Tau Empire vs Chaos Space Marines

Mechanized vs Infantry

Mission  Source: Open War Cards

Mission: Supply Cache / Modified Hammer & Anvil / Eager for the Fight

Points:   2000

Armies: Tau Empire - Tau Sept vs Chaos Space Marines (With no actual Marines) 

Setup
For this battle report, since it was played a while ago, and I have either lost my notes or forgotten most of what happened, I'm just going to post the pics, and add captions.

I was torn about this deployment since my Tau were in the middle, with enemy forces on both flanks. If I got to go first, I thought I could fight one side at a time, but if I went second, I was pretty sure this would be over turn 2.

Anyway, check it out. It was fun to play, just kinda lop-sided.

Mission, Deployment and Twist.

Tau Armoured column that has apparently been ambushed.

Cultist bomb 9" away, with Bloodletter backup.

3 squads of Obliterators, a Daemon Prince, 2 more 10 man
 Cultist squads, and a FW Dread thingy that shoots mortal wounds.

Tau get first turn, and promptly kill the FW Dread thing
with Seeker missiles, Fusion Blasters and hatred. 

All the soft squishy targets get the attention of all the anti-infantry weapons.

Tau shooting sweeping away the nearest and worst threats.

Minimal damage to the Oblits though.

Bloodletters are surprisingly effective against vehicles, hence they had to die.

In retaliation, the Oblits kill the two Piranhas.

The cultist bomb shoots twice, and does 6 wounds to a Devilfish, without any heavy weapons.

Pincering the Oblits and Daemon Prince, though the Tau have used all their Seeker Missiles.

Hammerheads and Devilfish shoot up and then charge into the Cultist bomb, but still can't wipe it out.

6 x 6 man Strike Teams spread out looking for the supply cache.

That pile of bodies in the bottom left of the pic? Yeah, they're not dead. That's the Cultist bomb coming back and annihilating a 6 man Strike Team, and almost killing the damaged Devilfish.

Turn 3.

Supply cache located!

Trying to hem in a Daemon Prince.

Having secured the battelfield around the supply cache, the forces of chaos withdraw, since they have no way of getting to the supply cache.

Summary

As you can see, not really a close game. None of the cultists had heavy weapons,the Tau killed the Dread thing that spits out Mortal Wounds before it could do anything, and then the Oblits just got whittled down and hemmed in.

The Daemon Prince did manage to assault the Commander, but his one attending Shield Drone made 4 5+ Ignore Wound rolls before it died, saving the Commander from an ignoble death.

An army that is comprised entirely of units that can FLY is quite powerful. Fall Back, shoot, hitting on 5+ when Overwatching...rinse and repeat. We will see how this mechanized Tau list performs against an army that has heavy weapons. 

That's it for now!

Until next time, happy gaming!