Prot's Brief Batrep: An ITC scenario showdown vs Tau

[Prot]

This is a quickie for sure... and unfortunately not a lot of pictures, but let's lead in with Mr.Awesome:

+++ "I may not always take on a Tau army by myself, but when I do I make sure to turn my FnP on to "Awesome". +++

Scenario:

- We're Playing ITC Scenario 2: This is a mix of Maelstrom points and the "relic" mission.

- I get to deploy first and plop down my Gladius Battle Company lead by Tiggy in LibCon.

- My forces look something like this:

+++ My current Battle-Co. It goes through many minor changes to maximize the Ultra way of life. Be damned you White Scars players! +++

+++ Tau Deploy: Sorry I missed it, but his Stormsurge Deployed after this picture was taken. +++

- The Tau counter deploy. The army features old favorites, with some new twists. Tau Wall, a few troops, marker lights, and Kroot with Obsec for Maelstrom. A Pirhana Formation that spits out baby drones over and over (very annoying.). Of course the Stormsurge is in there too and even one of those Sushi plates for cover and more marker lights. There's also a transport with those close ranged shock troop shooter guys (very strong against Pod armies). Seige Breakers or something like that.

- I go in heavy and strong on my opening turn. I decided to try an extremely aggressive tactic and I get LibCon with the Centurion Dev's front and center. I drop pod in and the Interceptor is gross...

I try to flame (with drop pod squad) but that squad is annihilated by Riptides. Sicarius comes down to try to take out his marker lights, and a transport. I lose most of the squad, and Sicarius tanks something like 17.5 billion shots! It was pretty stellar. I've never had that luck with him before but he was there explicity to tank and help with reserves. I use him just because he's Ultra, but this is a rare pay out.

- Believe it or not, I get off a Psychic Shriek and do wounds to a Riptide, but it's a witchfire so I did it illegally!!! I noted this later and said I cannot wound him....(I thought Tiggy was BS5... my bad.) So I apologized but we realized he would have to take a leadership test at the end of my Psychic phase, which... he fails and runs. Now I put my two pods and squads in a way that he could NOT retreat. So he would have to double back.... I know it's a dirty trick, but it's Tau.... So he's auto dead, since you cannot flea towards your opponent.

- Concentrated Fire Power that is still standing let's it all go.... I pull Dev Doctrine, and it takes a lot more than it should, but I kill the Stormsurge Turn 1. (FnP makes it that much harder.) I'm a little worried at the effort it took which leaves Tiggy in the middle of hell.

- Good things happen though and my combined firepower of Attack Bikes, and Razorback Las, and secondary Dev squad (las) put some dents into the Riptide Squad. One Riptide goes down.

- A very lucky round of Shooting from Sicarius' squad and I manage to blow up the Tau Transport and the Siege Breakers come out and get pinned!

The Fish Retaliate:

+++ With their ammo expended in the Interceptor phase, the Riptide Wall assaults my Cen-wing. Tigurius doesn't like close combat... but he does like to Gate! +++

- In desperation the Riptide assault. I am invisible, but guess what? He's WS2 anyway, and he does get some nice hits and wounds off! I take 2 on the Chappy and after failing one of them, I Look Out Sir to a Centurion who takes a chink in the armour. Oh well... it could have been worse. I did hit him as well with Force on but I sucked horribly, and whiffed.

+++ Tiggy Gates out of Trouble! +++

- I reset the remains of the Cent squad and rip into a riptide. It's barely dead (FnP again).

- The rest of my army shoots the crud out of the other riptide, barely killing it with Missile launchers, las, grav, etc... it took a LOT to bring this one down, and I admittedly have the upper hand.

- At the same time, Mr, Awesome is strolling into close combat:

++ Upon declaring an assault, Sicarius bravely puts these two marines in front of them to take the overwatch from every Tau within a country mile. Oh well... you serve under Sicarius, you get used to this. +++

- Sicarius actually must have been really exhausted from taking interceptor shots, because he -barely- makes it into close combat alive. However, he does a real job on these tau killing a good chunk and running the rest down! (I was genuinely surprised - he rarely works for me.)

- This is a little out of order, but I should back up a bit and mention....

+++ I moved a chunk of my forces to claim the Relic. Then Grav'd one Riptide, while the army shot at the other Riptide. +++

- At this point in the game turn 2 was winding down. I had a massive lead from Maelstrom, and I now owned the Relic. On his turn 2 the Tau player tried to make any sort of comeback but it was apparent he did not have the models anymore. So he conceeded as we predicted he probably would be tabled next turn.

Victory for Ultramar! Was it luck? Probably. Should Sicarius be named the new Chapter Master? Doubtful! It's these hairbrained, overly aggressive antics that will continue to make the captain a second place runner up for Chapter Master, but first place in my heart for Mr. Awesome award!

Thanks for reading the batrep.

[Dread0]

Is it weird that I got really excited at another Prot batrep? You are so good at writing them! Nice to hear Sicarius managed to get stuck in for once and you are a braver man than I for taking Interceptor straight on the chin like that. 

 

How did you arrange your units in your Pods? Did you have Tiggy rolling with the Cents and the Chaplain and Sicarius in another? Where did Captain Awesome pop up from?

[Prot]

Thank you Dread! That's a nice compliment.

 

How do I arrange my pod units? Physically? Well I always put the expendables outward, and then the HQ tank (my battle co's usually are designed for tanky HQ's). Then the special weapons are typically the juicy inner circle that everyone is trying to kill.

 

Interceptor is wicked on our pod lists... truly brutal, but I think this is a good tip because I see a lot of people just plop stuff out of the pod and you have to be extremely aware of every unit the opponent has that will intercept you that turn. Also keep track of it. Tau players like to 'forget' they intercepted and shoot you again! Joking aside it gets hard to keep track of because as I'm sure you're aware playing against tougher Tau armies it feels like they literally shoot in every phase of every turn. lol

 

Tiggy is my special glue in this army. He is rolling up on Sanctic every game now. He is gating Cent's around. I'm tired of seeing the vanilla Battle Co's. I respect people playing it that way, I just prefer to put some fun models in it, and put some points into those units that normally go vanilla. This makes the unit very flexible and I also got Invis on my 7th power roll at the start of the game, BUT this is an ITC scenario which modified Inivis to be treated as you are WS1 (not snap firing) when hitting these guys. So it was a little useless against marker light armies.

 

I split the Battle Co HQ's up every game depending on the opponent. I actually realized in this game I've been overlooking a simply 5 man Flamer Squad in a pod too long. It had a very strong psychological effect on my opponent this game. It caused him to split his interceptor to my advantage.

 

Captain Awesome? He was cruising with a dual melta squad... actually it's not quite WYSIWYG because it's supposed to be a Combi-melta Sarge, and a Melta gun squad. I just proxied a normal melta since I could not find all my combi-sarges.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it. The game was a real test for this latest Battle Co!

[Dread0]

No Problem Prot, it shows that you clearly put a lot of effort in to these. Thanks for the tips, I've got a game coming up tomorrow where I can put them to good use with my Battle Co. I've kept it light to allow for a CAD with Tiggy so I am hoping that 5 man special weapon squads work for me too! Haven't tried Sanctic powers yet though. Might be worth taking a look at.

 

I've been a victim of the Tau double tap before, it is hard to keep track of when you are already rolling so many saves from the rest of the shooting. 

[Ishagu]

Another great battle.

Prot you seem to play in a very competitive meta, I see a lot of your battles are against Tau.

 

You'd do very well at my locals, mostly Chaos, IG, Nids... And damn Necrons lol

[derLumpi]

Again an awesome batrep, prot! Thanks for sharing!

 

Sicarius is seeing not that much combat in my army as well. He neither fish nor flesh as we say in Germany. Nice to see that he proved himself in your game.

I'm tempted to use Cents and Tigurius with Sanctic powers. You dropped them via Pod into the fray?

[SickSix]

Wow I am definitely taking mental notes. Tabling cheese Tau by turn 3? Wow.

[Thedarkprincesnun]

Wow congratulations Prot nice to see the fish getting tabled