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I bet you've got a hunch who wins this one. And I'll bet you that you'll be surprised....

I have been helping Somnicide with his dark eldar lately. he doesn't want to over-buy and he doesn't like to lose either. So pretty much our entire gaming group has been doing a collective think-tank for the DE, and we are starting small at 1500 for the playtesting.

I wanted to throw him in to the deep end right away. This is my take all comers IG list, btw. But it is biased against speedier and lighter armies. I actually use hydras mostly to really hurt long fangs from range and thunderwolves as they close in But they also have the benefit of scaring the hell out of GWs newest codex.

Ok, we rolled a 5 objective seize ground pitched battle, and the dark eldar won the roll and punted first turn. First smart decision of many. I think a lot of dark eldar players are struggling against armies like IG because they are making an assumption that they have enough firepower to outshoot an attrition style mech spam army like IG, as long as they go first. Its not possible, you've got to shorten the game by as much as possible, and you can only afford to fight locally, taking the whole army on with your whole army is just a bad plan. You'll see this unfold as the game goes on.

Ok, so I deployed my IG in a flexible, spread out, 'hopefully able to react' deployment. here is the list and a couple deployment pics.

CCS 4x melta chimera

PBS x6 chimera

vets 3x melta 1x autocannon chimera
vets 3x melta 1x autocannon chimera
vets 3x melta 1x autocannon chimera

vendetta heavy bolters
vendetta heavy bolters

2x hydra
2x hydra
2x hydra




On the scout move, I move forward, on turn one I move to the side and on turn 2 I move right back to where I was during deployment only with a 4+ SMF save.

On bottom of turn 2, the villains show up. His list was...

haemonculus liquifier

5x trueborn 2x splinter cannons 3x blasters in venom with extra splinter cannon
5x trueborn 2x splinter cannons 3x blasters in venom with extra splinter cannon
5x trueborn 2x splinter cannons 3x blasters in venom with extra splinter cannon

9x wyches hekatrix agonizer in raider
5x warriors 1x blaster in raider
5x warriors 1x blaster in raider
5x warriors 1x blaster in raider

ravager
ravager
ravager


He got one ravager, three trueborn venoms, and two warrior raiders. This is how he arrived. Intelligent decision number two.



Please excuse the cell phone venom stand-in. I only own two vypers with which to loan him, and so we endeavored to kill that ugly proxy ASAP.

Ok, as you can hopefully glean from this first opening move by Somnicide, he is not planning to play a conventional "fair" game. Its actually kinda funny, in the normally pretty useless strategy section of the dark eldar codex, the first two paragraphs are basically Phil telling you guys. "Look, I didn't give you enough firepower to just move on and table someone. If you try to do that, you aren't going to win much. You are going to have to play unconventionally to win with this army" of course he uses more positive language than that. But that strategy section is actually better than most, and is worth a read again. he's really trying to let you know what not to do, without giving too much away. Som is on his way to a much closer game than you would expect against IG with 6 hydras.

The ravager and both raiders are able to fire, and between them they are able to crew shake my closest vendetta and destroy one of two hydras right across from them.

Ok top of turn 3.



Half of my chimeras are out of range of the enemy, and my furthest hydras only have a single shot, on an 'in cover' raider. The shaken vendetta moves 12.1" to get SMF, and the other one moves across table and can just see another raider from around the central building. This is probably my best turn...

The surviving hydra shoots at the tiny fraction of venom that it can see behind that building and gets past its cover save to wreck it. The trueborn fall out, unpinned. my hydras in the far corner shoot their bad shot, only one could see and he got a cover save, and didn't manage to do anything. The center hydras shot at the center troop raider and wrecked it with an explosion, the warriors were pinned. My chimeras could only see the ravager and only two could fire at it. but they couldn't get past armor 11. Lastly, my vendetta made a trick shot, exploding the ravager, catching all of the warriors in the radius, killing two more, and causing a morale test which they failed, running off the table. That was about as good of a turn as I could hope for, considering many of my vehicles were out of LOS, and many of his won vehicles were out of range and LOS to the majority of my force.

On bottom of 3, he had the first of his two 'good' turns. He got the wych raider, and one ravager. All three of his trueborn debarked and moved into LOS of my army. The new ravager set up a shot at my vendetta while remaining out of los to everything else thanks to the building in table center. The venoms peeled back and angled for shots on his primary target. And the wyches also boosted on to the table into a position where they were almost entirely out of LOS.

He fired at my closest troop chimera, blowing it open and then dumping 24 splinter cannon shots into the survivors. mostly due to poor rolling by Som, i had one meltagunner alive, unpinned and unbroken He re-crew stunned my closest vendetta, but whiffed on the other vendetta (this was going to be a theme, the emperor LOVES my second vendetta) he had darklight to spare, and so he shot three blasters into my CCS chimera that was halfway to a blocking position. That vehicle took both an immobilize and a weapon destroyed (heavy flamer) In yet another shrewd move, his trueborn who shot at that chimera then charged it. With no plasma grenades to hurt it, it seems wierd, but they did so to get into base with the vehicle blocking damn near my entire LOS to them.

Ok top of 4. Now I'm looking for troops to kill. I do not have time to worry about killing the killy stuff, I need to cut out his mobility, kill troops off, and get my own vehicles in positions where they can move onto objectives next turn. i was thinking way too hard to take any pictures, so I'll just have to be pretty descriptive. The single damaged hydra moved over to be in position to block a nearby objective next turn. The psyker battle squad and a troop chimera both moved shoulder to should and parked directly over an objective in an effort to prevent one of his MANY skimmers hiding behind the building from being able to contest. My last troop chimera positioned itself comfortably scoring an objective. And my wonderful vendetta moved closer to the furthest objective, not quite contesting it yet, but able to shoot at all those hiding skimmers. The surviving meltagunner veteran ran into the waiting arms of the SMF vendetta nearby.

A note on my third hydra unit... You may have noticed that on turn 3 i didnt shoot my third hydra unit, and i wont be shooting it this turn either. I took out the camera and took a LOS perspective shot so you can all see how effective Som's dark eldar wimpiness is being...



I assure you this pic was taken during the game, there were still PLENTY of DE models on the table. But Som was not interested in walking into that firepower unless it was absolutely necessary.

Ok, top of 4 shooting was pretty decent. My vendetta fired at the wyches raider and wrecked it, my single lone hydra shot at a warrior raider and both immobilized AND weapon destoyed it, and my center hydras shot at another in-cover warrior raider and wrecked it. I jumped on those warriors as they fell out. A quick weaken resolve and some multi-laser peppering saw them running. Hopefully off-table.

Bottom of 4 was the only actual killy turn som had. the rest was all nip-tuck. His untouched trueborn (I just couldnt get anything on them, there was always something a little bit more important to shoot, they respected the heavy flamers of my chmeras too well, and all of the really close stuff they were shaking and stunning with their blasters.) moved to within kill range of three or four of my vehicles, the wyches emerged from the other side of the center building, staying in cover and still out of los of anything but my center hydras and my leftmost vendetta, and both chimeras. His damn warrior unit rallied and their 3" regroup move took them into embarkation of a venom. His warrior unit in the immobilized raider jumped out and got to within easy scoring of the furthest objective while still hiding behind a building (a well placed objective by som it seems) His final ravager showed up too.



The trueborn blasted my vendetta to hell, the resulting explosion killed the lone troop inside, Another trueborn unit unloaded three blasters into the side armor of my uncovered center hydra unit, wrecking one and shaking the other (ouch) the trueborn unit that charged the CCS chimera earlier peeled off and dumped blaster into my CCS chimera, crew shaking it. And a single warrior blaster from a window of a building leapt out to crew stun my troop chimera on the objective. So of course right when the wyches expose themselves to two of my heavy flamers, both of them get crew stunned. It was a bit risky for them to move out, but they needed to work towards the objective. their pureblooded allies protected them.

Sorry so blurry...



You can see the furthest warrior unit lurking behind that building, and see the trueborn boldly walking forward with no cover. there isn't anything close enough to shoot at them, and they aren't a priority.

Ok top of 5. Of course I've got to make all my moves, AND anticipate enemy scoring moves and blocks as well. Fortunately i log a lot of games against fast tricksy armies, and so I know what Som's options are. I also know that even with all that information, this is going to be a close one.

I move the vendetta to within contesting range of a far objective. I've still comfortably got my corner objective, and he's got no way of contesting it. I can't do anything with my center two chimeras, but they are scoring still and it doesn't look like he's really got the tools to stop that. And I drive my wounded single hydra 12" to contest an objective near my lines, in another turn he might be able to contest the dark eldar "home objective".

My third hydra unit again doesn't have a shot, but it is comforted to know that if he makes a move on the bottom of this turn, and the game doesn't end, he'll be able to shred a vehicle to bits. The vendetta shot at the troop-holding venom, and Som finally gets that whiff that I owed him. He might have made one flickerfield and I think I got a crew shaken on it. I shot the other lone hydra at wyches, but their cover held they may have lost one or two. And since all of the rest of my vehicles had to move quick to make predictive blocks, or had limited LOS, I had to pass the turn.

Bottom of 5. At this point, I had two (the two closest to me, and Som had one, the one closest to him. The way the vendetta was positioned, it didn't look like he could get to within scoring range with his troop venom on this turn. But an empty venom, the wyches, and two of three trueborn all were well within the distance needed to contest my center objective. So he played it that way. his priorities here were to kill my last vendetta to stop that shooting and to open up a new objective to him, and to mkae sure I can't score that center objective. he hopped the empty venom over the wall, and charge both of my chimeras with a trueborn unit, double contesting it. Another trueborn unit easily wrecked the threatening hydra that was going to maybe block next turn. And another trueborn unit wrecked the other center hydra unit.

He takes his 3 dark lance and one blaster shot at my vendetta and the sad trombone song plays. EMPEROR LOVES HIM SOME VENDETTA. If the game ends here its a draw. but the game continues.

Ok, top of 6. i can win this. I'll do my best to clear out my center objective, and I'll stop that venom from being able to come over and score the far away objective. I don't have much to do but how survivable are dark eldar really? The immobilized CCS chimeras top hatch opens up and 4 meltas fling out and toast the blocking venom. I line up my heavy flamers and toast away at the single trueborn unit that is currently contesting. But I have to stay put with the chimeras, as they are anchored on the objective and can't move out to reach the wyches. My vendetta heroically charges his weapon systems and takes aim at the helpless venom. Two pens from lascannons, two failed flickerfields, and then TWO WEAPON DESTROYEDS!!! RAGE!

Bottom of 6. I'll go pretty quick here. Skipping over some incidental blaster shots by the trueborn. At this point thanks to the wyches and surviving trueborn units, Som's got a pretty limitless supply of untis that can block my center objective. If he doles them out two at a time, he'll be able to block this turn AND next turn should there be one.

At this point, Som can win this. He has an untouched ravager lined up to take a kill shot on the vendetta, he flings his venom out there, ready to claim that objective should the vendetta die....

But what did I say about the vendetta. Untouched! The game ended here. Still a one to one tie, and now that the venom is in front of a fresh hydra unit. if the game goes another turn, its likely to remain a draw (hydra kills venom, vendetta kills three remaining warriors, then dies to the ravager)


Really fun game, and really well played by Som (I made sure he didn't forget the objective of the game a couple times ) I have to reiterate the importance of playing dirty with dark eldar. Use whatever tricks you can, terrain, range, reserving... etc. To mkae the game as unfair of a fight as possible. I'm sure that is going to be true in just about every matchup where you are outgunned and/or outnumbered.

And also note that terrain is super important to the success of speedy techy armies like dark eldar. That table has the officially proscribed amount of terrain from the main rulebook. Of vital importance is the LOS blocking stuff, of which a thir of your terrain HAS to be. if you play dark eldar, be sure to contact your friendly local TOs and let them know how important terrain is to your game. If there isn't enough, or if its the wrong kind. You're going to be fish in a barrel. No dark eldar general would attack an enemy while being exposed like that. And you shouldn't have to.

Somnicide will be by shortly to provide more perspective, correct mistakes, and hopefully give this thing some fluff

Very interesting battle report.

The important thing about the terrain is plenty of LoS blocking high buildings (ruins).

Moving thread to Battle Reports Forum.

I have to repeat the importance of LOS blocking terrain.

One of my biggest complaints about 5th edition is the move fully to TLOS, while virtually no gaming groups have sufficient numbers of large enough terrain pieces to really block LOS. Even if you do get a table with 25% terrain, usually 75% of that terrain barely blocks LOS to an infantry model. To me, adapting to the terrain is a much bigger mark of a good player than most other parts of the game.

Back on topic, I really like the way Somnicide played this. It's good that he remembered (ahem) the objective of this game and didn't fall into the trap of thinking he had to obliterate his opponent's models.

I am working on my own response here but am a bit busy just now at work. I just wanted to say that most of the time that I forget about the objective is when I get hammered by something (vendetta) and want to just hate on it to stop from getting hammered again.

I have to remember as an archon to just grab a finger from the fallen on the way out and give them to one of my haemonculi allies ;-)

Definitely well played, DE are unexpectedly fast at times which makes objective missions tough. I played a DE army 2 days ago and in spite of him having only a 2x Venom (1 immobile), 1 Wracks, a Haemy and some warriors he was in a position to win on Turn 5 (I had around 1250 of my 1850 points left and 3x troops)

i have x2 questions.

1) would you say that flicker fields are a waste of points?
i ask this because, that list has not-a-one. it's my opinion that due to crappy tournament terrain, that it's almost necassary to add them in the test phase as i think it's better to be short on points (10 per raider) than to shave off points from a list.

2) why the variation in the trueborn squads between the Cannons and Blasters?
there are about 126 pts. worth of dakka there that you could get another 5 warriors w/blaster in a double cannoned venom. not sure if trading x4 cannons for a blaster, extra shooting platform, and scoring troop is worth it to you but if testing shows it's not...then i'd love to hear your findings.

Saldiven wrote:
One of my biggest complaints about 5th edition is the move fully to TLOS, while virtually no gaming groups have sufficient numbers of large enough terrain pieces to really block LOS. Even if you do get a table with 25% terrain, usually 75% of that terrain barely blocks LOS to an infantry model. To me, adapting to the terrain is a much bigger mark of a good player than most other parts of the game.

HAAWGS DO! Over 300 Plastic Gw buildings of LOS blocking goodness!!

Too bad the CAWS ran off with our tournament fund in 2009 after The Big Waaagh. But we still have a fairly good smattering of small tournaments.

Nice bat rep btw, been playing with a raider spamy list with kinda the same load outs so this interested me greatly.

@Painnen

1. Flickerfields are an absolute waste of points and here is why I think so.

Sure you will occasionally ignore the single lascannon or missile launcher sent your way. However, the things that will ruin your day aren't single shot things. They are going to be 3 hits and you will ignore 1 and the other 2 will ruin your day. Everything is open topped and poorly armored. If I want to give things a 1/3 chance of survival I am having to spent 70 points just on flickerfields (3 ravagers, 4 raiders). That is a whole extra raider.

Add to that the fact that you should be endeavoring to get cover saves as much as possible and they give you a 4+ save.

At the end of they day you are armor 10 (or 11) and open topped. Putting a 5+ invulnerable save on isn't going to suddenly make you survivable, it will just break your heart. Remember, you get them for free on the Venoms so I did have them and they didn't help out at all.

2. I love the mixed weapon squad. I like being absolutely confident in that unit having a job to do in every single game I play. Plus their versatility means that I was typically firing them last every turn - if I did get infantry out I could splinter cannon, otherwise I would take a target of opportunity of a vehicle.

I dropped them in position and out of the vehicle asap to add to that flexibility - with them in the venom my opponent can potentially neutralize 2 threats with a single unit firing. If they are split, then 2 units have to deal with them.

Even in a wwp list, I will run them this way. If you need to pop vehicles, move forward into range and do it - if you need to deal with infantry/monstrous creatures fall back and do that until you can set up in cover.

@Shep:

In hindsight, do you think that it would be better to deploy all of the hydras in the center of the board, 12" forward, with hopefully decent sight lines to the corners? Or just in general more of a center castle formation than everything spread out? I find that I want to spread out most of the time with shooting, to try to get side shots on vehicles or to make it harder for an assault oriented opponent to hit all of my army, but against this army side shots are meaningless, and there's really no way to avoid the range of their anti tank when they're coming in from reserve. It just feels like an inside-out shooting approach would be better than outside-in, making it much harder for the DE player to deny some of your units shots, but I wanted to know your thoughts on it.

Good question. In thinking back to deployment... I just had no idea where he was going to be. And I knew he was going to try something sneaky, because we talked about it.

The way the terrain was set, I had one good spot to get hydras right in the middle. And it was definitely the first thing i deployed. From its vantage it could essentially see everything on the table except for the space immediately behind the center building.

Since the hydras have 72" range I never hesitate to place them somewhere far away. I was just looking for a spot where my fire lane was as broad as possible, and I had the maximum amount of LOS. The cross corner shots were going to be hard, because of two buildings in particular, but if I recall, there wasn't a good central hydra spot beyond the first one I took, either way, their cross corner shot was going to be difficult, and this way I had more of the objectives covered.

I really had no idea he was going to be able to take that rightmost hydra battery so completely out of the game. It seems pretty hard to believe, but every turn I kept thinking, well he 'has' to move out next turn, so I'll get a shot.

I do think I'll be finding the 10 points to run a single manticore. As much as I hate singletons, I can compress my deployment more, and I'll at least have one thing that can threaten units out of LOS, or clumped up like his arrival turn. I'm also sure that the manticore will be instantly shaken or dead from ravager fire on his arrival turn. But at least it can't be outranged or outLOSed.

The guys that got really outranged were my multi-lasers. The multi-laser is such a good shot against DE, and I couldn't believe how well he was able to mitigate that shooting. As you saw I tried to cluster those chimeras in the center. But I was also terrified that he would be able to immobilize them early, and that I would have to debark and eat disgusting amounts of splinter cannon in order to score objectives. So I hedged a little bit there. The troop chimeras were more split up than they could have been. But that was a fear based decision The kind the dark eldar seem to love!

=Somnicide They are going to be 3 hits and you will ignore 1 and the other 2 will ruin your day.

this is the most compelling statement in the whole lot. (not that the other isn't fair/good but this has the weight to change tournament lists IMO)

what i get from this statement is that each raider/ravager is being targeted by 3-5 'heavy weapon quality' shots, and as such, it's not got a snowball's chance at the Flicker Field saving the day versus that much firepower.

why i even have the biggest hang-up on dropping the FF's (aside from the aforementioned lack of LOS blocking terrain) is that Long Fangs can split fire 2on2 style and get quality resualts where ever you don't have FFs backing you up. Even Chimera's Scatter Lasers are significantly more dangerous without the use of FFs. (sure, Chimeras can shoot and see resaults before shooting again with another Chimera but i think the math backs up that FFs make one Chimera vs. a Raider much less effective).

my well-obscured concensus is that it would seem that FFs are worth consideration but plausably wasted points vs. heavy hitters like Lascannons and MLs. it appears that they are even less appealing because there is so much Lascannon and ML spam these days in tournament lists. is that the heart of the matter, from your point of view?

Even without the spam - just look at the humble chimera with hb/multilaser.

If you are in range to shoot them they can shoot you. Let's say your 3 shots from a ravager hit twice, caused 1 result and you got the worst result - immobilized.

In return you are taking 6 shots at str 5 and 6 and any results get a +1 on the chart. And that isn't even considering the autocannon that is probably riding in it.

You get your best return on investment for a flickerfield if the opponent has lots of low rate high strength shots (like missiles or lascannons) because typically a squad will only get 1 result (even the 2x2 long fangs example you gave above) and the FF might be worth it then. But if you are taking 4 chances on the damage chart - even just a glance - changing that to 3 really has no effect.

And yeah, with spamming high str weapons it is really just amplified - in fact, they are going to run out of raider/ravagers to shoot pretty early in the game whether you have them or not.

Nice to see Dark Eldar pull off a tie against one of their toughest match-ups.

@Shep I must agree with your analysis of Dark Eldar - if they try to play a "fair" game and just try to outshoot armies like this, they'll most likely lose. It's always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve in order to make a game out of it.

The major downside to the reserve strategy with Dark Eldar is having no way to manipulate reserves. Sure if my Troop squads don't come in until turn 5 I don't really care - but if my Ravagers decide not to show up it makes the game pretty tough.

@Somnicide I must say having tried playing some games without Flickerfields, and some games with; they absolutely save my hide during critical parts in the game. Same with Night Shields; having them forces my opponent to play out of their comfort zone. A 6" reduction is something different and something that will be in the back of their head for the entire game. Of course it matters much less vs armies like Guard and many Marine armies with plenty of firepower at 48".

I think good Dark Eldar armies can be effective either with or without both, it's all a matter of how you play the army.

At any rate, thanks for posting, always good to see stuff like this.

Interesting report. One use of the Flickerfield I've seen that's not been mentioned is assaults: since it is an invulnerable save, you get a Flickerfield save against close combat attacks. As an Ork player, I typically don't have enough shooting to drop 9-12 DE vehicles and have to resort to assault.

All in all, a good read and definitely gives food for thought.

This is a phenomenal Batrep with excellent insight into Dark Eldar tactics in general and the matchup against mech IG in particular.

Seriously should be required reading.

Mind if I crosspost this in my flgs forums?

Shep
Nice Battle Report.

I been doing some playtesting vs Avariel's MSU Dark Eldar at 1750 with beast packs and it does win its share of games vs my mech guard. She uses the reserve all and coming on from reserves on one flank to limit return fire tactic as well.

Looks like you play with more LOS blocking terrain then I see at most tournaments. The city terrain makes a huge difference. I played vs dark eldar with my guard on a low los blocking terrain table at Conflict GT and it was a turkey shoot.

I rarely if ever play 1500 but imo you have to have 3 Vendettas yeah they are a big target but they are the best unit in the codex for long range anti tank. I also have been running 2 Manticores. Need to kill land raiders and horde infantry. They also not bad vs raiders guaranteed pen if you hit and if you miss if the template clips the raider you can still get a damage result on a 5 or a 6 on 2 d6 take the highest.

Sommicide
Most IG players that I know take Chimeras with Multi Laser and hull heavy flamer to deal with infantry and hordes. You have to move too much to go for objectives and avoid autohitting assaults for the heavy bolter to be worth it.

Are Flicker fields worthwhile on Ravagers, Voidravens and Raven Wings? Your paying more for a gunboat and a 5+ invuln might keep you shooting.

Honestly, I still don't like flickerfields. We have just been talking IG here but let's take a look at what else is out there that cause the same issue of it just not being worth the points to me -

thunderfire cannons
razorbacks with hb or assault cannon
dreadnoughts with assault cannon
land raider (and land raider crusader)
autocannons
reaper autocannons
bolters
everything in the tau codex (not that we ever see them, but still)
everything in the eldar codex
hive guard
not to mention all the missile spam that there is out there

If I were going to invest points in protecting a ravager (which I don't know that I really ever would unless I was padding up a list) I would get the night shield.

Remember, the venoms had flickerfields as well and anytime shep shot at them he was getting multiple results. I think I made one flickerfield save all game - I would have been quite annoyed had I payed the 30 points just for them on the venoms.

Yes, you can (and should) go for the range game with ravagers, but they are still only 36" on their best day which puts you in play of any things that can move 12" and shoot 24" (like land raiders with twin linked autocannons).

Plus drop pods will just be in your face. YMMV but really, spending points on them feels to me like you are just trying to force them to be something they aren't (hardy and survivable) so will always be disappointed.

Now, I might consider Flickerfields on the fighter/bomber but even so, I would rather spend the points on more units - I think there would be a better return on investment with night shields (but I wouldn't even do that).

I am really starting to think that particularly with the Dark Eldar if an upgrade doesn't make you more killy you need to think long and hard about it.

A very, very interesting look at mature, objective-conscious play. I am trying to move past the style my friends and I generally played over the last couple years, of charge in and kill as much of everything. Even now, I tend to think 'what is best for each unit to attack' and then hope my turn goes well enough, than to think 'how can I attack without leaving anything vulnerable next turn'.

So thanks, very educational.

You can't just move 12.1" to get a cover save, you need be at least 18" away from your starting position to claim a SMF save. At least I think (that maybe for bikes)

Nah, page 71 you just have to move flat out. you are thinking bikes.

I only take Flickerfields on ravagers. Raiders aren't worth saving. The only time I'll put any upgrades on Raiders is if I'm building with a specific strategy in mind, or have points to spare. Ravagers need them though since they sometimes have to expose themselves to shooting. 10 points for the ability to shake off damage entirely is not to be over looked. Nightshields aren't worth it IMHO 80% of the time...especially vs. SW armies. 3 long fang squads can range cover the entire table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Shep: Your avatar creeps me out for some reason. I liked the Vostroyan better...LOL.

Somnicide, good job pulling off a tie against an army that's almost catered to kill yours.

Good battle report Shep. You run a very nasty list.

The FF question is one that I've been wrestling with since the codex came out.

I've been back and forth on whether or not to use them...what I've seen here may be enough to sway me away from the 70pts I'm spending on them in my current 2000.

This "hide and seek" style of play is much more effective when you're outgunned.

Two PSB squads - seems like you got lucky and did not have to face any fearless armies across the board. Reading the batreps it sounds like your list was tweaked to go against the local meta .

Afrikan Blonde wrote:Two PSB squads - seems like you got lucky and did not have to face any fearless armies across the board. Reading the batreps it sounds like your list was tweaked to go against the local meta .

???

I only see 1 PBS. He had 2 in his Sprue Posse GT list as a meta call. Reading the meta and adjusting to it seems like a very smart decision.

Yeah I think Afrikan Blonde replied to the wrong thread. And yes, he basically built his list to beat space wolves.

Lieutenant Wilocz watched over the stream of refugees pouring out of Sankt Marenzberg. The sight reminded him of the sumpstreams that flowed from the steelworks fabrikas in the days before the recidivist Makros Manneiwiecz led the Workers Rebellion. Wilocz's company had taken part in some of the heaviest fighting on Karakow at both Miganich's Port and Sommer's Fall and General Pawlow was letting them sit out this phase of the war providing peacekeeping and oversight of the refugees and aside from a couple of minor fistfights between the civilians it had been quite restful.

The Steel Wolves had all but crushed the rebellion save for in a few scattered lesser hives like Sankt Marenzberg although both sides knew that the end was near. All that remained was to bring Manneiwiecz, now known simply as the Maniac, to justice and smash the bones of any of those who had thrown in their lot with with the Maniac.

The first sign of the attack came when the hydra "Mordekai's Wrath" simply crumpled in on itself like a tin can being crushed by an invisible hand. It's death was completely silent save for the screams of the men trapped inside.

The voxnets erupted as confusion began to take hold. Wilocz looked around wildly for what had caused the death of the "Wrath". The auspexes were silent but as he scanned around with his monoculars he saw a dagger like prow cutting its way through the air. The vessel was like nothing he had seen before. It was a deep rich purple somewhere between fine velvet and an ugly bruise. As he watched dark beams of black light lanced out at the gunship "Eagle's Watch".


Shep has done a pretty good job with the play by play above but I just wanted to add some of my own thoughts as well as a bit of fluff.

This was my first game with my new army, obviously Dark Eldar. I was a little concerned as the first game with a new army is a lot like a first date. You really hope you will like it but could end up hating every second of it. Shep said he would be happy to bust my... er, break me in. Since it is a brand new army I thought he might dial down a bit just to keep me from getting too discouraged with a sound thrashing in game 1.

Yeah, that obviously didn't happen, and I am extremely grateful to him for that. My list is obviously pretty shooty and fairly well balanced vs. both mech and infantry. Full credit to Shep for helping me design it. He really is kind of the Rain Man of list design and you should pm him sometime. He doesn't just vomit up a netlist, he tells you why every single thing is in the list. Most of the time he just helps me tune and refine mine.

Anyway, so looking at the table it was pretty obvious that I would be reserving everything. The drawback of that is that without anything to cheat the odds on bringing things in, I was all but guaranteed to trickle in. The pro side to that is that I would be able to use the terrain to my advantage to stymie lines of fire and he would have fewer rounds in which to table me.

Fortunately, I have a lot of experience and practice using speed and terrain to advance thanks to my bike list and also, thanks to my time with a thunderfire cannon I was able to see that his extreme corner deployment of hydras would give me a very thin "safe zone" from one of them. Looking at the placement of the 5 objectives I quickly realized that there was 1 objective that Shep would just flat out own and there was nothing I could do about it which meant that I needed to claim 1 to tie and 2 to win which meant that I needed to neutralize his mobility and his long range shooting as best as possible. Troops were a much lower priority, which is unusual for an objective game but as I often say "thou shalt remember the mission objective and keep it holy". Which is far easier said than done.

Knowing I had a safe zone to come on (meaning only LOS from 4 hydras not 6) let me know that I needed to deal with one of the hydras and a vendetta right away. The Venoms are worthless against armor though the blasters carried by the passengers could be helpful but I decided I would need the Venom's splinter cannons and mobility later in the game so I opted out of turn 2 shooting with the trueborn in order to preserve them for later. I combined flat out movement with cover as much as possible. When doing this, you really need to get down and get that model's eye view, even walking around to the other side of the table.

My first priority every turn was to silence 1 of the hydra squadrons and then move on to the vendetta. An aside here, Shep's vendetta's are Emperor blessed. Every single game I play against him he makes WAY more saves on them and the damage chart is always kind to at least 1 of them. It balances out by other vehicles dying a bit easier so the law of averages is upheld, just not the way I want it ;-)

You can see above how my plan played out - there were a couple of times that my choler rose and I had to be reminded to keep the objective holy but it really played out like I had hoped. Massive kudoes to Phil Kelly for being able to write a book that plays like its fluff.

One thing I forgot during the game that I will really need to remember is that I should have gotten a kill point for blowing up the vendetta with the 1 meltagunner in it. That was added in the FAQ and forgetting pain tokens is like forgetting to fire a ravager. Just plain stupid and could cost you a game.

An extremely fun and challenging game that was WAY closer than I thought it would be. Dark Eldar really make you think about what you are going to do now and next turn. They are so fragile that I am basically treating every unit like a grenade. Pull the pin, toss it over there and expect it to be gone next turn whether it does anything or not. This has the added advantage of making me really evaluate priorities and to totally commit to what I am doing, even if it isn't necessarily the best idea.

Thanks again to Shep and I can't wait for the rematch.

Wilocz watched as another of the raiders crashed to the ground in slow motion as its grav-arrestor attempted to keep it in the air. Most of the warriors leapt safely to the ground at the last second but one was trapped and crushed under a spar. He saw one of the eldar jog over to the trapped warrior. For a moment he thought that the alien, a female by the breastplate, was going to help the other. She picked up the blaster and held it in the crook of one arm.

She removed the struggling warriors helmet and drew a wicked blade. Wilocz turned away in horror as she sliced the ear a good quarter of the entire head from the struggling and screaming warrior. She tucked it into a pouch at her belt and grinned wickedly as she watched the warrior thrash and buck wildly in pain. She quickly caught up with the rest of her squad, firing dark bolts of energy from the reclaimed weapon.

He tore his eyes away from that squad and looked over the battlefield. Another group of warriors had severed any avenue of retreat for a group of refugees. They were walking amongst them and jabbing them with an arcane item. Through the magnoculars Wilocz could see a small milky stone set in the center of a pooling welt of blood. These stones had apparently been stapled onto the refugees. He was just starting to wonder why they were being tagged in such a way when stone started to glow as the slavestone actived, transporting the tagged back to a hell far worse than death.