Well, I finally got a game in, this happened a few weeks ago (nearly 4 weekes!!) as decided I had to get at least one game in before Christmas. With Christmas and all its taken me a few weeks to get around to writing it up properly, but I though I would anyway, as I learnt a lot form the game. I decided to try out my newly finished Eagle Knights and it didn't quite go according to plan, but more of that later. Firstly, the low down on the game set-up.
Played Tau - I still hate Tau, but this was a little bit more of an old school, more balanced list. From memory it consisted of 3x troops of Fire Warriors, one with the Fireblade bloke, 2x Hammerheads, one with the Rail Gun and one with the other gun, Ion Cannon(??), 4x Piranha, 2 with Metla and two with Burst Cannons(??), a Devilfish (with one of the Fire Warriors) 2x Pathfinder Teams, A Riptide, A Crisis Suit team, and a Commander with two Bodyguards and loads of Drones.
We played Malestrom mission 3 - Tactical Escalation, which suited me as I would be holding a lot of my guys in reserve for the first turn. At this point we forgot all about Warlord traits! It may have helped me, if i had rolled a 5, but otherwise it would not have made much difference at all.
In the game itself (sorry no pictures, completely forgot about taking any!) things didn't really go my way from the off. In deployment I made a stupid mistake, by placing my Command Squad out in the open, believing that their storm shields would be enough to see them through until my turn. This wasn't the case, as the Tau had nothing else to shoot at turn one, they poured everything in to the command squad and decimated it, leaving only the Warlord standing. This was a blow, not only for first blood, but they were one of my hard hitting CC units, which was gong to go after some of the key units. Needless to say that my first turn nothing really happened, nothing was in rage of the two Tac squads and the Captain just ran forward to get in to cover, which he failed to do with a 1" run!
Turn 2 and the mistakes continued. The Tau didn't do much, tried to hit my Tac squads, but did little damage, mainly focusing on my Captain but he managed to survive, somehow. In my turn things started off well, with 2/2 for my reserves, but it ended with 2/4 coming in. And this is where i made the biggest mistake, as I brought them in separately. I brought them in, an assault squad by the back of the board and the Talons (DC) down by the Riptide. This meant that they ended up being taken down bit by bit, taking most of the firepower of the Tau next turn to do so, but they were still eliminated before the next set of reserves came in. One of my Tac squads also charged in and destroyed 2 of the piranhas, immobilising a third.
So, as just mentioned turn 3 was mostly the Tau destroying my reserves, as well as a few marines. My turn 3 saw just the Hawk Brethren (Vanguards) coming in, leaving the last assault squad still in reserve. As a result, i did nothing again, although my Tac squad finished off the Piranhas and my warlord, down to one wound, tried to take on the Tau Commander and failed to do anything, although, I just realise that I completely forgot about his Sword, at +2s and Ap2 it should have done a lot more damage than it did! Dam it, I should have challenged! Oh well, you live and learn.
Turn 4 saw the destruction of my Vanguards, and most of my Tac squad that took out the Piranhas. in My turn, the assault marines dropped right behind the Fire Warriors, again, probably not the best thing to do. All this lead to turn 5 where the assault marines were destroyed, and the Riptide took a chunk out of the Tac squad that had so far been hiding at the back, causing them to fall back. In my turn, all i did was run to garb some objectives, stealing one off the Tau Commander and a Tac squad took another for some extra points.
Even so, at the end of turn 5 we had to call it due to time and the scores stood at;
Tau; 12pts (9pts + Line breaker, First Blood and Slay the Warlord) to EK; 5pts
So, not a good run out for the Eagle Knights first time. The list played was at 1750, so basically, the 2000pts list with out the vehicles, which worked out at 1746. I don't think the extra points would have made a difference, maybe it would have kept the Command Squad alive the first turn, but with all the S5 weapons the Tau have, a Razorback probably wouldn't have lasted long anyway. The 2 main errors I mad was splitting up the first lot of reserves, I should have kept them together and gone for a safe landing spot away from the big guns and waited my turn to strike, which hopefully would have relived some pressure on the squads that followed. The other issue was the reserve rolls, I think I need a way to modify them and for just 130pts, I could with a IG/AM command squad with Officer of the Fleet and accompanying basic vet squad, both of which can camp on objective in my deployment. Not sure where the points are going to come from, but it would give me a way of influencing the reserve rolls.
I'll give the army a few more runs out before I even think about changes to the list, but mostly likely, I'll just leave it as it is anyway, as I like the fluff, although, I am still regretting not putting jump packs on my
Captain or Command Squad. Next time I'll definitely run the Razorback and maybe that will make a difference.
The Company Champion, armed as per the book. Why he only has a combat shield and not a storm shield I will never know, as he's now out classed by the vets in his unit. Anyway, this champion uses a DV Tac Sgts chest with robe and DV Chaos pack (below), a BA DC power sword and helmet. The combat shield is a fantasy item, dwarfs I think(??) with a chaos arm. Overall, I like the look. He looks like a marine who's customised his armour over the years and is showing the influence of chaos/mutation that plagues the chapter.
