July 2005 - Battle!

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to blow stuff up we go…

This month has been the most active so far for my Tau army. I have played my first two games with them and finished painting 18 miniatures. I also made some purchases from Forgeworld and the normal GW hobby centre and I had my birthday! If only every month was that good.

So how did the little tri-digit blokes get on in their first couple of blues? Good mate, pretty good. My first game was with Simon Harper with his Witchhunters army. We decided to play one of the missions from this year’s Liber Animus called “Behind Enemy Lines”. This has no victory points and is entirely based on achieving your mission, which is to get scoring units into the flanks of the enemy’s deployment zone. The game ended with one Hammerhead and my Pathfinders scoring for me and no units for Simon. I managed to minimise my casualties in deployment because Simon set up his Retributors first (with four Heavy Bolters = 2+ my Tau are dead!) and I set up so that he had no targets for them for the whole battle. I also learned that yes, make no mistake, the rumours are true, Tau are deplorable in hand to hand combat. They got beat up by girls every time.

Simon advances his troops toward the waiting Tau.

The Tau prepare to fire on the advancing Witchhunters

Game 2 was with my nemesis, Kynan Sims, and his dirty Tyranids. K-man and myself had played three games against each other and were sitting on a minor win, a minor loss and a draw each. Completely even. K-man has a similar approach to the game to me. We both make armies that are interesting to play and we think hard about each move we make, but we carry on like drongos and have a good laugh while we do it. We rolled up a mission from the standard missions in the rulebook and we got “Recon” on alpha level. I had to get scoring units in the opponent’s deployment zone with no victory points. Sounds familiar…

Both armies deployed and ready for the coming battle

Kynan's Genestealers move unopposed down the flank.

The Crisis team is deployed with a good line of sight

Anyway, the advantage swung back and forwards several times until the last turn. Kynan had the final turn. I had my Pathfinders and a Hammerhead scoring for me (sounds even more familiar), and he had his Hive Tyrant and a unit of Genestealers scoring for him. The last shot of the game was a Tyranid Warrior with a Venom Cannon scoring a single glancing hit on my Hammerhead, which had had both it’s weapons blown off and had moved more than six inches. That meant a 4+ and it was destroyed and K-man wins. With much posturing and talking it up, K rolled the dice and it came up… a 1. Drawn game, 2 scoring units each. The deadlock remains, so I’m sure you’ll see Kynan’s name in the coming months and hopefully we can fix up that draw thing.

Partially painted Fire Warrior's

Painted Fire Warrior

More Painted Fire Warriors

With a win and a draw I was feeling pretty good about the boys and got back to painting. I had finished 11 Fire warriors, so obviously the next unit to paint was my 7 Pathfinders, as they had scored in both games. Some hobbyists don’t play with unpainted miniatures, some think it’s wrong or embarrassing or disrespectful or damaging to the hobby in some way. For me it is the most inspiring thing to keep me going with building an army. I play a game, a unit does well, they become my favourite for the month and I paint them. I play another game, unexpectedly another unit does well, I paint it next. It’s great fun and it develops a story. If my boys actually ever win a combat and the unit isn’t painted yet, I’m going to put some trophies on them and paint them. The other point is why wait? Why would I deny myself the chance to play a fun game with someone?

Anyway, it was a great month. Next month I’ll finish the Pathfinder’s Devilfish and then who knows…