1500 Dark Eldar vs. Blood Drinkers

In preparation of an upcoming tournament that I may be attending I put together a 1500 point list to play in friendly game against my regular opponent who plays Blood Drinkers. While I had intended to use Battle Chronicler in recapping the game time was short so I'm going to do my best to remember things as they happened and do a "verbal" (without pictures to assist) recap.

First the list basics...

DE:
- Archon with 7 wyches and a raider
- 10 man warrior squad with raider
- 2-5 man warrior squads with venoms
- 4 man trueborn squad with venom
- 6 reavers
- talos
- ravager
- razorwing

BloodDrinkers: (and bare with me here as I don't know the list well so this is basics)
- Librarian
- 5 man squad w/ 4 missile launchers
- 2-10 man tac squads
- 2-10 man units combat squad'ed into 4 units, all in drop pods
- a shooty dreadnought
- Aegis Line with no gun

For warlord traits I got -1 to his reserves which was useless as his only reserves were the droppods which due to his rules both came in on turn 1. He got stealth, etc... in ruins which turned out HUGE for him because the board had a lot of ruins throughout. My combat drug was a pain token from the start. We rolled purge the alien and deployed at the far ends of the 6x4 board and he got first turn with no night fighting.

Turn 1-
I set up using the terrain as best I can using the ruins and put my units behind the boats rather than in them to start. After failing to sieze he began by dropping both drop pods right in the front lines. The two then disembarked their combat squaded units and began shooting transports. The first three units all got "exploded" results against the two raiders and then a venom, then the fourth venom made 4 flickerfield saves to avoid being destroyed itself. The resulting explosions killed 6 of my guys from random squads and surprisingly he had a number of his units get caught in explosions and lost 4 guys from the squads himselfs after failing his 3+ saves.

In my turn 1 I thought about having my units flat out across the board but there sat the dreadnought and 3 other squads and I'd be leaving half my forces behind anyway so that thought quickly flew out the window as I had 6 kill points right in front of me. My units that had rides left got on them (one trueborn squad and one partial 5 man warrior squad) and the shooting began. I reduced one squad that my wyches would charge down to 2 units, and one the Talos was going to try to charge down to 2 as well (it only had 3 after the explosion). I left alone a 5 man unit and bladevaned another unit reducing it to 3. In retrospect I should have focus fired a bit better but oh well. In assault the Talos failed its charge but the wyches and archon made theirs. They killed all but 1 enemy which was fine by me.

Turn 2-
In the top of two the missile launchers with their re-rolls thanks to the librarian caught my poorly placed and in the open talos with rockets and killed him outright with the help of the dreadnought. The other units he had in the back were out of range. His units that had been reduced in size ran back towards ruins in the middle of the board and his 5 man unit fired at the warrior group managing to only kill one warrior. In assault his unit was finished off and the wyches moved towards the 5 man unit that sat nearby in the ruins.

In the bottom of 2 the ravager again missed the droppod completely and combined fire from other units at the 5 man squad managed to inflict just one casualty from all the combined fire thanks to the 2+ from going to ground in the ruins (along with the warlord trait). The reavers jumped up and exploded one droppod before jumping back into the ruins and the trueborn managed only a single glance against the other droppod. The wyches and archon then charged into the remaining 4 and managed to kill all four of them.

Turn 3-
The Blood Drinkers had little they could do being out of range with nearly all of their units. The dreadnought did manage to wreck one venom however. The two fleeing units continued to run, one group of 3 making the ruins on one side and the group of two nearly at the other ruins. The droppod that remained failed to inflict any wounds.

In the bottom of 3 the Razorwing came on. It fired into one of the groups of 10 with missiles (he was back far enough that I was just out of range with Dissies) and got hits with both missiles over 7 guys each. I rolled a lot of wounds and they went to ground again getting a 2+ save. He still lost 2 guys but without that +1 warlord trait would have lost 2 others. The trueborn then managed to wreck the other droppod and the warriors positioned themselves to fire at fleeing marines that were just in range. The group of three with their cover took a single casualty and ran 5 inches out of cover at the end of shooting. The reavers bladevaned over the other group killing them. The ravager with little else to do moved flat out over near the last venom for cover and to prepare for a potential move up board knowing I was down on victory points.

Turn 4-
His pair of marines that had run off the ruins ran back into them for cover. The missile launchers with their librarian re-rolls managed a single hit against the razorwing and despite having actually bought a flickerfield the penatrating hit got through and it blew up. The dreadnought fired at the ravager which failed its save and was wrecked. One of the 10 man squads was able to fire at the reavers who promptly lost two of their number.

In the bottom of 4 combined fire managed to kill yet 1 more of the two that had gone to ground in ruins. Knowing I was behind two points I jumped the reavers back from his board edge with intent to get linebreaker with them.

Turn 5-
Night fell and the marines could do nothing being out of range of everything and not willing to move out of cover to get to within 36" knowing they held a lead.

In the bottom of 5 my combined fire finally dropped the last of his drop squad. My reavers then bladevaned over one of his 10 man squads and sat between them and the board edge for linebreaker. They killed two of that squad after they went to ground and would have killed another 2 had they not. Had they not gone to ground those casualties would have forced a morale check that could have ran them 7" off the board for the win ... but where it didn't the Dark Eldar managed a tie instead.


I had told him prior to making my turn 5 moves what I was going to do to get the tie and if it went to turn 6 I would lose. I made the moves and we rolled and the game ended earning me the tie. We played a turn 6 just to see what would happen and indeed with the reavers now in the backfield they got all the attention and were killed. In my turn 6 there was no way for me to kill enough units to get back to a tie so I was fortunate it had ended where it did.

All in all it was a very fun game. Starting my units out of the boats saved a few lives but he could have killed a few troops then instead of their rides and focused on the boats later and probably been better off. Still, having 2 drop pods come in and have 3 transports blow up right off the bat and a fourth just saved because I made 4 5+ saves was brutal and I wasn't sure how well I'd recover. Effectively though he put half his army in front of me to shoot at where the rest were mostly out of range and thus not a concern.

The talos was underwhelming in its first showing for me and in fact after the game I just charged 6 marines (who I didn't shoot at but allowed overwatch) and while they only got 1 wound in 4 rounds (3 1/2 actually) I was only killing 1 marine a turn also. The Ravager had poor luck missing everything and the Razorwing getting blown up right away stunk ... but he also made some poor saves despite having obscene cover all game. The reavers, also making their first showing for me, were great both with heat lances and caltrops and then moving 48" at the end of the game for the tie. The wyches were also very good taking out a pair of marine units in assault.

Overall I think I'll put a second Ravager in for the Talos and keep the razorwing (I had planned to have a second anyway but it hasn't arrived ... and the razorwing was better than the talos on the long board). The rest of the army I was pretty happy with and despite heavy losses in the beginning things turned around pretty well...

Couple of things that seem odd to me from the get go:

2 Tac-Squads combat squaded in droppods. so 5 guys were in each pod. But one tac-squad can only ever purchase one dedicated transport, he could only have 2 of the 5 man squads in the pods and the other 2 units 5 five on the table then.

Drop-Pod assault states that half the number of pods, rounding up, arrives in your first turn. If you only have 2 Pods, only one of those pods may arrive turn 1.

Only option to have those 2 droppods come in first turn would be to buy the other 2 10 man tac-squads a droppod each as well and have them land empty later in the game.

Long story short: I think you played it wrong on some end, not sure which one though.

Edit: Ok, he squaded them after landing so that explains part of the issue

I'll edit this post once I'm done reading the report, but I had to write that thought down before something else crosses my mind again

Edit Edit:
Good battle report and good game, not a perfect one, but you definitely learned some things. I like the parts where you reflected on what you have done and what you maybe should have done different. Good move with the jetbikes to force the tie. Sometimes you just can't do anything else. Killpoints are tough for us anyway.

You also had some bad luck with some lowly tactical marines blowing up three of your transports turn 1.

Dogmar wrote:

Couple of things that seem odd to me from the get go:

2 Tac-Squads combat squaded in droppods. so 5 guys were in each pod. But one tac-squad can only ever purchase one dedicated transport, he could only have 2 of the 5 man squads in the pods and the other 2 units 5 five on the table then.

Drop-Pod assault states that half the number of pods, rounding up, arrives in your first turn. If you only have 2 Pods, only one of those pods may arrive turn 1.

Only option to have those 2 droppods come in first turn would be to buy the other 2 10 man tac-squads a droppod each as well and have them land empty later in the game.

Long story short: I think you played it wrong on some end, not sure which one though.

Edit: Ok, he squaded them after landing so that explains part of the issue

I'll edit this post once I'm done reading the report, but I had to write that thought down before something else crosses my mind again

Edit Edit:
Good battle report and good game, not a perfect one, but you definitely learned some things. I like the parts where you reflected on what you have done and what you maybe should have done different. Good move with the jetbikes to force the tie. Sometimes you just can't do anything else. Killpoints are tough for us anyway.

You also had some bad luck with some lowly tactical marines blowing up three of your transports turn 1.

Thanks for the reply. I relish the chance to put forward my games and get feedback from other DE players on what I could have done better, things I could try, and so on.

I spoke with the Blood Drinker player over lunch just a bit ago and mentioned the drop pods and he admitted that was a mistake as his initial list had 3 pods but due to points he removed one so only 1 should have came in on turn 1. I also asked him what the squads in them were as I couldn't remember which brand of marine they were and they were Sternguard Veterans who were armed with combi-plasmas. He also admitted that while he tries not to list tailor knowing he is playing DE does creep into his mind when making his army lists...

EDIT:
...and a thought just crossed my mind. I started with combat drugs giving me a pain token ... but I gave my archon with drugs and my wyches a single token as they were a squad when I started the game. However is this correct or should each have got one and the "unit" then started with 2 pain tokens? In the end this didn't make a difference in the game (though I constantly have to remind myself about FNP rolls ... the thing I forgot the most) but which way is correct?

Ah, Sternguard with combi-plasma explains a lot of the "turn 1 the pods came and 3 - almost 4 - transports bit the dust... those are a real pain, cover ignoring ammo and combi-weapons usually makes them kill whatever they need to kill. They are a one shot weapon though (the combis AND the unit, because the unit is most likey dust next turn).

Your Archon (with combat drugs) would have gotten a separate pain token giving the combined squad of Archon and Wyches 2 Pain Tokes from the get go and thus furious charge.

Sternguard can be tricky, but getting explosions on 3 vehicles outright is a lot of back luck for you. normally you should be able to recover easier. That said, Sternguard are very very expensive, something around 325 points fully kitted out with pod. And they die as easily as 10 normal marines. Food for thought If he takes 20 Sternguard, there's not much else to fear.

Be wary of the flamer sternguard. 2 of the 10 guys can pack a heavy flamer if I remember correctly. Try to build a wall with your tanks so that the flamer template cannot or just barely reach your vulnerable infantry or jetbikes. There was a thread on that topic "Dealing with Deepstrikers" with fancy pictures some time ago.