Small Tournament, Big Fun!
I had some time to play 40k and found out the local GW store was having a Combat Patrol Tournament. There are some restrictions on your composition that level the playing field a bit and I really like the way the Combat Patrol games play, so I put together a list for the Greater Good and got down to playing!

It's been a while since I played with my Tau (or any 40k at all) so I forgot something when I put my list together. In Combat Patrol there is a limit of 2 Wounds per model. I had forgotten that my Shas'El Commander has 3 Wounds when I wrote it up. The extra Wound didn't make a difference in any of the games (if it had, I would've played it as 2W anyway once I realized my mistake.) His extra accuracy helped a very small amount, but it certainly didn't make a huge difference. First, I'll give you the list I actually took, then below I'll have a list that I would have taken instead (y'know, to make it legal.)

97pts Shas'El Commander PR, MP, TA, HWMT
77pts Shas'Ui Leader PR, MP, TA, HWMT
77pts Shas'Ui Leader PR, MP, TA, HWMT
77pts Shas'Ui Leader PR, MP, TA, HWMT
60pts 6xShas'La w/ Pulse Rifle
388pts
Another player asked me why I didn't include 1 more FireWarrior, since I could fit it in under the point cap. The reason is the way that the Victory Point and Morale systems work makes it much more effective to have an even-numbered unit. This army is reliant on squeezing victory points whereever possible, so that's why.

Realizing my mistake now, I've remade my list for future Combat Patrols...
77pts Shas'Ui Leader PR, MP, TA, HWMT
139pts Shas'Ui Crisis Team (2) PR, MP, MT. Team Leader has TA, HWMT
124pts Shas'Ui Crisis Team (2) PR, MP, MT (No Leader)
60pts 6xShas'La w/ Pulse Rifle
400pts
This army includes 5 Crisis Suits in the Fireknife configuration, which gives it more raw firepower, but it only has 2 BS4 suits and 3 BS3 instead of 3 BS3 and 1 BS5. The accuracy versus firepower ends up being roughly equal, so this list gets a slight edge due to having more Wounds. (And more scoring units, since Independent Characters cannot claim objectives or the like.)

Since I've got a fair number of pictures and a brief analysis for each of the games, I'm going to split up this tournament report. The first article will be the first two games, the second will cover the second two games and the finals. The third article will cover some analysis of my army selection and of the other armies there. Once those articles are active, you'll find the links at the bottom of each page.

Game 1
IG. Dawn assault. 1st three turns Night Fight. Extra points for scoring units within 15" of opponent board edge. couple of squads, Heavy weapon squad, Sentinel, Ratling snipers.

The way the game played:
The Sentinel didn't come in until the end of the game, and I blew it up as soon as it poked it's nose out. (Missile Pods are wonderful, don't let anybody tell you any different!) He basically moved up one of his squads toward my Deployment zone, but then, seeing the damage I caused to his units that weren't in cover, kept them in cover too long to actually get into my Deployment zone. I basically did the jump, shoot jump thing and picked off most of his support at long range. The Heavy weapon squad didn't have anything to shoot at the whole game. By the time they moved to where they could see my FireWarriors, the snipers had taken care of them, and the Crisis Suits were always out of LOS. I had considered moving up in the last two turns to get the bonus for being within 15" of his board edge, but that would've put me into the line of fire of too many weapons for too long, so I went the safe route. Win for the Greater Good!

Game 2
Orks. Lots of Orks. I'm reminded of the scene in Terminator 2 where the police arrive at the Cyberdyne building and Sarah asks how many cops are there. "All of them, I think!" is John's reply. In this case, there were 60(!) Orks split into 2 Mobz of 30. Mission: Personal Objectives. Divide up 750 points (min 100, max 375) between 3 terrain pieces not in your deployment zone.

The way the game played:
The first turn I managed to kill 7 Orks between my Missile Pods and the FireWarriors up in the tower. I said, "Whoo Hoo! Now if I can keep that up, it'll only take me another 8 or so turns to wipe you out!" (Keeping in mind that these are 6-turn games.) He basically moved forward in a wave, while my Crisis Battlesuits swept right around the forest and everything kept hammering his left flank. I was basically doing a modified sacrifice flank so that my suits could claim the forest for extra points (if I'd had another turn, I might've gotten an extra 100 for the ruins over on his side as well, but that wasn't really my goal. My primary goal was to wipe out his left flank and keep my Crisis suits from getting overrun. Succeeded at that and got another win for the Greater Good. Scott had a pretty tough army, with all those wounds and all that close combat goodness. He had problems against me because my army was much more mobile than his. To compound the issue, when he called the Waagh! he only rolled a 2 for his fleet of foot, which left him slightly out of charge range.

This is the first in several related articles about this Combat Patrol tournament. Once it has been written, you can find the next in the series here.

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