the weekend two weeks ago was imperial guard's weekend, so we bought the codex and started playing. The new codex is great on the first look and it brings the humble guardsmen back to their deserved glory.
Before we start, I discovered some mistakes we made with the new rules, first off we forgot the distance limitation for orders and we chose leman russ squadrons and didn't hold them in formation. These are the major mistakes we made but I think both weren't really unbalancing the game too much.
Ok so let's dive right into it. First game we played was capture three objectives while deploying on the long table edges.
The Guardsmen could bring a good mixture of menpower and tanks. I don't have the exact army composition in my mind, but basically there was a company command squad with medic and vox caster, 2 troop choices with two teams and platoon command squad each (autocannons, lascannon and heavy bolter as heavy weapons) and some special weapon teams with flamers and grenade launchers, 10 deep striking kasrkin with flamer and grenade launcher, 2 lemand russes with heavy bolter sponsons and lascannon, one lemand russ exterminator with heavy bolter sponsons and one basilisk.
I played my usual tau list with XV84 Shas'O commander with melta and burst cannon, two shield drones and bodyguard with melta and plasmarifle, both deepstriking, one XV8 with twin missilepod and flamer, also deepstriking, 3 infiltratin stealths with burst cannons, 2x6 firewarriors in warfish, 16 outflanking kroot, 2 hammerheads with railgun and a skyray.
So here are some pics to give an idea what happened.
The Imperial Guardsmen deploy on their whole table edge, the company command squad in the middle, the tanks are somewhat more to the right flank.
Since the Tau deploy secondly they are bunched up in the right corner of their deployment zone, a little bit spread out to avoid the pie plate(s) especially from the basilisk.
The guardsmen advance to the objective at the containers covered by a leman russ.
But the treacherous carnivores were hidden behind and in the containers and charge a platoon and wipe them out completely in close combat. When the last guardsman falls the second platoon opens fire on the kroot: First rank FIRE! Second rank FIRE! 9 kroot die in the lasgun fire, the remaining two run away, never to be seen again.
The Tau skimmers advance to their nearest objective when suddenly heavily armoured guardsmen fall from the skies, realising that they can't do anything to harm the skimmers. In return they blaze away with smart missiles and burst cannon fire.When the dust settled, whe kasrkin where gone.
The final push on the objective in the mechanicum building, held by the imperials. Yet. The crater in the back is all what remained of a leman russ after a solid slug of a railgun smashed through the thick front armour. It took 4 slugs to achieve that!
Two fire warriors survived the explosion of a HE round of the leman russ but the objective in sight they didn't lose their wits and ran to capture it for their commander!They did this to honour him post mortem. He died unheroically when deep striking right on top of the leman russ. No glory to claim with such actions!
The game ended after six turns, the tau holding two and the guardsmen 1 objective.
We played a second game that day. I will write about that soon and I will add concluding thoughts on both armies.
