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Saturday 4 September 2010

1.5k Tau @ tourney Game 4 vs Black Templars

Hi,

I forgot to video tape this game, so I'll just illustrate how the game went with some Vassal images. You can click the images to enlargen them. My armylist can be found here. His list was something like this:

Marshal with termie command squad and 2 assault cannons

Emperors champion with abhor the witch

5 termies with 2 assault cannons

2x dread with twin-linked lascannon and missile launcher

3x 5 man crusader squads with lascannons and meltaguns (I think one squad had a plasma instead of meltagun)

2x auto-las predator

We were playing for table sixths, which were held with scoring units and contested with any units, with a pitch battle deployment. I go first and deploy across my deployment zone. Ethereal goes into the kroots and devilfishes go into reserve.

He deploys one crusader squad into each tablesixth on his side of the table, but he focuses his forces onto my left flank. He decides to play a refused flank.


He than steals the initiative!

Turn 1

He blasts some gun drones from my bigger broadside unit and kills one of the crisis suits on my left flank.

I start withdrwing onto my right flank. The plan is to ignore the termies. If I can move out of the way, they won't do much, and if I shoot at them th
ey'll close in faster. The lone crisis suit on my left flank takes a side shot at one of the predators. The crisis team on the right flank moves up to threaten the crusade squad, who are very alone on that flank. I blow off the lascannon from the centre dread.



Turn 2

He kills off the crisis suit on the left flank, continues to shoot the broadsides in the centre bringing them down to the leader. One of the crisis suits on the right flank is killed. The remaining suit takes cover in the trench system, within striking distance of the crusaders.

I continue to fall back with my kroots, but my shooting only manages to destroy a lascannon and immobilise the centre dread.


Turn 3:

His termies finish off the last broadside and shooting switches to the command suit team.

The flamer fails to kill anyone from the crusader squad on the right flank, and my shooting fails to harm his preds/dreads. One of my devilfishes arrives, I bring it on my right flank.



Turn 4:

He kills off the crisis suit on the left flank, his lascannons are out of range, and his termies try to kill some kroots.

The last devilfish fails to arrive! The devilfish that is on the table, drives up to the middle of the field, where it eventually is immobilised, so that the fire warriors and gun drones can move into any sixth to contest/hold. I try to shoot the crusaders on the right flank, my plan is to claim the sixth with my fire warriors, claim the bottom right sixth with the kroots and contest one of his sixths with gun drones.


Turn 5:

My opponent realises he wont be able to kill the Kroots, and thus can't take away the sixth they are holding. With his shooting he kills the crisis command squad and immobilizes the devilfish.

The last devilfish arrives on my turn. I drive it up on the very left flank, and disengage the drones, I'm hoping to contest his last sixth with some good run moves. They fall a couple of inches short. In the centre the firewarriors disembark to shoot at the crusaders in the top right sixth and are themselves contesting it. The drones disengage from the devilfish and move to contest the central top sixth. I shoot at the crusaders in the top right corner and bring them down to one marine. At the moment it's a draw



The game goes on

Turn 6:

His shooting is concentrated at the gun drones and fire warriors. He kills the drones in the centre but only manages to kill one from the left flank. His remaining crusader moves up to charge the fire warriors which are shot down to 3 warriors. Both fail to do anything in combat. He disengages the Emperor's champion from one of the termie squads and leaves it to contest the bottom left sixth.

On my turn the devilfish moves up and the fire warriors disembark. The lone drone contests the upper left sixth. The fire warriors rapid fire and kill the Emperor's champion! My luck turns even better when the three firewarriors kill the marine in combat and the game ends!




Summary:

I think he made a bad move in deploying his termies on my far left flank. Their range is only 24" and they should be deployed centrally where they have the best coverage. Because he tried to refused flank me I was able to ignore the termies, and I managed to get away with the horrible shooting I had in the first couple of turns. Still the game really came down to some lucky rolling on my part, and unlucky rolling on his part, as I pushed ahead on turn six to have 3 sixths to his 1. He's a great guy, and I've played against, and lost against him before. I really admire the armylist He's managed to get out of the Templar codex at 1500 points, eventhough I myself play a termispam with my Templars.

Talking of termispam, I painted some more termies for my Templars and have been playtesting 4 termisquads at 1500 points. So far I've gone 4-0-0, stay tuned for some pics and maybe some thoughts on why the templar termispam works so well.
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