Dark Eldar vs. Deathwing 1500pts

[Polythemus]

***Urgent Communicatis***

Belial, the Dark City and the Kabal of the Black Hand have struck on the planet Sisilak! Governor Pollus has been abducted and all his family killed. Sisilak has been on the brink of civil war and Pollus has been key to restoring order and normal function to the planet since his appointment by Terra. Yours is the closest battle group with the ability to intercept the raiders before they escape with the governor. He must be safely restored to power. The ravenwing has been dispatched to assist you, it has been recommended that they take the outlying territory to trap the eldar while their ships are held in the gravity well of the planet's interdictor systems. These xenos have gone too far! Save pollus! The emperor protects.

***Terminus***

Dark Eldar vs. Deathwing 6ed.

1500pts

Mission: The Scouring (FA are scoring and worth victory points)

WL traits

DA legendary fighter

DE

Deployment:

Strategy: I knew he was going first so I wanted to try and protect my typhoons by reserving them. I had played this guy once before and lost so I knew the power of the lances and the venom. I wanted as many missles as possible as soon as possible. His side of the board had the high VP objective (4points) I had to try and get to it to win. Sadly I thought his transports were fast attack and didn’t find out ‘til the end that it was the scourges who were fast attack. Outflanking bikes were meant to hassle his backfield. It was to be a battle of mobility vs. durability.

DE Turn1 lances fry one termie

DA 1 missles explode ravager and one raider. Beta tries to assault but cant charge far enough. One dies to overwatch.

DE 2 all reserves enter and razorwing shooting plus venom lay into gamma squad who I thought was well positioned but apparently not. Only one termie remains in that squad. The baron charges beta squad killing two. Scourges would trade fire with tactical squad the rest of the game.

Da 2 Bikes and typhoons arrive. Both missiles miss the venom, one hull point is stripped from the raider. Can you believe those things have 3?! Tricksy eldar! Belial and Bellerophon charge the Hellions, killing many, but also losing 2 termies. Belial challenges the baron hoping to claim a VP but cant get through the shadowfield (2+ invul sav!) The baron breaks morale. Sadly all the cyclones are dead. The bikers all miss with meltas.

DE 3 the venom lays into belial and the Alpha squad killing one termie. Scourges fire on the tactical squad. Razor wing strips one hull point from a madly jinking speeder. Other speeder is lanced to death by the squad embarked on the raider . The hellions continue their retreat. The bikers are mercilessly destroyed for their ineptness. The hellions rally.

DA 3 tyhpoon moves and fires on raider, stripping it to 1 Hull point. Seeking to avenge the death of his friends the lone termie emerges and in an insane bout of courage, fires his stormbolter and brings down the raider. Belial tries to assault the venom but cant reach. Bellerophon and beta squad is charged with killing the homunculus and run to get in a better position.

[Polythemus]

sorry data limit!

Mods this hasn't happened before, why i cant i post my pics together?

[Polythemus]

DE 4 the venom and the raider target and kill belial and his squad. The other typhoon is wrecked.

DA 4 the tactical squad continues its exchange of fire with the scourges. Bellerophon and beta squad roll for charge and get 12 inches! Bellerophon challenges the homunculi but the homunculi declines ( ok the pic is wrong, but who cares!). After the elves attack 2 wounds are dealt to beta squad, but they fail both saves! Bellerophon can only hope to deny the objective. The lone termie from gamma cuts through the ruins and runs towards the objective, will he make it?!

DE 5 the Baron and his hellion gang fly over the ruins and attack Bellerophon, who barely survives, then leap away (hit and run) before they can before the librarian can strike! Meanwhile the scourges try and crush the last resistance of the dark angels tact squad, but the grav wave generator keeps the defenders from getting charged.

DA 5 the tact squad fires at the scourges. Bellerophon cuts down the homunculus and retinue but cant claim the objective. The last terminator is able to finally reach the objective in the ruined factory.

The game ends.

D. Eldar 10 vP

Deathwing 7 vp

Analysis

Well that didn’t go as planned. In the final tally there were a couple of things that I think made a big difference.

1.) Troops with missles counldn’t do enough after the first turn. They died way too fast giving the venom free reign.

2.) Setup of tactical terminators was flawed, I should have switched them with beta squad and placed the librarian on that side.

3.) The typhoons should have been armed with H. Bolters to take advantage of the low armor on the raiders.

4.) I didn’t focus enough on the scourges (small aside I had played a lot of games against Blood Angels not Deldar. Since those transports are skimmers I was thinking they would be FA… not true.) and I improperly deployed my typhoons, their job should have been to kill the venom exclusively.

I did think that I did an alright job being super focused on objectives and positioning was good most of the time, but it always seems that I end up with very few models at the end of the game. if i had taken out his FA units it may have been a closer game. It was unlucky that both of those termies died from only two wounds but i think the game was probably lost with other decisions. For example if i had brought both typhoons to the right side of the board and killed that venom, using belial to try and assault the downed squad near the center hill, and attacking the scourges with the bikes via outflank. I might have had a better chance. not much i could have done versus that razorwing.

On board the strike cruiser Imminent Death, Bellerophon and Ezekiel are in conversation.

"This is a bad buisness Bellerophon, Azreal is not pleased. Belial is rehabilitating, Pollus is gone, and the enemy have escaped."

"I ask your forgivness lord, warp precience failed me and my chapter."

"Go and meditate on this defeat Bellerophon, the full implications of the eldar movements in this system, may yet be revealed with careful study. Azreal suspects that they may have had other motivations besides the ususal unsavory nature of their raids. The task at hand now is the full quelling of the rebellion that has broken out on Sisilak."

"Sir before we arrived in battle, warp prescience delivered a vision to me. I saw a great green tide over a field of grey and white."

"hmmm... You require rest my brother, your skills still require honing. I shall look into the warp as it regards these visions. Now go.

"Yes Lord."

As always any comments, grammar corrections, and criticisms welcome!

[silencer]

Hey,

 

really nice and funny batrep. I totally enjoyed reading it. Not sure, if I can make any helpful comments, but I will try my best.

 

I am not familiar with your codex, but think you underestimated the mobility and nastiness of DE-skimmers...actually, as you said yourself. I also don't know the details of your list, but the bikes did nothing which can be expected, if they are just a small group. I love playing bike-lists (C:SM) and learned the hard way that you need a full squad if you want them to survive and be effective.

 

Are Ravenwing-Biker scoring units? Can they add trikes? If so, you can make a full squad including a trike and apply one tactical assignment (i.e. big tank hunting) to them. After that you keep them out of the biggest trouble and use them as an objective grabber/denier in the last turn. Alternatively, you can team them up with another squad to eradicate something in CC...a Termie squad is perfect for that. The bikes are pretty resilient while the Termies deal the damage. Just my 2cent :P

 

Again, thanks for the nice report. Keep them coming

 

M.

[Polythemus]

Hey silencer

 

Thanks for the constructive comments!

As far as this mission goes the bikes were scoring units, but i think that you are right that i could have used an attack bike to increase their effectiveness. In fact this game got started a bit late and i was worried we would not finish it, so i think i may have rushed when i created the list. It may actually be that i had room for more thiings that didnt get included in the list. Ah such is life. I have definitely thought about more bikes to increase the resilience of the squad. This would have allowed a greater degree of durability. I havent yet used the bikes as a "bulldog unit" holding onto the enemy in cc so that the termies can rush in and finish the job. Its all something im still learning.

You are quite right about underestimating my opponent, As i said in my analysis, i was hoping to avoid this but sadly several factors (including my own judgement) worked against me.

As an aside i found it very difficult to write a losing batrep. Maybe its just ego but taking the time to really expose your own failings aint easy!

[silencer]

Hey Polythemus,

 

glad, you liked my comments. I totally understand your issue with writing a report about a lost battle. However, if we are honest, that might be the ones we learn the most from. Nonetheless, I also prefer to write rather about my wins than losses...if I write one at all. I also play way too less games since we don't have that many cool stores to do that, and not all of my friends play 40k. Acutally, that was something I enjoyed most when I spent some time in the States.

 

Okay back to the topic. I get your point about the shorthanded list. Bikes are kind of tricky IMO. Since it is difficult to hide a whole unit of them, they usually are easy to shoot at, and hence, they suffer despite toughness 5 and a 4+ cover save when jinxing. However, in CC they are hard to kill, especially when you have 5 or 6 bikes left...including a power fist Sgt. of course. Attack bikes are really cool since they have two wounds which is an asset most Space Marine modells lack. Moreover, a MM is so superior compared to melterguns, and trikes have virtually a melterrange of 24" which is pretty awesome. So, I usually have two full bike units, one of them as heavy tank hunter and one as anti-infanterie with HB and PGs. If they grap an objective in the end, it is a plus.

 

Have a good one

 

M.

[Brother Ambroz]

It would be difficult to write a losing batrep, difficult at least with the way you write it :lol:. I play Dark Eldar in addition to my CSM, the biggest piece of advice I think I can give is to remember they are fast and pretty deadly but very fragile. Easiest way to take care of raiders and venoms is with autocannons and assault cannons. With your Deathwing army though, it'd be difficult because you're not all that mobile. That's probably where your Ravenwing was to come in, but I usually find bikes kind of ineffective. I haven't personally used the Baron though and don't have my codex on hand so I can't tell you about him. Keep at it though and as always your batreps are a joy to read.

[Polythemus]

Tanith thanks for your kind words. As ususal your class shines through sir. Im looking for ward to the day when i can field a fully painted army for these batreps, hopefully it will be some time soon. I have lost to the dark eldar twice but i think a land raider may help alot against them. It would likely be impervious to their shooting attacks and could really cause some havoc.if i got a chance to field a 2k army then, a land raider might be a good investment. As for the baron his shadow field can be pretty nasty and the hellions are quite a handful. I do like his backstory as wel...l a hired gun or hellglaive as it were. But i think its time to get back to studying. Thanks for reading!

[Emperors Immortals]

Great report as usual, great read.

 

REgarding bikes, I try to take at least 3 attack bikes in my lists, they are an amazing asset for shooting armour and infintry to just keeping a fast unit pinned till you can back up the combat.Like you said, take lots of plasma and HB against dark eldar and either lots of bikes (opposed to speeders because T5 is superior to AV10 against dark lance spammers IMO) or a full dev squad, usually 4 HB work for me, or 3ML 1PC.

 

The baron is nasty, never even bother with CC just isolate him best you can and throw the bolter shells at him.

 

And thats the last bit of advise, bolter bolter bolter. Vs Eldar or DE bolters are the thing ive found wins or loses games.

 

Hope any of that helps - cant wait fo rmore!! :D

[Polythemus]

EI, thanks for the advice. I am still abit new to the hobby (for practical purposews i started really getting into everything this year) so i dont have all the squads/models you suggest but i'll certainly try out your advice sir. The dark angels codex is a little limiting in the sence that i would have to take attack bikes attached to a bike squad of at least 3 bikes, meaning things cost approx 170 pts per squad, times three squads is... Well you can see where im going here. id have to really revamp this list to see what would happen. I couldnt just take the attack bikes. The other thing thats tricky about DA is that plasma weapons aint cheap and since my termies are eating a third of the points i have to be careful about where the rest of the points are going.

I did recently realize that i might have forgotten to roll for sweeping advance against the hellions when they retreat due to the presence of the power armored librarian (Bellerophon baby!). This is obviously the main problem with taking terminators, no sweeping advance, but it is remedied taking a power armored INdependent character.

I tried to foreshadow a bit of what the next batrep will be in the epilogue. hopefully it will get out sometime before the thanksgiving holiday. Thanks for reading and commenting!