This was my sons second game in the 40k league and it was a mammoth one, after 7 hours and approaching 11 o’clock, we called the game at the end of turn 4. My son did very well to keep his concentration for as log as he did but there were quite a few errors made, due to both a lack of concentration and also tiredness as the game was played on a Friday night after a full week of school and clubs. This will also be quite a quick write up as I wasn't pulling double duty, keeping an eye on the games, babysitting the youngest and also dealing with general house stuff.
The ultramarines army was a fairly troop heavy army and contained a lot of proxy units. The army was lead by Roboute Guilliman, with Marneus Calgar and Cheif Librarian Tigurius, backed by a nameless Lieutenant. Two ten man Tactical squads, loaded with grav, three 5 man Scout squads, a Sternguard and Devastator squad (also with grav) made up the bulk of the troops along with the Company Heroes. These were backed up by a Land Raider Redeemer and a Whirlwind.
Deployment was a tactical battle in itself as both of the players tried to out manoeuvre each other with their infiltrating units.
The game started well, with the land raider getting knocked down to just a single wound, where it remained until its demise in turn 4.
It was in turn 2 that the first mistake from my son popped up. He deployed both his crisis suits in a very bad position at the front of his lines, mostly due to the fact that there wasn’t anywhere else to drop them. He could have placed them on a flank and done some more with them or just have waited until turn 3, but we had been played for the best part of two hours by this point already and he just plonked them down without much thought.
Unfortunately placing the crisis suits down without thinking left him open to quite a difficult second turn with his opponent making the most of it and destroying a number of vehicles and gaining quite a few secondary points. This was a theme through our the match, with my son just plonking units down with our thought and suffering for it.
There were also some unfortunate dice rolls, with farsight charging the remnants of the stern guard and librarian only for his opponent to make four 6 up saves out of six dice.
The Ultarmarines ultimately gained the momentum early on in the game and never let up.
By the end of turn 4 the Tau were on the ropes and I suspect that if we had gone to tur. 5 it was have been a tabling, as there was only dark strider and two broadsides left on the board.
The ultramarine were really geared up for a vehicle heavy army, with all the grav, cannons, guns and pistols, which for a very vehicle heavy list like the Tau, is deadly combination. Combine this with the fixed secondary of bring it down, which count per model and not per unit, means that there is a lot of point up for not a lot of effort. Each crisis squad with character gives up 8 points for bring it down and 4 for assassinate, for a total of 12 points or 24 for both squads, all for 495 points. Over half the available points for just two units and a quarter of the army points.
Overall I think this game was a very bad match up for the tau list, the number of grav weapons with the anti-vehicle 2+ and the number of vehicle models in the army combined with the fixed secondaries was always going to make this a hard game. As far as I know this is the only player in the tournament to take fixed secondaries, so hopefully that should not be a problem in future games.
The game was not a great game for my son, with several movement and tactical errors, most of which were due to tiredness and lack of concentration over the mammoth game, which might well have ended up being a 8 plus hour game if it had gone to it's conclusion. His next game is against Grey Knights and will be another hard game as his opponent is another very good player.
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