30k Night Lords vs New Eldar 2k

[Galron]

Had a game tonight. Wanted to try and see how my roughly standard Night Lord army would do against the new eldar so my buddy fielded a 17 D weapon list against me. I wasnt impressed although he used poor tactics in my opinion. We played a Maelstrom mission where you had to place sieze objective cards face up and either player could take them.

Me:

Praetor-jump pack, master crafted chain blade, Iron Halo  Rite of War : Orbital Assault

Assault Squad x10 guys 2 hand flamers, powerfist on sergeant.

Assault Squad x10 guys power fist on sergeant

Support squad x6 flamers with drop pod

Support Squad x5 Meltaguns with drop pod

Support Squad x10 guys Chargers drop pod

Support Squad x10 guys Chargers drop pod

(I often play Terror Assault ROW, and use these guys as terror squads)

 

Contemptor with two Kheres and a Dreadnought Drop pod

Lightning with kraken and autocannon

Fire Raptor with autocannons

 

Him Farseer on bike

3 5 man bike squads all with shurican cannon

3 Wraithguard squads in serpents with bright lances and holofields

Vyper with shuricannons

Eldar Dreadnought with Brightlances

Wraithknight

 

He went first deployed accross his zone

I deployed my assault squads in cover with my commander in one of the squads.

 

Turn 1:

It was Night Fight and he turbo'd his bikes onto objectives except for the one on the far right with his farseer whom he simply moved forward in cover. By the end of movement he had 5 of the 6 objectives covered, no wraithguard were deployed. His shooting was pathetic and I lost a lone marine to a bright lance. He got 4 VP from objective cards.

 

My Turn: Dropped a flamer squad next to his bike squad with the farseer. Contemptor landed nearby and didnt get out. Melta support squad landed behind the far right serpent. Assault Squads moved up into assault range of each of the other two bike squads. Flamers burninated the bike squad and the farseer along with it. Melta guys did two hullpoints and destroyed both guns. Contemptor fired on the Eldar Dreadnought and did nothing. No really I rolled 9 dice and didnt get a single 6. Three drop pods rapid fired at the Vyper and glanced it to death. Assault Squads shot at the squads they were going to assault. killed three in the left squad from commanders assault squad and none in the other.

Assault was fun. I charged with both squads, lost a on the non-commander squad to overwatch. Hammer of Wrathed the squad with a warlock in it to death(No more psychology phase) and killed the other one down to one guy who ran and ended up off the board. I repositioned into cover with both squads.

 

Turn 2: His: He deployed all of his wraithguard. Either on objectives or in cover. He wraithknighted my contemptors drop pod, and wraithguarded it in one volley. Boom. His dreadnought killed a melta guy. Two serpeants and 2 wraithguard squads managed to kill my commander's squad down to 6 guys.

 

My Turn 2: A charger squad alone comes in. I land it behind the wraithguard squad on the far left who was shooting at my "command" squad. Melta squad moves back into it drop pod, flamers move forward to try and get as many wraithguard as possible. Far right assault squad moves up to assault the flamers targets and the commanders assault squad moves up to take on the middle wraithguard squad. Shooting finds the melta squad killing the dreadnought in one volly giving me an objective VP. Flamers and assault squad do not kill a single wraithguard in shooting even with the flamers having shred from the warlord trait. Drop pod kills one. Charger squad and drop pod kill one wraithguard on the far left. Other assault squad kills another wraithguard that it is about to charge. Assault finds a single suriving wraithguard vs my commanders unit and the other assault squad kills all but one of theirs as well.

 

Turn 3: He moves his knight to the far left to shoot and charge the charger squad. He moves the right serpent to objective one. Assault has his knight charge my chargers killing enough after his shooting phase to break them and the knight runs them down although he did take a wound from their overwatch. Both wraithguard in close combat die.

 

My Turn 3: Lightning and other charger squad come in. Lightning lines up on an attack run on the knight. Chargers land in the middle of the four wraithguard, and two serpents and stay in their pod. Commanders assault squad moves toward the knight. Other assault squad moves to take on the serpent holding an objective on the right and both the melta and flamer squad run to take two objectives he was previousl holding. They are effectively done for the game. Shooting puts three more wounds on the wraithknight. Chargers kill two wraithguard. Lightning does 3 wounds to the knight. Assault, far right squad kills the serpent there and regroups next to an objective. Command squad assaults the knight and does two wounds. I am down to 4 guys in that squad including the commander.

 

Turn 4: He moves a serpent to take an objective. Wraithguard kill the drop pod the 2nd charger squad came in on, but their serpents fail to wound any in shooting. Assault phase sees the knight go down, but that squad consists of the leader and my commander now.

 

My Turn 4: Has my Raptor come in and shoot the falcon on the objective in the rear. Autocannons kill it off. I must have forgotten something because the commander and the ssergeant end up charging the two wraithguard and wipe them out

 

Turn 5: He has a lone serpent which backs up and shoots at my commander and sergent and wiffs on the bright lance and doesnt cause any wounds.

 

My Turn 5: Everybody moves forward for a final assault on the waveserpent, Raptor shoots it and rolls three pens and a glance with its autocannon plus another glance from it front cannon. Serpent bows up and kills a charger guy. And the eldar are tabled.

 

I think there is an inordinate amount of fear about the D weapons of the eldar. They can only kill one guy. Yeah, if you are playing a vehicle heavy list, they cut through like butter as this clearly showed. When he wanted a vehicle dead and had a squad around, it died. But a troop heavy list is fairly immune to the single shot D weapons. I think my opponent would have been much better served by using some aspect warriors and shooting me with rapid firing weapons. His other huge mistake was doing the objective thing when my goal was to table him from the beginning. Your objectives do not mean much when I control the board. I ended up beating him on objective points any way by 3 or 4, but I had already cleared part of the table that had 3 of the objectives and there was no one to challenge them so from turn three on, three of my troops sat there cleaning weapons watching the battle in the distance getting free objective points.

 

The much maligned assault squads did a really good job I think. We were fighting at a point level under the optimum for 30k against 17 D weapons and still tabled them. Now what to do about a knight army he wants to play against me next....