Game 2 Throne of (Marine) Skulls - vs Lee's Blood Angels

After a thoroughly typical hearty lunch with the Caledonian Deathwatch guys were we all shared funny moments, boasts and epic fails it was onto game 2. And low and behold, I was drawn against one of my local opponents, Lee with his Blood Angels - another Deathwatch member, and a dude I teamed up with for the doubles earlier this year which was great fun.

I'm going from memory here, but Lee's list was something like this:

McPhiston
Librarian with lance and shield (warlord)
Sanguinary Priest with power sword
Sanguinary Priest with bike (+ power sword?)
5 bikes with x 2 plasma guns
10 Assault Marines with a meltagun, powerfist sarge
10 Tactical Marines with plasma cannon, plasma gun
5 Scouts with camo cloaks, missile launcher
5 Devastators with x 2 missile launchers, x 2 plasma cannons
Aegis defence line with quad gun

Game 2
Mission - Crusade - 5 objectives
Deployment - Hammer and Anvil
No Nightfighting

Pre-game stuff
For warlord traits I rolled FNP next to an objective with the succubus - fail, as I usually already have FNP with my pain tokens. Lee rolls scoring for his Librarian, which is pretty win. He swaps out his powers for divination, prescience and something else which I can't remember. I get a 1 for my combat drugs, which means I can roll three dice and pick which one I want, which is nonsense for 6th ed since DE have fleet where you get a choice of rerolling your run anyways. Happy days. I beat Lee for the choice of sides, and elect to take the side to my right hand side which has a nice big ruin to sit my Guardian objective campers in, and hopefully hide my raiders, as I like to steal a squad of wracks pain token with my Succubus to give the Incubi a bit of survivability so therefore can't flat out first turn, and there's a lot of no-mans land between my DZ and his..

Pre-game thoughts

I know that Lee usually runs a Stormraven, and I have to say I'm entirely relieved that its not here with him as my Razorwing would have a hard time taking it out, and almost nothing else in my army would hit it realistically. Anyways - marines on bikes are annoying as they get a cover save and their FNP from dark lances, I'm worried about the length of the table that my raiders have to cover with no LOS blocking terrain to hide behind as they advance on the impressive amount of firepower he has behind his wall. A quad gun, devastators and a tactical squad behind a 4+ cover is quite intimidating to fly towards with DE combat specialists. I have to say though - not too worried about Mephiston due to his non-inv save, and with me having the Farseer of no psychic fun for my opponents.

Set up - I deploy a lot of my stuff on the backline in case Lee seizes the intitiative to make the most of my nightshields, and also so my succubus can start with the wracks to nick their pain token and jump in with the Incubi. I know the wych raider can use aethersails and flat-out first turn, but the Incubi raider can't flat out if someone jumps in, so no point in drip-feeding both raiders to the quad gun, devastators. Guardian Defenders int the big ruin, wraithlord beside them, with the venoms and ravagers hidden as best I can.

Lee deploys his aegis along the 24" line, with the quad gun behind it for a 4+ cover save, and with the devastator sarge manning the gun and the devs against the wall. He puts his scouts in the ruins, and the tactical marines next to the devastators with the foot sanguinary priest, and the bikers all start with Meph on his right flank. Assault marines are in deep strike reserve - no doubt to try and come in to troll my Guardians of justice. Lee fails to seize and its DE turn 1.

Dark Eldar Deployment

Blood Angels Deployment

DE Turn 1 - The usual shimmying goes on, the succubus steals a wracks pain token and jumps in with the Incubi, whilst the Trueborn steal the wracks venom. These wracks are getting daylight robbed!. Fortune on the Wraithlord, and venoms move forward. My Guardians are sitting on an objective and its revealed as opposing units half their charge roll. Venoms move forwards to try take out the scouts for first blood and one ravager moves forward to try and take out quad gun.
 In the shooting phase, the Venoms kill 4 out of 5 scouts and the missile launcher guy passes morale. The ravager hits and wounds the quad gun but Lee passes his 4+ cover. 

Dark Eldar movement turn 1. Both the far Ravager and Venom become immobilised with devastator and scout ML shooting

BA turn 1 - Firstly Lee rolls for the objective that his sole remaining scout is holding, and its +1 cover save. Thats a 2+ for that little dude now. Warlord Librarian passes Prescience with the Devastators, and Meph perils himself and fails trying Wings of Sanguinius, and fails his FNP save from the nearby biker Priest. The Bikers and McPhiston advance from the BA right flank whilst everyone else stays still behind their wall
 

In the shooting phase, the prescience missile launchers and quad gun fire at the exposed ravager on the DE right flank, and immobilise it as well as a glancing hit, leaving it with one hull point. The lone scout fires at the Venom on the same flank, and scores an immobilised result as well, also leaving the vehicle with 1 hull point.

DE turn 2 - No Razorwing. Fortune on Wraithlord again. I elect to use my aethersails on both raiders, with the Incubi one rolling a mighty 11, whilst the Wyches raider rolls a 7. So thats 23" and 19" movement respectively. They fly into the vast amount of no mans land in between the two forces, awaiting their flat-out moves. The Ravager and Venom on the DE left flank position themselves to shoot at the bikers whilst hopefully getting some cover saves in return.

Leeeroy!!

In the shooting phase, the Trueborn inside the immobilised Venom kill three of the Devastators, including the sarge, with a plasma cannon guy and missile launcher guy apiece biting it. Their Venom kills the lone Scout FIRST BLOOD. I think I wound Mephiston with some dark lances to the face and possibly kill a biker with the wracks venom, and Small John kills a tactical marine with his blast plasma missile shots. Both combat units raiders go full flat-out. Do-or-die for them...

BA turn 2 - No assault marines. Mephiston fails Wings again, though I don't think he perils this turn, then he moves forward which is followed up by a run in the shooting phase. Warlord Librarian wounds himself  with a perils casting Prescience but gets it (two 1's and something else). He detaches from the devastators and runs back towards Lee's board edge as he's scoring and the DE assault wave is imminent to the aegis wall. Bikers move towards the inbound Raiders to get ready to unleash some plasma on the xenos, whilst Lee shifts the remaining plasma cannon guy to utilise the quad gun.
  The Blood Angels open up on the incoming xenos skiffs, but some terrible luck from Lee's dice rolling and a lot of plasma overheating, coupled with a couple of passed 4+ cover saves for flat out result in only a hull point being removed from the Wych raider with a glance. A biker kills himself with his exploding plasma gun, and the tactical marines plasma gun overheats too, but the marine passes his save. 

Blood angels manouvering - turn 2

DE turn 3 - Fortune on Guardians this turn. Razorwing arrives from reserve, and moves towards the ruins at the left of the Dark Eldar DZ so as to get a 4+ cover from the quad gun that can intercept it. The Wyches and Incubi raiders both move 6" and deposit their cargo. Thankfully the Incubi and Succubus roll high enough to all disembark over the wall, as without assault grenades they'd be going at Initiative 1 if they had to charge over it. The wyches don't roll as well, but they have plasma grenades so its not a big deal, and the leading wych is about 2" away from the devastators. Incubi are going for the tacticals with sanguinary priest. At the end of the movement phase Lee elects to intercept the Razorwing as he doesn't reckon he'll get another chance to fire the quad gun. I pass a cover save or so, but it still suffers a penetrating hit which is a 2 or a 3 and is therefore snap fire only next turn.
  With shooting, the razorwing snapfires at the tactical marines doing nothing. Other shooting reduces Meph to one wound. The raider that dropped off the Incubi spots the warlord Librarian making a break for the objective and zaps him with its dark lance, with the Librarian failing his cover save SLAY THE WARLORD. The Haemonculus liqufies a tactical marine I think. 

  

Wyches charge the devastators and wipe them out, now having 2 pain tokens.
 The Incubi and the Huntress charge into the Tactical marines, with an Incubus dying to overwatch. Huntress issues a challenge to the mon-keigh warriors, and the sargeant steps forward. The Succubus lands blow after blow upon the space marine, but cannot penetrate the armour, whilst the marine slams his bolter into the alien hell-bitch's head, which she fails to dodge and fails FNP. The Incubi however slay 5 or 6 of the marines, leaving about 3 left. Marines fail leadership, are caught but obviously nothing happens due to And They Shall Know No Fear. This succubus has been lax in her training. Fail!

BA turn 3 - Assault Marines arrive from reseve and deep strike next to the big ruin with the Guardians, Wracks and Wraithlord in it. Despite being on 1 wound, Lee needs Mephiston to get somewhere this turn and do something, so tries Wings again, but Meph's head explodes from Runes of Warding. No other movement for the BA as the other remaining squad is in combat.
 The assault squad open fire on the Guardians, killing a couple of them, but not enough for a morale test.
  In the BA assault phase, the Huntress wiffs her attacks and the Tactical sarge batters her to death with his bolter!! SLAY THE WARLORD! She is on a roll so far this tournament... The Incubi fail too, killing only one marine, therefore losing combat by one and running! This is the Blood Angels tactical squad of uber pwnage. Marines don't catch them though and they escape over the wall.

DE turn 4 - Incubi rally, but they can't assault this turn as xenos are not allowed to do whatever they want all the time. So the Wyches take it upon themselves to show the Incubi how its done, lithely running down the hill towards the remaning tactical marines of doom + the sanguinary priest. 

In my DZ, the razorwing turns 90* and heads towards the newly arrived assault marines, and the Guardians and Wracks shuffle out the way so that Small John the Mighty can get at them. Fortune on Small John (wraithlord in case your lost!) 

 For shooting, the combined Razorwing, Trueborn, Guardians, a Venom, a Ravager and the Wraithlord's flamers reduce the assault squad to just the powerfist sarge left. 

 In the assault phase, the wyches charge and kill the remaining Tactical marines, becoming Fearless. Sanguinary priest remains. We decide to call it there, as the wraithlord was just about to declare its charge on the only remaining scoring Blood Angel.

Victory for the Annihilated Souls!

Thoughts: Went better than I expected to be honest. I didn't think that zooming the combat stuff's raiders across the board was going to work at all, and they'd get caught and trolled by McPhistin'. To be fair, Lee's dice were rubbish when he tried to hit them, and if his dice had not let him down he would have got first blood too, considering a ravager and a venom were both reduced to 1 hull point each and immobilised in the first turn. At least he got the comedy value of his Tactical sarge beating the Succubus' brains out. Thanks to Lee for the game :)

Win unit: Possibly the Farseer - really shut down Meph and the other Librarian. The Trueborn did a fair bit of damage too.

Fail unit: Succubus!! Again! She failed all dodges and FNP. uberfail

And now marching off to turn 3, the last game of the Saturday. Hopefully I wont be playing marines again...

  

Realspace Raid on the Throne of (Marine) Skulls

Was at the October Throne of Skulls at the weekend, and I have to say it was an amazing weekend yet again, with the Glasgow crew + others providing some awesome banter and just general pish talk as well as really fun games, awesome food and a hangover of doom to boot. Came away with the best Dark Eldar award with a 4-1-0 so was pretty chuffed, though there was only 4(!! WTF!) DE players there, compared to my win for Chaos Marines last year out of 12. My mate Scott was overall champion with his Sisters/Guard alliance of pwnage with a 4-0-1 and full sportsmanship awards so it literally was Scott-tober.

So without further ado I'll launch into the meat of it. Despite originally intending to run 2 squads of 6 Incubi for the lulz I decided to semi screw the nut, and took only 1 squad of 6 but managed to squeeze in some Eldar allies for the GK/SW/general psyker trollage. My list was as follows:

The Huntress - succubus, venom blade (Warlord) 70
Joseph + the Techicoloured skin-coat - Haemo, liqufier 60

Troops
8 Wyches with haywires, heka with venom blade, raider with aethersails and nightshields 186
3 wracks, venom with x 2 splinter cannon 95
3 wracks, venom with x 2 splinter cannon 95

Elites
6 x Incubi, raider with aethersails, nightshields 207
3 Trueborn, x 2 splinter cannons 56

Heavy
Ravager, x 3 dark lances, nightshields 115
Ravager, x 3 dark lances, nightshields 115
Razorwing x 4 monoscythe missiles, x 2 dark lances, x1 splinter rifle, flickerfield 155

Allies
Hq
Farseer, spear, fortune, rof Warding 103
Troops
10 Guardian Defenders with shuriken cannon, Warlock with Emolden and Singing Spear 118
Heavy 
Small John the mighty - Wraithlord with wraithsword, x2 flamers, EML 125

Total 1500

Once I actually got down to Nottingham, and in particularly when I noticed my friend Jay's list - who was running Eldar primary with DE allies - actually had more Venoms than I did I seriously regretted not taking 3 Venoms. Megafail, so I wasn't  amazingly happy with this list. Though I was chuffed to have the Farseer in there, and I've found the Wraithlord to be amazing for just smashing units that deep strike into my deployment zone (DZ) and in particular in getting me the Slay the Warlord point. Was worried about other fliers as a solitary Razorwing is a bit fail in taking down anything that flies, but didn't want to compromise too much with my ground units and this luckily proved to be the correct decision.

So zooming into the battlezone, the Annihilated Souls first encounter is with the Knights of Titan

Game 1 - opponent is a cool guy called Adam with a Grey Knight Terminator army

Mission - Purge the Alien (old annihilation kill points (KP) mission)

Deployment - Vanguard

Adam's list was something like this:
Modrak (warlord) and 5 Ghost Nights with a mix of hammers and halberds

5 GK Terminators with 2 halberds, hammer and 2 swords, psycannon, psybolts, flag of activate force weapons, psbyolts

5 GK Terminators with 2 halberds, hammer and 2 swords, psycannon, psybolts, flag of activate force weapons, psbyolts

5 more terminators as above, but with no psybolts

GK dakka psybolt autocannon dreadnought

GK dakka psybolt autocannon dreadnought

I won the roll and elected to go first. I got an extra pain token for combat drugs units (succubus and wyches) and Modrak's grand strategy allowed both psybolt terminator squads to re-roll 1's for hits or wounds (not that familiar with the GK codex of pwnage). No nightfighting, but I rolled on strategic Warlord traits and got Night Fighter so made it NF on turn one. I can't remember Adam's warlord trait.

Pre-game thoughts - Hmm Grey Knights. I hate GK dakka dreads, they are just so win against DE vehicles its unreal, and they are really gonna rack up the KP tally for Adam quickly if I don't deal with them. Having saying that though, with my nightshields on a lot of my vehicles then aside from the dreadnoughts I can easily outrange the psycannons on the terminators, and footslogger GK are actually not too bad for DE. Modrak is a major pain in the hole though with his deep striking, non scattering ways of trollage, and I need to make sure that when I start wounding Modrak I finish him off, or more of his creepy spectral buddies will appear for the lulz. As regards the mission - Adam has only 6!!! KP in his entire army. I have 17!!! Epic fail sadface :(

Set up - I take bottom left corner. There is not much terrain other than trees on the board, which is annoying but there is a bastion in the middle of the board which we classed as impassable, and I can use it a bit to block Line of Sight (LOS). I put most stuff where it will either be out of range of the Dreadnoughts or likely to be out of LOS behind the bastion, except one Ravager out at front to manouver to try take out a dread for first blood. Guardian + Farseer set up in a big piece of trees terrain in the corner with Small John the Epic Wraithlord of Doom next to them ala wraithsight, and the Incubi + succubus raider behind them. Everything else is gonna be out of LOS or out of range of GK stuff

Adam deploys his 3 Terminator squads on his line as far forward as he can, and puts his dreadnoughts in some trees over to the bottom right of his DZ. One is gonna get a cover save but the other wont as its not 25% obscured. Modrak is doing deep strike of lol turn 1. Adam doesn't seize and its DE first.

Grey Knights deployment

Dark Eldar deployment

DE 1st turn - Right I'm going balls out to get first blood, what with him having near zero kill points in his army!Trueborn steal a Wracks Venom and move 6" to line up terminators to my left, other wracks Venom lines up the same unit, as does wych raider with its dark lance and a Ravager. Other Ravager moves to get in range of the unobscured dreadnought, and Incubi raider moves just behind the Guardians. Fortune on the Guardians, and the Wraithlord lurks next to them. 

  

Shooting phase and the Incubi raider moves slightly to get flat out save. The ravager tasked with taking out the dreadnought fires, hits twice and penetrates once, I roll a 1 for damage. Arse. Ravager now in worst position ever. 

  On the left flank, the Trueborn, 2 venoms, the 2nd ravager and the wych raider open up on the left side terminator squad. After some epic armour and invulnerable saves only 1 dies(3 of them passed 5++ saves from dark lances grr). That was fail. So much for first blood plan.

4 terminators still alive, despite 2/3 of my army's shooting!

Dark Eldar positioning of fail after my 1st turn

GK turn 1 - Modrak the arch-troller teleports next to the Guardians with his spooky buddies, and the 3 terminator squads advance. Undamaged dread moves forward from behind the trees over on the right flank to line up the ravager of fail in its guns, whilst Adam elects not to try and cast Fortitude on the damaged dreadnought due to the threat from Runes of Warding.
  Shooting, and the damaged dreadnought snap fires at the ravager, and scores one hit that penetrates but the skimmer jinks, knowing that unfortunately that was merely the entree. Undamaged dreadnought scores 4 hits and explodes the dumbass Dark Eldar skimmer FIRST BLOOD. 

 Modrak and buddies shoot at the wracks Venom, and take off a hull point. Terminator squads all run forward but I think Adam rolled poorly here.

DE turn 2 - Razorwing arrives from reserve and moves into a position where it can shoot either the left flank termies or the middle ones. Fortune on the Guardians again. Incubi move towards Modrak and jump out their raider with the Huntress, wych raider manouvers to let the haemonculus shoot with its liquifier gun shoot Modrak and co, but it will only be getting one or two at the most. Some shuffling goes on, I actually move close to the adavncing Terminator squads but obscured behind the bastion  with venoms etc from 2 of the squads and the dreadnoughts, as I've had enough of their nonsense for the time being.
  In the shooting phase the razorwing, surviving ravager and venoms + trueborn shoot and kill 3 of the left flank terminators, leaving only a sword guy with psybolts who passes morale. 

In my DZ, the liqufier rolls something fail like ap 5 and wounds no Ghost terminators. A combination of the wyches, their raider's dark lance, guardians and wraithlord kill 3 of the Ghost nights and wound Modrak, who fails to bring in another ghost from his wound.
  Assault phase, and Incubi with Succubus + the Wraithlord charge. Succubus + Incubi kill ghost nights, with the ghost knights slaying an Inucbus in return. This now leaves Modrak facing the wrath of Small John, who at strength 10 with re-rolls to hit with his wraithsword power mashes the Grey Knight Grand Master SLAY THE WARLORD. Whilst this was fun, that means that the Incubi unit didn't accumulate a pain token as the wraithlord finished the unit!  Both the Inucbi and and Small John roll a mighty 1 for consolidation.

 GK turn 2 - Adam exclaims 'Dark Eldar in the open!' in joy at seeing my Incubi squad's consolidation of rubbishness, and moves the right flank terminator squad up to take full adavantadge, though they are still way too far to be able to get in assault. The lone Terminator on the left flank moves to hide behind a big rock terrain feature but still shoot away with his S5 storm bolter. The middle squad moves to shoot at the razorwing.
  Adam's shooting phase, and his eagerness was not misplaced as one of the dakka dreadnoughts nukes 3 of the Incubi after some rank rotten power armour saves on them, and it being more than twice my toughness no Feel No Pain (FNP) roll. Unfortunately (for Adam, not me!) the Terminators are not as lucky, and kill no more of the squad. Middle terminator unit shoots and damages the Razorwing, making it snap fire only next turn, whilst the lone terminator shoots a venom but I pass flickerfield save after it he got a penetrating hit.

This is where Modrak was unitl Small John got hold of him,
then Adam blasts Incubi to shreds in return

We're coming for you, you pointy heided-bastards!

View of the battlefield after turn 2

DE turn 3 - I want to Fortune the wraithlord but its out of range so fortune Guardians again. Razorwing flies off the board, as it can only snapfire this turn and I want to get those dreadnoughts, but I'm not flying the length of the board down the barrel of those autocannon dreadnoughts, so it goes off to go into ongoing reserve. The remaining Ravager and the Wraithlord take aim at the right flank terminators, whilst the venoms unfortunately are hiding out of LOS of the dreads behind the bastion as they will just get minced by psycannons and dreadnoughts until I can  deal with the walkers. Wych raider uses aethersails to fly to the top left. Remaining Incubi and succubus mount up in their raider and move out of LOS of the dreads as well.

  In the shooting phase, I flat out the wych raider to behind the trees to the left of Adam's dreadnoughts, and I am pretty certain that only one of the dreads will be able to shoot at it. Wraithlord kills 2 Terminators on the right flank with its plasma missile launcher shot ha! and the ravager kills another with a dark lance. Splinter cannon Trueborn finish lone terminator and gain a pain token for FNP. 

After Turn 3 DE movement

After turn 3 DE shooting

GK turn 3 - Adam moves the dreadnought that has lost a hull point forward to be in range of the Guardians as he can't see or is out of range of everything else. Other dreadnought turns to shoot the wych raider, and the middle GK terminator squad moves round the side of the bastion, whilst the 2 remaining right sider terminators move up to be out of LOS behind the bastion.
 In the shooting phase Adam's middle terminator unit shoots and immobilises the Incubi raider, whilst a dreadnought does 4 wounds to the Guardians, those 4 of which are not getting a cover save. I elect to go to ground, and save 3 of the 4 on a re-rollable 6+ with Fortune.. The second dreadnought shoots the wych raider but rolls poorly and merely takes out the dark lance from the skimmer. 

DE turn 4 - Razorwing arrives right to the side of the damaged GK dreadnought, and one of its dark lances are hitting the rear whilst the other will be on side armour. Haemonculus gets out of the raider and hides behind a tree to try and keep linebreaker for me if the wyches get killed, whilst they move 6" in the raider, disembark 6 towards the undamaged dreadnought. Wraithlord moves towards larger squad of GK terminators that are still living. Incubi + succubus disembark towards the GK termie squad, whilst the ravager and guardians are going to target the smaller squad of termies as they are not quite out of LOS

  Shooting, and I think this is where i finished the smaller unit of Termies off. Other shooting kills one terminator from the other squad, and a grenade thrown by the  wyches removes a hull point from their dreadnought target. Razorwing whiffs, and only takes a hull point from its target dread, leaving it on 1. 

  Assault phase, and I charge the  remaining Terminators with Succubus and the 2 incubi, no wounds from overwatch. Wyches charge dread and take one casaulty from overwatch autocannons. The wyches explode dreadnought and take one dead from the explosion. Succubus issues the challenge of fail - I challenged the justicar and forgot about the flag of force weapon activation. Succubus does 5 wounds with her venom blade on the Justicar, who passes all his saves. The Grey Knight then slams his sword into the Huntress, who fails her dodge and her soul is sucked into the warp to the delight of Slaanesh. SLAY THE WARLORD. The two halberd guys despatch one of the Incubi, who guts a terminator back himself before being smashed by the hammer. Wow that was a great idea Sean!!

GK turn 4 - from here my memory is a bit sketchy, but I'll try and write out how I think it went. The remaining dreadnought takes its shots at the razorwing, reducing it to its last hull point, whilst the terminators wreck the Trueborn's venom I think - it explodes and kills the guy who doesn't have a splinter cannon. They are too far to charge though.

DE turn 5  - The razorwing once again flies off the table to escape the autocannons of doom. The ravager will be out of range but the wraithlord moves up, and destroys the dreadnought with a krak shot of its EML.
Other shooting kills the terminators - possibly the Trueborn finishing them off - and its game over.

Victory for the Annihilated Souls!

Thoughts: With Adam getting first blood and a fair few kill points it would have been a draw we worked out, had I not tabled him. I always get tempted to go all out for first blood if its nightfighting because of how it favours DE, but really made an arse of it. Adam was thinking he should have deepstruck his force in in retrospect but I'm not sure that would have been a great idea, as I could have mass assaulted him with Incubi, wraithlord and wyches after all my shooting. Would have been fun anyways! That was an absolute fail idea, assaulting a near full Terminator squad with just the succubus and 2 incubi, and needlessly gave away 3!! victory points (warlord, plus the two units) when I was winning, and it could have lost me the game like an idiot. Adam was a really fun opponent, we were having a good laugh and banter all way through so yeah he was awesome.

Overall, I do admit I think my army should have the best of this army due to outranging most of it easily, but the mission really evened it up for Adam, coupled with a really poor decision on my part (succubus assault) but it worked out. I could not have dealt with Modrak so easily without the wraithlord, and he really could then have been the proper arch-troller that he is!

Win unit - Small John the Victorious, with a Warlord kill, 2 GK terminators and a dakka dreadnought

Fail unit - the Huntress. No kills. Got pwned.

Onwards - to game 2!

Craftworld fools pressed into service of the Kabal!

Have been playing around with a couple of lists for my DE, and since I have 2 or even possibly 3 tournaments coming up I was wanting to do something new with them. So in true 6th edition fashion, I have decided to put in some Craftworld Eldar as allies. My disdain for the craftworld muppets is well known amongst my gaming friends, but as I commented on in my review of my Dark Eldar's performance psykers have always been a problem for the poor darklings, with no real way of stopping them. 

Therefore, with the addition of a cheapass Farseer, it cuts down on the amount of psychic shenannigans I should have to tolerate. A lot of folks have commented that I should give him a couple of psychic powers, but really I only need him for Runes of Warding - where enemy psykers must roll 3D6 and add the results, with a 12 or more being Perils of the Warp - and Dark Eldar are not gonna be ones to trust 'allies' with too much influence. I've selected Fortune as my mandatory psychic power, which lets the unit its cast on to re-roll their saves in the next opponents turn. 

If you take allies you must include a troops choice with them, so I've selected a squad of Guardians with an Eldar Missile Launcher (EML), and a Warlock with Singing Spear with the Embolden power. I've always liked the look of the support weapons that Guardians lug about with them, so I picked the Guardians over the more popular Dire Avengers or Rangers/Pathfinders. Mainly because despite being a bit weaker overall, they are mostly going to be hiding behind an Aegis defence line, and with the Embolden power enabling me to re-roll leadership tests (and therefore the Farseer's psychic test muhaha) then they are going to be very hard to shift. The Farseer can go on a quad gun, that I'll be converting to look eldarish, and the extra singing spear I've found to be very useful to get rid of opposing armour in my deployment zone, whilst the quad gun and EML provide a bit of ranged ability and chance to get flyers. 

Since I mentioned they will be hard to shift with shooting, what with being able to re-roll my leadership tests for the Guardians on the Farseer's leadership of 10, then opponents may be tempted to get an assault based squad over my aegis wall and literally be in my base killing my dudes I decided to have a sneaky back up. I wanted to put in a Monstrous Creature to lurk about and provide the Guardians with a bit of muscle if someone managed to get near them with some assaulty stuff. A Dark Eldar talos would be good as it could accumulate Pain Tokens to make itself more powerful, but I already used up my 3 DE heavy support choices. Then I looked at the Wraithlord in the Eldar codex - S10 T 8, and the ability to take 2 flamers plus a long range weapon, and can only be wounded by very few weapons in return. Win! I had always considered Wraithlords a bit fail as Dark Eldar splinter weaponry gets rid of them double quick time, but here all he has to do is lurk about, firing his missile launcher and getting Fortuned to re-roll his saves then jump out, flame squads and mangle any that get too close to my Guardians/Farseer. I converted a cool looking Wraithlord/Talos thing from spare bits I had lying around -mostly Daemon Prince kits and some chaos + old DE stuff. 

So with the Eldar in, and a new razorwing kit the list for the UKGT looks like this:

Dark Eldar primary

HQ - Succubus with venom blade 70
Haemo with Liquifier 60
Haemo with shatterfield 65

Troops-
5 x KW with blaster, venom with x2 splinter cannon, nightshields 135
5 x KW with blaster, venom with x2 splinter cannon, nightshields 135
3 x wracks, venom with x2 splinter cannon, nightshields 105
8 x wych with heka, venom blade. All with haywires, raider with nightshields, aethersails 186
8 x wych with heka, venom blade. All with haywires, raider with nightshields, aethersails 186

Heavy-
Ravager x 3 dark lances, nightshields 115
Razorwing Jetfighter with x 4 monoscythe missiles, x 2 dark lances, x 1 twin-linked splinter rifle (ha!), nightshields, flickerfield 165
Razorwing Jetfighter with x 4 monoscythe missiles, x 2 dark lances, x 1 twin-linked splinter rifle (really, again - ha!), nightshields, flickerfield 165

Eldar Secondary

HQ - 
Farseer with singing spear, runes of warding, fortune 103

Troops - 
10 Guardians, EML, Warlock with Embolden and Singing Spear 133

Heavy - 
Wraithlord, 2 flamers, EML, Sword 125

Fortification
Aegis with Eldar quad gun 100

1848

Not optimal by any means, but thats 2 flyers which should do something when they come in (unless Intercepted lol) and 6 troops, which lets me really have a good chance with multiple objective missions. In Big Guns Never Tire, the Wraithlord will sit on an objective and just get Fortuned the whole time whilst the Eldar and him fire at anything that comes near him. 

Dark Eldar zoom off to kill stuff as per usual, though I'd like my Incubi in here as they are cool, but don't think they cut it too well at this type of competitive level. I am a bit worried at only 2 DE combat units, as I feel the 2 wych squads plus Incubi usually confuses my opponent into not killing enough inbound threat but with only 2 raiders they seem a bit exposed.

Death World - farewell to good old 5th ed

Some friends had organised a small local tournament a couple of months in the making. Since it was announced about May time, they decided to play it as a 5th edition event. I was looking forward to this, as we've had a few of these events over the last year and its always fun playing against your mates and a good bit of banter with it. Also, my Dark Eldar has been fun and effective without ( in my opinion anyways) having an optimised list.

So it was 5 games over the weekend - 3 on the Saturday and 2 on the Sunday, with unique missions with both primary and secondary objectives. Originally there was supposed to be between 24-28 people coming along, but since a lot of them are gooches they didn't show up, but we had 16 people and that was still a reasonable number, and they were all good guys, most of whom I know reasonably well.

I'm the only Dark Eldar there, which is relatively common in my local area.

The first game, and I'm drawn against Tama's Blood Angels, who have repeatedly smashed my poor DE in 5th edition. My absolute fail dark lance rolls against his Stormraven are legendary, and I think he beat me solid every game for a year!

My list:

HQ
Succubus with Agoniser 85 pts
Haemonculus with shattershard 65
Haemonculus with liquifier gun 60
Haemonculus with liquifier gun 60
Troops
8 x wyches, haywires + 1 set of hydra gauntlets, hekatrix with power weapon. Raider with sails and nightshields 201
9 x wyches, haywires + 1 set of hydra gauntlets, hekatrix with power weapon. Raider with sails and nightshields 213
5 x warriors, blaster. Venom with nightshields + extra splinter cannon 135
5 x warriors, blaster. Venom with nightshields + extra splinter cannon 135
5 x warriors. Venom with nightshields + extra splinter cannon 120
Elites
7 x Incubi with klaivex with Onslaught. Raider with sails and nightshields 259
Heavy
Ravager x 3 disintegrators, nightshields 115
Ravager x 3 dark lances, nightshields 115
Voidraven Bomber, x 2 void lances, void mine, x 2 shatterfield missiles, flickerfield, nightshield 185


Total 1748

Tama's was something like this:

Sanguinor
Blender Furioso
5 man Sanguinary Guard with melta pistol thing and a power fist
Sanguinary Priest
10 man tacitcal squad, power fist, meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino
5 man assault squad, power axe, meltagun in a lascannon Land Raider with HK missile
2 Land Speeder Typhoons
Stormraven with Mutlimeltas, hurricane bolters and plasma cannon
probably missing something

Mission was table quarters - dedicated transports can't hold or contest table quarters - anything else can and set up was Pitched Battle. I win the roll and decide to go first. I roll a 6 for my combat drugs, and so the succubus squad of wyches are fearless, have feel no pain (FNP) and have furious charge (FC), with the other squad with FNP & FC.

I set up hugging the back of the table with my nightshields stuff to hopefully be out of range of a lot of his shooting. Tama then deploys so my disintegrator ravager is pretty useless in its position, and with a lot of his troops quite far back so I have to at least weather a turn or two of shooting before i'm in assault. He fails to sieze but I was certainly clenching.

Early Game: Disintegrator ravager busts a flat out move away from Tama's land raider and the wych raiders position themselves to get a cover save or be obscured from most of his shooting, but don't go flat out as I want their dark lances to shoot this turn. One of my venoms move up onto terrain and gets immobilised. Shooting, and both the Voidraven and the dark lance ravager totally wiff on the Stormraven. Again! Then a dark lance from a raider immobilises the Raven and it has to get placed on the deck behind a big rock thing muhaha. Tama turbo-powers his land speeders towards my stuff as its quite far away in the opposite corner. Tama pretty much wiffs most of his shots back, though he fires two weapons the first turn from his land raider despite moving 12"  as we later discover (sneaky Tama), a hunter-killer that my Voidraven's flickerfield deflects and the lascannon takes a dark lance off the Incubi raider.

Will finish later

A Dark Faildar player grappling with Marinehammer...

It occurred to me yesterday that either I am a shockingly bad player, my Dark Eldar army is terrible or I am making an arse of each one of my games. Currently I am on quite the losing streak, which is amusing and interesting for any player to go through, as you take stock of where you think you went wrong, change either parts of your army or rethink strategy & tactics, move on and see how it goes. I think I must have played close to 15 games of 6th ed, and I've won three of them. To start with I was sure that it definetly isn't my list, and that I just hadn't got my 6th ed game sorted which probably applies to everyone, so therefore to just persevere with it and it will work. But it hasn't relented, and games that seem to be in a favourable position just slip away. 

The last few games I've had were like this:

An absolute murdering against Ronalds' flyer-spam Necrons:
I think this is fair enough - I didn't have enough skyfire stuff to take down 3 doom scythes and a night scythe, and was probably gonna get tabled until Ronald suggested we call it. Some questionable stuff here though, like does the doom ray hit both flying targets and those underneath (i suspect they do as thats how its written in the codex, but if you say your using skyfire..) and my flyers got shot down quick time as I was going first, therefore the Necrons get the first shots in. DE flyers are fail in taking down other flyers too, but we'll come to that in a while

A 1 Kill Point defeat to Colin's Templars
well this was obviously close. No more invincible Templars LR's, just haywire them to death, but that cost me 2 kill points as both wych units died, and I only got 1 of 2 of the LR's. Everyone seems to think Templars will loose blessed hull which will make me happy as I can potentially take them down with shooting instead of suiciding my valuable troops units. Long- table deployment didn't favour me here as its less room to maneouver to stay out of his weapon ranges. Whilst this was a defeat I killed a lot more of his army than he did of mine but its the age old kill pts problem of me having more units in transports 

A hiding vs Colin's Fateweaver flying circus 
Was big guns never tire mission. Colin got his non-preffered wave down and I killed a unit of crushers and two units of horrors on the 2nd turn. Then I didn't do a single wound the next turn when FW, a DP and a bloodthirster came down in the flying mode. Not one wound. I eventually killed all the troops, but the Daemon Princes were scoring and I just couldn't hit them. Colin won by about 4-5 victory pts. The Bloodthirster (Warlord) was on 1 wound through half the game and I chucked the kitchen sink at him to no avail. One of the scoring DP's was on an objective on 1 wound too. I would have won on turn 5 but went to 6 and I got gubbed.

1k game against Bernard's Coteaz Grey Knights
Gk's in 1k are filth as you take the stupidly pointed 3 man squads as troops leaving you to take a spam of purifiers! Was one of my only games of nightfighting, which does benefit DE immensely in this edition. So after an encouraging start where I killed about half the purifiers, I didn't kill or wound anything for about 3 turns. Lost a squad of wyches and my succubus to a foolish disembarkation, but obviously with poor dark lance rolls against GK you don't have a 2nd chance against them, not with twin-linked psybolt fortitude nonsense on the go. 
A hammering

1750 or 2K game (can't remember) close victory against Scott's Sisters
Nightfighting first turn which was good for me - I put the hurt on in the 2nd turn when I got the charge with Incubi + wyches on some sisters squads, and I bombed another into oblivion with my voidraven which then shot and exploded an Exorcist. Going well, then the remaining Exorcist started smashing Dark ELdar vehicles and the saint got up at last to roast 4 from 5 DE warriors on an objective, he stayed and I won the game. Well we had to call it there and not roll for a 6th, but if it had went on I had a venom full of warriors on the only other objective with not enough to stop them. Despite destroying about half the sisters army in turns 1 and 2 I still could have lost it, and to be fair to Scott the saint failed twice to get back up (though she did pass her first 3 Dark Lance instagib invulnerable saves!)

An unfinished game against Scotts sisters - again at 1750 but with a slightly different list. Similar in that I smashed a lot of the scoring sisters, but my vehicles took a hammering by the Exorcists frankly ridiculous rates of fire, and I couldn't scratch them this time with my Dark Lances. I still had all 5 troops units technically, but both wych squads only had 1 left. Hadn't lost my venom warrior squads though, but the saint was flying around with nearly a whole squad of seraphim and Scott had both exorcists left. I had to leave though, so we didn't get to finish it. 

A comedy 1750 gubbing vs Bernard's Gk
This game was a pure farce. Relic, and diagonal deployment. Didn't do enough damage, or any damage to think of really, going 1st, then lost about half my vehicles on Bernards 1st turn. After that I suppose the game is more than half over but what happened next with my shooting for the next 2 turns was undescribable. A good laugh. I conceded start of Bernard's turn 4 I think.

so a few things that are coming up constantly:
DE antitank shooting sucks in this edition - its almost completely ineffective vs GK. so on a penetrating hit on a razorback i need a 5-6 to take it out, or a 4 to take the HB off. Glancing changes for just hull points are pish for DE as there is no twin-linking so you really needed the potential for those glances to possiblly destroy a weapon or immobilise stuff.
DE flyers are awesome at killing infantry, which is good, but are terrible at killing other flyers, for the same hull points reasons, and the low AV of DE stuff when you get the retaliation from the angry Stormraven, Vendetta or even Doom Scythe that you are unlikely to take out with your two DL shots.
Ap1 totally annihilates me - true of most stuff, though its more from Doom Scythes and MM on Raven's for me, as with nightshields etc my raiders + venoms rarely get hit with infantry melta weapons. + 3 on the damage table!!
I need to take a farseer ally to stop GK psychic shennanigans. Self explanatory really

Despite all this I am undeterred - I really believe that I can make my Kabal mighty again with the units that I like, it just needs a bit of thought. However, a rebranding of the 40k mantra is in effect I believe - ''In the dark future of Marinehammer, for Xenos, there is only pain!!''