1500 - Dark Eldar vs Orks (Completed)

Finally busted my evil space elves out for their first game in a couple of months (since June, I think). 1500 point game against the reprehensible greenskins!

Dark Eldar Kabal:
Archon, Huskblade, Shadowfield, Venom Blade, Combat Drugs
5 Incubi, Raider, Flickerfield (Archon goes here)
5 haywire wyches, venom with dual cannon
5 warriors with blaster, venom with dual cannon
5 warriors with blaster, venom with dual cannon
10 warriors with cannon, raider with splinter racks
Tri-lance ravager
5 scourges, 2 haywire blasters
3 Reavers, heat lance
Razorwing, flickerfield
Razorwing, flickerfield

Ork Mob
Ghaz
Grotsnik
30 Cyborks, Nob with Klaw (Grotsnik went here)
30 Boyz, Nob with Klaw, Bosspole
6 Meganobz, combi-flamers
Battlewagon with deffrolla, red paint job (Ghaz and meganobz here)
10 Lootas.

Mission was Relic, with Vanguard Strike deployment. Ghaz got counter attack in his own DZ for a warlord trait, archon got to re-roll reserves. Combat Drug came up as Splintermind, and it was night fighting on turn 1. I won the roll for deployment and first turn.


Yup... sparse terrain. The warrior raider is flank-on to the front, incubi raider and rav next to it. Wych venom is out of sight behind the towers. Reavers/Scourges in reserve. The Orks have the cyborks in front, then the boyz, and the lootas lined up behind. The orks roll to seize the initiative, and do!

Turn 1 - Orks
The Battlewagon goes flat out to the right, and tucks in behind the pillars up top. Both mobs move forward 6" and then run, Cyborks going a further 6, and regular boyz just 4. The lootas open up into my warrior raider, with a mighty 3 shots each! I'm getting a 2+ cover save from 6 on the ground (shooting through ruins plus shrouded), but only my shrouded save from the 4 on the top with a clear LoS. After a LOT of bullets, the raider suffers two glancing hits - still alive!

Turn 1 - DE
Everything shuffles around trying to get in optimum range. All 5 lances open up into the battlewagon, scoring 3 misses and the two that hit fail to even glance. One venom puts down two regular boys, and two venoms manage to cut down 9 of the lootas. The warriors in the raider have the choice of all firing into the cyborks to thin them out, or trying to use the cannon on the last loota - this is for first blood. I pick the former, and kill two cyborks. The lone loota vindicates my decision by failing his leadership and running, but not far; still 9" from the table edge.


Start of turn 2 - orks are beginning their movement phase.

Turn 2 - Orks
The loota fails his test to regroup and falls back...9 inches! First Blood to the Dark Eldar. Battlewagon barrels forwards, and the Orks continue to march on. Shooting is ineffective, and the cyborks are forced to attempt a charge against the Ravager thanks to Grotsnik. However, thanks to having to charge through terrain, they fail their 4" charge.

Turn 2 - DE
Using my warlord trait, I'm able to bring in the scourges and the razorwings, leaving the reavers in reserve. Wyches and incubi move up and both disembark, looking at the battlewagon - I'm planning on committing all my forces to bringing it down. The ravager decides to stop being a colossal failure for one turn and puts it down in its first volley, wounding a meganob in the explosion. Further shooting puts two more wounds on the unit, all on different nobs due to the direction of fire. The razorwings dump pie plates on the clustered orks and kill a lot, and a lance from a raider kills another meganob outright. Incubi and wyches charge and its now that I'm made aware of the combi-flamers, which get 3 hits each on overwatch! This kills two incubi. I make both charges, and deal four wounds to the unit, taking 5 in return (3 dead wyches, 2 dead incubi), archon managing to stay alive via shadowfield. The archon holds, but the wyches break.


End of turn 2. Note the depleted horde, and the fleeing wyches (next to the razorwing). Also note the ork mob on the party popper (relic).

Turn 3 - Orks
The cyborks stumble out and go after the warrior raider (now closest). Ghaz calls his Waagh! to get a 2++. The regular boys pick up the relic and move round towards Ghaz. Shooting from the cyborks manages a glancing hit on the raider, but I make a jink save to keep it alive! They charge and lose a few to overwatch, but manage to wreck the raider - all 10 warriors pile out uninjured. The other boyz charge in to help out Ghaz and friends, but roll high enough for their charge that they have to abandon the relic in their haste! In desperation, my archon challenges Ghaz to try and stay alive. The incubus slaps down a meganob, and the regular boyz chuck nearly 50 attacks at him! He takes 18 wounds, fails 6 saves....and passes all but one feel no pain! Sadly, that was enough to finish the unit. Archon doesn't hurt Ghaz, who does 3 wounds back, and my shadowfield shorts out on the final one giving the Orks Slay The Warlord

Turn 3 - DE
One Razorwing banks right towards the cyborks, and the other flies into ongoing reserve. The Reavers come on, despite my best efforts, and the wyches rally, but can't make it into cover. The venoms move round, the raider gets behind the orks, and the ravager (now useless) moves across whilst the warriors retreat slightly, meaning it is now closest to Grotsnik's cyborks. The razorwing fires both missiles to thin the horde a bit more, and the warriors also open fire to cut down even more. The dark lance on the raider lops off Ghaz's Nob, and venoms combine fire to gun down a lot of the regular boys.


End of turn 3. Only brief turns from here

Turn 4 - Orks
Ghaz joins boyz; boyz grab relic; shoot wyches dead. Grotsnik's mob are forced to charge the now useless ravager, and wreck it.

Turn 4 - DE
Razorwing flies off the table (again, part of my cunning master plan) as the one with missiles remaining comes back on. Everything just circles around; Razorwing missiles make short work of the remaining boyz, and shots from the warriors etc. manage to bring down all the boyz and cyborks leaving Ghaz standing, and grotsnik on one wound.


Bottom of turn 4

Turn 5 - Orks
Ghaz shoots a scourge but royally fails his charge. Grotsnik in his insanity makes an attempt at charging the warriors and gets gunned down for his troubles.

Turn 5 - DE
With just a wounded Ghaz left (can't remember where the first wound or two came from), the Dark Eldar converge on him, including the razorwing which came back on - now they're both in line to shoot Ghaz. Venom moves and disembarks its cargo of warriors to claim the relic. I do the razorwings as the first in my shooting phase, and the lances get the better of Ghaz.


My Party Popper! Much celebrating to be done in Commorragh!

Dark Eldar Victory by Annihilation!

I think I definitely had the edge coming into the game based on lists and army matchup. The orks should have spread out a bit more, and Ghaz could have been more aggressive in his battlewagon. Once I got rid of the lootas there was precious little that could get rid of my armour, and thanks to Grotsnik I was able to kite an entire unit around by the nose for most of the game. I fully anticipated the orks to spread out and try and keep to cover where possible, which is why I hung back with the reavers... my plan was to fly over the ork mob that held the relic from turn 5 onwards, and try and bladevane out the dude with the relic at any given moment, but they stayed together. I think I used the razorwings well, sweeping them in and out of play in an overlapping manoeuvre, to get them in their best positions as well as to line them both up ready to drop Ghaz with their lances.

Three contenders for man of the match, in order:
3: Splinter Racks - though its not obvious, the warriors in that raider did a fair amount of damage over the game, and the splinter racks were a real boon
2: The Incubus that took a charge from an entire ork mob and only died once
1: By far and away the MVP of this game; a split award to the pair of Razorwings. Without them I think the match would have been an awful lot closer - monoscythe missiles are BRUTAL against horde armies.

That's it - C&C welcome, and hope you enjoyed!

I bet 2 ork boyz for a draw on turn 5!

EDIT:
Agh, lost in gambling again.

I mean... Congratulations for the victory, and be sure to resurrect that incubus!

Looked like a good game mate, nice to see you back with the DE (no more of this 30 odd assault marine nonsense )

Panic_Puppet wrote:

The dark lance on the raider lops off Ghaz's Nob

Wow that was an accurate, and i imagine very painful, shot!

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Splinter Racks - though its not obvious, the warriors in that raider did a fair amount of damage over the game, and the splinter racks were a real boon

Love raiders with splinter racks, I never leave home without at least one.

Really good game!

I'm liking Raider without splinter racks and deploying my Warriors in area terrain. But it doesn't look like you've got any of that on your board so you definitely have the better list!

Those terrain pieces have bases, so they should count as area.

Good to see you getting back into your DE. Great game too, poor orks. Not much else to say looks like most of the mistakes were on his side and you punished him for it.

Thanks for sharing the pain!

I think I'm getting quite adept at razorwing usage... I was particularly pleased with the way I managed to get them overlapping from turns 3-5 to try and maximise their effectiveness. Comes from running 2 of them and only one ravager... even against MEQ 8 S6 large blast templates do a LOT of damage.

@ Tyrant Lord - it was 35 assault marines, I'll have you know!

@fuhrmaaj - I really, REALLY like the splinter rack raider. That unit almost never lets me down. The fact is, of all my vehicles it's by FAR the least threatening on the surface... everyone hates venoms, the ravager has ~25% of my ranged anti-tank on it, and the other raider's full of Incubi and a tooled up archon which can bring the pain against most things, so it's quite unassuming. Until people see it dishing out a mental amount of twin-linked shots. And the number of people that assault it only to be met with a very nasty surprise... generally its in rapid-fire range on turn 2 at the latest (turn 1 if stuff like this happens), and it gets at least one turn of decent shooting. When it inevitably dies I send the warriors scurrying for cover. In a nutshell, that's 10 points I've never been disappointed about spending - it generally makes its points back in at least one shooting phase.

Re: terrain - The gaming club has quite a wide variety of terrain, actually... its only now that I realise that the only other decent batrep I did (against Tyrant Lord 73's Dark Eldar) was on the same terrain set.

There's some that have very little area terrain (in fact, I think one has absolutely none, its mostly huts/ruins). This is my least favourite table terrain-wise because there just isn't enough of it. It does do LOS blocking quite well with the tall pipes, but against a predominantly combat Ork army that wasn't really necessary. I also tend to alternate, if possible (terrain's all stored in boxes) - for variety's sake, I hate using the same terrain set twice in a row so I'll use a different one next time given the option.

We've got a couple of urban wreckage-scapes, the refinery, an ork-style shanty town, one with a lot of huts, an overgrown city, and a really cool webway table that I'll try and pinch for the next game (I'm willing to sacrifice my cover saves to make for a cool-ass table)