Saturday, July 23, 2011

4th Edition Codex Battle - Tau vs Eldar





Josh told me he had never played against Tau before, so we planned a 1850 point Tau vs Eldar game. Actually, this was the first time we've played 40k against each other. I brought a standard Tau hybrid-mech list with battlesuits, broadsides, kroot, etc. Josh brought a hybrid-mech list with Eldrad. We decided to play a standard mission and keep the battle missions book for next time. We rolled a seize ground mission with five objectives and spearhead deployment. After deploying objectives, Josh won the roll off but decided to let me deploy and go first. I picked a nice corner to setup my gunline where I had some good firing lanes. I then infiltrated my two kroot squads. He deployed two groups of rangers in some trees and reserved the rest of his army leaving not much on the table for my guns to shoot at on my first turn.



I shot my entire army at one of the ranger groups near an objective. Josh failed enough 2+ saves and his lone surviving ranger fell back off the board. I positioned one of my kroot squad forward hoping they wouldn't be exposed too long in the open. My pirahnas moved around waiting to see what reserves showed up. Some gun drones were deployed to act as a screen against reserve units.




About half of Josh's reserved showed up on the bottome of turn two. He opted to flat-out move his transports so there wasn't much firing. My biggest concern was the fire dragons. Fortunately, my pathfinders had LOS, range, and were able to tag it with markerlights to penalize his cover save. Railguns followed and took out the fire dragon's ride killing about half of them in the explosion.



The swooping hawks came in from reserve. Fortunately for me, their only assault target was a two gun drone squad. The hawks killed them easily and then consolated into cover. I was able to concentrate enough fire to take out the swooping hawks even in cover.



Turn 3. Now things were starting to get interesting. My two battlesuit squads moved up to engage the two dire avenger squads. My kroot squad got tank shocked and then suffered a lot of casualties from a nearby exploding pirahna. It was enough to cause them to fall back. Josh declared an assault against them, and since they were falling back had to take a regroup test to stop. They failed and were wiped out.




I continued to take out vehicles with railguns, but his troops were making a lot of cover and armor saves. I failed to complete take out the fire dragons with his one upgraded guy still alive! On Josh's turn he moved up to shoot his BS5 melta shot at my Devilfish and missed! However, he was able to redeem himself by tagging it with a grenade/melt-bomb hit on a needed six to hit. Fortunately, he just blew the gun off and I was able to move away.



Eldrad and the banshees finally showed up for him on the bottom of turn 4. I got lucky and was able to ram Eldrad's ride with my shaken Hammerhead. On turn 5 I was able to take out his last vehicle, leaving Eldrad and the banshee's on foot. He tried to reach my kroot, but didn't roll a good fleet or difficult terrain test. The gamed ended on turn 5 in a DRAW with each of us controlling two objectives.





It was a fun game. I think I should have more aggressively infiltrated my one kroot squad onto an objective in a building. Also, I should have held back with my other squad. I think Josh got a lot of his army stuck in reserves. I was able to pick off his transports to keep him from grabbing/contesting objectives at the end of the game. Even with two outdated codexes, we can still enjoy a good game of 40k now and again. I am looking forward to our next one.



1 comment:

  1. Awesome stuff with two very well-painted armies. Might I suggest in the future no flash on the photos? GS has such great lighting that you don't need it.

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