| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2005 1:38 pm
Posts: 186
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Interesting battle report and a funny game area for the least 
The imperials:
Unlike others, I don't think this Steel Legion is that bad a list. Maxing out heavy tank formations seems pretty effective on paper. Sure, it could have been made more powerful by replacing the Baneblades with Shadowswords.
Maybe a bit short on AA with only 2 hydras. For the record, I would certainly have had a third one in the Baneblade company. But you tell us that this list is not worried much about massed air units in genreral and I quite agree with it. Indeed, most aircrafts have no way to defeat heavy tanks easily (that is excepting AX10s, of course  ).
So the Steel Legion you played was not a bad a list at all, but still supposed to suffer greatly from AX10s on paper because:
- about any formation in the Steel Legion army is a worthwhile target for the AX10.
- Imperial air cover is pretty thin in that respect.
==> Actually, I would expect AX10s to be worthwhile in this game against an army with plenty of reinforced targets and a thin air cover. If they're not, when will AX10s be worthwhile? 
The Tau:
Not that bad a list, still two weak points in the ground forces selection IMO:
- I am mitigated about the neat ammount of Pathfinders in this list. I don't see the need for 4 formations of them when you only have two Hammerhead formations to coordinate. Were they really worthwile?
- The supreme commander coming down from the sky in a four units formation seem quite counter effective, for you can't use his reroll while he is not on the board (not even to activate the orca it seems). Mine always battle on the ground in a bulked up formation (drones or stealth at least).
To sum it up, none of these armies seems perfect to me, and a well fought battle is what I expected.
The Game
About the actual game, I agree your opponent did not play the Whitesharks to their the best, but you made mistakes as well. At least one big one if you look at the following sequence of events:
Chris
(End of Turn 1)
Leman Russ and Mech had blastmarkers left on them.
...
(Turn 2)
the Russ sustained into a pathfinder formation, wiping it out
...
A-10 time. 1 plane failed to call up (oh for a crisis formation  ) but the other three crashed into the russ killing 7 (the first two planes broke them, the last one got 2 kills which translated into an immense 5 dead!).
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It's one event amongst others but a key one in my opinion. You should have Marshalled the tank company to remove blast markers and still shoot at -1, rather than Sustain fire. You wouldn't have lost the Tank company that way. So close to the break limit, your BtS formation was a very tempting target, and it was completely predictable that the AX1Os would go after your BtS.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say you play bad, but you didn't play perfectly either. As a result I don't think you can account for your opponent not playing the Whitesharks to their best because you didn't play your SL to their best in my opinion.
After that, I don't picture the positioning of the units very well, but I bet you could have have won the game on turn 3 if your tank company was still there. Instead the fourth turn cost you a lot, giving the AX10s yet another ground attack greenlight. 
Finally, the game result was decided counting victory points, in which case aircraft heavy armies have an edge because of their inherent survivability.
To sum up my opinion:
- This Steel Legion army is the ideal foe for AX10s. But both Tau and SL list have questionable formations from an effectiveness perspective.
- Both players made mistake. The Tau player made many small ones, you on the other hand made one big when giving your BtS.
- the game last 4 turns => advantage Aircraft heavy list.
- victory points were calculated => advantage Aircraft heavy list.
So in the end the result does not surprise me much. It's a small victory for the Tau, very small. Especially as I expected AX10s to be real good.
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