Blood Angels versus Tau 7th Edition Battle Report

The title should really be.

Pie Plate versus Pie Slice.



Thanks again reddit for your services. ;)


This post we see the return of Yoda of the Blood Angels, a long forgotten creature of wisdom. He will provide comments where needed.

Neverness demands humor lets see if we can deliver.

Daniel and I met again for a game of 40K and this time I brought my Blood Angels as my Tyranids are undergoing a slight paint scheme update. Again you ask, yes, well sort of. I have found a new way to paint them faster, but that is another story. Daniel brought with him some new dice, new dice, we'll out those dice to the test.



Force List

Blood Angels

I did something different for a change and that was I used a special character, not the best choice, and I didn't take any Sanguinary priests.


Astorath

1x Furioso Dreadnought with Frag Cannon, Drop Pod

1 x Sanguinary Guard squad

1x Tactical Squad with 5x Additional Marines, Plasma Gun, Plasma Rifle, Lascannon, Power Weapon

1x Assault Squad with 5x Additional Marines, 2x Meltagun, Power Fist

Baal Predator with Heavy Bolter Sponsons

1x Land Speeder Squadron with 2x Heavy Bolter

1x Land Speeder Squadron with 2x Heavy Bolter

1x Devastator Squad with 5x Additional Marines, 4x Missile Launcher

Tau

I wasn't exactly sure of the loadouts so I improvised there, but the unit types should be correct.

Commander w/ BattleSuit and a bunch of other stuff

Ethereal

Firewarriors x 12

Firewarriors x 12

XV-104 Riptide with a bunch of other stuff

Stealth Suit Team with 4 x XV15 battlesuits w/ burstcannons and 2 x XV25 battlesuits with fusion blasters

Pathfinders with 7 Pulse carbines and Marker lights, and 3 with Rail rifles

Hammerhead Gunship with a bunch of other stuff

Broadside with a lot of missile launchers

Broadside x 3 with a lot of big guns


Deployment

We rolled for the mission big guns never tire. Along with a roll of three mysterious objectives, heavy support choices would be worth extra victory points. I placed the first objective in the middle somewhat, Daniel placed another where the Pathfinders would eventually be deployed and I placed the last objective where the Baal was eventually deployed. The objectives resembled a game of Domination setup in BF4, sort of. Night fight was a failure, but with Tau it really didn't matter much at all.

Daniel got to go first again, bah.

We used the same table as last time. I changed the terrain a bit to give both sides a nice amount of cover and minimize the middle dead zone, although it was still kind of was a dead zone.
I gained an excellent warlord trait which Daniel so nicely enhanced by failing three leadership tests, pinning his entire middle to right flank minus the Hammerhead. New dice indeed.



The Baal Predator scouted about 6 inches into the middle dead zone.



Turn 1

First turn was very frustrating for both of us as all we did was take whole units right off the table. I wish I had photoshop skills or a side artist to pay for artwork.
Tau

Hammerhead
Pie plate Assault squad, safe.

Riptide
Imagine ... a pie just rolling across the field landing on the Tactical squad.
Pie plate Tactical squad, goodbye Tactical squad.

Blood Angels

Enter Drop pod, hello Furioso Dreadnaught, oh my what a big Frag cannon, Frag cannon, WTF is a Frag cannon?
Dreadnaught
Imagine ... a pie slice emerging from the barrel and slicing through the Pathfinders.
Pie slice Pathfinders, goodbye Pathfindes.

Devastator Squad
Mini cake Firwarriors, GTFO Farewarriors, lolz panzees. Firewarriors routed.

Astorath and the Sanguinary Guard assaulted the Tau commander. One Sanguinary Guard dies.

Turn 2

Tau

Hate upon the Assault squad who have done nothing wrong to thee, kill all but three.
Enter Stealth suits, Stealth suits destroy Landspeeder, goodbye Landspeeder. Stealth suits jump away into cover to hide, cowards.
Tau commander fails to harm Astorath in a challenge, Astorath cleaves the Tau commander in half with his mighty axe. Goodbye Tau commander, I love killing Daniel's Tau commander.

Blood Angels

The Baal Predator removes half of the untouched Firewarrior squad, lolz, eat my AP4 rounds.
The Landspeeder and Devastator squad not able to deal with the cowards below opened fire on the previously demoralized Firewarrior squad. With some Heavy Bolter and lovely crack rounds the Firewarriors were no more. Goodbye Firewarriors, lolz, panzees.
The Furioso Dreadnaught strolled over to the lone Broadside and stated "It looks like you are trying to kill Blood Angels, Would you like help?" The Furioso Dreadnaught showed the Broadside a thing or two on how to open up to the Blood Angels squishing the battle suit and the Tau pilot within to a bloody pulp. There was no official reply from the Tau pilot.
Astorath morphed into true model form, actually another Blood Angel player named Chris swapped my librarian model for Astorath. Astorath and the Sanquinary Guard failed their charge, lame.

Turn 3

Tau

The Stealth suits failed to destroy the Landspeeder, "Idiots, says the face-palming Ethereal.

Then much death the blood angels felt.  Yes, hmmm.

The Riptide killed the rest of the Assault squad, bully!
The Broadsides killed Astorath after making three Instant Death Invulnerable saves and the rest of the Sanguinary Guard, so sad. Astorath promptly dissipated and traveled back to his rightful owner. Well played Chris, well played.

Blood Angels

The Landspeeder and Devastator squad combined firepower and rained death down upon the Stealth suits and killed four of them, leaving two of them to cower as presumed.
The Furioso Dreadnought walked to the Hammerhead with a fist of friendship. Evidently the fist of friendship was not friendly at all as the Hammerhead was torn apart and rearranged into the a throne for the Furioso. The furioso didn't like his new throne and strolled back to the nearby objective.

Turn 4

Tau

The Tau did nothing spectacular by moving the Riptide closer to the middle objective and moving the Stealth suits into cover, again, cowards, again.

Blood Angels

The Devastator squad tried to kill off the remaining Stealth suits, but too many were obscured. The Baal Predator shot the rest of the Firewarriors off the battlefield as they had nothing else to do, but hide in the trench lines. The Landspeeder moved to the middle objective to contest it and force the Riptide to stay put and maybe move the Stealth suits away.

Turn 5

Tau

The Stealth suits moved away and up keeping out of the sight of the Devastator squad possibly moving to an objective.
The Broadsides finally destroyed the Baal Predator, finally.

Blood Angels

The Devastator squad was not able to harm anything at all.

End Game

Once Turn 05 was finished I was tired of such a frustrating game and wanted to get home before Midnight. The cool thing was my friend Ralph was online for a few games of BF4 which is always a good thing.




Victory Points

Tau

1 First blood
1 Slay the warlord (A special production, directed by fail and produced by cheese)
1 Objective held by the Riptide

Blood Angels

1 Slay the warlord
1 Linebreaker (This was almost tied, but the Stealth suits were moved out of the Blood Angel's deployment zone)
1 Objective held by the Furioso Dreadnought
1 Tau Heavy support Broadside suit destroyed
1 Tau Heavy support Hammerhead destroyed

Somewhere about half way through the game we noticed we forgot to reveal the mysetrious objectives and in turn we both agreed to treat them as normal objectives.



Awards

Most deadly, MVP
Furioso Dreadnought
Once the Furioso dropped and deployed he was never removed and decided to have his own one dreadnought blood bathed destruction fest. This model needs some paint.

Most annoying
Stealth suits

Most didn't do didly shit
Tactical squad, Pathfinders, Firewarriors

Most missed chances
Astorath and the Sanguinary Guard
Failing their assault, and the constant annoyance of BS rolls of 6 with added BS re-rolls ofS 6 overwatch AP2 BS fire

Most hated
Broadside suits
Lawn chair cowards protecting a coward, lol. The Devastator squad was about the same, but they didn't have those 2+ saves.

Most almost Kenny
Riptide
This jackass managed to wound himself three times from lolvercharging.

Most cowering, not able to hang with the grunts, let the commander and grunts die in shame
Ethereal




Thoughts

Be honest in this game Astorath was not the best choice. I hate using characters for the most part and I rarely use them. If I don't use a character Blood Angels are left with an expensive boring captain, a sub par wanna be chaplain, and a librarian with no special save. I usually take the librarian as he is the cheapest of them all.

Failing <6 inch charges makes me face palm so hard the earth shakes.

The Sanguinary Guard might not have been the best choice either, but they are fun to use.

Sanguinary priest(s) might have helped, but the amassed AP2 firepower coming down in the open might and might not have saved some. They really helped the most when used after a normal/cover save, but without the normal save, marines with a 5+ save are simply dreaming with luck.

I am so glad I brought a full Devastator squad, anything smaller might have been easily been destroyed.

I wonder if I maybe should have combat squad the Tactical squad. Keeping a small squad with the Lascannon for shooting purposes and a small squad to grab the objective later. Keeping a squad hidden just to grab an objective on the last turn possible seems dull and why would I be playing this game anyway. Not my style.

Feel no pain on the Riptide is BS. It felt like the ONLY unit doing any work. I couldn't wound it at all and most of the time I just ignored it. Even ignoring it, the unit was still so powerful it could practically if rolling well remove whole units each turn if it really wanted. Models for money I suppose.

The Tau Commander's ability to do a similar smash attack is kind of silly. This should be reserved for monstrous creatures alone. I understand giving all your attacks up, but strength 10? A Blood angel can only achieve strength 8 with a PF, and strength 10 with certain characters (maybe) and with good rolls on the psychic power table. More models for money I suppose.

I lost my only AP2 weapon, again my only AP2 weapon when the Tactical squad went bye bye. The assault squad had two melta guns, they died.

I fought Necrons before and the Warriors ability to repair after an opponent's shooting and after an assault began to frustrate me. The Riptide's ability to charge up here, there, everywhere E-I-E-I-O, sigh. The warriors are kind of minimized by a normal 4+ save, but it is a 4+ save/4+ repair roll. The riptide a walking firepower machine, 2+ save, feel no pain, mounstrous creature, f^%& me.

This game displayed two things in the first turn I detest in this game a lot. Dick measuring and taking entire units off the battlefield in the first turn. More importantly it seems to be the norm with this game and the only way it seems to be going.

The first turn of this game and most 40K games feels like dick measuring and that is who can remove as much of the opponent's models as possible before they even take their first turn, stupid. A lot of strategy is lost in my opinion.

My Tyranid army constantly suffers from having to take huge chunks or whole broods off the table before first turn, early on, during play, but when my Blood Angel's are doing the same thing it gets dull fast.

By the third turn my army assault and mobility had been decimated. Fourth turn I was barely holding on doing what I could barely do. Fifth turn forget it I was down to two units. I almost got tabled which isn't fun for anyone, I think, some like the abuse.

Will Yoda of the Orks ever return?

Does anyone actually crave massive heavy infantry and support tanks games without all the crap in the center or without the lawn chair guy on the other side laucnhing shit and never moving?

Keep in mind I rant against the game and stupid rules and never Daniel, Daniel was a great player.



I hope you have enjoyed this BR and Rant , my Blood Angels will be back again for more abuse soon just you wait.