Counter attack and Vidighese

Game: 200opt Capture and Control
Result: Tau Victory (Tau control one victory point and contest the other. )
H'Russ Sept 2000Pts
Vostroyan CCCLII Firstborn 1000pts
291st Death Korps of Krieg 1000pts

The Town of Vidighese - Praxedes IV 058.747.M41

The Town of Vidighese was silent now. For the last few days it had been a scene from hell. For two days Artillery from LCXI Division down to regimental level had pounded the town with every calibre they had, smashing buildings, parks, manufactories alike in an effort to break up the Tau defenders in the Town. The barrage lifted as suddenly as it had arrived. Dazed Fire warriors scrambled from basements to the ruined town above, clutching pulse rifles ready for inevitable assault. On the outskirts of town men of the 291st Death Korps of Krieg had assaulted the ruins and soon swept them from the town.

That was two days ago. Korpsman Drusus Keppler-A5031-7 stood squinting into the growing light, in what remained of the second floor of an Imperial Hab-block, in the very same ruins where two days before, Tau Fire warriors had struggled him and his squad mates in a nightmare of close combat.
Now he stood waiting. The counter attack would be soon. Tau always counter attacked at dusk or dawn. He had overheard one of the officers commenting that it was because the Tau had superior technomancy in their helmets and tanks. Korpsman Keppler didn't know what to make of that, but then he didn't really care either. The Keppler gene-coda that made up his sibco batch had not been selected for its curiosity trait.

Keppler raised the optic visor to his eye pieces and took in the outskirts of the town in which he stood. Increasing the magnification he zoomed in on a LasCannon emplacement manned by guardsmen from the Vostroyan CCCLLII Firstborn. They had moved up during the night and taken over the right wing of this sector of the line, allowing the men of Krieg to consolidate into a smaller section of the line.
He zoomed the magnification back out and swept the optic visor across the hills overlooking the town. Without light intensifiers there was not much he could see, but the Watch master had told him to stand here and watch the hills and the watch master was his older brother, so he must obey.
When the first salvo lanced out from a Tau rail gun , Keppler was still standing looking out over the darkened hills. The shot struck a three story building down the street, causing Keppler to flinch back behind the lintel of the door he was sheltering in. The Vostroyan LasCannon teams responded almost immediately, quickly followed by the Death Corps own LasCannons emplaced in the highest ruin.


Tau tanks sped through the gloaming, men of the CCLII Vostroyan and Death Korps rose to meet them head on. In the center of the line, conscript replacements receiving a lecture on discipline from Commissar Khutuzov surged up full of zeal. Throwing themselves out of the building with abandon, they ran directly into the guns of a Kroot pack who had infiltrated a wood land copse just out of town. Young Kriegers fresh from the sibling companies ran into a wall of fire.





Behind them the Captain of the recruit platoon urged on the recruits, the Young men of Kreig, conditioned from childhood required little urging from the Commissar or Captain to throw themselves out of the building. The first wave out of the ruins paid a heavy price, as Tau built Kroot rifles and air burst fragmentation rounds cut them down before they could take more than a few paces.








In the ruins further to the right of the Imperial Line, Korpsman Keppler slithered down from the first floor of the ruins to join the rest of his squad on the ground below. Over at a hole in the rock-crete wall, Watch-master Leor was peaking out at the advancing Tau tanks. One had made the mistake of nosing into the street between him and the Building housing the recruits. Looking Back at Keppler and the others he communicated his orders with a few quick hand gestures. The squad would assault the tank with grenades as it passed.
Keppler scrambled over the blocks of fallen masonary to a shattered and empty window. As the tank passed the squad rose as one and rushed into the dust cloud raised by the passing antigrav wave. Men scambled up over the tank , some went to the back hatch looking for weak spots there. Keppler had barely had time to toss his own grenade into the left hand impeller pods of the Tau tank when he was blinded by the actinic glare of the Watchmasters melta bomb detonating on the hull. The whole tank lurched violently to one side. then seemed to bulge from the inside as secondary explosions ripped through the hull. the tank nosed down and slashed into the street, shedding composite armour fragments in all directions. The Tank slid for a few few yards before comming to a halt.
Keppler opened his eyes and levered himself up from where the explosion had tossed him against the building he had just recently vacated. He blinked in a daze at the ruin of the Tank before him. Great steaming fissures had opened in its hull, leaving torn bundles of fibre hanging from the great rents in its flanks. He watched as a long thin box was pushed through one of these gaps from the inside of the tank. He was still trying to determine what it might mean when the first burst from the Tau pulse rifle shattered the rock-crete above his head. Instinct and gene-bred reflexes took over, Kepplers body bucked and threw itself up and spun around in an attempt to get over the wall back into cover. The second burst from the Tau rifle was better aimed, corrected by its machine spirit. It followed his movement, strafing the walls and catching him a glancing blow on the meat of his thigh as he tumbled back over the lintel of the window he had assaulted through. While not enough to kill him, the wound was enough to stop him moving much faster than a crawl. For Keppler the Battle was over.
Later when he woke up in the Medicae tent he would learn that the Tau counter attack had succeeded in throwing the Imperium back into the outskirts of Vidigese. 80 Guardsmen had been wounded killed or gone on the missing roles including almost all of the replacement sibco.