Game 1, Firesweep, vs. Tau (Jack)

Well, it was my first league game last night. As hoped, I was able to play against Jack's new Tau army. The Tau are one of those armies that I have rarely played against in the past, and certainly have not played them much since their new codex, so was looking forward to seeing them in action. As one might predict, the first few turns saw Eldar dying by the droves while the last few turns saw Tau dying in droves. Here's the details...

Jack’s basic list:
Crisis HQ
2 Crisis Suits (Elite unit, HQ joined)
2 Firewarrior squads w/ Devilfish
1 Firewarrior squad w/ marker drones
5-man stealth suit squad
pathfinder unit w/ Devilfish
2 units of 2 gun drones
1 unit of 6 gun drones
2 piranha

Firesweep Mission*, Gamma
* A note about “house amendment” to Firesweep mission. League is calling for VPs to be used, but all but 1 mission use objectives, not VPs. So for this one, we just used the “loot counters” rule for the 5 buildings, thus each gave a 300 VP bonus at end of game.
Jack chose deployment zone and I had to deploy 1st
Jack = Demolition & Prelim. Bombardment** Stratagems
Me = Infiltrators (Pathfinders & Scorpions) & Sewer Rats (2 Dire Squads and Fire Dragons) Stratagems
** Dire 1, Autarch, & Harlies missed w/ Prelim Bomb; Striking Scorps, Guardians, & Pathfinders all hit – Scorps miss 2 saves and are pinned turn 1
I won dice roll to determine who went first - go figure, it was me

(the following is not a full bat-rep; I was so busy dusting the 40k/CoD rule cobwebs off my brain that I only took notes about what I did)

Turn 1
Dire 1 move across building they're in, but are out of range (barely).
Scorpions pinned from Prelim. Bomb.
Harlies & Autarch move & fleet to right, towards Tau flank.
Guardian Brightlance fired at Pathfinder Devilfish, hit, but no penetration/glance.
Rangers are “The Men!” w/ 5 AP1 shots (6th shot also hit); 4 wounds at AP1 plus failed wound from 6th shot removed both crisis suits and wounded the HQ.
**Result, Eldar = 2 buildings; Tau = 0

In Jack’s Turn 1, concentrated markerlights and numerous units firing at the Eldar Pathfinders resulted in the complete loss of that unit.

Turn 2
Both Sewer Rat Dire Avengers come on table; Fire Dragons do not (2 of 4 sewers blocked, so all 3 couldn’t come out anyway)
Dire 1 and 2 shoot up Stealth Suits, killing 1 (opted not to do any bladestorm, not all of the dires could reach suits, so it was more like a squad or so worth of shooting at them)
Dire 3 shoots/bladestorms Firewarrior squad just disembarked from Devilfish, killing 3
Harlies & Autarch run forward; Harlies have a CRITICAL MELTDOWN by rolling 1 for Fleet – ANYTHING else would have resulted in a charge on Firewarriors in a building, as it stood, they were over 6” (and less than 7”) from the unit (and got shot to pieces – more on this later).
Guardian Brightlance shuffles right in their building & shot at Pathfinder Devilfish again, missing completely.
**Result, Eldar = 3 buildings; Tau = 1

In Jack’s turn, Dire 2 that just emerged from left sewer between Dire 1 and Scorpions was shot to pieces, leaving Exarch and 1 trooper. I can’t say enough how bummed I am about that horrific fleet roll for the Harlies – they were all killed for that mistake (it did take a lot of shooting from Jack’s vehicles). Eh… ;-(

Turn 3
Fire Dragon sewer rats come on, emerging from right flank sewer near Dire 3 and Autarch.
Dire 3 moves and fleets towards building w/ Firewarriors (had bladestormed last turn); they assault and the combat results in a 0-0 draw w/ Dire Avengers piling in (thus “piling into the building”).
Dire 2 moves and fleets towards HQ Crisis Suit; making it into assault, causing 1 wound, and then Dire Swording him into oblivion! HA! That 10 point upgrade DID come in handy! Consolidation move takes him into stealth suits.
Fire Dragons positioned to shoot at Devilfish, destroying a weapon (missile pods) and stunning it several times (3 to be exact).
Autarch – Hmmm, can’t remember what he did – probably shot fusion gun at something to little effect (or aided Dragons in shooting at the Devilfish).
Guardian Brightlance shoots at Piranha and fails to glance/pen.
**Result: Same Score… Eldar = 3; Tau = 1

In Jack’s Turn 3, Dire 3 in close combat w/ Firewarriors kills 4 for no losses in return and then routes the Firewarriors with a vicious over-running. Conversely, Dire 2 Exarch is killed by Stealth Suits w/o killing any in return.

Turn 4
Things are looking desperate at this point. Dire 1 is down to a last man standing (Exarch), Dire 2 is wiped out, Guardians are down to a last man standing (Warlock), Harlies are wiped out w/o ever doing anything, Scorpions down to half-size due to prelim bomb (2 dead) and 2 dead in dangerous terrain (central building destroyed in start of turn 3, scorpions moved into it afterwards to claim) and 1 from general shooting by gun drones; Fire Dragons down to 6-man.

But things turn around in this first half of Turn 4, and the rest of the game is all for the Eldar (Jack’s dice went cold, mine turned hot, and I finally hit the Tau lines so they crumpled in close combat)…

Dire 1 exarch and Warlock pass Last Man Standing rolls. In the shooting phase, Autarch killed one of the two piranha, fire dragons downed the firewarrior devilfish damaged earlier, and Warlock singing spears the Pathfinder devilfish and downs it. Dire 3 shoots at 6-drone gun drone unit, killing all 6. Assault phase: Dire 1 Exarch runs, fleets, and charges stealth suits, killing 1 or 2, and then overrunning the rest after they failed LD test. Scorpions charge 2-drone gun unit, killing both and consolidating into the other 2-drone gun unit (which was killed in Jack’s subsequent part of Turn 4).
Result: Eldar = 4; Tau = 1 (Dire 3 finally in building uncontested, so claimed it from Tau; but Stealth Suits had been in the other building long enough to claim it – Eldar added an objective; Tau just traded one for another).

Turn 5
Shooting phase sees Autarch & Fire Dragons gun down a bunch of Firewarriors and then cleaning them up in close combat. Warlock clambers onto downed devilfish to spear the one behind it, but it is out of range. Scorpions charge into Pathfinders and kill them off.

Jack is left with 1 unit of Firewarriors, a Devilfish, and a Piranha. Since the Devilfish & Piranha couldn’t claim objectives, Jack conceded the game at the mid-point of 5. Doing some rough calculations (my VP bonus alone was 1200 while Jack’s was 300), it ended up being a Massacre/Victorious Slaughter for the Eldar, providing 20 points to me and 0 points to Jack.

So, what did I want to “test” in this game? First of all, I wanted to start w/ the Horde list. In lower point games, such as 1500, I always start list building by “going back to basics”. For this one, that meant really kicking the tires on many of the Troops units. Originally, I had 6x Troops including 2 Guardian squads; but some bad math resulted in the list actually being over 1500 points, so I re-organized the guardians into one larger squad, after bumping up Scorpions and Fire Dragons to full-size. Second, I wanted to test the Harlequins. On paper, they look poised to be the best damn Cityfight unit in the game, with their ignoring terrain rule (works for both movement and assault) plus fleet of foot move (plus Furious Charge and Hit & Run skills).

What did I learn regarding these “tests”? Troops are really the meat and potatoes of list building. The Dire Avengers got pretty trounced by Firewarrior guns, but in the end, even they were able to wipe out entire squads of Tau in close combat (I would NOT suggest Dires as close combat troops vs. ANY other army). Oddly, their overall shooting was not impressive – a bladestormed Firewarrior squad still only lost 3 guys to 27 shots. The large guardian squad did little. It DID claim one building (the one it deployed into), but then proceeded to bounce Brightlance shots off everything it shot at. I guess it did enough by claiming an objective (300 bonus VPs). The Pathfinders were great in Turn 1. Maybe too great. They died to the man after attracting way too much fire and markerlights (Jack used 4 of the markers to reduce the 2+ cover save to 6+, which is how they died miserably).

Harlequins. What a poor performance. God, I can’t go on enough about how disappointed I was in their showing last night. But I can’t judge their overall performance on the total crap-out of a single Fleet roll. Really, had that dice been anything but a 1, they’d have likely waltzed through the FW squad that turn and then have pleanty of options for who to work on next (more FWs, vehicles w/ Fusion pistols and/or H-Kisses, even the Tau back line defense w/ the right Fleet move).

I should also point out that this was Jack’s VERY 1st game with the Tau. He certainly made some learning curve mistakes (forgetting some seeker missiles, not realizing skimmers can’t claim objectives in CoD). I’d very much like to go up against Jack again in the last round of the league, see how he fares after getting 6-9 games of practice in w/ the army.

Truly one of those games where I thought I was had by the 2nd turn, REALLY had by 3rd turn, and then (still) amazed that turns 4 and 5 were so decisive in favor of the Eldar. Kudos to Jack – EXCELLENT game!!!


Ciao for now. May be a while before I blog again - I won't be able to make next week's league night, so look to hear from me again in a couple of weeks...