After a (highly successful) raid on an imperial manufacturing facility, bad blood flares up between the two archons involved in conquering this particular corner of realspace. Two kabals enter, but only one can leave...
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire (5 objectives)
Deployment: Dawn of War
For this game, the blue painted army is helmed by my opponent, whilst I'm rocking the turquoise forces, so for the sake of ease I'm going to refer to them as 'Blue' and 'Green' throughout.
Didn't bother rolling for night-fighting (no point). Blue archon's warlord trait was re-rolls of 1 when shooting a unit within 3" of an objective, green archon gave -1 to Blue's reserves. Blue won the roll for first turn.
The forces!
Green:
Archon, huskblade, venom blade, shadowfield, combat drugs, kitchen sink (looted halfway through the refinery raid)
5 Incubi in a dark lance raider
3 Trueborn with two dark lances
5 warriors with a blaster in a dual-cannon venom
5 warriors with a blaster in a dual-cannon venom
5 haywire-toting wyches in a dual-cannon venom
10 warriors with splinter cannon in a raider with splinter racks
5 scourges with 2 haywire blasters
tri-lance ravager with night shields
Razorwing (stock) with flickerfield
Voidraven (stock) with flickerfield
Blue:
Archon, shadowfield, venom blade (I think?), haywire grenades, no sink 'cos my archon looted it first
Succubus with venom blade
9x wyches in a raider
9x wyches in a raider (one unit definitely had haywires, can't remember if the other did)
10 warriors, cannon, raider with splinter racks
2x 5 warriors in dual-cannon venoms
2 ravagers
2 units of 6 reavers, arena champ, 2 heat lance
Blue has the advantage of more bodies on the ground, more anti-armour, and first turn to make the dent. Green has the planes (which are hard for blue to deal with, and scoring), and last turn to pinch objectives.
Deployment
The objectives are (roughly) marked by the red stars. Blue has one raider and a ravager way in the far corner, followed by the venoms. One's full, one's empty with dudes sitting on the objective and hiding. Then we have a second raider and some reavers behind the pipes, a third raider screening the second lot of reavers, and finally the second ravager. In response, Green refuses the left flank to mitigate the first turn advantage, clustering in the right hand corner. Sniperborn are in terrain, then the wych venom on the far left screens the archon's raider, the ravager is 25% covered from the front, one warrior venom is hiding right at the back, and the last warrior venom is screening the warrior raider, in turn screening the scourges. I try to seize, and fail.
Turn 1 - Blue
The stuff in the left hand corner comes out and screams towards my position, both raiders going flat out. The reavers both turbo boost into my lines, one unit bladevaning my trueborn off the table with a colossal 13 wounds for first blood. The other unit bladevanes the scourges, and kills two with shardcarbines. The lances on the right hand side of the table can't get past my cover, and the left hand ravager blows up my wych venom, killing all 5 in the explosion. Ouch.
Turn 1 - Green
The vehicles all do the skimmer-shuffle to get jink saves. Ravager hops over the right hand barrels, and the archon and incubi disembark before sending their raider on a screening manoeuvre. the other raider and two venoms scoot around into position on the right, pointing at the reavers and the encroaching raider. The lances aren't too hot, managing to immobilise the archon's raider, but jink saves prevent the worst of the damage. Blasters are similarly rubbish where applicable. The warriors, however, are angry and manage to gun down all 6 reavers in the corner from the shelter of their raider, earning a pain token. The one venom in range thins out the other reavers, and the archon and incubi charge in, and wipe them out for a pain token, consolidating into cover.
End of turn 1. Current VP score - Blue: 4, Green: 0
Turn 2 - Blue
The ravagers both move to gain better firing lines. The archon and wyches get out and come forwards towards the venom, and the succubus and wyches get out of the right hand raider after in moves forwards. The warriors hop out of a venom and sit on the central objective. Shooting finishes off the scourges, but the incubi tank all the splinter fire that comes their way. Lots of successful jink saves means that the ravager on the left does nothing, whilst the one on the right is forced to take out the green ravager, as it's just too threatening. Other ones just manage to stun the warrior raider. The wyches with succubus try and charge the incubi, but fail as they're going through cover! (6" charge, only gets 5", and 5 again on the re-roll). The archon and his wyches declare a multi-assault against the venom and raider, and lose a LOT to overwatch (go go gadget splinter racks!). They make it, but whiff horribly as their numbers are so low and flickerfields on the venom dodge the only hits that get through.
Turn 2 - Green
Payback time! Contrails of smoke fly through the air as both fliers turn up, void raven coming in from the left hand corner and razorwing from the right. The venoms shift, but the raider can't on account of being stunned. Archon and Incubi move out. The razorwing threatens the wyches by dumping two missiles on them. One scatters way off but the other's a direct hit, and combined with a splinter rifle and dark lance takes care of over half the unit. The raven dumps its void mine on one ravager, turning it into slag, and fires both its void lances at the other, but rolls a pair of 2s to hit. Other darklight is mediocre at best, but splinter weapons gun down almost all of the archon's squad, leaving just the blue archon and his hekatrix. The incubi and green archon charge the remainder of the wyches. Incubi easily flatten the wyches, whilst the succubus challenges the archon, who's surprised to come against someone faster and better than he is! Succubus lands 3 wounds so it's time for the shadowfield to make good... 6...2...5! Green archon is shadowfield-intact and huskblades the succubus into the ground for the incubi's third pain token.
End of turn 2. Current VP total: Blue - 8, Green - 1
Turn 3 - Blue
Ravager shifts to control the objective. Venoms both retreat, and the empty raider goes behind the void raven. The ravager snap-shots at the razorwing, and brings it down! The raider snap-shots into the back of the void raven and also hits (!), penetrates (!!), fails its flickerfield (!!!) ....and only stuns it. The remaining lance fires at the warrior raider, but only knocks off the dark lance. Splinter cannons from the venoms knock over two incubi, and put the kabalites in raider out of rapid fire range. They still score 5 wounds though. Green archon makes all but one Push-an-Incubus-in-the-way roll, and his shadowfield shorts out! To add injury to insult, he doesn't even make his feel no pain roll.
Turn 3 - Green
The void raven scoots off and gets out of there, leaving the table in the top right corner (flying over the ravager). Combined darklight from the blasters and the remaining raider blow up the blue raider, killing six kabalites in the explosion. The kabalites inside the green raider shoot at the hekatrix and blue archon who have been caught short in the open, with the blue archon having got his shadowfield from the same manufacturer (who is in line for some stern words later on). Both go down, granting Green slay the warlord. The archon and two remaining incubi charge the raider, and knock 1 hull point off.
End of turn 3. Current VP total: Blue - 12, Green - 2
Turn 4 - Blue
The ravager hops to the other side of terrain. Lances finally wreck the green warrior raider with a glance, forcing the guys inside out. Two die to the splinter rifles of warriors in the wrecked raider. Splinter fire from the far left venom cuts down another incubus, and the archon and his friend finish off the raider.
Turn 4 - Green
Archon and incubus walk up to try and charge the 5 kabalites in the centre. Warriors move to the other side of the venom to claim the objective, and the void raven comes back on. Void raven lances the other ravager and kills it, whilst the kabalites can only kill one warrior. its enough to send them running though. Blasters kill a blue venom, and the venoms themselves kill one or two kabalites from various squads. Archon and incubi fail their charge!
End of turn 4. Current VP total: Blue - 9, Green - 6
Turn 5 - Blue
The remaining venom swings round and snipes off the archon and incubus that are in the open. The kabalites rally and claim the objective that the ravager recently vacated, but that's all that can be done.
Turn 5 - Green
Potentially the final turn. Secondary objectives are equal to all intents and purposes (2 heavy support kills each, both warlords down, and an easy linebreaker to compensate for first blood). Blue currently leads with 3 objectives to green's one. The venoms both split off, and dump the warriors out, 5 to contest the right hand corner objective, 5 to contest the middle. The void raven flies off to contest the objective at the back as we'd agreed to measure distances from the base of the flier. If it goes to T6 the raven will come down to the open objective. Shooting kills two of the 4 kabalites on the central objective, and both green kabalite squads charge in. The one in the left is won by green 2 kills to 0, but the remaining kabalite holds leaving that objective contested. In the middle, the last two blue warriors are killed, giving green the centre objective.
We roll for a 6th turn and get it, but Blue throws in the towel.
End of turn 5, and the game!
Final VP total:
Blue: 7 (1 objective, first blood, slay the warlord, 2 heavy support kills)
Green: 10 (2 objectives, linebreaker, slay the warlord, 2 heavy support kills)
(After re-reading the rulebook, it looks like vehicles that become scoring bizarrely still can't deny objectives, so Blue would still have had that one that the void raven contested).
Narrow victory to the Dark Eldar (Green
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That was a really good game, and a first for both of us (neither having played DE vs DE before). Tight all the way through, with both of us rolling poorly/well at critical moments. Post-game analysis suggested that my opponent might have been a little over-aggressive with his reavers, as whilst they did a fair amount of damage turn 1 they also immediately died, and could have been crucial in later turns. Men of the match went to the green archon and his incubi for just being generally unstoppable, carving their way through reavers, wyches, a succubus and a raider, and just generally being a fire magnet. I'm really unsure about the trueborn. Three is probably just too few to do anything, and they're so fragile. I might replace them with a min-sized reaver unit to be a nuisance and contest objectives.
That's all for now, I'll get myself back to finishing that void raven so it can hopefully be painted before its next showing!
Subject: Commorragh grudge match! 1500 point Batrep with pics 
Thu Apr 11 2013, 12:39
- do you have any close up photos? Looks like a nice army you have there! 
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