1850 Point Batrep: Blood Angels vs. Dark Eldar

I'm trying something new with my battle reports by using more transitions between scenes, adding about 20 seconds of storyline before and after the battle, as well as music. I've been told by people leaving comments on the video that the music is too loud. I'm still experimenting and the next video will have quieter music. For now turn down your headphones a little when you start the video

I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for posting the bat rep. Music was a little loud in the beginning, but overall, a good production. As to the game itself...yikes. Really don't understand why you didn't want your super resilient MC unit on the board on turn one so you could cast Invisibility on it and laugh as your opponent watched everything in his army bounce off it. The way the battle played out, the game was decided based on your reserve decision. It seems like you'd already lost by the bottom of turn one. Better luck next time and keep up the great work.

I agree 100% I was foiled by the fact that a WWP deep strike seemed fun

Yeah, sometimes I think the WWP can be a bit of a mental trap. It seems so cool (and it can be), but if you don't have any reserve manipulation, than the lynchpin of your army could end up watching their comrades get slaughtered from the sidelines. I think your list was a good one. You just should've reserved the fragile stuff (everything except the Ravagers) and deployed the tough stuff (DA). It would be interesting to see a rematch with a different reserve strategy. I think it would go much better for you.

When fighting drop pods, I've had the greatest success during deployment with something like this:

R being Ravagers, V being Venoms, and C, T and H being the Dark Artisan.

Make sure there is room for a drop pod to land within the Ravager barrier, but not enough room to deploy the passengers if it does. So much fun when they scatter that way You also need to make sure any potential flamer templates can't reach across a Ravager and hit a Venom.

Also make sure you do this where there are no Objectives nearby, if possible, because you'll be moving away, but his pods will not.

By deploying like this you dictate where his pods will land. They have to get fairly close to be able to do something, but that will A) gather all his pods in the same secluded spot, and B) put him dangerously close to the board edge. Once down, he can pretty much only fire at your AV11 vehicles. Sure, this is not great, but lets face it. With drop pods, he is likely to get first blood, and with only jinking AV11 to shoot at, this is not actually guaranteed. Also, C) this will leave juicy targets nearby for the Dark Artisan from T1.

After his alpha strike, you have your entire army ready to kill just a fraction of his, getting ready for the rest of the pods to come down T2. After this, you can do the sweet Turboboost trick and leave the premises and go get objectives, or you can stay and clean up, whichever suits your needs the most.