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Just got annihilated!

3000, Eldar Versus Emperor's Children.

Eldar: Disruptor Beacon, Vampire Hunter

EC: Strategic Redeployment, Baneblade, Emperor's Children Warband datasheet

This was to be my... 3rd, perhaps? Game testing out Strategic Redeployment. This time instead of opting to use it to scurry around at the start of the game in response to his deployment, I opted to use it later to try to snatch objectives. This didn't work out so well.

He bid 4 minutes, and got everything out but a unit of guardians - which he then realized weren't in the list. And then his Dire Avengers unit was 10 models less than he put out, so he took those off. And his avatar wasn't included, so he took that off. And he only had 3 falcons, not 4, so there went one of those too. His army made an impressive display of three wraithlords with missle launchers, 3 falcons, 10 wraithguard with Eldrad and a warlock [duh], 3 or 4 units of guardians with missle launchers, and some vibrocannons.

I set up next, bidding 10, and had 3 squads of Slaanesh marked [as per the warband datasheet] marines in rhinos with doomsiren champions, meltaguns and flamers, and 3 squads of 12 supporting marked marines with blastmaster/plasmagun lined up, with the baneblade in the center. I deployed it in the open, planning on trying to soak a lot of the missle launcher fire.

He then used Eldrad's special rules to redeploy some wraithlords that were out of LOS to the baneblade so they'd now be in it.

He opens the first turn by shooting all of his brightlances at the baneblade. Brightlances? I didn't see....ohhhhhhh, all those missle launchers are really brightlances. Alrighty. A turn of perfect accuracy, solid hits and an inability to roll under a 5 on the damage chart later and the Baneblade is all but immobile and down to 1 structure point. I've also lost 2/3 rhinos.

My turn I try to advance with my rhino squads on foot, deciding using the rhino wrecks as cover for another turn is preferable to using strategic redeployment too early. The baneblade opens up and wipes out two and a half full squads of guardians, does heavy damage to the wraithguard and nearly drops a wraithlord. It wasn't a bad round of shooting, but definitely didn't make up its cost.

On his second turn the Vampire Hunter showed up, the baneblade went catastrophic [of course, more dice above a 5] and wiped out a unit and a half of marines [one squad was in cover], and things started looking bad, even though I polished off nearly all his infantry on my next turn.

After that it was pretty much over. I used SR to get my troops onto the objectives, but it was pretty much useless. The Vampire Hunter, not needing line of sight as it flew to wherever it was needed, hit with perfect accuracy and pretty much wiped out any unit it looked at. This was my first time on the receiving end of a Destroyer weapon and knowing that there's no chance for him to roll a 1 to wound to save that odd trooper with a heavy weapon or possibly leave a unit above scoring, and that you can't even hide in any sort of cover, is incredibly demoralizing. The game "ended" with both of us in control of two objectives, but the additional turn that we could have feasibly squeezed into the remaining time would have seen the game end with me in control of none and him of three or four.

I certainly do wish that I'd known I was facing brightlances instead of missle launchers - the apocalypse book goes to great lengths to explain why WYSIWYG is so important in games where there's so many models and so much to do that one can't keep going back to check one's army list all the time to make sure all the equipment is right. I would have put my baneblade far to the side to try to stay out of range of at least half of them right off the bat. He claimed he could have used Eldrad's power to redeploy over there anyway, but I still could have avoided three or four of them, and that would have put his wraithlords way off to the side where they were in sight of my heavy weapons, instead of beating up on my power weapon-armed assault squads on the opposite flank.

I don't think it would have affected the end result, however, as the Vampire Hunter could have easily managed to finish off the baneblade, my heavy weapons wouldn't have killed ALL of the wraithlords, and the falcons would have probably done as much damage to the assault squads. Still, quite a throttling. I don't think I'll be using strategic redeployment again if I only have one asset to use - perhaps combining it with Hold at All Costs would be a nice tactic, but many people here feel that 1v1 apoc games should have only one asset - a practice I disagree with strongly.


A question now, though, as we were debating it at some length during the game - do those reading prefer the Revenant Titan or the Vampire Hunter, in terms of effectiveness? The titan sports an additional Pulsar, but has a shorter ranged missle launcher and can be shot by many more weapons. The Vampire Hunter only gets one Pulsar [though it is twin-linked] but seems much more capable of avoiding return fire what with being a flyer and only being glanced [double effective as a super-heavy!]