Chaos Space Marines?

Well, in a turn from the greater good, I have decided to watch the galaxy burn. I was able to give the CSM a try, and I liked it. Mind you I only got in 2 turns before we had to break, as we spent most of the morning working on Gore Swirl. The turns are almost lightning quick, almost as fast as Tau turns are later in the game. Nobody got trounced, even though there was a Tau player. The only real damage I did was a couple piranhas and a sniper drone, but I had my Defiler and Daeman Prince on the objective, lesser daemons with in reach, a rhino close behind, with another circling around the right side, and a third destroyed(wait thats not good), but the Thousand Sons inside on the move into Tau territory. I did learn that I will pry be dropping the predator, as a single static tank in my back field seems sort of a waste when I am rushing foward with monstrous creatures who can do the same thing vehicles in person, and will be able to do more against infantry. Also, the drop will let me add another defiler.
I am currently working on getting templates for building the rhinos. I might end up scratch building all the vehicles, though originally I had planned to only use the rhinos for proxies until I had decided on a list. I might look at making a pre-heresy style force, but I do like the Black Reach space marine helms.
I guess we shall see.

Annihilate the 'crons!

So, we finally threw down the 2 'cron vs 2 Tau game. Apocalypse, no FOC, 2500 per player(5k per team). I was running late, so they rolled mission and such with out me. Annihilate! Damn! Each side had 2 assets. We took the marker field(everything marked within 24") and a Icestorm warhead(10" blast vs vehicles, all 'crons hit take a pinning test). They took some tech snag thing, single use, grabbed one of my area denial nodes. Other asset was a unit gets up on 2+, instead of 4+.
Started the game by making a destroyer squad run off the table, its becoming a theme. Took out swarm after swarm with rail rifles, killing 4 3 base swarms and 2 bases of the 5th by the end of turn 2. Almost everything else got back up. At end of turn 2 we had to barely scratched them. Supposed to finish weekend after next, but there is already talk about calling that one.
Likely next time will be objectives, with us holding a fortification on one end, going the long way. Basically a pro Tau setup, with the exception of no phase out for the 'crons. Not sure I like it, but whatever.
Biggest thing I need to do is look long and hard at that third mission. It has filled me with a undue sense of dread, and I need to face it down. I think I need to just set up my gun line and go all out for the kill. Kill a unit, move to the next. When placing on the long edge, instead of spreading across table to maximise fire lanes, and cutting off support from different elements, I should place everything in a cluster along the flank, forcing the enemy into my fire lanes. I think setting up second may not be disadvantageous. Then I can pick the weak flank and force them to move their strength to me, moving as far as possible.
For this next game, knowing my opponent and knowing my terrain setup before hand, I think I will place all my guns on the wall, plugging the hole in the center and the ends with my nodes. Likely place my HHs behind the wall, so they can move forward over the wall, landing in front, to unleash death first turn. Top of the walls will be loaded with markers, snipers, and broadside. Mind you, I will have to set up with a partner and space is limited, but it should work out, table is 5' wide. Pathfinder Devilfishes will find a place behind the nodes giving LoS for deep strike across the board. If the monoliths land in the back field, I hope to use my teammates FWs with EMPs to take them out.

Down with green!

So my Space Wolf friend and I finally got to play a game side by side, instead of against each other. And got torched. It was against the two newest players in our group. The newest played his orks, while the other played dark angels. We drew annihilate(DAMN!). Set up mostly along the back, the Space Wolves player set out a land raider crusader and a few terms(pure term army). Orks and Dark Angels deployed everywhere 18" away(accidentally bastardised dawn deploy). We held onto first turn. Opens with tons of shooting, biker nobs are just as brutal as everyone says. Usual comments about my shooting taking forever. Spend most of the game not killing Nobs, though we do eventually take them out. The angel bikers behind the fair better though, but still get taken. Kept the angel dread stunned until we could do get rid of all its range and immobilise it. Orks take a beating, I take a beating, Space Wolves get beat a little, Dark Angels come out almost unscathed. Now, that's how you use a meat shield. I'm not sure it was intentional, but they did an excellent job using the orks to tie us down, and then mop up with the space marines. Kudos to them. Sadly I think my partner and I sort of writ this one off from the start, but I don't feel either us played for the lose, it was more "Annihilate? Well damn. Geh, lets get to it then."
I need to get the killing power in my army. A side note, I recently set my list up so that I can use my broadside or a sniper squad interchangeably, this time using the squad. I take a tar getting array on the broadside, so they have always been the same points, I just list it now so I can change on the fly. I like it, little more fun I think.

Tabled turn 1

Not me actually, the guy I was playing. I felt terrible. I recently started playing with a new group, and one of their members also plays Tau. I hadn't gotten a chance to see him play, as he has been unable to make our game days. However, some of the other guys thought that I should get together with this guy and give him tips, seeming as I can almost win, and he gets trashed. So we kinda set up this thing where he and I would play a couple of other guys in a large Tau vs Necron game. Well, that's still a week away, but we(Tau players) decided to get together and do a practice 500pt game and talk strategy. My list consisted of a commander(tooled to use my new template), 1 FW squad, 1 Kroot, 1 Pathfinder, and a Railhead. I held my commander in reserve to deep strike with his flamer, airburst. I deployed my Hammer head forward, the pathfinders in a building, the firewarriors in the back on the right flank by the PF devilfish, the kroot infiltrated onto a central objective. He deployed a single, large firewarrior squad with drones and a commander(~fire knife) also with drones. I pie plated his firewarrior, killing a shield drone and 8 firewarriors, by far my best shot ever(no I know why SMs tear through me). The rolled 10 for Ld and ran. In shock I turn the turn to him. The firewarriors rolled another 10 and continue to flee. This is when I asked if he had any reserve and find out no, that's his entire force. I think I know why he has trouble bringing it on. He only had 450 pts, 250 for the commander, the other 200 for the Firewarriors. He had tooled them up with everything, plus a shield drone and a marker drone. The commander had a shield drone and marker drone as well. His plan was to shield my army with his as a sort of meat shield. I didn't like the plan before and after seeing what we would be throwing away points wise, I hated it. I pointed out what he could do if he toned down the points. More squads a definite plus, also a dropped marker light drone alone would have given him points for a broadside at least. I honestly expected him to have vehicles, I tried to plan around taking them out, they didn't exist. I wish I had scattered a little actually, just so I could have seen how he plays, but I hope it helped him with army creation a bit. Maybe different styles, I don't know.