A Week of Escalating Assault Day:4

By TheGraveMind

 Next up this week is my first game against a Super heavy in "normal" 40k. I have already played against ScreamerStar this week, so I'll now be taking the same list and facing against a Lord of War.



My opponent was eager to get a game in with his Stormlord, which I take it is a baneblade variant. Its main weapon fires 15 S6 ap3 shots. It's brutal, but manageable. He didn't want to scare away people bringing out D weapons yet. It also has a transport capacity and can hold multiple squads. so he had about 9 lascannons firing out of that thing.

 We get the scouring, and I hold back some stuff defensively, and am ready to throw my riptide down the table if needed. He deploys the stormlord and tons of heavy weapon teams. He also has more infantry coming in from reserve. He was originally going to bring some vendettas but forgot their flight stands. That would have made the fight far more interesting, making me focus more anti tank at them.

 First turn I droppod melta next to the stormlord, and fire lascannons into it. I strip off two or three hullpoints. It's night fight, so he can't shoot back too well. He pivots the stormlord and kills off all but two marines from the melta squad. (they were so close he couldn't get them all in sight/arc)

 My plan worked, and by flanking him, I made him choose. He went for the melta, but exposed side armor to the lascannons. I scored two pens, both explosions, which got enough to kill it off. Killing almost all the guys inside. Out side I focused on the mortar teams to protect the tau, as I had dealt with the lascannons.

He had a 4 and a 2 in his zone, both threes were in the middle, and a 1 and a 2 were in my zone. I got some marines from a combat squad to a middle 3, and held my back 2 with fire warriors. His units walking in managed to kill off all of my forward marines, but my riptide was able to keep him off his objectives with well placed blasts thinning the squads.

The first highlights was his first salvo with plasma vets, rolling 1, 1, and 2, missing with all three and killing two of them. The following turn, the last one rolled a 1 and died. Never hit with plasma and killed them all off.
The second was he tried to assault my riptide with a commissar and squad to tie him up. I had the counter fire defense to overwatch on a 5+. I hit will all three Ion shots, and with both plasma shots, killing off all the guys and the commissar.

So at the end I had first blood from a heavy weapon team, Line breaker from the riptide, Slay the warlord from the commissar, +3 points from the superheavy put me at 6 points before objectives. While I was able to kill the Stormlord, I still might change some plasma to melta in my list. Overall I got a good feeling that my Tau list is very take all comers.

If you can hurt the superheavy, it becomes a huge liability as it gives bonus points. If he had used his vendettas, it would have been a completely different game, but I would like to think I could have handled it still.

Anyone else have some recent experiences trying out the new Escalation?