. Since we could effectively take anything else you can imagine in our lists, I did consider a Culexus in a Valkyrie to nerf invisible deathstars but considered it too much pointsink. Perhaps I'd rue that decision...

Game 1 GT

Opponent: Ben, using Space Wolves CAD
Mission: Crusade
Warlord Trait: Counter Crisis
Night Fighting: Yes
First Turn: Farsight Enclaves

Ben was a great guy and easy to chat to. His list was as follows:

HQ
Rune Priest (warlord)
Wolf Guard battle leader on a thunderwolf

Troops
6 Grey Hunters, x 2 plasma guns, Razorback, TL Lascannon
6 Grey Hunters, x 2 plasma guns, Razorback, TL Lascannon
10 Grey Hunters, x 2 plasma, Rhino

Fast attack
3 TWC, x 2 storm shields, x 2 power fists
3 TWC, x 2 storm shields, x 2 power fists

Heavy
Long Fangs - 3 missile launchers 2 lascannons
Predator



Table had a good liberal spread of decent ruins and LOS blocking terrain without being crowded. I tried to give my skyray and Iontide a decent arc with minimal LOS blockers in the way, and my broadsides were on either flanks, with plasma suits and the commander with drones in the centre. Flamer suits, solo fusions in reseve with the kroot infiltrating to try and stop TWC with Battle leader's movement for a turn.



Ben deploys his long fangs with rune priest in a large building to his right flank opposite my broadsides that are in the open, flanked by a razorback mounted GH squad and the smaller squad of TWC, anchors his centre with the 10 man GH squad and Tri las predator, with 2nd razor and the character TWC squad out to his left.

Post deployment I infiltrate my kroot out of Ben's LOS behind the big missile silo terrain to try and block some TWC moves at some point.

Early Game



First turn, my skyray spraffs the entirety of its seeker missiles and wrecks the 5 man GH razor opposite my right flank FIRST BLOOD. The left flank broadsides main target is the long fangs opposite, and they duly kill them all with preffered enemy missiles, leaving the rune priest by himself. The right flank broadsides utilise markers and strip the predator down to one hull point, which was slightly dissapointing that I didn't get it first time. Can't remember why I didn't finish the predator with the iontide - think I may have went for a long range shot on the rune priest to try get warlord, which must have failed. I shuffle the kroot out to the right to try and block the TWC's first turn movement, which was completely a fail idea, as you will soon read!


Ben's first turn and he moves his Battle Leader TWC round, and I realise I've done the noob mistake of getting the kroot in the way far too early, and they are going to soon resemble the ingredients of a Nandos kitchen. The TWC on my left/Ben's right flank also move towards my board edge at the other end of the table, to menace the position of some plasma suits and broadsides. Shooting, and the cursed predator I failed to kill opens fire and detonates the Skyray, blowing it to bits. Assault, and the TWC charge and literally decimate the kroot. I'm thinking great - run little last kroot guy, and I'll missile them to death next turn. Morale check and 1... ok then 1 again! Insane heroism! The little troll has thought 'I can take a whole unit of thunderwolves solo!' and messed me up for next turn :/



Later game

As the game progressed though, my superior firepower was mincing through the Astartes ranks. In the second turn, my two man plasma suits picked up all my remaining markers and rapid fired the smaller TWC cavalry squad to death, whilst broadsides wrecked the larger GH squad rhino and the iontide then killed all but two of the stunned survivors. The battleleader squad slaughtered my riptide (after dealing with crazy YOLO kroot guy ), but then died against both broadside units next turn. Then it was just mopping up remnants. Flamer suits reaved a merry dance through depleted GH squads, and the rune priest took some fusion shots to the face at the end. Tabled my opponent for a 30-1 win.



Thoughts

Ben was a great guy and we had a laugh. He even said he really enjoyed the game despite the result - we were both laughing at my daft kroot squad, and he was pleased enough he detonated the skyray and got my riptide in combat. But he said he hadn't been to many competitive events and his list was probably quite a th ed SW list. However, I knew this result would really chuck me in at the deep end next game. And so it proved.

Game 2

Opponent: Nic, using mega deathstar of Ravenwing/TWC/Inquistion/Tigurius conclave
Game: Emperor's will + kill points
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fight: no
First turn: Ravenwing
Warlord trait: can't remember.

Nics list:

HQ
Sammel
Deathwing command squad, apothecary, huntsman

Troops
5 scouts
5 scouts

Champions of Fenris
Iron Priest, hammer, some fenrisian wolves
Iron Priest, hammer, some fenrisian wolves
Iron Priest, hammer, some fenrisian wolves

Inquisitor, rad and psychotroke grenades

Ultramarine conclave
Tigurius
Bike ML 2 librarian
Bike ML 2 Librarian

Not the best pic of Nics force here I'm afraid:



This is a nightmare match up for me, one of the worst I could have. RavenWolfstar is pretty top tier at the moment IMO. If he gets invisibilty and shrouded this is going to be bad.

I set up castling in a big ruin, which is a bit fail as I'm clustered up but I am completely cutting off his ability to get out of LOS.



Nic is set up in the open directly across from me. Powers, and he gets invisibility, shrouded, shriek and loads of other nasty.

I infiltrate my kroot in a big conga line across the front of my force as he'll have to hit that first before he can get to the juicy meat of my army, and I get lots of the supporting fire.

I seize on a 5+ with the Mirrorcodex

Early Game

Surprisingly going first to my delight and Nic's dismay, I marker up the unit. Broadsides do a fair bit of damage with the skyray and iontide chipping in to a minor degree but with FNP and lots of 2+ saves I kill a lot of fenrisian wolves one or two ravenwing guys, wound sammel and manage to kill an Iron Priest FIRST BLOOD. The thing is, with the scoring system being as harsh as it was, every secondary point was massive at this tournament even if you lost. So this would come into play later in the event for me big time.

Nic's first turn, and he charges forward. But he can only hit the kroot meatshield on the first turn, and I do a couple more wounds with supporting fire. Sadly, didn't get any markerlight hits or I may have done a lot more wounds.



I get another turn of shooting at him after he minces the riptide, but with shrouding and invisibility plus 2+ saves I kill only one of the iron priests and a few more fenrisian wolves.

I do my best to scatter away from my castle with riptide, suits and skyray, leaving the doomed broadsides to their fate.




Late game

I do my best to scatter around the board, and the plasma suits and riptide do fair amount of damage on the deathstar. At the end he is left with two librarians on one wound each on his own objective and the inquisitor and a fenrisian wolf on my objective, whilst I have only my commader and his drones left. So its was a 28-3 win to him, as I had racked up the secondaries.

Thoughts

So, disappointing but felt I put a good effort in. I almost killed all his librarians on his objective with my riptide assaulting them turn 5 then it lost its last wound to a force axe. Still, think Nic's list is pretty nails.

After a win and a loss, was difinitively mid table.

Game 3

Opponent: Graeme, using Iron Hands, Eldar and some FW tanks
Game: the Maelstrom mission where you can steal your opponent's cards
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
Night Fight: No
First Turn: Farsight Enclaves

Graeme's list as follows:

Iron Hands
Techmarine
5 Scouts
5 Scouts
Command Rhino

Eldar
Cloudstrike Falcon formation
Fire Dragons aspect host - x 3 Fire Dragons squads of 5 with +1 BS

FW tanks
Sicarian
Typhon

For those that don't know, the Typhon is a super heavy av14 all round tank with 6 hull points, that fires a S10 AP1 Apocalyptic blast that ignores cover. It also has ceramite plating, therefore unable to get a penetrating hit with fusion suits. Due to it being a super heavy, you can't stun it to stop it firing.



Early Game

I overcharged the ion accelerator on the riptide to try and do some damage to the Typhon, but I only managed to strip a hull point. The skyray unloaded on the command rhino and wrecked it FIRST BLOOD. Broadsides take out 4 out of 5 scouts, but can't get the last one as its out of LOS. The Falcons with fire dragons are in reserve.

Graeme's first turn, and the sicarian shoots and kills a broadside. Then we have this:



The Typhon starts splattering broadsides that are in ruins, without me being able to do anything about it! BOOOM!

Late Game

I steadily pick up maelstrom points, but don't particularly get the rub of the green with the missions I roll for, whilst I can't really expose any units out of LOS without them getting obliterated next turn with the Typhon. A fusion suit destroys the Sicarian whilst the Riptide makes a zoom up the left flank and tries to execute the techmarine to score warlord plus some maelstrom points, but dies before getting a proper bead on his warlord.

Here's Commander Nightfury with his drones JSJ-ing behind the 'bean can' LOS blocking terrain to avoid Typhon



Unfortunately he did eventually get splattered

But when Graeme's Falcons and Fire Dragons arrive the tide turns and I steadily get a pummeling.



Graeme wins by two points on Maelstrom, and with super harsh GT scoring its 29-2 loss for me.

Thoughts

Me and Graeme had a good laugh, but not sure I could have done much here. Tried to play the mission, but the Typhon and Hammer and Anvil was a nasty combination, as I had quite a distance to try and cover for objectives but few places to hide. Still - not usually going to see one of those things at tournaments, so difficult to plan for. Anyways - day one over. One win & two losses. I will be on the timmy tables on Sunday!

GT Day 2

Game 4

Opponent: Ben and his cent star
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Vanguard
Night fight: yes
First turn: Farsight Enclaves

Ben's list as follows:

Nemesis Strike Force
HQ - Level 3 Librarian, hammer, liber daemonica

Troops - Strike Squad

Heavy
Dreadknight
Dreadknight

LoW - Draigo

Space Marines
Tigurius

Scouts

Grav Centurions x 5



So this is one of the match ups I've been practising against, with mixed success. Ideally I'd like to get the jump on the cent star (consisting of cenurions, draigo, tirgurius and the GK librarian) and mash it to death before it does anything. However, the deployment and terrain are against me, with him able to hide it behind a piece of silo shaped terrain that blocks LOS. All the rest of the NSF are in reserve to try to deep strike turn 1. Space Marine scouts in reserve too.



Ben rolls his powers - gets invisibility first roll (joy!) and perfect timing (great - more completely ignoring cover uber shootin!) and the GK libby has Gate of Infinity (which is a pain as its multi-objective, and draigo already has Gate so they can split off and claim seperate objectives easily at the end).

Now, I was thinking about this game before hand and what I can do about it. Generally, its very difficult to kill the whole deathstar, so I planned to just kill everything else and claim as many objectives as I could. Which almost worked...

Early game

I shuffle about a bit first turn, with not much to shoot at. I think I wound draigo and one centurion with the skyray, and thats about it.
Ben's first turn, and he gets one of the dreadknights on from NSF 1st turn reserve. It deep strikes into my deployment zone, and I kill it straight away with mass Early Warning Override interceptor, with the Xv84 markerlight helping to boost my broadsides up to hit more often and obliterate it FIRST BLOOD plus a heavy support kill.

His shooting phase, and one centurion that is in range manages to kill my skyray. I chose not to jink as he hadn't cast perfect timing, and didn't think one cent could kill it. as it was, Ben scores a heavy kill for the skyray too.

On turn two, due to poor placement of his centurions I manage to kill one or two this turn I think as he has positinoed them so that Draigo is not tanking wounds for the majority of the squad and the cents are closer to my army. His turn, the 2nd dreadknight teleports in, and gets mullahed as well by mass interceptor for the second heavy support kill in my opponents turn. EWO is paying off for me here. I kill one of the strike squad too with sms intercept. Ben severly wounds the riptide to only 1 wound remaining with his centurions shooting, and splitting fire he kills a broadside through the big ruin, with no cover due to Perfect Timing.

Late game



Whilst killing the dreadknights was excellent and picking away at the centurions has been useful, I am just not doing enough damage to the cent star. Mostly its the perfect timing that is killing me as for the 2nd game in a row I am getting no benefit from the masses of ruins I have to hide in.

The kroot outflank and menace the strike squad, killing all but one. In Ben's turn he assaults them and makes them run, but they rally and shoot the last GK marine dead. Flamer suits take part in slaughtering scouts yet again, and the riptide goes down to more grav shots. Perfect timing wipes out Nightfury and his marker drone crew.



On the last turn, its pretty close. I have one remaining plasma suit holding an objective but with Draigo right in front of him on two wounds, and the GK libby by himself about 14 inches away on another objective. The last centurion and tigurius are on one wound a piece too. Basically, I make a Timmy mistake and choose to rapid fire draigo, which he saves one out of two wounds on his storm shield, then kills the suit in his turn. What I should have done would be to shoot the GK libby for both warlord and clearing him off that objective. The last centurion gets into combat on my objective with a broadside. Due to prefferred enemy marines his cent has to take two saves, but passes them both.

If I had killed either the centurion or Draigo I would have won. As it is, its a 28-3 win for Ben and the Grey Knights.

Thoughts

Two decisions lost me this game - choosing to go first, and choosing to shoot Draigo at the end instead of the GK librarian, who would have failed both the plasma saving throws he had to make. But I think my strategy paid off for the most part, and intercepting and killing the dreadknights was pretty good. With two secondaries, again I am doing better than most of the field that have the same results as me at this point.

Best Painted

Here was some of the best painted armies on display. I voted for the Salamanders army.





Game 5

With 3 losses and only one win, the NoobPwner is getting steadily noobpwned :sad: . But at lunch time I decided to activate beast mode :dead:

Opponent: Jim with Adeptus Mechanicus & Flesh Tearers
Mission: Purge the Alien
Deployment: Dawn of War
NIght Fighting: yes
Warlord Trait: Stealth Ruins (super win with night fight)
First Turn: AdMech

I didn't manage to get a decent pic of the majority of Jim's Ad Mech force unfortunately



Jims list - bear in mind I've never so much as looked at either the Skitarii, Ad mEch or BA codices:

Dominus

10 Skitarii, 3 haywire guns
5 skitarri, 3 haywire guns
5 skitarri, 3 haywire guns

3 Grav servitor things with tonnes of shots
3 Grav servitor things with tonnes of shots

2 Combat Walkers and one Autocannon walker that outflank turn 1

Bunker

Flesh Tearers
Librarian
5 scouts
two forge world thunderfire cannon things.

Jim wins the roll to go first, and I win which side I want. I take the side with the most ruins in it, but don't have a lot of LOS to his side of the board, as I am hiding the majority of my force from percieved mega alpha strike, but mostly those grav things. He sets up the dominus and 3 grav servitors in the bunker, with an escape hatch to come out in a big ruin. The remaining grav servitors are on the bunkers roof, with some scouts hidden behind a wall and the Marine cannon things behind the bunker. Jim stated that the last 3 opponents had seized on him so far in the event which had messed him up badly.

I reserve fusion suits and flamer suits.

For the 2nd time at this event, I seize the initiative on a 5+ with the Mirrorcodex :smile: . Great for me, but Jim can't belive his luck and I feel a wee bit guilty. But only a wee bit - 50 pts I paid for that!

Early Game

I run one squad of broadsides through their ruin to get LOS and in range of the Grav Servitors on the bunker, and jump Nightfury and his drones ontop of a ruin to support them, as well as the Skyrays markers. Riptide Nova charges Ion accelerator to try and damage the bunker, but fails miserably.
The broadsides have more luck though, and wipe out the grav servitors FIRST BLOOD. Despite having to snap fire, I got lots of hits on markers having rolled 'Preffered Enemy - Everyone' on my mirrorcodex roll, so the marker drones had a re-rollable 2+ hit, and I could boost back up to hitting on 3's with the broadsides and strip the cover of the serivtors.

Jim's turn, and 3 pods of skitarii arrive and the walker things. The dominus and the 2nd grav servitor units disembark from the bunker to shoot back at broadsides. At the end of Jim's movement phase I kill a drop pod and about 15 skitarii and the librarian on overwatch, with the remnants of the big squad falling back.
Shooting, and Jim's grav servitors kill a broadside and the surivors fail their morale and fall back. Elsehwere, the marine cannons aim for NIghtfury and his drones, but with stealth ruins and nightfighting, I get a 2+ cover which they all pass.

My turn two, and flamer suits arrive and toast the scouts. My running broadsides fail to rally and run off the board, but 2nd unit of broadsides do exactly what the other unit did and delete a unit of grav servitors with ignoring cover from markers. Fusion suits arrive to kill the space marine crew of a cannon. Riptide ruins the walkers, leaving only one left, and plasma suits plus Kroot mop up most of the remaining skitarii

Late game



We both know Jim can't really win now and he tries valiantly, but loses the rest of his walkers and skitarii. He kills one of my fusion suits with a cannon, but then concedes as we both know he will get tabled.


My Riptide stalks the ruination of the Martian assault:



Thoughts

I thought I could win this going second with the amount of decent firepower against troops (and not av14 ceramite armour tanks, or invis deathstars ) but going first I got the jump on poor Jim's forces. He took it well, and was a great guy.

As regards standings, I thought I'd have to play against my friend Paul in the last game, but as it turned out we didn't get drawn against each other. Here is his fully converted Deathwatch (Thunder Wolves) army anyway:



Game 6

Opponent: Mike and his Knights
Mission: Scouring
Deployment: Dawn of War
First turn: Farsight Enclaves

Mikes list-

Knight Warden, gatling cannon
Knight with Melta cannon
Knight with Battlecannon

Space Marine Librarian conclave:

Terminator Librarian
Librarian
Librarian



I thought I was going first, may kill a knight or two...



But seized on! Knights advance, killing riptide FIRST BLOOD and some broadsides!!

My Skyray gets wrecked, then thrown at Nightfury



But ultimately, Nightfury faces down the knights almost singlehandedly for victory. This is my fave pic of the weekend.



Not much to say about this game. I thought I had him going first, with tank hunting FBSC units, then he seizes and nukes my riptide and two broadsides. But I got lucky - turn one I killed his Knight Warden for Warlord, which then scattered back and took another knight with it on the apocalypitic blast. Very unfortunate for Mike, and a game ender. I tabled him turn 4.

I voted Mike my fave opponent as he had the worst ever luck.


Summary

I thought my list worked well, as well as can be expected with current limitations. We have good units, but struggle against deathstarhamma big time, though thought I gave a good account of myself in those games. Put it this way - played 2 deathstars with invisibility, and lost closely. Played 3 armies without deathstars or unplayable FW units, and tabled them all.

In the end I qualified for Finals by 3 tournament pts, so those secondaries I wracked up in my losses got me through.

Had a blast. Two of the guys I came to the tourney with were 1st and 2nd with Eldar and ADMech respectively, and another friend of mine was 4th with Eldar. There was only 1 other Tau player, so 2 out of 48 were for the greater good.


Onto Rapid Fire next week!

Nice report mate. I heard someone brought 65 Warp spider to the 2nd heat, I take it you didn't come across that list?

Wow came together for the Tau first round, well done!

Laughed at the YOLO kroot moment, that is a classic.

That next one is looking to be a really gnarly matchup, is it maelstrom or eternal war? Looking forward to it!

Cheers
Ibushi

Thanks for reading guys. Yeah the 2nd game was particularly difiicult. I didn't get time to finish the reports last night, as I am painting up another riptide, hammerhead and some pathfinders for Rapid Fire this weekend which is 1850.

Too many tournaments - 1st world problems !

And no, I didn't come across the 65 warp spiders, but two of my friends played against him. I have played against 30 warp spiders previously, its a very bad match up for me.

Hopefully will get time to at least finsih the first day of games when I get back from work tonight.

GT Heat 2 Reports finished. Will get working on Rapid Fire reports this week, where I did substantially better!

Rapid Fire

I went to the excellent Rapid Fire, run by Stirling Wargamers last year and had a blast. I also used my Farsight Enclaves force last time out too, and as I;m lazy decided to just keep with the Tau despite the army feeling a bit dated. I enjoy playing it anyways, so who cares?

As opposed to GT where it was 1500 and anything could go really, Rapid Fire was 1850 and if you wanted a secondary detachment you could only take up to 600 points in it. Forge World was limited to 600 points, but more on that later!

My army:

1850 Commander Nightfury's Montka

Primary - Farsight Enclaves

Commander, XV84 suit, EWO, drone controller, missile pod, Mirrorcodex, marker drone

Troops
3 dual plasma XV8, EWO
2 dual plasma XV8, EWO
2 dual flamer XV8
1 dual fusion blaster XV8
1 dual fusion blaster XV8
- All Crisis Suit unit prices include bonding knives
10 Kroot

Fast Attack
4 marker drones
5 pathfinders, bonded

Elite
Iontide, twin linked fusion blaster, EWO

Heavy Support
Sky ray, SMS, BSF
Ion Head, SMS, BSF

Firebase support cadre - Tau Empire

3 Broadsides, High Yield Missiles, SMS, x 2 EWO
3 Broadsides, HIgh Yield Missiles, SMS, x 2 EWO

Iontide, EWO, twin linked fusion blaster

So to bump it up from 1500 I had added the pathfinders, the ionhead and a second Iontide. Now I know people are probably thinking that the Ionhead is pretty fail, but it added a good bit extra range pie plates in for relatively cheap. However, good chance of overheating every now and again. Regardless, it had its moments.

Game 1

Opponent: Tom, with his Biel Tan scatterlaser Eldar
Mission: Crusade
Set up: Vanguard
Night Fighting: Yes
First turn: Biel Tan
My Warlord Trait: Stealth Ruins

Tom's list was something like this:

Farseer on bike
4 Units of scatter laser bikes
1 unit of 3 scatter laser war walkers
2 unit of 2 scatter laser war walkers
Aspect Host of 3 units of Warp Spiders with +1 BS
Wraithknight

This is a good army, and I was pretty worried about the wraithknight. Yeah, I have loads of shooting, but most of it is at S7, so I'd be wounding it on 5's plus he'd usually have either an armour or cover save plus FNP. I'd need to pick my time carefully when to focus on it, as if I spend a turn or two trying to kill it if it bumrushes me then I can get turkey shot with a lot of the scatter lasers, which can then battlefocus backwards after shooting.


Tom's set-up



And mine in the opposite corner, hugging the ruins



Early game

Tom moves a lot of walkers and bikes forward, and i'm already wondering if some of the stuff is gonna be a little far back to do much first turn. Wraithknight shuffles forward on the ruin in the Eldar DZ. Warp Spiders zoom forward with good rolls on the flicker jumps, and head towards the pathfinders I had infiltrated onto a ruin in the middle of the board.



Shooting, and with a bit of a mistake with some movement he can't battlefocus some of his walkers into range as some of the bikes are blocking the way. I think there is a wound or two put onto my broadsides from long range scatter lasers. The Warp Spiders open up on the Pathfinders, but I go to ground with my stealth ruins save and save them all.

My turn, and as a lot of the Jetbikes are clustered around the walkers closely packed, I concentrate on placing the pie plates from the Riptides onto the walkers, killing one or two walkers but killing more jetbikes. I think a unit of them fled the board after taking casaulties, and I deplete another squad. Bloody Ionhead overheats (yey!) on the first shot, and loses a hull point.
Broadsides heavily wound one unit of warp spiders, whilst the other unit kills a distant war walker. I killed a fair bit first turn, and was glad as it would be less scatter lasers to rain back on me.

Turn two onwards, and the warp spiders manage to wipe out the pathfinders in melee, whilst I may lose a broadside or so to shooting, the wraithknight moves forward and takes a pot shot at a riptide, wounding it but thankfully not a 6 from the hefty wraithcannon.

A few of my crisis teams and kroot arrive from reserve and try to put pressure on the unit of jetbikes hanging back with the farseer and try to take out the war walkers on the far side



With the result of killing the farseer and his unit with my flamer crisis teams. I think I got very lucky, and rolled about 12 wounds onto 4 models due to dual flamers on each suit. I then lost the kroot and fusion blaster guy in retaliation.

Late game

Towards the later part of the game, the Warp Spiders had mostly been killed in trying to close with the majority of the Tau shooty castle of broadsides, tanks and riptides, and the wraithknight had attempted to come up and support them, primarily by turkey shooing the Hammerhead with its wraithcannons, and wrecking it whilst putting another wound on the riptide. I responded by focusing the majority of my shooting from broadsides and riptides onto the wraithknight, getting lucky and taking it down to only 1 wound remaining.

Whilst this went on, my deep striking plasma, fusion and flamer suits had succeeded in wiping out the remaining jetbikes and war walkers around the Eldar deployment zone. Near the end the wraithknight charged back towards its own DZ and killed a unit of plasma suits, but it wasn't enough and as the game ended the Tau scored near to all the crusade objectives.



Game ended a 19-1 win to me.

Thoughts

When I seen his army I thought I'd be up against it versus Tom's force. I think had the wraithknight been deep struck near my deployment zone I'd have been stuck with the nail biting decision to try and focus everything on it to kill it before it starts stomping everything, or ignore it and try to take down the rest of the eldar army before the wraithknight could kill my relatively static broadsides and tanks. As it was, the wraithknight held back most of the game and I could work my way through the Eldar, prioritising the jetbikes and warp spiders so as to not have late objective grabs from the Eldar. A decent result for game 1 I felt.

Game 2

Opponent: Jamie, and his beautifully done Iron Warriors, with a Chaos Knight
Mission: Seize Ground? ( one of the Maelstrom ones)
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
Night Fighting: Yes
Warlord Trait: can't remember
First Turn: Iron Warriors

Jamie's army was totally stunning. List was composed something like this:

Terminator Lord
Terminator Sorcerer
4 Terminators

10 man squad of CSM, autocannon, melta, Icon of Vengeance, Rhino
10 man squad of CSM, autocannon, melta, Icon of Vengeance, Rhino

Heldrake

2 Obliterators
1 Obliterator

Chaos Knight

Armies facing off down the table:





Early Game

I don't seize, and the Iron Warriors hare towards me down the no-mans land of mid table. Shooting, and the oblits and knight take 3 wounds from the non-firebase Riptide.

My turn, and I can-open both rhinos, and kill a whole unit of CSM which scores me a fair few maelstrom points





Late game

On turn 3 I get a fusion suit deep striking behind the knight. Jamie elects to take the shield on the back of the knight, but I kill it with a lot of tank hunting shots to the now unprotected front. The terminator squad arrives, but takes significant casualties from intercept. They do redeem themselves by wiping out a riptide and a squad of broadsides before they get wiped out from shooting from markerlight supported 2nd squad of missilesides.

Unfortunately, I think my army was a tough match up for Jamie, and I wipe out his force on turn 4 by blasting the heldrake after it had menaced some crisis suits for a bit.



20-0 win for Commander Nightfury

Thoughts

Not too much to say. The deployment and the terrain just didn't help Jamie to close with the Tau fast enough to do much damage. Plus I could then deep strike all my XV8's in behind to start grabbing maelstrom points when the CSM advanced and the knight was dead. The obliterators put up a decent fight in taking out some crisis teams and killing my kroot before getting put down though.

Some nice reports there.

For the GT game 2, I'm surprised the game went the way it did. I run White Scars bike army and an all Ravenwing bike army and have always found Tau to be one of the toughest armies that I face. Was it Invisibility hindered you? Or maybe the Space Wolves?

Loving the reports from Rapid Fire too. I played Tom's Eldar in the same mission (game 6 rather than game 1) and I agree- his list looks really scary when you see it across the table. Lots of fast moving bikes and a ton of scatter lasers (not to mention the Wraithknight).

I really like the look of your Tau army, such a nice scheme. I don't recall seeing them at Rapid Fire, which is surprising as it is quite a striking army. Jamie's Chaos marines are fantastic, even nicer in person. It's no wonder he won Best Army in the end.

Thanks for reading.

And yeah - for the Ravenwolf Inq star army, if it didn;'t have invisibility I would be much more confident of a victory. With Invisibility it just becomes a nightmare. As it turned out I was happy to get the secondaries really.

Thanks for the compliment on my force's scheme. Doesn't look that great close up, but looks ok on the table - mostly as its just a garish colour clash. Perhaps I just have bad taste

Should get the rest of my rapid fire reports done tomorrow

The first tournament was a great read. Looking forward to more!