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Unfortunately I forgot my camera today, so I’m going to be doing this battle report by memory and mostly via text (it’s not too big a loss, I was using books as vehicles, because I’m trying out different armies to figure out what to start playing, so the pictures wouldn’t have been very pretty). Also, be warned the pictures aren’t even close to scale and some things were adjusted as necessary when i realized i had the layout sufficiently wrong that it effected something.

I was playing the dark eldar:
HQ
Haemonculus w/ liquifier 60

Troops
5 warriors w/ blaster, venom with splinter cannon 125
5 warriors w/ blaster, venom with splinter cannon 125
5 warriors w/ blaster, venom with splinter cannon 125
9 Wyches w/ razorflail, haywire grenades, hekatrix with agonizer, raider with flickerfield 218

Heavy Support
ravager w/ flickerfield 115
ravager w/ flickerfield 115
ravager w/ flickerfield 115

Total: 998

My opponent (so-gnar) was playing spacewolves:
HQ
Rune Priest w/ living lightening, tempests wrath 100
Rune Priest w/ living lightening, Murderous Hurricane100
Troops
5 Grey Hunter in Razorback 115
5 Grey Hunter in Razorback 115
5 Grey Hunter in Rino 110
Elites:
Dreadnaught w/ assault cannon 105
Dreadnaught w/ assault cannon 105
Heavy Support
5 Long Fangs w/ 4 Missile launchers 105
5 Long Fangs w/ 4 Missile launchers 105

Total: 980 (he listed assault cannons on his razorbacks but forgot in game and shot them as heavy bolters, so I’m listing them as they were played)
The type was seize ground with 4 objectives, with a dawn of war deployment. Space wolves went first.

The map was laid out fairly symmetrically:



Turn 1:
He deployed his grey hunters in the razorback with a rune priest on the far top left objective, with his rhino deployed near the right objective. I deployed the raider with the haemunculus and a warrior venom behind the cover on the bottom right. His first turn he dropped off all of his grey hunters at the objective and moved his razorback into the center of the map and moved his rhino up next to that and popped smoke. His remaining forces moved in from the back edge with long fangs on the far top left and middle, both dreadnaughts in the middle and the remaining razorback on the right. He activated tempests wrath and had some amazing run rolls across the board.
I brought my forces in across the board to counter his forces, venoms on the left to deal with the troops, and raiders in the middle to take out his vehicles, only the two ravagers on the left needed to make their dangerous terrain tests and both passed. The two raiders on the left had sight range to shoot into the razor back and managed a stunned and weapon destroyed result. And the raider turbo boosted across the board to deal with his other rune priest.



Turn 2:
The Rune Priest got out of the Razorback to activate his tempests wrath again, the rhino retreated 12 inches to keep its precious cargo safe. The long fangs moved up and shot at the venoms on the left immobilizing the right one. The Dreadnaughts moved up and fired at the raider as did the right razorback, between the 3 of them they managed a exploded result spilling the wracks onto the board, the thankfully passed their pinning test, but taking 2 wounds.
The Dark eldar had a great turn 2. The left most venom fired into the Long Fangs on the far left and took them down to two models. The other two venoms shot at the other Long Fangs bringing them to one model! The ravagers shot at the dreadnaughts and managed to mostly miss with some shaken results. The wyches did great with their haywire grenades destroying the Razorback’s bolter and immobilizing it along with some shaken results essentially turning it into a wreck. All affected vehicles passed their difficult terrain tests as well.



Turn 3:
The remaining Long Fangs shot at the advancing Venom and exploded it killing 3 of the squad inside, who failed their pinning test. The dreadnaughts moved up and shot at the other venom exploding that. But the forces inside took no damage, but failed their pinning test. The rhino retreated farther behind cover to wait out the fight. While the weaponless Razorback tried and failed, thanks to the skimmer 3+ save, to ram a Ravager. The Gray Hunters in the disabled Razorback got out, fired into the Wyches then assaulted, taking 1 wound and killing all but 2 of them who proceeded to run as fast as they could away while the Gray Hunters regrouped back 5 inches. The Rune Priest in that Razorback got out and started moving to the middle of the map and cast living lightening on one of the ravagers, but failed to do anything. The center rune priest tried to use a power but failed his leadership test and took a wound.
For my turn I moved my ravagers all over to the left of the bottom center terrain, setting up good firing lines and blocking LOS on my warriors. The remaining venom shot at the lone long fang and failed to kill him! The ravagers split their fire 3 ways, one killed the rune priest, and the other two shot into one of the dreadnaughts failing to do anything. The warriors in the remaining venom got out and moved towards the center objective. The Haemy moved up, but couldn’t get within template range on the Gray Hunters.



Turn 4:
The Dreadnaughts and runepriest fired into my ravagers and exploded one, his long fangs shot at the two units of warriors on the left, killing one in the squad of two, who then ran away, but missed on the other one. Thew gray hunters advanced and shot my haemonulus to death. While the Razorback moved to contest the middle objective.
My Ravagers split up with one moving out to the left to shoot the hidden rhino, though failing completely, while the other fired on a dreadnaught, destroying its auto cannon. The warriors on the right moved into cover, while the others moved towards the middle objective, taking a shot with their blaster against the back armor of the razorback, though failing to do anything. The venom shot at the lone long fang again, and, again failed to kill it!



Turn 5:
The Gray Hunters that were hiding all game finally moved out of cover to claim their objective. The long fangs all shot at the venom and managed to wreck it, preventing it from shooting at the Gray Hunters. The CC Dreadnaught moved up, while the other shot at the middle ravager, but flickerfield saves prevented two penetrating shots! The runepriest used living lightening on the ravager on the right, but filckerfield saves the one hit that got through. The gray hunters moved up and shot at the ravager as well, but failed to do any damage, while the rhino moved up to claim the objective.
The warriors moved around the Razorback and shot the blaster at it, missing entirely. The ravager moved up to contest and shot into the rhino, disabling its weapon and immobilizing it. The remaining Ravager turbo boosted across the map to contest the the objective on the top left! Luckily the game ended here with the Dark eldar up 1-0!



The MVP this game was the ravagers by far, their shots were reasonably effective, even if they did keep rolling to stun and shake, but their double contests were the game winning move. My opponent was completely blindsided by the ravager’s huge leap across the map!
I felt really good about my force (thanks for all the help Akroma06 and Ysclyth) and my plans worked mostly as I intended, with the exception of all my vehicles dying, ah well the dice move as they please!

Nice game. Congrats on yet another win with your Dark Eldar! I certainly see the huge strength with the DE, even if they aren't as cool as daemons, maybe they are more your style.

Nice report and congrats on the win. I've never seen a report with diagrams like this, it makes an interesting change

Good job mate, a well played Dark Eldar is a match for everything!,

Maybe you might consider taking a beastpack, don't think you need 3 ravagers at 1000 pts... also razorflail is a fail.

for 144 you have 3 BM, 4 khymerae, 4 flocks, that would come to a ravager, 2 whyches and the flail.

Making this army quite scary to face...

Something is wrong with the opponents list though, dreads and long fangs are both heavies, so he has 4 of them...

@Gorechild: Thanks! the diagrams were a little thrown together, but i'm glad you liked them. I always feel like i can't tell what's going on with text only battle reports, hopefully the drawings helped clarify everything.

@Valek: Thanks for pointing that out with the list, i looked it up and the dreads are elite choices for the wolves, just had them switched! I haven't used beastpacks yet, how do they play? they seem like very tough units, what do you find them really good at?

Where beast packs good at?

about everything, they go fast, can trap units and beat the crap out even spacemarines, just due to the enormous numbers of attacks and rending.
even rhino's are not safe, as rending will make sure you glance or even penetrate his rear armour
and you are almost guaranteed a turn two charge even if you start in your deployment zone.

your opponent will need to deal with it, if he doesn't he won't make that mistake twice...

I really REALLY hate to be the grammar Nazi but it is gonna drive me insane if i dont tell you its Dark EldAr not Dark EldEr. Thank you and forgive me for my annoying pet peeves with pronuniciation of names and such

oh my... that's embarrassing... fixed immediately!

I'll give beastpacks a whirl in the next game! i'm going to try out a WWP list based almost entirely around close combat forces like the beast packs, talos, wracks, and grotesques. The battle report will be up once we get around to playing it =P

We tested portal around here with beastpacks only and found it not worth it.
For the simple reason Dark Eldar are already so flimsy, and then you only going to give him you army piecemeal...

I'd have to disagree with Valek here. I regularly run a beastmaster squad (3 masters, 5 khymera, 4 razorwing flocks) out of a portal and they are probably my favorite squad in the whole codex. If you just have one or two units in reserve to come out the portal then its not a problem at all. As long as you set the portal off on turn 1 you're golden. It's only when you're putting your big portions or your entire army into reserve that you suffer from coming in piecemeal.

The only time I'd really consider beasts outside of a portal is if they are running with Baron Sathonyx.

I strongly suggest you do some proxy-ing to give them a try

@Gorechild,
I was referring to his above post, if you run only one or two beastpacks out of the portals then it is ok.
But by the look he described dumping talos(i), grotesques and whatever all out of a portal it is not going to do fantastic.

But i must admit I like to have my beastpack on table turn one, always nice to see your opponent make his plans and then again looking to your beastpack with a certain look 'drat i need to take care of these too, grr, choises

I don't expect to do amazingly well, i just want to get a feel for the capabilities of the various units that i haven't used yet... We'll see how it goes though, perhaps i'll get lucky on my reserve rolls =P i'm excited to see how the beastmasters do, they seem like they're really tough and their attacks are through the roof.