Battle Report - Tau vs Space Wolves

For a little change of pace I took my small tau army out for a spin on Monday. I was reading the Tau of War recently and began to miss my neglected blue friends. So here it goes.

1550 points, Pitched Battle, Annihilation.

Tau Army
Shas'el plasma rifle and missile pod(PR/MP), bonding knife and 1 shield drone

2x Crisis teams-3 man squads all with PR/MP

2x 6 man firewarrior squads, 1 with Devilfish with smart missiles, disruption pods, targeting array and multi-tracker.

1 six man pathfinder squad with devilfish, same as above

2x Hammerheads with railguns, smart missiles, multi-tracker, and disruption pods.

1 three suit squad of Broadsides with 2 shield drones.

Space Wolves:
2x Rune priests JotWW on both, Living lightning, and the 5+ cover save as the other 2 powers

1 Long Fang squad w/ ML, plasma cannon, and Lascannon

1 Lone Wolf

1 Terminator squad with Arjac upgrade

3x troops with Terminator leader with combi-meltas

1x other troop choice with Lukas the Trickster in it.

He won the die roll and passed me first turn. I have no idea why. So I set up centrally with eveything but one devilfish, and let him go. When he set up I saw no transports, and my heart went out to the poor guy. It was going to be a shooting gallery.

First turn, I had to eliminate his long fangs, they were the only immediate threat to my army. They were camping in a central building with LOS to the whole board about. They had to die. Markerlights went up and only 2 hits. This was my first go with them in my army, and the jury is still out on whether I like them or not. So my suits shot the long fangs to pieces, leaving only the lascannon standing. The rest of my shots went into the troop squad at the base of the building. They lost a few guys, but both squads passed their Ld.

His turn he came forward running. His lascannon managed to shake the crew of one of my hammerheads and that was the end of his turn.

Next turn I got 4 marker light hits, much better. I nailed his Terminator squad that was hugging a forest and launched a load of shots into them. The markerlights dropped their cover so my plasma rifles would be more effective, and boosted my ballistic skill. And his storm shields laughed off plasma, much to my dismay. I did get a few kills in to force a Ld test, but he passed that easily.

His turn he ran towards me screaming some more. He had a few combi-meltas in range of one of my tanks, and managed to shoot the railgun off one of them. His lascannon did nothing, and that was the end of his turn.

Turn 3 I blasted him some more. Wiping one squad and killing a few more terminators. On the far side I had a devilfish shooting the crap out of his Lone Wolf, and this turn I finally managed to down him. And I didn't move one of my Hammerheads, which was a mistake.

His turn he brought another combi-melta around a bulding and blew my Hammerhead to bits, ugghh. And wouldn't you know it, the explosion engulfed all my Pathfinders, and killed all but 2 of them. What a blow. The pathfinders booked it off the table, being much too afraid of the Wolves closing in on them. End of turn.

The rest of the games was mostly unremarkable, in that I just continued to retreat in front of him and shoot him to smoking piles of melted power armour. On turn 5 I finally got the last of his army, a lone Rune Priest hiding in some trees. It took all of my suits to finally kill him off, coming to rolling 6 2+ saves vs my 14 missile pod shots. The priest had only one wound left, and he managed to fail just one of the saves. It was epic to see, It all came down to the last roll. We both had a good laugh about it.

Total victory for the Greater Good! MVP was the Crisis suits. They put out so many shots it was kind of silly. They killed more than 3/4ths the army. I had a good time, although I would have preferred more competition from his list. I know the Wolves have much more than that to throw at me, and it was a little underwhelming. Jaws was fail for the game. He managed to get it off twice, and I passed the test on the 1 model he got each time. Lucky rolling by me, but it could, and should have been much worse. Even rhinos would have made the game interesting, but such is life, every game can't be a nail-biter.

Until next time!