“I do not offer hope, comfort, or safety. I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, and death. Let him who loves his Emperor with his heart, and not merely his lips, follow me.”—General Milus Montague, commander during the War of the Beast, M32. *

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Continued from Part 2 . . .

An angry ogryn

Despite years of psychological indoctrination, the roar of burst cannons stuns Commissar Kairov and leaves him to stumble against the stone wall to his right. When the shooting stops, he realizes he’s unhurt. He powers up his power sword and charges the xenos.

It’s a bloody affair. Only Thugg and two guardsmen still stand, and the Crisis Suits before them open fire with another round of their weapons. All fall except the wounded ogryn.

The abhuman is enraged. His beloved commissar is laying on the ground, perhaps dead. Thugg charges at the closest xeno battlesuit—and smashes the blade of his Ripper Gun into the xeno’s helm. It caves in, and the Tau collapses.

The other Crisis Suit recognizes the threat and turns, preparing to open fire on this gigantic abhuman.

It doesn’t get the chance to fire. Laser beams slam into back of the battlesuit. The xeno is outflanked. Its attention focused on the obvious threat, it failed to maintain its “situational awareness.”

The armor of a Crisis Suit is strong, but when a half-dozen lasgun rounds strike it, followed by the fire of a heavy bolter and multiple multi-lasers, even the best armor can buckle. The heavy bolter 1st Platoon weakns a key point, and the multi-lasers of two advancing armored Sentinels cut through the damage and vaporize half of the Crisis Suit pilot’s chest.

A startled Thugg sees its enemy fall. He realizes he has survived. He goes to his commissar and takes him gently in his arms. He begins to retreat.

Two Crisis Suits land land on the roof of a nearby building and open fire on the building occupied by 1st Squad, Second Platoon. The building’s structural integrity cannot handle the plasma onslaught and collapses, killing two guardsmen who were firing from second-floor windows. Their wounded comrades flee for the stairs and the relative safety of the first floor.

Outflanked and outgunned

More Crisis Suits descend from the sky. To the north, 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, are firing at Tau Fire Warriors from the second floor of a building that was captured only minutes ago.

Sgt. Malcak takes aim with his laspistol and fires at a Fire Warrior shooting from behind a building terrace only six meters away. The guardsman misses, but half a dozen plasma rounds from the xenos outside target his window, tearing the plascrete walls to shreds. Malcak curses as he peppered by debris from the exploding walls.

This is suicide, he thinks. His squad is severely outgunned.

The roar of familiar jet thrusters sound above him, and Malcak knows what that means. A moment later, the entire building shakes. Something heavy has landed nearby.

Before he can react, xeno burst cannons open fire, and the roof of the building begins to shake, and chunks of plascrete begin to break away from the ceiling and fall.

“Down the stairs!” the sergeant yells. His men understand the danger, and they rush toward the stairs, men tumbling over one another in a panic.

It’s too late. The ceiling collapses. Two men are buried by the debris. The rest tumble over one another as they scramble down the stairs. The Crisis Suits are too large to follow them, so the guardsmen find a measure of safety below. But what now?

As two Crisis Suits open fire on Commissar Kairov and his assault team, two Armored Sentinels appear behind the xenos. These reinforcements are too late to stop the Crisis Suits from slaughtering Kairov’s command, but they exact revenge seconds later when the Sentinels open fire on the xenos’ rear armor.

Entry denied

The veteran squad reaches their objective—the building (top right) with the destroyed second floor. Alas, the door seen in the alley doesn’t lead inside the building but to the street beyond, which is occupied by scores of advancing Fire Warriors. Their position untenable, the veterans are ordered to retreat.

Unseen by the rest of 3rd Company, the veteran squad has broken through the xeno lines by advancing up an undefended alley. The veterans run into a few fleeing Fire Warriors, but they are easily brought down by a barrage of shotgun shells.

The veterans reach the objective building, but there is no doorway to breach. There is only a stone wall.

“A krak grenade!” one of the veterans shout. “Gimme a krak grenade.”

Another guardsmen uses the butt of his lasgun to shatter a ground-floor window, hoping to clamber inside. A plasma round strikes him in the face as he looks inside. The man’s entire head disappears in a mist of blood.

A vox-link chimes in the helm of squad commander Sgt. Gauis Cross. He listens for a moment before the broadcast is drowned out by the explosion of a frag grenade thrown into the window where the guardsmen fell.

He ignores the commotion of battle around him. He ignores the static of his vox-link. He hears new orders. He shouts with his most commanding voice and cuts through the noise of battle.

“We are falling back! Abort the attack! Back to the Chimera!

A bitter reversal

So close to success, Captain Eustace thinks. It is a bitter thought.

The Hammerhead tank isstill  advancing down the village’s main street, with scores of Fire Warriors using its bulk to shield themselves from enemy fire.

To his right, what’s left of 2nd Platoon is falling back without orders. They’re not routing, at least. It’s an orderly withdrawal. Still, the commissars are going to be busy this evening.

To his left, 1st Platoon is holding its position, but the men are in danger of being outflanked. Sgt. Cross has reported that he’s reached the base of the objective, but it’s defended, and there’s no obvious entry point from his position.

And xeno reinforcements are simply too numerous.

There will be no victory today, Eustace knows. He tells his voxcaster to order the retreat.

Aftermath

That night, the roll call of 3rd Company, 2nd Battalion, 310th Cadian Regiment, reveals the cost of the battle: Of the 120 men deployed that morning, 87 are fit for duty, while 15 are dead and 18 are wounded.

Despite such losses, 3rd Company remains the most combat-effective unit left in the regiment. Months of fighting against a surprising powerful foe has left the regiment shattered, and there are rumors that the regiment may be disbanded.

The news is no better regarding the main attack on the city. It’s known that the Titans of House Thanataris and the Rekarshan Rifles Regiment made inroads into the city, but a planned behind-enemy-lines attack by the Ultramarines was called off at the last minute.

Now word is that the Imperial forces have fallen back. and there’s talk of an evacuation. No one knows what’s going on. But they know the crusade has tackled an opponent far more stalwart than expected.

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The arrival of a Devilfish transport and a Tau Breacher Team with plasma assault guns outflank 1st Platoon. The firepower of these two units is enough to scatter the guardsmen and their supporting Sentinels, one of which explodes when hit by a burst cannon round.

TheGM: In its first battle against the Tau, the 310th took heavy casualties but drove the Tau off the battlefield. In subsequent battles, the fighting was bloody and success elusive. In a human wave attack on the advance to Gel’bryn, the 310th suffered horrendous losses.

When you add the defeats suffered by the 5th Company of the Knights of Altair Space Marine Chapter on Namatos—still fighting on the Imperial side of the Damocles Gulf—it’s clear that the Tau achieved a positive win-loss record over the course of the crusade.

One reason for this success is that 7th Edition 40K (that I still play) favored “shooty” armies, and the Tau are very shooty. It is possible to defeat the Tau, but I’m still experimenting with army lists and tactics to make that happen consistently.

Whatever. This was a colorful fight with lots of heroics. As the Tau dropped smart-missiles on the 2nd Platoon, I could envision the guardsmen running forward, explosions erupting all around them (and amidst them). I could see the carnage through the eyes of Captain Eustace and mourn his loss of men.

And when the veteran squad finally turns the Tau flank, only to find there’s no way to the objective—and Lt. Holt’s squad  is being slammed by xeno reinforcements—it was just heartbreaking.

Oh, how I love miniatures wargaming—particularly in the grim dark of 40K.

* The quote at the beginning of this article is a 40K-themed tweak of a quote by Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general who played a pivotal role in uniting a long-fractured Italy in 1860 (or M2 as we 40K fans chronicle history).

Click here to return to Part 1 of this battle report.

Click here to return to Part 2 of this battle report.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.