Pipped At The Post
Destroyer Lord Bryghax led a force 1500 strong into Tau territory on Sigma 293. He had 28 immortals, 10 aboard the Night Scythe NNV True Spirit with a cryptek, whilst he led five destroyers including one heavy. The immortals with tesla carbines held the left, immortals with gauss blasters were in the centre left.
On the right, 7 tomb blades, centre right Brygax himself, to his left three heavy destroyers and further left a C’Tan shard of the Nightbringer. The engagement opened in darkness and at extreme range however we were able to secure first blood destroying one of the pairs of crisis suits on the enemy right.
The Tau had a riptide in the centre with broadsides close by together with a unit of pathfinders. Two squads of fire warriors with Aun VA and his bodyguard were on the left. A Piranha was at the rear on the right. Holding three objectives scored the enemy a point for an early score of 1-1.
The Tau advanced with their remaining crisis suits destroying two tomb blades and the Piranha came forward too. Our tomb blades now failed to assault the crisis suits losing another pair to overwatch. We were also losing destroyers in the centre and our immortals were only making sluggish progress on the left. Nevertheless, both sides scored again this turn for 2-2.
The left hand objective exploded but failed to injure any immortals nearby, the Tau meanwhile continued to draw objectives that they already held. Our central immortals now all fell to the riptide, our Night Scythe meanwhile was slow in appearing but the Piranha exploded under fire. The tomb blades failed to damage the pathfinders however.
The C’Tan now fell to concentrated fire from the fire warriors and our tomb blades and heavy destroyer units were wiped out. All our destroyers were also gone leaving Bryghax with just his heavy escort. The True Spirit arrived at last and dropped immortals against the fire warriors, under fire from our two units of immortals and the True Spirit, Aun Va’s warriors were destroyed.
The Riptide had some issues getting hot and failing its Nova charge but our flier was hit by a broadside but survived, the Tau had scored two more unanswered points and our immortals on the left were at half strength, with only the destroyer Lord and Heavy destroyer in the centre remaining apart from that and the True Spirit.
Aun Va was down to just a few warriors having lost his bodyguards, with time running out we had three tesla equipped units ready t take down Aun Va who was worth 4-6 victory points to us with the score at 2-5. A combination of unlikely saves and poor shooting however left Aun Va and three warriors standing at the end of our shooting.
Our cryptek and his few surviving immortals assaulted, but only three made it into combat and it was a draw. The action broke off, we had gained linebreaker with our desperate charge but this made the score only 3-5 instead of a might have been 7/9-5. Damn!
Our rallied forces were just 443 strong having suffered losses of 70%. The enemy had lost three units in all with heavy loss to the second fire warrior unit. Estimated losses 40% with the riptide down to 1 wound.
4.4.15
Home 