[1500] Mech Blood Angels vs Dark Eldar

Introduction:

I strolled into the Gaming store this past saturday, once again. This time I had a scheduled game all lined up. If you know my story I have just recently moved into the area so I am fairly new to the community. This means that I have been trying to find my niche spot within the gaming tiers of the area. Last time I was at the store one of the -twins- called me out for a game, he said he had heard I was a -decent- player and therefore wanted to have a game. I was flattered (of course) that my reputation had preceeded me . I had heard of the -twins- over the last month or so from various members of the gaming community and they are held in high regard when it comes to list buinding (using powerfull lists) and their generalship skills. And so, with this I set out my army and we rolled for the mission straight out of the book.
Mission? 4 Objectives
Deployment? Pitched
Location? Sir Games Alot in Barrie Ontario

The Table:
We made sure that there was enough terrain on the table this time, 25% and good LOS blockers. Then tried to mirror it as much as possible in an adepticon format.
The green markers are the primary objectives.


The armies:

I was using the same tournament list that I have been using since I got here and had to drop to 1500pts. It is a strong DE list that has a lot of synergy and can catch people off guard if they are not careful. At a glance the list only has 2 venoms... but at close range (12inches) the army shells out almost 80 AI shots. Hence not needing to rely on the venoms, and boosting 15 AT weapons for decent tank busting capabilities. (with 18 grenades if the wyches get stuck in).

His list was a variation of Blood Angel razorback spam. Cheap squads, cheap HQ and then as many pts in firepower as possible. Of course this variation has adapted to the local meta and he has been using vindies rather than predators because of the prevailence of FNP and other foot troop armies in the area. The use of HK missiles was clearly because of certain DE players that love their night shields. At a distance he could target 6 different things a turn and then even more as soon as the fast vindicators got within range. So I was in for a fight!

Dark Eldar Kabal 1500pts


HQ-
Archon, Agonizer, Phantasm Grenade Launcher, Shadow Field, Combat Drugs

Elites-
4 Incubi
Venom, Dual Cannons, Grisly Trophies

Troops-
9 Wyches, Hekatrix with agonizer, haywire grenades
Raider, Flicker Field, Grisly Trophies

9 Wyches, Hekatrix with agonizer, haywire grenades
Raider, Flicker Field, Grisly Trophies

5 Kabalite Warriors, Blaster
Venom Dual Cannons

5 Kabalite Warriors, Blaster
Raider, Flicker Field

Fast Attack-

3 Reaver Jetbikes, Heatlance

3 Reaver Jetbikes, Heatlance

5 Scourge, 2 haywire blasters

Heavy Support-

Ravager, Flicker Field

Ravager, Flicker Field

Blood Angels 1500pts

A closeup of one of some of his painted figures. They will be looking good when he is done!


HQ-

Librarian- Stock- Powers Shield and Fear.

Troops-

5 Assault Marines
Razorback with Las-TLplas-HK missile, dozer

5 Assault Marines
Razorback with Las-TLplas-HK missile, dozer

5 Assault Marines
Razorback with Las-TLplas-HK missile, dozer

5 Assault Marines
Razorback with assault cannon, dozer

Fast Attack-

Typhoon

Squadron 2 Typhoons

Baal Predator, HB sponsons, dozer, HK missile

Heavy Support-

Vindicator, dozer

Vindicator, dozer

Deployment:

After rolling again because we drew the first roll the Blood Angels took first turn and chose to deploy everything with the Baal in outflanking reserve.
He huddled his army in a off centre position threatening three of the 4 objectives and also had a flanking force on his far right to hold the far objective. No units roll red thirst.


Dark Eldar roll +1 str for drugs. Not wanting to rely on trying to sieze the initiative the Dark Eldar wisely reserve everything. If it all goes to plan even the Baal pred will show up before any of the DE reserves do. And there is enough terrain that if the army trickles on the Kabalites should be able to deal some damage and mitigate the brunt of the enemy shooting in return.

Turn 1

Blood Angels- To make the game go quicker, the Blood Angels decide not to move anything for turn 1. Only having the speeders move away (to then move them back into position but with a cover save for turn 2.

Dark Eldar- The Kabalites wait. The moment to strike is soon the Archon follows the enemy movements on his pics screens and heat-sensors. Waiting for a weakspot to appear, then the realspace raid will commence!

Turn 2

Blood Angels- The mechanized force shuffles. The lead tanks blow smoke. The Baal predator is hiding well in the bushes and does not arrive! The ambush is not yet sprung. The Blood Angels prepare for the Dark Eldar to arrive.


Dark Eldar- Rolled for reserves: Ravager, Scourge, 1 unit of jetbikes, 1 unit of wyches, the incubi and archon and both squads of warriors show up. (quite a lot, I was hoping for less)...
The Dark Eldar move onto my far lower left side of the table, he has left units unsuported on this side so I will overload it and hope to solidify my hold on the nearby objective. I boosted the reaver jetbikes up to entice the squad in the razorback to come out and charge them. Shooting saw the speeder stunned and that was it... I also moved the incubi (dark) and warrior (green) venoms behind the walls prepared to move out as needed, if the razorback squad took the bait the incubi would be able to take first blood.


Turn 3-

Blood Angels- Reserves... the Baal predator fails to arrive once again! The large portion of the blood angel force shuffles further into his far left corner. Nothing is in LOS or range to shoot ( I was unsure of what he was doing here, putting more distance between us, maybe he was expecting me to play his game and just charge his lines?)

To my delight, the squad inside the razorback gets out! And prepares to charge the jetbikes. This means that the incubi will have something to charge next turn! The combat sees the jetbikes die but they did cause one casualty. The razorback fires its payload into the ravager and wrecks it on a lucky glancing hit!


Dark Eldar- Reserves: The second jetbike unit arrives. And thats it (this leaves one Ravager and the other wych unit still to arrive). The jetbikes boost over the disembarked squad and kill another with their bladevanes. The incubi and the archon move up to assault the small squad. The rest of the army shuffles to prevent as much shooting as possible while manouvering for the central objectives and getting into position for the late game.

Shooting sees the speeder immobilized and stunned and the razorback immobilized... and that was all.
In combat the Incubi and archon make quick work of the 3 assault marines, gain their pain token, and consolidate into the crater fearing the plasmagun and lascannon on that razorback.


Turn 4-

Blood Angels- Reserves: The baal predator shows up on his far left, the side that I am pushing up the table. The mechanized block moved up at reasonable speed to bring a few more weapons to bear as well as prepare to get some units on the objectives turn 5. He wants to make me work for it, this is fine. His shooting sees the baal predator shoot at the wych raider, and blow it up! Wounding 8 and killing 6 of the wyches inside from the explosion. (ouchies!) Other shooting sees three of the scourge taken out as well by frag missiles. And then he shot as much as he could at the incubi venom and managed to only blow off its gun and stop it from shooting, he really wanted to strand the killy unit on the far side of the table. My units all passed their morale tests, thank goodness.


Dark Eldar- Roll for reserves, only the ravager moves on (the last wych unit will arrive turn 5) In movement my incubi do not roll high enough to all get within 2inches of their venom! So the Archon embarks and speeds off towards the Mechanized force. The incubi prepare to assault the land speeder. The Jetbikes line up the razorback on that flank and the remaining scourge (luckily with the 2 haywire blasters) engage the baal. The wyches move and run to hide begind the central wall. The ravager moves to engage the speeders and the raider warrior squad moves up to block the central objective with the raider and bring its blaster and the lance to bear. The other warrior unit moves to the corner objective.

Shooting sees one speeder down. And the lead razorback stunned (blocking the one behind and too far from the objective to score. The razorback, baal and speeder are stunned, and charged, not much else happens with the grenades and close combat attacks.


Turn 5-

Blood Angels- The army advances. The unit close to the objective moves out to take the one near their razorback. The vindicators line up some shots and the surviving speeder boosts over to contest the central objective. Shooting sees the raider in the centre dead, and 2 of the 5 warriors (including the blaster) die in the explosion. Then firther shooting at them forces them to go to ground to survive. The ravager survives a vindicator shot as well. The venom with the archon also receives much shooting and once again survives with only the second splinter cannon gone! They pass their morale. The librarian and squad move to try and take the other objective on his far right if the game continues. As it stands he is tying up the game. In combat (with the tanks from before nothing really happens)


Dark Eldar- The last unit of wyches arrives. And moves to my far right, facing off against the librarians razorback. As it stands all I needed to do was contest his objective and if the game ended I won. So I kept the wyches conservatively back to use them to push on the objective if needed on turn 6. The venom with the archon darted up and he disembarked, with a half decent run he would be in combat with the squad on the objective contesting it. I also moved the depleeted wyches up to attempt to charge the land speeder and bring it down if I could. I also moved the venoms and the ravager as well as the jetbikes to create a wall to prevent any contesting on turn 6 from the vindys or the remaining razorbacks.

Shooting saw the librarians razorback stunned. And the speeder unharmed. I then charged in with the wyches into the speeder and the archon into the assault squad, if this was time to not have him flub his attacks... it was this time.


As the dust of combat settled, the archon had killed 2 marines and lived! And the wyches had landed a hit with a haywire grenade and glanced but only managed to stunn the speeder. As it stood I held one objective to his zero.

We rolled for the game to continue.



Roling a 1 and it was over!
Victory to the Dark Eldar.


Conclusions:

Well, that was one fast paced game. My opponent was quick to note that I had one my just the one objective. I replied that one is all it takes. And this is true, sometimes people forget that you only need to win by that one objective in order to take the game and they try and take as many as they can. It it good to threaten as many as possible but at the end of the day the one you hold and the ones the enemy does not are what counts.
I did note that my opponent was not as aggressive as I think he could have been, he held back and was reluctant to advance on my forces. I have seen him just sit in a corner and blast people off the table but of course hi opponents seem to just run at him. There were a few lucky instances for me that game, with the archons venom surviving two turns of dedicated shooting (I did fail all other saves on my other tanks so it adds up ) and this allowed the archon to get to the other side of the table and ultimately prevent the tie.
Man of the match? - I would have to go with my Archon, as it was him that contested the enemy objective.
My opponents best moment? - Well, there were two, one was when by exploding the wych raider he rolled 8 wounds (out of 9 wyches) and then, later in the game, when he blew the warrior raider up and the explosion wounded all 5 warriors that had just disembarked, this led to the death of the blaster.

Thanks a lot for reading I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked it make sure you check out the other stuff I do (links in sig).

Cheers!
Skari-out

Nice report and pictures there. Well done on the win.

So is that BA player highly rated in your area, because I was reading that and thinking WTF is he doing. I would have expected him to get into firing range as soon as possible and let rip. I was at least expecting him to occupy centre table in his first 2 turns and then be in range to hit you hard T3 with almost everything he had.

You played it well. Always good to get one over on someone who obviously thought he was going to put you in your place, Nice one.

Thanks for the comment!

Nice battle but I'm interested in as to why he could assault your bikes out of his razorback. I was pretty confident that you cannot assault out of a transport. That's why I love DE vehicles, because they are open topped we ca n assault out of them. Or am I just playing it wrong?

No your playing it right you can only assault out of open topped vehicles or ones with an assault ramp (Land Raider) so if the BA player did charge the bikes then that's wrong.

If a vehicle hasn't moved, disembarked troops may move and assault.

That is correct. The transport had not moved before the unit disembarked, and therefore the unit inside could move and charge.

interesting to see a mech BA player not using Auto/Las Preds and only Baal Pred. Why the Typhoon Speeders? I think he would of gotten more out of another Baal and Vindi

Also I was supprised he castled up as well. You would think with the vindies he would be moving all over the center of the board with fast vindis, sure they would end up ahead of everyone else and probably be haywire bait, but oh well. Castling is useually for when they outrange you, like with all their Preds and Las/Plas.

I think i may have understood the BA players way of thinking for that match. Dark Eldar can move incredibly fast and tie you up in combat by turn 2. By holding back he could prevent his forces being completely engaged and pinned down. Tuned right, Dark Eldar can be the anathema to space marines. I very much like your playlist skari. lots of firepower, close combat ability, speed and anti tank ability. very well played ^^

It's interesting to see a list without Blasterborns and Haemi. Congratulations for the win against a very sharp army! I have also watched some of your videos which are really nice. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the comment! I actually got the chance to have a rematch against this same list at a local tourney yesterday... Batrep to follow. I am glad you like the list, yes its very balanced and it works great on the tabletop!