The Massacre

Had a fun game on Sunday against a great Nid player. He's been playing nids for a long long time and was looking forward to playing against the new Tau codex. Below is his narrative of our game, and honestly he makes my little blue guys sound much more heroic than the way they died screaming and soiling themselves.

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The Massacre of Pat's Tau By David Caldwell

The Tau, in their new found technology, have once again taken to the stars in search of new planets to bring into the fold, for the Greater Good.  What they found was far from what they wanted.

The Tau had been monitoring a small planet and had noticed several small scouting parties arrive to the planet.  After weeks and even months in some cases, communications ceased and many of the life forms of the recently arrived races could not be found.  Only a Dark Eldar party left the planet at high speeds.  The Tau had  evaluated the situation and found the planet to be a nice place to colonize but because of the recent activities a fleet had called in, if needed they would take it by force.  A Battle force was assembled and sent to the planet, they had recently found a ancient Relic and wanted to check it out.  An outpost was created and awaited for the arrival of the rest of the fleet, a small force was sent out to scout the area near the Relic.

Sometimes passing the leadership test sucks

The Tau commander with his bodyguard surveyed the area and looked over his force.  The fire warriors set up just behind a ridge, Broadsides taking up the right flank on a hill along with the Stealth group, Left flank had Pathfinders supported by a Hammerhead searching the area and other forces were on standby awaiting command.  So far all was peaceful and quite, maybe too quite, but because he was new to the planet the commander didn’t think it an issue.  Other than some unknown blips the area was still.  The Tau Commander gave the word and the Stealth force and Pathfinders moved forward, searching for anything out of the ordinary.  Soon garbled transmissions started coming through, it was difficult to understand, something seemed to be jamming the signal. 

Tau Commander, ”Say again”

His answer came from the Hammerhead Commander Longshot “Stealers, we have Stealers on the Left Flank, Pathfinders have engaged the enemy!”

“Broadside unit here, Unknown blips have appeared on the other side of the ridge, all communication with Stealth unit have been lost.”

The Tau Commander checked all scanners, “Command, we have engage a hostile force, Stealth Unit is down.  Send in reinforcements, now.” 

“Commander, this is Command we have air support on its way.  We don’t have anything heavy on the ground yet but a new Riptide is being launched from cruiser to your location.”

“To all Fire Caste, enemy incoming, shoot everything on sight, reinforcements are on their way.  Keep this zone clear.”

A hardy yell went up over the comms.

Then all hell broke loose.

Broadsides on the left flank let fly Rail guns and missiles directly over the ridge and walked the barrage away from them, blips disappeared as Termagants were blasted by High Yield warheads.  The pathfinders fired into the Stealers, dropping several of their number but they could not be stopped as two BroodLords and the left over stealers torn into them.  The ground erupted in a burst of rock and dirt as two Trygons and a Mawloc appeared.  The Mawloc coming up directly under the broadside unit destroyed couple of the drones and injuring all the Tau in the process.  The air shook as all three roared their defiance and challenges to the sky.  A seed pod slammed home directly in front of the Firewarriors and the ever dreaded Doom floated out.  FireWarriors and Broadsides took the full brunt of the mind attack and many fell to the powerful psyker.  As the last Pathfinder fell to the Broadlords a new and odd looking group of Stealers moved out of the foliage and into the battle.

 “Commander, HammerHead here, Pathfinders lost, moving back to your position, be aware new targets are incoming.”

“Acknowledged, stall them as long as you can.”

The Tau emptied clip after clip into the oncoming horde, which in a matter of seconds had tripled in size.  Missiles shook the ground and sent bugs in all directions, but still they pushed forward.

“Commander, Air Caste is inbound.”  The ground was torn up as plasma bolts rained down from the sky and strafed the bugs. 

“Glad you could join us, Air Ca...”  The air exploded as the Air Caste fighter detonated in mid air, drowning out the last spoken words from the Commander.

As the explosion was some Terrible Omen for the Tau, many calls started to come in from all over the battle field.

“Commander, Broadside 2, I have a heavy enemy engaging me, I can noooooo…*Static*”.

“Sir this is LongShot, HammerHead is being chased by heavy enemy, will need to disengage soo…..”, An explosion could be heard in the distance, which was directly behind the command squad.

The Tau Commander was taking it all in, he was surrounded with no way out, “To all Tau, shoot and kill the Doom creature.”  The Tau all took aim and let loose with everything they had, only stopping to reload.  In the distance their heard the cry of the Doom but as the smoke and dust cleared, they saw that the creature was still up and moving.  A sonic boom hit the area and all looked to see as the RipTide came down, weapons free the Riptide took the fight to the enemy and put everything into the Tervigon.  Unscathed the Tervigon roared it’s challenge and the Termagants in the area turned direction, straight into the RipTide.

Again looking around the Tau Commander knew it was over. They had no way out.  No more reserves were coming and the enemy was bearing down on them, fast.  “Commander of the Riptide, disengage, get back to command and let them know what happened here.  They must be warned, we will hold them off for as long as we can.” 

“Understood.”  With that the giant robot’s jet pack came to life. Looking back, the commander of the Riptide only sighed, knowing that all had already fallen.

Once again the Nids faded away into the night, waiting for the next prey to show and to rebuild their nest.