Coven and Heroes' Path vs Khorne Daemonkin

2000 point game of Cleanse and Control against Khorne Daemonkin.  Night fighting was in effect and my opponent had the first turn.  There are some problems with his list and how he played a few of the Daemonkin rules, but this was actually played almost a month ago and I think he just wasn't familiar with the new codex yet (nor was I as I hadn't played a game with my daemonkin yet either).

Dark Eldar (the good guys)
CAD
Haemonculus - Armor of Misery and Scissorhand (placed in one of the Grotesquerie units)
5 Warriors - Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons
5 Warriors - Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons
Scourges - 4 Haywire Blasters
Scourges - 4 Haywire Blasters
6 Reavers - 2 Cluster Caltrops
Ravager - 3 Dark Lances
5 Mandrakes - being shady

Grotesquerie
Haemonculus - Scissorhand
4 Grotesque - 1 upgarded to Aberration with Scissorhand in a Raider with Enhanced Aethersails
4 Grotesque - 1 upgraded to Aberration with Scissorhand in a Raider with Enhanced Aethersails

Dark Artisan
Haemonculus (warlord)
Talos - Ichor Injector
Cronos - Spirit Probe

Heroes' Path
Death Jester
Shadowseet - Mask of Secrets
Solitaire - Haywire Grenades

Khorne Daemonkin (the bad guys)
Blood Host Detachment
Chaos Lord - Juggernaut of Khorne, Sigil of Corruption, Lightning Claw, Power Fist
Chaos Spawn
8 Cultists - sticks?
8 Cultists - stones?
10 Bloodletters - Banner
8 CSM - 2 meltaguns
10 CSM - 2 plasma guns and missile launcher
Maulerfiend - Magma Cutters
Maulerfiend - Magma Cutters
8 Khorne Berserkers - Chainaxes, Rhino
5 Possessed Marines - Land Raider (this was illegal I believe because I don't see a way for the detachment to get land raiders unless you take terminators)

Deployment
Opponent set up everything as far forward as he could with his big hitters in the middle and the weaker units on the flanks.

I set my raiders up to give cover to everything squishy in my army and set up most of my units just outside of 36" from his infantry so he couldn't fire into my units with his marines and such.  I infiltrated one unit of mandrakes on the far end of my table to safely engage only the cultists, put the solitaire up close enough that he could get a first turn charge but be out of LOS of anything, and gave the Death Jester a high vantage point to hit anything he wanted and monopolize on a 2+ cover save.





Daemonkin Turn 1
He rushes forward most of his units (moves and runs) but forces one raider to jink with his land raider (no damage caused) and the other jinks against all the marines firing at it.



Dark Eldar Turn 1
I put my raiders and their contents as far into the middle as I can.  I position my ravager and a unit of scourges to work on the land raider while the other unit of scourges does what it can to weaken one of the maulerfiends before the reavers set to charge it.  My dark artisan pushes forward to engage the other maulerfiend (I would have rather charged the juggerlord, but I didn't want it running free and was interested to see how that combat would go).  The solitaire pops out to charge the lord after one of the venoms knocks out the spawn in front.  The mandrakes wreck one unit of cultists but the warriors on the other side completely whiff against their target.  



In the combat phase, one unit of grotesques take out the rhino full of berserkers, the other unit of grotesques practically wipes a CSM unit but the survivors manage to safely flee, the reavers take out the weakened maulerfiend, dark artisan gets a lucky 6 on the pen table to kill their maulerfiend outright, solitaire and juggerlord duke it out with me inflicting a wound and taking no damage in return.  Game has taken a huge swing in my favor right from the outset.





Daemonkin Turn 2

Cultists move up to assist the berserkers who can't charge because they just got popped out of their rhino.  His Landraider fires into the dark artisan and gets a wound in.  The possessed disembark from the landraider (proxied raptors) and charge the dark artisan while his second unit of CSM charge the unit of grotesque (hoping that the combat goes better this time if he gets the charge because of rage and furious charge).  The grotesque wipe out the CSM, lord and solitaire each do a wound to each other (I use hit and run to break free), and the dark artisan completely whiffs against the possessed while they get a wound or two in.



Dark Eldar Turn 2

Grotesque move up to hit the berserkers from two sides, raiders and a venom finish off the remnants of the CSM unit that rallied last turn, reavers move to flank the juggerlord or assist the dark artisan as needed, ravagers and scourges finish off the landraider, death jester breaks the cultist squad and makes them run off the side (or he used the rule to just let them die for the blood tithe point), while the warriors and other venom weaken the berserker squad a bit and the mandrakes finish off the other cultist squad.





In the combat phase, the grotesque utterly dismantle the berserkers although I may have lost 1 or 2 of the previously weakened ones.  The solitaire and reavers charge into the juggerlord and he is killed through the hammer of wrath so no blows are actually struck.  The Dark Artisan finally notice the possessed hitting them and knock out 4 of the 5.



Daemonkin Turn 3

The game is pretty well over, but he wants to play with the bloodthirster at least a little bit so we keep going.  His bloodletters arrive from reserves and he takes a gamble on placing them in the middle and gets lucky that they don't scatter.  The bloodthirster summoning was done incorrectly as he placed it wherever he wanted and didn't do the leadership test to replace a champion or anything, but I think he just hadn't read everything carefully enough yet.  It actually should have had a mishap, but I just let him adjust it over a bit so he could test it.





Dark Eldar Turn 3

I move everything up to get a lot of poisoned shots into the bloodthirster and hopefully make some charges on him while the haywire scourges focus their shooting into the bloodletters.  I get a fair number of wounds on both and the dark artisan charge and nearly finish off the bloodletters but I fail all the charges (they were all longish) against the bloodthirster.

Daemonkin Turn 4

He charges the reavers with his bloodthirster and wipes them out easily while the dark artisan finish off the bloodletters.

Dark Eldar Turn 4

Surrounded and outgunned, the bloodthirster is brought down bringing the game to an end.


Conclusion
A few things were misplayed like the daemonkin formation bonus for an extra blood tithe result giving the entire army feel no pain just about every turn as well as the mechanics of summoning the bloodthirster being done incorrectly.  I don't think any of those events had a huge impact on the game though as it was an overly decisive victory in my favor regardless.  I didn't include the objective commentary in this battle report, but they did affect some of my positioning and charges.  Even by the second turn the game was something like 7 points to 1 so we stopped keeping track of it early and ran the game more as a test to see what would beat what in combat.  It was a lot of fun having both of us rushing at each other and smashing faces though.

I was pretty happy with the mandrakes but the heroe's path seemed a waste of points to me.  I got crap spells from the shadowseer and he literally failed to affect the game in any way at all with failed casts or successful casts and atrocious damage results.  The deathjester only caused 2 wounds all game (and against cultists at that).  The solitaire was pretty fun and I was impressed with his ability to go toe to toe with a juggerlord, but it didn't seem worth it to take the whole formation for just him.  I like having the mandrakes, reavers, and grotesque all in the enemy's face turn 1 and would rather spend the points supporting that I think.