Jolly Toys Outing Tournament Report

Matt and I have been down to Warhammer World this weekend for the Jolly Toys Outing tournament which is a 2K "Nova" style event with each game having three different missions. Win on the primary goal and get maximum points, then a descending scale of points for victory on secondary, tertiary or finally VPs. As you might know, I took Tau to this event in order to motivate myself to paint another army and for a change of pace from Space Wolves.

My overall aim for the weekend was to at least win a game. This might seem minor but remember I'm playing Tau here! After that the organisers were giving prizes for the best general from each codex. This pitted me against two other Tau lists so I was in with a decent shot of a trophy!

Game 1 - Tau vs Imperial Guard

My opponent, Kelly, had a whopping 16 hulls (give or take) for me to deal with. Plenty of chimeras, 5 leman russ, a basilisk and a couple of other bits and pieces. Seeing as mech is my ideal opponent I felt pretty confident. We were playing Dawn of War and KPs with a 3 point KP margin being the primary victory requirement.

Neither of us deployed anything so we rolled on in turn 1. I got the first turn but obviously had nothing to shoot at. Kelly didn't do much damage with his shooting thanks to those lovely disruption pods. In my first couple of turns I did my best to hit the leman russ demolishers before they got into range of my suits but it was only in turn 3 that I figured out I'd be better hitting the chimeras for the easier KPs. This was especially true with the Leman Russes being in squads.

Once I'd figured this out it didn't take me long to rack up some KPs. My commander teams dropped in and popped open chimeras and either charged or gunned down their occupants for some cheap kills. In the end I won the game by 10pts to 5 giving me the maximum score.

Mission accomplished then! Only problem is that now I'd won a game I felt a bit more confident. My list had performed well and I'd hopefully be up on the higher tables where I'd be facing plenty of mech.


Game 2 - Tau vs Blood Angels

Seeing I'd got Blood Angels made my heart sink with the thought of jump infantry. I was pleased to see my opponent had a dual land raider list with a storm raven and terminators spread between the transports. With me taking first turn and Seize Ground (with 5 fixed objectives) being the mission Rob elected to reserve his entire force. He'd deep strike the land raiders and blast the storm raven forward when it came on. Speaking of which he'd made his storm raven from a Terminator Salvation salvation model and converted so it had all the guns/missiles.

I set up in my usual way with a nice spread to cover the entire board with firepower. I had a couple of turns to myself which meant one deep striking commander team ended up being dropped in near my lines as I had no targets. In Rob's turn 2 he brought on the storm raven and deep struck one of the land raiders. The stormraven immobilised one of my devilfish but little else happened.

In my third turn my first two shots of the game saw me wreck a land raider and a stormraven with my broadsides. The terminators in the land raider somehow pinned themselves and the stormraven's occupants were hit with a torrent of low AP fire and everything else bringing them down to a couple of models.

Next turn saw the two 5-man assault squads who'd swapped transports with the terminators walking on towards some objectives. Again there was little shooting to speak of from my opponent. The terminators that had been pinned found themselves in charge range of the pathfinders so easily dealt with them. I reduced both assault squads to 2 men each but despite failing leadership they'd be coming straight back. The terminators that had been pinned now took the brunt of the fire and died over a couple of turns of shooting.

The final land raider slammed in on one of my objectives but once again I downed it straight away. I swept in and finished off the second squad of terminators and then did some damage to the squad that had been recently evicted from their land raider. Rob had now got 5 terminators, a librarian and 2 lots of two assault marrines left on the board and I was certain of victory.

Sadly, it was at the end of turn 5 as I was making my assault phase jumps that I suddenly realised it was objectives as primary! The immobilised devilfish was supposed to be disembarked to hug the centre objective but I'd forgotten. I had one more assault phase move to contest that centre objective but my commander was 9.5 inches away meaning he'd still be half and inch short of contesting! My only hope now was that we got a turn 6. With Rob failing most of his storm shield saves he decided he'd like to roll the 3+ for turn 6. Of course he rolled a 1 which I stared at in disbelief. I'd scored a whopping 1,545 VPs to his 200 but he won the game by 2-1 on objectives. If ever there was a case of PLAY THE BLOODY MISSION this is it! Had I disembarked the fire warriors and rapid fired the two marines or ignored the terminators and hit the assault squads I'd have surely won the game in 5 turns. Gutted. At least my opponent took pity on me and bought me a beer!

Game 3 - Tau vs Dark Eldar

Feeling dejected about throwing the game away I was having a discussion with Matt about how I'd fare against DE. Sure enough in Game 3 I got to find out! My opponent had a mixture of kabalites/trueborn in venoms and wych squads in raiders. Coupled with the obligatory 3 ravagers I'd have my work cut out. Table quarters were primary and spearhead deployment so this would be complicated.

With me again taking turn 1 (as you'd hope with Tau!) my opponent again reserved everything. In some ways I thought this would play into my hands as I'd be able to gun down the army in waves. Anyway, he brought on two ravagers first turn and I found my broadsides without a cover. One squad was cut in half and the other took some wounds. The venoms hammered my pathfinders with poisoned shots and I was already down a unit.

In response I could only kill one of the ravagers. I popped a couple of venoms but didn't do enough to the squad inside who passed their leadership. For the next few turns we traded blows with both of us alternating between awesome and awful rolling. At the end of turn 5 it was still a tight game, we estimated it would probably come down to KPs and that was a close run thing. I'd dropped my commander squads into largely empty quarters which meant a hefty number of VPs to claim them. Luckily he used one of those arcane Ld flamer things (i forget the name) and killed one of the cammanders. The crisis bodyguard ran away but would hopefully regroup to flame some wyches. Of course they ran away and with them my chances dwindled.

I ended up losing 2-1 on quarters in a turn 7 which saw me fail to kill the necessary targets to win the game. Overall I don't think I played it badly but my dice let me down at the crucial times e.g. immobilising a ravager with broadsides!

Game 4 - Tau vs Space Wolves
Refreshed after a night's sleep we returned for day two to find that Matt and I had been drawn against each other. I'd have been quite happy to face his GK list because I'd done well against it in our practice games. I figured this would still give me a decent shot of winning the Best Tau General Trophy. Matt on the other hand fancied playing someone different (he was scared of my railguns if you ask me!) so we swapped with the next table over which had Tau playing Space Wolves on it. The Tau player rolled to play Matt so I was pitted against Wolves. Please note I forgot to take photos!

My opponent's lists featured a whopping 14 missile shots from long fangs and cyclone wolf guard. The other problem would be a large swiftclaw biker squad coming right at my lines. To cut a long story short my damage table rolls were appauling despite my opponent forgetting to use smoke. The land raider was immobilised with no weapons but still standing and two razorbacks had either lost weapons or been immobilised. Not what I needed in a KP game!

What followed was a hammering of my pathfinders with frag missiles before my suits failed cover/invuln saves to be insta-killed by krak missiles. Two lone wolves, the bikers and a small grey hunter pack made it to my lines which resulted in carnage and a 5 turn tabling.

However, it was an enjoyable game against a friendly opponent and I like to think things would've been different if I'd had first turn and better damage table rolls. The lone wolves would've given me KPs which would've helped. Nevertheless with Matt losing to the other Tau player I was pretty sure that trophy was out of my reach. I blame Matt entirely here since not only should I have beaten him but the other Tau player might not have beaten that Wolves list either! Ah well.

Game 5 - Tau vs GK

My final game of the weekend saw me fighting Simon Ellis from the Spiky Club (they run Starsmash). I'd played his CSM army at The End Times last year but he's now running Grey Knights (like everyone else!). He's got a shedload of razorbacks and rhinos plus the obligatory 3 dreadnoughts. I'd be relying on damage table rolls again here! Not to mention the table could well have been a Cities of Death board with the amount of LoS blocking stuff! Brilliant! The game was table quarters again though so it could still be anyone's game.

I took first turn but with Dawn of War there'd be no shooting until turn 2. Some awful damage table rolls again saw me immobilising rhinos and destroying weapons on dreads. Simon advanced his rhinos/razors up to the centre line and smoked them all. I popped a couple of them but could only stun a razorback with death cults inside. The next couple of turns saw me destroying a few more transports and failing to kill others. That razorback made it to the end of the game too!

My commander squads dropped into the same quarter being some tanks and a dread. I blew up one of the rhinos with my broadsides and the commander squad opened up with low-AP. Unfortunately the bodyguard completely missed but the commander killed three purifiers leaving just the psycannons. The other commander team blew up a dread. They'd now have to weather a torrent of wire!

One team took the brunt of the shooting and only a single bodyguard remained with a solitary wound. The other team was unscathed though. In the following turn I blew up another rhino if deathrains and the full strength commander team annihilated the occupants. The solo bodyguard used some a markerlight hit to open up on the two psycannon purifiers but missed 2/3 shots despite BS4 leaving a grey knight standing. Fire warriors who found themselves without a devilfish opened up at him using their 30" range and did enough to finish him off thank god.

With the rest of my army surviving well up until now I still had a good chance of winning the game on quarters. My two home quarters had 400+ points in each and one of his had one and a half commander teams in it. Simon suddenly realised this in turn 5 and took steps to deal with it. He moved some purifiers in to use their VPs and their shooting to even the odds. They gunned down the solo bodyguard and some death cults who got out of a nearby razorback charged the other team. They drew the combat but reduced the squad by 50% meaning I'd lost that quarter.

In one of my home quarters Simon advanced two squads of purifiers, Coteaz and some death cults. This would give him a VP advantage if he could kill some of my stuff. Sure enough a rending psycannon shot was lucky enough to blow up my sky ray and fire from the other purifiers (with help from the dreads) finished off my broadsides. This left Simon with 3 quarters and with no Turn 6 I had no chance of doing anything about it.

Conclusion
One win and four losses is never a great performance but I really feel like I only had myself to blame (despite some shitty rolls). The game against the Blood Angels was the turning point. Not only did it knock my confidence but in the following games I was so focussed on the mission I didn't think about target priority enough. I'll do a full run down of what was good and bad in my next post but overall I think the Tau list I've got is pretty solid. With more experience and a bit better luck I could put in a good performance. Had I won that BA game I would've been likely to meet more mech and hence have a decent chance. That and I'd have been in a good chance of getting the Tau trophy. Ah well, onto Open War in April.