Hopefully you all tuned in and watched the hard fought battle between the Astra Militarum and Tau. Here are the post game thought’s from our two players.
Keith:
Hello again Frontline Gaming! DirtyDeeds here with another post-game report for your viewing pleasure. This week I played Reece’s Imperi- I mean Astra Militarum (I’d rather have a mouthful ) and their new Tank formations. His list was fun, thematic, and had some surprising elements; my list was not…
Quick breakdown, he had lots of AV 14 and AV 12 in his list with a wide range of weapons to cover every potential enemy army. As a Tau player, we DREAD AV 14 as our only effective ways of tackling this mighty armor is through Deepstriking Crisis suits, a Stormsurge with several Markerlights, or HULK SMASH. My list utilized the Stormsurge and relied on the use of two Nova Charged Heavy Burst Cannon Riptides that were shooting twice thanks to the Riptide Wing formation to bring these “mighty” giants down. I had two decisions on my first turn, either A) RIPTIDE HAILFIREOFWTFDEATH and hope for all the Rends, or B) rush his gunline to see how many licks it would take to get to the center of his Tootsie Pop. Being a typical Tau player, I chose the former. However, my poor Riptides did more damage to themselves than they did to Reece on my first turn!! WTF!!!!! Even his AV 12 escaped the wrath of my Heavy Burst Cannon. I managed to meek out First Blood by using 5 Markerlights to Ignore Cover, boost to BS 5, and shoot two D missiles at Chimera…
Yeah, that’s how I felt about that too.
Anyways, I shrugged off the worst shooting phase ever in the history of Tau and defaulted to my next game plan; HULK SMASH. All my Riptides rushed different sections of his Tank line to prevent him from gaining any ground, one took the left flank protecting my warlord, the weakened Riptide rush up the center to attract fire, and the last escorted my Stormsurge up the right flank to work on those pesky Guardses trying to get Line Breaker. Stupid Guardses, this deployment zone is my precious!
So fast forward quite a bit, the Stormsurge ALMOST died in a hail of Plasma and Melta shots (he survived with a single wound remaining! Yikes!), Firewarriors came on and shot things, Kroot came on a Glanced a tank to Death, Stormsurge did a little tango and rolled two 6’s on Guard… It was fun. We didn’t tally the points in the end because it was a one sided game from the start (we rolled the Kill Point primary ITC mission), but we still had some fun. One unit that I would like to expound upon before I sign off is the Forgeworld Y’Vahra. I highly recommend that all of you take a quick look at his rules now that ITC permits experimental rules in their tournaments as you’ll start seeing this bad boy. His sports a 6” Torrent Flamer that could potentially be Str 6 AP 2 Heavy 2, and a Str 8 AP 3 gun that does the Str 8 and a Haywire “hit” per successful hit (and it causes Blind too). To top him off, he can move like a Swooping Monstrous Creature every other turn, has Hit and Run, and one of his Nova Charge abilities allows him to jump into Ongoing Reserve even if he’s stuck in combat. This model will murder Invisible units without Invulnerable saves and will steal their candy while he’s at it. The Y’Vahra is a dangerous model that is incredibly aggressive and agile for the typical Tau M.O. He still was my MVP this game despite how poorly I played him.
Things I wish I would have done differently… Well I think I should have been less afraid of Tank Shock. Heavy Tanks can’t move very far and I could have used that to my advantage to set up turn 2 assaults. Also, I focused too much of my Y’Vahra’s attention on the Engineseer, he should have worried about taking out tanks with Haywire. The game was still fun and I’m glad I had the opportunity to head into the studio. Expect to see more of me in the future!
Alright guys, thanks for watching and reading! This is DirtyDeeds, done dirt cheap!
Reece:
I knew going in that I was likely to lose the game. Keith’s list is solid, Tau MCs are brutal and Marker Lights rock the house. Leman Russes….don’t! Lol.
I thought I might have a chance on the mission with some clever play and some luck, but we rolled Kill Points. Le sigh. Considering how difficult it is to kill MCs vs. how easy it is to kill Tanks I was pretty hosed baring some really good fortune.
As it went, I was actually winning Maelstrom but Keith had First Blood and killed all of my units that were able to take out the Y’Varha which is so bleedin fast, there was no way I could keep it out of my deployment zone. With that combo, and no way to get Slay the Warlord, I was SOL.
Oh well, it was fun to get ye old tanks on the table and to try out the Cadian Battle Group! It’s a fun detachment, but not one for competitive play, at least not the way I played it.
Good win for Keith!