Tau Take to the Field

With PBL switching over to learning 40k 6th Edition rules, I've taken the Tau out of the display case to get some action in. Having two games under my belt so far, I am still a bit overwhelmed with the rules changes. I am sure I have plenty more to learn, but I am on the fence so far on how this edition is.

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These first pictures come courtesy of Josh. Check his site for more! We decided to do some lineup pictures before the game, since we were fielding fully painted armies on a complete board (boasting a large portion of my old Mordheim buildings)

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The first game was against Carl's Eldar in an objectives mission. We omitted a good deal of 6th edition things, such as warlord traits and terrain placement, so it was more of a mix with 5th. We still learned some valuable lessons of the changes to charging and cover saves.

In the end my long range firepower was able to whittle down Carl's main assault forces before they did serious damage. At that point he had little that could turn the tide or contest objectives in time.

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The second game was against Josh and his awesome Imperial Guard. He had been in a painting frenzy since the last PBL , and came into battle with a crisp and professional looking army. We were playing straight victory points and corner deployment, so we took the time to set up the terrain the way we were shown for 6th. This proved to be quite a bit more crucial than I anticipated.

Despite seizing the initiative, I was just out of reach of catching some infiltrators, and whiffed on all my shots. Instead I moved much more defensively, and lost any momentum in the early game.

My Broadsides proved to be my most resilient unit of the game. Not only did they absorb a Rough rider assault and sweeping advance them, but they weathered fire from storm troopers and plasma gunners for a few rounds where movement was not an option. I will probably run with stabilizers next time, while the multitrackers did come in handy for pummeling nearby troops, not being able to move a few inches and fire railguns kept them in harms way too long.

When the Imperial Guard tankline was broken, it came down to attrition with both of us trying to mop up or run off the other's weakened infantry squads. SMS worked wonders here, though the autocannons and remaining plasma very nearly won the day against my last Devilfish. We tied 8 to 8, having exhausted the turns (and our brains). Quite the game!