New Gun in Tau'n: Tau vs Alpha Legion

Good lord - in an usual act of latency, I played a game about three months ago and never wrote it up. Heresy! 

It was not long after the T'au Codex had dropped, and Kas and myself thought we'd try putting it through its paces. Its large, d6+6 paces. Against a list of T'Pau Sept suits, who I think were using the Farsight Enclaves rules, I took Alpha Legion, on the grounds I knew roughly what I was doing with them. 

Our lists are lost to time, sadly, but I have a rough idea of what we took. The big names in the fight were a Great Brass Scorpion and a Stormsurge, so we each had a Lord of War in the game. Obviously we needed some boots on the floor, so there was a range of other stuff around too. 

Kas had one team each of Pathfinders and Breachers, each with a couple of drones. Backing these were a medium sized Crisis Suit team, three Broadsides with defensive drones, two Tetras and both a Coldstar and Enforcer Commander. Heaps of guns, as you'd expect, but also the pocket handcannon that gives the Coldstar a bit of melee punch too. There was a pair of Remoras in reserve, too, which would be handy for roaming firepower. 

My lot was a Dark Apostle and his Disciples and a jump pack Sorcerer, who would be orbiting the big arachnid and boosting or veiling him with their powers. A cheap pack of cultists for objectives, then a fully-armed Havoc squad, a Warp Talon team, a Decimator and some tooled up Bikers. Shoot the big guys, assault the small guys, rub the Scorpion over any survivors. Finally, a Termite full of Berserkers for even more melee punch. 

Mission and Terrain

The game was a Maelstrom of war. We had six objectives scattered over the board, long edge deployments and although I'm sure there was some kind of twist in play (extra attacks in melee, perhaps?) I'm not really sure what it was. Or if it made any difference!

We were fighting over an industrial complex on the edge of town, a little knot of roadways around ruins and flyovers. Great looking board, the mat goes very well with the buildings! 

Deployment

Kas went for a central castle with all the heavy suits and the Enforcer. Pathfinders snuck forward to the north, the south was held by the Coldstar and his Breacher team. Crisis suits were awaiting in a Manta overhead.

My plan had the Warp Talons in the warp, where they belonged. Bikers would rush the north side, the Scorpion and his character tag team to the south. Kas got first turn, and off we went!

T'au Turn 1

You'd expect nothing less than a shootfest from T'au, and they did not disappoint! 

The Coldstar led the charge, leaping forwards into central cover and nuked the Decimator pretty much straight off. Then the Pathfinders, who I'd remembered as a bunch of dudes with laser taggers, turned out to be packing heaps of rail guns, and tore through 80% of the Bikers. 

The rest of the army managed to thread a few shots on to the Scorpion. But my saves were holding well, and I only took seven wounds. Somebody somewhere sniped a Havoc away, too, possibly with smart missiles. Ouch! Not an auspicious start, the T'au now had most of the field locked down and I was already looking rather dog-eared. 

Alpha Legion Turn 1

Dog-eared but not dead - the Cultists and characters swarmed into defensive ruins on the south end, as the Biker Sarge roared forwards to avenge his dead. The Havocs popped up and drew beads on the Broadsides, but really most of my hopes were riding on the Scorpion, who went front and centre. 

The Chaos Sorcerer then threw him at the foe with Warptime! An easy charge to the Stormsurge, who was going to be outclassed easily in melee. Various missiles and lascannons took a big bite out of the Broadsides, leaving just one standing, and the Coldstar Commander got leathered with smites and autogun fire, somehow scraping through on a couple of wounds. 

But the big fight was a bust. Shooting failed dismally from the Scorpion, so I had to rely on the charge. Overwatch scraped two more wounds off me on the way in, just enough to leave me on the middle profile. Although I still connected, it wasn't the knockout hit I needed, and the Stormsurge was still standing proud after triggering some kind of defensive strat, I forget quite what.

The Biker slammed into the Pathfinders (or, well, slammed into the supports under the platform they were on and raked them with fire from below), but only just managed to kill a single drone. Then one of them wounded him in return! Bah!

T'au Turn 2

The Stormsurge immediately boostered away from the angry crab, which left pretty much everything else free to shoot at it as they also looked to put some distance between themselves and its claws. But somehow I survived! On a single wound, and looking jolly unhealthy, but very much alive. 

The Crisis team dropped in on my back line, but not within range of the zillions of flamers they were packing, thanks to Scrambled Coordinates. Didn't really make any difference - they had zillions of other guns too, and wiped the Havocs out without too much bother. Likewise the Biker, who succumbed to pulse carbines from the Tetras as the Pathfinders shifted away from him. 

Then the Cultists go shot up by smart missiles from the Broadsides, and the casualties caused a bit of a rout. The whole lot were gone by the end of the turn, which definitely stung.

Alpha Legion Turn 2

But I did still have a Scorpion! For a bit, anyway, it got crisped by the Stormsurge as it tried to charge in, but I remember it being very close. 

I needed my deep strikes to connect this turn if I was going to have a chance, so the Termite popped up and unloaded Berserkers in the back line, whilst the Warp Talons prepped to jump the Pathfinders or the Crisis Team, depending on how I felt later in the turn. The Apostle ran for the Breachers, and the Sorcerer gunned his jetpack into the Coldstar. 

And then, of course, it was whiff city! No charges from the Deep Strikes, and although I managed to gun down a few Breachers and then assault the rest with the Apostle, they passed morale easily enough. The Sorcerer failed to smite away the Coldstar, tried to take him on in close combat and took a Trebuchet Gauntlet to the chin before he could even swing. No, this wasn't looking promising. Did kill a few drones, though, so that was nice.

T'au Turn 3

As you can guess, the Tau third turn was conclusive. The Coldstar, Tetras, Broadsides and Commanders utterly levelled the Berserkers and their Termite, with enough spare to shoot down the rather isolated Apostle. Remoras swooped down to kill his Disciples, who'd tried to lurk on an objective, and the Warp Talons, who'd done nothing except pop up like ducks on a range, died as the filling in a Crisis Suit and Pathfinder sandwich. Only dust remained!

T'au Victory!

Locker Room

Hard to say what takeaways there were - it was a while ago! 

The Dice Gods had robbed me of success, as is their way. If my turn two charges had gone well, it might have been a different story, but I do recall Kas had screened against their arrival pretty well, so I was needing higher numbers than usual. T'au shooting had impressed me, but not quite as much as I'd thought it might, and it was certainly a fun and swingy game, initially at least. 

What I did enjoy was the changes to the Drones. It made them much less of a massive pain in the arse, whilst still fulfilling their role as cannon fodder - they're a regular part of the unit now, so your opponent just takes them off first instead of having to roll to bounce shots. Quicker and far more sensible, I liked it! 

We did have an idea of reversing the roles and seeing if I could bring the same T'au list to an equivalent victory, but we haven't got round to it yet. But there's plenty of time still to come this year!