ETC-style mission: 1750 points of Dark Eldar VS Astra Militarum

Mission
Objective #1: Eternal War: Crusade 4 objectives (3 Victory Points each)
Objective #2: Maelstrom of War: Cleanse and Control
Objective #3: Slay the warlord, First blood, Linebreaker
Objective #4: Kill points: Max 6 points.
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

1750 points
Max 1 double outside troops. Max triples in troops. 1 CAD only.

Astra Militarum CAD
Pask Punisher (Warlord) & Executioner buddy.
Sanctioned psyker (level 2) (Prescience, precognition, Scryer’s gaze).
Priest.
Platoon Command Squad w. 1 heavy flamer and 1 flamer, in Chimera.
10 veterans w. 3 meltaguns, in Chimera.
50 infantry platoon w. 4 flamers and 4 power axes.
10 infantry w.  flamers
10 infantry w. meltaguns
2 x Vendetta
2 x Wyverns

Dark Eldar CAD
Archon w. blaster, haywire grenades, shadow field, webway portal (Warlord)
Succubus w. archite glaive, haywire grenades
3 x 5 kabalite warriors w. blaster, in Venoms w. extra splinter cannons
5 kabalite trueborn w. 4 blasters, in raider w. dark lance and night shield
4 grotesques w. aberration upgrade and scissorhand, in raider w. dark lance and night shield
5 scourges w. 4 haywire blasters
9 reavers w. champion upgrade, 3x cluster caltrops
Razorwing jetfighter w. dark lances
2 x ravager w 3 dark lances

Warlord Traits
AM: Preferred Enemy for pask
DE: May discard first hand of Objective cards

Dark Eldar have first turn.

Deployment

Dark Eldar reserves the Trueborn with the Archon for deep striking, and the Razorwing. Astra Militarum reserves two 10 man infantry squads in Vendettas.

DE T1
Maelstrom1:  Witch Hunter, Demolitions/Scour the Skies, Secure 5. I choose to discard these.
Maelstrom 2: Secure 3, Overwhelming Firepower, Hungry for Glory



Reavers turboboost to surround the wyverns in order to make it very hard for the wyverns to shoot them. Unfortunately I forgot to check up on where in the blob the flamers were hidden. The grotesques hides behind the bastion. Venoms kill off 10 guardsmen. Everything else whiffs to good saves.

I Discard Overwhelming Firepower.

DE 0 – 0 AM

AM T1
Maelstrom: Secure Objective 1, Blood and Guts, No prisoners



Turns out the grotesques didn’t hide well enough, and Pask promptly kills off the raider for First Blood. Wyverns puts wounds on the grotesques and the Venom. All four blob flamers are within reach of the Reavers and kills of 7 of them. The 2 remaining fail their morale and run for it.

He Discards Secure Objective 1

DE 0 – 1 AM

DE T2
Maelstrom: Secure Objective 3, Hungry for Glory, Behind Enemy Lines



All reserves enter. The trueborn targets the Wyverns, but whiffs horribly. Only one blows up, taking a Reaver with it in the explosion. 2 ravagers, the razorwing, kabalite warriors (kw2) and scourges barely wrecks the Executioner. Venom (V1) kills 3 guards. A venom moves to contest objective 3, expecting the blob to move away to pile in later. I was very tempted to blow my missiles on the blob, but I wanted to charge them with the grotesques. If I could do this I’m quite confident they would kill them off quite nicely. Unfortunately (AGAIN!!!!) I forget about the 4 flamers standing some 30” away, and the wall of flame yields 11 hits!!! This kills the Succubus and the Aberration, and the charge range changes from 7” to 13”. I forgot to roll a morale test here  I hate flamers…

DE scores Behind Enemy Lines.

DE 1 – 1 AM

AM T2
Maelstrom: Blood and Guts, No prisoners, Assassinate



Both vendettas enter. The first one explodes my razorwing. The second jinks a ravager. Veterans disembark to kill a venom. It does, and the resulting explosion catches 6 of the veterans in the blast. The blob use the Split Fire order. 1 flamer on the trueborn and 1 flamer on the raider. They intend to charge the raider to axe it down. The Platoon Command Squad flames 3 trueborn. Pask hides in a ruin, intending to kill Scourges, but forgets to check line of sight LOS. This leaves a raider as his only possible target. It dies horribly. The wyvern target the warriors on the bastion, killing one.
The blob charges the trueborn instead of the intended raider. The Archon challenges an axe-wielding sargeant. The archon and the remaining one trueborndoes nothing. On the return, the trueborn saves 5 wounds!!!! The sargeant does 2 wounds to the Archon, who signs off this impressive feat by rolling double 1 on his invulnerability save. Sigh…

AM Scores No Prisoners and discards Blood and Guts

DE 1 – 3 AM

DE T3
Maelstrom: Secure objective 3, Hungry for Glory, Secure objective 1



The last reaversneak up on  Pasks rear to drop off a few caltrops here. Warriors on the bastion embarks into it, and the scourges claim the roof. Grotesques run foreward. Ravagers and Scourges kill Pask (Warlord kill). The bottom venom kills a couple of the platoon command squad. The top venom turboboost to objective 3. With Pask suddenly dying, the reaver hides.
In melee, the trueborn once again tanks the hits of the entire blob with his amazing armour and feel no pain. He is really “in the zone”. The archon kills the sergeant.

DE Scores Secure objective 3, Hungry for Glory, Assassinate

DE 4 – 3 AM

AM T3
Maelstrom: No prisoners, Demolitions, Assassinate



The platoon command re-embarks. One vendetta flies off the board, dropping it’s payload in the process. It misshaps and dies. Veterans kills the last reaver, and the wyvern kills a Scourge. The blob FINALLY kills the superior opposition (warlord kill).

AM scores Asassinate

DE 4 – 5 AM

DE T4
Maelstrom: Ascendancy, Supremacy, Big Game Hunter




Scourges, Ravager and top warriors kill the top chimera. Top venom finishes the remaining veterans. Grotesques run foreward and hides in the wrecked Executioner. Bottom ravager  immobilises the wyvern. Yay!

DE scores Ascendancy, Supremacy, Big Game Hunter

DE 9 – 5 AM

AM T4
Maelstrom: No prisoners, Demolitions, overwhelming firepower



Vendetta change to Hover mode and tries to kill a ravager. It jinks everything away. The blob kills a Grotesque, and again I forget they aren’t fearless. The other vendetta kills the bottom ravager. The wyvern kills two scourges.

AM discards Demolitions

DE 9 – 5 AM

DE T5
Maelstrom: Secure objective 2, secure objective 4, Secure objective 1

Both venoms move foreward for line breaker. The grotesque does the same. I know I will likely lose 1-2 of these units, but decide it’s worth the risk. I do not dare charging the blob with the grotesque. Those flamers are scary. Instead I charge him into the chimera, completely forgetting about the platoon command squad inside it, so he goes down to flamers anyway. Doh!. Scourges, ravager and bastion warriors shoot the hovering vendetta, and top warriors charge it. It loses 2 hull points. Venoms kills a handful of guardsmen.

DE scores Secure objective 2, secure objective 4, Secure objective 1

DE 12 – 5 AM

AM T5
Maelstrom: No prisoners, overwhelming firepower, Secure 2



Both venoms and top warriors goes down to flamers.

AM scores No Prisoners and Overwhelming Firepower.

DE 12 – 9 AM

The game ends on a 2.

6 – 6 on Eternal War objectives.
Kill points: AM 14 – 3 DE. 6 points for AM.
Line breaker for AM

Final Score
DE 18 – 23 AM
Re-calculated to ETC-style points = DE 8 – 12 AM

Thanks for sharing Sigmaril! And shame you didn't pull it off vs AM!

From what I can tell you had your share of bad rolls in this game, but I do have a few questions.

First off, sending the reavers into the teeth of the enemy - did you send them in as a suicide squad to take out the wyverns? My first thought was - wow, daring! I think personally I would've tried to destroy them with the ravagers, but that's just me.

Then the Succi that died to the flamer overwatch, doesn't she get Look Out Sir rolls?

And lastly, what would you try to do better next time around, list wise and battle decision wise?

PS: Flamers really DO suck :/ I bet you won't ever forget to check for them again!

BlackCadian wrote:

Thanks for sharing Sigmaril! And shame you didn't pull it off vs AM!
From what I can tell you had your share of bad rolls in this game, but I do have a few questions.

First off, sending the reavers into the teeth of the enemy - did you send them in as a suicide squad to take out the wyverns? My first thought was - wow, daring! I think personally I would've tried to destroy them with the ravagers, but that's just me.

The thing is, for the ravagers to get within range, they would have to move into Pask's deathzone, which I'd rather not do.
It does look like suicide, but bear in mind that I'd forgotten that his 4 flamers were all in the back of his blob. Ignoring them for a second (as I did ), the intention was to make it hard for the wyverns to kill reavers. Something they otherwise excell at. This way, he would almost certanly hit himself with the blasts.
besides, there is little to do for the reavers in this match-up, with so many flamers around.
The huge mistake was forgetting the flamers, obviously, but even with them I still had two reavers with Cluster Caltrops left, which is an average of 7 S6 hits to the Wyverns' AV10. This was somewhat foiled by them failing their Morale test, though.

BlackCadian wrote:

Then the Succi that died to the flamer overwatch, doesn't she get Look Out Sir rolls?

Yes. Yes, she does. You also mentioned some bad rolls, and this was no exception, so she failed them
I had put her in front exactly because I expected a few wounds from overwatch, and with Look Out, I would not loose charge distance because of it.

BlackCadian wrote:

And lastly, what would you try to do better next time around, list wise and battle decision wise?

PS: Flamers really DO suck :/ I bet you won't ever forget to check for them again!

List wise I don't think I can do much better than it already is. The list is for a turnament we're attending next thursday (30 people, 6 games, over two days). With the semi-highlander format and no allies my options for variation are somewhat limited. I'm open to suggestions, though
Odds are that I won't meet the AM list at the tournament, but if I do, I will definately pin-point every single Flamer Also, a more precise measurement of my hiding wil be required. Pask being able to gun down my Grot boat turn 1 was just plain stupid. I could easily have stayed out of LOS if I had bothered to look.
I think the Reavers will stay out of Wyvern range next time, and just zoom around waiting for an opportune moment to arrive. The Trueborn really ought to have made an impact on the wyverns (I got a direct hit with the Archons haywire grenade, taking 2 hull points. The remaining 4 blasters managed just one hit), and with them gone, the Reavers would be able to move more freely.

Thanks for the explanations!

As for suggestions there is only one thing which I have been contemplating for my own list vs AM:

Instead of dropping the blasterborn in via WWP, I think heat lance scourges would give a higher rate of success if something armored really HAS to go (in my case the AM commander hidden behind a bastion in his chimera).
Sure, those scourges will most likely be dead, but so will whatever they've shot at. Plus, the archon with shadowfield will still take some attention and resourcs to remove. Meanwhile the squad of blasterborn can shoot other stuff.

It's an all-comers list, so I won't be changing out the Haywire scourges for Heat Lances. With the restrictions in selections, the amount of anti-tank guns is way too limited for my taste, so I need to be removing hull points reliably from turn one, so the 24" range is vital.

Awesome report. Astra Militarum is a tough matchup for conventional DE. Though it felt that you spread your forces to thin and split units in isolation to engage him piecemeal. Not quite sure what I would do differently as I have only been playing footbased coven lists for the last few months.

Thanks for sharing the pain.

Mushkilla wrote:

Awesome report. Astra Militarum is a tough matchup for conventional DE. Though it felt that you spread your forces to thin and split units in isolation to engage him piecemeal. Not quite sure what I would do differently as I have only been playing footbased coven lists for the last few months.

Thanks for sharing the pain.

Thanks. I'm fairly certain your Ramblers would just endure a round of shooting and then enjoy a fat meal of juicy guardsmen I would truely love to try out your list, but even getting to 8 Grotesques in my collection (which is where I am now) has been an expensive hazzle, and I dread thinking about the next 12...