Misguided Kin... Dark eldar vs Eldar 1500

A slight rest from my Eldar in order to use my Dark eldar, totally different I know. This is a kind of rematch against my chaos opponent the other weak (here) but instead of using his Chaos he used his Eldar. So a rematch but between different forces. The game was 1500 points, Crusade with 4 objectives, with Dawn of war deployment.

The Armies

For fun I brought a raider heavy list with a little defence line just to mix it up.

Dark Eldar 1498

Haemonculus – 65 (Warlord: Divide and Conquer) w/warriors 1

Venom blade, Liquifier gun

Haemonculus – 65 w/ warriors 2

Venom blade, liquefier gun

Haemonculus – 55 w/ Wyches

Venom blade

10 Warriors (1) – 115

Dark lance

10 Warriors (2) – 115

Dark lance

10 Warriors – 100

Splinter cannon

Raider – 60

Dark lance, splinter racks

10 Warriors – 100

Splinter cannon

Raider – 60

Dark lance, splinter racks

10 Wracks – 100

Raider – 60

Dark lance

9 Wyches – 108

Haywire grenades

Raider – 60

Dark lance

Ravager – 105

3 x Dark lance

Ravager – 105

3 x Disintegrator

Ravager – 105

3 x Disintegrator

Defence line – 100

Quadgun

So this list is a very basic, troop heavy list which has nothing scary on its own. No single squad will be able to do a large amount of damage but if they work together then I am hoping for great things. At least my army is fast with its transports if nothing else.

Eldar 1500

Spiritseer   W/ wraithguard

10 Dire avengers

Exarch

5 rangers

5 Wraithguard

D-Sythes

6 Fire dragons

Exarch, fire pike

Wave serpent

Holo field, scatter lasers, shuriken cannon

Crimson hunter

Exarch

6 Swooping hawks

Exarch, Hawks Talon

Wraithlord

Bright lance

Wriathknight – (warlord: D3 [3] re-rolls)

Scatter laser, suncannon

A very small army, but very powerful one with high toughness across the board. He doesn’t have a large number of anti-tank or even high strength shots so if I keep my tanks on the outskirts of the table they should survive long enough to really count. We shall see though.

The Mission

Rolling for mission we get Crusade and end up with 4 objectives. Deployment zones rolled up as dawn of war so nice and simple. I won the roll for deployment zone and then set up my defence line across the edge of my deployment zone so I could be manning it turn 1. It reached from the large ruins to the left of my deployment zone until it hit a terrain feature so just curved round. Objectives were placed next; I placed my two down, with 1 behind the defence line and the other in the middle level of the ruins. My opponent set up his objectives in the swamp and trees in his deployment zone.

Rolling for first turn the Eldar won and elected to deploy and go first. He set up his fire dragons in the wave serpent and placed it on the far right side of the table assuming I was going to be behind my line. The wraithknight and wraithlord go next to the serpent more towards the centre of the table. The spiritseer and wraithguard go behind them and the dire avengers are placed in the wood. Rangers infiltrate and the hunter goes into reserve with the hawks.

I was unsure what to do really as this point so thought I would attempt to distract him with the combat aspects while shooting him with the rest. I set up warrior squad 2 behind the defence line and warrior squad 1 inside the ruin. The wyches and wracks in raiders go on the right to try and force him to focus on them. The ravagers hang at the back of the table with the warrior raiders being placed on the left side.

The rangers are then infiltrated into the swamp in his deployment zone.

Deployment

Night fight: turn 5

Steal the Initiative: YES!

The Battle

Dark eldar turn 1

So I stole the first turn, what a beautifully dark eldar thing to do. In order to take full advantage of this I send both my wych raider and wrack raider straight at the eldar lines, hoping that they will only manage to hurt 1 of the squads leaving the other to assault something and be a pain in the ass. Two ravagers skirt around the left side of the table while one moves towards the right. Both warrior squads in raiders move forwards to shoot as much as they can.

Shooting starts with the warrior squad shooting at max range at the rangers, managing to down a single eldar. Their raider follows suit killing another ranger. The quadgun targets the dire avengers killing 1 of the aspect warriors who are they shot at by a disintegrator ravager who kills 3 more though the trees. The wyches raider shoots at the wave serpent and glances it while the wrack raider boosts straight towards the wraithknight. He will have to deal with them or risk losing a few wounds on the wraithknight or lord. Not a very exiting first turn.

Eldar turn 1

The spiritseer casts voice of twilight invigorating all the wraith constructs around him (giving them battlefocus). The wave serpent moves forwards 6 inches into difficult terrain and manages to immobilised itself. With their transport damaged the fire dragons jump out and move towards the wych raider. The wraithknight jumps forwards and the wraithguard consolidate around the objective getting ready to shoot the raider.

In a ranging inferno the wych raider explodes under the pressure from the fire dragons’ melta weapons (first blood). 3 wyches die in the explosion and then the fire dragons battle focus away. The dire avengers somehow manage to get 3 glancing hits on the wracks raider and only 1 is saved by Jink. The final hull point is taken off by the wraithlord bright lance making the wracks disembark. Seeing an opportunity the wraithguard battle focus forwards and flame the wracks, killing all but 1 who (foolishly) holds his ground. Immobilised but not harmless the wave serpent shoots at the wyches killing 5 of them. To finish off the turn the wraithknight shoots at the warlord warrior squad and kills 4 of them off, but thankfully they hold their ground.

Dark eldar turn 2

With the wraithknight in the open I move a warrior raider and ravagers to optimise shots on it, If I can kill It this turn it would be a large blow to the eldar. The wych and haemonculus moves towards the wave serpent. The other warrior raider moves towards the rangers, I want to kill all of his scoring units off if I can.

The solid shots of the quadgun manage to wound the wraithknight even though he uses a re-roll to try to save the monster. The other warrior squad on foot shoot at it and their sheer weight of fire power manage to take another wound off it (again using a re-roll). The first warriors on raider shoot at the wraithknight again taking a wound off the monster and using up first final re-roll! So only 3 wounds left and no re-rolls. The other warrior boat shoots at the rangers and kills off the squad (gaining a pain token). Triple dark lances shoot at the wraithknight and this time his shield protects him, forcing my wyches to take a blind test but they pass. A ravager with triple disintegrators targets the knight and somehow deals 2 wounds on it, even though it needed 6+ to wound. The other ravager targets the wraithguard but only kills 1 thanks to them being in cover.  The last wych throws a haywire grenade at the wave serpent but somehow misses the still tank...

Assault phase and the wych charges into the wave serpent and this time manages to use its haywire grenade to glance it, reducing it to 1 hull point.

Eldar turn 2

Reserves are rolled and thanks to my warlord trait only the swooping hawks come in! They are placed behind the defence line to the right next to the ruin. They drop their grenade pack onto the warriors manning the quadgun and kill 4 of them (Feel no pain saved 2). The spiritseer casts renewal on the wraithknight healing it by 1 wound. With the wave serpent in danger the fire dragons move to get rid of the wyches in the only way they know how. Again the wraithknight gets very aggressive and moves straight towards my warlord. At the end of the movement phase I INTERCEPT with the quadgun and shoot at the swooping hawks and manage to kill 3 including the exarch! Not a bad retaliation.

Not wanting to let the warriors get away with murdering their brethren, the hawks shoot back and manage to kill 2 more warriors, they then battle focus into the ruin. A little bit of overkill next as the fire dragons shoot at the wych and haemonculus killing them both. Not free the wave serpent shoots at the ravager on my right and gets a penetrating hit on it blowing off a weapon. The wraithlord once again goes tank hunting and explodes the ravager just hit by the serpent. The wraithknight shoots at the warriors including my warlord and manages to kill off every warrior leaving the warlord standing, defiant to the last.

Assault phase and the wraithknight rolls enough to charge into the haemonculus, while we didn’t move him up we though it looked cool. Unfortunately the combat is a little 1 sided and my warlord gets turned into a smear on the ruins wall. What did you expect?

Dark eldar turn 3

With the rangers gone an objective has opened up so a warrior squad and a ravager move up to go after it. The rest of the skimmers move back to try and combat the wounded wraithknight who will be able to crush anything he wants if left unchecked. The warriors manning the defence line move to get a few more models in range of the hawks.

Starting with the warriors on hawks, the liquifier gun manages to clip 2 hawks and kill them both, the warriors fail to do anything. The triple lance ravager aims at the wraithknight but once again fails to do anything to it. The warriors in raider next to it however are my little stars as they manage to get 10 wounds on it and he fails 2 saves, killing the wraithknight and granting me slay the warlord. Up in his deployment zone the disintegrator ravager shoots at the wraithguard and kills the whole squad off leaving the spiritseer on his own. The warriors snap shot at the dire avengers and manage to kill a single aspect warrior.

Eldar turn 3

In comes the crimson hunter and it hides behind the ruin so the quad gun can’t target it. The fire dragons moves though cover towards my deployment zone, they are practically out the game now as I won’t let them catch me. The wraithlord moves behind a wall so it has a cover save from all the ap2 shots. The lone swooping hawk skyleaps to safety while the dire avengers take back the objective the wraithguard died defending, and it joined by the spiritseer.

Making its mark the crimson hunter exarch shoots at the dark lance ravager and makes it explode under the pressure of its lance shots. The wraithlord shoots its lance at the warrior raider and glances it.

Dark eldar turn 4

The last ravager moves to target the dire avengers and both the raiders move to get into range of taking the objectives, but 1 moves within 12 inches of the wraithlord.

9 shots from the ravager is more than enough to kill off the remaining dire avengers. He now has no troops left to take objectives. The warriors closet to the wraithlord shoot at it and the sheer volume of shots on the monster kill it in a single turn. That was rather lucky.

 Eldar turn 4

In comes the hawk again and hides, dropping the grenade pack on the warriors killing 2 (including the guy on the quadgun). The crimson hunter moves behind the ruin to target the warriors.

The crimson hunter again shows its skills and kills off the remaining warriors including the haemonculus. Running for line breaker the fire dragons continue into my deployment zone.

Dark eldar turn 5

The sky darkens as night falls. Pulling back the ravager goes after the crimson hunter as it has a chance of doing something to it. One warrior squad jumps out of their raider and grabs the swamp objective while the other warriors go towards the spiritseer manning my opponents other objective.

Aiming into the sky the ravager hits the crimson hunter twice and he decides to evade, I manage to get a single glance which he saves. At least he can only snap shot next turn.

For fun the warriors charge into the spiritseer, but the psyche proves to be more than a match as he kills a warrior. But they hold.

Eldar turn 5

The crimson hunter moves behind the warriors on the objective and shoots at them, but fails to hit with any shot. In combat the spiritseer kills another warrior but opens up his defence allowing a blade to injure him, reducing him to his final wound.

We roll to see if the game carries on...

Dark eldar turn 6

The ravager again moves to target the crimson hunter but this time fails to even hit it. In combat the warriors manage to kill off the spiritseer and overrun onto the objective.

Eldar turn 6

The crimson hunter shoots at the warriors who assaulted the spiritseer and kills 2 and the wave serpents scatter laser can just see them and kills 2 more. They hold though.

 The game ends here.

Dark eldar: 8 (2 objectives, slay the warlord, line breaker) – Eldar: 2 (line breaker, first blood)

Dark eldar victory.

Post-Battle

Well looking over that I can see I got very lucky on a few occasions, namely the number of wounds I caused and my opponents failure to make armour saves. This meant I could kill the wraithknight, as if I failed to do that he could have run rampant though my lines and killed more troops. Something that really would have messed me up. Having 6 troop’s choices and my opponent only having 3 also was a major advantage for me in an objective based mission. Either way it was a good game and it would have gone either way in the opening turns.

• Wraithknights: With the suncannon they are a lot scarier than with the two heavy wraith cannons, i will have to test this out with my eldar list. I liked how it did.
• Poison: It was scary how much damage it did against his monsters. This just happened to work very well in my favour, if he had taken a more foot orientated or even mech I would have been screwed.
• FNP: Having the haemonculi really didn’t help this game as most of his shots were strength 6 so ignored my feel no pain. That said I just used what I liked and I like them, I’m not going to list tailor now am i.
• Ravagers: they are powerful... just saying.

That's it from me this week. Hope you enjoyed.