Shas’el
Fragmentation launcher, missile pod, HW multi tracker, HW drone controller with 1 Gun Drom and 1 shield drone
3 Stealth Suits, t-leader w/ fusion blaster and hardwired target lock
12 Firewarriors w/ t-leader and bonding knife
8 pathfinders, 1 rail rifle
Pathfinder devilfish with disruption pods
12 Kroot, 4 kroot hounds
Broadside with/ ASS
3 Piranha, 2 with burst cannons and 1 with fusion blaster, all with disruption pods
XV8 with flamer, burst cannon, HW multi tracker, vector controlled thrusters
Senior HQ, with Master of Ordnance, 1 autocannon team
Junior HQ with 2 plasma guns, 2 squads with flamers
Junior HQ with flamer, 2 squads with grenade launchers
2 Leman Russes (squadron, though we both agreed in hindsight this wasn’t the best strategy)
3 Chimeras, 2 with the ten man launcher squads and 1 with the J-HQ
A sprinkling of medkits and power weapons
Terrain
The board was split pretty evenly, with an industrial park in one corner, and a cluster of bluffs and rocky outcropping’s in the other, with a few rolling hills to separate the two. Two forests flanked both corners, though they were rather small.
Hoping to try out the new guard codex and see how badly I was going to be wishing for the updated Tau one, my friend and I wandered over to the local store, only to find that the new codex had walked off. A bit bummed, he started putting together his list when the Emperor heard his prayer and the book materialized in front of him.
After he picked up the new codex and started to whistle appreciatively, I figured he might be able to field an extra tank, and maybe some better hardware. However, when he put away his Basilisk, and pulled out another Leman Russ, 2 Chimeras, and about an additional 20 men, I felt the color start to go out of my face. I thought this was going to turn into a slaughter, and while it did, it definitely didn’t turn out like I thought it would.
Tau turn 1
Shas’El T’au Kais Kodel checked his relay again, the three separate chronometers in his HUD almost within a nit’ro’tau of each other. The killing blow was in position, and by the rumblings in the distance of the gue’la combustion engines, the prey was rapidly approaching. The Fire Caste had managed to take this production facility with nary a casualty, and the Imperial forces had to take it back, or risk a crippling shortage of ammunition in other campaigns being prosecuted on the planet. He powered his lifting thrusters, and leapt to meet the enemy, trying to drawing them further into the trap.
After rolling spearhead and annihilation, I won corner and first turn, and deployed heavily in the park, placing the fire warrior squad and the Broadside in covered positions, and placed the Devilfish out front, to get into position to help the deep strikers, with the pathfinders scout moving into the nearby wood.
His deployment was a heavy flank advance, with the 3 full chimeras in front, with the two follow up squads taking up the rear, and the senior HW on the high bluff. The two leman russes held up the right flank, and I started to sweat seeing that many guns pointed at my poor commander.
After he failed to seize the initiative, I tried a simple attack, as he’d held back far enough that most of my unit was out of range. The path finders lit up the middle Chimera, with the sniper picking off the rocks around the senior HQ. The broadside inloaded some targeting data, and struck the front of the Chimera, shaking it. My commander, frustrated by such a poor opening volley, managed to wreck the ship with his missile pod, though he was out of range for the fragmentation launcher on the junior command squad that poured out. My piranha turbocharged across the board, landing nearly in the middle, close enough for double tapping, but managing to keep one of the rock spires blocking LOS to the russes.
Imperial Guard turn 1
Colonel Daniel Hadrian lowered his magnoculars, sneering in contempt at the slithering khaki shapes on the catwalks of the manufactory. Through trickery and assassination, typical tools of the xenos, the creatures had managed to wrest control of Delta auxiala munitorium. How they had managed to slide under all of the defensive auspexs would be a problem for the Inquisition, though the Colonel suspected traitors, as the xenos seemed to create by sorcery, bending loyal men to their disgusting cause.
The bounding abomination leapt backwards, the plume of smoke from the Chimera already dissipating, with lieutenant Marran and his retiune crawling out, barking orders to flank around and use the wreck for cover. The Colonel smiled wryly. Good man, Marran. It took something else to walked out of a burning wreck, wondering why the men under you hadn’t already charged past. The Colonel looked over the bluff, waving his hat to draw Captain Taralens attention. “Captain!” he barked, pointing at the battlesuit descending behind the woods like a skeet “Destroy that vile thing!” The tank captain saluted smartly, and slid down into the tanks belly, shutting the cupola behind him.
After passing his pinning check for the J HQ, the Leman Russes took aim at my Shas’el. 2 battle cannons, 2 lascannons, and 6 heavy bolters shots tore through the woods. One of the shells detonated prematurely, killing a pathfinder as the Tau ducked under trees for cover, though the other struck true. All three failed their cover saves from the woods, and died. Wincing, as I’d lost my relay, and my main strategic card, I sighed in relief as everything else rumbled forward uneventfully. His attempted orbital strike on my Broadside scattered within centimeters of my Tau.
Tau turn 2
Alert, alert, outer hull compromised, the atonal voice droned in Kodels ear. Alert, alert, life support systems disabled. Emergency power unresponsive. A shocked gasp burst out of his throat as his automatic medical systems dumped pain killers and cardiac strengtheners into his blood stream, but Kodel could feel the lead weight in his arms and legs, and could recognize it easily. He wouldn’t be climbing out of his until either the Earth Caste, or the Imperials, cut him out. His HUD began to dim out, just as all three timers spiraled down to zero. Even over the din and distance, he could hear the screams of surprise, and Kodel managed his own wry smile “A fine strike, gue’la. Now here’s mine.”
Invoking a prayer to the Ethereals, I rolled my reserves for the battlesuit, stealth suits, and kroot. 4, 4, 4. With a barely contained breath, I rolled side for the outflank, and the Kroot materialized, boiling up out of a Viet Cong like tunnel entrance no doubt, and wound up an inch away from the rearmost infantry squad.
Hoping my bout of luck held, I tried for a rear guard strike with the Monat, landing in line with one the behind the left most Chimera. The stealth suits similarly, after scattering into the junior HQ, struck on target in front of one of the Leman Russ’s with help from the Pathfinders topographical scanning equipment.
What followed was a slaughter. My broadside, trying to make up for last turn, and with help from the pathfinders, disintegrated a second Chimera, killing half the Gaurdsmen inside and pinning the rest, also picking off one or two men from the squads packed in around it. The pirahna elements split, with the two burst cannons chewing through about half of one squad, and my monat incinerating half of another. The fusion blaster tried to obliterate the last Chimera, missing. My firewarriors, barely within range, opened up on the guard spilling out of the flaming wreck, and managed to finish off all except the sergeant. On the other side, the stealth suits, landing a few feet in front of the battle tank, split their focus, with the burst cannons chewing into a junior HQ, and the fusion blaster blowing off the battle cannon of one of the tanks. The kroot then slammed into the right guard squad. Between the hounds, which tore nearly half the squad apart before they could even bring up their knives, I managed to kill all but 1 while taking only 1 casualty, who fled. Realizing they were almost surrounded by three squads with rapid fire weapons, my kroot suddenly looked very vulnerable. My battlesuit hopped behind a small hill, and the stealth suits shimmied up close and personal with the leman russ, all but daring it to tank shock them.
Imperial Guard turn 2.
Sergeant Caleb, coughing and sputtering, blindly groped his way through the razor edge shrapnel of what had been his Chimera, head low to the remaining oxygen in the rear cab. He’d shaken several men before giving up on them all as lost. Spying a light, he drew closer, shoving his head through to draw a lung full of delicious oxygen. Suddenly his vision began to grow red, and he blinked in astonishment, seeing the red light intensify by degrees. Realizing what it was, he sighed heavily, and pulled his head back inside the burning vehicle, where it was safer. Right before the whole world blew up, he muttered darkly that today was not turning out to be a good day.
After some heartfelt agreement between my opponent and I that the last turn pretty much flipped around my fortunes, he began to plot my demise. The russes, not wanting to risk hitting one another, scooted backwards to try and bring weapons to bear on the suits. The last chimera canted slightly to bring the hull weapons to bear on the pirahnas, while the guard behind them, calling for blood and vengance for their dead, dashed over the hill towards my XV8 battlesuit, while on the other side, the senior commander used an order to rally the remaining member of the squad that the kroot had broken last turn, while below him, the two junior HQ squads lined up in a literal execution firing squad on the Kroot. Both used the extra tap orders on themselves, their squads either dead or too far away, and the Kroot, buck-gawking in distress, dove for the dirt. The triple tap lasguns and plasmaguns, both of which got hot and killed one of the gunners, along with a stray shell directed at the stealth suits, tore the kroot in half, though they rolled a 5 for leadership.
The remaining guard either picked shots off at my XV8, or lobbed krak grenades at my fusion pirahna, shaking it. The orbital barrage, directed at one of the burst cannon pirahnas, and hoping obviously to scatter either onto my fish, XV8, or the other pirahna, scattered a whopping 14", directly onto the sergeant still trapped in the burning Chimera wreck, though the cover saved him. One of the stealth suits also bought it from a stray lascannon shot, but the squad stayed.
The far left squad, running for the XV8, charged into it, failing to wound and taking a casualty in return. I rolled my initiative, and the vector thrusters powered up, and I bounded the XV8 towards the senior HQ on the bluff.
Tau turn 3
Shas’vre T’au Mont’atan Caim barreled towards the rocky bluff, bounding over smoking, burned corpses. While fighting the quartet of men who had be screaming curses and death oaths, his battle computer, from a stray optical image, had spied the bright metal bars that denoted a high officer, yelling down commands to the men below him. Strike off the head, Caim thought, reciting from the Book of the Killing Blow, as his thrusters took him up over the rise of the bluff, “and the body dies!” his external speakers howled. He even registered a faint look of surprise on the gray haired mans face as he brought his flamer to bear.
At this point, almost one entire flank was pretty much mop up. The devilfish and the two burst cannon pirahnas slid around behind the last Chimera, taking aim on the wounded of the two remaining squads. The stealth suits again got up close to the russes while staying in range of the remaining junior hq squads. The Broadside nailed the last Chimera, knocking off its multilaser, and the pirahnas and devilfish wipred out the last two rear guard squads. The poor sergeant, having crawled out of the wreckage of the Chimera and finally on his feet, took a sniper round in the back of the head.
The fusion pirahna, after disgorging its two gun drones, spun on its axis, and went full speed around the rocky bluff, bearing down on the two Leman russes, while the stealth suit fusion missed again, although his burst cannon companion took down the lone man from the squad that the commander had just regroup a moment earlier.
My XV8, surviving its difficult landing, cooked three of the guardsmen in the command squad before jumping into close combat. Despite finding myself going last, the suit managed to kill the master of ordnance and the heavy weapons team, taking one wound from the commander, as my opponent ground his teeth for having not given power weapons to the only two officers so far to have gotten into hand to hand.
Guard turn 3
Finally determined to run down my infuriating stealth suits, both leamn russes setup to tank shock them, and probably my kroot. However, one of the russes, striking one of the rock spires, tore off a tread, and managed to kill the driver in the ensuing crash. The lascannon shot went wide, and the junior hq squad killed several more kroot as the lizard stumbled to their feet, though they again managed to stay on the field. The Chimera spun around to heavy bolter my point blank pirahnas, and managed to wreck one of the skimmers. In close combat, the commander took another wound, and my suit saved 2, and I failed my initiative check for hit and run.
Tau turn 4
Setting up for the final kills, my pirahna slithered into melta range on the last russ, and between it and the stealth suit, managed to immobilize the tank. The broadside, with a clean shot on the last Chimera, exploded it, killing only two of the Guard inside, but between the pathfinders, the unhurt firewarrior squad, and the fish, the squad was shortly turned to bloody ribbons. The kroot, back on their feet, charged the remaining junior hq squad, killing them all after the pursuit. On the bluff, the XV8 saved its 16th close combat wound, and hit the commander for the last time. With only the Russ left, he conceded.
Kodels eyes slowly fluttered open, and he saw Caim standing over him, offering a hand. “I take it the plan worked?” he burbled out through anesthetized lips. “Your computer may have gone down at the last instant, but when have I ever counted on such things?” Grasping his seconds wrist, he hoisted himself out of the suit, wincing as the central lines tore out of the back of his neck. “Casualties?” he sputtered, shutting his eyes to the sudden glare and rubbing the stiffness from his limbs. “Almost none. One of the stealth suit pilots won’t do so again, and the Kroot lost several of their number. As for the gue’la....” he trailed off, and Kodel raised his eyes to the horizon. Surveying the field, he felt himself go cold “By the Ethereals.” he murmured in awe.
The ground in front of him was a charnel house. Burned human corpses were strewn everywhere, and several obviously had been within the vehicles that had burst aprat, shattered like a child stomping on a toy. One body nearby was so mutilated that it more resembled a flesh trough filled with blood. He turned back to his friend “Tell me we took some prisoners?” he asked almost plaintively. Greater good or no, the Tau’va or no, he wanted to think that he hadn’t simply butchered these soldiers. Caims eyes cast down “A few... The Kroot though...” he was cut off by an agonized scream, and Kodel whirled. A gue’la, broken and covered with blood, was crawling along the top of the hill, as one of the Kroots vile hounds bit deep into his thigh. One of the remaining warriors, apparently tiring of the shrieks, spun his bladed rifle, taking off the top of the humans head, as Caim and Kodel turned away, groaning in disgust. Choking his bile back, Kodel started towards the factory that they’d... valiantly protected...
“Sometimes...” he muttered darkly “Our victories are as bad as our defeats.”
While a few lucky rolls on the damage chart helped matters, this was pretty much determined by my second turn reserve rolls. We did just about all of the new orders and equipment rules wrong, but it was a blast, and we both we're shaking our heads over my spectacular turn 2 luck. While the positional relay would've helped out, the devilfish did most of the heavy lifting, as both units would've scattered into a mishap without the rerolls.
