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