2k Batrep vs Dark Eldar

So Tim and I are preparing for the team tournament this weekend, but neither of us has had much practice time.  We both had Wednesday night free and met for a match to help clear away the cobwebs.

We rolled up 2 objectives and dawn of war and decided on vp's for a tie-breaker.  I won the roll and decided to try something different.  I usually like to go second and reserve everything in DoW, but I decided for a full reversal and took first turn.  Three of my last four games have been DoW deployment and I'm starting to get sick of it.  This probably clouded my judgement to take first turn.  A note on my capture and control playstyle:  I always play to win from turn 1.  If this game ends in a draw, it's because we fought to a bloody draw.  99% of the time with this mission, I split my force in two and go for both objectives.  I know it's not the best practice for tournaments to avoid losses, but a castled up draw on this mission can be very frustrating.

Tim's List:
Haemunculi + liquifier (with wyches)
Haemunculi + liquifier (with wyches)
Haemunculi + hex rifle (with warriors on foot)
Harlequins x5 + shadowseer, 2 kisses, 1 fusion pistol
Incubi x5 + klaivex + raider, lance, flickerfield
Trueborn x4 + 4 blasters + venom, 2 splinter cannons
Warriors x10 + dark lance + raider, lance, flickerfield, splinter racks
Warriors x10 + dark lance + raider, lance, flickerfield, splinter racks
Warriors x10 + dark lance
Wyches x7 + hekatrix, agonizer, shardnet + raider, lance, flickerfield
Wyches x7 + hekatrix, agonizer, shardnet + raider, lance, flickerfield
Reavers x6 + 2 heat lances, cluster caltrops
Ravager + 3 lances, flickerfield, nightshield
Ravager + 3 disintegrators, flickerfield, nightshield

My List:
Tervigon (HQ) + toxins, adrenals, catalyst, cluster spines
Hive Guard x3
Hive Guard x3
Zoanthropes x3
Termagants x12
Tervigon + toxins, adrenals, catalyst, cluster spines
Genestealers x10 + toxins
Genestealers x10 + toxins
Genestealers x10
Genestealers x10
Tyrannofex + rupture cannon, cluster spines, shreddershard beetles
Carnifex + heavy venom cannon
The pre-game:  I decided to try something new and play aggressive DoW.  I know I could get screwed if he steals the initiative, but all these DoW games are starting to affect my judgement.  His list is similar to his last one, but with less warriors, no flier, added harlies, and one more ravager.  My list has more shooting and slightly less assault, but I'm feeling pretty confident in the match-up.

I place my objective in ruins about 24" from my left table edge.  He places his objective about 24" from my right table edge in a forest.  It's in the pic right above the bastion.  Mine is the pile of bones in the bottom of the pic.

Like I said, I'm going to reverse my normal DoW style and deploy my 2 troops and an HQ.  I put my troop tervigon in the ruins, my HQ tervigon behind the skyshield, and a unit of poisoned genestealers on top of it at the halfway mark.  The other 3 genestealer units are flanking, everything else will walk on turn 1.

Tim deploys the foot warriors in his central ruin with the haemi and hex rifle.  He does not try to seize.  He rolls the 3d6 run drug for his wyches hehe.

My turn 1...  Everything but my genestealers walks on.  Carnifex, hive guard, and gants head into the ruins by my objective.  Zoans lead up the center with the tyrannofex behind for cover.  Another unit of hive guard come up the right side into the forest.  Genestealers on the pad get FnP and move up a little.  I run almost everything for better position.

Tim's turn 1...  He brings in everything on the side of my objective in a refused flank formation.  Drats...  That's a pretty perfect counter to my deployment. 

From left to right: Reavers, lance ravager, disi ravager, wych raider, venom, wych raider, incubi raider, warrior raider, warrior raider, harli's.  He actually botches almost every night fighting/night vision roll, but the venom causes 2 unsaved wounds on my troop tervigon in the ruin.

My turn 2...  Both naked genestealer squads arrive, one on each side.  He's blocked up the left side pretty well, so I come in behind his ravagers.

On the right, I come in on the open but shielded by the forest and head for his objective (the CSM on the spike in the forest).

The wounded tervigon spawns 12 gants without doubles.  I place them in the ruins and up two levels (mistake #1 stay tuned).  Everything on my left and middle moves up.  Tervigon on the left FnP's itself.   Tervigon on the right climbs up the skyshield and FnP's the poisoned genestealer unit.  They move up but I elect to not climb down as I'm somewhat imtimidated by harlies with furious charge striking at init7 (mistake #2 stay tuned).

I open up with everything I can.  The canifex wrecks the venom with trueborn with a direct hit from the venom cannon.  The tfex hits a wych raider twice, Tim flickers one of them, and the other only stuns it.  Hive guard wiff!  Zoans and hive guard on the right run towards the action.  Genestealers on the left attempt to multi-assault with the ravagers and reavers, but I miss-call the primary and miss-judge the necessary coherency moves and only get both ravagers.  I wanted to ger the reavers with one stealers so we'd lock.  All attacks wiff as he moved 12" last turn.  Mistake #3...

Tim's turn 2...  The wyches from the stunned raider jump out and head for my genestealers.  The other wych raider and incubi raider move up 12" towards my objective.  The ravagers and reavers shift for clearer shots.  I actually talk Tim into moving into the swamp since his reavers are skilled riders and he actually loses one.  I feel terrible muahaha!  Trueborn and harlies advance.

His haemi with the wyches breaks off and liquifies 3 genestealers.  His ravagers open up on the wounded tervigon but only cause 1 wound.  Reavers target the tervigon also but cause no wounds.  All raiders target hive guard and I lose 1 from the left unit.  Warriors target genestealers on the right but cause no casualties.  7 wyches assault 7 genestealers and we each lose 2 and lock.

My turn 3...  Well, my tervigon survived which surprised me, let's see if I can recover.  I spawn 11 gants on the left and 8 on the right without any doubles.  I realize reavers are t4 5+ so I send the left gants after them.  Everything in the middle and left advances.  My hive guard get terrible terrain rolls.  2 units of stealers and spawned gants on the right skirt the forest to avoid harlequins.  I'm not so much scared of them, but also the 2 warrior raiders with splinter racks waiting to jump up and rapid fire me to hell and back.

I physically can't fit my wounded tervigon any further into the ruins so I FnP her.  I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place right now as he has two mobile assault units in my face, two ravagers free in the backfield, and a wounded tervigon is my lynchpin to hold my own objective.  I fire the right hive guard first as they can only reach the incubi raider.  They immobilize it.  The other hive guard target the wych raider and only blow off the dark lance.  Tim has made many flickerfield saves at this point.  I've gotta stop that wych raider and the tfex can't see ravagers well, but he wiffs or gets flickered.  Carnifex aims for a ravager, but kills a reaver with a scatter.  Gants kill 3 more reavers and they break and run.  In assault in the backfield, 1 wych and 1 genestealer go down.

Tim's turn 3...  He's got many ways to take my own objective away here.  His wych raider shoots the gap and land in a pocket I left open.  My first spawn mistake reveals itself here as I spawns the unit up levels and his wyches have a perfect assault lane to my tervigon.  They disembark.  Tim has magnetized skulls for pain tokens so that's the ork head.  The haemi stays in the raider.

His incubi disembark from their immobile raider.

In shooting, the lance ravager rolls all 1's shooting my wounded tervigon.  The disintegrator ravager doesn't have good opptions, but puts 2 wounds on the carnifex.  His haemi liquifies 4 gants up in the ruins.  Combined warrior fire only kills 1 genestealer on the right.  All the rest of his shooting fails to hit, wound, or penetrate armor and cover.  He assaults...

Incubi kill 5 gants and I lose 5 more to no retreat, leaving 1 and a whole unit of incubi I can't shoot now.  His wyches multi assault the wounded tervigon and hive guard, killing the tervigon, one hive guard, and several gants in the explosion.

My turn 4...  The last poisoned genestealer unit arrives on my left.  I have the option of going for ravagers, or racing to reinforce my objective.  I decide to go for my own objective.

Miraculously, all my units on the left pass instinctive behavior in the absence of the tervigon.  My force on the right makes a push for Tim's objective.

I spawn 8 more gants and push up to the forest.  Green flag is FnP.

My tfex comes over the left side of the bastion to keep the pressure on ravagers.  Zoanthropes go right to threaten the two raiders full of warriors near his objective.

Te gants up front shoot trueborn, kill 3 and they break and run.  Tyrannofex explodes the disintegrator ravager.  Zoanthropes blast harlequins, kill 3 and they break and run too.  Hive guard in the back only have rage to the empty wych raider by my ruin.  They wreck it and pin the haemi that was inside.  That was pretty awesome....  I send the carnifex into the wyches to try and tie them up until the genestealers arrive.

Now, I've lost my assault on the harlequins because they fled.  On my objective, the wyches kill the hive guard and lose 1 to the carnifex.  Incubi finish the lone gant and consolidate towards the ruin.  In the backfield, 1 wych and 1 stealer go down again.

Tim's turn 4...  Incubi head for my gants in the upper levels of the ruin.  He pours all his splinter weapons into genestealers and kills 5 from one unit.  I boneheadedly decide to go to ground.  He kills a couple more from the other unit, and kills several from the new unit that's heading for my objective.  In assault, my carnifex kills 2 wyches and takes a wound.  I lose another genestealer in the backfield.  His incubi crush the gant unit.

My turn 5...   We get a head's up that the shop is closing in 30 min, so this will be the last turn.  That's when all my other past mistakes come to fruitition.  I've lost my own objective and hold his, but he's got 2 raiders full of warriors waiting to contest.  The front unit of gants fails IB and must shoot incubi.  Tfex passes IB.

Genestealers head for incubi.  On the right, everything rushes to stop him from contesting.  One unit of genestealers is pinned, the other only gets 2" moving into the forest.  We take out trees to make this vital part of the game easier.

I run the genestealers and get 2" drat... Now I'm not far enough up to keep him from contesting.  I must stop those transports.  Zoanthropes wreck the one closest to the objective.  He deploys them forward and clustered and they pass pinning.  I place the tervigon's pie plate in the middle of them, and it scatters off the table, noooo!  Hive guard shoot the second transport and stun it.  My genestealers assault incubi, lose 3 and kill 2 incubi.  They fail leadership and run off the board!  On the long drive home, it later struck me that this 4th unit of genestealers had toxins (I was using the painted ones for poisoned units and unpained for naked).  Had I used the poison re-rolls to wound, I could have rended more and locked combat, contesting my objective.

Tim's turn 5...  We have 5 minutes left.  We decide to just roll out his movement to contest his objective and he makes it.  In combat, the wyches take the final wound from the carnifex and score my objective.  Tim wins!

The post-game...  Well, I waited a bit to write this batrep because I'm still going over the game in my head.  I was actually very pleased with the performance of the list.  It's the performance of the general that failed.  For 3 turns, I crept towards his objective to avoid the harlequins.  If I would have pushed harder, I would have stopped him from contesting.  At one point I had 20 genestealers, 16 gants, and a tervigon in that formation and I was creeping up like a scared dog.  Not completing the bubble wrap on my left tervigon ensured I would lose my own objective also.  The icing on the cake was forgetting poison on the final unit of genestealers.  One more rend on incubi would have drawn objectives and we would have gone on to vp's.  We didn't tally up, but I lost 970pts worth of bugs.  Tim lost reavers, harlies, trueborn, 1.5 ravagers, 4 raiders, venom, and half a squad of wyches.  I don't have a codex in front of me but headmath puts that around 975ish so almost exact tie on vp's.  Very close game.  However, if we had a chance at a 6th turn, my zoans, hive guard, genestealers, and 3 units of spawned gants would have swamped his objective and stopped the other transport.  I was only in position to lose the genestealers (that I should have played as poisoned) and he was in position to lose another raider and 2 squads of warriors.  I'd like to think in a tournament, or playing faster without bothering to take batrep pics and notes, I could have turned this into a win.  This time though, Tim played it perfectly and got the win he wanted from me hehe.  That's why I'm actually pretty pleased with the results.  Except for one really ugly shooting phase, my stuff was getting damage results every single time they shot.  Had the general been making better decisions, this could have been in the bag for me.  Until next time!!!

Actually, Tim is my teammate for the tourney tomorrow so we join forces for the next 3 battles.