Vior'la Tau vs Orks
Matt-Shadowlord (Vior'la Tau) vs RuneJack (Ghazgkhull Mad Uruk Thraka Orks)RuneJack has been running a quality Ork force for the campaign that has been waged throughout the month, and for this game we agreed at the last moment to scale down to 2000pts in order to try lists for an upcoming small scale tournament.
Scaling down is painful (Toys! I want all my Toys!) but since Vior'la are in final test phases having a limited amount of points actually proved very useful.
Both of us would be running an air drop in our list -RuneJack with a Landa full of Ork boys, nobs and grots, and myself with an Orca of Crisis suits.
Deployment was chosen by Tau, so we did a corner deployment (distance from your enemy is your best friend!). I set up with two screens of scout skimmers to slow the advance, and firewarriors and pathfinders safely on overwatch on the blitz, with Riptides to their right.
The pride of the Ork army was the Supa Stomper formation. Fortunately I had exactly the right tool in my list to take it out - two AX-10 titan killing bombers. What could possibly go wrong?
Moving first, a large formation of Orks pushed aggressively up the centre, while Stormboys leapt from cover to cover.
The AX-10s hurtle over head, letting rip with their Titan Killing Twin Railcannons. Shock-waves reverberated from the cliffs as the entire battlefield was illuminated with an ethereal blue light, orks cowered behind their Nobs unwilling to believe that a weaker species could possess such might.
And the AX-10s missed with both their 3+ weapons, leaving the Super stompas completely unscathed.
After fightabommas scrambled to take out the AXs, the sky was clear for an Orca to approach down the other end of the battlefield. As it Dropped Crisis suits into terrain, markerlights illuminated their target and ensured there were no survivors.
At the end of the turn, the Ork had trampled their way through the centre, destroying tetras and moving to objectives.
Turn 2 began with a bang, with Tau taking initiative and calling in a massive air strike. This time, Sunshark bombers we called in first, screaming across the field and unleashing Pulse Bombs to strip shields from the enemy formation. No casualties were caused due to the reinforced armour of their targets, but they did remove 1 shield.
Immediately afterwards, the AX-10s came in behind them, mixing the formations to try ensure they'd be able to share defensive AA fire against Fightabommaz. This time tetras were able to markerlight the target, meaning they'd only need 2s to hit and hopefully destroy it.
And missed.
From the point of view of the game, this was a disaster. From the point of view of playtesting the Vior'la Tau list, this was actually useful as it shone a highlight on an issue; the game's low point size meant there wasn't the usual level of redundancy an epic army can expect, and having this many points tied up in non-scoring, non-contesting air units pushes the limits of sustainability. It's easy to gloss over the problem when they work (ie "375pts of Titan Killers killed 400pts of titans! #WINNING").
As all experienced Epic players know however, the truth is of course that when it comes to scoring and contesting, aircraft are as irrelevant as the targets they have killed.
My recommendation for smaller games where you need some anti RA or SH firepower would probably be the Moray, which is a lot less powerful and harder to use than 2 AX10s, but at least doesn't write itself out of the game by missing!
Back to the battle, where the Orks were planning their own throw of the dice; sending in a landa to assault the Tau BTS formation guarding the blitz. With no AA available to stop them, the Orks got in unscathed. On the ground they were greeted by a whithering amount of overwatch firepower, with some lucky dice meaning 3 grots, a boy and a nob were lost before assault began.
The Orks won the assault regardless, but had taken enough casualties to be as broken as the two fleeing tau survivors.
The empty orca then came in to attack the broken Landa, before being destroyed itself.
By turn 3, the Orks were decidedly on the run, as their regroup rolls were poor and they didn't have enough formations to make up the loss of the two that stayed broken.
The two remaining firewarriors moved back to the Tau blitz, while Sunshark bombers destroyed the broken ork boyz who had hoped to hold it.
Crisis suits double moved onto the Ork blitz, Riptides took a central objective and the remaining tetras took another.
I maintain the view that the Tau army was top heaving with fliers, but while RuneJack played a good game to try exploits weakness he was unlucky at a few pivotal moments. The result was a solid win for Tau after a shaky start.
