Batrep: Dark Eldar & Eldar vs Eldar & Tau 1850pts

I had the chance to sneak in a game this weekend due to the holiday.  Kevin came out and brought his Tau-dar for my first game with my dark footdar.


My List:
Lady Malys (warlord)
Baron Sathonyx
Maugan Ra
Grotesques x8 + liquifier, aberration w/ venom blade (Maugan here)
Warriors x15 + blaster, splinter cannon, sybarite w/ venom blade
Wyches x10 + shardnet, hekatrix w/ agonizer
Rangers x5
Beastmasters x5 + clawed fiend, razorwing flocks x2, khymerae x12 (Lady Malys, Baron S here)
Razorwing Jetfighter
War Walkers x3 + scatter lasers x6
Aegis Defense Line + Icarus Lascannon

Kevin's List:
Eldrad (warlord)
Shas'O + plasma, missile pod, HWMT, shield
Guardians x13 + scatter laser, warlock w/ destructor
Dire Avengers x10 + exarch w/ bladestorm, wave serpent w/ scatter lasers
Fire Warriors x7
Warp Spiders x7 + exarch w/ power blades, withdrawl
Nightspinner
War Walkers x3 + EML's
Dark Reapers x5 + exarch w/ crack shot, tempest launcher (Eldrad here)
Broadsides x2 + shield drones x2
Aegis Defense Line + quad gun

The mission was Emperor's Will and deployment was Hammer/Anvil.  My warlord train was MTC-ruins (useless) and Kevin's was +1 assault range (useless for him).  There would be no night fight and all of our terrain rolls were 1's and 2's for each quadrant.  Eldrad draws misfortune, precognition, prescience, and dominate powers.

 We set up defense lines and terrain.  I put several pieces of area terrain down in my DZ and just in front to advance in.  Kevin placed a few trees on the flanks but ended up with the table half with the least terrain density.

Here is my deployment before scout, infiltrate, and Malys' redeploy.

Kevin has a ton of shooting (4 heavies!) and drew misfortune so I put Malys with the beasts to block the psy powers as they're my fastest unit.

Here's Kevin's deployment before Eldrad's redeploy.  Eldrad is manning the quad gun with the reapers.  Warp spiders are deep striking.

I infiltrate the rangers up behind my defense line and scout the walkers up 6".  Malys redeploys the beasts to the opposite side.

Kevin redeploys the nightspinner and avenger's serpent up the side.  He fails to seize.

My mysterious objective is +1 cover.  Everything pushes up.  I have a hard time with targeting priority.  It's my first game with this list and I'm torn between going for first blood or taking out shooting threats.  I decide to put my walkers into his war walkers and I remove five hull points from the unit, leaving one walker with one hull point.  Maugan is out of range of the walkers, but takes out two reapers and pins the unit.  Fire warriors pass some cover saves from the splinter cannon.  I run the beasts and get a three and decide to reroll it with fleet and get a one.

Kevin pushes up the units on the flank.

Kevin's mysterious objective is also +1 cover.  His fire base opens up on my war walkers.  Fire warriors with prescience explode one walker and  the rest of his shooting takes out the other two for first blood.  Since there's only two objectives and he got first blood, he can now castle up and just try to prevent me from getting into his DZ.

My flyer arrives behind the tree on the left side safe from the quad gun.  Grotesques advance with Maugan but I roll triple one's.

Beasts advance up the right flank with the Baron up front and Malys in the rear.  The flyer explodes the nightspinner.  Maugan takes out the quad gun.  The splinter cannon and snipers bounce off his cover saves.  I lose a beastmaster to overwatch as well as the shadowfield on the Baron when I roll a one for LoS! and a one for the save.  I also fail to get the 9" I need to assault the fire warriors even with fleet rerolls.

His warp spiders don't arrive.  Only the serpent and Shas'O move.  His entire army shoots at my beasts and I lose the Baron, clawed fiend, razorwings, two beastmasters, and a ton of khymerae.

I have no choice but to keep pushing towards his DZ so the remaining beasts run up.

Grotesques, wyches, and razowing also advance.  Malys leaves the beasts and joins the rangers.  The razorwing lands two monoscythe missiles on the guardians and knocks them down to a single model who runs away.  Maugan takes out another reaper.  I try to assault again with the beasts and Kevin rolls seven hits out of fourteen shots with prescience'd fire warriors on overwatch and I lose five more models and fail assault again.

Warp spiders fail to arrive again.  The dire avenger's serpent starts crossing the field.  The fire warriors kill the last beastmaster and one khymerae and the last model runs.  My flyer is forced to jink and evade incoming fire.  The Shas'O puts one wound on a grotesque.

I'm still advancing painfully slow due to terrain rolls.  I make a hard turn with the flyer since it can only snapfire, hoping to make another hard turn next turn and have a firing arc, but I misjudge it.  I should just fly off the table after evading.  My shooting takes out five fire warriors and the rest run.

The warp spiders arrive automatically at the bottom of turn four.  The scatter is lucky for me and puts them closest to warriors in cover.  My objective also gives them +1 and they go to ground for 2+ cover and I only lose one.

His fire warriors regroup and the serpent cruises towards his objective. Maugan/grotesques get hit with dominate and misfortune.  Maugan takes a wound and passes a few out to grotesques.  Wyches get pounded by the tempest launcher.

At the top of turn five, Kevin has first blood and we each have our own objectives.  He also has a linebreaker unit.  I also fail my leadership test with Maugan so his unit can't move thanks to dominate.  I run up with three surviving wyches to go for a long shot assault on the serpent which I fail.  Grotesques run 2" which is enough to get into linebreaker range.

My last beast continues to fall back, warriors are pinned, and Malys moves onto the icarus lascannon.  The spiders only fail one save against all that shooting.

The dire avengers jump out so they can score.  Misfortune and focus fire from the remaining units put several wounds on grotesques.

Spiders jump over and mow down five warriors who fail morale and fall back.

Razorwing kills five avengers with missiles and lances.  We roll for the end and the game continues.

Warriors gun down a few spiders and Malys brings her rangers around.

Maugan and the grotesques finally make it into assault range of the fire warriors.  The razorwing kills 3 more avengers.

I make my assault range and plow through the tau.

Rangers assault the warp spiders and Lady Malys cuts them to pieces.

I have to consolidate around the objective to stop the Shas'O from jumping up.

My consolidate move with the grotesques only gets one model into contest range.  The eldar bring all their guns to bare.  The tempest launcher actually takes out the other reaper but combined with bladestorm, twin linked scatter laser, krak missiles, and railguns, he wipes out the entire unit and Maugan. 

The game ends with 3vp for the DE/Eldar and 5vp for Eldar/Tau as he had first blood and linebreaker with the Shas'O.

Well, not exactly how I wanted it to play out, but I was actually really pleased with this game.  Kevin always gives me a fun game and I'm a firm believer that losing your first games with a new army helps you learn.  I'm thinking I should outflank either the rangers or war walkers for a better shot at linebreaker.  I should have chosen the fire warriors for first blood I think.  All of my units could have hit them and the amount of damage they dealt with prescience was silly.  In a mission like this, first blood can be the most important vp in the game.  I also played my flyer wrong losing a turn of shooting.  Next time I'll just fly off the table after evading.
I think next time, I'll also deploy the aegis up to the halfway mark so my units don't get tripped up crossing it and have better cover as the foot sloggers move up.  I also need to work on movement of the units without blocking each other.  Overall, a great game but I need a lot more practice.

I have one more game tomorrow and then the September tournament on Saturday so stay tuned for more barteps and another hobby update this week.  You can see some of this week's progress on models in this report.