Vet's night @ Heroe's World

Managed to squeeze a game in yesterday at Heroe's World before catching Transformers 2. Played against Ivan with his Tau again. I tried taking two dreads with extra armour and a techmarine to keep them moving. Also included a whirlwind, landspeeder, assault squad and 3 tactical squads (one in rhino, one in dp with libby). Ivan had a couple squads of firewarriors in devilfish, 2 stealth suit squads, 2 battlesuit squads? (one with heavy weapons, another with mid-range) a Hammerhead with rail gun and his HQ. We played a standard pitched battle/annihilation battle.

I setup first and basically secured the middle of my deployment zone with both dreads and the whirlwind, tactical squads next and the assault squad/landspeeder on far right. I kept my entire army deployed on my right hand side of the board, as I'm quite used to getting blown away when I spread out. Ivan did spread out his units to take advantage of cover since I had first turn (he failed to steal the initiative).

First turn I dropped my DP with tactical + libby in his deployment zone, very close to his HQ and one devilfish with firewarriors embarked. I brought both the landspeeder and assault squads as far forward as possible on the right, supported by the tactical squad in the rhino. My third tactical squad was broken into combat squads to take advantage of cover (though I forgot to bolster defences!). The dreadnoughts/whirlwind advanced just enough to use some cover to block line of sight from Ivan's troops on the left hand side of the board. The DP tactical squad caused some damage to his HQ, and most of my heavy weapons focused on his battlesuits with heavy weapons, though didn't do much. This scared Ivan and he pulled his HQ away in his turn and moved his devilfish to allow his firewarriors to deploy. On the other side of the board he blasted away at my dreads and wrecked one - first KP to Ivan.

Second turn I moved my assault squad/landspeeder up to deal with his firewarriors and devilfish. Brought my tactical squad in the rhino up to support and used Gate of Infinity to bring my libby + tactical squad to bear on his HQ squad again (I had great luck with my GoI - deep strike rolls). Dreads just barely moved forward to keep out of line of sight. I shot up his firewarriors with my assault squad, taking out 8 of 12 (love those flamers!) and blasted his devilfish to bits with my landspeeders multi-melta. For whatever stupid reason I thought I couldn't assault with my marines (we were chatting about fleet and somehow I thought I had both ran & shot?!?! stupid) but I wasn't worried as I had about 3 good strength squads in that corner. Ivan shot up my other dread and immobilized my whirlwind and killed a couple tactical marines from the DP squad. Also a stealth squad came in, but scattered off the board and I got to place them :). I thought about throwing them in the middle of my marines but decided to just tuck them in the opposite corner of his deployment zone.

In turn 3 I assaulted his HQ with my libby + tactical squad, the assault marines/landspeeder took off looking for someone else to hurt and I used the tactical squad in the rhino to gun down his remaining 4 firewarriors in his table corner. By this time I had evened up the KP, and it all went downhill for Ivan from here. Landspeeder took out the hammerheads rail gun, libby + tactical wiped out his HQ through sweeping advance, assault squad attacked the hammerhead as well and immobilized it.

Turn 4 my assault squad destroyed his stealth suits that I placed, libby + tactical blasted his battlesuits with heavy weapons to bits. Landspeeder missed his hammerhead from close range. Packed up the other tactical squad back into the rhino and brought them back towards the middle of the table. He destroyed my whirlwind on his turn, but had miserable luck with his other shooting. His other stealth suit squad came in and he placed them in between the combat squads of my third tactical squad.

Turn 5 my assault marines blew up his hammerhead, landspeeder and missile launcher from a combat squad got a weapon destroyed and immobilized result on his second devilfish. I brought my libby + tactical into the middle along with my tactical squad in the rhino. Together they blasted away most of his final firewarriors squad. My techmarine ran to join a combat squad of tactical marines in cover near the middle of the board. The two combat squads combined to destroy his second stealth squad. When Ivan shot at the combat squad with techmarine I went to ground which saved the combat squad and techmarine from being destroyed.

Turn 6, after this turn every unit except for his last squad of battlesuits (who had barely seen any action all game from being deployed) were destroyed. The game ended a convincing 10-3 win for me. :)