Season's Beatings!
I went down to the Game Matrix for their annual New Year's eve party. I heard about it by accident last year, went and had a good time, so I figured I'd do it again this year.

I got there and there were a ton of people there playing a variety of collectible card, board and role-playing games, but I didn't see any 40k or Fantasy Players. I brought in my potluck dish, had a bit to eat, then started looking around to see if I could find any players. No tell-tale army boxes or big packs, so I asked the guy at the counter. He didn't expect any 40k players in, he said they mostly come on Saturdays. I was a little disheartened, but I figured I'd finish painting my Tau and see if anybody showed up.

I finished all my painting and was just considering a little touch-up work where some of the paint scheme got a little rough, when I saw a group of guys with big cases, at least one with the Imperial Eagle on it. I got all excited and went over to check it out. After striking up a conversation with them, it turned out that they were indeed 40k players and were after a game. They'd planned on doing a 3-way game, but asked if I'd like to join. I did and so it was Orks and Dark Eldar against Tau and Tau, with 1000pts each.

Deployment

The other Tau player ran sort of gunline Tau. He had an Ethereal, 3 large FireWarrior Teams, 2 good-sized Kroot teams and 2 sets of Sniper Drones. I took a Fireknife Shas'El and 3 teams of 2 Fireknife Crisis Suits, 3 teams of 8 Firewarriors(Team leader had a marker light which I never used) and 2 Broadsides.

The Dark Eldar player had a semi-shooty Air force. He had a Lord with a small retinue (2 incubi, 3 Warriors) in a Raider, along with 2 Wych squads in Raiders and 2 Ravagers (DL and 2 Disintegrators) plus 2 squads of 10 Warriors and 2 Dark Lances. The Ork player had 2 Big Meks with Shokk Attak gunz, 2 Kanz, and 4(I think) big Mobz of boyz.

I didn't take careful notes during the game, so I'll keep this report pretty brief and just give you a run-down of how it went and let you look at the pictures.

Both sides lined up across from each other, with the Tau and Dark Eldar clumping up to take advantage of cover. (Orks didn't have much choice with all their bodies.) Sadly, I was so focused on being able to shoot the Kanz on the first turn that I forgot to put my Broadsides behind cover! They both died to Dark Lances before being able to shoot.

End of Turn 1

Tau firepower forced the Dark Eldar player to be very cagey about his movements, as was emphasized when a Wych squad assaulted one of his Kroot squads, and then was cut down by shooting immediately afterward.

We whittled down their forces significantly, but we lost sight of the objectives a little bit as we got swept up in trying to keep them from assaulting us. It wasn't until the final turn that we realized Kanz counted as Troops for the Orks, but it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. We had let them get too close to the objectives and didn't have enough firepower left to shoot them off of them. Of the objectives they held in the final turn, I managed to take 1 away by killing a Kan, but another one had a Kan and a DE squad in cover, the next one had 2 Ork mobz (1 was down to a Wounded Nob at the end of the turn, but it still held) and the last one was held by a squad of Dark Eldar in heavy cover.

End of Turn 2

Unfortunately, 4-player games tend to take longer, and I had to end the game after turn 4. We looked at the objectives and realized that the Orks and Dark Eldar had won handily, holding 3 objectives and constesting the single one that the Tau held. We congratulated each other on a good game and I got to packing up. I got everything packed up, headed out and managed to be kissing my fiancee at midnight. (She had to work, so I met her there and we had a brief toast! All in all, a very good way to end one year and start another!

What could we have done better? Heh, for starters, I could put my Broadsides behind or even in cover! Aside from that, I think we should have concentrated a little more on eliminating Troops early on. Every shot against a Ravager or a Shokk Attack gun is a shot not taken against Troops. We could also have been more aggressive with our units, moving them forward earlier to get rapid-fire or have better targets (or targets that weren't as obscured) and possibly even using bait units to lure them (or drag them) off of some of the objectives. While another turn or two would have also caused them more damage, it's a double-edged sword, as the last turns are the ones where assault armies generally do the most damage and they were definitely all up in our business at the end there.

End of Turn 3

I had forgotten my rulebook and we ended up having a few questions about the rules. In the interest of helping myself learn the rules better, and possibly helping out other people, I went through the book and checked the ones I could remember. I think most of the confusion stems from remembering rules from 4th edition or from confusing one rule with a similar one.

The first one was blast weapons: they roll a scatter die and 2d6 minus the firer's BS. Also note that it seems to be only Barrage weapons that have cover based on the centerpoint of the explosion, not Blast weapons in general.

Fast Skimmers do not get a 6" move in the assault phase. They do, however, get to move 24" instead of just 18" if they are moving Flat Out.

Skimmers only get their automatic Obscured (Hull down effect) if they moved Flat out in the previous turn, not if they moved less than that speed.

Troops that are vehicles or swarms do not count as Scoring Units (thus, the Kanz couldn't have held objectives, but it wouldn't have made a difference, since the remaining Kan was holding an objective in conjunction with a unit of Dark Eldar Warriors.)

In our game, we thought that units within 6" of an objective could hold or contest it. I think this was a holdover from previous rules, because in the current ruleset, the distance is only 3 inches. While this would have made a difference at the end of the game, each of the units holding or contesting could have moved closer to get within that distance if they had known it ahead of time.

None of these are really game-breaking issues, but they could make a difference, and would be potential problems in a tournament setting.

There was also some confusion about the vehicle damage table (since I rarely use vehicles, I don't have it memorized)

End of Turn 4/End of Game

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