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This is my first battle rep. Well, not exactly a battle rep.



Today I took a participation in Agram Arena 2016, Warhammer 40K tournament, held in Zagreb, Croatia. Tournament listed more than 15 players from Croatia and neighbour countries, some of them playing for fun and some of them playtesting their ETC lists.
This two day, five round tournament used the ETC rules and regulations, which in summary looks like this:
1850 points in no more than 2 battle forged and/or formation detachments from books that came out before May 2016.

I came in with my FSE Dawn Blade contingent, consisting of Retaliation Cadre as core and Drone Network / Ranged Support Cadre as my auxiliaries choices.
Deep Striking on Turn 2, more than 30 marker lights sources and EarlyWarningOverride (Interceptor) are the key points of my army. Below is the picture of my Army, ready to depart for the tournament.


GAME 1
Mission: EW - Big Guns Never Tire / MoW - Tactical Escalation
Random pairup - Tau Vs. Blue Oyster Cult (Ravenwing Psychic DeathStar)

A New Classic - One MEGA unit, that rides on bikes (most of them) and rolls a lot of dice in Psychic phase. I played against these lists before and I positioned myself so that my opponent has to choose how and what to chase. He stretched his forces quickly, making himself vulnerable to everything that came in My Turn 2. I was feeding him units to eat, while dragging him across the board. However, I lost My turn 3 because one crisis suit that passed its leadership test and stayed in CC.

The bikes approached once again and slaughter continued. And it ended at the end of Turn 4, with 16-4 for my opponent. As he was rolling psychic dice during turns, I checked other tables and spotted a Tau Player, having tough time against Eldar. I tought how funny it would be if I play against another Tau. Ah, what a silly thought.


GAME 2
Mission: EW - Crusade / MoW - Cleanse And Control
Tau Vs. Tau (CAD + Riptide Wing)


After my opponent started his first turn, I made a huge mistake. I had a game plan, which I didn't follow. Minutes later, everything that could go wrong went wrong. I failed my shooting like I had BS1, failed my saves like I was hitting 6+ and pushed my troops forward, just so Riptide Wing and IonHeads can eat them. On top of them, my opponent played well, using his shooting to the max and at the end of Opponent Turn 2, none of my Auxiliary units was on the table. I was ready to hand the game.

I deep striked and my enemy managed to 'large blast' my entire MissileSide unit. That is when I handed the game officially. He wiped almost everything that came via Deep Strike. Tough one for me, that had a sudden change of feel.
My opponent, after the game, told me how my list is illegal, due to the fact that FSE should not have access to C&C node, Multi Spectrum Sensor Suite and Iridium Armour. I'm glad I handed that game. I used the time to rest a bit, eat and scout some other games still in progress.



GAME 3
Mission: EW - The Emperor's Will / MoW - Contact Lost
Tau Vs. Imperial Guard (10 tanks and few bib blobs of guardsmen and conscripts)
Yup, the guys you see in the picture above got to play against me. Or other way around. Anyway, one thing I learned is that I love tanks. My 4x4 Fusion Blasters will open anything that is on the map, and with Dawn Of War Deployment, this was an easy task.

I had an upper hand during this game and gave my opponent few easy kill points at the toward the end of the game. Anyway, I scored a lot of objectives in this 5 turn game and came up with 16-4 win for me.



GAME 4
Mission: EW - The Relic / MoW - Spoils of War
Tau Vs. Eldar/Tau (WraightKnight and Skatterbikes + Riptide wing)
This was a no-go since turn one. I tried to apply what I learned yesterday from my previous Riptide Wing encounter, but did not present any success.


Same thing that happened yesterday happened today. By opponent Turn two, I had nothing on the board. And It was painful. I jumped with my Turn2 wave, but few of them scattered and it was an easy task for my opponent who won this round. 20-0.


GAME 5
Mission: EW - The Scouring / MoW - Deadlock
Tau Vs. Adepta Sororitas/Cult Mechanicus

Strong list, with my opponent being a better player then me. I put some resistance forward, but that S10AP1 Exorcist was just too damn far from me to destroy it.

Another loss for the Tau empire, but I stood my ground. It was a good game. Both sides presented their advantages and their disadvantages.

Cool, I like the painting competition entries...

Here are some of the entries for the painting competition. Enjoy.

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed reading these. Was the Ravenwing guy mostly blasting you with witchfires or just boosting his own guys?

Great pics! I feel bad for you though... Going 20-0 and all...
Still, loved these batreps!

Hey peeps,
thanks for the comments and the read. Sorry for me being slow on my 'post game' report, but here it is.


Let me answer the questions first.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Thanks for posting, I enjoyed reading these. Was the Ravenwing guy mostly blasting you with witchfires or just boosting his own guys?

Most of the time, he was boosting his army, giving him Invisibility and FNP / Invulnerable saves. Only few times he tried some whichfire (3D6 minus my leadership thing). I kept my dice only to dispel Invulnerable saves and FNP. Invisibility i can ignore with my Markerlights and those WhichFire things can backfire (fail) by themselves.

 SixT4Pixels wrote:
Great pics! I feel bad for you though... Going 20-0 and all...
Still, loved these batreps!

Defeat definitely hurts. Never the less, I tried not to be bitter, but to learn more about my army and how different people think and how they react when they see an army list like mine.


Here is the list, BTW.


The list itself was tailored to 'work all the time', better to say to keep all of it's granted abilities and rules in game all the time.
- All drones get buffed by Drone Network.
- Volume of fire that Retaliation cadre can deliver on turn two is high and dangerous. Also, this keeps a number of targets that my opponent can fire or chase in turn 1 and 2 to a minimum.
- Most of my army can move 6"+2D6", making it highly mobile and able to hold and release objectives as needed. (Broadsides from Retaliation Cadre are relentless)
- Depending on my warlord trait and my initial deployment, I can switch my army profile from highly aggressive Beta Strike to well entrenched 'Tau Fire' type of list.

I took some time to analyze the missions and think of different ways to go thru the game. To try to make my opponent follow my game, and lose focus of his own. I made 4 different scenarios for each mission, based upon how do I see opponents army, who won 'deployment' zone roll off and who goes first.
- Against stronger armies, or armies that have good Intercept, I deployed everything on the table right away. (Low Altitude Deployment). In addition to that, I was going for the secondary mission objectives, trying to reduce the point difference from 'defeat' to 'near draw'. Also, moving your army on T1, in order to change the layout of the 'table' from Dawn Of War to Vanguard Strike to Hammer and Anvil and vice versa in order to control the assault & weapon range of my opponent.
- In missions that required from me to chase objectives, I would try to keep them in a group, near the center of the board, so that I could move in and control them by having units nearby and deny access to my opponent by using range of my weapons and ignore cover rules.
During my analysis, I failed to see one thing:
In MISSION 1 - Big Guns Never Tire - My opponent would score 1 additional point for each HEAVY SUPPORT unit that he kills. Guess what? I had 4 sets of Broadsides that are very squishy. Very very squishy (T4)
In MISSION 5 - The Scouring - MY opponent would score 1 additional point for each FAST ATTACK unit that he kills. 3 sets of Pathfinders and 5 sets of drones would give my opponent the kill points.

Being my first tournament, made few mistakes that costed me hard. Ah well, learning time:

HUNGRY FOR GLORY - Last game turn and I charge my unit with my WarLord into enemy. Not a mistake, but I should have separated the Warlord. Rest of his unit counted as a kill point for my opponent.(he hammered me down)
RIPTIDE WING - Got to get one. It s not fun for your opponent.