Met Connor at Fantasy Flight for the long awaited match up of my new Dark Eldar list against his Blood Angels.
Wore my VNV Nation Faith, Power, Glory work shirt today.
http://www.vnvnation.com/
Mission: Annihilation (this is going to be rough) Deployment: Dawn of War. My Dark Eldar has become MSU (multiple small units) so there are a lot of little things for him to wipe off the board. Have to focus my lances on areas that will arrest his shooting while obtaining kill points.
Felt rather good to hear frequent praise for the paint job of my Dark Eldar Wed night. One guy even said "great free hand" then joked about the painting looking like decals. I even joked about him giving me money and his models so I can send them to another country where they will be painted. I called it an "association fee." One of the unofficial store employees also complimented my painting. Must have been five people and store manager Dave who spoke highly of my paint job. Felt great.
Table of fun. I always try to set up a balanced table. Each side has the same amount of negative and positive space. Staggered terrain blocking line of sight. Ultimately designed to make an army move into position. Not giving free positions to long range heavy units so they can fire at a good portion of the board with easy.
Dark Eldar deploy a squad of Kabalite Warriors and their Raider. Can't see the Raider because its in the lower left hand corner. Blood Angels don't deploy anything and decide to move everything on in the first turn.
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Top of first. Dark Eldar move onto the board. Blood Angels have two Storm Ravens. All I remember is they have Multi-melta's which I want no where near my paper tigers. Then I learned they had Plasma Guns. Yeah, that's fun. Thank goodness for keeping everything on the back line with Night Shields. Dawn of War helps a couple of Blood Strike missiles not able to shoot at me. Connor did say he didn't know what to shoot at because there was so much stuff on the board. Guess MSU works a little bit.
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Bottom of first. Blood Angels come onto the board. Nice and clustered up. Connor knows his game. Shoots into the Warriors in the middle dif/+4 terrain. They go to ground and live. Eventually I will have to start taking them out of there. Not this time though.
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Top of second. Dark Eldar now have an idea what Blood Angels are doing and spring into action. Dropping one webway was helpful in corralling the Rhino's and Razorbacks to the other side of the board. Should've thought about it and had my other venom in position to drop the other webway in the middle of the other path around the middle terrain. A lesson for next time. Storm Ravens are little hard to put down with all those weapons to destroy before wrecking it. Ultimately did end up immobilising both and stripping one of that Plasma Gun. Not worried about multi-melta with night shields.
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Bottom of second. As Connor said he will have to move his tanks elsewhere because of the Webway. Either through difficult terrain, which he will eventually do and through a narrow gap of safe passage. Have to learn a way of exploiting this in the future. I thought about throwing a Raider in front of the lead Razorback to create a wrecked vehicle at most to further stunt his movement. What shooting Blood Angels did resulted in successful Flickerfield saves. As Connor said "Two rounds and no one has Kill Points yet" in surprise.
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Top of third. Dark Eldar continue to dump more and more lance shots into Storm Ravens. One is immobilised the other cannot shoot. Vect and Wyches arrive, other Wyche squad arrives along with both Scourge squads. Three Blood Angel tanks are down. Lose some Wyches to the explosion. My True Born on the far side aren't doing anything to get their points back. Perhaps keeping them in their Venom would've been better.
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Bottom of third. The Blood Angels that left their ruined tanks take out the Scourges that destroyed their tanks the turn before. Terminators move in to attack Wyches which assaulted one of the tanks. After some damn good rolls from Connor Wyches make all 6 invul dodge saves. Tie! No one loss, no leadership. Combat continues. Blood Angels are successful in immobilising two Raiders.
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Top of fourth. It's been four turns and my Razorwing has yet to move! Finally more Blood Angel tanks are being taken down. Not fast enough. Connors Terminators were too successful in their saves. At this point I decide to stop firing at them. Can't anyway since they are in H2H (hand to hand).
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Bottom of fourth. Blood Angels make a great turn. Wiping out True Born and putting Wyches on the run. Sanguinor takes out 5 Kabalite Warriors with ease. Blood Angels are pushing back. Feels good to have the pressure of the ropes against ones back. Helps me to know my character. Do I keep my cool or lose it?
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Top of fifth. Ravager power slides to the building hoping to do damage to some Blood Angels. I need me some kill points. Also to get out of range of the Storm Raven. Wasn't damn it! It's coming down the wire. Need to start getting me some kills. Venom is the far field shoots into the squad of Blood Angels hiding in cover near the immobilised Storm Raven behind the centre terrain. The Venom takes out some of the marines. Not enough. Keep moving my Razorwing, Venoms and Raider further back. Range is my ally here. Night shields are useless if I don't utilize them which allows me to take advantage of my lance range.
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Bottom of fifth. (Russian accent) Blood Angels are hungry (/Russian accent). They are chasing down the fleeing or pulling back Dark Eldar. Really depends how you look at it. Lucky for me they won't get in range. Thank you, move-12"-and-shoot-everything-I-want. That might be it folks. Connor rolls the dice and 4 comes up, onto sixth turn.
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Top of sixth. Far Venom continues to pump more poison shots into the Blood Angel squad hiding in cover. Connor does something next which makes me want to draw a cartoon about. I try to shoot lance after lance hoping for more kill points. It wields me little. Great news is because of Ravagers movement I was able to jump to other side of tower and destroy the Storm Raven from the rear. Yay, power slide. There are fewer and fewer models to move on the field. Great because turns are flying by. Bad because I'm sure I'm on the losing side of this kill point stuff.
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Bottom of sixth. Lone Blood Angel marine in the far back field has watched as his squad has been slowly whittled down by the Venom. He decides it's too scary outside and embarks in the immobilised Storm Raven. Good to see Space Marines on the run from poison weapons. /snicker
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Top of seventh. Since far Venom lost his play thing it moves up 12 and shoots at squad of 5 Blood Angels who are also hiding in the back field behind a wall. Ravager also shoots, completely misses, the one that hits fails to wound. I thought I had that squad back there. Three Lance shots with two instant deaths and 12 poison shots grrrrr. Continue to pull back in far left corner using range as my friend. Don't think Blood Angels can catch me.
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Bottom of seventh. Four Blood Angels in far corner assault Ravager. Fail to take it down. Connor put up a great fight and was successful!
Lose. 9-16 Dark Eldar vs Blood Angels
Perhaps I didn't focus all my strength against the right part of the army. I gave away too many easy kill points. Maybe keeping True Born in Venoms would've been helpful. Flickerfields and Night Shields saved me several times. It was beautiful. He tore me up plenty good. Think having the Venom with the Ancient Haemonculi closer to the other avenue in the middle to drop the second Webway would've been helpful.
Looking back at the game I spent one shooting phase pumping lance after lance and splinter cannon after splinter cannon into the Terminators. Yeah terminators are tough. It wasn't efficient shooting. Should've focused on shooting softer targets for more kill points.
slainte mhath
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