1850 DE vs Iron Hands

Time to die!

Kabal of the Dying Sun raiding with the Cult of Marrow Excised
Realspace Raiders Detachment
HQ - Succubus, HWG, Glaive [Warlord]
Troops - 10 Kabalites, Blaster, Raider w/ DL, NS, Racks
5 Kabalites, Blaster, Raider w/ DL, NS
5 Kabalites, Venom w/ SC
Elite - 3 Grots, Aberration, Scissorhand, Raider w/NS
Fast - Razorwing, 2 DL
9 Reavers, 3 CC, 3 BL
5 Scourges, 4 HWB
5 Scourges, 4 HWB
Heavy - Ravager w/ 1 Dark Lance, 2 Dissies, NS
Formation
Dark Artisan - Cronos, Spirit Probe
Talos, TL-HL, CF
Haemonculus, WWP

Iron Hands Steel Rain
Space Marine CAD
HQ - Librarian, Lev 2, Force Staff (Psy Shriek, Mental Fortitude, Shrouding) [Warlord]
Command Squad, 2 Flamers, 3 Meltas, Apothecary, Drop Pod w/ Homing Beacon
Troops - 5 Scouts, Snipers, Camo Cloaks, Land Speeder Storm w/Heavy Flamer
5 Scouts, Snipers, Camo Cloaks, Land Speeder Storm w/Heavy Flamer
5 TAC Marines, Melta, Combi-Melta, Drop Pod
5 TAC Marines, Melta, Combi-Melta, Drop Pod
5 TAC Marines, Flamer, Comibi-Flamer, Drop Pod
Elite - Dreadnought w/Power Fist & Heavy Flamer, TL-Heavy Flamer, Drop Pod
Legion of the Damned, Plasma Gun, Plasma Cannon, Combi-Plasma
Fast - 3 Land Speeder Typhoon
Stormtalon, Skyhammer
Stormtalon, Skyhammer
Heavy - Thunderfire Cannon
Whirlwind

Mission: Maelstrom, Cloak and Shadows
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fight: No
Warlord Trait: DE - Towering Arrogance (Warlord and friendlies within 12" Fearless)
SM - Master of Interference (One use, opponent must randomly discard a Tactical Objectives card in his hand)
Combat Drugs: Hypex (+1 Init) 'Cause we've got the need. The need for speed.
First Deployment: SM
First Turn: SM

Initial Thoughts: I know SM isn't the scariest foe out there by a long shot, but I have serious trouble defeating my best bud when he plays his. That said I have a generally acceptable level of confidence in my list and think I know what I'm doing. That said, he brought a lot more fire than I'm comfortable with.

Deployment: The board is set up pretty much mirror-match. To the left are small ruins, one on my side one in the centre and one on his. Centre of the board is a large BLOS ruin on a hill, right side holds a larger piece of impassable BLOS with a forest while his has impassable BLOS with a ruin. A crashed Aquila Lander sat in the centre between the impassables.  Objectives were in the Forest, on the Aquila Lander, in his ruins, in both little ruins on the other side of the board, and in the large centre ruin.
He deploys Scouts in his left and right side ruins on the objectives with the TFC in the left as well, his Typhoon squadron behind the impassable BLOS, Whirlwind hiding behind the small ruin near his centre with the Land Speeder Storms flanking it. Everything else is ready to fall from the sky.
I deploy the Ravager hiding behind the far left ruins. The Grot Raider is centred behind the BLOS, flanked by the Kabbie Venom and the 5-man Kabbie Raider. The rest of my army lurks in the Webway.

SM Turn 1 -
Let it rain! The Dreadnought Pod crashes to earth near the Venom. The Command Squad w/Libby land on the other side near the Kabbie Raider. And a Melta TAC unit guns for the Ravager.
Libby casts Mental Fortitude on itself and Shrouding.
All game long the snipers are shooting at things. They miss.
Melta Squad fires, Ravager jinks and avoids damage. Dreadnought fires his heavy flamers at the Grot Raider, hitting the Venom in the process. He burninates all 5 Kabbies and lands 4 wounds on the Grot models, 1 each. The Venom didn't take damage from the fire and the Raider lost 1HP. Command Squad Targets the Grot Raider as well, doing another wound to the Aberration and finishing off the Raider with the flamers! Grots & Succubus emergency exit staying behind BLOS. Kabbie Raider escapes unscathed but only the Blaster and one other warrior survive inside. Typhoons open up on the Kabbie Raider but he saves 5 glances/pens with his 3+ jink. Whirlwind decided to mutiny and scatter off of the Grots, onto the Command Squad. 3 wounds, all saved. Too bad. TFC however kills off 2 Grots. Sad! At least I'm fearless.
Scores First Blood, Obj 1, Obj 3 twice.

DE Turn 1 -
Ravager snap-fires at the melta marines. Hits 3! Fails to wound all. The two last Kabalites in the Raider swoosh aside to throw shots into the Command Squad and kill a flamer marine. The Raider's Lance misses the Dreadnought. Venom opens up on the TFC but fails to stick a wound. Surviving Grots and Succubus walk over and pass their 1" charge. Grots hammer 3 Marines into paste. Her ladyship the Succubus doesn't wound anything out of sheer spite at the Librarian denying her challenge. No damage taken in return.
Addendum: He forgot the entire game that he had an apothecary in that unit. Likely would have made a difference.
I score nothing.

SM: 4   DE: 0

SM Turn 2 -
One Stormtalon, both Melta and Flamer drops, and LotD drop out of reserves. Flamer drop lands on the objective in the Crashed Lander terrain. Stormtalon lines up on the Kabbie Raider but only sticks 2HP. Melta drop lands near the Venom, but the Dread melts it to flickering goo before they can shoot (also preventing the Typhoon Speeders from killing anything). One of the Melta Marines dies in the explosion.
LotD go for the Ravager which jinks away all damage. The melta marines nearby do manage to immobilize the Ravager however, and destroy it in CC with well-placed Krak grenades. His Whirlwind opened up on the Kabbie Raider, forcing it to jink directly into the path of incoming Thunderfire Cannon barrage. Raider wrecked, 2 Kabbies disembark but are close enough to Succubus to be fearless.
Librarian manifests Mental Fortitude but channeling the warp takes its toll and he loses a wound. Shrouding gets denied!
Succubus still refuses to kill anyone because of the insult of a denied challenge. As a result the Librarian mashes the last two wounds off a Grotesque before being snipped in half by a rending wound from the Aberration. Succubus and Aberration consolidate towards the nearby Drop Pod in the forest.
He scores obj2 and I get Slay the Warlord.

DE Turn 2 -
So far the valiant Space Marines have really been dishing out the Pain. This is not good.
Time for my reserves! I get my Razorwing, Dark Artisan, Reavers, and one unit of Scourges. Scourges go near the Aquila crash aiming for the Typhoon Squadron but don't stick any glances through them jinking. So that's what that feels like. Razorwing luckily does blast one of the Speeders into pieces. Dark Artisan lands between Scouts/TFC and the Whirlwind. Talos Heat Lance shakes the Whirlwind which is no small blessing. Reavers intend to go for the turbo-boost surround on the Whirlwind theoretically preventing them from being hit with too many blasts. But I am struck by a sudden bout of insanity and decide a better plan would be for them to chases Scouts on my left in the ruins for no reason at all. Surviving Kabalite with a blaster puts 1 HP into the back of the Dreadnought, wrecking a Heavy Flamer. CC sees my Succubus and Aberration charge the Drop Pod and inflict 1HP via HWG. Locked in combat.
I score nothing.

SM: 5   DE: 1

SM Turn 3 -
His Stormtalon streaking onto the field heralds the last of his reserves. The Iron Hands battle force is fully committed, the better to rid this world of the foul xenos taint. Both Stormtalon engage the Razorwing in a short-lived but lethal dogfight, sending the Dark Eldar flyer crashing into a hillside. Typhoon Speeders jet away from the MCs onto the other side of the TFC ruin. Snap-firing bursts 1 Scourge in an explosion of limbs, gore, and stimulants. The flamer Marines approach the Scourges and put down two more in the name of the Holy Emperor but lose a man to overwatch and fail their charge. Dread moves toward mid-field and behind his Drop Pod because he forgot about the Kabalite with the Blaster entirely. LotD, TFC, one Land Speeder Storm conspire to remove 5 jinking Reavers who fall back 9". Look what my careless hands have wrought!!!   LotD fail a charge at them.
Succubus and Grotesque destroy le Drop Pod. IWND on the Dread recovers a HP.
He scores Supremacy for 1VP.

DE Turn 3 -
Kabalite gunboat and my 2nd unit of Scourges arrive. Scourges scatter onto the right side table edge, but stay on the board and Haywire a Typhoon Speeder into a static-y wreck because they elected not to jink. Other scourges pop a 2nd HP onto the Whirlwind. Kabalite gunboat DS's perfectly into a gap between the Flamer Marines and my Dark Artisan. Dark Lance fails to pen the Whirlwind. The 10 Kabalites inside the Raider put 11 wounds on the Techmarine manning the TFC who fails exactly 2, putting the TFC out of commission!
Reavers regrouped. Snap-fired blaster puts a HP and Crew Shaken on the nearest Land Speeder Storm. Dark Artisan formation glides over to the Scouts. Spirit Syphon kills 3 who promptly break and try to run before getting messily dismembered by the MCs as the Haemonculus drinks in their undiluted agony. Succubus and Grotesque move up onto an objective near the edge of the forest, closer to mid-field.
I score Pain In All Its Forms for 2 VP, and Obj 5.

SM: 6   DE: 4

SM Turn 4 -
One Stormtalon goes into hover mode to target Aberration & Succubus. Skyhammer missiles blow the Aberration into more pieces than his creator can count, and the Assault Cannon cuts the Succubus in half for Slay the Warlord! This leaves the Dreadnought with nothing to smash. The other Stormtalon forgot to reload after last turn and didn't shoot anything. Whirlwind takes out 4/5 of the Scourges on the table edge. Flamer Marines shoot and charge the Kabalite gunboat, turning one Kabalite into a charred screaming husk but not hurting the Raider in any lasting fashion. Overwatch kills another flamer-toting supersoldier. LotD charge the Reaver unit and kill 1 in CC. Power From Pain means the Reavers are fearless. I love this chart!
He scored Slay the Warlord, Recon, Overwhelming Firepower, and Kingslayer for 3VP!

DE Turn 4 -
The 2 lone Kabalites sharing the blaster in my DZ have a line on the hovering Stormtalon who jinks but I fail to hit anyway. Dark Artisan misses the Heat Lance shot but makes the 9" charge! Talos eviscerates the flyer into a grounded wreck. This leaves the Dark Artisan dangerously close to a unit of Melta marines and the Dread however. Bad news bears. One Scourge puts a HP on the remaining Typhoon with his HWB and the second unit moves into linebreaker then luckily finishes it off with a thrown plasma grenade! Kabalite Gunboat moves at combat speed into linebreaker. Dark Lance puts a hole through the Whirlwind and it shudders to a halt, out of commission. Kabalites disembark also into linebreaker but do exactly Zero damage to the nearby flamer Marines that had been in CC with their Raider. Uh oh. Reavers and LotD dance around each other without any damage.
I score Overwhelming Firepower and Behind Enemy Lines for 2VP.

SM: 12   DE: 7

SM Turn 5 -
Scouts charge into the Reavers and actually kill 1! That is their only accomplishment all game. LotD kill another one. Zooming Stormtalon annihilates the 2 Kabalites in my DZ in a spray of lead and vital organs. Melta Marines and Dread charge the Dark Artisan. Drop Pod shoots out the lone Scourge. Shooting puts 1 wound on the Talos from the Heavy Flamer. Good thing the Dark Artisan formation gives the Engines +1 I. Cronos kills 1 Marine, Talos kills the other 3. They are vivisected and their more interesting bits are placed into size-appropriate jars. Haemonculus claps. The Dreadnought lands a staggering blow with his Power Fist, dealing another wound to the Talos! Yeesh! 1 remaining wound on the Pain Engine. Flamer Marines torch 4 Kabalite Warriors in a spray of superheated promethium. Their deaths energize the other Dark Eldar in their unit to the point of distraction enabling two of the Marines to get through their overwatch and into CC, where another Kabalite is beaten down and broken savagely.
He scores Obj 1 with one of the Land Speeder Storms.

DE Turn 5 -
The Dark Artisan push forward to deal with the mighty Space Marine Dreadnought. The Talos manages to carve two serious gashes in the armour plating, disrupting vital internal mechanisms. The champion honourably interred in the Dreadnought chassis is enraged that foul xenos dare to touch his holy ceramite flesh! He lashed out with glorious fury and would have pulverized the Haemonculus into unliving dust even a master of the regenerative arts would have had difficult coming back from, had not the Cronos pushed his master out of the way and taken the hammering blows in his stead. Both heinously powerful attacks beat through the Cronos' armour but it managed to shake one off thanks to the life-essense it had drained earlier in the battle.
Elsewhere, the remaining Reaver managed to stay alive and locked in futile hand to hand combat with the Scouts and LotD. My 2 last Scourges join the Kabalites in combat with the Marines but no wounds are inflicted by either side.
I score Kingslayer for 1VP.

SM: 13   DE: 8

The Game ends! Both teams get Linebreaker, resulting in a final score of:
SM: 14   DE: 9

Victory goes to the Iron Hands chapter of the Space Marines!

What I learned this match:
Remember that Reavers have Hit & Run. Seriously. 'Cause I clean forgot.
Sacrifice whatever you need to before the match to your Succubus lest she decide she doesn't need to sully herself by killing anything in CC.
Don't forget to throw Plasma Grenades.
If you're bringing a Dark Artisan formation, odds are that Haemonculus should be your warlord since he's nigh-on indestructible. Especially compared to a Succubus not in CC.
Space out transports more when expecting flame drops. I miscalculated deployment and tried to space out my vehicles without actually measuring distance with a template, thus allowing him to roast Kabalites while targeting and inflicting wounds on Grots. Bad bad bad.
Also decide what you're doing with a unit that comes on from reserves before you put it on the table, not after. That's basically why I lost my Reavers. D'oh.

Comments, critiques, and general thoughts about my list, tactics, and the batrep in general greatly appreciated! What should I have done differently?
Thank you for your time!

Nice battle report! Well written .
I faced similar difficulties my last few games (Sternguard in pods with flamers) and your report gave me a few ideas to handle them. Lets hope our tactics bear fruit and we'll show those pesky Marines their place!

Cheers
Caspaar

Yikes! I always struggle against a full-pod marines so I feel you bro..

Against a list with that many templates I would've probably deployed the grot unit outside the raider (dash them in a ruin, out of LOS, making my opponent to choose between ignores cover or not with the barrage weapons) With a unit that your opponent knows to be a threat, the amount of flamers coming against the boat is going to be staggering, and there's a too high risk the single hvy flamer to inflict more hits with the D6 (when inside the boat) than plainly being on the field (strictly my opinion). The ruin could also keep a litle distance to you and those bbq-machines (don't know the measures so this is purely situational).

Tough call, can't say that I would've played any differently. I probably would've kept the venom, since those darn marines won't run, no matter how much you shoot&stab them, only solution is to eradicate them from the face of the planet. More dakka >> more dead marines..

Good luck next time bro! Hope you'll think some solution against those tin cans (and share that solution to me after you do)..

Drop pods are very difficult, especially now with the no escape rule.

Whilst I've not played a list with hideous numbers of pods (3 max) deployment becomes key for us, placing units to make sure they are limited as to where the pods can be placed, possibly starting units outside transports to give them protection from flame templates (each flamer hit isn't likely to do a lot of damage to a raider).

Keeping stuff in reserve gives us the chance to counter deploy, and using terrain to our advantage to obscure lines of sight and make artillery scatter full distance (average 7" instead of 3" is massive for things like TFC and Whirlwinds).

Also, you don't need to use deepstrike just because our transports have it - yes you need to declare during deployment if they're going to use deepstrike or normal reserve, but with pods they're often going to be within striking range of our reserves on the turn they arrive anyway.

I think in this case, I'd have deployed the ravager and dark artisan, perhaps the reavers and grot raider to start with , spreading them out as much as possible with the grots outside their transport so that templates could only hit the outside of your deployment where possible, or hitting the higher toughness stuff if not, then gang up on the stuff that arrived early. I won a game of purge the alien under the old codex by only killing 4 units of my opponent's army and just keeping everything else out of range/line of sight. By the time my enemy realised I wasn't coming out to play it was too late for him to reach me - a lot of people assume that because we're fast we're going to go to the enemy, springing a different tactics on them can really scupper their game plan.

I think tactically the biggest mistakes I made were
-not focusing more fire into the TFC earlier
-should have turbo-boosted the jinking Ravager away from the melta marines Turn 1
-should have actually used my brain when deploying & boosting Reaver
-should have declared Haemy as warlord

Thank you Caspaar! Please let me know how that goes next time you face them!

Ly'khal, I never feel confident enough to deploy units outside of their transports because I feel that opens them up to so much enemy fire, especially since he had the Whirlwind and TFC. Yeah Ruins likely would have helped, but the only ones we had on the board were tiny and single-level. Worst. Thanks for the ideas both here and in list building, I'll be sure to update next time I play them!

Burning_Eye; as mentioned placing units outside transports to buffer from templates is good, but what to do in a situation like this where the opponent also has barrage artillery? I feel like that over-exposes your units to dakka. Tried my best to keep LOS between me and the TFC but none of the terrain pieces aside from the one he was camped in were big enough, and he could almost always see SOME part of his targets. Or he just rolled hits.

When you say the pods are often going to be within striking range of our reserves when they arrive, do you mean they'll be in range of us striking them or vice versa?
He ended up with his pods roughly strung out in a line straddling my 12" deployment zone line. I chose to DS my Gunboat Raider because that would hopefully enable Rapid Fire access to something juicy I wanted to put down, like the TFC. If I'd gotten my Gunboat in Turn 2 instead of Turn 3 I should have had an extra 3 Reavers alive. Because of the TFC barrage I lost two of my three blaster/caltrop models. Seriously bad luck with my opponent's scatter dice this game.

On deployment I was definitely going to deploy Ravager, and briefly considered Dark Artisan for counter-DS. But with Psychic Shriek available Turn 1 I was mostly worried he'd nuke my Dark Artisan before I got the chance to do anything with them.
So you'd recommend hiding in my DZ and killing everything that arrived via drop pod instead of leaving them to waddle their way forward and boosting into his end?
I get what you're saying about not playing to their expectations and staying in your end, and that sounds like a pretty funny match you had there lol, but I have trouble deciding NOT to go straight for his throat and get close up to the squishy scouts, speeders, and artillery.

I played a game against a 4 drop pod list with flame dreads and what burning said is accurate.

I deployed a castle with all my stuff out of transports covering a corner of my DZ and my vehicles formed up at the edges. He couldn't deep strike in to the area because he'd slide all the way out either way.

I stayed in my corner and let his pods come to me, killing what I could and sending my vehicles zipping off to grab objectives every now and then. Oh also kept my reavers and two scalpel squadrons in reserve to counter strike. The whole battle took place in my corner and though I started off taking a beating eventually he just ran out of stuff and I still had enough mobility to zip around almost tabled him to boot. The salamanders lost many of their venerable dead that day lol. Helped I ran wyches, allowed me to tar pit two of his dreads for days while the hekatrix slowly killed them with haywire.

Thanks for that great Batrep and that you share your experiences!

Also important to note is that flamers aiming at a vehicle have to cover as much of it as possible. That is in the rules. That means that you more often can only aim at one vehicle at a time. I have not played against a pod list, but against a GK list with lots of lamers. Burning eye is right I think. You could also try to deploy the raider with 3+ jink and reserve the infantry that will walk on the board an embark then.

It reads as it could have easily been a much closer game

Also, I am afraid that Pfp gives fearless in turn 5, not 4?

Thanks for taking the time to read & reply!
Red King; One of these days I'll actually try castling. That is, one of these days when my opponent hasn't brought long-range blasts. Either marines with Whirlwinds & TFCs, Tau with Submunition Hammerheads and Riptides, Tyranids with Biovores, or Orks with their new hilarious artillery. I can't ever seem to justify castling outside of my boats.
So you dealt with everything that came out of the drop pods rather than flying away and ignoring it?

Mirai; Thanks for the tip on flamers. Both my opponent and I were aware of it and followed that rule. Trouble is my vehicles were just close enough that he could target the 2nd one while hitting the first. My bad during deployment, clearly, if I'd deployed properly it wouldn't have worked as well for him.

Probably should have started all my infantry in walk-on reserve, you're right.

Truth. I'm not sure how I screwed that up, or if I applied it at the wrong point. Wrote the batrep from memory lol. Thanks for pointing it out!