From 1d4 chan anom: A while back my store had what we called the Tau alliance, 7 different Tau players who would pool together resources and money, work together in apocalypse level games, etc. At the time there were three Imperium of Man players. Me a space marine player, my buddy who ran Imperial guard and a guy who ran Grey knights off and on. Now the store owner was a cool guy, would set up some nice themed games for us and one of them always ended up being Tau vs. Imperium Of Man, so we had to represent. We got stomped every time. They had 3 Mantas THREE OF THEM. On top of every type of flying vehicle that could be had. Points wise we were outnumbered sometimes as badly as 4 to 1. We would get a fuckton of planetary/ground defenses to make up for it, but it was never enough. All battles ended with us being slaughtered almost to the man, but we gave as good as we got planned and plotted and made every inch of ground costly. One week the store owner threw us a bone. Unbeknownst to me, the Imperial Guard player had recently purchased Castellan Creed, a general and hero of the Imperium and the store owner had made a deal with the imperial guard player to lend three warhound titans to use. I on my own had pulled out the stomps. The game we were going into was a invasion type scenario, where the Imperium was mustering its forces to deny the xenos filth a key comms tower. The comms tower battle was going to be a battle within a battle, a standard game of 40k within a larger apocalypse level game with apocalypse force allotments. To wit I had brought my secret weapon, 50 space marine terminators that I had gained over time (and from my Dad) all of whom would be keyed into defensive locations around a tower essentially a big square loaded with defenses. I planned to dig my heels in and dare the Tau scum to take it from me. Our battle plan was sneaky as fuck: Force the Tau players down streets and alleys to limit the rush, deny them safety of jump in shoot and jump out tactics, bombard units when we could and use hydras and point defense guns to bring down the fast flyers, then we have space marine infantry and fast attack units come in to isolate, outflank and crush individual squads outright. It worked, sorta. While the mantas were weathering the storm, their other flyers were dropping from the skies and our outflankers were coming strong due to the comms tower. We surrounded and ground crisis battle suits to paste, basilisk artillery guns shelling the ones we couldn't envelope in murderous crossfire. They came back strong, taking out tanks and pill boxes, jumping out of ambushes, space marines were dying in the droves. Then they came for the comms tower after taking two of the games five objectives on the far edge of the map. I was waiting for them. Every person that said normal space marine termies weren't worth a shit would have shut there traps. The xenos fell upon my bunkers and METAL BOXES (tanks) and they burned and died in ignoble repute the way they should have. Bolters. missle launchers and cyclones flared, autosensed building defenses came to life, dice were flying. Enemy fire warriors, suits, devilfish transports were dropping, I couldn't hide my grin as they walked to certain doom. Then the goddamned manta came over head. Now, for everyone who has never dealt with a manta they are considered a flying transport, an oversized, upgunned transport. It dropped some 40 crisis suits right into the square, bypassing my frontline defenses. Imagine lord of the rings, helms deep, when the deeping wall was blown up. It was like that I pulled landspeeders from other battles in a desperate attempt to shore up my defenses, but it was to late. They were all over me plasma and flamers hitting my entrenched termies, manta bringing down fire on any support from friendly skimmers and flyers. Hell, the best I could hope for was that when they went down they would crash into the suits ripping me to pieces. My Imperial Guard buddy couldn't even support me, because due to the way the square was constructed, tanks couldn't get in and the basilisk artillery needed to keep fire up on his end just to stay on the level, while I used the wrecks of his tanks to give cover to my space marines. I finally made the decision to surrender the now overrun comms tower to the xeno menace, but they would not have it. I had my few remaining termies escape the square and directed my imperial guard buddy to shell the tower using my landspeeder as a spotter. The tower went down in a full apocalyptic explosion, taking out ALL Tau forces in the square, the landspeeder, 3 of my 8 remaining termies and damaging the manta. Ave imperator, motherfuckers. After that shit went down hill in a hurry. I didn't expect the fools to devote one of there three mantas to taking the square and it was only by the blessing of He upon His Throne that the manta in question dropped its entire payload. LOSING said payload and was damaged in the effort losing many of its guns. We began to pull back, my space marines leaving behind squads in buildings to harry Tau forces and buy time. At this point the Tau alliance was in full gloat mode, smiles, drinks and brofists abound. They took the time to kill each individual squad i left behind to a man, slowly moving up the three mantas to recover suits to drop later and shelling buildings to rubble if the occupants proved to "stubborn". My buddies sentinels were being greased and for 2 turns we got our shit handed to us, the ONLY good thing that came out of it was my landraider (tank) dropping one of the mantas, The Sanctum Of Peace, causing it to come down hard, losing nearly all the suits and troops onboard on top of killing a score of ground forces. It was turn five or six, I don't remember. The asskicking was in full swing. Losing the manta enraged the Tau forces and was a heavy shot of morale for the imperials. We were skirmishing with them, using units to draw them out in their bloodthirsty anger, again surrounding them and crushing them, but we had neither the numbers nor might to continue it. Finally the reserve roll. I remember that moment. My buddy's eyes lit up, he had teh biggest grin i've ever seen on a man that wasn't on my own face and with one word changed the fate of the battle. "CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED" And the owner brought our three warhound titans and plonked them on the enemy flank. Commence jaw dropping, yelling, arguing while my buddy lit up a cigarette. I expected him to say "YOU MAD XENO SCUM?" It was glorious beyond compare. In a single salvo they dropped a manta in an apocalyptic explosion killing so many guys i didn't bother to count the models and nearly bringing the other manta out of the air. The next salvo eliminated all the suits that were assaulting our front line. In subsequent turns, we surged forth, tanks rolling out running over whatever could be reached after blowing warriors away. I embark all my remaining space marines on transports and push forward. We took back the square, we took the barracks and slaughtered the Tau that were in it, tanks threw fire and death and Titans reigned supreme on the battlefield, uncontested Lords amongst children. The tau quailed with fear and fled before the might of Man in its full brilliance, the last manta retreating far to the rear, leaving behind many fire warriors and suits with no cover or safety, no mercy asked and none given. We took back almost the entire city in one fell, unstoppable wave, pushing the Tau to the last objective they held. Held they did, at that. Their courage never failing them at the end. They struck back as only a cornered beast can, throwing themselves upon us like wolves. The last manta surged forward and in a final act of defiance levied all its remaining weapons at one of the titans destroying it and causing an explosion that killed many on both sides before being felled by the two remaining titans and the combined might of our remaining tanks. The battle continued for a while, before the last suits were destroyed and fire warriors ran off. The battle concluded, we counted up casualties. I personally lost nearly 80 marines, 44 terminators, as well as various tanks and hero's. In a point game where we had somewhere between 9k-10k points of troops and the Tau having nearly 30k points of troops we won handily. Victory to the Imperium of Mankind. Best game i've played in a long time.
Simply... Epic, read it all and it reads as good as the epic battles of the Ultramarine novels, great job and thanks for sharing!
Sounds like hilarious fun. Imagine this was on PC and you would have one hell of an epic fight to view.
This brings me to one thought I always shared with one of my friends: Why is there no table-top game of Wh40k? Kinda like all those Trading Card Games but that with winning battles you get some kind of points you can invest in new figures and such and even collect different armies if you like to. And the cool thing would be you could change your army colors easily (unlike in real life) as it is all digital! And Premium Store for Cosmetics or to faster purchase additional units. But I do not want to ruin this fantastic post here with my spam.... Just felt like sharing it as it fit into context. EDIT: maybe an other thread for this idea would be suitable.
Honestly... I think it's because GW wants people to pump their money into the figurines et al. If they made the table-top into a PC game then they would lose a lot of their custom.
