2013 Kick off - Battle Report - Chaos Space Marines vs Tau

Trond and his family celebrated New Year's eve at my place, so we decided to grab the opportunity to get this year's first game in before they had to leave this afternoon. Not having had the foresight to bring his Eldar along, I stuck Trond with my Tau. We each prepared a quick 500 points list, and set up a 4' by 4' table.

Crisis Suit team - Plasma Rifle, TL Missile Pod - Plasma Rifle, TL Missile Pod, Shield Drone - Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster, Multi-tracker Stealth Suit Team - Three Shas'ui Ten Fire Warriors Ten Fire Warriors

Chaos Sorcerer - Lvl 2, MoTzeentch - Spell Familiar - Combi-flamer Ten Chaos Space Marines - Asp. Champion w/P.Sword - Two Meltaguns - CCWpns, VotLW Ten Chaos Space Marines - Two Plasma guns - CCWpns, VotLW

Scenario: The Relic
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Shas'vre Kael scanned the tactical readout displayed on his suit HUD one last time. His small scout force would not reach the injured Shas'ui S'nik in time to extract him, but there was perhaps still time enough to set an ambush - if only barely...

I won the roll-off to choose table edge, so I chose the one with the most terrain, to keep the fishmen from being able to deploy there. I also won the roll-off for initiative, so I took first turn an deployed the Melta squad forward to go grab the downed Tau Pathfinder (Relic) and the Plasma squad in the large ruin where they would have line of sight to most of the battlefield.

Trond deployed the Fire Warrios and the Crisis Team a little ways back out of Bolter range, and prepares to try and shoot the Chaos Marines to pieces before moving in for their fallen comrade late game. The Stealth suits infiltrated out of sight in another ruin on my left flank, to harass the Melta squad.

There wasn't much to do but to go for it and push forward. For a few turns, I moved both squads towards the Pathfinder while trading bullets with the Tau forces. By turn four, the Melta squad was down to the Champion and one specialist and the Plasma squad was at half strength. One of the Fire Warrior teams was down to three models while the Crisis suits had lost the shield drone and a wound off two of the Shas'ui.

The Plasma squad met the Sorcerer as he left the Melta squad to join them, while grabbing the Pathfinder. The Plasma squad then used Rapid Fire to take the remaining wound off the two damaged Crisis Suits while the Melta gunner and his Champion assaulted and wiped out the full-sized Fire Warrior squad - for First Blood.

The Stealth Suit team moved in on the Champion and perforated him. The Chaos Marine with the Meltagun was lying on the mound of Fire Warriors nearby. The remaining Crisis Suit and three Fire warriors killed another one or two members from the Plasma Squad, but was assaulted and slain by the end of turn six.

Both the remaining three Tau models and the last four CSM models got into their opponent's Deployment Zone to claim Linebreaker.

CSM: 5 vps
Tau: 1 vp

Cererros the Fleshsmith examined the sealed cylinder that had been hanging from a chain around the broken neck of the now discarded xenos scout. He had to link up with the remaining Word Bearers dirtside and make haste for the extraction point to be able to open the small case and determine the exact nature of it's content. Once back onboard the Veritatem, it would be an easy enough task, but he lacked the necessary tools here.

As the Word Bearers moved out, Cererros sensed a psychic pulse and knew he would not be allowed to leave without shedding more xenos blood.