Final Fight

Well, this is it, my last game of the year, and probably the last wargame (with figures and an opponent I could shake hands with or flick peanuts at ) I'll have for six months.

Having already packed all my models and even my dice into a relatives attic; I left the game in the hands of Chris to arrange. And was duly presented with two 1250 point armies for 40k.

We set up some terrain across a 6 x 4 foot table and rolled off for who got what; luck was on my side on this and I got to choose. I selected the accursed Blood Angels; who Chris has used to defeat me so many times in the past.
The objective of the battle was to control the round house in the centre of the table. I chose to hold some of my assault marines as reserves, enabling them to strike deep into the battlefield. Chris employed standard Tau tactics of deploying well back to use his superior weaponry.

Initially It was going well for me, my artillery Whirlwind was deadly accurate on it's first turn and routed a unit of Fire Warriors straight away, Elsewhere my Predator and Attack Bike were able to thin out the Stealth Suits, which usually cause me such a problem. However all that good work was undone the next turn when Chris destroyed both the Predator and the Land Speeder.

With no reserves, I looked on the face of it; badly outnumbered.

Nevertheless, one group of Assault marines occupied the objective, whilst the others charged the Stealth suits. In principle this should have been a slaughter, as Blood angels are made for close combat, whilst Tau are not. In the event this combat lasted three rounds before a casualty was even caused, we both rolled terribly - except for our saves.

Finally I broke the stealth suits, though not quite catching them in the retreat. In the mean time though the other Assault squad had been wiped out. Fortunately my veteran squad of Assault Marines had dropped in and were causing casualties. The Tau had withdrawn to consolidate even further, Only the squad of Drones and a Crisis Battle suit were showing signs of advancing.

For the Assault marines on my left the Idea of a slogging match with the Stealth Suits held no appeal, so when the opportunity arose they broke left and charged the fire warriors. This left the Stealth suits with no viable targets and meant the Marines could chop through a soft target instead.
Indeed the Fire Warriors were easy meat and my Assault marines were able to move to threaten the Tau rear. The Chaplain and the Death Company also arrived and with the veterans moved to hold the objective. The Veterans were able to eliminate the Drones and secure the perimeter, whilst the Tactical marines gave covering fire. A passing mention of the Whirlwind which after its first turn success had failed to hit anything at all. Chris wasn't even wasting time shooting at it any more, a sure sign of how pointless it had been.

Instead he expended everything he could to try and destroy all the troops on the objective. Fortunately for me one member of the Death Company survived, and at the end of the game I had the objective in my control.

When we worked out the victory points there was only 40 points in it, which made it a draw; well you can't say fairer than that. The blood Angels had suffered terrible losses to secure the objective. It was great to finish with neither a win or a loss though. We all came out as winners.

Elsewhere most of the club was embroiled in their Formula De (F1 racing Game) campaign. eleven players clustered round the board.

Also knocking about was a 10/12mm Italian WW2 army that I had to get a couple of shots of. Here and M13/40:

And a command version:

Later on the usual crowd were playing the Arkham Horror, Cthulu board game.

Further to this the was a Pacific Naval board game and a 20mm WW2 game; but neither were especially photogenic.

So, that's all the wargaming done for the year. What's next?...