5000 pts - Dark Eldar + Craftworld Eldar vs Black Scorpion Space Marines & Imperial Guard.
Tactical escalation: objective cards going 1,2,3,4,5 as the turns increase.
The city was occupied by the Eldar, the outskirts and the church occupied by my forces. This would be brutal! I'd be facing a fast, hard hitting Eldar alliance. That meant 2 Wraithknights, lots of poison and archon+wraithguard perfect deepstriking ambushes.
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| Blackheart Jack's Dark Eldar - Grotesque and twisted |
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| The Lord Baron Sir Billy Bob's Blue Eldar - Gorgeous army |
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| The mighty Good Guys! |
We deployed. I won the roll off to go first but as we deployed the devilish Eldar had warlord traits. They both rolled 3's meaning 3 units each could infiltrate! My backline suddenly looked like this:
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| The Battle lines are drawn! |
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| The holy church firmly in control of true believers! |
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| Death Company ready to sally forth! |
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| The city in control of the pointy ear'd devils! |
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| Filth! |
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| More filth! |
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| Villians! |
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| Captain Harkol ready to give orders! |
My turn commenced and I moved some forces forward. A rhino and a chimera pushing up the bridge, first into the fray, ready to take back the city!
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| A fine force! |
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| Fuckers! |
The rest of the dark eldar were ensconced in the city and took a few casualties here and there. A drop pod of flamer tacticals came down and roasted the occupants of two venoms but not fully!
A cool narrative bit was the scouts in the tavern on the far right corner. I'd infiltrated them along with a landspeeder storm as a distraction. They killed a wraithblade. My field artillery killed another two wraith blades and took a wound of the Wraith Lord there too. I like to imagine they were directing the artillery fire.
Scored: First Blood! & Behind Enemy Lines! (2 total)
Turn 1 - Eldar!
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| Heroes! |
The real action took place in my rear (lol). The wraith knight each chose a target. I'd bubblewrapped the Knight Cerastus but one of the knights found a way thru! The blue knight charged into the grav devs. Their overwatch causing a wound! They lost several members but held on and didn't run away! which was annoying meaning the wraithknight was locked in combat.
The Dark Eldar monstrosity charged my knight cerastus. An epic duel! The Knight Cerastus is designed to fight gargantuans and makes them hit at -1. Jack hit twice cause 2x d3 hull points. I saved a couple with my 5+ invul and lost a few hull points. In return I swung back causing 3 wounds! 2 left!
Scored: Objective 1 (1)
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| Scariness! |
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| Tacticals Die! |
The Eldar alliance had an OK turn. They managed to avoid disaster and held the city. I'd have to pull out all the stops to try and not get distracted by the wraith knights in my back lines.
I sent the 2nd tactical squad into the fray. I saw a weak stop in their back lines. I unloaded 3 flamer templates and bolter shots on the 4 bikes killing them all.
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| Tacticals come to the rescue of the scouts! |
'Fire!' bellowed the commander. The tank shook with force. Lywis traced the shot off into the distance. It felt like forever. The shot hit dead on! The shell exploded and covered the construct in vile mutagenic acid. Lywis could make out the shape of it in the haze. He witnessed the construct disintegrate as the horrible weapon did its work.
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| The mighty wraithlord goes down! |
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| Pushing forward |
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| Death comes to the rangers! |
Scored: 0 (2)
Turn 2 - Eldar!
It was the Eldar's turn to take the fight back to me. Archons allied with wraithguard came down to unleash death!
The Wraithknight finally squished the last devastator and was now open to shooting from me!
Scored: 3 Big Game Hunter! (4)
Turn 3 - Imperials
My air support arrived! Two Fire raptor gunships and 1 vulture gunship. Ready to bring the pain.
My first move was to move my grav bikers out and kill the 1 wound Wraithknight. Done. I drew 3 cards that were attainable. My planes opened fire, killing the Dark Eldar Flyer. Scour the Skies! My other forces, which were numerous opened fire downing ravagers, venoms and just slaying stuff in general. The artillery was particularly effective. The sheer amount of fire power I was throwing out was a sight to see.
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| BRRRRRRRRT! |
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| More BRRRRRRRRT! |
I had another turn of very effective shooting. The deepstriking forces were all but eliminated. Having 30 guardsmen, 3 leman russes and 3 chimeras is a lot of shooting. The wraithguard and the archon fell to massed fire from my lines. The Vulture swept over the scythe-wraiths and the warlord archon. 20 shots was enought to eliminate the Dark Eldar Warlord!
My death company in the city charged and slaughtered the Eldar Warlock scoring a second Slay the Warlord point! (we we're playing with two warlords per force)
With that, I'd scored Scour the Skies, Witchhunter, Slay the warlord x2 and Ascendency D3 where I scored a 3!
Scored: 7 (8) (+1 if you include linebreaker)
At this point we looked at the table. The Eldar forces had a scattering of Dark Eldar warriors in the city and the Iybraesil Eldar were wiped out. They drew their cards and it was nigh-impossible to score more points let along survive another turn of furious firepower.
Result? 9-4 - Imperial Victory
Conclusion
A number of people have said to me... 'It always feels like I'm killing you, and murdering stuff, but I never feel like I'm making progress... you just keep coming'
I suppose it's my play style. I favour lots of cheap units. I favour taking scouts and cheap imperial guard squads as my back-up. I also always make sure I have small response units hidden away. I had my 3 bikers hanging out in the back, ready to respond. I had a chimera full of veterans and rhino with a demi.squad of grav devastators. My philosophy is never to have any key units, never to rely on 1 thing to do a job. Always have back up.
I was faced by a powerful combo of strong firepower and speed... but they lacked resilience. Too many specialists and hard units that, once removed, left them flat-footed and unable to carry the day.
It was an OK game but almost an annihilation. It's easy to let a string of victories go to my head. It's easy to let my ego tell me I'm a tactical genius but that would be wrong. It's a combination of luck, decent unit placement and most importantly....unit availability. I have a cupboard full of different units so I can build a versatile force ready to face Eldar type units. My opponents on the other hand were maxed out, using all their stuff. Their armies were therefore at a disadvantage as they weren't geared or built to any particular strategy.
An ok battle but a great day full of laughs, beer and spicy chicken wings!
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The smoking city was littered with shattered alien corpses. The guardsmen of the Hydrobian 8th were piling the dead high in funeral pyres. The acrid smell filled Evodius' nostrils. He savoured it. It smelled like justice. His forces had crushed the aliens and scoured the city. Only a handful escaped. Evodius had personally slain the enemy warlock. He held the beautiful soulstone in his hands and examined it carefully, almost entranced. He caught himself admiring the beauty. Disgusted with himself he threw it into the pile of soulstones the Black Scorpions had collected. The Legion master had ordered them collected, cleaned and stored. Leverage? Bargaining chips? Evodius didn't care. He knew it would drive them mad, and he imagined the Master had some plan for them.
Captain Harkol approached Evodius, the men behind him shoving a wounded blue-armoured Eldar along. The Eldar was severely injured. It's left arm a tattered stump below the elbow and great shrapnel gashes sliced across it's chest. The trooper smacked his lasgun butt of it's head and it crumpled to the ground in front of Evodius. It spoke in some filthy language and spat at Evodius feet. Evodius laughed... and then kicked it the face with his power-armoured boot, knocking it out cold. 'Medic!' shouted Evodius. 'Make sure this filth doesn't die and take him shipside. We'll interrogate it fully'
Always great reading your battle reports, I'm glad when I see them in my RSS reader.
ReplyDeleteA couple rules clarifications - always fun. The Wraithknights would not have been able to charge Turn 1 as they Infiltrated. They could have in 6th edition, but not 7th.
Also, you're saving against D strength hits incorrectly. The order is:
Roll to Hit
Roll on D Chart
Roll Saves, if applicable
Roll Damage Amount
For example, if the Wraithknight scores two hits on you, he'll roll twice on the D chart, say he gets a 2 and a 5. You'll now roll two invulnerable save, say you pass one. He then rolls a D3 for damage, and you take that many wounds.
Always great reading your battle reports, I'm glad when I see them in my RSS reader.
ReplyDeleteA couple rules clarifications - always fun. The Wraithknights would not have been able to charge Turn 1 as they Infiltrated. They could have in 6th edition, but not 7th.
Also, you're saving against D strength hits incorrectly. The order is:
Roll to Hit
Roll on D Chart
Roll Saves, if applicable
Roll Damage Amount
For example, if the Wraithknight scores two hits on you, he'll roll twice on the D chart, say he gets a 2 and a 5. You'll now roll two invulnerable save, say you pass one. He then rolls a D3 for damage, and you take that many wounds.
Ahhh. Good to know! :) We were unsure at the time.
ReplyDelete