BR11: The Black Buzzards VS CSM New Codex - 1500pts

My friend was fortunate enough to receive his new chaos codex two days early, so we were able to get a game in the other day. So I'm proud to present the first Dark Eldar battle report against the new Chaos Space Marine codex!

I have also changed my battle report layout slightly with diagrams now appearing before the text, as I find it more readable (Feedback appreciated).

The armies:

Black Buzzards (DE)

HQ
Archon, Shadow Field, Husk Blade, Soul Trap, Haywire

TROOPS
8 wyches, Hekatrix, venom blade, PGL, Haywire
Raider, Disintigrator
8 wyches, Hekatrix, venom blade, PGL, Haywire
Raider, Disintigrator

FAST ATTACK
9 Reavers, 3 blasters, arena champion, venom blade
9 Reavers, 3 blasters, arena champion, venom blade
9 Reavers, 3 blasters, arena champion, venom blade

HEAVY SUPPORT
Talos, twin-linked liquifier gun, twin-linked haywire
Talos, twin-linked liquifier gun, twin-linked haywire

Chaos Space Marines (CSM)

HQ
Chaos Lord, MoK, Gift of Mutation, Sigil of Corruption, Axe of Blind Fury

TROOPS
20 Chaos Marines, CCW & Pistol, MoK, Icon of Wrath, 2 meltas, gift of chaos, power weapon
10 chaos marines, bolter, pistol, CCW, MoK, 2 plasma guns, gift of chaos

FAST ATTACK
Helldrake, baleflamer
4 nurgle spawn

HEAVY SUPPORT
Forgefiend
Forgefiend
Maulerfiend

The scenario:
The mission was The Relic using Dawn of War deployment. No night fight on the first turn. Warlord powers: I rolled Strategic Genius (re-roll reserve rolls), my opponent rolled: Hatred Incarnate (The Warlord and his unit have hatred). I won the roll off and decided to go first. For combat drugs I rolled Splintermind (Yay! paintokens for everyone!). For his Chaos Lord he rolled Unholy Crusader (Crusader special rule), for his champions in the large squad he rolled Cerebral Cogitator ( +1I). For the champion in the smaller squad he rolled Mind of Metal (ademantium will).

Deployment:

I deployed centrally. The chaos player deployed the bulk of his force in the centre, with the forgefiends hanging back in cover and the maulerfiend on the flank.

Turn 1(DE):

The three reaver squad moved forward and fired into the spawn, killing them, earning one of the reaver squads its second pain token, the reavers then used their assault move to jump back. The Taloi ran forward as their haywire blasters were out of range. The two raiders fired into the big marine squad killing three.

Turn 1(CSM):

Both forgefiends used their Deamonforge ability to re-roll to wound and the sixteen strength eight shots from their hades autocannons managed to down a talos. The ten man marine squad moved out and fired at the archon's raider with their plasma guns and bolters, making it explode in a spectacular fashion, but only killing two wyches thanks to FNP. The large squad of chaos marines moved out, and latter managed to run 6", thanks to the crusader special rule, this allowed them to screen the plasmagun squad. The maulerfiend surged forward 12" ignoring terrain and the managed to charge a spectacular 11" thanks to fleet (and also ignoring terrain), into the raider destroying it, only killing three wyches thanks to FNP.

Turn 2 (DE):

The Talos moved forward and fired it's liquifier at the large squad hitting and killing two marines (AP2), later it tried to charge them but failed. The wyches on the left threw a haywire grenade at the fiend, taking off a hull point, and then proceeded to charge it wrecking it. The reaver squad on the far right with furious charge moved forward and fired at the plasmagun squad killing two marines, and then managed to charge them (overwatch failed to hurt them), the seven impact hits from the reavers in base contact killed three marines! The arena champion challenged the chaos champion, cutting him down before he could strike, the rest of the reavers killed two more marines. The two remaining chaos marines fail to do anything and flee getting cut down, earning the squad it's third pain token! The other two reaver squads moved forwards firing at the large blob of chaos marines killing nine marines, one squad made it's charge. The eight remaining marines and their lord fired their bolt pistols, but fail to hurt the reavers. The archon and his wyches charged, and barely succeeded (rolling a 10).The Archon challenged the chaos lord, the lord accepted. The archon failed to wound the chaos lord (oh dear). The chaos lord rolled 4 for his daemon weapon,meaning he got a total of 9 attacks (S6, AP2 that re-roll to hit thanks to hatred). Unfortunately my archon failed one of the five shadow field saves he was supposed to make (Splat...). The Lord rolled on the chaos boon table and got cyrstalline body (+1 toughness). The reavers and wyches manage to kill five marines, leaving only three to fight back killing a wych. The Chaos Lord and His surviving marine were fearless and therefore held.

Turn 2 (CMS):

Thankfully the Helldrake did not arrive this turn. One of the forgefiends fired into the reavers failing to hurt them. The other forgefiend fired into the talos inflicting a wound. The Chaos Lord Challenged, the arena champion accepted, managing to inflict a single wound on the lord. The lord rolled a 6 on his daemon weapon this time making a staggering 10 attacks, all of which hit, suffice to say the champion was no more. The chaos gods granted him a fragment of Immortality (Eternal warrior). The wyches and reavers slaughtered the rest of the chaos marines. The reavers earned the pain token.

Turn 3 (DE):

The reavers spread out and fired at one of the forge fiends, immobilising it. The Talos fired its haywire blaster stripping a hull point. The wyches ran for the relic. The Chaos Lord challenged, the Hekatrix accepted, and got two re-rolls thanks to the extra supporting models. She inflicted a wound leaving the lord on his last wound. The Lord in turn struck back with 9 attacks, killing the hekatrix despite her re-rolls. The chaos god bestowed the bloated gift on the lord (returning him to full wounds), not funny (O dear I think we have overfed Pudge...).

Turn 3 (CSM):

I need dragon sword power!" *plays flute*

The Helldrake exploded out of the clouds, in all it's fiery splendour. Immolating the reavers but only killing two. The forgefinds fired at the other reaver squad, killing two (BS3 sucks). All the reavers and all the archon's women failed to hurt Mr Chaos Lord yet again (needing 6s to wound). In return the lord despite his nine attacks only killed a single wych (go FNP reavers and 4++ wyches) . However both the reavers and the wyches broke! He caught the wych squad. The forgefiend did not regenerate a hull point. Soulblaze remained in play but didn't manage to kill any reavers.

Turn 4 (DE):

Direct all forward fire on that angry man!

Both reaver squads fired into the Chaos Lord vaporising him (only just). The other reaver squad rallied. The wyches grabbed the relic and ran into the area terrain ruin. The talos took out the forgefiend with one hull point. Soul blaze killed a reaver.

Turn 4 (CSM):

The helldrake used vector strike on the reavers, killing one, and then proceeded to immolate the wyches, killing all of them, S6 ignoring their FNP. Soul blaze on the reavers ended. The game was called at this point. DE victory, just.

DE 3 (kill the warlord, line breaker, first blood) CSM 1 (kill the warlord)

Conclusion
That was a crazy, game with the chaos lord eating half my army. The boon table is interesting and potentially very powerful, I see Dark Apostles being popular as being able to re-roll on the boon tables and giving the units they join hatred seems very potent. The Mauler fiend, is fast, really fast, ignoring terrain and having a 12" move and fleet means they can get into your parking lot ASAP. Their 5+ invulnerable save and "it will not die" mean that it can still potentially shrug off haywire grenades. The forgefiends were similar to pyflemen dreadnoughts, BS3 letting them down (still very powerful). The chaos lord was ridiculous, easily capable of taking out entire units. The spawn were tough but suffered because of poison shooting. Twenty man marine squads with rage/counter attack/furious charge/re-roll charge distance are a big threat and need a lot of attention to take down. The helldrake is awesome, it's like the opposite of the night scythe rather then last turn scoring it last turn immolates a scoring unit, the baleflamer is just a fantastic weapon. It's important to remember I rolled a six for combat drugs and therefore had a considerable advantage thanks to FNP, that my opponent was playing a list just to try as much out as possible, and I still only barely won!

As for the dark eldar side of things, I'm missing my heatlances too much, blasters are nice, but I like playing ultra aggressive. So I will be going back to heat lances. The talos were great! What do you mean, they hardly killed anything? No they didn't kill much but they forced my opponent to be more careful with his large marine blob, ensuring I got the charge. They also attracted a healthy amount of fire. Personally I'm going to drop the haywire blasters and replace them with splinter cannons as I find they are more useful. Running the huskblade archon reminded me why I don't really like it, it's just asking too much to pass a load of 2+ saves and wound on 5-6, and beat an invulnerable save.

Hope you enjoyed the report!

Wow, thats some fun stuff, well done Mush! That Helldrake looks like some mean stuff!

lol remember that 10 point upgrade called combat drugs??? yah... wish you would of taken that now huh (you would of had FC on that Lord...)

If the Chaos Lord was strength six, wouldn't he of disabled FnP on wyches?

Great report. I will no doubt be playing new chaos soon and its good to know weakness'/strengths. Does Just the chaos lord have boon of the dark gods (BotDG, almost as bad as ATWKNF) and when does it apply, when he kills someone in a challenge? If so i might not be getting a strength 6 Archon in that game...

alexwellace wrote:

If the Chaos Lord was strength six, wouldn't he of disabled FnP on wyches?

He did just not on the reavers as they are T4.

Quote :

Great report. I will no doubt be playing new chaos soon and its good to know weakness'/strengths. Does Just the chaos lord have boon of the dark gods (BotDG, almost as bad as ATWKNF) and when does it apply, when he kills someone in a challenge? If so i might not be getting a strength 6 Archon in that game...

Thanks. All chaos characters (including squad leaders have it), and roll on it whenever they kill another character (including squad leaders), they also get an upgrade (gift of mutation) that lets them roll on the table before the start of the game. It also means they have to challenge and accept challenges.

Great report and great win. It was a close one and I am not looking forward to playing chaos now.

OMG new chaos, my second favourite army.

They look like they play very different from normal space marines and have some cool new toys which is great.

Chaos lord looks like a boss, pudge mm fresh meat.

Wow, your turn two looked amazing, just utter carnage! I agree on the heatlances, once you hit with them, whatever they've hit is toast, whereas with blasters it's all too often the case that you'll just glance (at best).

I can see me avoiding Chaos characters like the plague now, it seems like if you don't stop them in the first challenge they're just going to be almost impossible to drop.

Lucky for me, my Chaos playing friend doesn't seem to be too fussed about the fiends - either one of them would scare me, but the forgefiend in particular with that ectoplasma cannon is ridiculously intimidating.

Mr Believer wrote:

I can see me avoiding Chaos characters like the plague now, it seems like if you don't stop them in the first challenge they're just going to be almost impossible to drop.

Shame there are no squads of characters any more, then you could feed him characters until he becomes a spawn! Or a Daamon Prince...

Mr Believer wrote:

Lucky for me, my Chaos playing friend doesn't seem to be too fussed about the fiends - either one of them would scare me, but the forgefiend in particular with that ectoplasma cannon is ridiculously intimidating.

I had a chat with Shadows Revenge and he came to the conclusion that the triple S8 plasma cannons is the way to go when it comes to fiends, most armies are marines, cover is not as readily available, and blasts mean ballistic skill is less relevant. S8 is huge for plasma as it get rid of many of the disadvantages, of regular plasma, not to mention it ignores FNP on marines!

When I viewed your opponent's deployment of his two CSM squads and first round move, I almost asked out loud, "Has he not heard of bladevane attacks?"

Cool report MK. After reading about the new CSM toys and getting a look at the codex, I have to admit that a few Noise Marine models have crept onto my painting desk

Damn - +1T, Eternal Warrior and Heal all wounds? Has he been patined in Nurgle colors ? )))

Was expecting sad end to Archon the moment i saw him in roster. Bring the girls back )

Evil Space Elves wrote:

When I viewed your opponent's deployment of his two CSM squads and first round move, I almost asked out loud, "Has he not heard of bladevane attacks?"

The way he had positioned his forge fiends, meant if I did bladevane he could have potentially tied my reavers up with the fiends, quite clever actually, not sure it whether it was intentional though.

Evil Space Elves wrote:

Cool report MK. After reading about the new CSM toys and getting a look at the codex, I have to admit that a few Noise Marine models have crept onto my painting desk

Thanks, and I agree it's a very nice book, lots of options, nice to see GW go back to the good old armoury section.

Azdrubael wrote:

Was expecting sad end to Archon the moment i saw him in roster. Bring the girls back )

I will definitely be going back to succubi. In hindsight I'm just glad he wasn't running The Black Mace. It's a power mace daemon weapon (d6 extra attacks) that always wounds on a 2+ (flesh bane not poison, so no re-rolling to wound), if it inflicts an unsaved wound the target must take a toughness test or be removed. So far not so bad, but wait for it! At the end of a phase where the mace causes one or more unsaved wounds all non vehicle enemy models within 3" of the bearer must pass a toughness test or suffer a wound with no save of any kind allowed. Kill one wych... and 2/3 wyches within 3" die... Talk about dark eldar slayer. You won't be tarpiting any chaos lords with this thing.

Well from this report Chaos Lord showed a strong impression - shoot the frakker from afar!

Those Demon Weapons are hellishly powerfull, i have read the codex.

We probably wont see Mace often outside of Daemon Princes, cause of it AP4. But on them, oh boy...

Azdrubael wrote:

Well from this report Chaos Lord showed a strong impression - shoot the frakker from afar!

Definitely the best course of action, I think we will see them on bikes/chaos steeds so we will be hard pressed trying to keep them at arms length.

Azdrubael wrote:

Those Demon Weapons are hellishly powerfull, i have read the codex.

The Burning Brand of Skalathrax is another scary artefact with it's torrent template that I think will be popular.

Azdrubael wrote:

We probably wont see Mace often outside of Daemon Princes, cause of it AP4. But on them, oh boy...

I think we might see it more then you think as the Axe of Blinding Fury is khorne only. Not to mention as long as you kill one marine/terminator then half of the marines/terminators within 3" will die, with the volume of attacks the daemon weapons put out I see this being quite feasible. What I find even better is it prevents the Lord being tied up in challenges, as even though he is in a challenge if he kills his opponent all the models within 3" still test, challenging him won't slow him down! Very nasty.

Yea turn two looked like carnage! Must have been exciting to play, it was exciting to read lol!

CD on the Archon would have helped I think. I feel our huskblade should work against squad leaders as well.

Also, does the FC +1S work for HoW attacks as well? I didn't realise that if it does

Well maybe Grey Kights will start to do what they supposed to do, instead of building rosters to kill everybody else.

mug7703 wrote:

Also, does the FC +1S work for HoW attacks as well? I didn't realise that if it does

No, I just rolled that many 5s and 6s.

Azdrubael wrote:

Well maybe Grey Kights will start to do what they supposed to do, instead of building rosters to kill everybody else.

Tell me about it, but with "Veterans of the Long War" It's not looking good for the marine codexes out there, well at least in close combat that is.

Mushkilla wrote:

Tell me about it, but with "Veterans of the Long War" It's not looking good for the marine codexes out there, well at least in close combat that is.

What does that rule do?

mug7703 wrote:

Mushkilla wrote:

Tell me about it, but with "Veterans of the Long War" It's not looking good for the marine codexes out there, well at least in close combat that is.

What does that rule do?

Gives the model/unit hatred (space marines), so they re-roll to hit on the first round of assault against space marines (that includes, blood angels, space wolves, grey knights, dark angels, black templar, etc).

Okay thanks. At least DE are exempt from that.

thats cause they were too busy being awesome to get dragged into the little spat between horus and daddy

great review. I thing i will be taking a character hunting unit of trueborn or scourge for this edition

Mushkilla wrote:

I had a chat with Shadows Revenge and he came to the conclusion that the triple S8 plasma cannons is the way to go when it comes to fiends, most armies are marines, cover is not as readily available, and blasts mean ballistic skill is less relevant. S8 is huge for plasma as it get rid of many of the disadvantages, of regular plasma, not to mention it ignores FNP on marines!

And yet they do nothing against fliers!

I see you now understand the best part about Talos Pain Engine - it's not the killiness of the guy, it's the fear it puts into the mind of your enemy because of how grave a potential threat he is. Same with Eldar Wraithlord for all his vulnerability to plasma and rockets - they have to be shot at him, not the paper boats.

Great report! I'm really glad to see the new Chaos codex in action and I'm glad it gives us a hefty challenge. It means I'll have some serious opposition in the coming days.

Quote :

And yet they do nothing against fliers!

Well, the other option have 36" range, and it also is not a solution to fliers.
Although 8 S8 shots seems good.

CaptainBalroga wrote:

And yet they do nothing against fliers!

S8 is nice against flyers but the 36" range could be limiting. That being said it is one of the better options against flyers in the codex as far as I can tell. It's like a psyfleman dread (higher potential damage). Are psyfleman dreads any good against necron flyers? Or do they get taken out too quickly? I have no idea, but I can imagine whatever the case, the Forgefiend will be in a similar boat to the psyfleman.

Siticus the Ancient wrote:

I see you now understand the best part about Talos Pain Engine - it's not the killiness of the guy, it's the fear it puts into the mind of your enemy because of how grave a potential threat he is. Same with Eldar Wraithlord for all his vulnerability to plasma and rockets - they have to be shot at him, not the paper boats.

They are indeed a fantastic area denial unit and as a Chaos Daemon player I can say they are an absolute bargain for their points cost.