Battle Report - 1500 Points
Tau plus Rogue Inquisitorial Allies vs Astra Militarum
OPFOR -
Hey, this battle occurred about 12 days ago...Its hard to remember.
- Ghostkeel / Stealth Suit Formation
- Tau Hunter Cadre Detachment - Battlesuits, Missile Suits, Warriors, Missile tank, scouting skimmer, Buffed Commander, pathfinders, drones...
- Inquisitorial henchman mob, level 1 Rogue Inquisitor
- Assassin....
1st Armored Company, 555th Regiment
This was a battle I had not been prepared for - I'd just grabbed stuff and headed out for club night - which is never a good thing! I ended up dropping 350 points off an older stock list - giving me:
Ground force:
Command squad (7), inc. master of the fleet, master of the ordnance, chimera
Veteran squad (10) , chimera
Veteran squad (10), chimera
Veteran squad (10), chimera
Veteran squad (10), chimera
Lehman Russ Demolisher
Manticore
Reserves:
Vendetta
Scions squad (5)
Mission
We rolled off randomly and ended up playing a mission with 4 objectives, each worth 3 points, mo maelstrom cards, with short-edge/deep deployment zones. I tried to get my objectives as far apart as possible - my opponent placed his centrally.
Deployment
The terrain was all ruins. I deployed first with the intent to go first. That said, I deployed a core force of the Demolisher, command squad, and two veteran squads forward, with the intent of forcing them up the center, with two squads back to act as a follow on-wave / response team.
My opponent deployed as forward and dense as possible. I was thinking that was pretty good for me...
And then he scouted forward - with the inquisitorial faction on my left, and the Tau opposite my center and right.
Things went downhill from there....
The Game
The game after deployment and scout moves....ready for the IG to begin turn 1. The Assassin is in the open for crying out loud...but its that kind you can only snap fire at...the Ghostkeel formation is on top of the container boxes...
Here we are in Turn 2...is the Ghost invisible? No...It was kind of funny. The Tau formation was leading with the Ghost. Its T5. Dorris the demolisher shot at the tau unit following the Ghost formation. The large S10 blast deviates and lands on the Ghost. He rolls a 1 for a save and blink...no Ghost. The Manticore contributed to a bunch of losses, as did the officer of the fleet. I started to lose vehicles to "rear targeting, you get no cover, S7 missile systems" though...
At this point, the Tau had first blood....I'm wishing I had ignores cover artillery....
Still Turn 2....the tau are thinking about getting the (wounded) Assassin into assault, followed by the next wave of henchmen.
Here we are around Turn 4. I'm still stuck in my deployment zone. In Turn 3, the assassin lost in assault to lose its last wound or so, after taking out about 9 guardsmen. Dorris the Demolisher was exploded by some form of missile hit.
Meanwhile the last operating Chimera is making a break for it.
IIRR the Vendetta arrived Turn 3...I also had forgotten the Officer of the Fleet...I'd decided I needed to get into his backfield, trying to take out his (only) hover tank. The Scions were to deploy and get on the objective at that pile of pipes in the center...
The Vendetta took a lucky hit, but stayed in the air.
This fight was interesting...stealth suit vs Cadian trooper...the trooper was obsec...
The Vendetta hovered over to disembark the Scions. They got slaughtered though...but they did shoot up the tau squad on the objective.
Pretty much end of game shot...smoking wrecks all over.
End of turn final score 8-3, Tau are victorious.
I think I had a total of two models left on the table. The Triple Nickles took a beating! The biggest issue, ultimately, were the ignores cover, hit you on the rear armor, split firing missiles from the Suits. They accounted for all of the wrecks! I tried to hit the Suits with big blasts, but they made most of their saves each turn. Regardless, my opponent has been trying this Tau+henchment+assassin list for a bit and plans to use it for the upcoming campaign the FLGS is putting on. I'm wondering if he'd be better served with just a pure Tau list!
Anyways, back to the drawing board. I need a strong 1500 point IG list...got any ideas?
It looks like you didn't have any special weapons. May I ask why? A lot of veteran's strength is in their ability to take three of them to amplify their firepower considerably. If you're just looking for obsec squads, reduce three of the veteran squads to a platoon and hand out a few big guns.
ReplyDeleteAs far as this game, that Tau formation was practically designed to piss IG players off. No cover, rear armor shots! On a unit that can ignore 1-3 ordinance shots a game, causing them to become wasted?!? Wow...lame. IG doesn't have a good answer to that unit except hitting it again and again and praying for some luck. Here is where special weapons on veterans matter. They'll not like a salvo of plasmagun fire coming their way so you can overwhelm it.
I did not put the special weapons in the list - but the command squad was dual flamers, the 4 veteran squads were two with dual melta and two with dual plasma. Each Chimera was multi-laser/HB, 2 or so with heavy stubbers. Daisy the Demolisher had 3 HBs. The only critical mistake I had was not knowing the henchman squad had two purifier flamers - that hurt the vets (all grenadiers) that were clumped around where the assassin assault had carried on. Overall, I like games with a challenge, but those Tau IC/RA missiles made the game alot less fun and changed this from an even match to a can't win. I'm sort of thinking about the concept of allying in some marines just to create some flamer suicide IG vet squads using marine drop pods to just drop in the Tau backfield and toast them up. Or drop some $$ on the new IG artillery formation to get TL/IC artillery downrange...
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