We rolled the mission that required us to take and hold objectives. I felt somewhat good about that because I have been following fritz' blog. We decide that the three buildings and the one tree stand in the middle would be fine objectives. The roll of the dice said that the table would be divided long ways for deployment.
Turn 1: I sort of splashed doods evenly across the field. Probably not the smartest thing I could have done. I opt to go first and race everything forward in transports. My land Raider with 9 Blood Claws and my Rune Priest are obscured by the building on the far end of the table.We forgot about night sight rules on turn 1 and he shot down my venerable dreadnought. My rhinos are full Grey Hunter units with Power Fists. He's Fielding three elite choices, three heavy support choices, HQ, and a couple troop choices.
Turn 2: I decide that the giant building with one entrance would be a good place to leave one of my units and challenge him to get them out so I disembark them. My land raider decides to move 6 inches this turn and downs three in the unit at the far end of the table and they fail the morale test. I should have just moved 12 to get closer to close combat. I moved both of the rhinos on the close side. He cleared all but three marines in one of them.
Turn 3: All I can say is that round three stung a bit. My fragmented unit with three marines won combat and ended up out in the open to be shot at again. The troop choice that was still mounted had its rhino popped but the marines did a great job surviving two pie plates. My Land Raider got popped (the Land Raider model should be upside down or something in the following picture) and the unit inside of it got pinned to be victimized by one and a half rounds of fire.
Turn 4: All that remains for me is two healthy units of Grey Hunters, one of their Rhinos and my Rune Priest with one Blood Claw. The Grey Hunters among the gun ships destroy one of the gun ships and draw a bunch of fire. My HQ choice and his one remaining blood claw jump in the middle of a bunch of the suited elite choice doods with his HQ choice and totally murders them. He chooses to run from my Rune Priest with his troop unit instead of fire.
Turn 5: my hidden rhino runs over to grab another objective. My one surviving unit sits tight. The Tau grab one objective with a Gun ship. He considers grabbing another objective with his other ship but that would put the tall building in his LOS at my Rhino so he moves more than our agreed upon 2 inches from his second objective. When his shooting phase comes, he is distracted from my Rhino and decides to save his fleeing troop unit from my charging Rune Priest. He succeeds.
The game ends at the bottom of turn five. My last unit and my Rhino are each holding down objectives while he only has one objective. The fourth objective was up for grabs but had no one on it. My opponent was a ton of fun to play with, a great sport, and beat the hell out of me for two good hours.
