Greetings,
initially Trotzki and me just had in mind to play one of our usual weekly games. We met after work, Trotzki had his daemons and I was up playing tau again, as my tyranids are not ready for more than "test-games". We decided to play cities of death again (imo the best addition to 40k so far). We set up a board with an abandoned fortification in the center consisting of our three bastions and aegis lines, surrounded by some buildings and containers and a street. The mission would be to secure the own building and attack the one the enemy had declared to be his own (I never can recall how the missions are called correctly). In hindsight we chose absolutely pointless stratagems. I fortified my home building and would get feel no pain additionally. Trotzki had the two stratagems where he would get a 5+ cover save in the open due to smoke grenades (amazing when you have a 5+ invul save as well...) and wrecking gear to tear down buildings.
I lost the first roll.off and had to set up first. I placed my broadsides and the kroot in the fortified building the railhead and the two deathrains and the stealth suits behind him next to the street. The ionhead and two fireknives on the other side. I wanted to create some kind of two-pronged assault on his building on the opposite site of the board. I kept both my warfishes and the command fireknife team in reserve.
On my first turn I just moved towards his objective and as no daemons were on the field yet, no shooting occured. Trotzki was lucky to get his designated first wave and so a greater daemon of tzeentch, 15 daemonettes, a tzeentch herald and a daemon prince dedicated to tzeentch as well materialized in real-space. But the warp was treacherous and the daemon prince mishapped to the other end of the board. Maybe a sign of things to come.
Things like the greater daemon of tzeentch "el poldo diablo" shooting on my fireknives.
Nothing spectacular, the bolt of tzeentch just roasted one shield drone leaving the suits unharmed. But who would have thought that this particular shield drone was the shas'ui's heirloom which he favoured more than his XV8 suit? Every evening he spent his free time with lovingly cleaning and optimizing it while his buddies went out to meet the girls or getting involved in a good old brawl in the local tavern. And now that. A warp-spawned monstrosity hurled a shiny bolt at him and in a desperate hover-jump his drone finally fulfilled its duty and saved him (and his squad-mate) from being turned to slimey goo. That was too much for one day. With a cry of desparation on his lips the shas'ui jumped for the burning remains of his once beloved drone, grabbed them under his battle suits arms and turned tail, running home!
That seemed to be the signal for a game of mutual abysmal dice rolling.
On Trotzki's second turn no reserves arrived, not a single unit. Oh lucky me. Don't blame me that I don't remember every normal detail of that game, I just want to share the highlights. On my turn the command team of three fire knives showed up and under the combined firepower of them, the ionhead and 6 firewarriors and the warfish el poldo diablo was sent back to the warp. Can you imagine what happened on Trotzki's turn with the command team? I guess you know what this is all about. Right, the shield drones were destroyed. And what do elite firewarriors do when that happens? Right again. They cut and run, turn tail, flee. To make long things short, the deathrains lost their single drone as well, failed their morale check and fled. But hey! I learned from the other two squads and I had moved them more to the center of the board. So when they fled 8" to my table edge they ended their run merely 1" from it! And as exceptions some kind of proof the rules, they passed their morale check to regroup. Hah!
Next remarkable thing was the soulgrinder. He didn't do much damage the round he appeared. And I was of good spirit as he materialized right infront of two BS4 twin-linked railguns and railhead lurking on his side.
The broadsides hit but didn't penetrate and the railhead missed with a 1. Over the remaining course of the game I just managed to immobilize him and destroy his mawcannon. It's not too spectacular but it matched the feeling of the game.
Trotzki had bad luck with his last daemonettes which didn't show up until turn 5, where they mishapped and were sent back to warp. On turn 6 they appeared again, scattered, mishapped and were claimed by the warp.
In the end I didn't manage to get anything to Trotzki's building, the last surviving deathrain was annihilated by the daemon prince, who later smashed the railhead.
Trotzki had the damaged soulgrinder with one foot/claw in my building and nothing to claim his home base. So the only acceptable outcame was a draw.
I am definitely not complaining about this poor dice rolling as it was bad luck on both sides and wasn't one-sided, what would have caused a rather disappointing if not annoying game for one of us. So sometimes it was that ridiculous it even was starting to get funny again.
I want to end with a citation from the "Imperial Infantrymen's uplifting Primer" concerning cowardly battlesuits:
"There are several types of tau 'Battlesuits' (as they
are laughably known), all equally ineffective. Battlesuits
are given to warriors who are even more
cowardly than their compatriots, and who refuse to
enter combat without maximum protection.
Feckless cowards! The tau encased in the cumbersome,
brittle arnour are usually inexperienced and
untrained.
Battlesuits are such easy targets that they
might as well have a bull's eye painted on them.
But it should be put on the back because they will,
in all likelihood, run away at the first sighting of a
well-armed and determined Imperial Guardsman!"
Did you experience something similar or have you had games like this where all and everything seems to fail?
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