+ Tau Beatdown / Chaos Suckfest +

On the heels of a 3000 point ogre victory on Friday, played 1500 point rematch against my favorite Tau opponent. My list was the standard 1500, except with 3 plasma termies in place of the dread or noise champ. Yep, first game of chaos with no dreadnought - I shoulda seen this coming ...

Undivided vs Tau [1500] - He brought shas'o + 2 crisis (fusion / missiles / targeting array), 3 deep strike crisis (fusion / plasma), 2x 12 fire warriors in warfish, railhead, ionhead, 3x sniper teams. We used the 5th ed LoS rules, so all real LoS + cover saves are extended to the target if LoS crosses the terrain. Vehicles get cover saves too, no more hull down.

I bunkered into one tall ruin center of my zone, with havoks on top floors, then noise marines mid-level and fisty CSM on the bottom floor. Then I stuck the shooty CSM + lord into a small ruin to the left of the main bunker (Mistake #1). 1k Sons deployed to the right of the bunker, in the open as usual. Tau deployed warfish, railhead (behind left building), snipers (in left building), warfish (behind mid ruins), snipers (in mid ruins), ionhead (behind trees), snipers (in right ruins). Chaos took first turn, and the suck began.

My heavy weapons let me down hard, though admittedly all of my dice were really not feeling it today. My armor saves were abysmal, particularly the invincible ones - 1k Sons were hit with 5 plasma/fusion wounds in Turn 3, and made 1 of their 4+ saves, for example. Horrible, but not as bad as the track record for my few tank breakers:

Obliterator - Turn 1, couldn't see snipers. 2, missed railhead. 3, missed railhead. 4, missed warfish. 5, missed warfish TWICE with twin meltagun. 6, hit and killed the fish with meltagun.
CSM Lascannon - Turn 1, moved up. 2, missed ionhead. 3, hit railhead but rolled 1 for pen. 4, hit ionhead but rolled 1 for pen. 5, hit ionhead but rolled 2 for pen. 6, missed railhead.
Blastmaster - Turn 1, couldn't see snipers. 2, couldn't see snipers. 3, missed railhead. 4, missed crisis team. 5, hit crisis team and killed 0. 6, hit crisis team and killed 1.

Another low point was my drop termies ripping the sniper team apart with plasma (90 points, w00t), then assaulting the railhead nearby. 9 fist attaks = 0 hits. Yuck, and I think I should have gone for the big payoff and struck near the Tau HQ hiding behind a building and JSJ-ing with missile pods all game, instead of mid-board where they could die to tanks (Mistake #2).

Add to this that I summoned the girls right in front of the railhead (Mistake #3) with nothing to charge and nothing to do but die. So they did, to the railhead next turn.

And during the game I managed to break 4 models by knocking them off my central tower. Blerg.

Chaos Loss

Bringing me to 2-1-2 vs the blue/white Tau.

Painting: Biker Lord
Building: Dread 2?? Shockingly FW may have sent the rest of the dread my way!