Battle Brothers January 2014: Game 2

Mission: Big guns with four objectives

Deployment: Hammer and anvil

Terrain: Big ruin in each deployment zone (ours on our left, theirs on their right) a forest across from each ruin, a big hill in the centre and another forest on our left in the centre.

Warlord trait Tau: Through Unity, Devastation

Warlord trait Marines: No idea

Psychic powers

Eldar: guide, fortune, presience

Night fight: yes

Opponents:

Space marines and guard

Chaplain

Two tactical squads

Two devastator squads

Thunderfire cannon

Rhino

Company command squad

Massive blob squad (50 guys)

Marbo

Leman russ demolisher squadron (two tanks)

They won the roll for first turn and opted to place the thunderfire cannon behind their big ruin, with the devastators in the ruin, one tactical squad hidden behind the rhino, with the chaplain and other tactical squad in the rhino.

The guardsmen deployed in the forests, with the russes anchoring their left flank. Marbo was hidden in reserves.

We set up a fire warrior unit in the ruin, and the fireblade and other fire warriors in the trees. The pathfinders were on the higher floors of the ruin, the skyray cowering behind the hammerhead in the centre. The bikes anchored our left flank facing off against the devastators, with the riptide next to them. The plan being to force the marine flank with the bikes 48” turbo-boost, taking out the thunderfire turn two and forcing the marines to fight us on two fronts. As usual, the suits and hunter were in reserve.

We failed to seize the initiative.

The imperium ordered a general advance, rushing forwards to engage the filthy xeno. The searchlight from the rhino lit up the hammerhead. The devastators seized this opportunity and blasted the grav tank to tiny pieces (first blood).

The tau retaliation was swift and deadly. The skyray missile barraged the rhino into oblivion. The marines charged out, only to be met by a farseer guided riptide and his nova-charged weapons which gunned them down, leaving few survivors. The bikes soared down our left flank, pressuring the devastators and the thunderfire.

The chaplain and marines dashed forwards, hoping to do some damage to the riptide. The guard advanced but ran again due to being out of range. Guardsman Marbo materialised in the ruin’s, but fell under the ever watchful eye of the riptide and was shot down in a hail of burst cannon fire. The demolishers attempted to raze the forest containing the warlord. With a sharp cry, Oi’nan’shi ordered her warriors to take cover, the tau diving behind the trees to avoid the explosive munitions. The devastators and thunderfire cannon unleashed hell on the bikes, tearing down four of one squad and one from the other, but the elves’ nerve held.

The riptide advanced, plasma guns ready for the devastators, as the crimson hunter swooped in, lances locking onto the space marine leader with the farseer moving in to help. A crisis suit gracefully touched down beside the jetbikes, as the bikes prepared to kill the thunderfire and the devastators. The skyray swung round, ready to unleash smart missiles on the advancing blob squad. The riptide failed to harm the devastators, the crisis suit killed a couple with the jetbikes adding to the tally. The two man jetbikes bladestormed the thunderfire techmarine down, silencing the artillery piece. The crimson hunter and farseer removed the tactical squad from the board in a brilliant display of lance fire and shurikens (slay the warlord).

The imperials responded by bringing the second tactical squad to bear on the riptide, but the plasma gun failed to cause any wounds. The blob squad put a couple of wounds on the riptide with various orders. The devastators failed to kill the jetbikes and hunter. Again the demolishers futilely pounded the forest with siege shells, though they did successfully destroy the skyray.

The crimson hunter banked right but fluffed its rolls against the leman russ squadron. Thankfully, the second crisis suit had just arrived and reduced one of the lumbering behemoths to molten slag with its fusion blaster. The riptide nova charged, and ignored the juicy guard heavy weapons teams and instead destroyed the second tactical squad with help from the first crisis suit, the farseer and the jetbikes. Having finished its work, the riptide jetpacked after the blob squad…

The remaining russ powered forwards away from the crisis suit. The suit was slain by rocket fire from the company command squad, even as they ordered the men to slay the riptide. After many orders had been cast, las cannons fired and grenade launchers shot. The smoke cleared. Leaving the riptide still standing. The devastators charged down the building, rushing into combat with the farseer, but neither could cause any damage leaving combat a draw.

The crimson hunter finally sorted its targeting profiles blasting the second russ apart as the jetbikes took out the command squad. The riptide sprinted forward, charging into the guardsman blob to drag them off the objective. Despite numerous overwatch shots and bayonets, the riptide crushed several unlucky heroes of the imperium, running them down as they fled from the monster battlesuit.

With little left to do, the remaining guardsmen prepared to sell their lives dearly as the riptide bore down on them, their shots just bouncing off its impermeable armour.

The bikes moved to claim all the objectives, as the farseer finally slew the devastator squad in combat. The riptide survived yet more overwatch to charge the last bastion of the imperial guard, scattering the puny gue’la, and claiming this sector for the Tau Empire.

Final score: Taudar 18 (4 objectives, 4 heavy support kills, slay the warlord, linebreaker) Imperial marines 2 (1 heavy support kill, first blood)

After game thoughts

This game was immensely enjoyable. Our opponents were a great laugh, and although the score was very one sided, the game was not. When the hammerhead got killed first turn, and the bikes charge began taking casualties, we began to get worried. But ultimately the risk paid off and we were able to execute a pincer manoeuvre. However, it was a hard fought match right until the finish.

Unit of the match: riptide, for generally making a nuisance of itself

Battle Brothers January 2014: Game 1

Mission: relic

Deployment: dawn of war

Terrain: forest in the centre of each deployment zone, ruin in the left of each deployment zone and a big ruin in the centre of the table

Warlord trait Tau: Predator of the skies (one use skyfire)

Warlord trait Iron hands: Not sure, might have been librarian got blessing of the omnissiah

Psychic powers

Eldar: guide, misfortune, presience

Iron hands: endurance

Night fight: yes

Opponents:

Iron hands

Librarian, terminator armour, storm shield, force axe (warlord)

10 tactical marines, meltagun, combi melta, melta bombs, multimelta, drop pod

8 tactical marines, meltagun, combi melta, melta bombs, drop pod

Storm talon, skyhammer missiles, assault cannon

Storm talon, skyhammer missiles, assault cannon

Space sharks allies

Tiberius the red wake

5 lightning claw terminators

Land raider redeemer, multimelta

Storm talon, skyhammer missiles, assault cannon

Deployment

They deployed only the land raider (containing the terminators) which sat in the centre of their deployment zone beside a forest.

We placed the hunter, and suits in reserve. The hammerhead on our left with the pathfinders ready to scout into the ruin on our left, both firewarriors and fireblade in the forest in our deployment zone, riptide in the centre. Skyray behind the firewarriors, and a unit of jetbikes on either side of the skyray to protect against drop pods. The farseer joined the jetbikes nearest the riptide.

With a spot of good fortune, we seized the initiative.

The farseer guided and presienced a whole load of stuff, and the riptide charged up his gattling gun, advancing on the land raider. The hammerhead swung round to the left using the pathfinder’s markerlights to destroy the land raider with a clean penetrating hit (first blood). The terminators pile out, only to be blasted apart by riptide fire. I believe three died and Tiberius lost a wound.

The marine’s retaliation involved a mad dash from the terminators and a drop pod landing behind the hammerhead. The marines piled out, only to be cut down by rending interceptor fire from the riptide. Crucially however, the melta sergeant and multimelta survived blasting away at the hammerhead, knocking off a hull point and the smart missiles.

The hunter arrived, soaring onto the battlefield but with a lack of targets it hid behind a ruin. A crisis suit deepstruck to mess up the terminators and the hammerhead ran away from the space marines which were being chased by a swarm of angry jetbikes and a farseer. The other jetbikes began a play for the relic. The hammerhead failed to kill the drop pod, a few marines were bladestormed by the bikes and Tiberius’ guard were shot down by the crisis suit. Diverting full power to shields, the riptide charged Tiberius. Bringing a massive metal hoof down on the chapter master the giant battlesuit smashed the life from the space marine, before he could lash out with his chainfists, stalking on to stand defiant in front of the relic.

With the scream of jet engines, the three storm talons roared into battle, blasting apart the crimson hunter in a shower of debris and skyhammer missiles, the elegant crafts jinking turns no match for the blessed missiles. The others tore into the riptide, but the suit’s armour withstood the battering.

The space marines on foot again tried to silence the hammerhead but their grenades could only bounce off the hull.

The crisis suit wasted no time in blasting apart the remaining tactical marines, even as his strike partner touched down on the other side of the table, and failed to snap shot at a storm talon, though the drones stole a hull point. The skyray blasted another’s assault cannon off in a barrage of missiles. The fire warriors skyfired up and put a glancing hit on one the already limping storm talon, knocking it out of the sky. The riptide failed to hurt the third, being out of range of guide.

The librarian and friends turned up, going for the fireblades unit. The iron hands storm talon regenerated a hull point. Both fliers flew over to kill the fire warriors and the skyray, but did little to no damage.

The tau and eldar mobilised to hunt down the warlord and marines. Several marines fell, but not enough. The hammerhead missed the drop pod, the jetbikes grabbed the relic, and the skyray shot it’s last missiles, ripping the missiles off the regenerating storm talon, leaving it with no guns.

The skyray’s victory was short lived as the space sharks flyer went into hover mode and tore it apart with rending. The marines charged into the warlords unit, the fireblade accepting a challenge from the librarian. However, everyone fluffed their attacks and combat was a stalemate.

The hammerhead finally did something, blasting the space shark flyer out of the sky.the tau converged on the combat, the farseer and bikes charging in. The farseer heroically shoved the fireblade out of the challenger. Again combat was drawn.

With a snarl, the space marine librarian finally landed a wound on the eldar psyker in combat, activating his force weapon, banishing the xeno to the warp. Bolstered by this heroism, the marines slew several fire warriors, running them down (slay the warlord).

We rolled for turn six (we needed this to charge the riptide in and claim slay the warlord) but we rolled a one.

Final score: Tau 5 (relic, first blood, linebreaker) Marines 2 (linebreaker, slay the warlord)

After game thoughts

We played a reasonably solid game, though we got very lucky with that first turn alpha strike. The marines were hampered by being unable to focus their forces on a particular section of the army allowing us to take them apart piecemeal. The fire warriors could have had more of an impact, but overall the units all played the part.

I'm very glad we took the skyray, it's a really cool looking model and it provides good anti-air defence. It's rules are nice, good, but not so good that it can be used without a bit of thought.

Unit of the match: riptide, proved to be a good all-rounder, and conjured up some great imagery charging Tiberius

Battle Brothers 2014 List and Pre-tournament thoughts

Two weekends ago, Xenos and Proud and I attended the Warhammer 40k Battle Brothers tournament, at Warhammer world in Nottingham. Despite the daunting prospect of a seven and a half hour car journey, we were both very excited and looking forward to playing doubles 40k again, something we haven’t done in about four years.

The format for Battle Brothers is fairly simple. You pick an army of 1500 points, and the two of you play five rounds over two days with this army. It can be structured in any way that follows force organisation.

The interesting twist of battle brothers, is that you win the tournament by amassing victory points, not battle points for winning games. This is quite an interesting mechanic with its own pros and cons. On the positives, it forces people to really play a high risk, high reward game. You can’t roll Emperor’s Will (the two objective one) sit on your own objective and win through first blood like you might normally, you have to claim the other one to maximise your victory points. This makes the games exciting, tense matches, which are usually close until the last turn or two. It also means both sides can gain a benefit, even if they lose. However, it can lead to very one sided scores, where people are left feeling like they’ve been tabled when they actually fought a really close game. It also means you focus less on winning the game, and instead winning points to win the tournament, which can leave you losing sight of just playing the game and enjoying the battle being fought.

The reports that follow this introductory post will aim to give an idea of how the games went, I don’t remember enough to make it a blow by blow account, which would probably come out quite dull anyway.

The list

We knew from the start we’d be taking Tau and Eldar, given that that’s what we took all those years ago, they’re our favourite armies, and XandP’s other army is Tyranids.

We initially tried to come up with a super competitive list, but quickly realised we had no idea what we’d face, especially now forgeworld was in play. We contemplated dipping into my student loan to by a revenant titan, but then decided we ought to just take a whole bunch of units we liked the look of, hadn’t used before, or just enjoyed gaming with. Here is our result:

Cadre Fireblade Shas’nel Oi’nan’shi (warlord)

12 fire warriors, rifles, shas’ui, markerlight, target lock

11 fire warriors, rifles (fireblade lives here)

Riptide, heavy burst cannon, twin linked plasma rifles, early warning override, stimulant injector

Crisis suit, plasma rifle, fusion blaster, 2 gun drones

Crisis suit, plasma rifle, fusion blaster, 2 gun drones

5 pathfinders

Hammerhead, railgun, submunitions, disruption pod, blacksun filter, smart missile system

Skyray, blacksun filter, smart missile system

Farseer, jetbike

6 jetbikes, two shuriken cannons

6 jetbikes, two shuriken cannons

Crimson hunter

The list has a good mix of ways to handle the various threats (flyers, hordes, etc) and has few spammed units in it. The crisis suits are a particular favourite of mine as they always bought an element of randomness to the game. Every game, we deepstruck them in on a crazy suicide mission behind enemy lines.

I'd played a skyray once before the tournament so I was keen to have another go and see if it was better flyer defence than the riptide. The hammerhead is a favourite model of mine and has been since I started the game. I felt the tau portion of the list reflected a mobile gunline, anchored by fire warriors, with suits and vehicles mobilised around it, an idea I'm growing more and more fond of. The riptide was armed with a burst cannon for the cool factor and ridiculous number of shots, despite the ion accelerator seeming the superior weapon. Also, people complain less when you intercept with it rather than a strength eight, ap two large blast. When I explained this to someone, I actually found myself being complemented on the sporting way I was fielding a riptide. I'm expecting the first flight of pigs tomorrow...

The eldar half came from Xenos and Proud's favourite models. Given a few more points, we'd have thrown in a fire prism as it is to him as hammerheads are to me. 

Game 1 to follow.

Ko'vash

School's League Tournament Report

The school's league is an inter-schools competition run by GW in the UK. Each year there are regional heats, followed by a regional final, culminating in a national final held in warhammer world in Nottingham. My team won our regional final in Glasgow so we were heading off, resplendent in kilts, to represent Scotland and our school in the UK final.

The school league is a team tournament with four players per side, each with a 600 point army. The total score for the team is added together at the end (four points for a win, two for a draw, nothing for a loss plus points for fully painted, having your dice, tape measure, etc) and the highest scoring team wins.

I brought Tau, my friends brought grey knights, imperial guard, and Eldar.

My Tau list:

Ethereal: he provides solid leadership which is really handy at low points and gives good buffs to my fire base.

Riptide with burst cannon, plasma rifles and interceptor: the heavy hitter, guns down hordes or meq. My only anti flyer through volume of shots. Is also a mega bullet magnet

2x eight fire warriors: scoring units, more survivable than kroot, solid firebase

Four pathfinders: markerlights
Piranha, fusion blaster, blacksun filter: a harassing unit, hunts the odd heavy tank, drones useful for clearing small units, it's also a distraction

Hammerhead, with ion cannon, smart missile system and blacksun filter. Slaughters light tanks and meq. Smart missiles are just the best out of the secondaries.

General strategy: fire warriors and pathfinders for a firebase/crossfire supported by the ethereal. The riptide plays hyper aggressive, charging around drawing fire and shooting, potentially even getting into combat with tanks, contesting objectives, etc. The hammerhead is support as is the piranha.

Game 1

Orks

War boss, power claw, heavy armour, cybork body
Nobs, heavy armour
Looted wagon, all the shootas

15 boyz, heavy armour
battle wagon, all of the shootas, rokkit launcher

Crusade, vanguard

Warlord: did nothing (I got sky fire)

He gets first turn.

Table has two big ruins on the line in my zone, another big one bottom centre with two forests right next to it. A couple of forests in his zone.

We get 4 objectives, 3 end up in my zone, 1 in his. He deploys nobs in looted wagon on my right and the boys in battle wagon on my left behind the forest ruin. I deploy piranha on the left then fire warriors, pathfinders, and ethereal in the left ruin, riptide in the middle, fire warriors on the right, hammerhead behind the right most building. Both fire warrior squads are on objectives.

My plan is to draw him into a killzone, block the battle wagon with the piranha, first blood from the looted wagon then shoot down the boys when they get out. I'm a tad worried about taking out the battle wagon, but I figure I can side hit it or fusion gun it.

I can't remember turn by turn so I'll chronologically recount the important parts. He rushes towards me with everything, and I fail to kill his vehicles. I fired the riptide, fire warriors, and the ionhead at the looted wagon, and only stunned it and left it on 1 hull point. He gets first blood from my piranha, the nobs disembark and then fail an 12" charge to my hammerhead despite there being juicy fire warriors closer, albeit in cover. The hammerhead uses the pathfinders to go to bs6 for the gets hot reroll and wipes the nobs from the table as it causes instant death. The riptide and fire warriors kill the warboss for slay the warlord.
The most important and luckiest part of the whole tournament happens turn 3 when his battle wagon immobilises itself in a forest, even with the reroll from his deff rolla. This effectively saves my fire warriors, though the boys aren't down and out yet. The last few turns, I relocate to get two objectives further from the boys, blow up the looted wagon, claim line breaker with the riptide and kill his battle wagon turn 6

Unit of the match: ionhead, versatile, high damage output, mobile, I would highly recommend one at low points levels.

Units that performed well: the riptide. Solid damage output, high mobility

That forest that immobilised the battle wagon: without it I would have had a really tough time of things.

Nothing performed underpar.

Game 2 necrons

Dark Eldar, work in progress Razorwing

 The colour scheme for my Dark Eldar army is quite simple, being essentially dark blue and boltgun metal. This left me with quite a lot of space to fill on the Razorwing. Then I remembered my Scottish theme and decided it needed a huge saltire flag painted on it. The jet is still a work in progress, the blue needs to be a bit more uniform and various highlights need to go on but overall I'm happy with it so far.
The white was done undercoated with fortress grey (I don't know the names of the current equivalents of the paints I use) then had four layers of watered down skull white painted onto it. The cross was then tidied up with a mix three parts ultramarines blue to one part chaos black.

 

 I've yet to properly use it in a game as my Dark Eldar are waiting on the acquisition of two venoms to make them a battle worthy force, but I'm looking forward to it. Eventually I hope to have a complete attack wing of a Voidraven and two Razorwing escorts but we shall see.
Comments welcome.
Ko'vash

Schools League Game two: Shas'el Kau'uit vs the Giant Bugs from Outer Space

So onto game two with a win under my belt (game one here). I was still miffed at the size of table (2'x4') but such is life. Then I realised I was playing horde nids, with a tervigon, loads of termagants, a prime, a biovore and two zoanthropes and all my acceptance fled for the door. Spearhead and three objectives was made slightly better as we agreed to have the objectives 6" on from table edges. Och well, as we say up here, lets see what we can do.

I won the roll for first turn (thank God) and stuck both objectives 6" on, 12" apart. The kroot again decided they'll outflank. All the battlesuits play hide and seek in some ruins in my deployment zone and the piranha hides behind them.
He deploys in Nid Carpet Formation™ the prime inside the carpet (snug as a bug in a rug) the tervigon and zoanthropes behind, the Biovore in the backfield.

Leaping out of cover the battlesuits target the nasty looking giant bug knocking the Tervigon down to three wounds. The piranha leaves them covered in dust as it races round the side of the board. In hindsight I should've flown it across the way rather than forwards (mistake number one).

The carpet rolls forwards tripping over itself, the Zoans annihilate the piranha.

The Return of School's League: Round 2

Okay, the first in a series of battle reports from the second round of the school’s League is here. All games 600 points, standard force org except 0-1 elites and 0-1 heavy support or fast attack, games lasted fourty-five minutes. The first was two objectives, Dawn of War. Due to GW administrative errors, all games were played on 2’x4’ boards. I arrived expecting 4'x4' boards at least (I was hoping for 6'x4' like last time) which I was already a little anxious about giving my tau's preference for running away. Seeing the tiny boards my pessimism took over, but I resolved to give it my best go. Anyhoo, let the games begin!

In the red corner: The Communist, all loving Greyskins (Cheer, clap) *

In the blue corner: The evil totalitarian Imperial Guard (boo, hiss)

High command had decided to send the recon wing of the Vior’la 5^th airbourne comprising of:

Shas’el Kau’uit (fireknife)

Shas’el Elro (fireknife)

3 deathrain shas’ui with flamers

6 shas’la, shas’ui

10 kroot

10 kroot

Piranha, fusion blaster, targeting array, disruption pod

The enemy:

Primaris psyker

2 units of veterans with meltaguns in chimera

Sly Rambo Marbo

Leman Russ with battle cannon

First Contact

Seizing the first turn, the Imperium decides to set up a chimera on a hill overlooking the field of battle, camping quite nicely on the disembowelled bits of guardsman. Seeing this, Elro decides she’ll take up position in the central ruins of the battlefield, hopefully all the games of hide and seek with the cadre’s stealth team will pay off.

The Imperium rolls it’s metal boxes on and they blunder about in the darkness, Elro’s strategy of ‘duck behind the wall’ keeps her alive.

Seeing this pathetic effort the cadre charges on, the piranha pilot deciding to take a look at the left flank, the battlesuits running for cover.

Elro spots a chance to one up the tanks abysmal shooting and leaping out of cover, explodes a chimera killing five very surprised veterans. The psyker's shouting however, keeps them on the board.

The Russ decides it has had enough of Elro’s antics and gives her a nice concussion with a well-aimed battle cannon shell. The chimera mills about. Sly Rambo Marbo stays hidden in the Chimera’s weapons locker. Things aren’t looking too good for everyone’s favourite interstellar dictatorship.