IFL Finals - three battle reports, CSM vs. different TAU armies

Greets,

This is the a recap of my final three games for the IFL league. These final three games were played in an RTT format with the other top 8 players from the league. Of the top 8 players, they consisted  of tau or eldar, with an exception for myself  and two others. (myself CSM, A Daemon Player, and a Necron).

Game 1. Vs Pure Tau

General of his list -
2x fire warrior squads
2x pathfinder
2x kroot
2x missile broadsides w/ SMS / high yield, with all missile drones possible
2x riptides
1x skyray
1x super beefy commander
1x ethereal
1x crisis suits w/ super beefy sarg

Hammer and Anvil
Night fight - irrelevant, its tau, they basically ignore it
mission - 4 corner objectives, whoever holds more wins that goal, 1 center objective, holding is a separate goal, slay the warlord, linebreaker

Turn 1 - Deployment like such. I deployed like this having first turn, essentially counting on not being seized on. My opponent infiltrated his kroot as an assault screen.

Then I got seized on.

Booo

He shoots me a bunch, knocking a few hullpoints off here and there, kills one nurgle spawn and wounds a plague drone. I run at him full speed.

 Top of turn 2

He kills one of my maulerfiends, a few spawn from each squad, and a few plague drones. A hull point is lost from the other mauler fiend, and my soul grinder goes boom!

 Bottom of turn 2

I run forward with my remaining forces. Hellrake comes on and nukes a kroot screen. Cultists come on and run towards corner objectives, but maintain LOS blocking terrain. My plaguebearers deep strike near the middle objective behind the LOS terrain.

Assaults - my plague drones make it into some kroot. My juggy lord + a few spawn make it into one broadside squad. My nurgle lord + his spawn fail his 5 inch charge into the other broadside squad + commander. Not because of shooting, just straight out dice roll fail.
Plague drones brutalize the kroot, forcing them to run, but can't sweep them. Juggy lord ravages the broadside squad and eliminates them.

Turn 3. My opponent shifts his models around to bring maximum firepower to bear on the juggy lord and the plague drones. Ethereal moves to give aura to the fleeting kroot. Commander joins the crisis suit squad. Brutal shooting removes the nurgle lords spawn, and leaves him with a single wound left.
Juggy lord and company die.
Bottom of my turn, move the nurgle lord out of LOS to the hill to remove over watch damage potential, he then dies on the charge vs. some kroot.  Herald of nurgle splits from his last remaining plague drone to assault fire warriors who do not break. The remaining plague drone goes after the fleeing kroot, only to die to over watch. Plaguebearers run to the wall to hug it outside of LOS to move onto the center objective last turn. Cultists are now holding both corner objectives, but out of LOS from the bulk of the tau army.

Turn 4 -

 The kroot rally thanks to the ethereals aura, moving 3 inches but not quite close enough to the objective to take it. His commander and riptide assault the Herald of Nurgle. The rest of his army moves forward to try and take the middle objective and shoot down my cultists. You can see in the pic on the left his kroot 3 inches away from the center objective to attempt to hold it. In the top of 4,his commander assaults my herald of nurgle to try and save the fire warriors, my herald of Nurgle decides to go to town and completely destroys the commander, then survives the remaining saves required of him.  Bottom of turn 4, my plaguebearers move onto the center objective, as close as possible to the kroot. They then assault the kroot and wipe them out. The herald of nurgle bites it to a riptide smash.

End result - I win by holding the center objective. We both have slay the warlord and 2 corner objectives.

Game 2 vs. Tau with Eldar allies

 



Opponents list

Commander with all the fixings
Riptide
4 or 5x fire warriors
Crisis suit team
2x pathfinders
Huge broadside squad with tons of missiles
Hammerhead with longstride
Riptide
Aegis line with quad gun

Farseer on jetbike
Guardian jetbike squad

So super important note about this game, my opponent rolled forewarning on his psyker powers. Which allows the psyker and his unit to fire over-watch at full BS. That basically means no assault army can ever easily make it into combat.

So, my opponent opted to go first. After seeing his deployment, I set up everything outside of the range of all his guns. I attempted to seize, and failed. His first turn of shooting was ineffectual beyond killing a maulerfiend and that's about it.  My first turn, I ran forward keeping the large LOS center blocker between me and the bulk of his armys shooting. It wouldn't help me versus smart missile systems, but it was better than nothing. The soul grinder shot and killed two crisis suits

The photo to the left is in the middle of turn 2, right after the tau finish shooting. You can see a large portion of the army is still available and ready for action. Sooo at this point, I forgot that my opponent had forewarning (and what it did). Its a stupid mistake and one I will try not to make again, because I essentially lost my entire army when I charged into combat

Because afterwards, my army looked like this. This is the top of turn 3. After this, it was clear I could not win, so I made it my personal goal to simply kill the hammerhead with longstride, which I was successful in.

So I lost.

 

Game 3 vs. Pure Tau

My opponents list here was...
2x Ethereal
3x Broadside
3x riptide
5 or 6 kroot squads
2x pathfinders

Turn 1, my opponent has first go.

A maulerfiend goes boom, the other maulerfiend is immobilized, and one nurgle spawn bites it.

 
 Bottom of turn 1,  ran everything I could into LOS blocking terrain. My nurgle spawn managed a 10 inch charge against one kroot squad, almost wiping them out, but thanks to a kroot hound they managed to get away.

 

Turn 2 - Kroot wall shoots the snot out of the nurgle spawn killing all of them, and almost killing the lord. Juggy lord squad loses some spawn, and the soul grinder loses a hull point. Bottom of turn 2, I assault the plague drones/nurgle herald into a kroot squad, the juggy lord hits a different kroot squad. Nurgle Chaos Lord assaults the kroot who were running finishing the job. Juggy lord hits himself in the face, and spawn whiff epic hard, so we hang out in combat. Plague drones put some serious hurt on the kroot squad, causing them to run, but not off the board.

 Top of turn 3, running kroot rally and move back to screen. Nurgle lord bites it to shooting from kroot outflanking. Kroot also outflank into my back left board edge and pin a cultist squad. Kroot + riptide shooting mucks up the plague drones real hard. In the bottom of three, the juggy lord finally finishes chopping up the squad he was assaulting, leaving him standing in the open by himself. Plague drones re-assault the kroot. Helldrake comes in and nukes / kills all the kroot which just outflanked on the right side.

Turn 4 - All the plague drones die. Herald of nurgle ends up locked in combat with a kroot squad and riptide, but passes all his saves like a boss.  Helldrake dies to a Fusion gun. Juggy lord kills .. stuff. The soul grinder shoots at the kroot causing them to flee or something.

 

So, for this round, I won on secondary missions because the Herald of nurgle refused to die (he should have died), contesting the only objective held by anyone.

 

 

http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/IFL-Summer-Playoffs/leaderboard