The Crest of Kortuuz

Imperial Communique
***                   ***
**Inner Circle only**
From Chief Librarian Ezekiel


"Belial, your reassignment has been hasty, but duty calls you to serve your brothers in the continuing quest to track and capture the fallen brother Insidus. As you are well, aware this traitor had been an apothecary in the days of Luther and our beloved primarch but fell under the sway of chaos and strayed from the Emperor's guiding light. Intelligence gathered thus far suggested he may be attempting to use his knowledge, of the apothecarion arts, to extract and experiment on his own geneseed, as well as devising plans to sell dark angel secrets to a xeno battle force. Ravenwing and fleet forces had been following leads on fallen brother Insidus, until the trail had gone cold during the investigations at the Hesper Prison planet which had suffered a massive jailbreak. Intelligence reached the Imperial listening post 572-1b near the planet Gallepi suggesting increased tau chatter far from typical tau worlds. Furthermore the Ravenwing have confirmed that energy signatures matching those of a Tau, Manta-class, starship have been recognized orbiting the planet.
At this time we are sending you to immidiately deal with the Tau force that has been found on the planet. When they have been eliminated you will be able to extract the necessary information from them to determine the location of Insidus and his plans. it is essential that you kill as many Tau as possible since it is unclear whether this group is the buyer of Insidus' information, and they may have already met with him. If you are sucessful we will eliminate a very potent threat and come one step closer to catching our quarry.
You are being deployed at a rock formation know in the local dialect as Crest of Kortuuz, a sacred altar to their heretical gods, on the edge of the city of Jildan. Good Luck Belial."



Mission
Emperors will

Deployment
Vanguard

+Night Fight

Strategy- Well im fighting Tau, but not Farsight. bomb Tau. so we'll see how it goes. I going to keep trying to use my current strategy of Deathwing plus LRC and Stormeagle, with librarian. I decided to stick with this list cause its fun and pretty hard.  Keeping things close togther is key so i need to stay compact and keep out of line of sight when possible. To that end i placed my objective the homing beacon on the edge of my deployment half (just infront of the Crest of Kortuuz). my opponent placed his within the Aegis. I will have to go into the teeth of his defense to claim it so i will try instead to beat him by getting first blood. My target priority will be pathfinders and suits. i will try to leave the riptides if possible. I only deploy the Libby and the LRC with belial and DWK inside, to give him nothing to shoot at.

NO PIC :(  .forgot sorry!
Turn 1
Tau: the kroot have infiltrated into the building in the center of the picture. Riptides and take an ordinance shot after supercharging but do nothing to the libby and only stun the LRC. nothing of note really happens ( 1 crisis suit takes a wound to dangerous terrain.
DW: The LRC trundles forwards.


Tau 2: Shas'ui: "The enemy's vehicle seems impenetrable!"
At the beginning of turn two everyone is still alive. The Riptides take an ordinance shot after supercharging   and stun the LRC but do nothing to the libby.


DW2: The Deathwing assualt! The kroot suffer the wrath of the deathwing knights.

DW2: The Storm eagle arrives and all the termies drop in. on arrival the storm eagle loses two hull points to the quad gun. The left most pathfinders eat a ton of storm bolter rounds and a few krak missles causing them  to run off the board eventually. One suit falls from the Commanders' unit to yet more storm bolter fire. Knowing that it is a bit of a trap but still needing first blood i charge the deathwing kinghts and belial at the Kroot and wipe them out. i am successfull in getting first blood but have a feeling i will pay for it.
Tau3: The tau exact a terrible vengeance on the Deathwing.
Tau 3: The tau unleash their army at the deathwing destroying all the DWK and bringing Belial to one wound. One of the Riptides attempts to overcharge and suffers a radiation leak losing one wound. Unfortunately my opponent forgets to move the Devilfish. The Stormeagle loses another hull point.
DW3: The stormeagle hovers, dropping its cargo. The Bellerophon the librarian and the deathwing bring the pain on the doomed firewarriors of the wrecked devilfish.

DW3: With only one HP left the Stormeagle enters hover since it is not long for this world and an exploded flyer doesn't do its cargo any favors, so the termies hopout. Both flyer and its disembarked squad focus on the firewarriors near the riptide, causing them to break and flee (loaction is where all the dice are in DW3b near the riptide). The Devilfish which forgot to move last turn is mercilessly wrecked and its contents charged by both librarian and termies...  Meanwhile belial charges the enemy commander. I had the option of getting him back in the LRC but decided that i wanted to try for his +1VP WL trait... 
DW3b: Who says tau cant fight? the firewarriors stay locked. Belial makes his charge and survives the overwatch from the entire tau army. the commander breaks and runs.
Libby and termies...the termies make their charge over difficult terrain. I make sure to charge the librarian first to ensure that the closest termie isnt killed by rapid fire, and all space marines are engaged vs. the fish boys.
Belial meanwhile survives the supporting fire from the entire tau army (yikes i forgot about that) 9 saves rolled, and makes it into combat with the commanders unit. However i had not realized that my opponents commander was encased in iridium armor, but such was my jubilation at successfully getting into combat with the tau that I forgot to challenge him. so i won on wounds and he broke and ran leaving me exposed. I think at the time i also should have charged my other termies at the riptide, but i forgot to do it at the time. more on that later. Belial wins combat but cant consolidate out of line of sight and is about to get destroyed next turn.
End of turn 4. Belial is dead. Three of left most termies die to 4 wounds from fire warriors. storm eagle wrecked. both riptides still alive.
Once again forgot to take the pic for each turn.
Tau4: The tau continue to put out brutal firepower. all the termies on the right die to plasma. The Stormeagle has its jink removed and an is wrecked. Belial dies to a ton of fire directed his way tying the game.The termies from the Stormeagle take only 4 wounds from the red firewarriors opposite them but roll three ones. Arrgh! Fortunately my opponent is also having bad luck as his right most Riptide continues to suffer power surges taking wounds on the Overcharge of his weapons system. Tau are turning the tide of the battle. Sadly all fish boys from the devilfish are killed as the termies and libby do their bloody work. they consolidate back towards the LRC.

DW4: with the game tied and my opponent having the better mobility i know it will be tough to win. only two termies are left on the objective and my saves have been mediocre this game so i dont trust their survival. I have to try to support them. sadly the termies arent within range to get picked up the LRC has to move towards them before they can get in. i put in a few shots at the red firewariors killing a few. but cant get close enough to support.
End of turn 5. locked in combat with the riptide. The struggle to wrest control of the objective hangs in the balance.
Tau5: with only the termies on the objective to shoot at the tau firepower kills them. In a good display of mobility the Riptide with full wounds lands next the objective saying come and get me.

DW5: the LRC gets in range and everyone charges the Riptide. but i cant do enough wounds and the riptide thumps his metallic chest.

we roll for turn 6 ... game on.
end of turn 6. does it all end for the deathwing or will the emperors finest eke one out?
Tau6: deperate to claim linebreaker my opponent moves but gets poor assault rolls. combat continues with everyone benefiting from the PFG, Riptide included.
DW6: I still cant do enough wounds. and direct the LRC shooting at the Firewarriors.
Turn 7. The end. the Riptide falls even with the the PFG granting him a save. Tie game 4-4.
Turn 7: He kills to more of my termies, but cant get line breaker. i tried to multimelta his commander but of course he saves with cover from the interveneing riptide. In the end i need to do two wounds to him and i rolled three only one of which was saved. DW v. Tau ends in a draw.

Analysis: Well i pulled it out at the end but it was not an easy thing to do. I think i did a few things well. i was better at protecting and utilizing the librarian, i made pretty good use of the LRC and I was able to make enough good decisions to get a draw vs a tough opponent.
in this list the librarian has several roles. he provides the 4++ save bubble, acts to buff units and becomes critical in assault with his ability to run down opposing units fleeing from CC. I was able to keep him alive the whole game and was good at positioning him to best effect.  i think this was pretty effective.
the LRC was pretty beastly and did a good job moving termies around. it provided solid fire support and did a good job surviving. i did make it harder for myself by losing belial and going for the insurance VP. There were a few poor decisions. however...

How i should have dealt with kroot... The kroot present an opportunity to charge and to get first blood. they have sniper rifles which means they can rend, this meant that they could do a number on my troops. i needed first blood to have a chance in the game so i charged them but could have proceeded differently. i could have instead dropped all the termies close to me and used belial's homer. this would have allowed me to shoot 18 storm bolter rounds and special weapons at the kroot and kept the DWK safe in the LRC. the other option would have been to charge the kroot with just belial and the librarian. kroot would get the save from PFG but i would likely have been able to still win combat and had a high likely hood of running them down. this strategy could have been limited to just belial, which probably kept them in combat for an extra turn.

How i should have used DWK... the DWK were not used to best effect. It would have been better to direct them at the objective, command squad or a high value target (riptide/crisis team). this would have meant delaying their deployment to pressure those objectives later on in the game.

Descion making with charges... there were a few poor charge decisions. 1.) charging a 1 wound belial instead of embarking in the LRC. 2.) charging the kroot with the deathwing knights 3.) failing to charge with the other termie squad on turn three. the only good charge descision that was made was charging the libby before charging terminators into the firewarriors, this limited the firewarriors ability to take models off the termie squad and made it possible to keep the difficult terrain charge length managable (at the time of rolling the length was 5" and the average distance rolled for difficult terrain is 4". So i had a good shot and used good strategy.

Changes to the list...  The idea of the list is to keep termies alive as much as possible by staying compact and reducing opportunity fire. The stormeagle should probably be swapped out for a LRC and carry the deathwing knights instead of tactical termies, but im not sure about this move. since 1.) i dont own a another LRC. 2.) i like the idea of the stormeagle providing good fire support but coming in late game its hard to guarntee it has an impact. so having Deathwing knights makes it a variable source of pain. The list is really fun to play and id like to keep trying to get better with it.

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