Battle – Elysian Drop Troops Vs Tau empire 1850

 

A game was played a few weekends ago, and I might be heading for some kind of record for games played in a year!

We rolled up the mission and deployment, we got the relic hunt mission, with a single, movable objective worth 3 points, pretty much making it a purge the alien mission, but with an extra 3 pts on the table if you had the objective.

We went for quite a sparse terrain layout, it being a desert planet and all, and rolled the corners deployment you see above.

My opponent won the roll and chose the far edge in the picture, leaving me with the bottom right as pictured.

We used one of my old tiki head statues as the objective and placed it in the centre of the table amidst the wreckage of the vehicle that was presumably transporting it.

      

 

My Forces:

Elysian 93rd Recon Regiment,

Command squad with valk, bodyguards, sniper and hvy bolter, ground scanner and MoTF

Elysians vets with plasma and valkyrie with rocket pods

Elysians vets with Grenade launchers and valkyrie with rocket pods

Elysians vets with flamers and shotguns

3x lascannon tarantuals

3 drop sentinels with multimeltas

2 tauros venators with tllc

Vulture gunship with punishers

Avenger strike fighter

 

 

My Foe:

Shadowsun,

Commander with bodyguards, plasma rifles,

xv9 with fusion cascades

riptide

2x piranahs with fusion

a squad of kroot

two hammerheads

broadside

stealth team with fusion

The deployment, I put down 1 valk with troops in it (the plasma) and the empty CC valk, along with the CC squad already in place – this turned out to be a mistake. I also deployed the venators into cover. everything else would deep strike.

 

My foe deployed his hammerheads and broadside, along with the devilfish and piranahs, he infiltrated the stealth team. in reserve were the xv9 and the riptide.

Some of the opening moves, after I failed to seize, my opponent came for me, his piranah taking a hull point from the valk

 

His stealth team successfully splitting fire to hit my venator for a hull point, and decimate my CC squad with his burst cannon.

Making good use of my orders, i responded by pinning the stealth team

The avenger glanced a hammerhead into defeat.

And the valkyrie deprived a piranha of a hull point, don't underestimate multilasers.

The venators proved their worth by taking down the piranhas, but the opening exchanges were quite balanced.

Once reserves started to appear, things started to turn, as the Motf held back the tau.

 

Deep striking MM took some hull points from the second hammerhead

and the veterans with shotguns and flamers took out the kroot in a single round of inspired shooting.

 

This hole had a deep striking riptide in it briefly.

Tau fire warriors disembarked to shoot at deep striking tarantulas and sentinels who were pressing the attack.

sentinels fell to the weight of pulse rifle fire.

 

veterans close in on the objective.

  

The avenger strafed the enemy positions

 

The last Tau standing, sadly he didn't survive the drive-by.

 

wit victory close, the brave men of the 93rd close in on the relic tech. 

As the game drew to a close the last Tau unit standing took a punisher to the face. all I needed to wound was not to rolls 1’s

 

Yhatzee.

It was a very good game, but on reflection I may have over-tweaked the list, it was a little on the brutal side, but I also think part of that is that I've tailored the list to my preferred style, which is fast moving and mobile with a good amount of DSing units.

My opponent acquitted himself well, and if I'm honest about the only things I would have done differently in his shoes were to focus fire form the railguns until a target was dead, and to press the attack more with the troops and devilsih, there were some unlucky rolls on his part, and vice versa.

All in all though I was very happy with the list, and will certainly play it again mainly to see if this was a fluke, or if it will consistently perform this well.