Monday, May 14, 2012

12.5.13 2500 Dark Eldar vs Space Wolves

Finally the other half of my blog.  With my Dark Eldar completely painted it's time to put them on the field and see how the new version of my army works.

A pic from Shawn's camera.  I hope to get one like his some day.


Time to play one of my favourite opponents Shawn.  He's one of my favourites because we are both playing to have fun.  Yes we use tic tacs to win the game.  We are familiar with the rules but never let them get in the way of our fun.


Wore my red Permanent Skin Art t-shirt.  The place where I get all my ink.

http://www.permanentskinart.com/

Met at Fantasy Flight for our regular 2500 points.  Was expecting 3 squads of Long Fangs to tear apart my paper tigers.

Mission: Capture and Control.  Deployment: Pitched Battle.  A damn good mission for my new Dark Eldar army.  Have to grab one objective and sit on it while shooting at anything that comes close to the second one.  As someone as Fantasy Flight asked "So is divide and conquer working?"  Really didn't think that's how I was playing my army.  Then considered my first turn and yeah.  Pretty spot on.

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Our stage of entertainment for removing expensive models off the table.  Shawn won roll off and decided to go and deploy second.  Which made me very happy.



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Dark Eldar deploy.  Vect, Wyches and Scourges in reserve.


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Space Wolves deploy.  Reserves Venerable Dreadnought in Drop Pod, 3 Terminators and Rhino with 10 Space Wolves.

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Space Wolves attempt to seize initiative.  Doesn't.  So far going according to plan.  Thank you dice gods.

Top of first.  Dark Eldar come screaming out of their deployment.  Expected them to not be in their deployment for the rest of the game.  That didn't go according to plan.  10 man Kabalite Warrior squad leaves deployment to jump on right Objective in difficult/4+ cover terrain.  Alpha striking Dark Eldar do exactly that.  Eliminating the single Long Fang squad and wrecking their Razorback.  Haemonculi leave the Venoms and True Born take the Pain Token.  Each Haemonculi drop a webway 18" from sides of the board.  This is part of my new Dark Eldar army.  Vindicator tank is stunned.  That is helpful.


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Missed a pic.  Bottom of first.  This is designed to help me in the future.  Instead of putting the Webway so close to the wall.  Should've put it more in the middle so the Land Raider Crusader couldn't get through.  Also making the Terminators inside disembarking and assaulting little bit more of a pain.  Terminators come out.  Bjorn and Land Raider take care of True Born and 5 Kabalite Warriors on right flank.  Was hoping 4 Blasters could take out the Land Raider.  Nope.  Venerable eliminate all but one Kabalite Warrior from 10 squad.  Throw that plan away.  Makes leadership and he sticks around.  Not for long.



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Top of second.  5 Kabalite Warriors embark on one Venom and flat outs.  Other Venom also flat outs.  Considered it a mistake because how close they are to the table edge and he still has reserves.  They can come on and take out one of my scoring units.  Two Raiders escort the Razorwing to shoot at a Venerable Dreadnought that came down in a Drop Pod.  Didn't think this team of three would be together the entire game.  They were.  Vect and Wyches arrive from reserves to take on Terminators.  Terminators lose and have to make four saves due to ATSKNF No Retreat rule.  Scourges arrive and don't hit Vindicator.  grrr.  Wyches receive their first pain token from taking out Terminator squad.  Only Logan remains.


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Bottom of second.  Space Wolves do great on right flank.  Fast Attack wolves assist Terminators in taking down several Wyches.  Bjorn kills Vect.  Vindicator uses its cannon at True Born.  They go to ground and all live!  Amazing.  3 Space Wolf Terminators arrive from reserves.  Exactly what I didn't want.  They shoot and assault Venom.  Thank the dice gods for Flickerfields.  Wyches receive their second pain token from killing Logan.  Right flank folds as Bjorn and Wolf fast attack take out the last of the wyches.  Bjorn consolidates towards objective and Wolf fast attack consolidate towards Land Raider.  Shawn is great at anticipating where the battle will be next.  I'm not very good at that.  He does play a lot more than I do.  Venerable Dreadnought eliminates last Kabalite Warrior holding onto the right Objective.


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Top of third.  Dark Eldar secure left flank and Wyches grab Objective after removing last Terminator.  Venoms are nasty.  Pain Token, baby!  12 poison shots.  Especially when they work together with other squads.  Something Natfka has mentioned several times.  Dark Eldar aren't designed to go toe-to-toe with another army "find their weakness and exploit it" damn fine words.  That was my purpose with my new Dark Eldar army.  I wanted to effectively dis-spell it.  To be fair to him, the left flank wasn't toe-to-toe it was 2 Ravagers, 2 Venoms, 1 True Born unit with 4 Blasters, 5 Kabalite Warriors with 1 Blaster, 5 Scourges with two heat lances, 10 Wyches against a Vindicator and 3 Terminators.  Hardly toe-to-toe.  I continue to defer to Natfka's tic tacs.  Scourges arrive from reserves and wreck Land Raider.  Shatterfield missiles wreck Drop Pod.


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Bottom of Third.  Wolves fast attack take out first Scourge squad.  Not before my dice tease me and actually made me believe they might live.  Shawn decides to go for a draw.  Great idea.  Instead of spreading his firepower across the entire board he focuses solely on the right flank.  Rhino flat outs planning to drop off 10 Space Wolves to secure the right objective.  Wyches are on left objective.  His Venerable Dreadnought doesn't have any range weapons.  Space Wolves models still active:  Bjorn, Venerable, fast attack wolves, Rhino w/10 marines.

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Close up of bottom of third.  Fast attack wolves happily munching on Ghost Armour.  Swear GW put that 6++ in Dark Eldar codex for fun.  I'm almost convinced Scourges are the throw away Melta squad of Dark Eldar.  They don't get the same amount of Melta's and are probably more expensive than Marines.  It wasn't helpful that my dice were teasing me in addition to making saves on 4+ and 6++ still lost the entire squad.  grrr.



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Top of fourth.  Haemonculi ancient and True Born embark upon Venom.  5 Kabalite Warriors embark upon Venom to flat out to right objective.  Plan is to contest.  Didn't consider I would come so close to holding both objectives.  Venerable Dreadnought survives a surprising amount of lance shots.  Wyches enjoy their pain token from the 3 Terminator squad a couple of turns ago and sit on Objective.  That is 1 score in my favour.



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Bottom of fourth.  Night Shields helped.  Bjorn would've hit a Raider because his assault cannon is now 18" instead of 24" he was an inch short.  Wolves fast attack charge a flat out Venom.  What penetrations and glances occurred Flickerfield had my back.  Flickerfield saved Raider from venerable dreadnoughts penetrating hit but glance made middle Raider not able to shoot or move.




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Now this is how it's supposed to work.  Immobilised Rhino next to a Webway.  This cuts off almost 6" of movement through that area.  As Shawn pointed out, Space Wolves can't disembark because of webway so they have to leave the other side.  Bjorn is also immobilised because of Ravager lances he also lost his Assault Cannon.


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Top of fifth.  Mis-pic.  This is actually a pic from bottom of fifth.  Forgot to take one.  Venom drops off its 5 Kabalite Warriors who run onto the right objective.  Venoms and True Born take out wolves fast attack.


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Bottom of fifth.  One of the many reasons Shawn is one of two of my favourite opponents is because we BS during the game.  We share stories, which is what this game is all about.  We laugh and make fun of each other.  We generally get along like two peas in a pod yelling at each other because of cabin fever and if anyone picks on my brother I will end them.  It's ok for Shawn and I to pick on each, if someone else picks on one of us the other has their back.  Good olde brother mentality.  However our BS'ing has cost us.  There's less than 30mins of daylight (store closes) left.  We have to get our sh*t together and finish this.  I want to finish this for a win.  Shawn wants to finish this for a tie.  So we ignore the majourity of our models and focus on whatever is nearby the right objective.  Kabalites fight against 10 marines coming in.  Game continues on a roll of 4.


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Top of sixth.  Raiders, Razorwing, Ravagers and Kabalite Warriors all shoot at Space Wolves.  Reducing their number from 10 to 4.  Not enough.


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Bottom of sixth.  Space Wolves shoot and assault into the second objective.  They remove a Kabalite Warrior.  Fail leadership.  Kabalite Warriors don't catch them, Wolves fall back.  Roll for turn 7, 14 mins til store closes.  5 on the dice.  Seventh turn it is.  Shawn calls it.  He has a model troop model left and there's four Kabalite Warriors on the Objective.  We move the model in because it is his turn so it is contested.


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1-0 Dark Eldar vs Space Wolves

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My new Dark Eldar army provides 21 lance shots in the first turn.  48 poison shots.  Effectively attempting to make it an alpha strike army (really I'm trying to copy Natfka's army of  "I punch you so hard you fall down.  Then I kick you when you're down" army).  Damn good mentality if you ask me.  Meaning first rounds of shots are supposed to be devastating to the opponent.  My army is primarily designed to take down Imperial Guard.  Which I agree with Natfka, the only army my Dark Eldar have an issue with.  Not worried about Grey Knights.  In fact would like to face a Grey Knight army with this list.  Particularly a Paladin list.  Watch one Paladin squad get wiped off the table one turn at a time.

Believe it was helpful applying my army's strength on the left flank with just two venoms, haemonculi, true born and 5 kabalite warriors on right flank.  Really wanted to take down that Land Raider, when the dice don't like you.  They don't like you.  After securing one half of the table and neutralizing any threat on that side then it was a pincer close from two Raiders and Razorwing with everyone from the left side moving right.

Had a great game with Shawn and learning more about him.  Thanks, brother.

slainte mhath

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