Raid Outpost G-S-38

Friday saw the first battle for me since about January and for the Dark Eldar since a very long time as I'd played Chaos Marines for the last 2 years or so. But I felt drawn to the dark kin again, started building lists and making appointments - which were promptly smashed by the shutdown due to Corona. Reasonable as I am, I waited patiently.

My buddy took out his AdMech to play and we agreed upon 1500p. The mission was Disruptive Tactics from CA2019 with "search and destroy" as our deployment. He was the attacker (I suppose I got surprised by a patrol ... including Cawl? ^^) and as I did not make the Initiative roll, he went first.

My forces consisted of the following:

Obsidian Rose
3x Archon
4x 10 Warriors mit 2 Blastern und 1 Splinter Cannon
4x Raider mit Dark Lance
1 Razorwing mit Disintegrators
3x Ravager mit Disintegrators



His army can be seen here:



Turn 1 AdMech ... he had deployed most shooty units around Cawl and the Tech-Priest Manipulus to get those nice buffs to the highest effect. The two Duneriders move forward, followed by two small Vanguard squads. The Kataphron Breachers move a little forward, careful to stay in the aura of the HQs. As they were out of reach, the Ironstrider Ballistarii open up fire and holy moly do they shoot the poor Raider to death!! Overkill at its best - but better this way than the other round, right? The two Onager Dunecrawlers open fire to wreck another Raider, while the stubbers from the Duneriders killed one Warrior unit completely and decimated the second one to 4 lonely Warriors. Ouch.



Turn 1 Dark Eldar ... as I'd opted to go with Obsidian Rose, most targets were in reach, so I just shifted the skimmers a little to get into better positions.
I open fire on the Breachers as I remember them to hurt a lot from past games and nearly wipe the whole six of them off the table ... but the last one refuses to lose his last wound. Damn. The Dunerider that boosted into the middle of the table to get a Objective went down in a hail of dark light fire and the following rain of poisoned splinters quickly eliminated the Rangers that came from the burning wreck. One of the Vanguard squads was close enough to also be in range for some splinter fire and promptly 4 of the 5 guys fell.
Sadly, neither the lonely Vanguard nor the Breacher with the single wound succumbed to Morale ...

Turn 2 AdMech ... the remaining Dunerider closes the distance and comes to a halt in front of a Raider with a Warrior squad sitting on an Objective. The Ironstriders shoot the Raider from the sky, while the Warriors are killed by the Dunerider and the now disembarked Rangers. The Onagers target the Razorwing, which barely escapes destruction, clinging to its last wound like the Breacher in his unit. Fair game, I think
A squad of 10 Infiltrators appear behind my lines - reserves!! Damn, I'd totally forgotten about those guys and it was a lucky coincidence that they were not able to target my Archons! They came with those nice 5 shots S3 per model, so the Archons would definitely have been toast. He split up the shots evenly between a Ravager and a Raider. The Raider survives with 4 wounds left, the Ravager only takes 1 wound. They get into close combat with the Raider and an Archon, surrounding the latter. I already wrote off both of them due to the sheer mass of S6 attacks ... BUT! the Raider survives with 3 wounds left (so only takes one) and the Archon has one wound left after his Shadow Field shorted out. Nice! Or not, as I could not shoot them, as the Archon could not break free ...



Turn 2 Dark Eldar ... a Raider boosted away to secure a faraway Objective, while the disembarked Warriors shot down the second Vanguard squad. I needed some real heavy firepower to crack open the second Dunerider ... in the end I even shot with Splinters until the armor gave away and the Rangers came out. The Razorwing shot down the last Breacher and the last Vanguard. Battle of the Survivors
The Infiltrators killed the Archon and the disembarked Rangers were charged by a second Archon, the Ravager and a Warrior Squad. They sadly only killed 6 of them, so the Objective was not in my hands.



We stopped the game as it had gotten late. It was 11:6 points for AdMech. Quickly we talked through the options of turn 3 and it would have gotten to 14:11 for AdMech, but I'd only have a Ravager and some Warriors and the Archon left.

It was nice after all and I suppose we both learned some things. Not forgetting about reserves, for example
He suggested, I should have tried to charge two Raiders into his Onagers, as they would not have been able to get out and shoot. I'll keep that in mind ... what would you say? How do you play/fare against AdMech?

I just lost to a very different Mars admech at 2000 pts. He specifically didnt take anti air because (his words) "Its not fun for either of us". Instead he took Bellisarius, 2 tech priest engineers, 3x2 Robots (with full cannons), 3 Duneraiders, 6 Rangers, 3 Dragoons, and 3 Infil units. I didnt take coven. Game over before it began.

The duneriders were useless, the rangers all died, the Dragoons never got into melee. That was where my good fortune ended as the Robots locked down over objectives after blasting my wyches off them and then I was facing 18 shots at s6 ap-3 from each model every. Damn. Round. Oh, and they can do that in melee combat.

I had 2 Flayed Skull Gunboats with 2x5 Blast/Blaster Kabalite squads in each, 2 archons, a succy, 2x5 wyches in venoms, 2 dissi ravagers (should have gone DL but wouldnt have made a difference in the end, as they can all heal), 2x5 reavers with HL and GT, a razorwing, and a voidraven.

I just couldnt bring anything armoured down reliably. And if I didnt overcommit, it healed next turn.

Everyone is saying "take coven". I dont like coven models, nor do I want to "respec" hundreds of pounds worth of models to totally change my existing army. Neither me nor my friend can figure out how I could have won after turn 1. Apparently reddit cant either.