Our local monthly event for October was a DaBoyz GT primer. I scored max battle points in my first round by tabling my opponent and ended up paired against Nogle (Mike) who also plays Eldar and scored well in his first round. I was actually really excited for this game as Nogle has done really well with Eldar at tournaments in Erie and Syracuse and I haven't had the chance to test myself against him yet.
Since this was the GT primer, we used missions from the GT packet. Game #2 had the Relic as primary (20 battle points) and 4 crusade objectives as the secondary (10 battle points) and the standard bonus points for linebreaker, warlord, and first blood (1 battle point each) making each game worth 33 battle points max. Deployment for this mission was Vanguard Strike.
Here's my list with psy. powers for game #2 (1850pts):
Farseer + spirit stone of anath'lan (game #2 - warlord: night fight. Hallucinate, Guide, Prescience)
Spirit Seer + shard of anaris (game #1 - Conceal, Invisibility)
Baron Sathonyx
Wraithguard x5
Wave Serpent + scatter lasers, holofields, ghostwalk matrix
Dire Avengers x5
Wave Serpent + scatter lasers, holofields, ghostwalk matrix
Windrider Jetbikes x3 + cannon
Windrider Jetbikes x3 + cannon
Kabalite Warriors x5
Venom + extra cannon, grisly trophies
Beastmasters x4 + khymerae x12, razorwings x2
Wraithknight
Vaul's Wrath Support Battery x3 shadow weavers
War Walkers x3 + scatter lasers
Nogle's list:
Autarch + mantle of the laughing god, fusion blaster, banshee mask, firesabre, phoenix gem, jetbike
Guardians x10 + bright lance
Guardians x10 + bright lance
WRJB x3 + cannon
WRJB x3 + cannon
WRJB x3 + cannon
Crimson Hunter + exarch, starcannons, marksman's eye
Crimson Hunter
Vypers x3 + shuri cannons x2ea
Wraithknight + shield, suncannon, scatter laser (warlord - don't remember trait)
Wraithknight + cannons
War Walkers x3 + shuri cannons x2ea
My opponent had first turn and we had night fight. This was going to be tricky. I now his autarch has been key in his previous victories, but I feel my beasts are a good counter. He's got more bikes for scoring, but I have second turn. He has double wraithknights and flyers, so I'll have to be careful in planning my movements and picking my engagements.
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My opponent's deployment. The black primer WK is his warlord. He deploys the autarch, guardians, and wraithknights on his front line. One unit of bikes is in the back corner. Everything else is reserved with walkers outflanking.
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My deployment. With pre-measuring, I discover that my WK would be safe in the back corner from his first move + wraithcannon shots from his non warlord WK. Artillery are spaced to the max due the suncannon. Wave serpents put the central ruin directly between them and the stock WK. Beasts deploy as a screen with all 3 characters attached. I spread them almost entirely across my front line so I can snag his autarch if he tries to come after serpents or artillery. I don't try to seize.
Turn 1:
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The stock WK flanks to try for a clear shot on a serpent. Warlord WK pulls back out of range of my own WK's move + cannon range. Guardians and autarch advance. Stock WK misses both shots. Bright lance wiffs. Suncannon may have killed a beast or two but nothing major. The moral of this turn was lots of wiffed shooting.
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He finishes by turbo-boosting his autarch right behind my beasts.
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I put invisibility on the lead serpent. My WK jumps up the flank. Both serpents advance. Beasts pull back to engage the autarch. Serpents take out all but 3 guardians.
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I get really excited for first blood, forgetting he has the phoenix gem. I take a wound from the firesabre and gain soulblaze. This will actually cause 6-8 more wounds throughout the game as he made his 4+ every turn. The beasts easily kill the autarch, he rolls for phoenix gem, and it's a 1! First blood to me and I avoid the large blast.
Turn 2:
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Walkers arrive in the gap where my WK stood.
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Vypers and crimson exarch line up across from my WK.
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The other flyer also angles for my WK. Both reserved bike units stay off. The second guardian unit walks on behind his WK's. Stock WK jumps back to the left. Vypers, walkers, and both flyers focus on my WK and put 4 wounds on him. Luckily, my opponent forgot lances are 36" not 48" so his backfield flyer lost 2 shots. The non-invisible serpent takes a hull point from a stray shot.
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Artillery get guided. The damaged serpent gets invis. Beasts push up on the right side of the central ruin. WK jumps towards his vypers. I back my non-invis serpent up to the ruin for 3+ cover (holofield). The invis serpent aims for vypers. My walkers and bikes stay out.
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My venom arrives on the right flank using ruins and aims for the stock WK. The visible serpent is able to take out all 3 walkers with 6 damage results and 0 passed invulns. The invis serpent and WK cause 5 hull points to the vyper unit. Venom puts a single wound on the stock WK.
Turn 3:
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The last bikes arrive. All the foot units push towards my beasts and the relic.
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3 bikes and a vyper aim for my WK. Flyers all head to my left side and then vector dance to face serpents. The stock hunter immobilizes the wraithguard's serpent (non-invis one facing away from the relic). The hunter exarch puts precision strikes on my farseer and takes him out! Bikes and vyper finish off my WK. His stock WK attampts to assault my beasts and fails.
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Beasts get invis and push up towards ... everything. Wraithguard disembark their immobilized ride and get a terrible terrain roll keeping them off the relic so they run up the ruin. Mobile serpent puts itself between the WK warlord and my wraithguard.
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My walkers come in the left side and head for bikes. One unit of bikes also arrive and plant themselves 24" from his last vyper. Walkers take out a unit of bikes. Bikes take out his last vyper. Scatter lasers from the immobile serpent immobilize/vector lock his hunter exarch.
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Since I'm invis (makes enemies ws1 in assault), I multi-assault both WK and his guardians. The primered WK is primary target, I get 4 in base, then the guardians staying in coherency, and I'm able to get models onto the stock WK also. I take out a few guardians, lose a few beasts, and we lock (fearless from spiritseer with shard).
Turn 4:
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My opponent flies both hunters off the table. His unit of 3 guardians is pinned from my artillery last turn. Due to the mass combat, only his 2 bike units are free. One heads for my side and explodes my venom taking out 3 warriors. Despite invisibility and 4++ on dogs, I lose a bunch of models in combat. I also fail my hit-and-run test!
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My last bikes arrive automatically. Beasts get invis again. Dire avengers disembark and touch the relic in case my wraithguard can't make it. But they do with a good terrain roll, and a wraithguard picks up the relic. Left bikes boost into the far left ruin. Right bikes boost up behind the center ruin. I continue to lose models in assault, am unable to hurt the WK's, and due to placement his guardians are mostly safe and slowly removing all my beasts.
Turn 5:
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Last turn due to time. Both flyers come back. One unit of bikes take the top right objective. Bikes in the lower right take out my kabalite warriors and park on that objective. Hunter exarch takes out all 3 bikes behind the center ruin. Stock hunter takes out a single bike on the left ruin and I pass morale. I lose my last beasts, my spiritseer gets 1-shotted by the stock WK, and the baron gets swept due to losing fearless!
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We've got about 2 minutes left so we just roll out the things that matter. My 2 remaining bikes take the objective by my artillery. Dire avengers get 6" MTC and a 6" run and make it onto the top left objective. Wraithguard still hold the relic and try to distort his warlord WK but fail. My mobile serpent is able to take out his bikes on the back right objective. The immobile serpent's scatter laser takes out the bikes on the close right objective with some unlucky armor saves.
With that, time is out on the bottom of turn 5. I hold the relic, objectives 2-0, and earned first blood. My opponent ended up with only my warlord leaving the final score 31-1 in my favor.
Wow, what a brutal game! I went into this pretty confident, but could have easily lost if my opponent's opening dice were better, or if he would have passed the 2+ for the phoenix gem. Tying up 2 WK's and guardians with my beasts was key, but nearly backfired when I failed my hit-and-run test and lost the unit despite invisibility. The game ended due to time, but at the bottom of 5 it may have been meant to be. Had the game continued more turns, his flyers would probably have cleared off my scoring units and his WK's would have forced me to drop the relic. Overall, this is one of my favorite kind of games where the momentum shifts multiple times and the game remains close all the way until the end. It was just the right amount of luck, list design, and planning and everything panned out in the end.
Something else interesting happened this round. Every other 1-0 player either had a draw on the primary or secondary objectives this game. With 64 out of 66 max battle points, I'm headed to the top table with a very comfortable lead.
Wow good game. Your opponent REALLY misplayed this whole game. He feared your wraith canons way too much and threw away his laughtarch who btw really should have boosted up onto the ruins where your beasts couldn't reach him and allowing him a position to strike at your WS the next turn.
ReplyDeleteHe made matters way worse turn 2 when he threw everything into that WK again (seriously? Who, especially and eldar player, doesn't know by now that those things should be ignored) his fliers should have killed a WS and his WW should have gunned down the artillary and assaulted or taken rear shots at a WS (enter artarch who should have been safe in ruins here also. Basically with smart play he should have had the WS down by turn 2 and then you really lack the tools to take out his scoring units.
Also, that multi assault looked a bit broken. Your unit is broken from coherency in 2 places it looks like, I'm thinking realistically you could have definitely pulled two units maybe three, but you would need to set it up right and roll incredibly well on your terrain roll due to the characters not being beasts. Again not saying you couldn't just that in the picks it looks a bit dodgy. Again a poor p[lay from his part, he should have used his stock WK plus a run roll (why assault?) to plunk him down in the middle of the pack forcing a bad movement phase out of you.
His list looks super fun and unique, to bad he misplayed so much, I feel you could have had a much tighter game but congrats to you sir, I feel you played this one to the letter which is probably what forced such error-ed play from him. So again complements to the chef for a great recipe!
Oops broke up my reply. See the bottom. Beasts can climb ruins now so there wasn't a safe for the autarch that would protect him from my assault as well as line him up for assault following turn. I originally questioned the suicide move, but had forgotten about the large blast tied in with the phoenix gem. Had he made his 2+, I would have lost 6-8 beasts after wounding, saves, and he would have hit-and-run out to make me spend another turn chasing him.
DeleteFocusing on my WK wasn't the worst thing either. He eventually established a 2-0 WK superiority which is really strong in an objective game.
Basically, if the phoenix bomb would have gone off, I wouldn't have had enough beasts to make the multi-assault and hold down the WK's. Since he had two more than me after turn 3, they could just stand on my objectives to deny me. It probably would have been a 1-1 draw instead of 31-1.
If the Autarch got out, he was going for the support battery. That would have let the guardians clump up with the Wraithknights and finish off the beasts.
DeleteIDK remember you need to see what you assault, and from the pics anyway it looked like he could have put that guy pretty high up. Either way if deemed to risky I would have waited a turn and when the beasts move forward jump into the back field. Either you tear up the rear guard or force them to waste time back tracking on their T2 which they can't afford if they want to be effective IMO.
DeleteI don't waste time with WK's, but I play MSU marines so I don't have to care, its rare he will ever kill his points. I think they are generally overestimated and draw too many shots (good for you) and should usually be ignored.
I hate second guessing my opponents and criticizing any decisions but my own.
DeleteBeing on the receiving end of the laughing autarch for the first time, I was mostly worried about him landing rear shots on my serpents. Those flyers are a good counter to MSU jetbikes with their speed, maneuverability and range. My wave serpents were key in taking out 3 scoring units and getting the avengers and wraithguard to the middle safely.
The multi assault was good. I ran the guardians up to get like 10 more shots and basically drew him a line from one Wraithknight to the other. Didn't see it till he declared it, the lack of sleep that comes from a 3 week old at home will lead to that sometimes.
ReplyDeleteAs for shooting the WK instead of serpents. When I came in with the flyers, one serpent had a 2+ cover save and the other a 4+. it seemed like throwing away shots. I usually don't target a serpent till it shots it's shield. I like those 1 shot kills. maybe I should have just tried to hull point them to death. To be fair, his WK lasted a turn longer than he should have. I was going to target the serpents the turn after the WK died. him staying an extra turn gave the beasts time to get off the charge.
I told Aaron during the multi assault that I wouldn't let that happen again. At first he thought I was questioning the legality of it. took a minute for him to realize that I meant, I'd never make that mistake again.
Players making that mistake has been the bread and butter of my Daemon army for the last 3 years! It is a really easy one to make and it is surprising how the right order of movement can really build a bridge across long distances.
DeleteI think it can go either way on the Autarch - and even if beasts could not climb stairs the Beastmasters could have done it anyway. It was a really aggressive play, and with a little luck it could have really changed the game - at the least it keeps the beasts from advancing toward the relic and puts down some backfield pressure.
Failing 6 of 6 5++ saves on your warwalkers to lose the unit is pretty epic.
The idea was to pull the beasts back to his board edge to give me time to kill the WK turn 2. then deal with either beasts or serpents turn 3. It's amazing how little things have such lasting effects down the game turns
DeleteYeah the assault was legit. The picture was taken after initiative pile ins and possible casualties. I had a 10" assault move, got 4-5 in base with the unpainted WK as primary and couldn't get any more. Next model hit the guardians on the left side and was within 2" of a model on the WK. More beasts wrapped around the guardians and the chain spread down to the painted WK. My original goal was to get the WK's but when he moved the guardians up in between the two I considered a triple assault.
ReplyDeleteWhen did the Baron lose his Fearless? I'm reasonably sure that was the result of Terrify from the Hemlock, but it's cast at the beginning of the turn before the Hemlock arrived from ongoing reserves... What am I missing?
ReplyDeleteThe flyers were crimson hunters not hemlock fighters.
DeleteThe barons isn't fearless unless he has 3 pain tokens and only had 1. He had fearless from the spiritseer with shard of anaris. Once the guardians finished their beasts, they took out the one around the seer allowing the WK to one shot him.
I made the exarch look different by using the hemlock profile. I also magnatized that one so it can do any option(inclusing hemlock). Figure maybe in a latter edition of rules/next codex they might be worth taking.
ReplyDelete