The Tau vessel slowed, as it closed on the marine’s position. Their barrage of bolter fire clattered ineffectively off the armour plating. The vector thrusters kicked up sand and grit as the alien pilot brought the vessel around sharply. They were clearly planning to assault. It seemed like an unusually bold approach for aliens as cowardly as the Tau. The boarding ramp slammed down into the dirt, and the aliens within burst out shooting. They were not the tall, thin xenos that the marines had been expecting. Instead they were wiry, blue lizards, shorter than tau, but wielding similar weaponry and marking. Their targeting systems allowed the alien weapons to fire with accuracy that a marine would have been proud off and the pulse weapons seared through the marines armour with far more power than the brother sergeant had been expecting. Brother sergeant Andoran coughed up blood, as his internal organs bubbled and ruptured. His whole squad had been gunned down in seconds. A last question hung on the dying lips of the brother sergeant, as he felt his spirit drifting from his ruined body. “What are those things?”
I am pretty new to Tau and have been too busy this year to play as many games as I would like. Since the 24 hour painting challenge I have only had three games. The first two were teaching games in which I was completely massacred. However I thought that I had started to see how I could use the Tau more effectively.
In my local club most of the regular players tend to field some very elite forces, with lots of elite units, super heavy tanks, flyers and lords of war. My fairly basic Tau force is not really equipped for that sort of enemy. However, this month they were running a 750 point combat patrol tournament.
I was not free on Sundays, and didn’t get to play in the tournament, but I did get one of the club members to give me a game, using a 750 point list that I had built using the clubs amended combat patrol rules. (the only difference was that 3 wound unnamed HQ choices are allowed, in order to give a few more HQ options)
My HQ was a Cadre fireblade, attached to a 10 man fire warrior squad with no upgrades. I had a 4 man crisis battlesuit squad with plasma rifles, airburst fragmentation launchers and early warning override, two squads of 4 pathfinders with 3 rail guns each and my skink breacher team in a devilfish transport with countermeasures (for a +1 cover save).
Round 1: I deployed and started first. we were playing to control 3 objectives. My fire warriors were in cover on my right, near an objective. The devilfish was in the table center and the battlesuits were on my left. My opponent only had 10 marines on the table, in squads of 5. The other forces on both sides were in reserve. The devilfish moved forward at full speed, as did the crisis suits. The marines fired a few shots, ineffectively, and the squad on my right broke cover, moving closer to an objective.
Round 2: My devilfish moved close enough to the marines on my right to deploy the skinks, who moved to within a few inches. On my left a squad or pathfinders came from reserve. My crisis suits were still the far side of a ruin from the marines.
My fireblade lit up the marines with a markerlight and his squad fired at them, killing one. The skinks shot with improved accuracy, wiping out the remaining marines effortlessly. On the other flank my pathfinders killed a couple of marines (rolling very badly) but my crisis suits also landed a few airburst templates on them, leaving only one marine alive on the board.
All the marine reserves arrived. A squad of terminators (the only unit that didn’t fit the combat patrol rules, as my opponent didn’t have all his other miniatures at the shop) came down safely behind cover, to avoid my interceptor shots, but Luke forgot that interceptor also works on infiltrators. Two bike squads came in, one on either flank.
The terminators shot at my fire warriors, but I was lucky and only lost 1 man. On the right flank they shot up my skinks, killing nearly half the squad, but failing to rout them. On the left flank my crisis suits opened fire first, hitting with all four templates and wiping out the whole squad, before I even had a chance to roll for the plasma. Now you see them… now you don’t.
The lone marine heroically charged my pathfinders, routing them off the board.
Round 3: The fire warriors shot up the terminators a bit, killing one man. The cadre fireblade lit up a bike squad, allowing my remaining skinks to kill three of the bikers. My pathfinders came in on the wrong flank and tried to get a line of sight on the terminators, but rolled badly. The devilfish deployed the drones and gunned down the lone marine.
The terminators opened fire on my battlesuits and missiles killed two of them. The remaining two bikers bypassed the skinks and assaulted my battlesuits, killing another, but taking a casualty.
Round 4: My skinks moved into position, to shoot the bikers, once they killed my last crisis suit. The fireblade supported the pathfinders and fire warriors, shooting at the terminators. We only killed one, but he had the missiles. The terminators shot my drones and tried to move close enough to assault my devilfish. The last biker and crisis suit remained locked in combat, with no casualties.
Round 5: My pathfinders and fire warriors continued to whittle away at the terminators, killing one more. The pathfinders moved onto an objective and the devilfish moved onto the third. The terminators failed to destroy the devilfish and my skinks joined the assault on the last biker, with nobody dying.
game over. I held all 3 objectives and won overwhelmingly. A great victory for the greater good.
My forces clearly needed to keep out of close combat, but had done extremely well in the first shooting engagements. The crisis team were extremely effective and my breacher team had far exceeded their points value in their kills. The fire warriors had done little, but the cadre fireblade had made my other units far more effective. As a combat patrol list, I wouldn’t change anything.
Cadian 501st 