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Unfinished models alert! you have been warned...

I finally got a game against the owner of my FLGS! He's been making a tau force from whatever was traded in and despite missing bits and lacking in paint; the addition of a ghostkeel (being painted to look like 'bumblebee') brought it all together.
I stupidly let him play the optimised steath cadre because i didn't know what it could do at that point and i also didn't 'click' right away that all his stuff was scoring..

All that said, i was up for seeing how one of the big-bad's from 40k did on a board littered with cover.

Ordo Reductor:

HQ: Calleb Decima with the decima invictus upgrade and a cyber-familiar and a scyllax cohort as a bodygaurd.
Cohort alpha:Thallax cohort with destructor augment
Cohort beta:Thallax cohort with destructor augment
Cohort gamma:Thallax cohort with a p.p.fusil
Fast attack: Avenger strike fighter with battle servitor control and chaff launcher
Heavy support: Artillery tank battery with medusa cannon, hull HB, machine spirit and siege plating
Heavy support: Artillery tank battery with medusa cannon, hull HB, machine spirit and siege plating
Heavy support: Artillery tank battery with whirlwind missile launcher, machine spirit and siege plating
Heavy support: Artillery tank battery with whirlwind missile launcher, machine spirit and seige plating

Tau:

i'll update this when i can get hold of my opponents list he wrote out asap...
battlesuit commander with 4 shield drones, crisis bodyguard, velocity tracker, fusion blasters
10 man firewarrior strike squad with markerlight
10 man firewarrior strike squad with markerlight
10 man firewarrior strike squad with markerlight
10 man firewarrior strike squad with markerlight
xv25 stealth team
xv25 stealth team
xv89 ghostkeel with TL fusion blasters and an ion rifle
xv104 riptide with ion accelerator, TL fusion blaster and 2 missile drones
tx4 piranha with TL fusion blasters

I suggested playing a mission from the age of darkness and we ended up doing with mission 2 from the mechanicum red book with staged deployment, two objectives which give 5 VP'sif you control the one in the enemy DZ- any enemy unit destroyed in the first turn gives a VP and the secondary objectives were slay the warlord and killing the most enemy units and give 1VP each.

My warlord trait was himand his unit causing fear and being immune to fear - not great and i forgot about it when it would have mattered.
His warlord trait was so good we both forgot what it was - it was basicly usless to him. edit: it was 'precision of the skilled hunter' which stops me using 'look out sir!' with my warlord.

I won the roll off for first deployment:

Dont let the visage fool you; thats actually a tau piranah in white at the bottom!

Calleb Decima worsened the cover of a section of area terrain in the enemy DZ

Ordo Reductor Deployment detail...

Tau deployment detail...

The two commanders oversee proceedings...


Tau didn't manage to steal the initiative so i went first.

Ordo Reductor turn 1
Calleb split off from the scyllax to go hunt down the only vehicle in the enemy force, the artillery tanks moved forwards; cohort alpha moved forward to flank the enemy, cohort beta moved back into area terrain and the scyllax moved toward the objective in the enemy DZ.

Thanks to 'barrage' almost nothing i aimed at got hit - one of the unit with the enemy warlord got a wound and the firewarriors on the objective took 3 casualties - they failed thier Ld check and ran off the board!
I hit other things with the scattering templates, but nothing got past the 2+ cover saves.

Tau turn 1
the enemy moved forward apart from the firewarrior squads which stayed put - that was the point i remembered that all his stuff was scoring.
the piranah went to meet cohort alpha on the flank and caused two wounds while the ghostkeel picked a tank to delete. the scyllax took three wounds at the same time from the stealth teams.



Ordo Reductor turn two...
All reserves came in - the avenger took up position on his warlord, cohort gamma deepstruck onto the newly cleared objective in the enemy DZ. Calleb continued his schlep toward the piranah, the scyllax continued toward the objective cohort gamma landed on. cohort beta continued toward the objective in my DZ while cohort alpha took up position to punish the piranah for the damage it caused them. some pivoting was done by the artillery batteries and the whirlwind launchers moved toward the enemy board edge.


Tau turn two...
I don't remember what the enemy did very well..



Ordo Reductor turn three...
Calleb Decima moved into better cover while cohort alpha went after the riptide; cohort beta continued toward the objective, as did the scyllax. the remaining thallax from cohort gamma rallied and went back to the objective while the whirlwind launchers executed evasive action, turning front armour toward the riptide and reversing away from the ghostkeel repectively.



Tau turn three...
not a lot moved now that the heavy artillery threat was gone and the ghostkeel has such an easy time of things. The riptide moved among the ruined bulidings for cover from thallax cohort alpha and killed one of cohort beta's number.
The HQ squad turned on thier targeting units and shot the avenger out of the sky - straight onto his own stuff! three fire warriors died in the crash. luckily both the remaining tanks were out of the ghostkeels range which bought them a round of shooting...




Ordo Reductor turn four...
Calleb Decima took position in a cubby-hole made by the wreck of a medusa ready to kamikaze attack something significant - like a ghostkeel for example cohort alpha keep hunting the riptide and prepare to assault it while cohort beta continues toward the objective in my DZ and cohort gamma and the scyllax take up better firing positions in cover on the other objective. The whirlwind launchers can't reverse any further or do anything about the ghostkeel so they turn front armour toward the riptide and let rip at a squad of firewarriors.



Tau turn four...
the ghostkeel moved into range with the whirlwind launcher on my right flank and deleted it - firewarriors shuffled into better positions and the tau commander finally emerged from the area set aflame by the phosphex earlier without injury. The riptide continued moving away from cohort alpha toward the centre of the board and the ruined medusa's to avoid another attempt to charge by thallax.



Ordo Reductor turn five...
Cohort alpha leave the fast-moving riptide and begin a manouver to go round the back of the enemy lines toward the objective in thier DZ. Cohort beta moved into position to hold the objective while in cover as cohort alpha and the last whirlwind move round into the enemy DZ for cover. The ambush set, Calleb Decima waits for the right moment...



Tau turn five...
The ghostkeel moves back toward my last artillery battery and the commander and squad also move back toward Thallax cohort alpha and then the shooting starts. A unit of firewarriors kills the only fully-functional thallax in cohort alpha leaving two of them on one wound each. the ghostkeel deletes my last whirlwind and a depleted firewarrior squad attempt to move out of cover toward the objective in thier DZ but trip and fall two inches



Ordo Reductor turn 6...
Cohort beta shifted around while holding the objective while cohort alpha continued round the back and went after the enemy warlord which resulted in no damage (damn 4++)
Calleb and the riptide stay locked in cobat with no wounds suffered on either side



Tau turn 6...
the warlord and unit move toward cohort alpha and destroy them in a flurry of fusion reactions while the ghostkeel moved toward the objective in my DZ and destroyed Cohort beta that were gaurding it. The remaining firewarrior teams kill the scyllax and last thallax of cohort gamma,clearing the objective they were securing.


End of game and i am tabled.

Summary?
Ouch, that was savage. you know something is wrong when your opponent feels the need to apologise after a unit's shooting phase - a lot of the rules stunned me in how broken they are.
Ghostkeel and the optimised stealth cadre is a case in point; it just deleted whatever it was pointed at.
It went something like this...


I ended up going for the riptide because there was at least realistic chance of hurting it compared to the ghostkeel et al.


The game, the game - i gave a good showing i think. My army specialized in vehicle and fortification killing rather than blobs with good saves of some kind.
Calleb Decima felt like a square wheel - he didn't have anything proper to level his 'curse of the omnissiah' attack at - i would be thinking different if he'd swept the riptide though!
Thallax are good against riptides! i'm going to make a dedicated unit to bring them down in future - ferrox upgrade and heavy chain-blades should do the trick!

I've been told by my opponent that he's going to be using the same list for a while so i can at least optimise a little next time - i recon minotaurs and macrocarid explorators may be the way to go. I think that my myrmidons with irradiation engines in a macrocarid explorator will be a good answer to the optimised stealth cadre.
A unit of thralls with the rite of pure thought for objective camping will be good - small enough to hide behined a wall and never going to run away like thallax cohort gamma.

Maybe i can reverse the result next time i think?
He got 2VP's for slay the warlord and attrition (as well as tabling me) and i got one for making a unit of firewarriors run off the board in turn 1.
I was in a winning position right up to the start of turn 6 (6VP's total from the objective and those firwarriors against 1VP for attrition)
It would have been a draw if i had passed just ONE of calleb decima's final invuln saves! Gahhhh!!!

TAU WIN this time.....

You should post army lists. I'm using my cell phone and have no idea what you're playing.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
You should post army lists. I'm using my cell phone and have no idea what you're playing.

fixed (kinda) for now - cheers for looking!

To counter the OSC (The awesome .. broken Ghostkeel) abuse the things limited range and movement.

24" gun + 6" move + 2d6" assault move. Whilst reasonable it is not huge.

Ultimately, it is why I decided to pick a Riptide over it... That and the Riptide Wing formation's ability to shoot twice once per game... and reroll their awesome nova checks

At Donlad - thanks !

Cheers for the tip razerous, thats going to be key in dealing with it.

I'm thinking - use thallax to push infiltrators 24" away from whirlwind launcher artillery battery - that prettty much pushes them back to their own DZ during deployment.
Assuming they don't get put into reserves i could push a macrocarid full of myrmidons toward the ghostkeel to neutralize it asap.
i may have to use a different HQ to get cyber-occularis within 12" of the enemy units to worsen their cover saves by 1 which could stack with thallax 'djinn sight' which worsens it by 2.
Thallax FTW.

But don't they have some wargear that allows them to fire twice anyway? knowing GW it probably stacks...

You need a maniple of Thanatar to blunt the Ghostkeel imo .

Yeah, it mirrors the thallax a little with the enhanced targeting array: good call - I'd forgotten about the robots!
Luckily i've got some in my 'to do' pile.

Very nice battle report. Nice viewing for a 26 hour train ride! I hope your "mystery owner" gets it all painted though! Also I'm loving the old rocket piece from that space marine kit!

Yeah, me too! they're a trip back to the old school for me - i remember when those bad boys came out and i got one immediately and then found out about the overbalancing issues!
I've stripped and re-configured one of mine to centralize the launcher for stability and the other will get the same treatment - it's just better that way.
Also - bloody hell! a 26 hour train ride?!? No medals available sadly, but you are in the right place to have one made for a reasonable price..