After a brief Hiatus from gaming, I have recently gotten back into playing 40K and have been working on painting my army again. I've even joined a local escalation league at the midway point (1250), and have thus far been relatively successful.

For my two league games at the 1250 level (both ringer games as my opponents already had their league games in) I first played Aaron and his Ultra Marines. We rolled the Relic, and Hammer and anvil.

My list was composed as follows:

1250 Pts - Tau Empire Roster - 1250 League v6

HQ: Commander Shas'el (2#, 97 pts)
1 Commander Shas'el, 97 pts
1 Shield Drone (Automatic Unit Type; Shield Generator)

Troops: Fire Warrior (12#, 255 pts)
10 Fire Warrior,
1 Shas'ui (Markerlight target lock)
1 Devilfish (warfish)

Troops: Fire Warrior (12#, 255 pts)
10 Fire Warrior,
1 Shas'ui (Markerlight target lock)
1 Devilfish (warfish)


Fast Attack: Pathfinder (9#, 216 pts)
8 Pathfinder,
1 Devilfish (Warfish)

Heavy Support: Broadside Battlesuit (3#, 178 pts)
1 Broadside Battlesuit (Team Leader, SMS, HWMT, HWTL, HWDC, BSF)
1 Broadside Battlesuit (SMS, MT)
1 Shield Drone (Automatic Unit Type; Shield Generator)

Heavy Support: Broadside Battlesuit (3#, 178 pts)
1 Broadside Battlesuit (Team Leader, SMS, HWMT, HWTL, HWDC, BSF)
1 Broadside Battlesuit (SMS, MT)
1 Shield Drone (Automatic Unit Type; Shield Generator)

Heavy Support: Hammerhead Gunship (1#, 190 pts)
1 Hammerhead Gunship, (Railgun, + all options)


Aarons Ultra marines were something to this effect (I'm missing some wargear options as this doesn't add up to 1250):

Captain in artificer armor (Warlord) with plasma pistol and ? attached to 10 sternguard with a combi melta and two plasma guns in a drop pod
2 5 man tac squads in rhinos
1 devastator squad with 2 las, 2 missile, and like 5 or 6 extra models with bolters to absorb shots (there was some character or something attached I think, that may account for the missing points)
Scout squad with cloaks of 5 including tellion
1 Vindicator

Since I didn't take any pictures, I'll just summarize the game. Aaron won the roll-off and chose to go first. He scored first blood top of turn one, after deepstriking the HQ and sternguard in behind my hammerhead and glancing it to death (I think it's BS that I don't get a Jink on my skimmers if I haven't taken a turn yet to move them, it's not like they've been sitting there immobilized prior to this battle starting). This also set him up to score line breaker later as he had 1 sternguard left at the end of the game that I just couldn't kill. In return, I eventually killed his Warlord with massed fire, and managed to snag the relic at the bottom of turn 7 by jumping my 2nd firewarrior team out of a devil fish I'd been using to block his tac squads from getting near it. Amusingly I had a second devil fish there to aid in the denial, which was eventually imobilized, but with some luck DPod rolls it managed to survive till the end of the game.

Final score, Tau 4, Ultra marines 2.



My 2nd match was against Josh's Imperial Guard. I ran the same list as it was a league, and you had to run the same list for both games at a given point level. We rolled vanguard strike and the relic (2nd game in a row). Josh ran something like:

Lord Commisar
Platoon command squad
Large Blob squad with HQ attached
Aegis Defense Line with Quad Gun (fired by Commisar)
Leman Russ x 2 with standard battle cannon
Manticore (buried in a ruin in the back corner with no LOS in or out)
Vetsquad with 10 men and 2 plasmaguns in
Vendetta x 2

Again I failed to take any pictures, mostly because my phone service is off so I haven't been carrying it around.. Josh won the roll off and went first. We rolled and got night fighting for turn one He illuminated a devilfish with a leman russ's spotlight, then since it was "illuminated", could target it with his Manticore which was outside of 36" which is the cut off for targeting when nightfight is active. I realize the rules can't account for every circumstance, but how is it that a vehicle with no line of site to a target, can then shoot at it beyond the targeting range just because there is a spotlight on it? No idea, but suffice it to say that his Str 10 ap 1 large blast exploded one devilfish, and immobilized the one next to it while also killing 4 firewarriors and a pathfinder that were nearby, giving him first blood, and severely limiting my tactical options as far as getting near the relic. I deepstruck my Shas'el in behind the manticore on turn 2, hoping to neutralize it even though I expected it would cost me a vp for slay the warlord.. Of course he scattered out from behind the Ruin and only had a shot at a Leman russ that my broadsides had taken a hull point off from. He glanced that to death, then managed to jump back into the ruin on his thrust move. He never did kill the damn manticore, but wittled down a good chunk of the command blob squad and scored me Line breaker at the end of the game. I did manage to shoot down a zooming vendetta with my broadsides, killing 8 of 10 guys inside. This would have left them in position to get linebreaker, but I eventually killed one and the other was falling back at the end of the game. The final tally left us with no one in possession of the relic, Josh had first blood, and I had line breaker.

Tau 1, Imperial Guard 1 for a tie.


In preparation for the 1500 point level starting in a week, I thought I'd try something different and got in a practice game at Battlefront vs Jakes Imperial guard list Saturday. We initially rolled vanguard strike and the scouring, but we both hate that mission with the 6 random pt objectives, so we rerolled and got... THE RELIC!.. That was better than the scouring, so we went with it for the 3rd time in a row. I ran the following:

1500 Pts - Tau Empire Roster - Tau 1500 league V2

Total Roster Cost: 1499

HQ: Commander Shas'o (2#, 188 pts)
1 Commander Shas'o, 173 pts = (base cost 75 + Airbursting Fragmentation Projector 20 + Cyclic Ion Blaster 15 + Hard-wired Blacksun Filter 3 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Iridium Armour 20 + Stimulant Injector 10 + Shield Generator 20)
1 Shield Drone, 15 pts

Troops: Fire Warrior (7#, 216 pts)
5 Fire Warrior, 50 pts = 5 * 10
1 Shas'ui, 46 pts = (base cost 20 + Markerlight 10 + EMP Grenade 3 + Hard-wired Blacksun Filter 3 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5)
1 Devilfish, 120 pts = (base cost 80 + Disruption Pod 5 + Multi-Tracker 10 + Smart Missile System 20) + Targeting Array 5

Troops: Fire Warrior (10#, 136 pts)
9 Fire Warrior, 90 pts = 9 * 10
1 Shas'ui, 46 pts = (base cost 20 + Markerlight 10 + EMP Grenade 3 + Hard-wired Blacksun Filter 3 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5)

Fast Attack: Pathfinder (9#, 172 pts)
6 Pathfinder, 72 pts = 6 * 12
1 Devilfish, 100 pts = (base cost 80 + Disruption Pod 5 + Multi-Tracker 10) + Targeting Array 5

Heavy Support: Sky Ray Missile Defence Gunship (1#, 170 pts)
1 Sky Ray Missile Defence Gunship, 170 pts = (base cost 125 + Smart Missile System 20 + Disruption Pod 5 + Multi-Tracker 10) + Blacksun Filter 5 + Targeting Array 5

Heavy Support: Sky Ray Missile Defence Gunship (1#, 170 pts)
1 Sky Ray Missile Defence Gunship, 170 pts = (base cost 125 + Smart Missile System 20 + Disruption Pod 5 + Multi-Tracker 10) + Blacksun Filter 5 + Targeting Array 5

Heavy Support: Broadside Battlesuit (4#, 200 pts)
1 Broadside Battlesuit, 90 pts = (base cost 70 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Advanced Stabilisation System 10 + Team Leader 5)
1 Broadside Battlesuit, 80 pts = (base cost 70 + Advanced Stabilisation System 10)
1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
1 Shield Drone, 15 pts

Elite: Stealthsuits (3#, 152 pts)
1 Stealthsuits, 40 pts = (base cost 30 + Targeting Array 10)
1 Stealthsuits, 40 pts = (base cost 30 + Targeting Array 10)
1 Stealthsuit Shas'vre, 72 pts = (base cost 35 + Targeting Array 10 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Markerlight 10 + Shas'vre Upgrade 5) + Fusion Blaster 2

Fast Attack: Piranha Light Skimmer (3#, 95 pts)
1 Piranha Light Skimmer, 95 pts = (base cost 60 + Disruption Pod 5) + Fusion Blaster x1 5 + Seeker Missile x2 20 + Targeting Array x1 5



Jake ran something like:

Lord Commissar with small command squad in a chimera
30 man blob squad with some grenade launchers and a commisar?
Platoon command squad with heavy bolter and a standard of some sort
Vet squad in a chimera
heavy wpn team x 3 missle launchers
heavy wpn team x 3 lascannons
Basilisk
Leman Russ x 2 with standard battle cannon
Aegis defense line but no gun emplacement


He won the roll off to go first, and I failed to seize. My warlord got the ability to make it nightfighting turn 1, so I did so as every unit I had had Blacksun Filters. He failed to kill any units on turn one, and through significant use of markerlights, I managed to destroy his vets chimera with seeker missiles hitting from the side from my piranha which had moved flat out all the way to his board edge and from the front from the two skyrays, and put a hull point on the command chimera, first blood to me. After turn one, the Skyrays were really pretty worthless as far as the seaker missles were concerned. Strength 8 ap 3 is just not enough to reliably put glancing hits on av 13-14.. The sms systems on them helped by ignoring cover and taking out most of the missle launchers, but all things considered, they seemed to have wasted 2 heavy slots while performing no better than a warfish. I'd rather have had 2 Ionheads, or 2 2 man broadside teams in their place. The 3 man stealth team payed for themselves easily. They contributed a markerlight hit toward killing the chimera turn one, they wiped out the lascannon squad (all but one wound to which I donated a railgun shot in order to finish them off on turn 2). They drew fire from the basilisk turn 3 saving my firewarriors from getting pancaked. They wiped out most of his Warlords unit on turns 4 and 5 which let me finish off his warlord with a railgun shot on turn five. And they scored me line breaker as the game ended after 5. In the final tally, no one was on the relic, though I had 6 firewarriors an inch from it. I'd scored first blood, slay the warlord and linebreaker. Jake had no points.

Tau 3, IG 0 for a win.


So, in summary, out of the 3 games I've played most recently, I would have to say that the return of Target Locks to my infantry, and the improvements to Disruption Pods have really helped make the Tau feel somewhat competative. My vehicles and stealth suits are so much more survivable now it is just huge. Much as I want to like the Skyray, it just under performs dreadfully. If the seekers had some missle options, or weren't limited to 6 per vehicle, or if the skyray had skyfire as it should, it might be a different story, but as it is, they will be going back on the shelf till a tau codex or an errata comes out to fix them.

If you made it this far. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post. I'll make sure to include some pictures from now on.

When did it become so hard to upload images to blogger? I was going to upload some images of my game today vs Eric's Blood angel mechanized list, but now I have to individually select every image?.. No thanks.. Suffice it to say that due to us rolling KP's and Hammer and anvil, as the mission/deployment, and my having 3 teams of 3 broadsides, and a huge hill to hide behind, that I won with Firstblood, kill the warlord (vespid for the win) and a total of 9 Vp's to his 4.. had it been any other mission, or any other deployment, he would have tabled me.. On the plus side. I through away my tiny GW round cornered dice, and used old school square dice you could buy at walgreens, and didn't experience an inordinate amount of 1's for a change. So atleast I can now blame any loss's on my sucking at 40K instead of having to blame my dice. Oh, and for all you vespid haters. My 11 strong vespid unit, deep struck in and wiped out a 5 man devastator squad (Thats 4 missle launchers and a sgt off the board), and put one wound on Eric's Librarian/Warlord.. After a round of shooting, and a failed assault distance roll, I was left with 1 vanilla Vespid. I jumped it over next to his librarian, shot, hit, and wounded killing his warlord, and totaling out at something like 235 pts of enemy models killed, 3 victory points gained, all for 180 or so points of vespid.. If Vespid don't work for you, you are using them wrong. Ignoring the now aweful interface for blogger, I went ahead an uploaded a couple shots from our game.

2000 pts Tau vs Eldar

I had the opportunity this evening to get in my last, or next to last game of 5th edition prior to 6th hitting Saturday against Eric of http://thewildriderhost.blogspot.com/ 's Eldar army.  The game was 2000 points and we rolled seize ground 3 objectives, and capture and control as our missions.  The deployment was dawn of war and I won the roll off to go first, and Eric failed to seize the initiative.
My phone died after turn 1 deployment, so I have no pictures, sorry.

Army list wise, I ran a Farsight enclave with a 955 point farsight and bodyguard squad, with 7 helios (fusion blaster, plasma rifle, shield generator) body guards, 4 with target locks, one with failsafe detonator, and one with stimulant injector.  I mixed up the other options enough to have 7 unique suits for wound allocation, plus 6 shield drones.  I also had 2 6 man firewarrior teams with Shas'ui with EMP grenades (just the shas'ui), 2 Broadsides with Plasma team leader with 2 shield drones, shield generator HWMT, HWTL, and the 2nd broadside running a multi-tracker.  One shas'vre Crisis suit (mandatory) with MP, Flamer and Pos Relay and a shield drone.  1x 3man stealth suit team, teamleader with markerlight.  Skyray.  Eight Pathfinders including Shas'ui, DFish with DPod and drones.  Lastly I had an IonHead with DPod and Bust Cannons.

Eric ran 2 9man jetbike squads with Warlock and attached farseer's with Fortune and Guide.  2 Wave serpants with holo fields carrying 5 man Fire Dragon teams including Exarchs with flamer, 2 Dire Avengers troops of 7+1 Exarch and a night spinner.

I deployed Farsight and friends strung out along the center of the board, with the firewarriors at either flank  in terrain 12" from the edge or so, and in cover to force him to deploy in the 6" band on his edge.  All but my 3 stealth suits (deepstriking) walked on on turn 1.  Eric deployed one jetbike squad with attached farseer in the far right corner.  The rest of his forces came on on turn one.

Since I don't have pictures, I'll save the play by play..  Due to some amazing roles by my pathfinders, skyray and stealth teams markerlights, I managed to wipe out both Jetbike teams and their Farseers'.  I wrecked 2 Wave Serpents, depleted a Firedragon team down to just the Exarch and wiped out most of a Dire Avenger team and removed the twin linked wpn from another wave serpant.  I also got my first ever glancing hit with an EMP grenade on turn one from a Shas'ui which charged into a Wave Serpant along with his team.  It took a Dire Avenger squad and a Fire Dragon team 4+ assault phases to finally wipe them out.  Unfortuneately, the Shas'Vre that was contesting his Capture and Control Objective Died while Jumping into Difficult Terrain in the Top of Turn 6, leaving his 3 remaining Dire Avengers in that area to Cap the point.  All the other points were contested, and so Eric won One to nothing.

All in all, it was an amazing battle, and as always Eric was a great opponent and we had a great time.  I plan to get in one more 5th edition Game at Big Kidz Games tomorrow before 6th hits on Saturday.  Hopefully I can redeem my Farsight list which is now something like 5 wins 1 loss in the last month or so.. 

Or, I think tomorrow, I'm going to try to run a Shadowsun list, that has at least 1 of every unit possible ( I don't own a space pope model, and can't run Farsight, but I will run my Ethereal with honor Guard).. I will probably leave the Skyray at home so I can run 3 sniper Drone teams, I'll skip the gun drone squadron, but will make a gun drone team by detaching them from my Piranha squadron, and will otherwise make the army as stealthy as possible.. 2 6 man stealth teams, 2 16 Kroot Kroot Teams infiltrating, Pathfinders outflanking and Tankshocking on turn 2 if possible.  It's not a winning strategy, but when the Vespid hit the board, oh look out.. no ones gonna know what to do then..

On another thought all together, I bought 3 more Mark I Rhino's from Eric today bringing my Total up too 8 Mark I rhino chassis for my sisters of battle army.  3 will get converted to Exorsists, 3 into imolators for my Dominion squads, and 2 as Rhino's as transports for Jacobus and the Battle Conclave, and 1 for my Sisters Repentia..  Assuming 6th doesn't have some rules that make that a horrid build. 

Tau versus Tau 2000 pts

 I was invited to play a 2000pt game versus Dan, another Tau player from Cobblestone games at the Battle Barns final evening of gaming (a sad day indeed, the battle barn is no more).  I gladly accepted and set about devising a way to beat the Tau, as the Tau. 

The Pregame planning: 

Given my notoriously bad dice, I decided that if we both brought standard Tau lists, and it came down to a long range shooting match/dice fest that I would surely lose.  I needed something nonconventional.  I also couldn't think of a reason for Tau to fight Tau (acting like a bunch of humans) unless one of the teams was a Farsight enclave.  Since Farsight lists are universally considered to be uncompetitive,  I didn't expect Dan to bring one, and since I've played a few games with Farsight lists lately I decided that Farsight would be my solution.

After waffling with some standard style lists with pathfinders, broadsid team, multiple crisis suit teams etc.. I realized that almost every game I've played lately has been determined by kill points.  Each list I made contained no fewer than 13 kill points.  Inspired by Eric's excellent Eldar Jetbike list that has minimal kill points, I decided that minimizing kill points would be the second component to making my Farsight list competitive against a standard Tau list. I stripped out everything I could, took my 4 mandatory unit choices (Farsight, Crisis Suit Team, Two Firewarrior squads) then after waffling back and forth about a squadron of 4 piranha, settled on a Broadside team, and an IonHead.

Conceptually, I planned to split the Farsight Team into 2 groups, 4 suits with Fusion Blasters would either split fire and target vehicles, broadsides, or nearby Crisis teams (causing instant death for any wound applied to a broadside or a suit), while Farsight and the 3 fireknives would focus on mid range targets starting with Crisis and Stealth Suits.  If any crisis team was in assault range, I'd declare them to be the squads target before splitting fire, and minimizing my shooting at them so they'd still be around to assault and hopefully keep me from being shot during his turn (this never happened).

My final list contained 6 SIX Killpoints at 2000 points, and looked something like this (please excuse extra notation in unit entries, it was intended to help remember who had what) :

2000 Pts - Tau Empire Roster - Tau 2000pts Farsight of DOOM!

Total Roster Cost: 2000


HQ Farsight Bomb - Fire Both Wpns!!! (16#, 982 pts) (CBg = Crisis Bodyguard)
   1 Cmdr Farsight PR DawnBlade SG HWTL, 170 pts
   1 CBg FB MP SG BsF - ForgeFire, 92 pts = (base cost 35 + Fusion Blaster 12 + Hard-wired Blacksun Filter 3 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Missile Pod 12 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
   1 CBg FB MP SG - ForgeFire, 89 pts = (base cost 35 + Fusion Blaster 12 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Missile Pod 12 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
   1 CBg PR MP SG - FireKnife, 97 pts = (base cost 35 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Missile Pod 12 + Plasma Rifle 20 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
   1 CBg PR MP SG BsF - FireKnife, 100 pts = (base cost 35 + Hard-wired Blacksun Filter 3 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Missile Pod 12 + Plasma Rifle 20 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
   1 CBg TLFB SG - Sunforge , 83 pts = (base cost 35 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Twin Linked Fusion Blaster 18 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
1 CBg PR MP SG - FireKnife, 127 pts = (base cost 35 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Iridium Armour 20 + Stimulant Injector 10 + Missile Pod 12 + Plasma Rifle 20 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
      1 CBg FB PR SG FSD - ForgeFire, 104 pts = (base cost 35 + Failsafe Detonator 15 + Fusion Blaster 12 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Missile Pod 12 + Shield Generator 20)
         1 Shield Drone, 15 pts

Elite: Crisis Shas'vre (5#, 202 pts)
   1 Crisis Shas'vre, 82 pts = (base cost 25 + Airbursting Fragmentation Projector 20 + Missile Pod 12 + Positional Relay 15 + Team Leader 5 + Shas'vre Upgrade 5)
      1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
      1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
      1 Crisis Battlesuit, 43 pts = (base cost 25 + Missile Pod 12 + Twin Linked Flamer 6)
      1 Crisis Battlesuit, 47 pts = (base cost 25 + Flamer 4 + Twin Linked Missile Pod 18)

Troops: Fire Warrior (12#, 163 pts)
   10 Fire Warrior, 100 pts = 10 * 10
      1 Shas'ui, 33 pts = (base cost 20 + Markerlight 10 + EMP Grenade 3)
         1 Marker Drone, 30 pts

Troops: Fire Warrior (12#, 163 pts)
   10 Fire Warrior, 100 pts = 10 * 10
      1 Shas'ui, 33 pts = (base cost 20 + Markerlight 10 + EMP Grenade 3)
         1 Marker Drone, 30 pts

Heavy Support: Broadside Battlesuit (5#, 325 pts)
   1 Broadside Battlesuit, 105 pts = (base cost 70 + Hard-wired Multi-tracker 5 + Hard-wired Target Lock 5 + Shield Generator 20 + Team Leader 5)
      1 Broadside Battlesuit, 90 pts = (base cost 70 + Shield Generator 20)
      1 Broadside Battlesuit, 100 pts = (base cost 70 + Twin Linked Plasma Rifle 10 + Shield Generator 20)
      1 Shield Drone, 15 pts
      1 Shield Drone, 15 pts

Heavy Support: Hammerhead Gunship (1#, 165 pts)
   1 Hammerhead Gunship, 165 pts = (base cost 90 + Ion Cannon 15 + Two Burst Cannons 10 + Disruption Pod 5 + Multi-Tracker 10 + Seeker Missile x2 20) + Sensor Spines 10 + Target Lock 5

Game Day:

An hour before I should have left, while trying to pre-assemble my suits with appropriate wargear I discovered that none of my shield generators were magnatized, and that 4 or 5 suits were lacking magnets in at least 1 hard-point.  By the time I got it all straightened out I was 25 minutes late getting to the Barn and in a wicked bad mood.  Fortunately Dan my opponent had troubles of his own and ended up being even later than me, so it wasn't an issue anyway.  I'd never met Dan, but it turns out I had seen him playing the one time I'd been out to Cobblestone.

Dan brought a pretty standard Tau list as expected other than having a team of Stealth Suits and no shield drones to speak of.  I don't recall all his wargear choices but it looked something like this:


HQ: 
Shas'O - Fireknife + SG

Shas'El - AFP, Flamer
Bodyguard - TLFB

Elite:
3x Crisis Suit - Fireknives

3x Crisis Suits - (not sure on the loadouts, they had some proxies)

6x Steath Suits with burst cannons (loved this unit, all XV15's)

Troops:

12x Firewarriors (I think it was 3 teams of 12, my photos are too blurry to count)

12x Firewarriors

12x Firewarriors

14x Kroot Carnivors including a shaper

Fast:

8x Pathfinders + Devilfish gun drone + Dpod

Heavy Support:

2x Broadside Suits with SMS

2x Broadside Suits with SMS

Hammer Head Gunship with Railgun and 2 burst cannons, DPod.

The Game:

Dan rolled the dice for missions and deployment.  We got Annihilation as the primary with Seize Ground and 3 objectives as a secondary, with Dawn of War as the Deployment.

I won the roll to place objectives first, and placed my objective in the open on Dans side of the board, he placed his objective on my side, diagonally opposite of mine and with a Bastion in the center of the table blocking LOS from one to the other.  I placed the last objective on Dans side as well, mirroring the placement of his placement.  The plan was to give him a reason to stay on his side of the board, and to draw him out into the open with his troops if possible.

Deployment:

We rolled to deploy first and I won, I chose my side of the table as I already had my army out of the bag near this side, and because I'd placed objectives with this side in mind.  Since it was Dawn of War, I got to place up to 1  HQ and 2 troops.  Normally I don't deploy anything on the board in Dawn of War, but normally I don't go first, and I don't usually have markerlights (heavy wpns) in my firewarrior teams.  However since I was running Farsight, it was an easy call to Place him on the board running across the center to force Dan into the 6" along his board edge.  For some reason I placed my HQ ringing around the Bastion instead of just placing some suits on it, this would hurt me later.  Then I placed the firewarriors (whom I usually reserve) so I'd have access to my markerlights from round 1.  I put them  in terrain in either corner, with one team stretched out to the center line to increase the area of denial for his deployment.  Everything else would walk on on turn 1.

Dan apparently hadn't played a Dawn of War mission in some time and initially deployed the majority of his army on the board.  After some clarification on what was allowed to deploy, he settled with placing his firewarriors in either corner, in or behind terrain, and a monat HQ also behind the hill to my right.  He reserved the Shas'el team, the proxied crisis team both deepstriking, and outflanked his Kroot.

After deployment Dan rolled to sieze the initiative and succeeded.  This made me cringe a bit, but I was confident that between the nightfighting rules, and the size of my HQ that it wouldn't hurt me to much.

Game Summary:

I was going to write a play by play on the game, but here it is 2 days later and I can't recall all the specifics, and my phone failed to take almost any worth while images.  So instead of rambling on and guessing at what happened here are a few pictures, and a summary of  the end of the game.

My HQ wiped out a broadside team, the fireknives, the proxy crisis team, 2 firewarrior teams, and put some hits on the Shas'el team.  In the end, my HQ was almost wiped out but Farsight managed to hold on as an IC taking cover behind the Ionhead.  The Ionhead killed 1 of the Proxy suits, finished off the Shas'el, and killed a few firewarroirs and 3 stealth suits.  My firewarriors on the left were wiped out by Kroot outflanking except for my Shas'ui and the markerdrone which were escorted of the board by the kroot consolidating near them.  My broadside team blew the railgun off his Hammerhead, killed his pathfinder devilfish and killed his Shas'O on turn 5.  My crisis team failed to have any effect and got wiped out my massed fire from his whole army on my right side.  My firewarriors to the right were also wiped out all but one firewarrior who failed leadership and fell off the board.  His pathfinders worked far better than mine providing him with alot of markerlight hits through out the game.  My getto pathfinder/firewarrior team managed to call in the 2 seeker missles with their markerlights, both of which failed to have any effect.

In the end, neither of us controlled any objectives markers, so no points there, and I had 3 out of 6 kill points still on the board, while he had lost 8 kill points.  My plan to minimize kill points in my list paid off, and I won the game.

And here are the least lousy of the bad pictures I remembered to take:

After Dan's army arrives top of turn 1

Same timing as above

Looks like the end of the bottom of turn 2.

End of Top of 3, Dans Kroot, Shas'EL and Proxie Crisis team arrived.

End of Top of 4.  Dan's Sunforge "tripped" after failing to even glance my IonHead at 1" Range.

End of Bottom of 4.  Dans' Shas'el falls back from shooting but I can't get within 6".

Other Side bottom of 4. Broadsides fail to do much.

End of game?  THought I'd killed that Shas'el, but there he is?  Maybe this was after top of 5?  Not sure.

I played Josh's IG at 1500 pts yesterday.  We got a late start so we only made it through 3 rounds (barely) but I thought I'd throw a few images up anyway.  He was trying out some new units in his list, but the models hadn't arrived yet, or had just been assembled.  I ran a farsight list.  I went first in a spearhead annihilation match with a capture and control secondary element.  My son took over the camera for a while so there are some less than informative "artistic" shots here :)

Just for kicks I photoshop'd in some lascannon models to replace the cups on the image above.

Tau vs Necron 1850

Got in an 1850 game versus Chads Necron tonight at the Barn.  Unfortunately my phone was taking lousy pictures, and I got distracted and again forgot to take any for a few turns.  We just played pitched battle and annihilation, with  2 objectives thrown in for the heck of it.  I have a huge headache this evening so this really will be brief.  

 Second round I deep struck in my farsight bomb and hit his command barge with 2 fusion blasters causing it to explode.  He assaulted into me on his turn.  Eventually I won that combat but he had assaulted in some scarabs at that point which stuck around till the bottom of turn 5 when I finally finished them.  By that point my other units had done enough damage that we called the game as I was up 8 to 5 or something like that.  Here are the few semi decent picture I got:

 

Tau Vs IG 1500

So another brief write up because it's late and I don't have time for a full write up, nor did I get pictures of every round yet again.

Josh and I played a 1500 pt battle at Big Kidz Games tonight. 

He ran something like 2 identical HQ's with camo cloaks, masters of ordanance, medics, autocanon team, and a generic guardsman, 3 chimeras with veteran squads, one stormtrooper squad, a Valkrie, an Executioner, and a leman russ proxied as a variant with an assault canon turret I don't know the name of.

I ran a farsight enclave list with Farsight and 7 bodyguards with 7 shield drones all with MP and twin linked flamer, a crisis suit shas'el with twin linked MP Pos Relay and shield drone, 3 Sniper Drone teams, 8 man pathfinder team DFish with DPod and drones, 2 broadsides with 2 shield drones, 2 6 man firewarrior teams.

The game was Dawn of war deployment with Capture and Control Primary and Annihilation Secondary.

Josh went first and deployed 2 chimeras with vets, and a command team.  I deployed nothing, but walked on everyone but the Farsight Bomb on my turn one.  This really sucked for me as it demonstrated one of the key weakness's of the Tau Codex.  On my turn 1 though I had 11 markerlights available, none of them could fire because they are all heavy wpns attached to non-relentless units.  This is why I hate markerlights.  It makes no sense to have a fast troop choice equiped with a primary equipment that they can't move and fire.  How is that a fast unit?

Moving on, Neither of us accomplished much on turn one obviously.  Turn two  both Josh's Leman Russ variants came on from reserve along with his stormtroopers and his second HQ walked on then ran into the cover of the ruins, he moved up and fired his two chimeras wiping out most of my pathfinders, shot at my shas'el attached to my broadsides with the exterminator and his stormtroopers and failed to get any kills but put a wound on my shas'el.

On my turn 2 Farsight bomb hit on a 2+ thanks to the Pos Relay, though they scattered from my intended position behind a chimera over closer to the command squad, I chose to go with it.  I could have rerolled due to the pathfinder DFish, but decided that the command team was a good target and that put me closer to his tanks anyway.  I fired 2 sniper drone teams at a chimera failing to glance, and the 3rd at the stormtroopers killing one model.  Shas'el fired misslepods at stormtroopers then assaulted.  One Broadside had LOS to the executioner but failed to even glance the 14 front armor.  The farsight bomb fired 14 MP shots at the executioner and managed one glancing hit immobilizing it.

Turn 3, Josh's Valkarie failed to arrive again.  The chimeras wiped out a Sniper Drone Team both leman russ' and his command squad fired on my Farsight Bomb killing 6 out of 7 shield drones, and the storm troopers remained locked in assault with my Shas'el.

My Turn 3 I rolled for both firewarrior teams but only got one.  Farsights team moved up into position setting up to fire their twin linked flamers at the first HQ while also setting up a multi-assault later on into the HQ and one Leman Russ.  Here is where I bitch about FNP for a moment.  After hitting the HQ for 14 wounds, with my flamers, I failed to kill a single model due to FNP from the Medic.  Now they had Carapace armor on so they had a 4+ armor save.  but 5 models 14 wounds, all saved?  That is just ridiculous.  Anyway, my broadsides moved up on the hill and wrecked the executioner, I managed to immobilize a chimera and destroy both its guns, and in the later assault Farsight exploded the other Leman Russ while his body guards did nothing to the HQ on Init 1 due to assaulting into ruins.

Turn 4 Josh's Valarie still didn't come in but his last chimera did.  He moved it 12 and popped smoke.  He killed 2 sniper drones and all but 3 firewarriors in the first team.  Both units made their leadership.  I ended up winning both the ongoing assaults, catching his storm troopers and the HQ and wiping both out unfortunately for him as this allowed me to consolidate farsights team toward the second HQ.

My turn 4 I brought on the last of the firewarrior teams who shot up some veterans, destroyed a chimera with the broadsides, fired inefectively with everyone else other than farsights team who caused 21 wounds with flamers on the second HQ which due too FNP took 1 wound on the autocannon base..  again.   Ridiculous.  I then assaulted them but failed to do much in the way of wounds, the combat was a draw, or he lost one but made his leadership.










Turn 5, his Valkarie came on which he moved 24" and couldn't fire.  He got a vet squad out of their chimera and fired at my firewarrior team.  His other vets moved and fired at the other team.   I don't think he killed anything this turn.  Farsight and friends wiped out the other HQ and consolidated towards my objective.

My turn 5 we were in a rush at this point as it was after 11 and BKG closes at 11.  They kindly let us finish up.  I moved farsight towards my objective again.  I fired the broadsides into the immobilized weaponless Chimera assuming any result on the damage table would destroy it, I rolled a wreck anyway.  I unloaded 6 firewarriors and 4 sniper drones into one vet squad killing it.  I unloaded 14 misslepod shots from farsights team on the other vet squad, then finished it off with fire from the DFish.

We called the game at this point in part due to the time, and in part because Josh had 2 units left on the board and I was winning 8 kill points to 2 and there was just no way for him to catch up.

My thoughts on the game and our lists:  While the sniper drones were very effective last time against Erics jetbikes, the dawn of war deployment and Josh keeping his troops locked away in the chimeras pretty much neutralized them.  The pathfinders are still worthless in my opinion.  They added very little to my game considering the 181 pts they cost to field.  Tactically they just suck.  Farsight and his bodyguard.  The whole reason I brought the pathfinders was for the rerolled deepstrike, and because having a unit with 8 models 7 with missle pods meant I'd finally have a unit worth giving markerlight hits too.. Only they never really got to use them.  That said, they were very effective, wiping out 2 HQ's, a tank, and most of a unit of veterans.  I doubt they paid for themselves points wise.. but by tying up those HQ's in assault the whole game, I minimized the effectiveness of his Masters of Ordnance.  I really don't see why people say Farsight breaks the army.  There are enough options in the codex you don't need to bring more than one of any given unit anyway.  Though I do miss the kroot, vespid and ethereals in the farsight list.

I think Josh would have been better off bringing all his units on on turn 1 except the stormtroopers.  As it was he was simply denied the shooting from all those units for most of the game and allowed me to focus my fire on the units he did have on the board.  Deployment wise, he brought on his Second HQ in the corner behind the first, even though I had Farsight still in reserve and planning to deepstrike.  I think he should have brought them on on the far end of the board to limit the units farsight could get to given any particular deep-strike position.  I'm also less and less in favor of bottling up  troops in transports.  yes they are more maneuverable, but you are denied half your firepower and with capture and control being the primary objective, I'd have been inclined to mass all my fire to guard my objective in his position.  Either way it was a fun game.