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Army Size: 2000
Armies:
Blood Angels (Me )
Eldar Cheese Host (Him )

Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Spear Head


Rough Lists:
BLOOD ANGELS:
HQ:
Librarian, Jump Pack, Unleash Rage, Sanguine Shield

TROOPS:
Assault Squad x10, Meltagun x2, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol
Assault Squad x10, Meltagun x2, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol
Assault Squad x10, Meltagun x2, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol

ELITES:
Sanguinary Priest, Jump Pack, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol
Sanguinary Priest, Jump Pack, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol
Sanguinary Priest, Jump Pack, Power Weapon, Infernus Pistol

FAST:
Baal Predator, Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolters
Baal Predator, Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolters
Baal Predator, Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolters

HEAVY:
Predator, Auto Cannon, Lascannons
Predator, Auto Cannon, Lascannons
Predator, Auto Cannon, Lascannons

VS.

ELDAR:
HQ:
Farseer, SS, Doom, Guide, Runes of Warding
Farseer, SS, Doom, Guide

TROOPS:
DA x5, Wave w/EML
DA x5, Wave w/EML
DA x5, Wave w/BL
DA x5, Wave w/BL

ELITES:
Dragons x10, Exarch, H Flamer, Wave w/Shuri
Dragons x10, Exarch, H Flamer, Wave w/Shuri
Dragons x10, Exarch, H Flamer, Wave w/Shuri

HEAVY:
Prism
Prism
Prism

Roll off: I rolled a 3, he rolled a 6. He decided to give me first turn. A major mistake as will be seen later on.

DEPLOYMENT:

BA:
I deploy my Preds in some ruins near the center. I park my Baals right in front of them. I hold 3 assault squads in reserve.

E:
He deploys kitty corner in the far back. Pretty standard Eldar turtle shell bs. Though, I silently note some LOS issues that I can take advantage of. He attempts to steal but fails the roll.

SCOUT MOVES:
I run all three Baals straight towards him, passing a few DT tests along the way.

TURN 1: BA
I moved my Baals another 11" to get into position, using those LOS issues I had taken note of earlier to target the Prisms while not giving them cover. It payed off. My Assault Cannons immobilized one and blew its prism off. The last two Baal failed to penetrate. With the Predators in cover, they opened fire and wrecked one Serpent and stunned another one. Fire Dragons pulled themselves out of the wreckage. As the smoke cleared the Eldar were ready for retribution, or so they thought.

TURN 1: E
The two dragon squads mounting the Farseers split up, one going high and the other going low. Each vessel moved over 18" to abuse the Farseers fortune. Nothing else moves. The Eldar seem complacent in their superiority. The dragons open fire on the middle Baal and watch it explode while taking two casualties from the explosion as well. Every other vessel opens fire with a collection of Missiles and Lances but none could seem to penetrate the holy Emperors mighty armor. The Eldar line is so crowded that one of his prisms is unable to fire and the other scattered far off target.

KP Earned: BA1, E1

TURN 2: BA
My Librarian and his unit come in, as well as Assault Squad 3. They drop right behind the top Farseer/Dragon filled serpent. I pivot 1 Pred to face it. I move one of my Baals back a few inches into a little niche by a forest. It also happens to be pointing all of its weapons at the Dragon squad in front of it. The other Baal I try to back into cover but fail my terrain test and watch it become immobilized. Between the fire of both Assault squads and Predator, the Serpent took 6 melta shots, 2 auto cannon and 2 lascannon shots before, on its last reroll, failed its test and explodes from a lucky rear armor melta shot. He takes 1 casualty and I take 3 even with my armor and FNP My other Preds continue to stun and shake his serpents in the process of blowing a lance off. My Baal annihilates the Dragon squad, killing them all in a vicious torrent of fire. The last Baal fires madly into the night hoping to damage something, which it does not.

TURN 2: E
He races his bottom serpent closer to my Preds in cover, again using Fortune to beef cake the unit up. The top Dragon unit fortunes and guides itself and blasts the Librarians unit with a HF and 9 meltaguns. The Librarian used Shield of Sanguinous and then went to ground and managed only to take 3 wounds. His other vehicles rain fire down upon my Predators and Baals but once again the armor of the Emperor stood firm against the vile space elves.

KP Earned: BA 3, E1

TURN 3: BA
The last of my reserves come falling from the skies on wings of fire, right next to the bottom Serpent carrying Farseer and dragons. I move assault squad two 1.5" away from the top seer+dragon unit. The Baal that was hiding in the forest comes out to play with the Prisms. Between the preds and the assault squad on the bottom I managed to take down the other Farseers ride. The Baal made a Prism Explode with its iron rain of rending goodnes. The top assault squad blasts the upper seer unit and charges in. The BA take no wounds and further deliver 5 including Farseer to the Dar. They manage to pass their test an I tighten the noose around its neck.

TURN 3: E
None of his stuff moves. The lower seer dragon unit blasts my assault squad and they take 4 wounds, even after going to ground. Once again, his wretched xeno tech patters harmlessly off of cover and armored plating. Leading him into the assault phase. For some reason, the lower seer dragon unit assaults my guys and loses combat massively, fails his LD check, and rolls way to low to flee from my blood hungry warriors. His unit is destroyed and the Angels consolidate 1" towards the battle lines. The upper battle continues with his dragons swinging right hooks that bounce hilariously off of the marines adamantium hides. In turn, the marines slaughter 4 more and then the rest are run down like dogs and torn to ribbons by chain blades and power weapons. They consolidate 5" towards the battle lines.

KP Earned: BA 7, E 1

TURN 4: BA
The Librarians unit finally stands up and is ready to fight. They fly over the tree covered land scape and land right behind a Serpent holding some DA. The other unit jumps over the same patch of tress, however they lose 1 of their number to an angry forest sasquatch on the way down. The Preds and Baals stay stationary. The lower Squad jumps a little closer. The librarians unit blows the serpent up with 4 melta shots, the DA inside take 1 casualty. Between all of my preds I manage to immobilize or rip guns off of the last of the Serpents and glance one of them to wrecked with the broken Baal . The Librarian assaults and wipes the DA squad out. The died poor, awful deaths. Assault Squad two attempts to assault but is to far away.

TURN 4: E
Eldar, seeing that there's no victory in site, raises the white flag in defeat.

KP Earned: BA 10, E1

Thoughts on the Battle:
He made deployment mistakes that I took advantage of. He made strategic mistakes by splitting his Seer Dragon units up and I made him pay for that. My Baals and Preds were invincible for the entire game. The immobilized one took shot after shot after shot and would never go down. I'm a firm believer that more shots = better. I'd rather have a whole bunch of mid level guns with a bunch of shots then a few high level guns with a few shots. His dragons never made it to their destination. He was rolling like general crap. But that goes back to my last point. He had way less ranged attacks than I did. If he had taken first turn it would have been a different game. But, at the same time, I just would have kept everything in reserve. He had nothing to counter my Assault Squads. I knew that if I could take out one of those Prisms in the first turn it would vastly hinder his ability to harm my RAS.

A blood angel player calling Eldar cheesy

nice report.

BA aren't cheesy. In fact, they take some finesse to play because you don't have your units in tidy little armored boxes all of the time. I have to play on your weaknesses for my list to work. I capitalize on your mistakes and just so happen to have the units capable to exploit those mistakes. As I tell everyone that faces me "I have to get you out of your vehicles in order to win." And it's true. If I can't do that then I'm dead in the water.

Good report. I like the idea of using the Librarian's shield + going to ground to give a squad a 4+ cover out in the open.

Yeah BA are very similar playstyle to Eldar for in essence they are a finesse army. Both have to play a very tactical game to capitalize on their strengths (could be said for any army it's just more prevelant here). BA are more well rounded/universal with their troops, but not as much variety in specialized units that Eldar have. I think the two armies complimented each other in terms of redundancy, so either both armies are "cheesy" or neither are.

Not for nothing, but BA aren't a finesse army. All you have to do is run your assault marines toward the enemy, melta their transport open, and charge the contents. That tactic isn't optimal against Wave Serpent spam, but you can't pick better weapons than autocannons and assault cannons for taking them down!

Nice battle report, it managed to keep things interesting with the banter! Your Eldar friend did pretty well considering Eldar are really more of a 2nd tier army now, and BA are the new FotM. Both the lists were on the spammish side though...

Minor Note:
Scouts is before the roll to Seize.
__________

Thanks for the bat rep, other than the cookie-cutter lists, there was alot of movement and destruction, big thumbs up to that combo

Nice report for the most part. I liked that you mentioned deployment and line of sight despite not having pictures. It made visualising a little easier. My only suggestion would be to make it less opinionated. Mech Eldar is a very effective build but is much harder to play then Blood Angel Pred/Priest spam. I don't know why he gave you first when he needed all the turns he could get shooting (Fire Prism is range 60"!). If he's your friend tell him to try out Eldrad. At 2000 points level this guy is a bargain and a half, especally if you're taking 2 Seers anyway.

Great win and all, so let me congratulate you. But I can really see your bias's leaking through into the battle report. I can't see how his list and your list are any more or less OP, or standard.

I like seeing somebody using jump pack troops as their bread and butter as opposed to the over-meched lists. Good bat rep!

Well. . . you're right. Both lists are complete cheese Though I will disagree that MechDar is harder to play. He had 30 melta guns!!!, plus Prisms, plus Lances and EML's. His units were nicely contained in armored shells, mine were not. I have inherent and known issues with survival against big guns. Eldar are still very competitive. Any how, the other player is a good friend and I was just razzing his army a little in good spirits. I have no bias against anyones army or choice of list. I think he gave me first turn because I tend to hold everything in reserve. I believe he was hoping for the last turn of shooting because of this reason.

@Rube
You can pick better weapons, like meltaguns or lascannons. The Assault Cannons are ineffective against Serpents because of their energy shields. A lot of the serpents had taken a ton of damage before wrecking. There were three vehicles that I had immobilized and blown off both guns before glancing them into the wrecked zone with lucky shots from an assault cannon. I will say, however, my autocannons are pumping out the pens. And, you really can't just run your assault squads forward into enemy gun fire. You don't have enough guys to lose. You need to pick and choose where to drop in or deploy in order to limit the amount of casualties they take on the way in. It's not always so easy. This isn't a Ork Mob where I have 200 boyz backed up by 11 walkers. I can't suffer many casualties or my list will fall apart.

@powerklaw
I'll definitely mention Eldrad. He's a beast

double post >.<

That eldar list is far from cheese, the BA list is far more optimized. 10 fire dragons? incredible overkill on those units and major waste of points. He only needs 5.

And unless you wrote his list wrong, where was he getting fortune from? you listed them as having guide and doom. Also, you cant get out of a tank after moving over 12" so that baal on turn 2 shouldnt have been wrecked, unless they only moved 12".

And Eldar actually have an incredibly hard time against BA because of the FNP. BS3 missile launchers and bright lances hardly hurt 10 man squads. and fire prisms dont negate the FNP unless you use a tiny blast marker which wont do much dmg anyways.

I pulled that list straight from his sheet. . .now that I think about it it he had last minute change not listed on his sheet that I had okayed. He swapped doom for fortune. The size of his Dragon squads was so large because they were meant for MEQ hunting. You can always link the Prisms to mess up BA with FNP, besides the increase in str and ap you also get rerolls to hit. But, that's also why they were the first things I went after.

Linked Prisms still don't negate FNP (unfocused shot) and a good MEQ player should always have cover handy.

Dragon Squads hunting MEQ squads...ehh, just seems like a big waste IMO.

Its not really a waste, its more that Eldar normally need them to hunt tanks and MCs. If you can deal with tanks with other stuff (Bright Lances for heavy stuff and Scatters for lighter stuff) then its definitely viable. Fire Dragons are insanely cheap with a massive damage output and compared to the other Eldar Elite options are probably the most efficient way to kill MEQ out of cover (as Banshees need to be in combat which is harder to pull off + can still fail with S3 without Doom support).

He does have 3 Prisms which gets him up to AP2 if he links all of them which I believe is enough to remove FNP? Still not a particularly efficient way to drop the Marines though.

In any case I feel that the biggest issue here was that the Eldar player never managed to threaten the HS Predators at all and they are the biggest ranged threat you have to his skimmers. The rest of the army he can at least try and run away from. This is probably connected to using the large Fire Dragon squads, they need to be killing tanks (2 EML and 2 Lances isn't even close to enough), but using 10 of them to drop a Predator is no longer points efficient. Also I if he was struggling to fit himself in deep in his deployment zone then reserving some stuff would probably have been a good idea. Bunching everything in one corner tends to end badly against fast Assault armies because they can focus everything at you easily, you need some units out to the side to try and draw fire if nothing else.

"Once again, his wretched xeno tech patters harmlessly off of cover and armored plating."

I loved this quote.

Good battle report thanks for posting.

Good report, but BA are very, very far from a finesse list. That's why people hate them. FnP is a pretty clear sign that the army is resilient, rather than finesse oriented.
Even for MEQs, BA are very forgiving due to their resilience and speed.

Oh Grim, you always play like a vulture And from what I've experienced both playing with and against eldar turtle doesnt work, their vehicles are too flimsy to try to hold up against fire power.

I'm not sure why he didnt try to roll up his dragons in teams to focus fire on single ba squads simply because sure they might kill a lot of them but if everyone doesnt die the assault squad (giving it passes LD) can really really hurt the dragon squad in melee.

You also dont tank hunt with squads of 10, its over kill and not needed, they are better for meq hunting. Also I dont believe he linked for the large blast which will go up to str 6 ap 3 which is enough to be both twin linked and ignore armor and FnP saves.

not quite high enough to ignore FNP because it doesn't meet the requirements fully. You need either intakill or ap2-1 in order to negate FNP. If the eldar player had linked all three together then he would have been able to ignore FNP. This is the reason why I made it a priority to eliminate them ASAP.

Well keep bring glory to the Allfather and bring the fight to every Xeno that stands against him.