Titty twister kabal null deployment tournament raid

Hello guys (and girls?). Recently I tried out a null deployment army at a local tournament and really had a blast. The event was 1500 points with no superheavies/gargantuans    and no forge world. Missions were a nice mix of maelstrom and eternal war.

To counter all those drop pods, scatter bikes and such I tried a null deployment army using the Scalpel Squad and an Autarch to strike the helpless opponent in a true Dark Eldar fashion! So here’s the list:

Scalpel squad
2x 5 wracks no upgrades
2x venom 2 SC


DE CAD
Medusa
Raider with disintegrator

5 Kabalites with shredder, Sybarite warlord with haywire
Raider with disintegrator

5 Kabalites with shredder
Raider with disintegrator

Raider with disintegrator

Rasorwing with lances

2x Ravager with triple lances


Allied detachment

Autarch with wings and a fusion gun

2x 3 Scatterbikes

5 Wraithguard with D-cannons

Night spinner with Shuriken Cannon


So the first mission had max 3 maelstrom cards per turn, 2 points at the end for each of the 6 markers and +3 points for warlord. My first opponent played Necron douchcurion:

Decurion
Lord in chariot
2x warriors in arcs
Immortals
2x 5 tomb blades

Formation:
Stalker
2x lots of Judicators

He placed 3 objectives around the middle line in cover, while I placed 3 in the corners of the table. I didn’t deploy anything and let him go first. Though Necrons are supposed to be durable but slow (in my private world view) those army was damn fast. The Immortals camped an objective in a ruin in his left corner while everything advanced to the center and the middle right of the table. My Wracks came down on the left of my deployment zone. Turn two, his warriors in the arcs held the middle while the tomb blades, the lord and the judicators were right in my deployment zone. He blow up one venom and forced the other one into jinking. Unfortunately I felt the hard way my mistake in the deployment. As he had free reign on the table he could score some high value missions. At the end of his second turn he had like 7 maelstrom to my 0.  
On his hand he also had king slayer with this Necron mission card putting a 6-8 points price tag on the forehead of my Warlord Sybarite. Well, fortunately my whole army arrived except the Warriors with the Warlord thanks to the Autarch. The Wraithguard D-slapped his Lord, the Ravangers blew up the Stalker and I let Dark Light and Rockets on him while grabbing objectives. When the dust settled kind of nothing got killed (the Razorwing did 15 wounds on the Tomb Blades killing one…). The jinking Venom turboboosted to his left corner.
Next turns we did a bit damage to each other but not too much. He concentrated mostly on the Wraithguard (why?) who failed to do anything and finally destroyed. With my mobility and objective secure I managed to get up to his maelstrom score.
The fourth round was funny though. It started with my Warlord Warriors finally arriving. I deep struck them nice and far from his units to deny Warlord and Kingslayer. They scatted a lot and misshaped, so he placed them in a forest in the middle of his units. No problem, I can just turboboost away, right? Of course they also failed the terrain test and the raider got stuck! Good bye Warlord…
Next I tried to hold all Objectives for W3+3 points. It worked until the fight phase where his Immortals finished off the last Wrack and repositioned 6” to deny me one Objective marker! Nooo….
By getting to all objectives some of my units were in a really bad position, so he could kill a lot. However, I had the bottom of the 5th turn, so I could grab and deny a lot of objective markers. One more turn and he really could finish me off but fortunately the game ended with a 16:4 victory for the Dark Eldar. Phew…  



 
Second game was against Clan Raccoon space marines with Grey Knights allies. He had:

CAD
Marine WarBoss on bike with hammer, eternal warrior and a 2+, 3++ and 3+ FNP (WTF really?)
5 command bikes
4 or 5x 3 bikes
The bikes had mostly grav but I think some flamers and meltas, too.

Liberian (shrouding, invisibility) and 5 Grey Knights with S6 flamers in Pod
2 Dreadknights

The Mission was kill points with max 3 maelstrom cards per turn and +3 points for line breaker. The Objectives were placed kind of the same way like in game 1. Again, I didn’t place any unit and he went first. He let 2 Bike units to camp his backfield objectives and moved the rest very aggressively forward casting shrouding and sanctuary. The Pod landed in a forest in the midfield on an objective. In my first turn I landed the Wracks in his backfield and shot some bikes. Funnily they failed their morale granting me a maelstrom point (cowardly humans).
Again all of my Army arrived (had also a reroll reserves warlord trait) except the Autarch (guess he was partying with the Kabalites previous night). Here I made a BIG mistake. Although I knew it’s a trap, I just could not resist shooting the D-cannons and lots of other stuff at his command bikes. Unsurprisingly they tanked everything and only 2 command bikes died. On the other side of the table I could shoot some more bikes. The Wracks attacked a bike unit on an objective, killed 2 and made the last one run for an other “make enemy run” maelstrom point (shouldn’t they know no fear? ).
Third turn he jumped his Dreadknights into my lines and really put some hurt on me. Fortunately the command bikes failed a 4” charge on my remaining 2 Wraithguards, so in return they could finish off a wounded Dreadknight. The rest of the Army scattered and killed a lot of his stuff. The Autarch failed to arrive AGAIN (guess he should really know his limits ). The rest of the game I shot everything to pieces except the command unit and some bikes who were hiding behind terrain.
The Autarch got us a laugh. At one point he tried to kill the damaged Drop Pod. He strapped one hull point with his fusion gun, attacked it with his Haywire Granade but rolled a 1 on the table and in return the Greyknights roasted him. We imagined the Greyknights were sitting in the forest and one of them was like: “Hey look! The fine gentleman over there is trying to steal the car radio from our Pod! Come on, let’s kick his ass!”        

In the end he only had 2 units left, while my army was in quite a good shape. The game ended with a 10:10 draw (28 to 27 victory points).
Fun game with lots of laughs (He: “You forgot your drug roll.” Me: “Nono, this army is drug free lol” and pointed to the ugliest of my Wracks “This guy is holding the morale standards up!”)



The third and final game was against our slightly retarded cousins from the Craftworlds:

CAD
Farseer on bike
4-5x 4 Scatterbikes
2 Vipers
2 Vipers
1 Viper
3 War Walkers
2 War Walkers
5 scorpions in serpent

The Mission had again max 3 maelstrom cards per turn, 3 points for each table quarter at the end and +3 points for killing the most expensive enemy unit (his 3 War Walkers and my Wraithguard). Again same Objective placement. He deployed everything while I held everything in reserves. The game was really a blast! I had the alpha strike crushing half of his army. He returned fire crushing half of my army. It went on with lots of units zipping around the table and annihilating each other. In the end we both didn’t have enough units left to secure all table quarters! However it was still a victory for Dark Eldar with 14:10 (19 to 9 victory points).  
Surprisingly, his scorpions performed really nice. With all his glass hammer units I had no resources to shoot at them (the medusa scattered away on arrival and got shot) and I also had nothing to face them in cc. Over the game they killed the Wraithguard, one unit of Kabalites, one unit of Wracks and secured one quarter at the end.

It was a really fun tournament with nice opponents. Overall I scored 6th out of 30 (or so). Considering I haven’t play tested it and therefore made some really big mistakes I am quite happy with the army’s performance. I think I will replace the Rasorwing with some Grots and the Autarch with a banshee mask as their babysitter. I really missed something to tie up stuff like the unkillable Racoon Warlord or get rid of annoying units with a good cover safe like the scorpions.
Also I definitely should think of something to deny high value mission objectives like domination while my army is still in reserves. Maybe 3x3 Mandrakes or 3x1 Clawed Fiend or something.

Another thought is to add 2 Vengance Batteries with Battle Cannons to camp on the backfield objectives (maybe instead of the scalpel squad?).

Lets see…