THE VANUS TEMPLE

Ok I haven’t got the FULL results yet. But I know our position well enough!

Despite the event running late and the organisation a bit lacking in places, it was a good day out. Me and Darklighter (my team partner) got up for 4am and sat on a coach for almost 5 hours!

For those that can’t remember, our list was:

Darklighters Tau:

Tau Commander (lower points ones)
– Plasma Rifle, Missile Pod, Hard Wired Multi Tracker, Positional Relay.

10 Firewarriors
– Shasui with bonding knife
10 Firewarriors
– Shasui with bonding knife

Hammer Head
– Rail Gun, Burst cannons, multi tracker, disruption field.

Dezartfox’s Space Marines:

10 Assault Terminators
– Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields

5 Scouts
– CCW’s and pistols,
– Sergeant with Power Weapon
– Heavy Bolter with Hellfire shells.

(You can click and drag the pictures around)

The missions for each game were the deployment type and mission type of the same roll (so game 1 was pitched battle and D3+2 objectives, the last annihilation and DOW)
First game was against Imperial Guard and Blood Angels, it consisted of 2 tactical squads (one with plasma cannon and powersword, other with fist and lascannon) and a scout squad with an assortment of weapons. The Guard army had a Leman Russ, 2 infantry squads with no weapons and a Command Platoon with a flag and melta (that was listed as his HQ.. so I think his list was illegal but we wast sure so didn’t query it), and Vendetta that looked like a Valkyrie.
They got first turn and blew the hammer head from the air, and in return the Tau commander blew the Vendetta from the sky, killing 7 of the 10 guardsmen inside, who were then blasted by advancing FW’s.
All our games were cut short due to bad time organisation.. so the last few turns were rushed and I can’t remember most of the stuff.. The Terminators happily pounded through the tactical squads, but it took them a few turns due to bad dice rolls. In the end we wiped them off the table and held most of the objectives. First Win!

Second game was by far the toughest. We were against Guard and Eldar. The IG had 4 units of 10 guardsmen that he combined into 2 units of 20, a unit of Psykers with a commissar and a Chimera with a Stubber that they rode in, and Marbo. The Eldar had a Farseer, a Guardian squad with a brightlance, 2 D-cannon platforms and some Warpsiders. Mission was Bases and quarters, They set up in a big bunch in a line protecting their base, with the command platoon sat on their objective.
We decided to deploy all 10 terminators in combat squads, both to go and hold up a unit of guarsdmen each. Some bad dice rolls meant nearly all of the termies died or didn’t hit in combat (5 dice.. 4 1’s) so it was up to the sergeant to hold a unit in combat for as long as possible:

The deepstruck the spiders and Marbo right next to the Firewarriors on our objective, throwing the Demo charge onto them. Luckily it bounced off and landed ontop of the Spider unit and killed most of them! The FW’s were able to take care of the rest with the Tau Commander kicking the exarch to death.
The Tau Hammerhead won us the game, it stayed out of range of the D-cannons and the Brightlance all game, took a shot at the IG Command squad sat on the objective and killed them all, and then killed all the Guardians that were running onto the objective. The sergeant holding up the squad closest to the objective. In the Pic you can just see the flag poking out behind the rock.
So a second win to us!

Third game was against 2 tyranid armies. One had a Flying Hive tyrant, 9 Genestealers, and 18 Gargoyles. The other had 2 units of Termagaunts, a unit of Hormagaunts, a HQ Warrior thing and 3 zoanthropes.
The Tyrant smashed into the unit of 10 Terminators after reducing them to WS1 with his powers, this wasn’t enough to save him as he only took one down and was then smashed from the sky. The Termies then swept into the Gargoyles in the following turn and batted them from the sky too whilst the Tau took out the rest of the army and even fought off some Hormagaunts in combat! We wiped them from the table without losing a unit, so full KP’s to us!
Win three!

After winning all three games were were hopeful, but with being on Table 6 in the last round we knew there were people ahead of us with more KP’s.

First up they announced the Best Painted armies, and we won the 40k Best Painted Army! Only one trophy though… Huh. I let Darklighter have it as I already have one from Throne of Skulls.

We ended up in 3rd place overall, which wasn’t bad at all. Then someone told us that we should be first!
In the rules pack it says you get an additional point for winning Best Army, so we were the only team with the full 10 points!
We waited until after the announcements to tell the organisers as we didn’t want to interrupt and take away someone else’s trophies (As playing wise they did come higher). They said they were sorry and it was a mistake and that we SHOULD have come first. They said that they’ll correct the results online and put a clarification up or something. Also they’ll get some trophies sent to us!

So we came FIRST and won Best Painted Army!. Damn good weekend if you ask me!

Here are all the pictures I took from the weekends event:

Tau’Va Baby!!