1750pt Tournament
There was a tournament held at the Seattle Battle Bunker. It was held to benefit a local GW employee that had a medical crisis. I think we had 32 players, so it was a pretty good turnout and it raised several thousand dollars for a good cause.

Tau Empires Bork'an Expeditionary Force

97 Shas’El Commander w/Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster, Target Array, HWMT
97 Shas’El Commander w/Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster, Target Array, HWMT

201 3x Crisis Suit: Plasma, MP, MT. Tm Ldr w/HWMT and TA
201 3x Crisis Suit: Plasma, MP, MT. Tm Ldr w/HWMT and TA
139 2x Crisis Suit: Plasma, MP, MT. Tm Ldr w/HWMT and TA

100 8xShas’La FireWarriors w/Pulse Rifles, Tm Ldr also has Markerlight.
100 8xShas’La FireWarriors w/Pulse Rifles, Tm Ldr also has Markerlight.
100 8xShas’La FireWarriors w/Pulse Rifles, Tm Ldr also has Markerlight.

70 Piranha Fusion Blaster, Target Array
240 3x Broadside, Advanced Stabilization.
240 3x Broadside, Advanced Stabilization.
160 2x Broadside, Advanced Stabilization.

1745pts

List Discussion
I had originally planned to leave out the Piranha and have 1 extra Crisis Suit. This plan was foiled by the fact that I'd miscounted my models. Whoops. Fortunately, I had the Piranha with me and arrived early enough to rewrite the list. The Piranha really wasn't terribly useful on it's own, but it was all I had. I do have a couple of critiques of the list, though. I would have liked to have another squad or two of Fire Warriors, but those 24 were all I had painted by that time, so I had to stick with what was available. Having an extra scoring unit or two might have been helpful. Finally, I thought about including some gear to keep my units around longer. Bonding Knives help Crisis teams stick around after a casualty or two and Shield Drones do great things for Broadsides. At the time of the tournament, however, I didn't have these painted up, and I knew I wouldn't have time to get them done. We'll see if they would have helped.

Game 1: Annihilation Mission against Deathguard with variable special rules.
Okay, first off: Annihilation against Deathguard? Are you nuts? Even better, it had variable special rules, which meant that sometimes (most of the early turns when I needed to shoot him) we had to use Night Fight rules and other times (fortunately, some of the turns he was trying to get to grips with me) everything was treated as difficult terrain!

The way the game went
He basically set up in a 3-pronged pincer (pitchfork?) formation and moved forward, leaving his Terminators and Typhus to deepstrike. I managed to stop his rhinos fairly quickly and my right flank had an easy time taking out the remaining Plague Marines on foot that were facing them. My Left flank had a much harder time, with his commander and 2 squads of Plague Marines bearing down on them, with the Defiler marching up the middle. The Greater Daemon came out on my right flank as well, which made things even tougher. I basically staged a fighting retreat from that side toward my right flank. I lost my Fire Warriors and a couple of Crisis Suits in the process, but I managed to finally take almost everything out there. Just about then, his terminators and Typhus arrived on my right flank. (You know, the safe area everyone was running to!) Fortunately they couldn't charge after deepstriking, so I threw everything into taking them down. I wiped them out completely, leaving him with just his (non-Typhus) Commander. He wiped out another Crisis team and I tried to gun him down, but left him with one wound when the game ended. Had it gone on another turn, he would have almost certainly eaten another Crisis Team but I would have been able to gun him down then. Victory for the Greater Good and on to the second round.

Game 2: Unusual Seize the objective game against Deathguard
Deathguard again? Yup, there were about 4-5 Nurgle players at the tournament, so there was actually a possibility that I'd end up playing 3 games out of 3 against the Unclean Ones! This was an unusual scenario where you had to capture the primary objective by subduing it in close combat. (Uh-oh, not so good for the Tau!) It's attacks counted as power weapons, and attacks against it ignored special rules (like double strength or power weapon effects.) We had table quarter deployment this game, with the objective starting in the middle. There were also secondary (smaller point value) objectives in each quarter.

The way the game went
He moved out two pincers toward the secondary objectives, with a couple of rhino squads and the Daemon Prince coming toward my main force and a couple of foot squads moving on the objective across from my quarter. He also left a couple of squads in the center that seized the objective and quickly beat it down. This left me with the unenviable task of trying to shoot Plague Marines off of objectives. I actually succeeded several times at this, but not quite enough to take care of business. By the end of the game, I'd ripped the two rhino squads into bite-sized slimy pieces along with the Daemon Prince. I'd also shattered one of the foot squads on the opposite secondary objective and damaged the other one. Finally, I'd killed off the first foot squad with the primary objective, but the second foot squad managed to hold it. I didn't take very many losses in this game, but I just didn't do enough damage to take the objectives back. (I think I held 2 secondaries to his 2 secondaries plus the primary.) If I'd been more aggressive with my army, I think I might have been able to win this one, but it went down as a loss for the Bork'an Sept. On to the final round.

Game 3: Bizarre kill team scenario played against Necrons.
This was a weird scenario where one side had to get to the objective, stand around for a LONG time and then run back off their board edge, while the other side had to get to the objective, stand around for a LONG time and then blow it up. While I was happy that I wasn't playing against Nurgle again, the We'll Be Back rolls really aren't much different than the Feel No Pain rolls.

The way the game went
It was the end of the day and I was getting rather tired, so I don't have as many pictures or notes to go on here. Basically, we both lined up relatively close together and lit into each other. He had a hard time dealing much damage to me (primarily due to splitting his fire all over the place) but I just didn't do enough damage to him to keep him from getting to the objective. I had most of my forces left at the end of the game, but I couldn't keep him off the objective and so he took the win. Again, I think if I'd been more aggressive with my army, I could have done a little more damage. I was getting him pretty close to phase out, so even a handful more kills could have made the difference. Later, I also realized that I could have kept him from getting the objective by charging his unit that was on the objective. When I charged, his unit (already stretched really thin) would have had to counter-charge my unit, pulling him out of contact with the objective. Ah well.

Final Notes

I had a great time at this tournament and I definitely had a strong list. Given that my army survived each of the games with a fair amount left on the board, maybe I don't need the extra survival gear I had thought I'd need. The second game was the only one that required Scoring units, and I don't think that having a few more Firewarriors for resilience or even a couple more squads would have really helped me get the objectives. Looking back on the games, both the second and third games could have swung my way if I'd been more aggressive. This seems really strange, since the list was designed to zip around terrain and not get shot back, but it really does quite a lot of damage and, with the help of cover saves, can actually take a few punches, too. (I guess that's somewhat reasonable, as you can look at it as 20 Space Marines with better movement to get under cover (each Crisis Suit has 2W and T4 with a 3+ save) and 16 Terminators with extreme long-range weapons (each Broadside has 2W and T4 with a 2+ save, but no invulnerable save), as well as about 16 Scouts (FireWarriors have less Toughness but the same armor save as Scouts. That's actually a fairly formidable-sounding list if you put it that way. In addition, based on what I've experienced in the League play so far, I need to remember to be more aggressive with my Crisis Suits, even if I have to be more careful of the FireWarriors in objective missions.

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