This past Monday, Eric wanted to play me once again.  Hell, who am I to deny a challenge?  We upped the points level to 1250 and decided to use the Battle Missions book (depending on the roll) again.  Amazingly, we got the random mission roll again and got the Slave Raid mission on page 28.  This time I was the attacker.  The mission was a modified version of Kill Points that favored my army more than his.  He used a Shas'o, stealth suits, two fire warrior squads in devilfish, two broadsides, a pathfinder squad in devilfish, and a hammerhead.  I used the same list as before, except I switched my terminator squad into an assault terminator squad with a Land Raider Crusader.

The required deployment for this mission really hurt Eric, as it forced him to deploy in the middle, right next to my army.  I barely had to move to be in range of his forces.  He smartly tried to refuse flank my army, as the attacker was required deploy first and successfully limited the use of my predator and the EC crusader squad early on.  However, he forgot to deploy his broadsides on the board!  Because he and I only noticed after the battle started, he was forced to use them in reserve and got them on turn 5 after some really bad reserve rolls (ouch!).

The battle consisted of me moving up, killing his stuff on foot in close combat when I was able, and trying to get into his devilfish.  Unfortunately for him, he had horrendous rolling this game and without his broadsides to slow me down, I only needed minimal movement to get to his lines and that soon was the end of things.  I was having a hell of a time popping his transports with my melta, but he eventually got his pathfinders/fire warriors out in a desperate attempt to get some points which didn't work out due to bad rolling.  I ended up getting a charge on nearly everything, with the terminators killing the stealth suits and the Shas'o easily, and my two crusader squads fell the pathfinders and one of the fire warriors.  The last Fire Warrior squad was booking it out of range.  He amazingly tarpitted one of my crusader squads with his 10 man fire warrior squads in close combat for several turns.  Unfortunately, Eric didn't win a combat with them but came close a couple times.  I was disappointed with my crusader squad, since a 6 man squad should be more than enough to plow over fire warriors.  He ended up killing all but one initiate of that crusader squad, which eventually won combat and sweeping advanced his remaining fire warriors.  Game ended on turn 5 with me having 6 prisoners and him zero.  A win for the Njesta Crusade.

Final thoughts:  This mission really played against Eric in many ways.  First, it forced him to deploy very close to my own army.  Tau being a shooty army and Black Templars close combat oriented army, this played into my hand right away.  Second, he didn't deploy one of the things that could have won him the game!  Not having his broadsides the entire battle really hurt him.  Despite the huge disadvantages he had, I was actually pretty impressed with his sportsmanship and critical thinking in the game.  He is a newer 40k player and was doing his best to turn the situation around for himself, but the rolling just wasn't on his side this game.  Several of us in the gaming group are trying to help him learn 5th Edition tactics and how to up his game.  Eric is definitely getting better at using his army and I think this style of play better suits him (shooty Tau over close combat Orcs).  He is hand over fists better than when he began, and if he continues playing, he'll be quite a force on the battlefield!  :)