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Yeah, 180pts vs. 185pts. This isn't going to be a long fight, nor a properly played one, but it all comes down to one important thing.

Tau Forces:

10 Tau Fire Warriors
8 Tau Fire Warriors

Chaos Forces:

10 Chaos Space Marines
Aspiring Champion
Power Fist

Setup:

2' wide kitchen table, depth was never meassured but no more than 2' was used. Flat terrain, no obstacles.

Turn 1:

Chaos starts off, having little choice but to start moving towards the Tau, being out of range to fire anything, they choose to run. A 4 is rolled, so 10" closer to the enemy!

The Tau fire off all they've got, and after the dices have been rolled, 2 Chaos Space Marines have fallen.

Turn 2:

Chaos continues their advance, but this time their player forgot to run (tihi!)

The Tau fire another volley, this time picking down 1 more Chaos Space Marine, as well as wounding the Champion.

Turn 3:

Chaos continues their advance, moving and then shooting. Bad luck with the dice cause 3 shots to miss, and 1 to do nothing, and the only one that makes it through is saved by the Tau's armor.

Tau counter-advances, walking to be within range of shooting twice. And so they do, bringing down 4 evil Marines this time!

Chaos rolls a morale check, which they pass.

Turn 4:

Chaos fire their pistols and charge in, the pistols didn't do anything, but the charge cost the Fire Warriors 7 cassualties (3 of which were thanks to the Power Fist!), the tau doesn't hit anything.

The Tau rolls a morale check, which they pass.

The second Tau squad (the one with 8 soldiers) back off to the table's edge, ready to fire once the assault is over (Yeap, waiting for their mates to die off, basically.) The assault phase is a slow one, as only two of the three Fire Warriors die, and the third remains where he is after passing his morale check.

Turn 5:

Chaos butchers the remaining Tau, only to find themselves in the open once again.

The Tau blast off a volley towards the chaos - And do absolutely nothing!

Turn 6:

The chaos marines open their eyes again, noticing they still live after the short-ranged volley of he Tau, grin and charge in.

Six out of the eight Tau are killed in the first assault, again without doing any harm what so ever against the Chaos Marines. Even so, they pass their morale check.

With nothing left to do but to fight back, the Tau's assault phase ends up being their defeat, the chainswords take one, the last survivor tries to strike back, fails to do so, and is hit over the head with a Power Fist. He is no more.

Conclusion:

Tau Fire Warriors should avoid engaging even small numbers of basically anything in melee.

This brings me a question, however.

Can you break off from melee? (not counting with losing the combat and morale check and end up running)

I don't see anything about it in the BRB. I know if you have Calgar leading your space marines you can have them automatically pass or fail any ld test they are forced to take. You'd still have to check about sweeping advances and what not. So i'd probably say no, otherwise units with "Hit and Run" would be a lot less useful.

No you cannot. The Hit and Run USR allows it, but I believe that is the only exception.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And when assaulting vehicles...but then vehicles are never locked in combat in the first place.

Space Marines without a Chapter Tactics rule can use Combat Tactics to automatically fail Morale checks and voluntarily retreat from shooting or assault, though they still might get caught by the enemy or escorted off the board by enemies within 6".