1500 Point Batrep: Dark Eldar vs. Dark Eldar

As the title says it's 1500 points of Dark Eldar (no allies) against my Dark Eldar (with Eldar allies) in the Maelstrom Mission: Cloak and Dagger!

First off - nicely painted and converted army by our fracophone. Yours was also nice.

I really enjoyed the report and not to diss you but was very happy to see that spam failed. Spam lists can be strong no doubt but they are one-dimensional in nature. You live or die by your main unit - venoms. Two medusae took on two squads of warriors, lol. He knew what he was doing and enough various weapons to accomplish his ends without spam.

The other list used everything in the arsenal and played to his mission brilliantly. Kudos to him.

Lastly - and please don't get angry - making excuses was unnecessary. You played against an obviously experienced foe who understood ho to use his list. He used reserves and cover quite well, prioritized well and came out a winner.

I did say "It was my fault" meaning I'm taking the blame which is the opposite of making excuses. It may be that I'm wrong about why I lost but that's different from making excuses. When you make excuses you blame something/someone other than yourself

Good to see return to your Dark Eldar.

egorey wrote:

The other list used everything in the arsenal and played to his mission brilliantly. Kudos to him.

Lastly - and please don't get angry - making excuses was unnecessary. You played against an obviously experienced foe who understood ho to use his list. He used reserves and cover quite well, prioritized well and came out a winner.

I agree with egorey, your opponent was a decent player even though his list might have looked weak, he used everything in it to maximum effect.

Using coven supplement units to lower your leadership to make pinning and vehicle damage results more likely to reduce the effectiveness of your army was a smart move (something worth considering). He also really focused on playing the mission leveraging the massive movement of those MSU reavers. At one point the expendable reaver unit drew fire from almost half your army!  

I enjoyed the webway portal warlord bait (treating every unit as expendable including your own warlord is the mark of a good player in my experience). It got you to move all your venoms closer to his army, keeping them clustered (for the razorwing) and running your warlord away. Which I'm not sure why you did, turbo boost happens in the shooting phase, you could have waited until the end of your shooting phase. You would have known whether or not his warlord's unit was still a threat or not and positioned your warlords venom accordingly with a flat out move. Instead you isolated your warlord for a deepstrike assassination and the rest of your army was out of position meaning they couldn't retaliate against the medusae.

Not quite sure what your were trying to achieve with your autarch, he spent most of the game running up and down the board, when you could have kept him back as a counter assault unit. Your opponent did the right thing and mostly ignored him (though he always had the option to take him out with the medusae deepstrike if need be).

Your opponent really drew you out by feigning weakness (misdirection) resulting in an impressive divide and conquer. The whole time he was still playing the mission finishing off with a nice ascendancy (making sure three units were in the right place at the right time takes some forethought). He had the initiative the whole game (ironic considering he got seized on) and you were just reacting to him. It really felt like he had a game plan, and you didn't.

Hope the feedback helps and thanks for sharing the pain! I look forward to the next report.

Hi, I'm the french guy playing against 40scribe.
To balanced his analysis is main error was to focus on killing my units to take care of the missions afterward. But in this mission we are limited to 3 card anytime. So I focus on getting as much objectives as possible.

kourac31 wrote:

Hi, I'm the french guy playing against 40scribe.
To balanced his analysis is main error was to focus on killing my units to take care of the missions afterward. But in this mission we are limited to 3 card anytime. So I focus on getting as much objectives as possible.

Le résultat de ce plan: Une victoire bien méritée. Vraiment bien joué!

(The end result of that plan was a well deserved victory. Well played!)

For this game I wanted to test the soulfright effects so I oriented my list as such and with a list not too rought I hoped. For some games now I always take the medusae. I wanted to DS it along the succubus next to his archon in venom. First shooting witn the 4 templates on the venom hoping to touch some other in the process to give the succubus a turn to charge next turn.
But the reserve didn't turn that way.
So I only DS the succubus next to his venom formation behind the archon and I only remove 1 hp with the HG. I willingly try to attrack the shootting from his venoms for one turn to give some time for the rest of my reserve.
At this time I really thought I was going to lose but I did't give up now that the tactical card could turn out the game which they did.

kourac31 wrote:

For some games now I always take the medusae. I wanted to DS it along the succubus next to imhis archon in venom. First shooting witn the4 template on the venom hopping to touch some other in the process to give the succubus a turn to charge next turn.
But the reserve didn't turn that way.
So I only DS the succubus newt to his venom formation behind rhe archon and I only remove 1 hp with the HG. I willingly try to attrack the shhorring from his venoms for one turn to give some time for tjz rest of my reserve.

When I was watching the report I was waiting for your medusae to come on and attack 40kscribe's tightly packed venoms. But then you didn't get the right reserves! Making do with what you had and sacrificing your succubus was a game winning move and was very resourceful (débrouillard).

As I said - do not get me wrong. Maybe 'making excuses' is a bit of a strrtch. I did enjoy the report. I did not understand some of your decisions as I said. You did not prioritize well or make good use of your movement. I think the fact that your list has dismembered less competent opponents worked against you. You also looked at one time to actually have the game in hand but a few mistakes were costly.

Uppermost was that you took his bait units as serious threats and he used this to his advantage. Also clustering your venoms and keeping them relatively stationary - you should have used your mobility more.

Having said all that I recently lost a game badly that I could have won - 1250 - Mechanicus vs. Orks. So I sympathize. It did look like you had fun though and that is what it is all about.

I'm glad everyone enjoyed the report. At the end I agree that I didn't give kourac31 enough credit but I was truly baffled by how much my own arrogance cost me the game. As egory mentioned it seemed like I was ahead at first, and indeed we both thought I might win this one until he scored 6 points on turn-3

He has a solid army (well painted and converted, I totally agree!) as well as tactics. I also agree that the more I play against more competent opponents, the better I'll get (my army is strong but I need to improve my tactics)

I appreciate the post-game analysis -- we've got an EXCELLENT Dark Eldar community here

40kScribe wrote:

I'm glad everyone enjoyed the report. At the end I agree that I didn't give kourac31 enough credit but I was truly baffled by how much my own arrogance cost me the game.

I think what egorey was getting at is that you need to look past your arrogance as the reason for losing. Yes, you may have decided to go easy on your opponent, but that's not ultimately why you lost. It's also the least useful fact in terms of what you can learn. If you look past "I lost because I went easy" and the associated logic of "I would have won if I didn't go easy" so to improve "I just need to not go easy" you will learn a whole lot more from this game. Things I would pick up on:

1 - Playing the mission.

2 - Thinking about your opponents reserves (when and where they might arrive, what they will target).

3 - Positioning in order to minimise the effectiveness of your opponents weapons (clustered venoms).

4 - Positioning so you can secure any objective cards you draw in your turn and still engage your opponent (spreading out your venoms would have allowed you to do this).

5 - Preventing your opponent from playing the mission (killing his units near objectives).

6 - Have a goal in mind when moving a unit, your autarch was chasing things but I'm not sure how it was helping you. Relying on his one shot melta to take out skimmers that can jink on a 4+ is not something to plan around (assuming you hit, and you penetrate, you have a a 50% chance of doing nothing, and only a 25% chance of making it explode).

7 - The threat level of units and how to reduce their effectiveness. You didn't have to shoot the deepstriking warlord unit. Most of your venoms were over 6" away, with their 12" move you could get them 18" away, the grot unit would have to make a difficult terrain test in their movement phase, and wouldn't benefit from fleet. Simply put that charge wasn't going to happen (they would have to roll a 6 on their dangerous terrain test and two 6s on their charge roll). As long as they couldn't make a multi charge, they could at most destroy one venom. Even if your venoms hadn't been 6" away you could have always resorted to blocking. You don't need to kill a unit to stop it from being a threat.

8 - You also had more lance fire than him, so could have been using those venoms to hunt down his transports (which were protecting his units from splinter fire). Food for thought.

40kScribe wrote:

I appreciate the post-game analysis -- we've got an EXCELLENT Dark Eldar community here

Remember hindsight is 20/20, it's easy for me to watch the report to pick out the tactical mistakes because I can see the outcomes of the moves and am not burdened with making the choices at the time.

Writing reports and posting them here is a fantastic way to get feedback and amplify what you can learn from a game tenfold. Reading/watching other peoples reports is another good way to learn.  

Very good batrep, looking for more pain.

Very nice batrep and good comments about the battleplan.