Moral Victory
Overlord Tiblescu led a force 1496 strong on Medacol XIX to engage recently enhanced Tau interlopers pursuing expansion in the Fekellis Systems. He had two squads of immortals led by Crypteks and a royal court of three crypteks and three lords. A Triarch Stalker and the Annihilation barges NNV Harbinger of Glory and NNV Noble Warrior added their firepower, and a squad of deathmarks were in reserve together with the Doom Scythe NNV Gallant
Tau forces included a riptide battlesuit on their right and three gunships, one in the centre and two on our left. Their force was bulked out with around six large squads of troops. We advanced cautiously, gauss immortals on the left, barges and stalker in the centre, tesla immortals and our HQ on the right. Our eldritch lances engaged picking off a few troops but the Tau responded powerfully with their superior range.
The left hand immortals fell early as Tau gunships advanced to engage the stalker and Harbinger of Glory. On the right we were resilient as fire poured in from enemy units, then the Noble warrior was destroyed by the third Tau vehicle in the centre.
Our reserves were slow in coming on but at last the deathmarks arrived deep striking behind the Tau left and the Gallant surged on over our left, cutting down the enemy warlord and blowing up the deepest Tau tank with its death ray, taking fire from enemy warriors as it did so.
The other enemy vehicles were resisting well but being worn down by our remaining vehicles and eventually both were wrecked allowing them us to advance our support and swing round across towards the enemy centre and right. The Harbinger destroyed the left hand enemy troop squad as it did so.
Meanwhile back on the right the enemy brought three troop squads and the battlesuit against our advance and the immortals were destroyed, but then the HQ assaulted the battlesuit and after taking damage, it was eliminated by the overlord’s Tesseract labyrinth.
The deathmarks having ludicrously held their fire, now wiped out the closest enemy troop unit, the Gallant also inflicted heavy damage on two others paving the way for assault to continue by our HQ. It was then shot down by skyfire from two enemy units it had overflown on the centre, actually crashing onto one of them. The deathmarks failure to open fire was to prove a costly mistake.
As the stalker and Barge engaged from the left with the deathmarks, another two troop units were destroyed or fled, our HQ unit was down to the injured overlord, one cryptek and one lord and it systematically destroyed most of the last troop unit on the right doing much damage with mindshackle scarabs.
The deathmarks meanwhile broke the last and largest remaining troops but they rallied just sort of fleeing and returned to retake the central objective in their deployment zone. This would be the only objective held as the battle ended. Along with first blood, this two point objective against our linebreaker and Slay the warlord gave a three two victory to the Tau, despite the fact that they were down to two partial units having taken an estimated 95% casualties.
Our forces had the Harbinger still intact having taken minor damage, plus the Triarch stalker, three survivors from the HQ and a full complement of deathmarks. Total value of the survivors was 738 having lost two squads of troops, the Gallant and Noble Warrior, two lords and three crypteks, a casualty rate a fraction over 50%.
13.4.13
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