Escalation league Game 1: VS Space Wolves/ Grey Knights

Playing in an escalation league: Game 1 1500 points

My List:
Arcon/ Soul trap/ huskblade/ Drugs/ Shadowfield/ Haywire
4 Incubi w/ champ/ onslaught
Venom 2x cannons

3x 5 warriors in venoms w/ blaster/ xtra cannon

3x5 wyches in venoms w/ champ/ hydra/ haywire/ xtra cannons

2 darklance ravagers

1 dissie ravager


My Opponent had:

3x longfangs with missles

2x troops (grey hunters?) with 2 meltas each

A rune lord? (the one with no psychic powers)

5 paladins w/ Halberds/ hammerhand

1 Librarian w/ prescience and foreboding

1 Dreadnaught w/ melta/ fist

1 storm raven gunship


Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
Night Fight: No
Drugs: +1 WS
1st turn: Dark Eldar

Mission:
Primary: Kill Points
Secondary: Objectives
Tertiary: Kill unit opponent chooses as a "Marked Unit"

SW Marked unit: The Paladins
DE Marked unit: Incubi

Marked units do not count tward kill point total.


Setup:
The board was longwise, so I hid my ravagers behind some LOS blocking buildings, and put all the venoms up front.

He deployed all longfangs in ruins, and 2 troop units with warlord out in the open by craters hoofing it.
He reserved the storm raven which had the dread, libby and paladins in it.

SW Failed to seize

Turn 1: DE
All the venoms moved up 12", the ravagers shuffled around, my lords venom moved up 12 on the left side, and we went to shooting.

Lords venom, the dissie ravager, one dark lance ravager and 2 wych venoms earned FIRST BLOOD by wiping a long fang unit. All other shooting removed another longfang unit, and took the last longfangs down to 4 models.

Turn 1 SW
He moved up the grey hunters (still out of melta range, but well within bolter...) and started shooting.
Split fire from the remaining longfangs saw 1 wych venom immobolised, and a flickerfield saved a single penetrating hit on my Arcons venom. All the shots from the Grey hunters sneaked a single glance through on a warrior venom.

Turn 2 DE
Moved all warrior venoms up 6, 2 wych venoms up 12 (right in their grill), the wyches from the immobile venom jumped out and ran back to cover an objective, ravagers backed up except the dissie one where I had some neat shots if I went forward into a crater, which I did, and then promptly rolled a "1" for difficult terrain. I failed my flickerfield, so thats where she sat the rest of the game.

I started shooting with the immobile dissie ravager on the remaining longfangs, killing 3. The Arcons venom took out the last one.

The warriors were within double tap range, and with all their shooting and the wyches venoms and remaining ravagers, I was able to bring both hunter squads to 4 models each.

Turn 2: SW
His reserves came on flying, and his hunters moved back to get to his objective.
Shooting from his raven saw his twin linked multi melta miss a venom twice, his missles scatter off to no mans land, and his autocannon doing a pen and a glance on my lords venom. The glance went through, but the flickerfield saved the pen.

DE turn 3. Both wych venoms and the Arcons flew real real close to the stormraven (within 6"). The warrior venoms flew within 12-18". Ravagers moved back.

I started the shooting with all the venoms wiping both grey hunter squads from the table. Then, the wyches and my arcon tossed haywire grenades at the stormraven. No hits
Blasters saw a single glance go through, and all 6 dark lances from the ravagers saw another hull point and a "Shaken" result.

SW turn 3-
He unloaded all the passengers.
He did not move the raven
The dreadnaught took down a wych venom, killing 3. They passed pinning and panic.
The raven again missed or got flickerfielded.
His termies shot 12 shots, taking down my lord and incubi.

He charged the lord, made the distance.
He charged the wyches... failed. Stand and shoot (haywire and lords pistol) both failed.

In combat, he challenged, i accepted, and my Arcon did 2 huskblade wounds to his librarian. He invuled them both.
Attacks back saw 1 wound on my arcon. I of course rolled a "1" He was str 5 due to hammer hand, and had cast prescience and foreboding, so had no warp charges left to activate his weapon.
My Incubi champ killed 1 termie, but I forgot they had halberds, went first and wiped my incubi. I lost combat and the lord ran. He had tertiary points.

DE Turn 4
Arcon Rallied.
Wyches jumped out, and put themselves halfway between the raven and the dreadnaught. The raven had to die, as I could keep out of the dreadnaughts range all day long. Slight shuffling of units.
Shooting started with the disie ravager unloading on the termies right in front of it. 2 more dead.
venoms then wiped the rest.
Ravagers took out the raven on the first shot.
Wyches both threw grenades at the dreadnaught, taking 2 hull points and stunning it.

He had a dreadnaught with 1 hull point left about to be charged by 2 units of wyches with haywire grenades. He called the game.

This game did 2 things for me. The last time I played this opponent, we had a draw and I beat him by just 1 extra point. I felt that I had a better list, played better and still couldnt finish him. So this helped purge those demons.

Second, with any other player there, i would have felt bad. The venoms tore him up, and after my turn 1 there was realistically no chance of my opponent winning. I prefer hard fought, well earned games. This was just me rolling dice and him picking up models. HOWEVER, that being said, Before the game, the league organizer made this sw/ gk list, and bragged to my opponent how it would "Own every other list here"....

Not so much!

After the game, my opponent ripped it up and said "Well, i wont be listening to him anymore!"

Game 2- next wednesday, 1750 points.

Nice work, always good to see the Grey Knights take a beating!

Your opponent's list look's playable, but DE are great for taking on footsloggers. You'll never get anywhere tearing up lists after a defeat!

Thanx for the report - well, and the other one a few threads down from your tournament.

Don't you run into fully mechanized lists? And wouldn't that be problematic to fight since the venoms are useless vs. mech?

Don't get me wrong, I like your list but I often play vs. mech guard, mech DA, mech eldar and I really really struggle vs. that kind of opponent even though I have plenty AT in my lists. They kill my transports in no time and only my reavers seem to stand a chance of wrecking something.

Anyways, I think the SW/GK player made some bad mistakes that cost him the game - like reserving the storm raven with hundreds of points inside. That was a seriously bad move on his part, did he really expect he could just foot slug across the board vs. 6 venoms and a disintegrator ravager?

Squierboy wrote:

You'll never get anywhere tearing up lists after a defeat!

Heh, just ask Mushkilla

Septimus wrote:

Don't you run into fully mechanized lists? And wouldn't that be problematic to fight since the venoms are useless vs. mech?

Yes, full mech is abundant, but i figured at 1500 points, 6 dark lances, 3 blasters and 15 haywire grenades should be able to handle it, not to mention side shots with the dissies.

Quote :

Anyways, I think the SW/GK player made some bad mistakes that cost him the game - like reserving the storm raven with hundreds of points inside.

You and me both. It was an uphill struggle for the poor guy from the begining. But, Dark Eldar show no mercy... right?

Quote :

You and me both. It was an uphill struggle for the poor guy from the begining. But, Dark Eldar show no mercy... right?

True that

How's all the wyches working out for you? No problems with mech anymore? I usually face about 10 rhinos / predators/ dreadnoughts / wave serpents / warp hunters (omg I hate those tanks!).

I completely forgot to mention my nemesis match-up: 2-3 annihilation barges, 2 ghostarcs, 2 night scythes (or 1 night scythe and 1 doom scythe) and a large wraith unit.

Have you faced anything like that, and how did you tackle such an army? The necron example is a 1500 army.

Yes, I faced it.
Pretty much, I found a balanced 3 warriors in venoms and 3 wyches in venoms is the best way to go. Great anti infantry and great anti tank.

How I handle it Is I try to bait them. 2 ravagers are decent, and between the two, you should get 1 vehicle down or at least pop the av 13 field thing they have. I would use the triple dissie ravager out in the open to attract fire and deflect from the real threat... the wyches!

Move warriors up 12, shoot at anything on foot unless in blaster range of a vehicle (true, 6's needed but hey, better than nothing) and flat out with all 3 wych rides.
They may get 1.
They may get 2. you do have a 4+ save after all.
But that is just the vehicle. Wyches drop out, throw a grenade and charge in. Multi charge if possible or if a vehicle NEEDS to die.
If all 3 units lived, you have 3 charges next round, and haywires dont give a rip what the armour value is.

The round your wyches charge, you move the warriors up 6", and thy are in double tap and blaster range all day long.
And while this is going on, 3 ravagers that they CANNOT ignore are in the backfield taking stuff out left and right.

Nightscythes? Forget and ignore them until they are all thats left if you can. Remember you can throw haywires, you have blasters and if you face a lot of flyers, a succubus w/ 20 warriors behind an aegis w/ a quad gun or lascannon is nothing to sneeze at! hitting on 2's is very nice! If you have to shoot at a flyer from a transport, why not move 12" everytime? You head towards objectives and need 6's to hit anyway.

So... anything that falls out of a transport, focus fire with venoms until the unit is gone. This is especially true vs necrons. they don't stand back up if there is no one left! All blasters, haywires and lances take down the vehicles.

Easier said than done, but truth be told necrons will become much less prevelant with each new army release. The more anti flyer there is, the less appealing they look.

Hope that helps... good luck!

Thanks, I'll try out more wyches - so far I've only ever had 2 small units - and never more than 4 venoms.

I actually can't remember ever having played with more than a maximum of 4 troop units in my DE lists.

Have you tried disintegrator raiders instead of the venoms? Venoms generate a little more wounds but the disintegrator often denies or nerfs a save - and you get more hull points.

Yeah, but overall, raiders can't hold a candle to venoms. Venoms are without a doubt the best anti flying MC weapon we have. A dissie ravager has 3 shots... not good odds of hitting a flyer. If I took a raider, i would keep the Dark lance as better anti tank and for insta killing independant characters that you can manouver to be the closest model.

Okay, you have convinced me - I'll try a handful of venoms full of wyches in my next games and see how I do

Skulnbonz wrote:

Yeah, but overall, raiders can't hold a candle to venoms. Venoms are without a doubt the best anti flying MC weapon we have. A dissie ravager has 3 shots... not good odds of hitting a flyer. If I took a raider, i would keep the Dark lance as better anti tank and for insta killing independant characters that you can manouver to be the closest model.

I use raiders with splinter racks for the anti-flying MC. There is alot of tau in my meta, so the more str 8 ap 2 the better.