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Thanks guys!

I didn’t take any pictures during the tournament, in part because I forgot, but mostly because I didn’t want to distract myself. But I’ll some quick battle reports anyways for those of who actually read what I write!

GAME 1 – SPACE MARINES

In the first game I played a cool guy who was new to 40k and had a hodge-podge vanilla marine army consisting of a captain, an ironclad, 2 las-missle dreads, 4 tactical squads, a couple land speeders, a land raider redeemer, and two devastator squads, one with lascannons and the other with missiles. It was kill points and pitched battle, with a secondary mission to hold these weird moving objectives. I knew that I had a leg up on him in terms of experience and codex quality, but he had a ton of missiles and lascannons and I was worried that he might be able to pick apart my paper planes and beat me. I had the upper hand the whole game, and after 5 turns I had all but tabled him with about 1/3 of my army left; however, after a handful of crazy events on both sides, my initial worries were correct, and we tied the kill points 10-10. But I claimed the secondary objective, mostly because he wasn’t really paying attention to it. A victory… I guess.

GAME 2 – ELDAR (AND MY BROTHER…)

In the second game I was matched against none other than my brother! He was visiting DC for his spring break, and though he left his necrons and his marines in New York, he wanted to play in the tournament, so he took the Eldar army that we have joint custody of off the shelf and took it for a spin. They told us that they wouldn’t place us against each other, but apparently we had identical scores after the first game, and they decided to do it. It was kind of silly, since we’ve played each other a hundred times, and we both were looking forward to getting 3 good games in against other people. But we did what we had to do and squared off. His list included eldrad, the avatar, fire dragons in a falcon, scorpions, 10 wraithguard, 2 squads of avengers in wave serpents, path finders, warp spiders, and two squads of dark reapers. The mission dawn of war and capture and control with 2 objectives in each side, secondary objective was some silly thing involving killing units in close combat. I won the roll off but let him go first, expecting him to spread his army across his edge when he walked on (which he did), and allowing me to refuse flank and start out of range of just about everything in his army. We danced around each other for a turn and a half, and he realized that I outgunned him at range, so he went all in and shot everything, pushing everything towards my army and bladestorming both avegers squads. Besides shredding a bunch of hellions, he did minimal damage, and I proceeded to pick him apart. I almost tabled him, and took all of the objectives. Again, I think the story of this game was simply the fact that my codex was more powerful than his. A lesson I would be on the other end of in game 3…

GAME 3 – GREY KNIGHTS

So I found myself 2-0 with a fairly high score, which meant I was placed against another 2-0 guy with a high score, which meant I was placed against a dude with a beat face grey knights list, and I was terrified. He had a grand master and a librarian with a few henchmen in a chimera, a ~7 man paladin squad, the vindicare assassin, 4 full strike squads with rhinos, 2 of the heavy support grey knights in rhinos, and 2 psyfleman dreads. So I was staring at ~15 psycannons, among other things. It was spearhead with victory points, and thankfully there was a large piece of terrain in the center. He went first and deployed close to the center, so I hid back in the corner of my zone to avoid the psycannons for as long as I could. I did a good job dancing around the center objective and keeping the dreads out of LOS of my important units for the first two turns, but eventually he closed in, and tore me to shreds. Every single gun in his list, whether it was a S5 storm bolter, or a psycannon, or a S8 autocannon, had the potential to kill every single model in my army. It was sort of like a game of rock paper scissors, and he was swiftly cutting up my flimsy stationary. I really don’t know what to do against grey knights, but hell, getting my butt whooped definitely got me thinking…

LESSONS LEARNED

The big lesson that I took from this tournament is that I need more units of blaster trueborn. I was only running one at 2500, and had I had 3, I think I would have stood a much better chance against the grey knights dude.

Along the same lines, I need more venoms. Like 6 to 8 of them. I really don’t want to build a spam list, but I think I’m going to have to get close to one if I want to be as competitive as possible.

I also decided that I should start looking into and getting practice with beastmaster squads, since I think they would have helped me in all of my games. I’ve never liked the beast fluff, but it seems that they are one of the most powerful units in this dex, so I’ll have to find my way around what I don’t like about them.

Those things being said, here’s a new 2000 point list that I’ve been thinking of.

105 – Baron
85 – Haemonculi with WWP

322 – (2x) 3 Trueborn, blasters, Venom with SC , GT, and NS

313 – 18 Hellions, Helliarch with agonizer
420 – (3x) 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom with SC, GT, and NS
110 – 3 Wracks, Venom with SC, GT, and NS

228 – 4 Beastmasters, 10 Khymerae, 4 Razorwing Flocks

375 – (3x) Ravager with FF and NS

1958

Two ways to run it; one, the haemie and the wracks can both give their pain tokens to the hellions so they can start with FNP and furious charge, or two, the haemie can move up and drop the portal while the rest of the list hangs back and lures the enemy closer, then out pop 18 hellions and a large beast mob.

I have all the models to test a list like this, except for the beasts. So….

BEASTMASTER THOUGHTS

Obviously, I don’t want to buy GWs stupidly expensive dark elder beast models, especially since the razorwing flocks are sort of… meh. So I started browsing the internet to brainstorm how to make cool custom beasts. Most people use chaos hounds, or hormagaunts, or some other beastly looking cheap model. I didn’t really want to do this, so I was looking for something different to make my squad unique, cheap, and badass all at the same time. I saw a razorwing flock that used little drones made out of hellion PGLs and warrior bayonets, and there was my inspiration; I could kit-bash a swarm of robotic beasts out of my dark elder bitz box. The razorwings could be sharp little drones, the khimerae could be larger more hound-like robots, and if I ever decide to make a clawed fiend, I’m sure I could kit bash something cool. Plus, I initially thought that necron spines might make for a cool haemonculi, and now I think I could them on my beast masters, and I’ll be able to make it look like the beast masters are techno-savvy dark elder who are controlling the beasts. So… step one.

RAZORDRONE FLOCK

I knew that grav-talons and phantasm launchers would make good bodies for my razordrones, and I figured I could just put some spikes on them, and after an hour of messing around with my bitz box, this is what I came up with!











I figure that I can make every drone look a little different, and if I have 4 bases with 4-5 of these little guys hanging on thin metal wire, I think it would look pretty frickin cool. Thoughts? Any ones that you like/hate?

The drones all look good, but the second one you took a picture of doesn't tickle my fancy. It seems to long, like I was thinking the guys would spin around and shred. It looks good, though personnally I dislike it.

Good quick battle reports, glad you won 2/3, and happy to have an update!

Yeah that one is sort of the lame duck of the flock, I'm gonna replace it. The dark eldar kits are blessed with cool looking yet unnecessary bits that are great for these, but I think my spare disentigrators aren't the best sources for torsos for these guys. The grav talon is perfect cause it look like a bug. More to come!

The drones are a really cool idea...personally I think they are better suited to DE then a bunch of birds. A larger version could be cool to represent Kymerea

This Saturday I brought the Corespur Elite to the Berks Spring Assault 3 in eastern Pennsylvania. It was a great event, about 80 people showed up with a nice variety of codexes and armies that they put a lot of time and thought into constructing. I had a great time and took a lot of pictures, so I’ll do a pic heavy blog post / tournament recap for y’all!

BERKS SPRING ASSAULT 3

I road tripped up to the tournament with 3 awesome guys from Beltway Gamers. The tournament started at 10:30, it was a 2.5 hour drive, and we had to pick everyone up in the morning, so I drag myself out of bed at 5am for what would be a 22 hour day. It was well worth the fatigue.


I didn’t want to eat up space in the car pool with my huge battle foam bag, so I just put the Corespur Elite in a shoebox and held them on my lap.

We got there at about 10 and while the organizers were pairing people I had an opportunity to check out people’s armies. It made me really want to get a display board since I had to leave the Corespur Elite in their box while I waited for my table assignment. Here are some pictures of my favorite armies that I saw.




Bar at a tournament? Awesome




Fellow Beltway Gamer Marc’s woodland rangers space marine army!


Note the raccoon looking up at the dread!


Really cool looking chaos army with a great display.


Great centerpiece!


ANGRY STORM RAVEN!


So angry!


Cool looking grey knights. You think Monster sponsors him and paid him to paint them like that? Haha


I thought this looked like a really solid 1000pt eldar list. Wonder if it did well!


So orky!


Awesome custom Vulcan


And an even awesomer freehand land raider!


Very cool looking tervigon


CANDY LAND TABLE! We brought this up, and unsurprisingly, won the award for best club table!

1000pt LIST

Here’s the list I brought.



105 – Baron Sathonyx

146 – 3 Trueborn, all with blasters. Venom with an extra splinter cannon.

249 – 14 Hellions including a Helliarch with an agonizer.

130 – 5 Warriors with a blaster. Venom with grisly trophies and an extra splinter cannon.
130 – 5 Warriors with a blaster. Venom with grisly trophies and an extra splinter cannon.

120 – Ravager with grisly trophies and flickerfields.
120 – Ravager with grisly trophies and flickerfields.
___
1000

I was considering bringing something more spammy, like 7 vehicles all with night shields. But I decided I’d rather put my baron and my hellions on the table. So pretty much a trimmed down version of what I ususally run, without skimping on the hellion mob size, and without using reavers (which I’m starting to realize aren’t always worth it). I had 10 points that I didn’t know what to do with, so I just gave my ravagers grisly totems as well to pretty much guarantee that my the hellions would always have LD reroll.

GAME 1 – TAU

First I was placed on an awesome looking chaos themed table against a nice, enthusiastic guy with a crisp blue tau army. I had never played tau before with the Corespur Elite and I was pretty scared of what might happen when I did. He was running the HQ guy with the S4 pie plate that ignores cover and a couple body guards, 2 squads of 3 crisis suits with plasma guns and missile pods, 2 squads of 6 fire warriors, and 2 broadsides with shield drones.

To make matters worse, he won the first turn. It was spearhead and capture and control with a central objective that was worth double. He deployed everything in the terrain back in his corner. I deployed the hellions as close as I could, and with 8 of them in cover, and spread out my vehicles.



On turn 1 he opened up at my vehicles, but I got quite lucky with flickerfields, I think I saved both the shots from the broadsides with them. He stunned my trueborn venom, blew off one of its cannons, and downed a few hellions. I moved my army up, spreading out in the central cover with my hellions, and peppering his commander’s squad with venoms and ravagers, killing one. I was a scared of the pie plate that ignored cover since my hellions would have no save against it!



Turn 2, he knew he had one turn to kill as many hellions as he could before they hit his line, and he did a really good job of it, shooting everything including the broadsides’ missile pods at them. All that was left by my turn was one guy, the helliarch, and the baron. On my turn I moved the trueborn venom up and unloaded them into the cover, shot them and the ravagers at the broadsides killing one and a drone. I charged my warriors into his warriors, which in retrospect was stupid cause I forgot that they didn’t have grenades since I’m so used to only charging with units that have grenades. At the least, my opponent was getting a kick out of seeing his fire warriors hold their own in combat ad the combat drew. The baron and the remaining hellions flew up and chopped up the shas-ui-or-whatever and his bodyguard, and consolidated into cover.





Turn 3 he finished off the hellions and killed the baron after he made 6 or 7 shadowfield saves. He also wrecked the 2nd warrior venom. On my turn I moved those dudes towards the central objective, and shot at him some more, making the 2nd fire warrior squad flee.



On turns 4 and 5, he finished off my troops, and I had to try and scrape my way to a tie. There was a strange rule for the tournament that everything with a weapon skill counted as scoring, not just troops. It really hindered in this game, since the only non-troop unit I had with a WS were the trueborn, but he had all those battle suits that were suddenly scoring. I sent vehicles flat out to both objectives and hoped that the game ended at the bottom of 5, but it went on to 6, and he cleaned up one of the objectives and won a minor victory.



I definitely made some mistakes, but he played a good game and chose his target priority’s very well. Loss #1.

GAME 2 – ELDAR

In game 2 I was placed against a nice guy with a really cool looking Eldar army. He had won his first game in a massacre, and asked if I had too, and since I lost, he asked a judge if we should really be placed together. The judge okayed it.



He list included a farseer on a bike with fortune, 8 warlocks on jetbikes, 3 jetbikes, 5 avengers, a falcon and a night spinner. I recognized his farseer bike from dakkadakka because it was on the blog feed a few weeks ago!



The mission was a weird one; each player chose one model from an opponent’s troop choice to use as a traitor, he becomes an IC with +1 wound and a 5+ invul, and the goal was to kill the opposing traitor and protect your own. So yes, if you have an apothecary paladin with a cyclone launcher and a hammer, your opponent can steal it! I had paltry choices from his army, so I took a jetbike at first, and he took my helliarch. I realized that my hellions couldn’t run with the jet bike in their squad, and he realized that his jetbikes couldn’t do their assault jump if the helliarch was with them, so we both changed our minds, I took an avenger and he took a warrior with a blaster, so he could put them in the falcon. Falcons are neigh impossible to kill, so he definitely had an advantage over my traitor transport. But, I did roll a 6 on combat drugs and won the first turn, so I had that going for me.

I went first and spread out my army, and he placed everything in a corner, using his bikes to give his tanks cover. I had a golden opportunity to kill as many jetbikes as I could before he got the chance to fortune himself, so I shot everything at them, but I couldn’t even kill one. A theme that would continue… He moved his jetbikes up and was in range of a ravager with a singing spear, and he popped it. I need to learn to position my ravagers with more thought… He shot the nightspinner at the hellions; thank god they have a reroll on dangerous tests!



By turn two we both realized that the hellions and the jetbikes would be doing an awkward dance around each other, so I decided to be bold and position them ~16 inches away and ontop of the hill, hoping that he would attempt to charge and roll low on his difficult terrain test. Oops… bikes don’t take difficult terrain tests, I forgot that. I shook the nighspinner and shot all my venoms at the fortuned bikes, killing none.



So he took the chance and moved up his bikes, and he was able to shoot and destructor a few before charging, since I had positioned the baron closest and he knew I wouldn’t remove him to try and prevent the charge. By the time they charged there were only 3 or 4 left. He killed everything but the baron in combat. I’m pretty sure that even if I did get a charge on the seer council, he still would have won the combat. But! The baron made his leadership save (which is uncharacteristic of him) so I hit and run towards his falcon, since I needed to kill it to win the mission.

Turn three I moved the venom with the traitor in it as far away from the bikes as I could. I shot more venoms at the bikes, again killing nothing. On his last turn the nightspinner had attempted to ram a venom since it was shook, but I saved it with flickerfields, and dropped the warriors behind the nightspinner to get a shot at the rear. Miraculously, he didn’t save the penetrating hit, and I rolled double 4s on the holofields and wrecked it! I shot my remaining ravager at the falcon and blew off the pulse laser. The baron charged it, and just shook it I think.



His jetbikes came in from reserves and shot at the baron, cracking his shadowfield. His seer council went to clean up the trueborn, and then jumped closer to the venom with my traitor in it. His falcon went flat out to a corner.



On my turn 4, I realized that anywhere I moved my venom with my traitor in it, he would be able to reach it with his seer council’s spears. I moved it flat out and on a table edge, and then moved the falcon flat out and infront of the venom to use it as a shield. I was pretty proud of this tactic, but he managed to sling his falcon around so it could see the venom, and popped it with the bright lance. Then his jetbikes could see the guys who got out, so he killed them all with his shuriken catapults, including his dire avenger traitor.





The baron/bike combat drew on his turn too, so I hit and run and charged the falcon again after shooting the remaining ravager at it. If I killed it, the baron could have charged the guys inside and killed the traitor. But I couldn’t kill it (damn holofields!) and he won the game. His list was really well put together, I never realized how impossible to kill those seer councils are! I shot at least 150 poison shots at them and didn’t kill a single guy. He went on to with 1st place overall in the tournament. So, I wasn’t the only one to feel the wrath of the craftworld. Loss #2…

GAME 3 – ORKS

In game three I played a new 40k player with an ork bike list. It was simply wazdakka, 5 squads of bikers with power klaw nobs, and a cannon. Kind of a rock-paper-scizzors list, and I was afraid it might cut up my paper. The mission was the one from battle missions where its seize ground but you get 1 point for each turn you hold an objective.



He took the first turn and moved around the center objective, moving wazdakka flat out through it, shooting up the hellions and killing a few. I decided to charge wazdakka’s squad with the hellions, but weakened them first with venoms and such. Unfortunately, the hellions failed utterly, and proceeded to break, and since they were under 50%, they ran off the table. Typical of the baron; always looking out for his own life and disregarding the mission!




Wussy Mr. Baron!

Not much to report on in this game; it pretty much consisted of him attempting to shoot at my skimmers and hit them on 6s in combat, and me taking down his bike squads one by one. Unfortunately, his troops had a very large footprint, and he was racking up objective points much faster than me.



I realized that my only chance was for the game to go on to turn 6 and hopefully 7. By the end of 5, I had about 2/3rds of my army left but only 3 or 4 objetive points, and he had 7 or 8 points, but all he had left were 2 bikes and the cannon. If it went on to six I would have tabled him and then I think the objectives wouldn’t have even mattered, but I rolled the dice for random game length and got a one!!! Loss #3…



GAME 4 – SPACE WOLVES

So I was 0-3 and was desperate to avoid going 0-4 and winning the smoking boots award! I was placed against a kid with a sort of hodge-podge space wolf list consisting of 2 troop squads with meltas, a small elites wolf squad with a couple power fists in a rhino, a commander with TH and SS, and 2 squads of long fangs with missiles.



He won the first turn (that’s 1-3 on first turn rolls for the tournament… epic fail mr. baron!). It was dawn of war, so he placed his two wolf guard units at the foci of the table, and the captian in the one to my right. I set up the baron and the hellions just over 18 inches away from the ones on the left, so that they were too far away to get shot but close enough to charge on my first turn.



He walked on his long fangs, and made the poor decision of moving the hunters closer to the hellions even though they were still out of range; it meant my hellions could shoot at them before they charged since they didn’t have to run. I brought all my skimmers in flat out to the right, hoping to avoid the captain and his short ranged wolf guard until I dealt with the rest of his army. The hellions easily won the combat, and the remaining 2 guys failed their fearless save, so the hellions got their FNP.



He moved his rhino up and dropped out his elites (out of cover and out of range…) His long fangs shot at the hellions (krak instead of frag…) So obviously this kid had no idea what his doing, but I had to exploit his mistakes to avoid going 0-4! I shot my lances at his expensive elites, catching them cover saveless. I started shooting up the remaining wolf guard squad. And I tried to charge the remaining hellions at the longfangs, but they rolled poorly on their run roll, so I charged and chopped up the rhino instead.





I eventually killed the wolf guard and 1 squad of long fangs, and then the game ended. Win #1!

RESULTS

So I wen’t 1-3; not as good as I was hoping. The first game was tough, but I think if I did a few things differently I could have won. The second game… don’t think there was any way I was winning that one. I definitely could have and should have won the 3rd game. But, at least I pulled off the 4th. With painting and sportsmanship factored, I was splaced 40-something out of 80, so not bad at all!

LESSONS LEARNED

Dark lances and blasters are ridiculously good at troop killing. They killed a few crisis suits, instant deathed a bunch of ork bikes, fried the elite space wolves, and eventually left the space wolf commander as a pile of ashes. So the lesson here is that you can never have too many dark lances, because even if your opponent isn’t running any armor, they are still awesome weapons.

Again; blaster trueborn rock. Trying to fit 3 units of them into my 2k list.

Hellions are very, very difficult to use correctly. I need more practice. Plus, 4 more hellions and giving them 2 pain tokens to start will help…

Shattershards are frickin awesome. I have yet to use one, but I can tell that they are. If I had one on the eldar game, I would have had an excellent way to deal with that pesky seer council!

NEW LIST THOUGHTS

So instead of harping on my losses, I went straight to thinking about how I can make my army better. Here is the 2000pt list I’m thinking about now.

105 – Baron
65 – Haemonculi with shattershard

468 – (3x) 3 Trueborn with blasters, Venom with SC and NS

313 – 18 Hellions incl helliach with agonizer
420 – (3x) 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom with SC, GT, and NS
110 – 3 Wracks, Venom with SC, GT, and NS

156 – 3 Beastmasters, 5 Khymera, 4 Razorwing flocks

375 – (3x) Ravager with FF and NS

2012

One think I’d like to do is exchange a ravager for a razorwing, and then exchange at least 2 venoms for raiders, but I don’t know where I’d find the points without dropping at least 5 hellions or a whole warrior unit.

CONCLUSION

So, hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures, and if you actually read the battle reports I hope you enjoyed them as well! I write them mostly so I can record and analyze my games, but maybe y’all can learn lessons from them as well.

Got a 2k tournament to go to on june 9th, already looking forward to it!

Peace!

KHYMERA DRONE

In thinking about how to make custom khymeras for my beast/drone squad, I had to think about which leftover dark eldar bitz I had, and which would be best. Here are some of the highlights;

- Reaver hulls. Each box comes with 4 so I have extras. Plus I have 1 whole box that I used solely for bitz.
- Raider prows. Each raider comes with 2 I think, and each ravager comes with 4 incl the shock prow, so I have plenty lying around.
- Raider aether rudders. Each raider comes with 2 and each ravager comes with 3, so I also have plenty lying around.
- Raider sails. Plenty of these lying around. But they're the prominant feature of my baron, so I was hesitant to use them on my beasts.
- Tons and tons of spikey bits.

To add to my bitz box, I bought a talos/cronos kit to use purely for bitz. The cronos tenticles were very appealing and I want to use them for my khymeras.

I had a picture in my head involving reaver hulls as a torso, a raider prow as a head, and the rudders as wings. Here is a WIP; I haven't glued the head or the tail in yet. I took the pictures with some drones for size reference and to start seeing how they'll look together.





I think I want to use the raider prow upsideown; A) because it looks more like a beast, and B) because it distinguishes them from the actuall raider prows. I will definitely add more spikes and cover the hole ontop of the reaver hull, perhaps with the dark lance dangly bitz I have lying around; the little two pronged antennae thing. I'm going to run into a problem sticking the tail out of some of the reaver hulls, I'm going to have to trim the larger ones down a little.

So whaddaya think?

Why not 4 blaster trueborn in a venom for your list if you can find the points?

@ Enigma: Yknow... I don't think I can give you a definitive reason why 3 is better than 4, or why 4 is better than 3. I think its just a matter of preference. When I was running only one unit of blaster trueborn, it was 4 strong. But when I started running 2 or 3 units, I switched to 3 strong. It was primarily to save points, and secondarily to ease the burden of modeling / converting 12 blaster trueborn to just 9 blaster trueborn.

Now that I'm thinking about it (and thanks for getting me thinking about it!) I think the crux of the choice is this; I've found that when making dark eldar lists, you hit an awkward wall when you are 50-100 points over or under your target. If you're at 1925 and you're crafting for 2000, you don't have enough points to add a whole new unit, and you have too many points to buy upgrades for your existing units. If you're at 2075 and need to drop down, you either have to drop a whole troop choice, or run your current list completely bare bones with minimal upgrades. I'd say that messing with your trueborn squad sizes is the best way to fix this point gap, since it doesn't force you to drop a troop choice, and it doesn't significantly alter the play style of your army.

Quick examples to show my point;
- You're 75 points under and you're running (3x) 3 blaster trueborn in venoms. Bump them up to 4 and you're good.
- You're 75 points under and you're running (3x) 4 blaster trueborn in venoms. Drop them down to 3 and you have enough points for another unit (say, 5 warriors w/ blaster in venom, or 6 reavers w/ 2 HL)
- You're 75 points over and you're running (3x) 3 blaster trueborn in venoms. Bump two of them up to 4 and drop the third.
- You're 75 points over and you're running (3x) 4 blaster trueborn in venoms. Drop them down to 3 and you're good.
The same point can be made if you're just running (2x) blaster trueborn, it just takes a little extra list finagling.

The alternatives, if I refuse to change the size of my trueborn squad;
- I'm 75 points over. I either have to drop 5 hellions, drop all of my night shields, or drop a beast master and his beasts. All of these are significant hindrances to my list.
- I'm 75 points under. I could either waste the points with 3 reavers and a heat lance, or drop hellions or night shields until I have enough points for another squad of warriors in a venom. Or I could add a beast master with some beasts, but that means I have to convert even more beasts and I'm already daunted by converting 5 khymera and 4 razorwing flocks! All of these mess with my army more than +/- 1 trueborn in each squad would.

All that being said, I saw the list of the guy who won the colonial GT playing dark eldar, and he was running (3x) 5 Trueborn with 2 blasters in a venom... I certainly don't understand the reason for running them like that, but apparently it works!

Loving the large drone...very tempted to steal the idea!

I know your pain in crafting lists, I spent a good long time trying to tweak my 2k list so that it fit the units I wanted to keep and break under the number...try as I might it was either 2 points under or 3 over :(

Still running 2x4 Trueborn blasters though

Yesterday I brought the Corespur Elite to the Beltway Gamers Summer Showdown, a 2000pt 3 round RTT run by a local gaming club that I’ve become more involved with. Everything about it was great; the people, the missions, the terrain, and especially for me, the outcome : ) I didn’t take many pictures of my games, so I’ll keep my battle reports relatively simple.

2000 PT LIST

Painting was not necessary, and while most of my army is painted, the list that I wanted to bring would have the following unpainted; 4 hellions, 5 trueborn, 2 venoms, and 10 warriors. But this Tuesday I was struck with motivation and decided to paint as much as I could, so in-between all the other stuff that’s been keeping me busy nowadays, I was diligently painting what I needed to. By Friday I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get everything done, and after finishing the hellions, the trueborn, and the venom, I decided to just replace 2 squads of warriors with 2 squads of wyches, and for the first time in at least 7 years, I put a fully painted 2000 point army on the table top, and I’m so proud of it!


The Corespur Elite

So here is the list I brought;

105 – Baron Sathonyx
60 – Haemonculus with a liquifier

322 – (2x) 3 Trueborn with 3 blasters in a Venom with an extra splinter cannon, night shields, and grisly trophies
86 – 3 Trueborn with 2 dark lances

297 – 17 Hellions, including a Helliarch with an agonizer
280 – (2x) 5 Warriors with a blaster in a Raider with flickerfields, night shields, and grisly trophies
310 – (2x) 5 Wyches with haywire grenades and a shardnet and impaler in a Venom with an extra splinter cannon, night shields, and grisly trophies
110 – 3 Wracks in a Venom with an extra splinter cannon, night shields, and grisly trophies

250 – (2x) Ravager with flickerfields and night shields
175 – Razorwing Jetfighter with monoscythe missiles, disintegrator cannons, a splinter cannon, flickerfields and night shields
____
1995

I decided to add the sniper trueborn because I had an awkward 100 points left after putting everything else in. The wyches replaced the 2 other warrior squads that I didn’t have time to paint, and I used 2 raiders instead of more venoms because a) I didn’t want to have TOO much venom spam, b) they pick up a little of the tank killing slack I need since I don’t have a third ravager, and of course c) the models are so great. Turns out all 3 of these choices paid really paid off!

BWG SHOWDOWN

My favorite thing about this tournament was the diversity of the armies. There were demons, eldar, deathwing, black templar, tyranids, necrons, tallaran i-guard, orks, and I was the only Dark Eldar player. Miraculously, the only grey knight army was a draigowing played by judges since there was an odd number of players.




Amazing Tallaran army. It was very clear that this guy was going to win best painted, and he did.


Cool Space Wolves. Check out the polar bear cavalry!

ROUND 1

In the first game I was placed against a cool guy with a nice looking deathwing army. It had belial, Ezekiel, a terminator command squad, and I think 6 terminator squads, each had cyclones and assault weapons. I’ve never played deathwing with the Elite, but I knew it was a great matchup for me, since dark lances and venoms are both great at killing terminators. The mission was spearhead and seize ground but you got 1 point for each player turn you were holding an objective for.



I went first and deployed front and center. He started 3 squads on the table and the rest in reserves. I was able stay well out of assault range, and pick off the terminator squads 1 by 1, and taking minimal fire in return. Venoms were killing terminators left and right, dark lances were picking off lightning claws that were left out of cover, and the hellions were swooping from squad to squad and abusing the slow and steady terminators. Two terminators charged 5 wyches on an objective, and after 2 turns the wyches won the combat! Everything was going well for me, and by the end of turn 4, I had tabled my opponent. I’m a huge fan of Dark Angels, and I know it can be very frustrating to watch your opponent roll dice and make you pick up your pretty, expensive terminators, but my opponent was a great sport, and hopefully learned a lesson or two! He probably shouldn’t have put squads in reserves, so that in turns 1 and 2 he was pumping as many missiles into me as he can.

ROUND 2

Obviously, the Dark Eldar select the targets of their real space raids carefully and purposefully, so it really is no surprise that in round 2, I was placed against the other deathwing player! His list was practically the same, except he had a chaplain instead of Ezekiel, fewer terminators, 2 vindicators, and many more TH/SS guys instead of lightning claws. The mission was victory points, and a crazy scenario where S10 AP1 pie plate meteors were falling from the sky every turn! It sounded very, very scary, but they did very little damage in our game.



He too decided that reserving stuff was his best option, and kept everything off the table. So just like the first game, I was able to pick off the terminator squads one by one, without taking too many missiles back. It took me a little longer to crack all those 3++ saves, but by the end of the game, I had all but tabled him.

ROUND 3

So, for the 3rd time in the 4 tournaments I’ve brought the Dark Eldar to, I won my first to games by wide margins, and was placed on the #1 table contending for the best general prize. The first time it happened, I was playing chaos, and lost a close game because I made numerous mistakes. The second time, I got torn apart by GK psycannon spam. So this time, I was determined to not make any mistakes, and to identify and take advantage of my opponent’s mistakes.

I was initially placed against a scarab farm necron list, but as we were setting up and talking, he realized since he had lost his second game, he shouldn’t be fighting me. He asked the judges and was right, there was a mistake in the matchmaking, and he wasn’t supposed to be playing against me. So we swapped with the right table, and my correct opponent had an ork battlewagon list with 3 battle wagons, 2 trucks, 2 large loota squads, stormboyz, some nobs, some burna boyz, and a bunch of slugga boyz. The mission was capture and control and dawn of war, on a planet with a highly ionized atmosphere, so all high energy weapons (plasma, lascannons, meltas, lances, psycannons) had the gets hot rule, and any skimmer that moved more than 12 inches had to take a dangerous terrain test. Very bad news for me!!! It meant that I absolutely could not risk moving my transports flat out, because if I rolled that 1, the transport and everything inside would die!

I got the first turn, and marched everything on, and he brought his whole army on bearing towards my objective. After my turn 2 of shooting, the game had practically been decided. I annihilated one loota squad, wrecked 1 battle wagon, and stunned the other two, and he didn’t have ‘eavy armor so they were stuck, and the second squad of lootas was stuck behind them! But he was a great sport about it, and quickly converted his army into a green tide and tried to throw as many boyz at me as he could. But I was able to dance around them and venom them down, picking off stray squads with the hellions. On the final turn, I tabled him, and went 3-0 on the day!

RESULTS

There were prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and last, based purely on battle points, and then best painted award. So with 85 out of a possible 90 points, I won first place! Second and third place were tied with 65 points. I got an awesome trophy with a gold grenade on it, and 100 dollars in store credit! I pretty much have all the dark eldar that I need, so it took me a little while to decide what I wanted to get. I quickly settled on picking up one of the new ork flyers, and I got the white dwarf with the rules as well, and then filled the rest with some magic cards for me and my little brother.


The Corespur Elite return to Commorragh with plenty of loot after a successful real space raid.

LESSONS

As great as their close combat potential is, it is more and more clear to me that the Dark Eldar are best as a shooting army. With 9-12 vehicles that can move 12 inches and then fire 36 inches and fire all their guns, and with NS and FF to hinder and reduce return fire, the Dark Eldar are amazing at dancing around opponents, staying out of the range of dangerous units, and dropping a pummeling amount of lances and splinters into whatever they want. I have gotten much better at estimating distances during my movement phase, and it has paid off majorly.

The 2nd most valuable unit was definitely the razorwing. I always feel like I should take 3 ravagers, but every time I decide to bring the razorwing, it performs amazingly, and I think it has earned a permanent spot on my roster. It probably killed 15 terminators and 30 orks over the course of this tournament, and it only died once.

And by far, the MVU were the hellions. At 18 strong, and starting the game with FNP and furious charge, my opponents barely even tried to wither them down with shooting, and every assault went their way. When they charged terminators, the combats were always decided by just 1 or two wounds, and usually they were able to pull of the ideal combat that lasts 2 player turns and then ends in a hit and run. I made sure to keep grisly trophies nearby, and it was a great thing, because they lost at least 2 combats by 1 or 2 wounds, but never broke. In the third game, the hellions were about to chop up a decked out squad of nobz, but I decided to fire the splinter pods first, killing more than half of the squad, and making them fail their 7 LD and run for the rest of the game.

The sniper trueborn were awesome, but it was only because every opponent ignored them. I don’t think any of the 3 dudes died in any game; they even took a S10 AP1 meteor to the face, and made all 3 cover saves! While these guys look really cool, I think I can find a better way to spend those extra 90 points.

This tournament was a great way to bid adieu to 5th edition, and I'm very proud of myself. Thanks for stopping by!

Glad to hear that you are still alive!
Nice Battle report and update.

Saw this army in person on Saturday, absolutely fantastic paint job! Didn't notice how well he was doing though, as I was too busy getting pummled in my own games. Congrats though!

Amen to that.

I got to see his army too. It was gorgeous. I especially liked the amount of time he spent high-lighting up the purple. I too was too busy getting torn apart to watch it play.

Thanks guys! There is another tournament coming up on July 14th at the bowie battle bunker, I'll be there, and I hope to see you guys there too!

I'm very curious if they're going to use 5th or 6th edition. Its only 3 weeks after the release, so that makes me think they'll keep it 5th, but the tournament is supposed to be a NOVA prep tournament, so something tells me that if NOVA announces they are using 6th, this tournament will use 6th. In which case, it might be a rocky tournament, but it will be a great way to help us learn the new system.

If it is 5th, I think I'll take it as an excuse to bring some bonkers list, like a webway portal and a bunch of reavers with caltrops!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've always wanted to tell the short story of the inspiration for the Corespur Elite.

I slowly started collecting the new Dark Eldar after the codex was released, and I was (and still am!) very excited about the model range and the rules. I knew that I wanted to paint them as well as I could, and so I wanted to be diligent in choosing on a paint scheme. I was very indecisive because I am somewhat of a idealist and I wanted my choice to be perfect, so I spent a long time looking around at advertisements, clothing, and sports teams, anything that might show me how colors can interact unexpectedly and aesthetically. I even remember one vivid dream where I was walking around a wal-mart looking for color combinations for my army. Inspiration finally struck from a unexpected source; a display table posted on GW's blog during the Storm of Magic release. The instant I saw this picture, I knew what the colors for my Dark Eldar were going to be.


See the similarity?

The bright blue pops so well with the dark purple, and the two colors are quite dark eldary. Flipping through the codex after this, I found a wych, a hellion, and a reaver that were all painted with a blue/purple scheme similar to what I had in mind. The hellion was a member of the Sky Devils, and the reaver was a member of the Corespur Elite, so I chose the far less cheesy name for my kabal, and there ya have it!

The first special character I made was my Baron, and he is still the one I get the most compliments on, as he is pretty much the centerpiece of my army. I knew that I wanted to do something different with my baron, as I don't like the David Bowie portrayal he gets in the codex artwork. I did some google searches, and found this guy who had the genius idea of plopping a raider sail onto his baron's skyboard.



I loved the concept and knew I wanted to also do a surfer-baron. But I knew that this initial concept was missing something. Eventually I realized what it was; real windsurfers don't hang onto the sail directly like this guy, they hang onto a curved bar that wraps around the sail. I was dreading having to cut my own, but I found the perfect piece in the raider kit; the curved bar that sticks out under the sail. And thankfully, the ravager kit comes with a replacement! Within a few hours of finding this final inspiration for the construction of the sail itself, I had designed and build my custom sky board and my baron. If you google image search Baron Sathonyx, my baron comes up on the second page. So hopefully, my baron is inspiring the creation of other barons out there!

Well that's cool, glad to have another update, can't wait to see that battle report.

Hello! Hope you all are enjoying this new rulebook; I certainly am. Every time I open it I find something new. I’ll share my thoughts on the edition and the rules for anyone who cares to listen, and then give a battle report of the Corespur Elites first 6th edition real space raid.

DARK ELDAR IN THE 41ST MILLENIUM

There’s a lot for Dark Eldar players to love in this book. I mean, just look at the army entries starting on page 183. Every race has at least 1 page of fluff next to a page sized, defining image. For most of the races, this defining artwork is just the cover of the existing codex. For others, it’s some piece of artwork that you’ve already seen. But only the Dark Eldar have an awesome new piece of artwork next to their entry! And, while the Eldar only get the standard two pages in this section, the Dark Eldar get four and have a great page with drawings of different models and insignia, including a badass haemonculi ancient that makes Rakarth look like a scrawny dork.

I’ve never really been one to read the fluff in codexes, but I have been reading large bits and pieces in the new rulebook, and loving it. The narration is very anthropocentric and all the more believable. Xenos are explained from the perspective of humans, not from a third person perspective. For example when it talks about the fall of the Eldar in their entry, it stresses the fact that the Eldar never speak of it and thus no one really knows the true nature of it.

It gives all these accounts of humans that make impossible pilgrimages to Terra, not even certain if it exists or it’s just a myth. Space Marines are also just a legend to most of humanity, and “for an Imperial citizen to catch a glimpse of a single Space Marine, even at a great distance, is a dire portent and most likely one of the last things they will ever see.” There’s a great short story about an astropath flying through the warp, sensing the demons around him and meditating on them, while maintaining calm as to not feed their presence.

Humanity is in a pretty bad situation… I mean, if I remember correctly, in prior editions, the Tyranids were most certainly the biggest threat to humanity, because they were coming from outside the galaxy, and showed no signs of stopping. Now it’s written in bold that Chaos is the biggest threat. And all the while the Orks have never been more volatile, the Necrons have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, and the Eldar are stubbornly asserting their superiority and privilege.

You get that feeling that if all of the forces of the Imperium were to simultaneously give up, drop their weapons, turn off their engines, and take what is inevitably coming, the largest and most prolific race in the galaxy would be extinct within a week. That is why there is only war.

So I know you’re thinking what I’m thinking; where do the Dark Eldar fit in this anthropocentric galaxy? Humanity is beset by a dozen manifestations of evil and destruction, but aren’t the Dark Eldar supposed to be the evilest of the evil?

They might not be humanity’s biggest threat or the most implacable foe, but that’s because they don’t need to be. The Dark Eldar have it all figured out. They are spectators and connoisseurs of the carnage that has engulfed their galaxy. Of course, humanity thinks they are sadistic, selfish, and soulless. But they are merely jealous, because the Dark Eldar have found their niche in the galaxy spanning, Darwinian frenzy for power and control.

As the eternal war rages on, every other race fights for either its protection or its proliferation. The Dark Eldar have found a way to use the war itself as their means of survival. With complete apathy they speed up the death of a dying galaxy only to prolong their detached existence. They are entropy, spreading destruction and decay in order to stave off the demonic forces that are constantly draining their life energy. The Dark Eldar are contempt to watch and enjoy the coliseum galaxy.

I think that this edition is a huge step in the right direction. Of course people are going to moan about the rules they don’t like, or pry on ways to abuse them, but I’m not here to do that. I’m here to explore the depths the competition that this game has to offer, and find how the Dark Eldar will thrive and survive on 6th edition tables.

So instead of going through what got better and what got worse for the DE, I’ll just start off with my first 6th ed battle and battle report!

2000PT VS NECRONS

This weekend I drove up to NYC and played my first 6th ed game against my brothers necrons in their second game. We almost always play 2000 point games, and obviously, we decided not to use the 2nd force organization chart. He was running a list that he had been working since 5th which had a destroyer lord with wraiths, a lord on a barge, 3 squads of immortals with crypteks with the haywire staffs in night scythes, a squad of scarabs, 2 annihilation barges, and a doom scythe.

I decided to just run my 5th edition list for my first game, just to get a feel for the new rules with very familiar units. I figured I was going to get swept off the table since I have a staggering lack of anti air fire, and pretty much my only hope was to get lucky with lance shots.

We rolled and got hammer and anvil deployment and big guns never tire, and both of us rolled 1s on the roll off so the Baron seized the first turn! I thought that if I had two whole turns to shoot up his non-flying half of the army before his turn 2, I would have a much better chance at dealing with the scythes.

I deployed front and center, and realizing that I would be able to bring my whole army to bear on his ~5 deployed units, my brother deployed snugly behind cover near the back on the long deployment zone.


The Corespur Elite advance on the hiding Necrons


Something tells me I won’t be running this unit anymore. So, I gave them a profile pic

I moved my whole army forward, except kept my hellions behind everything because I did not want them to get charged by the command barge (which I realized would probably result in them breaking, maybe dying if the chariot can sweeping advance? We weren’t sure) or shot by the annihilation barges (because they have a large footprint and those shots would arc to like half of my army).

Instead of shooting at the barges behind cover, I positioned myself so that they would need to snapfire to shoot me, and where I could bring my guns to bear on the wraiths so that I could snipe the destroyer lord who didn’t have an invul save. But I forgot about look out sir, and ended up spreading a few wounds around the squad.

He moved everything up and snap fired his barges at a ravager which luckily was unscathed. He had set up charges with his chariot and his scarabs on a couple venoms, the scarabs couldn’t make it but the barge swooped in a crushed a venom, getting the first blood VP.

My turn 2 I shuffled around so as to stay out of max charge range of the wraiths, and bring all my lances to bear on the barges. I ended up wrecking all three of them, and the destroyer lord pinned himself! My hellions shot up a scarab squad that was at half strength from other stuff, hoping to secure their 3rd pain token, but unfortunately leaving 1 base with 1 wound left! I shot venoms first to help the hellions grab it, but that meant that the bases in the front were removed, and half of the hellions were now out of range.


The scythes arrive!

On his turn, two of his night scythes came in and unloaded immortals. The wraiths and lord screened themselves in front of one squad. Venoms started dropping like flies struck by lightning, and even though the first two turns went way in my favor, he was nowhere near down and out.

Something very lucky happened to me. One of the mysterious objectives that I grabbed was a skyfire nexus, and the mission was big guns never tire! I could use the objective with my heavy support guns. After his flyers came in, I positioned both my ravagers next to the nexus, and got to fire at the scythes with my full BS. Unfortunately, I still whiffed pretty bad, and I pretty much just forced them both to jink.

But, my razorwing came on also, and easily found an open firing lane to the squad of immortals that weren’t behind the wraiths. It fired its disentigrators and two missiles and completely annihilated the squad, leaving just the cryptek the chance to get back up, which it did!


The hellions set up for a risky charge, and ended up getting pretty lucky. Note the lone dead cryptek; all that was left of a full squad after the razorwing unloaded.

I also decided to be bold and charge the wraiths and lord with the hellions after shooting them up a bunch. I had ~14 guys left, and he had his lord and maybe 3 wraiths. He challenged the Baron, which I forgot about also! I there was no chance, so I backed down, but that was a mistake. I should have accepted the challenge so that the shadowfield can soak up all the warscythe hits, and the combat resolution has a better chance to be in my favor. Lesson learned; the Baron might have a roll in challenging beat face characters just so their attacks aren’t going into the hellions.

I lost the combat by like 5, and much to my fear I failed to keep a grisly trophy within 6 inches, but they uncharacteristically made their LD check like a boss. But I couldn’t hit and run yet cause it was his turn next.


The long rumored summer of flyers!

The doom scythe came on and cut a line through a ravager, a venom, and the sniper trueborn. That thing became very scary in 6th edition, because it can hit at least 2 targets each turn, potentially way more if you’re positioned poorly. In combat I finished the wraiths but lost more hellions, and after making my LD check again I hit and ran outta there.

I continued to make pot shots at his flyers, and killed one, but after my ravagers were dead and I couldn’t use the skyfire nexus, I found it impossible to damage them. Most of my attention was turned towards finishing off his immortals. I shot down the destroy lord that the hellions had left, but he got back up the next turn! My hellions made another bold move and charged a squad of ~7 immortals. I only had about 6 hellions left, which meant that if he got 2 or 3 6s on overwatch, I could easily get owned in this combat. So I decided to put my Baron out front to take as many hits as he could, but unlike a boss, he failed his first one! So typical. He died but let the hellions get in safe. The combat drew, but his resurrected destroyer lord hopped in and finished the job.


After the Dark Eldar came out swinging, the Necons begin to sweep up and victory is within their grasp


The doom scythe bears down on some of the only remaining Dark Eldar troops

By the end of turn 5, almost everything was dead except for his 3 flyers, a couple immortals, the razorwing, a lone trueborn, a warrior squad, a wych squad, and the haemonculus with a wrack. I was holding one objective, but the doom scythe quickly changed that on the bottom of 5. The game would have been a draw had it ended then, only because a brave trueborn charged 2 immortals on an objective and survided 2 rounds of combat!

The game went for 6, and I again desperately disembarked on two objectives, hoping at least one guy would survived all the firepower from the flyers. One warrior did, and the game ended! It was a suitably epic ending to an epic game.

LESSONS LEARNED

- More so than some other brute force armies, the Dark Eldar are at their best when you can plan for, identify, and exploit the weaknesses of your enemies. So that being said, I am having somewhat of a hard time thinking of what my 6th edition lists are going to look like, because I don’t know what my list will have to deal with.
- If a lot of people us as many flyers as my brother, I will have to make drastic changes to combat them. I’m talkin 2+ voidraven fighters, or fortifications with quad guns, or an Eldar detatchment specifically suited for anti-air. I’m having a hard time thinking of any other ways that Dark Eldar can deal with flyers.
- If people start using less armor, you won’t have to squeeze as many lances into DE lists as possible, which is how many DE players approached 5th edition.
- Haywire is freackin awesome now. If 5 wyches on the charge have a very good chance to kill any vehicle in the game. They hit on 3+ and glance on 2+, so all you need is 3-4 hits and 3+ rolls of 2+ to kill almost anything with an AV except flyers. I think this makes sense though. If you let my acrobatic wyches close enough to your tanks, they are going to jump all over them, and easily plant grenades specifically designed to stop tanks in their tracks.
- I have a feeling (so do others) that reavers with caltrops are going to be quite an effective choice in 6th. They maintin their 3+ turboboost while most other bikes dropped to 4+, and now they can move 12 before they boost 36, and then move 2D6 after, making it much easier to fly over what you want to, and then hide when you’re done. How does wound allocation work for bladevanes? I’m not sure… but nonetheless, since I’ve always wished caltrops were a little better, I’m definitely gonna take them for a spin

ESCALATION LEAGUE

I’m heading to my local store tomorrow to play some more. My local club is going to do an escalation league to help everyone learn the new rules, so I need to bring a 1000pt list. I’ve put together a list that is a mix of what I think will be a lot of fun in 6th ed (the duke’s splinter raider and the reavers) and what I think will be effective in 6th (the wyches and the razorwing)

150 – Duke Sliscus

151 – 9 Warriors, Raider with splinter racks
260 – (2x) 5 Wyches with HWGs, Venom with SC and GT

172 – 6 Reavers, 2 cluster caltrops

105 – Ravager
155 – Razorwing with FF

993

I’ll let you know how it works!

WOW what a post, I never realized how much I was writing. If you actually read it, hope you enjoyed it! More 6th edition battle reports and Dark Eldar tactica to come!

Great post, Good luck with the game.

Oneironaut wrote:LESSONS LEARNED- I have a feeling (so do others) that reavers with caltrops are going to be quite an effective choice in 6th. They maintin their 3+ turboboost while most other bikes dropped to 4+, and now they can move 12 before they boost 36, and then move 2D6 after, making it much easier to fly over what you want to, and then hide when you’re done. How does wound allocation work for bladevanes? I’m not sure… but nonetheless, since I’ve always wished caltrops were a little better, I’m definitely gonna take them for a spin

Bladevane wounds would work from closest model when you hit the squad like shooting.

Thanks wildhost!

@enigma crisis: Closest model to where the reavers began their turboboost? Yeah that's what I assume. But in my first game I had 3 reavers and they bladevaned some scarabs, and they they just clipped the side of the swarm, so it felt sorta weird to be wounding bases from the front. But now that I think about it, that would be silly if reavers forced wounds on any model other than the one closest to them when they began turboboosting.

Oneironaut wrote:Thanks wildhost!

@enigma crisis: Closest model to where the reavers began their turboboost? Yeah that's what I assume. But in my first game I had 3 reavers and they bladevaned some scarabs, and they they just clipped the side of the swarm, so it felt sorta weird to be wounding bases from the front. But now that I think about it, that would be silly if reavers forced wounds on any model other than the one closest to them when they began turboboosting.

Closest model when you hit the squad from moving. So if you clipped the side of the squad that side would start talking saves first as it is closest to the to where the hits originated from.