Surprise Attack: Blood Angels v. Tau

Last night, I got in my first game against the new Blood Angels... and it wasn't pretty.

My friend Tim was a Dark Angels player in 4th Edition, but the newest edition (and especially the vanilla Marine codex) have not been kind to that army, so he'd been taking a bit of a break from the game until the Blood Angels were announced. Now that the actual codex is available for reading and list-building, he's been contemplating several different builds, and last night he settled on one to try out against my MechTau+Pathfinders army. With 1500 points, he built something like this:

• Captain Tycho, Brother Corbulo, and 6 Sternguard Veterans in a drop pod
• Furioso Librarian Dreadnought in a drop pod
• Baal Predator w/ TL assault cannons and extra armor
• 2 11-man Assault Squads, each with 2 meltaguns, a sergeant w/an infernus pistol, and a sanguinary priest w/ an infernus pistol

Lately, our group has been enjoying playing missions out of the new Battle Missions book, so we rolled up a themed mission and ended up with Surprise Attack. This was probably the best mission we could have rolled up for Tim's army. I was on the defense, having to deploy my army at least 12" from all table edges, and with no unit being less than 6" away from any other. This left my army a bit scattered and disorganized. Meanwhile, his entire army entered on turn 1 from any and all table edges - and anything that could deep strike could do so on the first turn. This ended up putting his assault squads and dreadnought scattered amongst my armor, his veterans within rapid-fire range of my Fireknife suits, and his Baal Predator coming off the side of the board near my Piranhas. By the time his first turn was over, I'd lost one Piranha, the fusion blaster off the other one, and both Hammerheads; not a good situation for me to start with.

The rest of the game became became a game of cat-and-mouse, as I tried to pull away from his forces and focus fire on them. Sadly, most of my guns proved ineffective thanks to the Sanguinary Priests in each unit. Combining a 3+ armor save with Feel No Pain made it nearly impossible for pulse fire to stick. My Fireknives, on the other hand, were much more effective. In one round, they decimated Tycho's unit of veterans, reducing it to Tycho (with two wounds), Corbulo (with one wound), and one remaining Sternguard, partially thanks to some very lucky fire with the Cyclic Ion Blaster - I managed to roll three 6s on my wounding rolls, meaning they ignored FNP. I also had some luck with the remaining Piranha's gun drones, which managed to disarm the Predator with a shot to the rear armor. I then finished it off with more rear armor hits from a unit of Fire Warriors. Unfortunately, they and their Devilfish got picked off by the Furioso, thanks to a combination of Blood Lance and assaulting. My Deathrains had a chance to pick it off on my first turn, but both hits failed to penetrate its armor - my cursed dice rolling left me with two rolls of 2.

We called the game at the end of turn 4, as the only thing I had surviving was my Piranha; I had given up a ton of kill points - 20, due to the rules for Surprise Attack - and had only managed to get 2 for the Baal Predator. Partially, this is due to the scenario; it strongly favored the Deep Strike-heavy assault army that Tim was playing, and left me scattered across the board with my units unable to easily support one another. Also, there's the MVPs of his army - Sanguinary Priests and Infernus Pistols. The combination of melta-heavy assault forces and ICs that give them Feel No Pain and Furious Charge was just killer; I was losing one or two vehicles each turn, and I just couldn't deal enough damage in return to finish anything off. I did heavy damage to him - of his original 11-man assault squads, he had only 7 marines left between them, and his HQ/veteran squad was nearly wiped out. Unfortunately, I couldn't seal the deal and finish off any of them. As an assault-heavy army, they were more than a match for my Tau, even with their reduced numbers.

Despite my poor showing, I don't think it's hopeless against the Blood Angels. It is an uphill battle, but other scenarios won't necessarily favor them so strongly. Like other Marine armies, they've got a low model count, so it doesn't take a lot of casualties to weaken them. It's a matter of keeping them at arm's length for as long as possible and focusing fire. It'll be tough, thanks to the fact that, at least in this case, they're a deep-striking army that only scatters half as far as other deep strikers. Tim was able to drop his army pretty much where he needed them, and they served him very well. Fortunately, in most scenarios he won't get to drop all of them in on the first turn.

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