Mission - Paint it up ..

I've been chatting with my Tau mate about our upcoming Tau invasion campaign. We've decided to bin the army lists and the map and go completely narrative driven with each of us writing up missions for us to play. Which way this will go? who knows? but what I do know is that it ain't fare but it's going to be fun.

So, here's the first off our missions, not a bad start in my honest opinion.

Paint it up .....

In preparation for the impending planetary invasion, the Tau insert stealthsuit teams across the planet to mark up vital Imperial installations that must be destroyed before forces can be deployed on the ground.

Setup

The game is played longways (short edge to short edge) across a 6' x 4' table. Imperial player must deploy a scenery piece to act as the objective within 12" of a short table edge. Tau forces enter play via the other table edge at the start of turn 1. The Imperial player must deploy his sentries no closer than 18" to the Tau table edge.

Forces

3 Tau Stealthsuits, fitted with blacksun filters and Molecular Ionic markerlights.

10 Guard Sentries
Platoon HQ squad with 2 grenade launchers, mounted in a chimera with heavy bolter, multilaser and searchlight.
10 Guardsmen with grenade launcher.
10 Guardsmen with grenade launcher.

The guard platoon is held in reserve and will deploy once the alarm has been raised.

Scenario Special Rules

Sentries - as described in 4ed.
Night fighting - the entire game is played using night fighting rules.
Sssssh - to avoid detection, the Tau do not use their jet packs or Run movement until the alarm is raised.
Molecular Ionic markerlights - a range 12" weapon that leaves a residue that Tau weapon systems can track long after the target has been marked up.

Mission Objective

Tau major victory - Successfully marking up the objective and then extracting the stealthsuits off their own table edge.
Tau minor victory - Successfully marking up the objective but not being able to extract all the stealthsuits off their own table edge.

Imperial major victory - Successfully preventing all the Tau from extracting and also preventing them from marking up the objective.
Imperial minor victory - Successfully preventing all the Tau from extracting.

Reserves

Guard reserves enter play at a rate of 1 unit per turn determined randomly from a point on any table edge as determined by a scatter dice.

Game Length

The game continues until all the Tau forces are dead or off the table.

Design notes - I'm looking at this one as a sort of chess game to start off with, that has the potential at any dice roll to suddenly become a very fast and furious game. I'm planning to setup quite a lot of terrain on the table to restrict LOS (we still play 4ed rules on area terrain and LOS) but you don't have to as ranges are restricted by the nightfighting rules. On the win conditions, there were two factors I thought were important. The first being marking up the objective and the second was casualties. Alarms could be raised at any point for any reason including tripping over and letting a round off by accident but actual dead xenos bodies outside an Imperial is going to get the High command on their toes.

Well, there you go guys, hope you like it. Feel free to give it a go and I'd love some feedback on what you think of it. Once we've given it a go, I'll put up a battle report and a few pics.