Hi guys I attended a local 1000 point tournament with this list:
http://www.thedarkcity.net/t14444-1000pt-grotesquerie-msu
There was a mix of missions with the standard secondaries like linebreaker etc. Interesting you got an extra point for each objective if it was held by obsec units.
Here's how I got on:
Round 1
Mission: 6 objectives, variable values
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
I played vs a cheddar cheese list with 5 riptides. The boards at this tournament were unfortunately very open so I couldn't hide. He dominated me, shooting twice to blow up my raiders and grots. Venoms and the ravager did take out a riptide one of only two to die all day. He went on to win every game and no friends.
This game came down to scenery plain and simple. With more blockers I could have threatened to ambush him and controlled the midfield objectives. I rate the grot's chances against him. All the ID wounds are very painful and he has very little to respond with. AP2 negates their 6+ save and that's about all. Once the suits are tarpitted the kabalites can just take all the objectives and win that way.
Round 2
Thanks to the early blowout I played vs a very nice guy playing Dark Angels.
Mission: 5 Objectives
Deployment: Vanguard
He set up his land raider on my left flank. I was planning to bully the left flank because it had some a good LoS blocker. Turns out he had the same idea. I counter-deployed to deny him shooting, mostly out of range on the right flank.
He was quite a static player, keeping his army in a bit of a gunline. His bikers came forward and were able to skirmish successfully with my bikers, killing a unit but being taken out by grots in return.
I pushed the right flank with venoms, transporting one of the kabalite units into some area terrain containing an objective. They used their 36 shots to hose down his flank, held by footslogging tac marines. They withered over several turns without being able to do much in return. The jetbikes went after his predator in the middle of his line, trying to open up the midfield for the raiders and grots. The ravager played keepaway with the land raider and terminators, I think this is what discouraged it from pushing forward although it didn't actually do much.
The bikes didn't actually get much done in this mission, failing repeatedly to damage the predator. However I think they actually allowed me to shape the battle in a very advantageous way. Firstly they drew a lot of fire. He also spent his knight bikes attacking a unit of jetbikes. The bikes charged the pred but did nothing and the bikes died to the knight bikers. However both moves set up the grots for the next turn, charging into both units and killing them easily. They also punched out the poor chaplain HQ.
Ultimately I won 4 objectives to 1. I held the objective in my line with 5 kabalites, the pair on the right flank with kabalites and a venom, the two on the left were held by his terminators and my grots respectively. I picked up some extra points for using obsec and the warlord/linebreaker objectives. He got first blood from some reavers. It was a fun game and we both got to do fun things with our units!
Round 3
Mission: Modified relic
Deployment: Dawn of war
This game was vs a Necron player with a pair of flier transports and the nightbringer shard, as well as 3x 5 man immortal units and a large unit of a dozen or so warriors with a cryptek. It was far and away the most interesting game so I'm afraid this one is a bit more wordy:
It was a pretty interesting mission objective. As well as the relic both players had a home objective worth 1 VP to them and 6VP to their opponent. I set up mine first. It went on my right flank. My opponent put his on my left flank. I won the roll to go first so I refused the right flank, putting a unit of kabalists and the lhamean into reserve to deckchair the objective. I then put everything else from the middle to the left, trying to hide the move a little but intending to throw it all up the left and entrench the left flank as much as possible before his fliers came in and started removing my mobility.
He split his force, putting the c'tan away from the venoms along with a unit of immortals and then two more units of immortals on his home objective in area cover. I executed the plan and shot up his immortals a bit. He returned fire and did very little. I had made sure the C'tan was out of range for any of his crazy powers and he moved towards my objective.
Turn 2 I capitalised on his weak position, crashing the immortals with my grots and splitting some fire into the c'tan and far immortal unit. I was pretty intimidated by the c'tan. I saw it was 260 points so assumed it was pretty tough. I had corralled it with the jetbikes in small groups around 12 inches from him, trying to herd him away from my base objective. In his turn 2 the c'tan used his gaze to regain his lost wound. A flier showed up, scooping the immorts and nearly killing a venom, which jinked since I wanted to preserve obsec. (This would be the first of many lucky jink rolls I made vs his fliers!)
Turn 3 I sent the surviving jetbikes to attack the c'tan along with my 3 venoms. I fired the jinking guy taking a wound off. Then the first unit of bikes fires and killed it..! Turns out I was scared of a paper tiger - it sucked. What a waste of points!
I fired the ravager at his flier doing nothing and grabbed the relic with some kabalites. The next few turns his fliers would come in and fly off, I used mobility to minimise damage, jinking when necessary, he killed a raider but couldn't kill the damaged venom.
I controlled both objectives with obsec and the relic so I began to set up for his turn 5 hail-mary.
Stupidly I used the bikes to screen the relic leaving both objectives open to a steal. He dropped in but the lack of fire arcs so close to the objectives did make it hard for him to take out my obsec venoms. He plowed shots into my kabalites wiping them off the home objective and immorts shot the venom on his base but with only 6 shots he was unable to damage it. It was unlikely to be a loss but it was stupid to leave this turn to dice. The jetbikes could have easily screened at least one of the objectives if not both. Lesson learned.
The game went to turn 6 with both objectives contested and me holding the relic. I charged the grots and smashed them off his base. I used reavers to pull him off my base but he was able to somehow wipe them out and consolidate back onto it in his turn to contest it for turn 7. The game ended here with my base contested but with me in control of the other two objectives. It was really interesting and fun, my favourite game of the day. I think it's a good lesson that it's better to totally bubblewrap one objective than half-heatedly bubblewrap two and risk chance swinging something.
It's also a good lesson if you're facing fliers. He could have outshot me but with so many points starting off the board I was able to beat up his starting units before help could arrive. Also, C'tan shards are really bad!
Round 4
Mission: 4 objectives
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
Having done quite well I was back up the table at this point. Game 4 was against a good friend with a chaos list I know very well. Having practised against it the previous week I knew it lacked good shooting. His list had a kitchen sink approach - spawn with biker sorc, jump lord with bikes, obsec havoks with autocannons etc. He used summoning powers and if they can get going it snowballs in the endgame and it's hard to recover. I found the best approach was to shut him down, drawing him in with bikes and then charging the grots at his lord. Force was his main weapon against me but I figured I could win if both units engaged at once.
The board had one big LoS blocker in the middle. We put all the objectives in the vicinity. I mis-measured and left the ravager in range of his havocs. They took it to 1 HP, blew off a lance and had it jink. It limped away for later turns. I pushed my bikes up the middle into the building and used the side of the building to screen the venoms and raider from the havocs.
We kind of messed up with LoS, he pushed his biker lord and spawn forward to attack my bikes but we'd ad-hoced line of light blockers by ruling all the ruin's windows were boarded up. He couldn't see my bikers so couldn't charge them. We fudged it and he put them in a position where he could see but the distance was 8 inches and he failed the roll. I felt bad and frankly if he had charged it wouldn't have made much difference. I could have charged him next turn with the grots which would have been better than what actually happened.
In the event I charged in 2x units of bikes against the sorc lord. The last unit charged some marines who's rhino had been kindly destroyed by the ravager. To cut a long story short we both ended up feeding our CC heavy hitters into the middle with the full grotesquerie vs the lord, spawn, bikers and sorc all battling it out. The grotesquerie really shone in this environment. They had shred which devastated the bikers and spawn. The haemi took out a 2+ re-rollable saved champ (boons!)
In the end his havocs used their rhino to push an objective, I took the other 3 with some obsec kabalites and the grots winning 3/1
Round 5
So I had done far too well in rounds 2-4 and ended up on the 2nd table ostensively playing it out for 3rd and 4th place.
Mission: Maelestrom (draw until you hold 3 cards each turn)
Deployment: Dawn of War
So my opponent this round was another shooting-heavy army. This time space wolves with 8x landspeeders and 2x preds. His formation allowed free upgrades allowing him to take cyclones on all of them with a mix of melta and flamers. On top of this he had a drop pod with a squad of space wolf tactical marines and some kind of character that ignored cover. I'm not very familiar with space wovles but with a very open board his shooting was always going to dominate.
I decided to reserve a lot of my army and refuse the right flank to deny as much shooting as possible. I castled in the corner, screening with jetbikes and using a ruin to protect a unit of grots with the haemi, a venom, the lhamean and a unit of kabalites.
This plan actually worked pretty well. He scored a few objectives on turn 1 but his shooting only killed 1 grot and the kabalites. His pod dropped the marines in front of the grots and I was actually quite happy at this point.
I used the lhamean to eat his overwatch (poor girl) and then charged with the 2x grots and haemi. I sent the bikes, which had all survived, off to try and pick off his speeders with their cluster caltrops.
This was a bad idea. He got some kind of counter attack which gave him +2 attacks. Charging through cover I had to sit and eat 24 attacks, gibbing a grot before he got to swing. If I had used the bikes to ensure far less incomming attacks and killing it was worth 2 victory points. Ideally I would have either wiped his unit out on his turn or hit and run out to chase down the speeders on subsequent turns.
As it turns out the bikes got bushwacked. I couldn't find any cover to adequately hide them. I did get some cluster caltrop attacks off but biffed the rolls and only killed a single speeder. The ravager arrived from reserve on turn 2 but was very underwhelming, forcing him to jink but failing to kill anything for two turns.
The melee on the other hand just rumbled on. The grotesquerie is a ridiculously tough formation. I love the durability of the grots and they can put out some serious pain. I had him whittled down enough that the grot was losing about 1 wound per turn. The haemi was in a challenge with what turned out to be some kind of lord with a stormshield. This was fine and she did end up killing him gaining me warlord!
The grot died but the second unit joined in to finish off the other marines.
It didn't all go his way, he lost some more marines to venom fire and I was able to snatch some objectives with obsec but it was still a bit of a whitewash. The final score was 18 points to 8.
Conclusions:
Overall it was a great tournament with a very friendly and fun atmosphere. The guy with 5 riptides was suitably chastised and made to feel an appropriate level of shame. People praised my painting a lot and I ended up with best painted!
I think with (a lot) more LoS blocking terrain a lot of the issues would have gone away. This was a major deficit on almost all the boards and reduced games 1 and 5 to shooting galleries. I think the riptides' SMS might have made even a cities of death board a hard slog but the speeders would have been shut down completely by cover. His drop pod surpise was totally negated my MSU bubblewrap.
Regarding the list and lessons for Dark Eldar in general. I think the list was pretty good. The fact I was able to push to the 2nd table shows that it has a lot going for it. There is a clear weakness against mech but it can bully for control of the board and is very strong at ambushing from behind LoS blocking cover.
Reavers are really great. I love their speed and the caltrops are a fantastic multipurpose tool. I used them like a light cavalry screen, baiting out units and drawing fire, like a hammer, smashing things with the hammer of wrath, and as interference, pulling units out of position by charging them.
If I was going to make changes it would probably be to cheapen the grot side of the list. The grotesquerie was 400 points. If I dropped one of them I could have taken a succubus instead and more bikes.
The ravager was awful. I dislike that unit a lot. Again I would drop it for more bikes and blaster upgrades on the bikes. I think at least 18 bikes would be a good number in this list in 3x units of 6. Maybe even go realspace raiders and take more. It should be possible to keep a grot unit as a tarpit, add an aberration as a challenge monkey and add the succubus with the glaive as a way to punch armour. I'm not really sure about the points but if possible then blasters and haywire for the kabalites seems reasonable to compensate for the loss of the ravager (not really a loss, it sucks).
Subject: 1000pt local tournament 
Sat Oct 22 2016, 23:29
. I agree that single units of lance ravagers are just terrible. You need at least 2 of them (and even then they are only OK).
