Baby steps and a tales of silly

Hi!

I'm a new player overall and totally new to DE. So far people in FLGS where I play laugh at my army lists since i basically play what I just bought as opposed to what should work, hence my latest DE - Mechanicum 750 pts alliance, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

I figured I might as well share the tale of my baby steps with DE. FLGS organizes montly leagues - 40k (750 or 1500 pts depending on what you have) and Kill Team (GW Rules). And i join those leagues every time, just because they mean at least 6 games a month I get to play. Yay!

This month's 750 list I run is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen people field, but OH WELL AT LEAST I DON'T RUN HELLIONS hue.

My army:

DE CaD

Archon with Blaster and shadowfield (got him with Start Collecting, already know he's bloody crap)
5 Kabalite Warriors (1 with blaster)
5 more Kabalite Warriors (1 with blaster as well) with Raider with Dark Lance as dedicated boat.
3 Reavers, one with blaster
3 Reavers, one with blaster

And to that allied Skitarii Start Collecting box with minimal upgrades, so 10 vanguards (decided to test them this time as opposed to rangers), one with plasma, Dominus i think plain, and Dunecrawler with S6 3 shot gun and 2 cognis stubbers. Do bare in mind they're Dark Mech in my mind, so I explained their cooperation (to myself, no one asked) by "these guys do drugs, these other make drugs (probably), so someone owes someone".

That's what I brought to my first (and only thus far) DE game ever. My opponent was playing Dark Angels,about 15 dudes on bikes and 2 5 man squads of Tesco Marines, Deathwing formation afaik, two psykers.

Won't go turn by turn, but this game taught me a lot, even though barely had any gangsta elves in it.

My game plan was simple, toasterheads stay in the middle and pew pew with the option of going forward to snag an objective there, Crawler stay back and shoot crap, Dominus stay back and shoot crap, Reavers don't even shoot crap, just turbo boost for those sweet sweet Maelstrom objectives while jinking like there's no tomorrow, Gunboat get shot down first turn and Kabalites try not to get overriden by bikes immediately, but draw attention to yourselves, so Vanguards can just spam those sweet 3 shots a piece.

Raider, to my great surprise, survived turn 1 and died on turn 2 instead, which against twin linked plasmas is quite an achievement i think. Warriors got charged by fine gentleman bikes, and fine gentleman bikes wouldn't die. 3+ rerollable jink proved to be a goddamn nightmare. One squad of Reavers got shot down on turn 2 cause I screwed up their positioning badly. The other played hit and run with DA bikes for 2 turns, them charging me, me not dying and just flying away.

I was quite desperate, since all i managed to kill during the first 3 turns were couple of Tescomarines, Bikes being pretty much immortal. I felt really down to be frank. But then I counted points we're sitting on, and realized "oh crap, my original idea is working. Get them sweet points yo!'.

So by the end of turn 5 I'm up about 6 points, finally got slay the warlord, which only required me to shoot every single Ad-mech thing i had at his 5 man bike squad for 3 turns, and an Archon who bascially just tied them for a turn (my warlord was Dominus) and managed to kill one biker with his basic close combat weapon and s3 somehow, don't ask me how.

Game ended after turn 5, I won 14-8 (or something like that) and am fairly sure that 100% of that win was that one reaver squad getting me about 6 objective points in total. Yay!

On Tuesday I'm playing Kill Team match, although I don't have a list yet. Most likely gonna go with few bikes, 10 kabalites and a boat as well.

That sounds like a Dark Eldar game to be honest. You were going up against what sounds like not only a superior army, but also a superior list. Staying focused on the game and points instead of killing people is so key. Not all of the games will go like this, but it is nice to see new players play to the mission rather than just go out and try to kill everything. I am sure the player you faced was not liking the result and probably cannot fathom what happened.

For some advice on your list, if you want some, I would use Caltrops on your Reavers. Jink saves having you down? they turn into norm 3+ savesi n CC with no reroll, so hitting them with Hammer of Wrath hits is key to taking down things with rerolls to shooting saves like you experienced.

It is nice to see the Dark Kin... I mean Dark Mechanicum get a win! Nice job!

To be honest ever since i picked up the codex caltrops are the thing i want to test the most, I'll surely do that asap.