Tau vs. Dark Angels - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - Managarm Round 2

Well Round 1 was a bit of a let down for the Tau, so good for us there was a break. So we went to get some food and talk it over.

After some nice hot dogs we were ready for Rouns 2, and i think this was a much more enjoyable experience, but enough of me talking!

2^nd game: Dark Angels

Spearhead, table quarters (at least one scoring unit and no enemy unit in one quarter)

Army List:

Interrogator Chaplain in terminator armour with combi-flamer

5 terminators (2 with shield and hammer, 2 with twin lightning claws, 1 with heavy flamer)

2x 10 marines with melta and heavy bolter/plasma cannon

5 marines with melta

10 devastors with 2 lascannons, 2 plasma cannons

Land raider crusader with multi melta

Vindicator

Land speeder with multi melta

This game was in every way the opposite of the first game and the guy I played against was very nice and a good sport.

I faced a more or less foot slogging marine army with a lot of bodies and every single unit could hold one table quarter as everything was scoring. He chose to deploy and go first and set up everything close to the middle so that his units could walk into every quarter first turn with the land raider, vindicator and land speeder coming to my quarter.

I was a bit impressed by so many marines so I decided to build a castle in my quarter with the broadsides standing on some kind of fortification with tanks and crisis suits behind that more or less out of line of sight.

As I only had 3 scoring units I decided to keep my fire warriors and the kroot in reserve with the latter outflanking. My bonus mission objective was to have more points of HQ on the table in the end so my commander would be in reserve as well.

First turn was as expected. He boosted the land speeder 24” towards my homebase and drove 12” with the land raider and vindicator, popping smoke. All marine units (all combat squadded) except the 2 lascannon dev-squad walked into the adjacent table quarters. The lascannons were the only ones able to shoot so they opened fire on my broadsides, killing one shield drone.
On my turn I jumped out of cover and opened fire. I thought my death rains could down the land speeder but I only managed to stun it. The hammerhead and the broadsides opened fire on the land raider but as the dark angels smoke launcher reduced every hit to glancing I only managed to shake it and destroy the assault cannon. The ionhead killed one or two marines of the lascannon dev-squad. In the end all suits jumped back behind the fortification.

In his second turn he continued to drive his tanks towards my little castle and his troops marched again. I don’t know why he did that, so he couldn’t fire one more turn and he even did not walk into cover (which was rare, admittedly), only the lascannons held their position. He fired the demolisher cannon at my broadsides but scattered a bit so I suffered only one wound which was saved by the shield drone. The railhead suffered one hit from a lascannon but the disruption pod negated any harm.
All railguns fired on the land raider and shook the crew, no immobilization, damn. The deathrains immobilized the speeder and destroyed the multimelta. But it still would contest my table quarter so it would take one more turn of fire to bring it down. I decided to start the push into another table quarter, so I jumped my fire knives not behind the fortification but towards the so far unclaimed quarter.

Third turn’s movement saw the land raider and vindicator continuing the push to my deployment zone and at last shooting from the marines. The demolisher shell scattered yet again and caused no damage. A few heavy bolter shells pinged off the armour of the broadsides and the lascannon weren’t able to damage the skimmers.

One devilfish and my commander arrived and I placed them to shoot at the marines in the table quarter to my right, the commander and bodyguards being able to jump behind cover in the assault phase. I destroyed the land raider with the hammerhead so the broadsides, the two fire knives and the ionhead fired on the disembarked death wing terminators, killing only one lightning claw armed one. The combined fire of the command squad and the devilfish killed 9(!) marines.

 
In his fourth turn he shot another gloriously scattering demolisher shell at my fire knives, killing none and the few bolter and heavy bolter rounds didn’t do anything as well. His terminators destroyed the shield drone of the death rains but weren’t out of assault range. I really started to feel sorry for him at this point.

On my fourth turn all remaining reserves arrived and the outflanking kroot showed up on my right hand side in charge range to the plasma cannon dev-squad. The ionhead fired at the side armour of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the fire knives killed the 5 men-squad in this table quarter. My commander used his target lock to kill the last remaining marine in front of the team and his bodyguards killed one of the devastators. The death wing terminators and the interrogator chaplain threatened my home base, so I fired everything I had at them, even the firewarriors disembarked to fire and the deathrains used their flamer. I killed everyone but one lightning claw terminator. I don’t know why he put a wound from a railgun on his chaplain. Maybe he thought the rosaries would save him. But it didn’t and the solid slug killed him instantly. The kroot charged the remaining four devastators and killed 2, losing 2 of their own. The death rains jumped in front of the firewarriors to protect them from getting charged by the last terminator.

In the remaining turns I killed the marines in his corner and all other marines on the table, wiping him out completely. In the end I only lost 3 shield drones and the death rains and 5 kroot.

I have to thank my opponent for a really kind and funny game, never losing his humour even when facing a massacre. And that made me feel a bit bad about tabling him in the end. But I think his list isn’t very suitable for a tournament environment. He mentioned he usually plays the double wing and I think that would be far better.