As usual I didn't take notes at the time, but I had a good game of 40k last Friday. The mission was Big Guns Never Tire on the diagonal deployment. My opponent had a fairly well-rounded list of one Maulerfiend, one ranged version of the Maulerfiend (whatever that's called), one Helldrake, a Land Raider filled with Possessed Space Marines, a champion of some kind with the Black Mace and some truly nasty close combat abilities, and a couple of squads of Noise Marines. His warlord was basically the Chaos version of the Techmarine.
My list included two foot-slogging squads of fire warriors, a third one in a devilfish, my old friend Longstrike in an ionhead, a Skyray, a sniper team of one marksman and 5 drones, Aun'Shi the Ethereal, and a Sunshark bomber. Crisis suits and markerlights consisted of two squads: an HQ with missile pods, and burst cannons, and an Elite squad of plasma rifles and fusion blasters. Both of them had 4 marker drones and 2 shield drones. There were also two suicide solos of twin fusion blasters and a flamer sidearm. Finally, I had a kroot squad, and this is where I was unintentionally cheating. I misread my list and played them as 15 models with sniper ammo rather than 10 models without. My apologies to my opponent!
I won the roll-off and chose to go second since it was an objective-based mission with four objectives. My opponent standard-deployed almost nothing, basically the 2 siege engines and the land raider, since his warlord trait allowed several units to infiltrate. I put the skyray in the back, propped in a building, since its weaponry doesn't allow both effective firing and a jink cover save at the same time. The center was occupied by the two fire warrior squads, Aun'Shi, and the sniper team since they all benefit from the ethereal's Storm of Fire ability only when closely packed. The large crisis squads and Longstrike deployed to either side of the static units, and the kroot infiltrated even farther off-center. After my opponent's infiltration, I decided to try seizing the initiative, and to my amazement, succeeded.
Longstrike's infamous markerlight-assisted, cover-ignoring, Marine-armor-piercing, gets-hot-rerolling, instant-death-causing, large-blast-of-doom pretty much wiped out one squad, while pulse and sniper fire softened up another one. Chaos siege engines advance at an alarming rate, and I started to get nervous, but the only casualty on my side by the bottom of turn one was Longstrike, who died to the first shot that got through his armor.
In the top of 2, concentrated fire immobilized the assault-maulerfiend, giving me a turn of breathing room (or so I thought), and softened up the other one. The kroot snipers (who weren't really supposed to be snipers) used a couple of markerlights to become BS5 against the shooty maulerfiend, getting quite a few hits. Only one of those hits rended, but I rolled a 6 on the second roll for a glancing hit that finished it off. I could almost picture the Shaper holding his shot until the last moment, after the rest of the squad was starting to scatter, and putting the final shot through the fiend's eye, then calmly explaining to the rest of them "that's how it's done, boys."
In the bottom of three or whatever we're up to, things started to go badly for the Tau. The Land Raider rolls forward and drops off Possessed and the warlord-techmarine, who detaches, strides up to the immobilized maulerfiend... and repairs it! The Possessed assault the sniper team, and the suddenly-remobilized maulerfiend charges into one of the fire warrior teams. Thinking that I don't have much chance of scratching the AV12 vehicle I pour all available overwatch into the Possessed. I soften them up some, but enough get through to do unpleasant things to the sniper team. On the other side of the field, the lone champion attempts a 10 or 11 inch charge into my command squad... and makes it! The only thing loopier than that is that one of the melta-flamer suits, who missed his deep strike target, gets to do supporting fire with his flamer because he's less than 6 inches behind the target of the charge. He's probably over 18 inches from the charging model, but rules are rules, and he gets his 1d3 hits with the flamer! The champion challenges my warlord with something like nine S9 AP2 Instant Death attacks, so my warlord responds by "bravely running away" and calling for his bodyguards to earn their title. Since the champion's ridiculous melee abilities only apply when he is in base contact with his target (my warlord), he "only" slaughters about 3 drones.
By now there isn't a whole lot left on either side. The champion is steadily slaughtering my command squad, my bomber and its drones are trying to finish off the maulerfiend, and most of the troops on both sides are gone. The skyray has downed the helldrake, the landraider is firing lascannons at the skyray, and the melta-gun crisis suits are trying to safely get into attack range of the land raider. My kroot shaper, knowing that the Chaos champion must offer and accept a challenge whenever possible, tries to charge him in the small amount of base contact that is available (courtesy of the fact that he's clobbered most of the squad now), but they don't get there.
My skyray holds one objective (because of Big Guns Never Tire making heavy support choices scoring), and my kroot and fire warriors have another. His land raider holds one, and two surviving noise marines models hold the last one. I have First Blood, but Linebreaker is up for grabs and both warlords are down. It looks like a narrow Tau victory, but we played it out until the dice determined the game should actually end. The land raider finally scores a direct hit on the skyray, destroying it at the end of turn 6, and had the game ended then the score would have been something like Tau 5, Chaos 7. Fortunately, the game continued for one more round, and after missing 7 of the last 8 shots, my melta crisis suits finally destroy the land raider and seal the victory!
Post Mortem:
- It's too early to make a definitive call on whether Aun Shi is worth it, but he's definitely not worth it for the reasons I've been taking him. An EMP grenade and shield generator are not worth the 60 points or whatever he costs over a standard ethereal, and if I always have him attached to a fire warrior team with squad leader I don't need to worry so much about his ability in challenges. It's more effective to just equip the fire warriors with their own EMP grenades even if I don't want them that close to a vehicle. My opponent won't always give me the choice!
- Daemon engines from the Chaos Marine codex are just all-around nasty. They're not quite indestructible, but they're very tough, very fast, and very dangerous. I miss broadside railguns!
- The more I play them, the more I like sniper drone teams. With an ethereal nearby, 3 BS 5 sniper shots per model at 24 inches is dangerous to everything but a heavy vehicle. I haven't tried it yet, but attaching a commander with a puretide engram for Monster Hunter would make them truly disgusting against Monstrous Creatures.
- The skyray is basically an immobile turret without the option of a vehicle multi-tracker, but it's still one of our best anti-flyer platforms, followed closely by the Sunshark and its drones. It's also a good source of seeker missiles.
- I've tried the command squad and marker drone combo a couple of times now, and I just don't like it as well as the commander joined to a Fast Attack drone squad. The stealth team with 3 markerlight launchers works well as a secondary source, but I think packing marker drones into a crisis team doesn't.
I think Aun'Shi's value is that he has half a chance in a melee challenge. Basically, he comes with an honor blade, a shield generator, and melee stats good enough to beat a couple of Space Marines. Most importantly, in a challenge he chooses between making his honor blade rending or rerolling his invulnerable saves.
The skyray is mostly an anti-air platform as it's one of the few entries in the codex that doesn't have to pay through the nose for the velocity tracker. Unfortunately, it is severely hampered by the fact that it can't be a Fast vehicle and can only fire one weapon at full BS if it moves. Most of the time, I find I need to buy it sensor spines, find it some good cover, and leave it there. When the flyers do show up it's decent at taking them down (although interceptor would be awfully nice), but the interceptor drones from the bomber are better. In the first turn before the flyers show up, or if there aren't going to be any, it's still nice as an alpha strike platform if you have a good markerlight source, like my commander / marker drone combo!