FTF Editorial - Campaigns, Scenery, Tau for Blog Wars & 40K Battle Brothers

In a blatant rip-off of Natfka from Faeit212 I'm going to try and write an (almost) weekly editorial post where I collect together some random thoughts I've been having over the last week or so. So often I have things I want to talk about that aren't worthy of a full post. Therefore I'll make a note of them and collect them together in posts like this and hopefully they'll be interesting.

Campaigns
You may have read yesterday's post about my campaign warm-up game against Jamie. The interesting thing for me was to play against Tau instead of using them myself. They're pretty horrific to face as there's a huge volume of fire coming your way. Add to that the relatively low-cost units and it's a difficult proposition for "elite" armies to face.

I've always been keen to make my casual 40K games more interesting. Matt and I attempted a campaign a while ago with mixed success. Since then we've never returned to the idea as we seem to be always testing out new armies or trialling things for upcoming tournaments. I think the reason our first campaign as a little lacklustre is the same reason that I've enjoyed the campaign games with Jamie. The narrative element really adds to the atmosphere of the game. I enjoy competitive play as much as the next gamer but it often ignores the rich background of the 40K universe. I wouldn't particularly consider myself to be a fluffy gamer but it certainly makes the battles feel more worthwhile if there's a story to them.

I'm currently taking part in Jamie's campaign with his friends Rob and Dan where an Imperial world is being assaulted by a Tyranid hive. It was because of this that Jamie and I have started out Tau/DA campaign and we've got plans for a Tau vs DE/Eldar for when the new Eldar book comes out. Matt and I haven't managed to get a campaign going yet but we were thinking of DA vs Chaos.

Finally, I've always wanted to play a planetary empires style campaign with multiple players all fighting battles against each other to grab territory. This could either work as an Imperium vs Xenos campaign or every man for himself. Might just be a pipe dream but who knows, I might get round to it!

Scenery
Speaking of things I don't get around to, I've still not made much progress on my scenery. However, my new plan is to start from the ground up. The first stage of this is to rebuild my gaming table to give my shelving underneath to store my scenery and for models, dice, books etc to be stored on a ledge so that they needn't been on the table top and get in the way. I'll post some pictures up when I get round to making a start.

Once the table itself has been renovated I'll be moving on to working on my modular gameboard. I was really pleased with it at the time but it's looking a little decrepit now and needs some love. I'll start off my filling all the holes in and then it'll get a few cosmetic repairs before I repaint it with a bit more variety to the colour.

Finally, I need to get my plastic scenery sorted. I made a start on this but then things ground to a half when the Dark Angels book was followed by the Tau one in quick succession.

Tau at Blog Wars
I was originally planning to take Dark Angels to Blog Wars and this plan succeeded in one thing at least, giving my pressure to get some models painted. Sadly with the new Tau book out my Dark Angels are getting neglected in favour of my rekindled love for the fish-heads. These make sense as a choice for Blog Wars as they won't need a lot of work to get them ready and will be nice and easy for me to use on the day whilst trying to run the event.

Of course, there's always the risk that I won't end up playing if there's an odd number but at least I'll have a Tau army fully painted!

Battle Brothers
Finally, Matt and I are heading to Warhammer World this weekend to take part in the 40K Battle Brothers event again. For those who don't know, Battle Brothers replaced GW's old doubles events. Two players take a 1500pt army between them using the standard allies system. We've been to several of these events now and despite the high ticket cost I've always found them worthwhile. There's been controvesy over the years but they've never failed to be a great way to spend a weekend.

We've been taking out Titanic Fenrisians (GK/SW) for the last few events now but were determined this time to use the Tau codex to add some much needed anti-air firepower to our list. However, when we tested against Andy and Graham (Claws & Fists) we found that our proposed list wasn't anywhere near as good as we thought. As such we're returned to our beloved SW/GK combo which is total shite against flyers but a lot of fun against pretty much everything else. Here's hoping the prevalence of Broadsides means people are put off from taking flyers or at least that we don't meet 2+ Heldrakes!!

Battle Report - Redemption & Retribution Campaign Trial Game - Tau vs DA

Jamie and I have been talking about running a campaign for some time now and finally got round to it last weekend. Jamie has written 6 scenarios for us to play through with the first 5 games affecting the outcome of the final apocalypse sized game at Warhammer World. In order to get a feel for balance in the campaign missions we played a trial run of the first scenario to see what needed tweaking. For a full rundown of the rules head over to Jamie's blog here. He's also written a brief battle report.

Essentially the mission involves a Cadre Fireblade, who starts inside a bastion, needing to make it to one of 6  inactive Devilfish, board it and drive it off the table. The Dark Angels want to interrogate the Fireblade so must "capture" him by killing him in combat. I'll run through it in picture form and then give some thoughts afterwards. Jamie is controlling the Tau with me returning to Dark Angels.

Tau deployment. The inactive Devilfish are screened by Piranhas. The back field is densely packed behind them making deep strike tricky.

Dark Angels forces arrive behind enemy lines. The tactical squad splits into two as it emerges from its drop pod. One squad of terminators is delayed (deep strike mishap) and the Chaplain's command squad scatters wildly out of position. 

Aftermath of turn one. The Dark Angels manage to kill a good number of Tau infantry but it isn't enough to stem the torrent of fire that comes their way. One terminator squad is annihilated whist the DW knights and DW command squad are depleted including the loss of the standard of fortitude.

More terminators arrive in the distance with support from a Nephilim. Thinking I'd be using it to engage ground targets it gave it a mega bolter which means it fails to harm any of the devilfish.

 

Elsewhere the second drop pod arrives and one combat squad is able to destroy a  Devilfish. Meanwhile the command squad fires its plasma cannon and immobilises a second Devilfish. Both cyclone launchers fail to do any damage to the transports.

The Nephilim is downed by missile broadsides whilst the sheer weight of fire from the piranhas is enough to kill off one of the terminator squads. The tacticals blow up another Devilfish but it's looking like too little too late. With neither cyclone termiantor team making it into combat with the tanks the fireblade is almost certain to escape.

The game is pretty much over by this point. With only a handful of tacticals and a couple of terminators left I'm never going to get to the devilfish before the fireblade does.

Conclusion

When I was first planning my army for this game I'd totally missed the point. I should've geared my army to maximise it's anti-vehicle firepower to down the Devilfish. With those out of the way I'd win automatically. My plan was to take out as much firepower in the first turn to allow my terminators to run riot. Sadly Jamie made all of his leadership tests even on Ld 7 and therefore my terminators had to make far too many saving throws. In hindsight even with my sub-optimal list I could've still won the game had I gone for the transports straight away. My terminators would only need to make it into combat with them for me to almost guarantee their destruction assuming I hadn't droppped them with fire from the heavy weapons.

We're going to play through this scenario again with a couple of changes. The Tau will have their piranhas and crisis suits in reserve (as they're out on patrol when the attack happens) which will significantly reduce the fire coming my way. The piranhas were devastating in this game. They pump out 8 shots each for just 40pts and can cover ground very quickly. Throw in a couple of markerlight hits and my terminators didn't have much of a chance.

It's always difficult taking a low model count army against an army with massed firepower. Even if the individual weapons aren't that powerful the torrent effect soon forces a few 1s on the armour saves. I had to maximise my chances of getting into combat alive which is why I brought most of my terminators in at once. Had one not mis-happed then things could've been different. I also could've used my drop pods better as they can deep strike pretty accurately and I could've probably used the guys inside to down more transports.

I'm looking forward to the replay followed by the rest of the campaign!