Going up against Tau & Necrons....with a Riptide unit?

 Hi all,

I managed to get a game in recently, which is not the most common event, and it was quite a good time, though extremely one-sided. I was asked to fill in as the fourth player in a 2 vs 2 game bringing 1000pts per player. I wiggled around with things so I could get 10 Deathwing with Belial, a squad of 5 and 5 sniper scouts to hold the backline. I was paired up with an ork player and we played against Necrons and Tau.

It was nasty haha. I didn't realise just how many tough things could be brought by these two powerful codices and how much we'd be hurt by their firepower. Luck swung back and forth but overall it was uphill for us.
 

Here's turn 1 after my deepstriking bomb landed. This is where I discovered that the commander can join the Riptide like a unit? Say what???? As we went through the rules and discussed it it became clear that there is no actual restriction on this behaviour (unless it's changed with a new FAQ) and my opponent was in the right. While game wise, I had no legitimate complaints it did bring up two nasty things that hurt my attack.

The majority toughness of the unit above is now 6, so the commander wasn't getting wounded nearly as much as normal, despite being the closer model. Also, once we charged into combat (the riptide being the closer after some movement), we had to strike against the commander's WS4 as the majority skill. So the giant robot suit made the commander tougher while the commander made the giant suit distinctly better in combat. Now my rolls were pretty dismal but with a lot of threes in the dice, I ended up losing about four thunder hammer hits that otherwise would have struck. Damn you majority statistics.

My playing buddy (the Necron player's girlfriend). I felt bad for her because from the start she just got shot off the table and didn't have a chance to really get in the game at all. The Doomsday ark put a large blast on the battlewagon in turn 1, blew it up and killed a bunch of orks. From them on it it was just a wrap up for the Necron/Tau alliance.

Despite all of the challenges we suffered with the majority stats noted above, the Riptide did get torn apart by the Deathwing. Special kudos go to the lightning claw trooper who took two wounds off the giant beast despite wounding on 6s and having to go through a 2+ save (go for the eyes!!!). The commander suit took a wound and then fled combat, staying just short of the table edge as he ran. I could have challenged him with Belial but elected not to because I was wary of getting into a drawn out and fruitless duel where we were both trying to get through 2+ saves for three turns. Perhaps I should have.

We lost badly, failing to keep the relic, losing first blood, slay the warlord (twice) and so the game was a wrap by about turn 4. Ouch. Things I learned:

• Riptide 'units' can be tough. 
• The Riptide in general is very nice for the points. My opponents thought it was expensive until I pointed out that it's basically 4 deathwing terminators with a heavy weapon. Damn.
• Supporting fire by the Tau is dangerous. We were lucky with the rolls but when charging the riptide we got shot by it, the commander, the crisis team, the fire warriors and the hammerhead (Longstrike).
• Tau crisis suits can carry double weapons as well as twin linked now. The commander was putting down 4 BS5 plasma shots in rapid fire range. That's killy.
• Necron tesla is really beastly. I've not played against them before and it was impressive how much damage they can lay down.

All in all a tough game and not the most fun, but it was good to see new units on the table and play against some new factions. In hindsight we should have paired up the teams differently as having the Necrons join Orks against Deathwing and Tau could have been a blast. No big deal though and I've met some new gaming buddies, which is always a plus.

In other news I've been working on my Dark Eldar/Eldar raider alliance. Most of the assembly is done but some greenstuff work needed to be done on the Razorwing's flying base. I bought a stack of greenstuff for my romantic christmas project but didn't end up using it. I wanted to continue the theme of rocky bases that I started with the dark eldar infantry. 

To avoid wasting greenstuff I chopped up lots of sprue pieces and glued them down first. They offered the bulk of the base and let me use the greenstuff to make the rocks and shapes on top. You can see the starting point on the left and the finished one on the right. It looks even better with the quick paintjob I've done on it. Simple but effective.

I've also had to do a little work on the razorwing hull with greenstuff. The Dark Eldar vehicles (and models in general) are excellently designed and have such well made joints that they are normally really good. In the case of the razorwing though, I could get the back of the hull to fit tightly or the front of the hull, but not really both. Perhaps I messed something up in the assembly (the turbine intakes are fiddly and can be put in upside down) but I don't think so. In any case I added a little greenstuff reinforcing to the bits where the pieces were not tightly joined. 

All in all, I'm getting on well with the new army. Now I just need the weather to dry out again so I can go and prime them.

All the best

Pete :-)