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Hey folks!

I had my first game against Blood Angels last night; no pictures and a brief write-up, but thought I would share.

I had a chance to play against the new Blood Angels yesterday.

He had two librarians, two chaplains, two scout squads, two assault marine squads, two furioso dreadnoughts (one with lightning claws, one with powerfists), two storm ravens, a scout biker squad and two Baal predators.

Scout squads+dreads were in each of the two storm ravens, deep striking assault marines.

Seize ground, capture and control - 4 objectives. I was playing Dark Eldar. My list: Archon+Incubi in Raider, 2x Haemonculi with destructors, 6x DL toting warrior squads in raiders, 2x wych squads in raiders (with blasters), 3x ravagers with disintegrators, 3x RJBs with 2x blasters.

He wins the roll to go first with a 6. I use my nightmare doll to make him reroll and he rolls a 1. Ha. I deploy and go first at the cost of a dead sybarite.


He started the Baal predators and his scout bikers on the board because I was going to completely block off both flanks with raiders, and kept everything else in reserve. He scouted the predators and bikes forward and turn1 began.

Turn1DE: I killed both baal predators and his scout bikers. The end.
Turn1BA: Nothing

Turn2DE: My entire army skips around the board flat out so that I'll get 4+ against whatever comes down.
Turn2BA: He gets both storm ravens and both assault squads - nice reserve rolling. He proceeds to hammer away at my mobility with my troop choices so that I can't get objectives, one librarian gets out and 4d6 lances a couple raiders, multitudes of fire take down another, although I make decent saves...think I lost 3 raiders here.

Turn3DE: My dark lances mostly whiff everything. I immobilize and stun one storm raven, and shake the other; his librarian gets insta-popped by a dark lance to the face. My ravagers eat both assault marine squads, who nicely presented themselves in a tight bunch.
Turn3BA: Since none of my stuff went flat out this turn, he's got free access to everything. Dread and scout squad get out of the immobilized storm raven - I have an exposed troop choice and wych squad underneath his other; I thought that between 10 dark lances and 2 blasters I could bring it down (and then my wyches would assault the contents) but it was not to be the case, so I've in bad shape. He proceeds to assault one of my warrior units with his Dread with lightning claws; he kills 3, gets 3 more attacks, kills 3 more....the squad dies. I lose a couple more raiders. The other storm raven jets away 12" and his disembarking chaplain/scouts from the wrecked one eat my bikes, immobilize a raider, and kill a warrior squad all in the same assault.

Turn4DE: My ravagers light up his disembarked scouts and eat them. I turbo-boost one lone remaining troop raider across the field towards an objective. His second librarian gets assaulted by my archon and friends - they've had nothing else to do. And my dark lances again whiff and fail to bring down the other storm raven. I had my archon out there in hopes I'd crack it and get to assault the contents, but nay.

Turn4BA: His dread drops from the storm raven and assaults my archon - they'll be stuck together in combat the rest of the game. His immobilized storm raven opens up on a warrior squad (he's targeting my troops the whole game). His LC dread goes after an immobilized warrior raider with troops in it (closest to an objective) and wrecks it.

Turn5DE: I give up the game right here. My turbo-boosting raider from last turn is 5" away from an objective. Rather than zooming onto the objective, I have no idea what I was doing, and I turn on the spot so my dark lance inside with the raider squad can fire (heavy weapon). I one-shot explode his storm raven, kill everything inside with ravager fire.....

And his turn is meaningless because he has no troop choices alive, and while I have four, I didn't put any on objectives. We both laugh at my tactical goof.

I like the new BA - they're going to end up counting on reserve rolls as much as daemons I think, so games are going to be mostly about how the reserve rolls go (unless people take a drastically different type of list).

It was 2 sanguinary priests not chaplains but otherwise well put

Nightmare doll doesn't work!!!!!

But yeah, nice report

Gwar! wrote:Nightmare doll doesn't work!!!!!

Yes, it does. You don't roll to see who goes first, you roll for deployment - and if you win the roll for deployment, you also choose whether you're going to be going first or not.

Dash good rep, I still want to play a game against you though I think you will hammer me like a nail...

So apart from your tactical goof, you still managed to have some good ol' sadomasochist fun with the new BA eh?

Never played against DE myself, but I always read these battle reports and they don't do half bad.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Nightmare doll doesn't work!!!!!

Yes, it does. You don't roll to see who goes first, you roll for deployment - and if you win the roll for deployment, you also choose whether you're going to be going first or not.

I think that's RAW and how it should work, but INAT says it does nothing. Kinda lame, imo... the initial roll is for deployment+1st turn, and per INAT things that affect who goes first (emperor's tarot) are still effective while things that work on deployment (nightmare doll) are not? Doesn't make sense.

Anyway, like the report. Amusing goof at the end to cost the game, but better in a standard one than a tournament!

My guess is that they rul;ed that way because doesn't Creed automatically get to pick his deployment? That would make any IG list with Creed go first every time with no role. I might be mixing up last edition creed with 5th edition creed.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Nightmare doll doesn't work!!!!!

Yes, it does. You don't roll to see who goes first, you roll for deployment - and if you win the roll for deployment, you also choose whether you're going to be going first or not.

Well, as a DE player myself, I don't believe the Doll should work. I believe that it, just like so many other things, are merely relics from a forgotten age where things worked differently.

As you yourself said, there is no "roll to go first." The roll to select side simply has a side effect of determining who deploys first and who goes first.

Saldiven wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Nightmare doll doesn't work!!!!!

Yes, it does. You don't roll to see who goes first, you roll for deployment - and if you win the roll for deployment, you also choose whether you're going to be going first or not.

Well, as a DE player myself, I don't believe the Doll should work. I believe that it, just like so many other things, are merely relics from a forgotten age where things worked differently.

As you yourself said, there is no "roll to go first." The roll to select side simply has a side effect of determining who deploys first and who goes first.

Those "sides" you're rolling for are also deployment areas. Which is what the Nightmare doll affects. You're rolling for table side or quarter, and those are deployment zones. So yeah...it works.

well if you try to use that logic at a tournament using the INAT FAQ you will lose your argument, i think that's what folks are trying to say.

i agree that the doll should work and that the INAT is being silly.

Other than that, seems like you has a blast, the BA seem like they are a very in your face army. Of course the DE are more than happy to oblige. Now, what were you using for Storm Ravens?

Modified Valkeryies. I don't want to do to much modification because I will buy the official model when it comes out and then my Valks can go back to being Valks

Good game, DE aren't bad at all (I won every game but 1 when I played em)... too bad I very much dislike their playstyle (and a good SW player, especially if he goes first, will annihilate DE). well played

What, INAT makes a semi-questionable ruling based on RAW instead of RAI?! No wai!

Interesting bat rep. Have you decided, Dash, to take the DE to your next GT?

Yes, I will be taking DE to my next GT.

We only made that ruling in the INAT to be consistent with the Witch Hunter Liber Heresius (or however the heck you spell that thing) which has essentially the same wording as the Nightmare Doll.

I agree that RAW it should work...but the existing WH FAQ was the one and only FAQ I was able to correspond with the FAQ writer before its publication and I did point this EXACT argument out...that by the RAW Liber Heresius should work fine.

But he obviously disagreed with me and put the ruling in the WH FAQ which essentially matches the ruling we put in the INAT regarding the Nightmare Doll as we try to be consistent across our rulings with GW's FAQs whenever possible and their is certainly no logical argument for why the Nightmare Doll should work when the Liber Heresius doesn't work based on the precedent set by GW's ruling.

Newest army against the oldest army. I'm very happy to hear they match up. Thanks for reporting.

I think Dark Eldar can match up against pretty much any army.

Last night they beat down an ork kan-wall + 30 Loota army (dishing out disproportionate amount of casualties to the orks) and today, they destroyed a 2,000 point IG list that was almost a replica of what I played Game5 at the SVDM; 100% foot-slogging IG.

I discovered that while being stubborn helps those IG keep from running when I assault them, it only affects morale tests, not leadership tests - and the horrorfex causes a leadership test minus the number of models under the template - so his five big blobs....three of them were pinned the whole game while the other two got shot up, mutilated, and assaulted. Creed had to go early on to stop him from casting "get back in the fight" though.

Those were some rather interesting games to watch btw. Good stuff all around. I think the DE are just fine and watching those horrorfexes go to work was just painful.

GO Dark Eldar GO GO GO GO Dark Eldar.......kill some more Space Marines

DE took down a BA list tonight:
Dante, priests, two deep-striking assault squads, two baal predators with assault cannons and heavy bolters, a librarian dreadnought, two rhinos with combat squads in them (2k points)
I lost 4 raiders, a jetbike (due to dangerous terrain), and a couple warriors in exchange for tabling him.

The DE played a seer council jetbike army before that; rerolls are all well and good, but volume of fire is meaningful too. They got to reroll leadership checks, but when you're testing at leadership minus 5 or so, chances are still good for failure - I was killing half his army while the other half was pinned from the horrorfexes. I've really come to like those things.

How DE stack up against the new nids?

It all depend on what type of Dark Eldar units you take against the New Nidz. I prefer the Wyche Cult, best in CC. I play in a Double Tournament againt the a Nidz oppoent, his homgaunts out number me 2 to 1, but with 30 attacks and power weapons, they all die. But that was only 1000 point per teammate, so the ture story is yet to be told. I do believe that Dark Eldar still can out do the new nidz in many ways. Dark Edlar has to many strenght 8 ap 2 weapons that can kill monster creatures really fast.

I've played against the new nids a couple of times.

In one game, my opponent had an all reserve army with two hive tyrants (using the rules that they had to be in play to get their bonuses). Turn1, both hive tyrants were killed from massed dark lance and blaster fire, and the rest of his army came down piecemeal, only to be eaten up.

In another game, my opponent used spore mines - he deployed them in my deployment zone before I got to deploy, so I dropped my ravagers on top of them and made them all explode onto AV11. lolz ensued.

At first zoanthropes were worrisome, but they're laughable now. A unit of three zoanthropes (or two) deepstrikes in a pod, and kills a 55 point raider (maybe, depending on shooting and flat out potential). In return, those T4 zoanthropes get insta-killed by dark lances probing their invulnerable saves. The spore pod is T4, so it dies in one shot with no save.

The rest of MCs have a *very* tough time trying to claim cover saves from other units (like gants, etc) when they're being fired at by a skimmer's dark lance 4" off the table.

Hive Guard can't split fire, so they can still only take a raider per turn, and if they're on the table, its an easy thing to hang back beyond their range and snipe them to death.

And that just leaves the hordes - and in 1250+ points, I have 3 ravagers, with three disintegrators each, which will seriously dampen that threat - and I've got two haemys with destructor flame templates, not to mention two squads of wyches to help settle things. I think that tyranids are *really* disadvantaged against DE.

Then again, I think pretty much everyone is disadvantaged against DE, which is why I'm taking them to my next GT.

I know how I'd feel if I lined my best nid list against a well built dark eldar list...

Very, very, very sad. As all of the 'surprises' of nids are expiring, and my mechanized opponents have nailed their target priority, nids have started to become pretty marginalized. Dark eldar just compounds that by having front loaded ap2 spam. So I blink, and my hive guard are evaporated by dark lances and plasma cannons, catalyst doesn't help. And then the new game is fly circles around tervigons, carnifex, trygons, t-fex or whatever else I have.

I think nids are a time bomb. Whenever the mechanized nerf hammer rains down on 40k, they'll be there, ready to be a respectable army... but as of right now, a list like Dash's is just the quintessential hard-counter to nids. It'll cut my arms off on turn one, tie my shoelaces together on turn 2 and then push me down a flight of stairs on turns 3-5.

Has anyone noticed how heavily Mat used the design crutch of melta in this new book? meltaguns in every unit, melta pistols for every sergeant, meltabombs to every sergeant, a melta psychic power, meltagrappling hook, melta-shielded stormraven. I'm sure I missed the melta-boots and melta-swords in there as well...

Wow, I just totally came off all bitter there, and I'm hijacking this thread.... I'm gonna click submit anyway, but not before i thank Dash for the batrep and all that it revealed. I've played some games against blood angels too and I think they are fairly fun to play against, especially with dark eldar trying to avoid their hammerblows while pecking at them.

Shep, DE can't shoot the hive guard if they don't have LOS to the bugs. Surely there is more than one piece of terrain on a battlefield to do that. Lance spam is bad, but it's still one wound per lance on 6W creatures that can deepstrike and shoot the #@^! out of skimmers. Seems like trygons would do well enough against DE.

Yeah, but the Dark Lances tend to be mounted on Fast Skimmers. That's a lot harder to hide from.

Lorek wrote:Yeah, but the Dark Lances tend to be mounted on Fast Skimmers. That's a lot harder to hide from.

"Tend to"?

Gwar! wrote:

Lorek wrote:Yeah, but the Dark Lances tend to be mounted on Fast Skimmers. That's a lot harder to hide from.

"Tend to"?

Or in