Points: 1700.
Missions: Four Pillars
Secondary Objectives: Engage On All Fronts, Investigate Sites and Thin Their Ranks.
Less than a week into the invasion, the Tau high command found itself occupying an abandoned settlement several miles from the frontline of the war. A council had been called to discuss the Tau battle plans since the war was going better than initially expected.
The Rift Wardens 4th company has fortified a series of bastions and defence lines across the anticipated path of the Tau advance. This site was chosen to restrict movement of the Tau fire warriors so that they could locked down and destroyed by more mobile Astra Militarum mechanised detachments. To protect this defensive line, the company was divided into four with each occupying a quarter of the total length.
The Tau forces carefully scouted and observed the space marine positions for three days. It was determined by the war council that the space marines had positioned themselves to hold off a dedicated attack force coming from the front. A weakness was detected in the right flank that the Tau could use to their advantage.
In the early hours and under cover of night, Tau fire warriors and stealth teams approached a steep slope to the east of the Rift Wardens right flank. From here the surprise attack was nearly total. Barely challenged on their way in, they were into the Rift Wardens' position with but a few stray shots. The Tau began to fire down into the space marine positions inflicting many casualties before advancing down into the lines.
The fighting lasted until just after sunrise when the Rift Wardens present recieved communications to fall back to a secondary fire base. The Tau, accepting a victorious fight against the Imperium, harried the retreating space marines while simultaneously claiming the fortified network for themselves and creeping ever closer to the main target, the capitol hive city of Corinthia.
