Imperial Guard in action ...

Dozens of pairs of eyes peered into the dawn gloom, watching nervously for signs of the alien invaders.

"Niner this is 10A, over"  a whispered voice over the vox caster.

"Niner over."

"10A, we have movement to our front over."

"Niner, Roger."

This might have been the opening conversation whispered over the command net as the small Cadian Defence Force unit waited in the dawn for first signs of the Tau forces that had been identified landing on the planet. The Guard forces had stolen the initiative from the Tau forces in a Seize and Control mission, and crept forward to set up a fire base. The Guard commander had deployed a unit of veterans to secure his left while pushing his invaluable unit of stormtroopers out onto his right flank, supported by the solitary Guard Leman Rus available to his small detachment.

The Tau commander  pushed his mobile fiorces forward on his right, while holding centre and left with units of Kroot mercenaries.

Fire from the Leman Rus, and the Storm troopers, eliminated the unit of Kroot that had been holding the Tau left flank. The Tau commmander was left on his own holding the flank, although it was a task he was more than up to.

Initial volleys from the Guard fire base inflicted heavy casualties on the first unit of Fire Warriors to deploy to their front, and these troops fell back.

However the Tau mobility allowed the Tau commander to outflank the Cadian flank guard.

The Cadian left was now the scene of heavy action and the Tau Firewarriors won a vicious fire fight.

As the Cadian firebase was neutralised, so the Kroot warriors positioned in the centre pushed off the central feature and towards the Cadian objective.

The Cadian stormtroopers on the Cadian right pushed forward to outflank the Tau left, but were caught in a hail of fire from the Tau battlesuits.

A vain last attempt to advance and flame the Kroot warriors from their position failed, and more Cadian troopers found themselves exposed in the open.

With just one squad of troopers left to him, supported by the Leman Russ, the Cadian commander could see that his inital defensive line was lost, and he ordered his troops to fall back further.

Adrian, Andy and I were trying out 1000 points of Guard against Adrian's Tau. The force is still very imbalanced, and so Adrian opted to take only lighter forces in order to try to balance the game a little more. As I don't yet have the full complement of Guard forces, I used a couple of Rhinos as proxy chimera to transport two Guard squads.

I clearly have a lot to learn about how to fight with Guard (or any 40K forces for that matter). Next time!!!!

The game was a lot of fun; vicious fire fights meant old fashioned 'tit-for-tat' exchange of units. It was the initial destruction of the las gun heavy weapons squad supporting the Cadian left flak, allowing Adrian to assault the Cadian left with his fire warriors, that was the turning point of the game.