Thanksgiving Turkey Rumble

T'au:
Longstrike, 2 hammerheads, 2 units of kroot, a piranha, breacher team, Commander suit, pathfinders, and some firewarriors. (not pictured: crisis suits deep striking in the corner by the daemons.

(me)Drukhari:
Tantalus(the lads bought it for me, was only right and proper I show it off, despite it being unfinished -> see giant silver ship on the right) filled with 10 wyches, 5 incubi and a succubus. Raider with 10 kabs, venom with Archon, 3 reavers, 2x10 wyches and 5 scourge.

vs.

Nids:
Tervigon, Brood lord, 20 genestealers, 20 Termigaunts, 3 warriors, 1 Lictor

Necrons:
20 warriors, 1 lord, 1 overlord, 3 destroyers, (monolith not pictured)

Chaos Daemons:
Daemon Prince, Changeling, Herald on a disc, Soul Grinder, 20 pink horrors, some brimstone dudes, chariot of Tzeentch, 3 flamers and some daemonettes as he's still working on his other Slaanesh stuff.    

 
-Roll off between both sides, the forces of chaos and destruction win the first turn, T'au and I fail to seize the initiative. Movement saw the Genestealers move onto the prize and pretty much everything else moved forward. Monolith dropped down next to the Tervigon's right side.

-Psychic Phase saw the nids smite/shoot the 2 shield drones off of the commander suit in the front ruins and kill most of the breacher team positioned below the chaos shrine/hill. Monolith put 2 wounds on the piranha with some unlucky rolls and killed 2 of my footslogging wyches. Daemons in the far corner had some kroot nearby, smote their carnivorous booties out of existence.

-Shooting saw the Tzeentch daemons finishing off the kroot with bone-chilling warpflame, Tervigon took a couple of shots, might've removed a wound or model from a squad, I forget. Soul Grinder puts some shots into my venom with Archon, manages to take off 1 wound, the other shots go into my reavers and manages to kill 1 and wound the other.

-Assault sees the daemonettes move around the shrine and charge into the breacher team, kills 3 models and they are down to just 1 model left. Models being removed brought the lone breacher out of combat, daemonettes consolidated into him anyways.

Summary: Everything moves forward, shooting is meh, objective is grabbed.

-Movement saw the scourges and crisis suits drop into the far corner by the Daemons, lone breacher hero falls back behind my +1 WS wyches, Commander suit flys some ridiculous 40" with jetpacks to get behind the necron overlord in the left corner. Everything else T'au stays put as they have a good LoS onto the point and some juicy targets. My venom and reavers moves closer to the daemons, raider moves left below where the commander suit was, tantalus moves to where the raider was, Wyches all move forward.

-Psychic. HA. We would not dare attract the gaze of she-who-thirsts.

-Shooting: An absolute glorious mass of carnage and destruction. Crisis suits and scourge kill the chariot in the back. Venom kills a couple of Pink Horrors, removing their bonus to psychic tests. Reavers use a heat lance on the soul grinder (sucks as much as expected), rolled a 3 for damage S6 v T7   . Tau go ham on the Monolith with the bonuses from Longstrike, bring it down to 4 wounds. Pathfinders, Firewarriors, Piranha kill something like 15 of the genestealers because one of the squads of firewarriors was in rapidfire range and the missiles from the tanks went in as well. Kroot help out as well and fire into the daemonettes, kill a few. Raider darklance and embarked DL put another wound onto the monolith, the 9 warriors firing from the hull are just barely within rapid fire on the Nid Warriors, manage to kill 1 and take a wound off another.  Tantalus, shoots into the soul grinder, do little to no damage. I rolled below average on the shooting (half hit) and then rolled 5 1's and 2's. Don't worry, my karma is building. Wych pistols might've taken down 1 or 2 daemonettes. Biggest failure of the entire game happened though. The commander suit whiffs literally everything that was fired into the overlord. No damage.

-Assault: Wyches charge into daemonettes, get a surprising 11 on the roll. I use some shenanigans and move my wych in the back first, allowing my wyches in the front to bypass the daemonettes, climb the hill and move within 3" of the genestealers on the top. I use the 3" pile in to get into close combat with the genestealers. Wyches roll surprisingly well in melee, manage to kill 5 of the 7 daemonettes that remained. Any wyches that died to the genestealers or daemonettes I removed from the back or the middle, barely managed to maintain unit coherency, did get out of melee with the daemonettes though.  

summary: Genestealers and monolith in the open, heavily punished, wych and daemonette cat fight in the middle. Objective contested?

-Movement was more or less the same, everything moves closer to the enemy. Tyranid Lictor drops in, near our back lines. attempts to charge the tau models on top of the ruins, fails to do so. Necron warrior blob shuffle towards scourges on small ruins in the back, daemons move closer to the crisis suits as well, soul grinder moves forwards, to munch on some tasty reavers. Brood lord moves towards the reavers as well, the genestealer unit managed to win the roll off against my wyches. retreats behind massive wall of termagaunts, who also move forward to block the path. Destroyers and Overlord turn around to deal with the commander suit behind them. Daemonettes move closer to the kroot tank screen, hoping to either kill or bypass them to get at the Tau tanks and tie them up. Flamers fly over the chaos shrine, get ready to toast some wyches.

-Pyshic/Shooting (I'm just going to combine these, essentially the same thing here.) My poor scourge in the back get the absolute snot blasted out of them, 2 of the shield drones near the crisis suits go down. Destroyers do work on the commander suit, almost killing him (the overlord finishes the job in melee), nid shooting is mostly ineffectual, kills some wyches here or there. Flamers attempt to roast my wyches, rolls poorly for hits, 1,2 and 4. Still manages 5 wounds. I roll 3 6's. GLORIOUS. middle wych squad is down to something like 4 models. They've done their job though. Monolith is down to 6+ to hit, does basically nothing. Broodlord smites the reaver, kills another, leaving 1 left.

-Assault: Daemon prince declares charge against the crisis suits and the drones. Makes the charge, but some absolutely insane overwatch drops the daemon prince. GLORIOUS DICE ROLLS. Daemon player remembers last second that he has the 6+ FnP on his prince (he did, we discussed this before the game). manages to survive with 1 wound. Wrecks the absolute bajeesus out of the remaining drones and suits. only 1 suit left. Soul grinder and Broodlord charge the reaver, while the daemon player was busy with the daemon prince business, the nid player decided he wanted the glory of the kill, so he went first and pimp slapped my reaver out of existence. Also, totally forgot, Nid player had 3 ripper swarms on the flank, they managed to get a 9" charge into my venom with the archon, we do 1 wound to each other. adorable.

-Summary: More movement, more meh shooting, not much was accomplished in melee, other than the obliteration of the crisis suits. Objective is behind a wall of termagaunts.

-Movement: I decide, it's now or never, The genestealer is out in the open(ish) and I can't let him get farther back to the blob of necron warriors. I disembark my archon, with the intention of charging the broodlord and "fall back" with my venom mere inches from the remaining genestealers. I advance my tantalus, flying over the veritable wall of termagaunts and land near the destroyed chimera(see picture/soul grinder's starting position), fully blocking the genestealer path. I move my raider around to the left, to where the monolith dropped in and to the right of the tervigon. This allows my closest unit of wyches to move closer (they had +2" movement, 10" is no joke) to allow them to charge the warriors, tervigon and termagaunt wall. the wyches in the middle, now down to some 4 models also move closer to the termagaunt wall. Tau don't move much, the lone breacher climbs the chaos shrine. the crisis suits back out of the daemon prince battle, they later finish him off.

-Shooting: Kroot finish off daemonettes who failed their charge, later charge the lictor after a tank takes out half of its health, the other tanks fire at monolith(dies) and tervigon, do some good damage. Tau fire warriors fire at flamers and wipe them out. Pathfinders put lights onto genestealers, tank missiles wipe them out to 1 mode. My venom finishes him off. the Prize is now up laying on the ground. Tantalus splits fire between the soul grinder(largely ineffective) and the necron destroyers, kills 1, brings another to 1 wound. I fire the dark lances from the raider and embarked warrior at the tyranid warriors. both hit, both wound. I roll a 5 and 6 for damage. lol, they gone. The 9 warriors rapid fire into the tervigon, hits roll average, I miss maybe 2 wounds. The nid player rolls poorly for armor save, another 4 wounds go through, degrading the Tervigon. Archon shoots his blast pistol at the broodlord, does a measly 1 damage.

-Assault: Extra movement wyches charge the tervigon and termagaunts. Take 1 or 2 losses. kills maybe 1 or 2 of the termagaunts in melee, little to no damage actually done. Other wych squad charges in as well, similar results. I take a couple of wounds back, but my dice are hot hot hot.  Archon charges Broodlord. I get all hits, no wounds. all 1's and 2's. not so hot. I explain to my nid opponent, oh I have a shadow field, I get a 2+ invuln against all attacks until it fails. first roll. a 2. phew. second roll, a 1. oh crap. 5 hits, 5 wounds. it's multi damage and something special happened when he rolled a 6 to wound. My archon feels the might of the brood lord's mighty "clap back". dead in one combat. how fitting.  

-Summary: prize holders are dead, nid wall is locked in combat, tantalus is in the middle of the deamons, necrons, etc. Archon got riggity wrecked by the broodlord.  

-Movement: Necrons towards Tantalus, soul grinder and broodlord towards venom, daemons towards the center, away from the corner.

-Shooting: Some wyches smote by tervigon. I save 2/3 with FnP. My saves were HOT HOT HOT. Necrons pour everything into my tantalus, destroyers whiff a lot of their shots, nothing goes through. The necron warriors rapid fire into the tantalus. Manage to only plink 2 wounds off of it's mighty 18 wound pool. Soul Grinder puts shots into the venom, rolls a 3 for charge, rip the dream. Venom survives after taking another 2-3 wounds. Crisis suit is wiped out of existence.

-Assault: as mentioned, soul grinder fails charge. I forget what happened to the broodlord... lictor tears up some kroot, one or two more wyches die, the necron destroyers got in close to the tantalus to charge and lock it down. my thinking was "eh why not, maybe get an extra wound, whatever." for the overwatch, I proceed to roll 6/12 6's and wound with 5 of them, one of the destroyers was resurrected last turn and that will be enough to wipe the squad. The necron player and I turn to each other, I say "well i wouldn't have been locked in combat since it has fly...maybe no charge?"  necron player: "yeah, that sounds good."  so we decided, ah what the heck, lets say that never happened.

-Summary: A couple of wounds here and there, no lasting damage. Destroyers learned a valuable lesson.

-Movement: Wyches and incubi disembark towards the necron warrior blob. Succubus disembarks towards the prize, venom moves next to the prize. Tau are more or less immoble again. My wyches back off of the tervigon, allowing the tau to get a clean shot, the other wych unit stays in combat. my raider swings over next to the overlord, who had some distance between him and the destroyers because they intended to charge the tantalus. The tantalus move to the side of the necrons, close to the herald of Tzeentch that moved next to the soul grinder. Because the rules say that the prize can be picked up by any model, my venom is now carrying the prize, my archon, back home.

-Shooting: Tantalus shoots one gun into the soul grinder, little to no damage. and the other into the necrons, killing a few. The wyches also fire in, kill 1 or 2. Kabalite warriors fire into the destroyers, plink off 1 wound. killing the destroyer that had 1 wound left. I shoot both dark lances in the raider at the overlord, hoping to do some damage. use the reroll stratagem to get both to hit, only 1 wounds. Invuln failed. I roll a 6 for damage. PRAISE THE SUN. 5 wound model just got one-shotted by a dark eldar test-tube baby. feelsbadman.jpg.  Tau tanks manage to put some more good damage into the tervigon, I think it degraded further. Succubus takes a blast pistol shot at the Soul Grinder, everything goes through. 1 damage. whoops.

-Assault: I use the tantalus to charge into the herald of Tzeentch, makes it, we decide that the rules state that it causes mortal wounds after it makes the charge, but before the pile-in. I use the pile-in to swing the tantalus around a bit to get the edge of it into the necrons as well, charges occur before the pile-in though, so I used the wyches to charge and absorb the overwatch. After some bad dice, only 2 wounds and I save both on FnP HOT HOT HOT. They charge in and leave the path open for the Incubi who also charge in and make it. I decided I didn't want the succubus in combat against the soul grinder, so she charges into the herald of tzeentch as well. That's when i find out that with the glaive (+2 S and I gave her +1S combat drugs) she now wounds the herald (Toughness 3) on a 2+. Still only manage to do 2 wounds though. whoops. Tantalus also did another wound or two. 6 attacks in close combat was pretty spicy, and yet it lives. The wyches against the necrons did some decent work, managed to take down 3 of them. The Incubi though...just 5 of them managed to take down 8 of the necron warriors. It was wicked. after all the shooting and melee, the 20 man blob was down to like 8 dudes or something. And that's before morale.

-Summary: Venom grabs prize, Who knows what the tau did, Drukhari holds the line and do some series work on the necrons    

  After that, we decided to call it there. They wouldn't be able to end their movement phase on the prize to actually claim it in time.  and we had been in the shop since 12, spent 2 hours setting up teams, the board, the situation and our armies. Then another 4 on playing the game as the newer players needed some help to make sure they weren't messing up too badly, so there were times where only 1 person was moving their armies, shooting or doing CC. Made the game a little boring for the Nid player who lost the fun part of his army early on and was stuck in combat with my wyches for the rest.

All in all, I had fun, learned some valuable lessons about the enemy armies, only my 2nd game of 8th edition and like my 5th game ever, so there's still a lot to for me to learn about playing with the Dark Eldar, hopefully I'll have my ravagers ready for Adepticon in March.