Summary
This is a battle report for the first round at the Battle Standard Tournament is Manchester
CT this past weekend. In this tourney, there were three games, and I brought the Mech'Dar list shown below.
My first match up with an
IG player named Will. His list consisted of
* 4 foot vet squads in carapaice armor. One had a
LC, 2 with
ML, and 1 with an
AC. All had an extra gernade launcher
* One
CCS with a
ML
* 2 demolisher
LR,
* 1
LRBT
* 2 basalisks
* 1 armored sentinel armed with a
PC
My army list is shown here :
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/416039.page
Game Type
The game was sieze ground, with a pitched battle deployment. All special rules applied.
Before the Game / Deployment
The
IG won the roll to deploy and go first, and he set his army up across the board. I castled into one corner to provide as many cover saves as possible, with one exception of a avenger serpent I placed behind cover. I set my nightspinner to fire indirectly all game. I set the dragons in the front, and the avengers behind them. Eldrad was put into the white tank with the
EML and avengers.
Will placed his
CCS and demolishers in the center of the board. His basilisks were behind a hill to one side. He placed his troops across the board in various areas of cover.
Overall Strategy
As the Eldar player, I held quite the advantage in this game. My plan is to go first, then move forward at fortuned speeds, weather the fire for one round, destroy all his tanks and then shoot or tank shock his units off the board. He will have a very hard to capturing my objective, and will have a hard time even contesting.
Turn One
Will moved his
IG a little bit. He pushed his demolishers up to get close to range, and he fired everything at my army and failed to do anything. I either made the obscured cover save, or he failed to damage the vehicle.
On my turn, Eldrad cast fortune on 2 serpents, then I moved the suicide squads up.all the fire dragons. With the avengers I shot up some vehicles with scatter lasers but had no effect. I targeted his
CCS with my nightspinner, which caused him to take a pinning test, which he failed.
Turn Two
On his turn, he again had just no real shooting to do. All my skimmers were moving flat out, and he failed to do any real damage to them. One of the skimmers holding the dragons was stunned, but I wisely put spirit stones on them.
On my turn two, I began to wreck face. Three of the warlocks left their serpent, fleeted and assaulted. Two of them assaulted demolishers and the third assulted the
CCS. One of the demolishers exploded, and the other was damaged. His
CCS squad then beat and killed two of the warlocks.
I took a gamble and assaulted his squad of vets with my dragons, and beat them in the assault, then drove them off the board. In the picture below, I know they are closer than 1 inch from his models. We put them there for the shot to show them about to assaut.
On the other side of the board, my dragons did good. One squad of them killed the two basalisks. The other one blew the battle cannon off the
LRBT.
My serpent in the back shook his armored sentinel.
Turn Three
Will shot the
LRBT at my dragons and killed the squad with
HB and a
LC. I had forgotten to assault the
LRBT with my melta bombs and paid the price. His
HB sponsons and
LC demolished the dragons.
The other squad of dragons was shot to pieces by the vet squad next to them. Only one lived after going to ground. I was impressed with the stats of the grenade launcher.
Will killed the last warlock int he assault phase, and shook a serpent.
At this point, I lost 2 dragon squads and my warlock squad. I also had a weapon destroyed result on a serpent.
On my turn, the dragons that were still at full strength boarded their ride again and headed to the remaining
LRBT. While they were going across difficult terrain, I tank shocked the squad sitting near it while passing to no effect. I also shot them with the scatter laser on it and killed a few of them.
With the vehicle that was shook, I tank shocked the remaining 2 squads. One of them failed their test and fled off the board. The other serpent tank shocked the remaining squad and shot them with its scatter laser.
One serpent shot its scatter laser into the back of a demolisher, but failed to have any effect. My doomspinner killed a few of the models in the squad I tank shocked. My remaining 2 back field serpents shot at his vet squad on the other side of the board and killed all but 3 of them.
Turn Four
Will's demolisher took out Eldrad's ride with an epic shot. His remaining
LRBT shot its
LC at the nearby serpent full of dragons to no effect. The vet squad with a
LC took a shot at a serpent to no avail. The
ML on the other vet squad hit but did not do any damage.
On my turn 4, I tank shocked the remaining vet squad 2 more times, it failed the second one and fell off the board. I then shot the remaining sentinel on the side armor.
The last surviving dragon that went to ground got up and shot the demolisher in the rear armor, and killed it.
The serpent near them shot at the
CCS and insta-killed the commander and his remaining bodyguard.
My other serpents killed the final few vets in the remaining squad.
Eldrad and his avenger bodyguard ran forward to claim his objective on turn 5 or 6.
The other dragon squad hopped out of the serpent and destroyed the
LRBT.
At this point, the only model he had left was his sentinel, and so we called the game.
MVP
In this game, the dragons were the MVP of the game. Their ability to deliver death to
IG forces is unparalleled. In this case, I give it to the dragon squad that assaulted a squad of vets, killed them, and then killed a demolisher. A great use of 80 points.
Game Notes
This was an extremely hard match up for him. He basically had one turn to stop the dragons/warlock assault, and as two of the dragon serpents were fortuned, they were HARD to take down. Even with going first, he just did not do the job. Once I saw the top of turn two end, I knew that this was going to be a short game.
The doomweaver did a good job overall. While it did not kill that many guard, the ability to cause his
CCS to be pinned is extremely nice. It never got shot at, so I think the holo-field on it was a waste of points.
The warlock squad did OK. It killed a demolisher and stunned another, so they did their job. They managed to tie up his
CCS for a little while, which prevented him from giving orders. Were they worth the 75 points? In this game, yes.
On turn two I had Eldrad still near my objective, and all my suicide units moving forward. This was not helpful, as Eldrad was then out of range to do a lot of good. As such I moved him forward at that piont. I think I should have moved him up with the other tanks.
Not assaulting with the dragons on the turn I shot the
LRBT was a stupid mistake. Each dragon also has metla bombs, and they should have used them.
Tank shocking
IG squads is extremely effective.