Game 5: Beast Mode

I solicited Kriston for a pick up game this past tuesday for a rematch of our last game. This was my first mistake. Here's the lowdown on how it all played out:

Game 5: Farsight vs. Beaststar, 1500 points
Opponent: Kriston
My list: Farsight tau featuring MSU crisis suits w/ 2 riptides and 2 drone commanders w/ markerlight drones
His list: Beast star: 1 fully beefed out Dark eldar beast unit led by the Baron and a farseer on bike, a unit of 20 guardians led by a warlock and Eldrad, a wraithknight, 2 3-man units of jetbikes, 2 5-man units of dark eldar warriors
Mission: Spoils of war (Maelstrom Mission 3) 
Notes on the game: This was an intense game. Beast star is a pretty damn strong list and Kriston has a proven track record with it in 6th. This was his first time bringing it out for a test run in 7th. It's funny, despite how experienced both Kriston and I are at playing 40k, and how famililar we are with our lists, we continue to have very long games for some reason. This one lasted 4 hours.
Anyway, my game plan going in was to spread out as much as possible to make it so his beast squad could only ever eat one unit a turn. This worked for the most part, but unfortunately he excels at making sure he limits the number of attacks he gets in an assault phase so more often than not his beast squad would be locked in combat preventing me from being able to shoot it. Which is ok, I was able to commit my firepower elsewhere. It took me a little longer to bring down his Wraithknight than I would have liked, which set me back a fair bit in the grand scheme of things. In the end, it came down to the fact that I was sacrificing my units to his beast squad faster than I could kill his units and the game ended with me only ending up being to kill the Wraithknight, the farseer, and a unit of jetbikes. Despite that, however, the game was decided by linebreaker and the final score was 9 victory points to 10.

There were two major play mistakes to highlight in this game that could have drastically changed the outcome, I would be remiss not to mention them.

The first was when he had a unit of dark eldar warriors sitting inside ruins on a level 3" above ground. and I had a unit of 2 crisis suits firing upon them from outside the ruins. I was unable to take out the warriors by shooting and got greedy and chose to charge the warriors with my crisis suits in the hopes of wiping them out in close combat and claiming the objective that turn, instead of just boosting underneath them and contesting the objective for a turn safely behind a wall until the following turn when I could hop up and shoot/ charge them with much better odds of wiping them out. Unfortunately I failed my charge leaving my crisis suits right out in the open and they got obliterated by his firepower in the following turn and he was able to score the objective with no resistance.

The second play mistake was on his side, he had split off eldrad in an attempt to score every objective for the tactical mission card in his hand that granted him d3+3 points if he held everything. In order to achieve this mission he simply had to kill one of my crisis suits which was holding the objective in question. I like to think I psyked him out by telling him that I was going to kill eldrad in overwatch with my fusion gun but, whatever the reason, instead of just charging my crisis suit he decided to cast mindwar on him first. The cast was succesful but I rolled a 14 for my leadership value and Eldrad rolled an 11, resulting in Eldrad losing the mindwar and reducing his WS and BS to 1. This resulted in him failing to kill my crisis suit that turn and ultimately cost him having a decisive victory instead of a close one.

In the end, it was a great game, I always enjoy being challenged by Kriston and I look forward to becoming more skilled in this edition so I can actually beat the fucker for once.

This loss leaves my current W-L-D ratio at 3-2-0, at least I'm positive, right?