League match 3; Showdown of the xenos!

Santa came through for me!

But unfortunately he also came through for Sune.

So in that case it should be an even match?
Read the battlereport below and come to your own conclusions. Who did Santa love the most.

Pregame thoughts

As I wrote in my previous post this match would come down to one thing. Who started the game. Fortunately for the game itself that was not true. Theres nothing as boring as a game where the result is predetermined by someone starting or not starting.

Anyways. The battle would be between the Tau suits and my splintercannons and lances.

The battle itself

Mission:

Would would be playing for 6 narrow bands, each 8 inches deep and 72 inches wide, for the primary objective. Each band would give a different number of points, the one at the opponents backline would be the most worth to you.
For secondary we would have kill points with troops being worth double.

And just to mix it up even more, every singlenon-vehicle unit in the game with WS that started the game with more than four models would be scoring.

Dark eldar deployment

Tau deployment

Since we ran short on time, we kind of rushed the game from turn three and I forgot to take pictures.

Turn 1

In my first turn I move up aggressively. I need to make an impact on the Tau firepower, otherwise im not gonna last beyong turn three. The raider with the five wyches zoom up in his face. The other one with the Succubus holds back to deal with outflanking kroots.

My primary targets are the suits which are wellhidden in a  ruin. Only two Venoms can see them. The rest of the force target Broadsides. First with Venoms and then with lances and blasters.

My fire is right taget hitting and wounding as it should. The suits take all their armor saves and loose a couple of drones against the two venoms.
Against the broadsides i remove several drones but my lances fail to get through the cover saves. Its enough to put morale checks on all broadside units and a single fire warrior unit that were hit by splinterrifle fire from two disembarked warrior squads.

All morale checks are passed and an intact Tau force prepares to return fire.

The suits crawl out from their hiding places and lay into my gun line.
The return fire is hard but i think I get of pretty easy with only one dead raider, three dead Venoms and one immobilized Venom.
My five wyches break and runs. They can recover though since they are above half strenght.

Turn 2

Ok the suits are out in the open now. Well not that much in the open. They are still in cover, but Sune decides not to move the back into hiding since he put more wounds on the suits themselves with dangerous terrain checks (5) than I did with my combined fire.

Both my Reaver squad enters the game and zooms up towards the Tau backline to try and get his attention.

I shuffle my forces around to get line of sight to the suits. My Succubus goes full speed up behind a piece of terrain that obscures it from most of the Tau forces but would allow me to assault right into his suit and broadside line the round after.

In the shooting phase 15 lances and blasters lay into two units of 3 suits each. After the firing is done the result is one dead suit. Sune saved 8 out of 9 coversaves on suits that would have instant killed them.

Guess Santa is giving gifts to everyone today and not just me!!

My warriors manage to break a single group of pathfinders who unfortunately only run three inches and regroup the round after.

The Tau forces has their two units of outflanking Kroots enter the game, one from each side. They enter midfield or towards my backline in close proximity of cover.

The remaining Tau forces shuffle around a bit but otherwise stays centered on the ruin.

And then the shooting commences.

Tau turn 2 before firing at my lines

After the shooting is done all I got left is three Venoms, two immobilized one of them missing a weapon, all the Ravagers were gone.

My Succubus, eight wyches and the haemonculus, also decided that getting pinned when their Raider exploded was the way to go.

Turn 3

At this point what I had left was struggling to get into cover in my own half of the table to try and go to ground and survive as long as possible. If I could contest the primary objective I would be able to get some battlepoints, since tournament points was out of the question by now.

The one thing I still had with potential to screw up the Tau were my pinned Succubus and friends.

The Tau got their remaining reserves in and the deepstriking suits with fusion blasters dropped down right behind my one remaining Venom that were doing ok and turned it into a burning pile of metal and dogpoop.

One of the commanders with his drones jumped up to use his flamer on the Succubus and friends. The Kroots moved up also to screen me of and ensure that I had to assault them and not go straight for the suits and broadsides.
After the firing were done only two wyches were dead and the haemonculus had a single wound.

Turn 4

Again the dwindling force of dark eldars were hiding in ruins except for the Succubus who along with heir harem assaulted the Kroots and the Shas´el.
Somehow the Kroots managed to only loose by a few and stayed in combat with a good morale check. Which I actually approved of quite alot, assuming I would get out of combat after the Tau turn four.

The remainder of my foces died. I now literally only had my Succubus + friends left and the three running wyches from turn 1 who finally had decided to regroup right on my backline in a crater.

The close combat ended as predicted with the wyches destroying the kroots and Shas´el. The haemonculus died but that was expected.

Turn 5 + 6

So what to do?
Well since the game was already lost to me I would try and salvage whatever I could. I had to kill more stuff to draw on the tertiary and get a couple of battlepoints with me from this match.

My wyches moved up and with fleet they managed to get a multicharge in on two groups of Broadsides and a single group of suits. The wyches won the closecombat thanks to agonisers and either wiped the suits or ran them of the table.
Afterwards they moved into cover in the ruin, that previously were the Tau firebase. Here they were out of sight by any of the oppositions forces.

The Tau mostly shuffled away from the succubus and took potshots and them and the three wyches sitting in my backfield.

And thus ended the Showdown of the Xenos with a smashing victory for the Tau.


Results
Primary: Control most bands in the opponents tablehalf. (Tau)
Secondary: killpoints with troops being worth double (Tau). They won this one with something like 29 - 11.
Tertiary: difference of 600 points in victory points (Draw)

18 - 2 for the Tau.
Damn you Santa!

Where did I go wrong?

 I did two big mistakes. One in deployment and one in my first turn. After that it all came down to the cover saves Sune took.

My first mistake was giving the Tau a deployment zone with a building in it. It was possible for the Tau to hide the suits in the corner of it and deny alot of my firepower LOS to them.
Instead I should have given them the deployment zone where the big rocks were. Those I would have been able to swing around the sides of and get more firepower onto the suits.

My second mistake was not flying the wyches with the Succubus up into the Taus face immediately. Instead I held back assuming I would need them to clean up outflanking Kroots in my own backfield. As it turned out that was dumb. Considering when the Kroots came in I basically did not have an army any longer.

Lesson learned ..... never trust Santa.