Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Batrep: Dark Eldar & Eldar vs Grey Knights 1850pts


Tuesdays before our local monthly tournament are my official practice day when I take a break from painting and this week, Courtney accepted my challenge.  He brought some of his GK from the Adepticon team event to put me to the test.


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

Courtney's List (approx):
Coteaz (warlord, divination)
Brotherhood Champion + emp brain mines
Terminators x5 + psycannon, hammers x2, halberd x2
Strike Knights x5 + psycannon, halberds x3
Henchmen - assassins x4, arco's x4, crusaders x3 (Bro Champ here)
Henchmen - daemon hosts x5 + razorback w/ psybolts
Henchmen - servitors w/ plasma cannons x3, acolytes w/ plasma guns x3, jokaero x2, acolytes x4 (Coteaz here)
Henchmen - psykers x8, acolyte x1 + chimera
Rifleman Dread + psybolts
Nemesis Dreadknight + sword, incinerator, teleporter
Land Raider Redeemer + multi-melta (assasins w/ Bro Champ here)
Aegis Defense Line + Icarus Lascannon

The mission was The Relic and deployment was Dawn of War.  We pre-set the terrain GT style (not alternating) and rolled for sides.  Coteaz got furious charge while in my DZ and I got the option for night fight for warlord traits (I declined it).  Coteaz also traded for divination powers (prescience & precognition).  I won the roll and deployed first.


I put my aegis way forward this time.  Beasts are on the left flank with the Baron.  Warriors in the middle with Maugan for fearless.  Grotesques with Malys to block the psyker's barrage screening wyches.  War walkers on my right flank.


Courtney deploys favoring the right flank with the assault henchmen in the LRR, NDK, and daemon hosts.  Coteaz is on the icarus with the plasma henchmen.  The rifleman and strike squad are also behind the aegis.


On the left flank are the psykers and terminators.


Malys allows me to redeploy the beasts to the right flank and war walkers to the left flank.  The rangers are outflanking.  Courtney fails to seize.


I advance the beasts but not too close to the NDK and LRR.


Grotesques, wyches, and warriors advance up the middle.  Maugan lands a rending precision strike (also ignores cover) on the psycannon terminator but he passes his invuln.  The splinter cannon kills the terminator justicar.  War walkers wreck the chimera via hull points and gets me first blood.


Coteaz uses prescience on the plasma henchmen (will do this every turn).  The NDK jumps up and LRR advances cautiously.


Psykers come around to barrage.  Termies and strikes advance enough to put both psycannons on Maugan.


The combined fire kills 5 kabalite warriors and puts one wound on Maugan.  The NDK kills 1 khymerae.  The dread immobilizes one war walker.  Psykers fail their test for barrage.


My beasts move up to pounce on the NDK.


My central block advances again.


Both the razorwing and rangers arrive.  Rangers are way in the back left corner behind the wrecked chimera.  The two mobile walkers leave the immobilized one behind.  Coteaz takes the interceptor shot, pens, and velocity locks the razorwing.  All 3 walkers target terminators and he passes every save.  Rangers pistol down 2 psykers.  Razorwing targets the plasma henchmen and takes out 1 plasma gun and 2 plasma cannons.  Maugan and warriors kill 4 strike knights and the last one runs off.


Beasts shoot and assault the NDK, pass their fear test, he challenges and removes the Baron from combat.  I cause 2 wounds (plus one from shooting) and we lock.


The psykers come around to shoot and assault rangers.


The LRR comes up and dumps out his assault unit.


Daemon hosts hang back (he's waiting for shooting powers).  His shooting takes out a bunch of wyches.  Terminators stun the razorwing and remove another hull point.  Psykers pistol one ranger down and assault.  I win by 1 and we lock.  The assault henchmen crush my beasts and actually sweep them (since you always use highest init now) but I am able to kill all 4 assassins and 2 crusaders.


Walkers continue to flank.  I fly the razorwing off the table rather than take snap shots.  War walkers finish off the terminators.  Maugan and his warriors fail to take the last wound off the NDK.


The surviving arco flagellants and brotherhood champ jump back on the LRR and it heads for my lines.


The rifleman jumps over the aegis and stuns one of my walkers.  The LRR finishes off my wyches.  Plasma henchmen take out a grotesque.  In the back left corner, my 2 rangers beat the 5 psykers and run them off.


The walker on the right is immobilized and one on the left is stunned.  The only target in range of the duo is the dread, but they only strip off one hull point.


My razorwing comes back and puts a lot of tall terrain between it and Coteaz's lascannon.  He takes the interceptor shot and misses even with the reroll for prescience.  The razorwing pens the LRR once and blows off one flamestorm cannon.  Maugan pens the LRR with a max rend and blows off the assault cannon.  The blaster warrior also pens it and explodes it.


The squad takes 5 wounds and the last crusader saves every one.  The immobilized walker puts 5 wounds into them and they fail all 5 saves leaving the brotherhood champion who also fails morale and runs.  My 2 remaining rangers will take pot shots at the plasma henchmen for the rest of the game but fail to cause any damage.


The champion auto-rallies and heads for the grotesques with the NDK.  The rifleman takes down the razorwing.  The champ assaults and I roll 3 ap2 auto hits with the liquifier, then fail to wound.  The NDK makes his assault range also.  The champ challenges and I accept with the aberration who fails his brain mine test.  The champ wounds twice but I make both FnP's.  Lady Malys and the other grots fail to get the last wound on the NDK who smashes two grots.  I lose combat by 6 and run away.


The grots rally and bounce back a bit but they won't be able to assault this turn.


The war walkers come around and all 3 fire on the champion but he passes every save.  Maugan and his warriors finally take down the NDK.


At the bottom of turn 5, the daemon hosts finally roll a shooting power and come out to play, though their razorback immobilizes driving backwards.  Can vehicles drive backwards?  They're making a dash for my DZ for the linebreaker point.


The dread and champ head for grotesques.  Combined fire from the plasma henchmen, dread, and razorback kills the lead grot and puts another wound into the unit.


The champion makes his assault range and challenges.  I accept with Lady Malys, otherwise the unit would go down to ld3 and I'd risk losing them all.  Malys passes the brain mine test, the champ strikes at init10, I pass my saves and he passes his saves (since her power weapon is ap3 now).

We roll and the game continues without night fight.


I move the warriors for the relic but come up short.  I think I fired everything at the dread here but only stripped one hull point.  The champion goes defensive and our stalemate continues. 


The daemon hosts make a run for my DZ but come up 3" short.  The dread comes up to join the melee.  I lose a few more warriors to shooting.


I lose combat by 1 but pass my morale test and the game ends there at the bottom of turn 6.

Final score is: DE/Eldar 2vp (first blood, linebreaker), GK 0vp

This was a very fun game for me (though Courtney continually complained about my list =).  I also learned a lot both about the new rules and how my army works.  Fleeing combat and sweeping is rolled on the highest init in the unit now which makes DE a lot better.  The ability to rally below 50% and with enemies 1" away helps DE a lot.  I like Maugan a lot with the warriors now, at least for objective missions. Even though I didn't get the relic, 16 bodies behind the aegis with fearless is pretty solid.  I've been gaining new respect for Lady Malys also.  We used INAT which says she blocks NFW's and her 7 attacks at i7 with grenades are respectable.  The beasts have yet to do anything epic, but they siphoned off the NDK, LRR, and assault henchmen for a few turns which helped me clear the left flank and take the middle.  My dice were above average this game, but they were well below average in my last game.  The difference between passing five 4++'s on the khymerae and failing five makes such a huge difference since DE tend to be so fragile, especially on foot.  Keeping the war walkers on a flank and limiting the range of incoming firepower worked a lot better than running them up front like I did last game.  I probably should have taken the auto night fight with my warlord since I had less shooting and better position to start.  The ability to leave the table with flyers is also huge, I'll have to try it with my tyrant sometime.  Anyways, I'm glad I learned what I did in my loss last game because it definitely helped my thought process this game.  All I want now is for my dice to roll average through the tournament this weekend!

6 comments:

  1. Nice report... You want to borrow my dice this weekend;)

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    1. Only way I'm using your dice is if you pay my entry so at least my 3 losses won't cost me hah.

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  2. Great report, and what lovely painted models on both sides.

    I was considering war walkers with shuriken cannons for my DE (much cheaper), but I may have to consider scatter lasers to use your tactic of staying on a flank to reduce the incoming firepower.

    Good luck for the tournament.

    Rathstar

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    1. Thanks man.

      Yeah, you'd have to hash out some serious synergy with other units to make shuriken cannons work. The unit is extremely fragile and getting into shuriken range means you can lose them to bolter shots.

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  3. awesome report as usual, besides the 3 special characters i dont see any reason to complain about your list, its solid but has no duplicate units.. and i would say it seems to have a perfect mix of range and melee.

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    1. Courtney busts everyone's chops for whatever they bring to the table. It's part of his game to make you feel bad for the list you're playing =) In my case, it was because I had Maugan without reapers and the Baron without hellions.

      Despite that, I'm really happy with the way the army plays out. It's a lot of fun with all the special abilities and different foot units which are my favorite in any army.

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