My first encounter vs a Riptide...

o/

This weekend I got to play with Patrick. He's an old friend of mine, and largely responsible for painting all of that wonderful terrain I posted a few posts back! Not having played in a few years (somehow) we remedied that this past Saturday.

Storm wardens with Subjugators and an Ordo Xenos inquisitor vs. Tau. 1750 points, Big Guns never tire (three objectives, one in each deployment zone and one in the middle of the table), standard deployment. He won the roll and decided to let me deploy first. Failing to steal the initiative I went first into night fight conditions...

The mostly painted Storm Wardens prepare to walk into hell on my right flank.

My full battle line, with Captain I Killed Draigo, the Obsolete Assassin (inquisitor) and a 10-man tac squad in the Landraider.

The predator's performance in this game would not move it up any higher on the painting list, the landraider...maybe.

The Subjugators, many of whom were assembled mere days before battle.

Ugh, I dread what that thing will do...

The Tau center with the Special character tank commander inside the Hammerhead.

2 Broadsides (one is a proxy) with a pair of funny looking shield drones faced me on my left.

Turn one, the dreadnought drop podded in, scattered badly, but took out a quarter of the fire warriors. The Landraider did nothing useful aside from illuminate the hammerhead with its searchlight. The bare plastic pred failed to put a dent in it, whereas the Subjugators pred put all three hull points on it, killing it with the final blow coming from a hunter-killer missile (quite the rarity for that to actually work), giving me 1st blood!

The Subjugators heavy bolters took out the 'shield drone proxies' but the Broadsides held firm.

The Cadre Fireblade, firewarriors and riptide hammer the advancing tac squad. The brute firepower proving too much for the Librarian's 'Invisibility'.

THIS folks is what you call the proper use of cover! This pic was taken from my bare plastic predator's point of view...

One broadside down and the scouts arrive in the backfield to cause problems...

Somehow still untouched (the Tau's opening turns went badly dice roll wise) the Venerable dread wipes out the center Fire Warrior squad.

Invisibility indeed. Overwhelming firepower annihilates my left flank!

Oh yay, Faresight and friends land in my backfield and the Subjugators pred goes BOOM!

PHOTO BOMB!!! lol, compliments of Patrick's brother Matt.

With Tau appearing in the Subjugators' backfield, their Librarian with Iron Arm moves to intercept. You can tell by his absence from this pic just how well THAT worked...

Having gone a few rounds in HTH losing once and fleeing form the broadsides. The scouts are reduced to just their Sgt., who succeeds in wiping out the Broadsides, and saving the Dread from anymore railgun shots to the back (especially as it was already down 2 hull points at this point...).

Oh great, MORE of them...

The last few Subjugators fight bravely, but are wiped out by overwhelming firepower (this seems to be a theme with the Tau...).

Thus my left flank, like the right before it (and my other predator) cease to exist.

The landraider disgorges its cargo into HTH with the monster, to no avail...

The Storm Wardens use their White Scars' chapter trait to leave HTH (and the inquisitor) behind via hit-n-run. Their intent was to avenge their dreadnought which had just fallen to the Cadre Fireblades' EMP grenades (at the expense of his accompanying fire warriors), but the game ended.

4" from the objective, idiot.

Tallying up the final scores, we came up with not a whole lot. Nobody had any objectives, I had 1st blood and line breaker with the lone scout (and only just barely). Whereas Patrick only had line breaker giving me a 2-1 victory. Had he kept his squad on the objective rather than try and kill the dread, he would have had me, but vengeance took over it seems...likewise had I not moved the landraider too far away from it's objective...

In the end a good close game it turned out to be, so we were both happy with it.

The Riptide didn't do too much, as it was his 1st game with it and as my GF doesn't have one, I couldn't help him much with the rules for it (he's new to the new codex and so hadn't heard of 'supporting fire' till I explained it to him, lol!). That said, a dozen shots per turn via nova charged burst cannon was murderous! Beware of that folks...