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Hey all,

My first attempt at a batrep. Don't expect too much, I didn't make any notes and I was playing my brother and we enjoy alcohol. In fact, he got me into playing this game with the words "it's the best excuse to have an evening of fun with friends and drink beer". There's probably quite some mistakes and omissions in the diagrams, but I hope you enjoy them.

Anyway, the main reason I made this is I really enjoyed the batrep by CaptKaruthors recently (link) and I pm'd him about it. He pointed me to Glaive Company CO (link) who started this style of reporting, it seems. GCCO sent me the visio files which got me 80% of the units to start diagramming batreps, thanks again So this is my attempt at it.

I took pictures of the game but they're not worth posting, my (SM) army is almost entirely unpainted plastic and the DE aren't a whole lot better

Let me introduce the armies first, bro's DE, which looks like a coherent (so not full tourney but not thrown together either) list to me:
Btw, the wyches are 9 + a Succubus, not 5 as in the picture.


And my SM, which is another attempt to try some units:



We rolled Seize Ground (3 total) and I got to place my objective first. I chose to try to keep 'm close together since I was less mobile and more rugged, so I placed mine dead center. He placed his totally to the side and I proceeded to place mine inbetween. Lets call that FU1, since he won the roll and we had spearhead so guess which quarter he chose to deploy in:

And here's the DE deployment:

And mine:


I failed so seize initiative and we were off.

TURN 1 DE
The bikers switch flanks, the beasts and talos come running towards me. His ravager takes out the TFC (sigh, learn to deploy it...). Other shooting kills 2 devastators. The warpbeasts appear to be in charge range of the LSS and assault it, sadly missing completely:


TURN 1 SM
One rhino is immobilized upon entering terrain. The termies roll snake-eyes for movement. I now notice FU2, the hill that the termies are on has perpendicular slopes. We count those slopes not as diagonal movement so it'll take the termies ages to get to ground floor.... One ravager is destroyed, the other immobilized. The talos is shot down by the terminators. The LSS, scared shitless by the warpbeasts, proceeds to shoot them down with the hellfire round doing very well:


TURN 2 DE
Some shuffling around but not much. Devastators are finished and Lysander receives one wound. The predator is destroyed by a lance shot.
The landspeeder on the right is downed:


TURN 2 SM
The land speeder on the right takes revenge and destroys a lance on the ravager..
Tac squad gets out of the rhino and starts hoofing it. The other rhino and one land speeder continue on the left flank. Shooting removes one weapon from the ravager and wrecks the wyches raider.:


TURN 3 DE
Warriors disembark into crater.
All shooting goes towards the rhino, stunning and immobilizing it with 11 lance shots...
The bikes charge the speeder on the left flank, but only manage to shake it.


TURN 3 SM
The land speeder on the right finishes the ravager
Terminators slowly move forwards again and shoot the wyches, destroying them apart from the succubus. The tac squad disembarks and rapidfires the bikes, killing half, the archon survives with one wound remaining.
No idea what the land speeder storm did.


TURN 4 DE
Shooting the horrorfex hits 4 terminators and pins the unit... Really, it's a 5pt upgrade pinning 6-700pts of termies here
The archon charges one tac squad, and the 3 remaining bikes the other. The archon kills 4 marines, the reaver bikes kill only one but lose one too.


TURN 4 SM
Termies are still pinned.
Combats continue, archon kills 3 marines and the bikes fail to do much and lose one.
Land speeders on the left do nothing?


TURN 5 DE
2 raiders move through the middle to contest and claim.
Both land speeders on the left are destroyed. Another terminator goes down.
The archon wins combat again, leaving just the sergeant up. The bikes lose combat.


TURN 5 SM
The unengaged marines move towards the objective, the scouts remain in their crater...
The terminators doublecharge the two raiders, lysander manages to only stun the one containing warriors, the empty one is wrecked. The archon wins his combat.


TURN 6 DE
Shooting kills 4 more terminators.
The archon charges the other tac squad, killing 4


TURN 6 SM
The scouts try to charge the warriors but only roll 4 on the difficult terrain check.
The terminators explode the raider. The archon finishes the tac squad.

DE wins, 1 objective vs 0. Man of the match: Archon

SM lessons learned:
- Deploy TFC at range. In fact, use my range for all units.
- Don't use 10 terminators on foot, it's too slow and too much
- Don't keep the LSS in one spot just to shoot the extra HB, better to get them moving and use the 4xshotguns as well.
- 4xML is too much for a 5 man squad devastators. 2 seems fine, 3 might be possible but risky.
- Lysander is TOUGH. He must have headbutted at least 10 Dark Lance shots and ended up with 3/4 wounds left.

Looks like an incredible amount of work. However, it also looks as if it can give a lot of feedback. As a new player, i am often overwhelmed by the possibilities and by what happens each turn, and i cannot remember what i did. On the one hand, that's a good way to think i did fine, on the other hand, it's impossible to learn from my mistakes.
Making enough notes to base such a report on might help me already.

Anyways, it looks very cool.

Sounds like a good match-up. Thanks for posting!

Cool. Nice work bro! Very good looking batrep there.

Im the DE player in this battle. Some of the things that i learned from it are:
- Horrorfex can be quit worth it
- Charging the skimmer with the beasts was a bad move
- I should use my mobility more

And BTW the wyches were 10 strong.

Dark eldar can still rock face after all these years!

I was going to hun an army without an archon, but now I may change my mind

Very nice battrep! A great way to analyse gameplay in hindsight. Brilliant graphics too

Cheers, Cilithan

I love the battle report maps!

What program is that again?

Judge_Fear wrote:- Horrorfex can be quite worth it

I really like them too, I didn’t notice them in the posted list – what unit(s) had the horrorfex?

I put them on every raider and although I may not use them every game depending on the opponent I still think they are worth the investment.

- Charging the skimmer with the beasts was a bad move

At first I thought it was a decent calculated risk – 20 strength 4 attacks should have done something as all the attacks should have hit automatically (it didn’t move, right?).

- I should use my mobility more

I agree that the Lord and Haemy in the bike squad needed support and perhaps the wyches should have worked in tandem with them. I no longer use bikes as they are just too fragile to use alone – I think not having blasters or a CC geared succubus in the squad really hurt their chances of surviving. Of course, outfitting a bike squad for CC is quite an investment with only a decent output to look forward for

What was the Archon’s wargear and weapons?

Also, I noticed the Raider Squads weapons – were you satisfied with it? I can’t tell if you got a lance shot off from the raider squad but since those raiders appear to have not moved then I’m figuring they did. If you want to be more mobile then those lances in Raider Squads will be silent more often than not.

Nice report overall – sorry it didn’t go well for the reporter but I appreciate that you still wrote it even though you lost and I also appreciate the time it took to do it all.

Kwi wrote:I love the battle report maps!

What program is that again?

Thanks, glad you enjoyed them. I made the diagrams with OmniGraffle, which is the Mac version of Microsoft Visio, a diagramming tool.

Kwi wrote:

Judge_Fear wrote:- Horrorfex can be quite worth it

I really like them too, I didn’t notice them in the posted list – what unit(s) had the horrorfex?

That's my bad, all raider squad raiders had horrorfexes and nightshields. I drew up the DE list first and got the detailed list later and was too lazy to adjust it...

Kwi wrote:I put them on every raider and although I may not use them every game depending on the opponent I still think they are worth the investment.

- Charging the skimmer with the beasts was a bad move

At first I thought it was a decent calculated risk – 20 strength 4 attacks should have done something as all the attacks should have hit automatically (it didn’t move, right?).

The LSS had used its scout move to move flat-out and get the 4+ save, so he needed 6's to hit. I don't think the move was that bad, there was nothing else in range and I would have been forced to deal with them anyway. This charge gave him a chance to deal dmg.

Kwi wrote:

- I should use my mobility more

I agree that the Lord and Haemy in the bike squad needed support and perhaps the wyches should have worked in tandem with them. I no longer use bikes as they are just too fragile to use alone – I think not having blasters or a CC geared succubus in the squad really hurt their chances of surviving. Of course, outfitting a bike squad for CC is quite an investment with only a decent output to look forward for

What was the Archon’s wargear and weapons?

Copied from the AB list: Independent Character, Fleet; Splinter Rifle (x1); Combat Drug Dispenser; Shadow Field; Tormentor Helm; Punisher; Plasma Grenades; Reaver Jetbike

Kwi wrote:Also, I noticed the Raider Squads weapons – were you satisfied with it? I can’t tell if you got a lance shot off from the raider squad but since those raiders appear to have not moved then I’m figuring they did. If you want to be more mobile then those lances in Raider Squads will be silent more often than not.

Nice report overall – sorry it didn’t go well for the reporter but I appreciate that you still wrote it even though you lost and I also appreciate the time it took to do it all.

It was fun to write. A lot of work though but I hope that some of the investments (drawing the raiders/speeders etc..) will earn themselves back on future reports. The loss was no biggie, my brother has about 10 years more experience than me with 40k, I started last june, so I kind of expect to lose

I was going to offer some brilliant insights but Kwi already beat me to really everything I was going to say.

I'll second his comment about Horrorfexes because it needs to be seconded - they are an amazing piece of wargear.

Nice work man! Thanks for the credit, although to be fair I can't say that I started this style of batreps since I am basically just copying what they used to do in White Dwarf.

Yours turned out great though. Good game and good batrep.

Love the Diagrams! Very nice battle report!

Also, I noticed the Raider Squads weapons – were you satisfied with it? I can’t tell if you got a lance shot off from the raider squad but since those raiders appear to have not moved then I’m figuring they did. If you want to be more mobile then those lances in Raider Squads will be silent more often than not.

I wasnt really satisfied with them. They got some shots of, but i think the fact that they have to stay put is to much of a downside. I'll be using more splinter cannons from now on.

I agree that the Lord and Haemy in the bike squad needed support and perhaps the wyches should have worked in tandem with them. I no longer use bikes as they are just too fragile to use alone – I think not having blasters or a CC geared succubus in the squad really hurt their chances of surviving. Of course, outfitting a bike squad for CC is quite an investment with only a decent output to look forward for

Yea the bikes are fragile, but i really like them. The upgraded Lord is very good in CC. And they heamy is the only one in the codex that can bring a flamer. Bikes give them nice mobility. But i agree bikes arent super.

Looks great man! Very nice report!

Judge_Fear wrote:

Also, I noticed the Raider Squads weapons – were you satisfied with it? I can’t tell if you got a lance shot off from the raider squad but since those raiders appear to have not moved then I’m figuring they did. If you want to be more mobile then those lances in Raider Squads will be silent more often than not.

I wasnt really satisfied with them. They got some shots of, but i think the fact that they have to stay put is to much of a downside. I'll be using more splinter cannons from now on.

I'm a big proponent of gunboat builds and think it adds a lot of needed midfield aggression to the DE. As a general bit of advice I'd suggest easing towards gunbaots, as the Lance boats can still be quite useful and you need to figure out the mix that works best for you. I'd suggest subbing them in in pairs of two until you start feeling you're not destroying vehicles well enough. Also, as a caveat, gunboats help fulfill some of the role of Dissie Ravagers. When i run my usual gunboat builds I often go 2 all dissie Ravagers and 1 all Lance Ravager to help increase my anti-mech capability. So another tool to toy with when working in gunboats is an awareness of how your Ravagers are equipped as well.

I'm a big proponent of gunboat builds and think it adds a lot of needed midfield aggression to the DE. As a general bit of advice I'd suggest easing towards gunbaots, as the Lance boats can still be quite useful and you need to figure out the mix that works best for you. I'd suggest subbing them in in pairs of two until you start feeling you're not destroying vehicles well enough. Also, as a caveat, gunboats help fulfill some of the role of Dissie Ravagers. When i run my usual gunboat builds I often go 2 all dissie Ravagers and 1 all Lance Ravager to help increase my anti-mech capability. So another tool to toy with when working in gunboats is an awareness of how your Ravagers are equipped as well.

Thanks, ill keep it in mind. Sofar i like the all lance ravager. But i can see the Dissie Ravager has its uses. I'm just a little cautious that i dont go to low on the nr of lance shots i have, sofar i see that i need quit a bit of volume of lance shots to destroy the average tank.

nice batrep.