West OZ - Skulls 40k tourney... 2 years in a row with dark eldar - Win! - Pics!

This event and I have a history. The first skulls was run back in 2002 in 3rd ed and has run every year since. Over that time I have won it 7 times (including this year and last with dark eldar). I have no idea why I am so consistent with this event but hey, I won't complain! This year had 36 (I think, could have been 40) players with only sisters and Templars not on the tables.

My round up for the weekend...

I decided on a slightly modified list based on the build from last year's WA masters event which i won. It meant i finally painted my harlequin unit i bought back in 2006 as well!

HQ - Baron Sathonyx (joins Harliequins in most cases)
Elite - 3 Trueborn, 3 blasters, venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Elite - 3 Trueborn, 3 blasters, venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Elite - 10 Harliequins, Troupe Leader with Power Sword, Shadow Seer with Harlequins Kiss, Death Jester, 2 Fusion Pistols, 5 Harlequins Kiss
Troops - 5 Kabalites, 1 blaster, Venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Troops - 5 Kabalites, 1 blaster, Venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Troops - 5 Kabalites, 1 blaster, Venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Troops - 5 Kabalites, 1 blaster, Venom, 2 splinter cannons, night shield
Troops - 7 Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Hekatrix, Raider, dark lance, nightshield
Heavy - Ravager, 3 dark lance, night shield
Heavy - Ravager, 3 dark lance, night shield
Heavy - Void Raven Bomber, 2 void lance, 1 void mine, night shield, flickerfield





Apologies if the lists are not 100% correct for my opponents...

Game 1 - Dawn of War, 4 objectives, suicide squad (nominate a unit - gain bonus battle point if this unit is dead at the end of the game)
Combat Drug - +1 Attack



Imperial guard
2x Company Command, Camo, Master of Ordanance, autocannon
2x Platton - Command with 4 flamers, 2xguard squads, flamer, autocannon, 1xguard squad, flamer
6 chimera total
vendetta
Colossus
2x LR Demolishers
Aegis with quad gun

I won the roll to go first. We had the remains of a fortress of redemption running between our deployment zones so the harlies with shrouding and stealth used this to move into charge range over the first couple of turns while the wyches copied them and died trying to charge a blob squad... but as they were my suicide unit i scored a battle point! They did take the flamer wall away from the baron who had split from the harlies to charge in alone and lock up a blob. Issuing a challenge he killed both squad leaders over a couple of assault phases but not much else. The bomber was a waste of time, missing then being shot down by the vendetta. The colossus only got 1 shot before dieing and thanks to night shields i took less fire back then usual. We only managed 3 turns (both a little rusty i think) but when the smoke cleared i had won, 1 objective to none and scored the bonus while leaving my enemies suicide unit alive!

Win plus Bonus!

Game 2 - Vanguard, Kill points, Bonus - 2 objectives, score point if holding or contesting the enemy objective only.
Combat Drug - Pain Token



Dark Angels
Azrael
Techmarine
10 Tacticals, fist, melta, missile, rhino with HK
2x 5 Deathwing, 1 chainfist, 1 cyclone, 1 thunder hammer & shield
2x 6 Ravenwing, 1 melta, 1 plasma, 1 fist
1x hyperios battery - 3 Hyperios launchers, 1 targeting array
Aegis with quad gun

I won the roll to go first. Knocking out the hyperios was paramount and thanks to them being exactly the same as the quad guns to kill, my venoms only took 2 turns to kill them plus the quad gun. Sadly not before they vector locked and weapon destroyed the void raven though. The shooting war worked very well for me and i was able to take out units in a fairly controlled fashion while my opponent seemed to have no luck with the termies... they failed numerous 2+ saves and generally fluffed all the attacks they got in shooting and assault. I lost the baron to his first shadowfield save as usual but otherwise, the game went according to plan. When time was called all that was left was azrael and the techmarine and i was up 8-6 in kill points as well as holding his objective.

Win plus Bonus!

Game 3 - Hammer and anvil, Big guns never tire - 4 objectives, Bonus - kill more enemy units then they kill of yours (i think!?!)
Combat Drug - +1 strength



Space marines with BA allies
Terminator Librarian with stormshield, null zone, gate
5 sternguard, 2 heavy flamers, 3 combi flamers, drop pod
2x10 tactical squads in rhinos
2x Thunderfire cannons
Mortis contemptor with 2 TL auto cannons
Mephiston
5 sniper scouts
Blood Angels Storm Raven

Prior to setting up i said something like "You know you're going to seize the initiative right". I won the roll to go first. We set up and i was quietly confident. I had the thunderfires in my sights, was sure i would be able to slow or kill the dread and push up to the mid way point to take his objectives late game. He rolled to seize... guess what... sigh
The pod landed and inflicted 35 wounds on the harlies and the baron and they all died with the help of null zone. I lost a ravager and venom in turn 1 as well. Bad. I did manage to claw it back with mephiston only managing to kill 3 kabalites before being gunned down while the librarian seemed to have the kiss of death as every combat squad he joined seemed to die leaving him the only survivor. He did go down to splinter fire in the end but not before some 20 odd marines had fallen to keep him safe. The void raven again failed to do any damage and was shot down by the storm raven. In the end, after 7 turns, i managed to claw it back to 2 objectives each, we both had slay the warlord, neither had line breaker... but he had first blood... On top of that, thanks to the massive KP total of my army, my opponent got the bonus as well.

Loss with no bonus

Game 4 - Dawn of War, Scouring - 6 objectives, Bonus - pick one unit in your list. It becomes scoring. Score bonus if oppponents bonus scoring unit is dead at end of game.
Combat Drug - Pain Token



Necrons
Lord, scythe, 2+/3++, labrynth, mind shackle scarabs
Cryptek of destruction
2x20 warriors
2x10 immortals with tesla
5 lychguard with scythes
2x4 scarabs
3x annialation barges
1 ghost ark

I won the roll to go first. We got perhaps the most sparsely covered table with just 6 peices of terrain... good for me. We deployed and flipped objectives... i got 3/3/4 while my opponent got 1/2/2. So he had to come to me, with my harlies in the only ruin on the table, who i made scoring, sitting on an objective. And all the while he had night shields to deal with and only 24" range weapons. This meant the first real shooting phase for him was about turn 3. By then i had chewed up one warrior squad and put a few hull points on the vehicles as well as taking out the scarabs. The key turning point though was the harlies charging a 20 warrior plus lord unit and the lord not being engaged due to a careful movement of the harlies. This meant i killed eveything in the 2" kill zone and only lost a couple of harlies after the pile in. Winning the combat i ran the whole unit down! After that the lances decided to work again and scott lost pretty much every vehicle in 1 turn. The baron and wyches were in combat with the last of the warriors and the tesla immortals, while holding 2 objectives, were out of the fight for the whole game due to range. The void raven again failed to do much. Come turn 5 we called it. I had killed his now scoring lych guard in turn 1 while i still had 5 harlies alive to boot.

Win plus Bonus!

Game 5 - Vanguard, 2 Objectives, Bonus - be the last player to gain a kill point in the game
Combat Drug - +1 WS



Grey Knights
Grandmaster with all grenades
Librarian with staff, quickening, might
4 paladins, banner, apothacary, 2 swords, 1 hammer
2x5 terminators, 2 swords, 2 halberds, 1 hammer
Land Raider with storm bolter
Land raider redemmer with multi melta
Dread with TL Las cannon

I won the roll to go first. I got night attacker for my warlord trait - bonus! Turn 1 i blew up the land raider and manage 4 of the 5 terminators (3 with 1 venom!). I took no fire back essentially thanks to night fight. Turn 2 i popped the redeemer and the pallies with 2 characters were walking. The other terminator unit deep strike mishaped back into reserves and when it did land behind my army it faced 3 venoms, 3 warrior units and then the harlies though in the end the shooting was enough. The rubber lance syndrome seemed to abate this game as i killed the dread turn 3 and by my turn 5, i had some 12 lance shots to kill just the 2 characters... i fully expected to miss the bonus for this round but as i had finished the game in my turn by tabling him, i managed the bonus as well!

Win plus Bonus!

Game 6 - THUNDERHAWK DOWN! Dawn of War, Kill points, Bonus - basically an objective crashes onto the table randomly - hold it at the end of the game
Combat Drug - +1WS



Space Marines (white scars) allied blood angels
Captain, bike, artificer armour, thunder hammer, storm shield
6 bikes, 2 flamers, attack bike with heavy bolter
2x 7 bikes, 2 melta, 1 combi melta, attack bike with multi melta
2 Storm Talons, TL las cannon
Storm raven, TL las cannon, TL multi melta
BA Libraian, blood lance, shield
Corbulo
7 assault marines, melta, dual inferno pistol, drop pod

I won the roll to go first. Kill points... great. I did not like my chances as i had no real way of dealing with the planes and i think this made me more reckless. I threw caution to the wind and attacked hard. I took a whole bike unit out in the first volley! Then the pod landed and he dropped the blood lance across a ravager and 3 venoms! i managed to save 1 venom but the rest were toast. The void raven did something useful, dropping its bomb onto the BA unit of doom and killing most of them and the rest fell to the blasters i lined up around them netting me 4 KP. i took out the captian and rest of the bikes by the end of turn 4 and held the downed thunderhawk wreck as well. I even managed a weapon destroyed on 1 of the talons! I stayed to my usual plan of keeping close to the flyers to avoid them shooting me and this worked mostly. At the end of my turn 5 i had 8 of my opponents 11 available kill points. All he had left were the 3 planes. He was down 1 KP at that stage though with the guns he had i felt like he had it. Then a series of jammy flickerfields on the venoms he targeted meant he only killed 1 venom. But wait! i got slay the warlord! With no line breaker and first blood not in this mission i had won! I even held the crash! One of the closest games i had ever played!

Win plus Bonus!

So i managed 5 wins with max points for 20 out of 24 possible battle points. I think had my opponent not seized the initiative in game 3 i would have stood a chance to win that game but then again, it would have probably changed the match ups for games 4-6 so i guess its all neither here nor there. I was really pleased to get second for painting (behind a guy with multiple OZ GD wins) second for generalship (Nids managed first with 6 straight wins!) and to win overall was fantastic - i have no idea what it is about this event but hey, i won't knock it!

Looking to the armies future, the void raven will retire back to the shelf and the harlies will probably join it... the 3rd ravager will go back in but who knows about the rest... maybe i should try reavers...

I have a tonne of pics I will put up soon

Cheers

Congratulation on the win. Going first in 6 games! And only getting seized on once... sounds like a dream for most Dark Eldar players.

The baron is epic! 3 of the 6 games I won either directly or on a reroll because of him!

well congrats to you! and really lucky with the baron there, guess down under isn't prepared for the dark kin ;-)

sláinte

Great report. Thanks for sharing!

Any hints on how to get Baron working so well? It was definetly worht the points for you.

I am not sure to be honest. I ran him with a beast pack for the masters and was underwhelmed with how they went. I thought harlies would be better... I was wrong. They are more fragile though do hit like a tonne of bricks. The thing is though they were easy to avoid by my opponents.

At present I am considering either a hellion blob (though I suspect they will be similar to the harlies), reavers (some synergy thanks to stealth combo with skilled rider and jink) or grotesques...

I might just run him solo and hide. To go first with the +1 is worth the 100 points for me

How are your harlies easy to avoid??? The only character you ran with them was baron, so they arent slowed by terrain, and they have fleet. Ive never felt that my harlies are ever truely being run around and avoided the entire game.

Also they were fragile to you??? Its true I normally fortune mine, but even a 2+ is still a 2+. In combat they are fragile yes, but thats why you have to maul the opponent enough to keep them alive, which is something they are good at.

Also why power sword on the troupe master??? Lance is far superior due to hit and run

Shadows Revenge wrote:

How are your harlies easy to avoid??? The only character you ran with them was baron, so they arent slowed by terrain, and they have fleet. Ive never felt that my harlies are ever truely being run around and avoided the entire game.

With just a 6" move and my opponents knowing full well how dangerous they can be, I generally ended up chasing targets who ran away! Don't get me wrong, this impacted the game but compared to the rest of the list they are slow. They managed a charge in game 1, 2, 4 and that's it!

Shadows Revenge wrote:

Also they were fragile to you??? Its true I normally fortune mine, but even a 2+ is still a 2+. In combat they are fragile yes, but thats why you have to maul the opponent enough to keep them alive, which is something they are good at.

2+ is not 2+ all the time. In fact, 4+ is much more common though this is more a regional variation for terrain I suspect. That and pretty much every time a flamer was pointed at them (game 3 with 5 in a pod especially!) saw them die. Even bolters make a mess if you only have 4+. When I did maul the necrons on the charge game 4 I killed all 7 within 2" and at the time felt pretty smug as I had neatly avoided fighting the uber lord thanks to him being at the back of the unit and the cunning way I had set up the charge. Then the 12 necrons piled in to combat and killed 5 harlies... Without The Lord even striking! Without fortune, I won't use them again... To expensive and to easy to counter/kill

Shadows Revenge wrote:

Also why power sword on the troupe master??? Lance is far superior due to hit and run

I bought and assembled the unit in 06, the week of release... So he has a sword cause its wysiwyg! With 5 attacks S4 then 4 at S3 all at AP3 I would argue that in the long game, the lance is less reliable as you do more on the charge but less on the next round vs meq. Eh, I am lazy and its not getting changed now its painted!!!

Too many Nightshields, this list will never work. :p

Nah, just kidding. Well done Massaen!!!!

1++ wrote:

Too many Nightshields, this list will never work. :p

Nah, just kidding. Well done Massaen!!!!

Hehe, thanks!

Congrat's on the Epic Win!

Remind me not to challenge you to game in Western Australia! With a record like that over the last decade or so you must be doing something right

Thanks guys. Pics of the armies will go up later, just resizing them (they are about 7mb each!)

PICS!!!

Wow fantastic pictures!

its not all of the lists but is a good snap shot of my meta!

Massaen wrote:

its not all of the lists but is a good snap shot of my meta!

Just wish there were some Necrons and IG. Oh wait...

Count Adhemar wrote:

Just wish there were some Necrons and IG. Oh wait...

Don't worry the daemon armies in there will become Necron or Guard armies now that the new daemon codex is out.

Also congratz massaen on being one of the few players not to bring an aegis defence line.

@ Count Adhemar - HAHAHA! I just woke my baby up laughing! My wife is not laughing mind you! they made up about 1/3 of the army lists for the whole event between the 2 of them.

I will point out we were using the old dex and WD for the daemon lists due to the release date of the new book. This makes the fateweaver flamer screamer list very dangerous!

The nid list with the 2 flyrants managed 6 wins for the weekend so pipped me at the post by just 2 points for generalship (i completed more bonus missions then him)

The DE list with 2 razorwings - the unit in the middle is converted scourges for counts as harlequins - combined with a tooled up archon. He told me he hated the genuine harlies... then looked at my army!

There are several very cool conversions (one list had solid snake in it - counts as Marbo) and some excellent painted lists. By shere fluke i managed to get the 6 armies i faced as well which adds visually so you can see what i had to face.

Great looking armies there. Are some armies only partially in the pictures?

Nope - they are all 1800 point forces and are not cut out of frame

Congratulations on a fine series of victories! Looked like a long day and a gruelling series of battles (oh look, space marines again, goody...).

Fantastic looking army as well, by the way.
Lots of great photos too!

You gave the voidraven a fair try, but it really has it's work cut out vs all those enemy flyers. Sure the bomb smashed that BA squad, but a disintegrator ravager would have done pretty much the same thing. You were able to handle the enemy flyers just fine by basically ignoring them, so I agree that you should just drop the idea of one of your own for the time being. Imagine what you could have achieved with more shooty ground units instead of it!

Maybe the problem with the harlequins is that you haven't quite gone full-on harlestar (adding in extra independent characters)? But then I've no experience in using them that way, just as a small counter-assault unit.

Instead of the harles, and taking into account your disappointment with the beasts, I would say go for hellions. They would be troops with the Baron included, and are quicker and less of a threat than the harlequins (meaing would be targetted less, which is a good thing for a scoring unit). Or what about scourges? Choice of heavy weapons and the Baron helps to keep them safer. Reavers would be awkward as the baron cannot turboboost.

One other thing, I noted at one point (vs necrons i think) you talked about a 2" kill zone in assault? I may have misinterpreted you, but that rule no longer exists in 6th ed - you can remove casualties from the combat regardless of whether or not the targets are engaged (p25 rulebook), so could have killed more necrons if you had caused extra wounds.

Also, when I saw that grey knight army with 2 land raiders and a handful of terminators, I almost laughed - that guy was going to have a tough game!