Road to NOVA: Space Wolves vs Tau 1500pts

This has been the first Wednesday that I could make it to the club and looks like the last for the rest of the month (unless I drag my kids with me at the end of the month) and I had a challenger.  One of the new members and I chatted a few months ago about painting and armies.  He asked if I wanted a match this week and always wanting to help recruit new players I said, "yes".  He did ask to have a lower point since his last battle versus Tyranids was a 3 hour marathon.

First, for a new player to last that long versus nids is an achievement.  Second, he played Ben. Ben is very good player that I am sure coached him in what to look for.  Learning an army is never easy and learning an opponent's army is also a challenge.  So he gets stuck in a 1500 point match versus Tau.  The army that you apologize for as your opponent is picking up their army.    

I guess the next question is why are you putting this under "Road to NOVA".  NOVA is 1850.  The main reason why is this a test to get a better feel for certain units.  I was spotlighting the buff commander and I also rolled the "Deep Strike" warlord trait.  I wanted to see how these things worked and if I would tweak my list for NOVA.  The list is here.

While I thought the buff commander was good in most situations, he didn't mesh with my initial list. The deep strike option was a complete mess with this list.  Not having my 8 markerlights on the board till the bottom of three hurt.

The setup was like this:

He went first and deployed first.   Two squads were on the board and the remainder were in pods.  He dropped a pod in front of my Riptide, my missilesides, and my kroot in the center.  His initial Combi-plasma salvo into the missilesides took out most of the drones, a side and a wound on another.  His runepriests hit the side twice with Jaws.  He failed one psychic test and the tide failed the other.  The kroot took some loses but hung tough. 

My return fire blew the command squad off the board and inflicted some wounds. 

He gets one more  pod in and drops between my two ruins.  He takes out the drones and the remaining sides plus the kroot in the center.  I get two kroot and outflank them on my side.  I take out most of his initial squad and put a big hurt on his newly dropped squad. 


He gets his next pod (dropping to bolster the first squad) and his remaining foot troops.  He then takes out a squad of Kroot. I get in my commander and crisissuits.  We drop in and cause some wounds on his squad by the kroot while my markerlights hit the longfangs which lose all but one guy to skyray fire.

Fourth round he finishes off my kroot and I inflict losses on his runepriest squad while dancing around.

Last round.  I kill a few guys and try to knock his infantry on the objective they are standing but fail.  So instead of a draw I get a tie.  Next week, I start working with the NOVA lists and my tactics for it.

Loss: 5 -2