10/08/2005

The Tau Beat Me Down... Again

Today I played Jason, aka An00bis... a good 1500-point Seek & Destroy mission at Omega level. I lost... and it wasn't one of those "close" losses people talk about when two people of equal skill meet face to face and square off. No, this was one of those things where Jason took out his wrench, unscrewed all my bolts and just let my army fall into a giant heap of scrap parts.

Basically, here are the main points of note:
- The list was: Seer Council (3 Farseers, 3 Warlocks), One Black Guardian Storm Squads in Wave Serpents & Enhanced by Warlocks, One Falcon tooled to the nines, Three War Walkers armed to the teeth with Starcannons.
- I was playing Ulthwe, not Ulthwe Strike Force. I shouldn't have done that. Playing Ulthwe Strike Force requires a certain degree of balls and, when I considered the fact that I was playing against Tau, I left mine in my other pants. And I paid for it; Ulthwe is what brought me down, ultimately... because I really just played straight into his strengths. As I am rather afraid of Tau, I always assume I can't use my usual tactics. What I tend to forget is that my usual tactics are what I do best and changing to do something that isn't what I do best is actually a step backwards.
- Escalation fucked me. He started with almost everything on the table. Me? Because I had almost everything mounted, I started with my Seer Council on the table... and nothing more. He managed to get into position and get some nice lanes of crossfire going. I only managed to shove a Seer Council behind a rock as they all hugged each other in terror and pooped their rune armor.
- The rolls in this game (both his and mine) were unbelievably bad. Now, I realize that all players who roll dice have this "one that got away" tall-tale tradition about how bad their dice rolls are, but... I've never seen rolling so bad. I've never seen someone pick up three dice, roll a one, a two, and a one... pick them up again, roll them again, and get three ones on the second try. It just got downright silly. Both Jason and I conceded that if we had been rolling "average" rolls, the game would have turned out quite differently.
- If you're careful with your War Walkers and you pick your battles, they can be quite resilient. This is yet one more game where I'm surprised how well they fared. Don't get me wrong; they're always dead by the end of the game, but they tend to easily make their points back before they end up eating dirt.

I've got a nice collection of pics here; more than the average amount, in fact. I didn't post thumbnails this time because the bandwidth drag would be kinda heavy, so I just labeled them and you can click whatever catches your fancy.

* Gun-Slingin' Broadside
* Fire Warriors En Regalia
* Broadside Takes Aim
* Crisis Suits Touch Down
* Kroot In Their Natural Habitat
* The Rail-Gunnenator
* Possibly The Only In-Focus, Close-Up Photo Of My War-Walker I've Ever Taken In My Life
* Kroot And Storm Guardians Tango
* The Battle Heats Up
* Off-Road Hammerheadin'
* Tau Human Auxilliaries
* The Tau Commander

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