Dark Eldar VS Dark Angels! An Illustrated 1250 batrep

A friendly 1250pt game with my best bud fielding his Dark Angels. He was excited and happy getting into the game as he'd just whooped another buddy's Tau this morning, something Mr. DA had been having trouble with. He was testing out a new list with some units he'd never fielded before, and this was only my 4th game as the glorious DE.

My list:
Mon-keigh Hunt
HQ - Archon, Combat Drugs, PGL, Huskblade, Clone Field - (with the incubi)
Elite - 3 Incubi, Venom 2xSC
Troop - 2x - 10 Kabalite Warrior, SC, Raider w/ Splinter Racks
Fast Attack - 6 Reaver Jetbikes, 2xHL
Heavy Support - Ravager, NS
Ravager

Dark Angels
HQ - Librarian, a few points of gear that never got used (with devastators)
Chaplain, Crozius Arcanum, jump pack (with assault marines)
Troop - 7 Scouts, sniper rifles
2x 10 Marine TAC squad, flamer
Fast Attack - 10 Assault Marines, 2xFlamer
Heavy Support - Predator Tank w/ TLAC, Heavy Bolters
Whirlwind
Devastators, 4x Heavy Bolter

Music: Tyr - Valkyrja, and Turisas - Turisas 2013
Mission: The Scouring
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fight: No
Warlord Trait: Both rolled Dust of a Thousand Worlds
Combat Drugs: Grave Lotus (+1 str)

Deployment:
We set up the terrain as per book ruling; roll for each 2x2 (4x4ft table). My side; barren as the tundra. His side; full of hidey holes for his Astartes cowards to hide in. He started objectives, and I pushed some of mine forward to try force him to play defensive, to let me snipe him out.
Dark Eldar win initiative. I've got my boats behind the impassable, in case he seizes. Top left to right: he has his snipers in ruins, the devastators behind a chest-high wall, TAC squad on a hill, Tanks in a godsdarn Ironbark Forest, another TAC squad on top of ruins and his assault marines hiding behind it.


DE Turn 1
Scooched all my vehicles out for LoS. Opened up with basically everything at the heavy bolters. A wise poster once told me to prioritize as such: kill what can de-mech you, then shoot at everything else. Managed to plow them with poison, leaving the libby for the ravager to one-shot. First Blood and Slay the Warlord ftw! The NS Ravager managed to immobilize his whirlwind.


DAngel Turn 1
The now-grumpy DA general hop-skotched his assault marines up the board, running them forward. Both TAC squads moved ~4" up their terrain, and the predator moved up a couple inches as well.
Snipers ding a glance off my Raider; the pred took a point off my right side Raider; the whirlwind scattered its blast off the table, having targeted Venom & Raider.


DE Turn 2
Reserves! My lovely jetbikes zoom on to the board. All my vehicles slide around to get their jink saves. Raider on stage left opens up on the snipers, kills 2. The Reavers bladevane three more snipers into oblivion, forcing them to run off the table and earning my first pain token. Dark lances get me nowhere, earning a single glance. Reavers then assault move away from the TAC squad.


DAngel Turn 2
TAC squad left moves towards the bikes, inflict three wounds which I save via Jink. TAC squad right moves further out of cover. Assault marines move up, pistol a hull point off the Venom, fail the 10" charge. Both tanks fire upon the Ravager; Whirlwind actually hits this time, but fails to glance/pen eithers boat.


DE Turn 3
Raider on left moves up, pops two Marines. Ravager opens up on pred, to meh effect. Ravager 2 opens on Whirlwind, does nothing. Raider on right (rapid fire time!) and the venom slide around to fire on the Assault Marines, melting 6 of their manly faces. I'm getting ready to receive a charge on that Venom, looking forward to the opportunity to test out Incubi & the Archon. Jetbikes turbo back to hiding out of LoS behind the impassable, sitting on the 4pt objective.


DAngel Turn 3
TAC left moves up, tries to mess up my Raider but only one glance gets through jink. Predator and Whirlwind try again for my Raider and Ravager; Ravager saves, whirlwind scatters far far away. Assault Marines shoot/charge/smash the Venom into tiny sharp fragments of death, freeing the Archon and Incubi do their business.


DE Turn 4
Jetbikes bladevane the left TAC squad, killing two, after the Kabbies in the Raider remove another few to poison. Finally manage to tear apart the Predator with the Ravages! (PS - the raiders have been firing their dark lances at the tanks since turn 1, accomplishing zilch. Ironbark Forest is seriously amazing. Right side Raider/Kabalite crew tries to take out some more Marines, but whiff their attacks. In the assault, two incubi go down to the double flamers remaining in the marine's hands.
Ouch.
Archon savages the challenged Chaplain with his huskblade, and the remaining incubi takes out two marines before falling to the blows of the third and final Astartes mon-keigh.


DAngel Turn 4
Whirlwind is useful! Takes out two of the jetbikes with it's first direct hit of the game. Tactical Marines again fire upon the leftmost Raider, not being useful. Right side TAC squad is too far away to do anything, but shuffles forward like a boss.


Having counted points, my friend determined that he mathematically cannot win this match, and concedes victory. Next turn I would have turbo-boosted the jetbikes onto an objective to contest, moved the left Raider of warriors back onto the 4pt, unloaded the right side raider into their 2pt with the Raider between them and the TAC marines as a wall, and yeah.
That would have given me at least 10 (4 & 2 objectives, First Blood, Linebreaker/contest with jetbikes, Warlord, Killed Fast Attack unit) and him with 3 (Objective)
The Dark Eldar pull out party hats and begin the celebrations.


Please help both myself and my friend learn from this match! What did we do right/wrong? What could have changed for the better? Should I have rushed the reavers straight for the whirlwind, with their heat lances?
What do you think of our lists? (He wrote his expecting to see wyches/wracks, hence the flamers)

I did shooting wrong; only managed to snag 3 pain tokens all game. Killed the Devastators with the Venom, the Libby with a Ravager. That said, I'm not sure I could have done it differently due to distance limitations, sniping across the map.

***All this said; I rolled improbably well on everything, whereas the dice gods were punishing the Angels like nobody's business. I was wounding ~ 8/13 shots from the warriors all game long, and he couldn't roll saves. Soooo, I don't feel I learned as much about the capabilities of our various armies as I did about the capriciousness of Madame Chance. And same with my pal.

Cheers for your time!

One thing that I think is wrong that the reavers used the assault move after turboboosting?

We looked for that ruling, but didn't find anything saying they couldn't.
Any chance you know the ruling or page#?

Edit: Found it. Durr. Thx.

Great game and a great report (added to the sticky of illustrated reports).

I'll focus on your friends mistakes, as I find with DE it's very hard to notice mistakes when everything goes according to plan.

Your opponents deployment was bad, he spread out splitting his forces which allowed you to have local superiority. His army composition just exacerbated this with the only advancing element being the assault marines, who were effectively unsupported. He should have kept his forces together and pushed out into the centre board that way he would have more control of the game and limit your mobility. It would have also meant that his tactical marines/scouts could effectively target the whole board and better be able to support his assault element. As it was they just charged blindly forward to their deaths. He was going second he got to see your deployment, yet he didn't compensate for it at all. He could have easily prevented your raider mounted warriors from shooting as they only have a 30" threat range, this would have dramatically reduced your turn 1 offensive.

Of course with the terrain as it was, there was there was no cover for him to push into, something he should consider in future terrain set ups. Another thing I noticed was the lack of line of sight blocking terrain for the whirlwind to hide behind, it's a barrage weapon so doesn't need line of sight, and dark eldar have no way of circumventing line of sight blocking terrain other than movement, which can leave them exposed. Whirlwinds are only AV11 they need to be out of sight.

His objective placement was also bad spreading them out like that against a very mobile army is just playing into the dark eldar hands.

His warlord should have been in his tactical squad as it has more wounds, and can still prescience the devastators as long as they are near by. He also should have blocked line of sight to his devastators with his predator turn 1. This would have made it very hard for him to give up first blood turn 1 as you would have only been able to shoot the predator, the 10 man assault marines, the scouts or the 10 man tactical marines. On his turn the predator could move away allowing the devastators to fire without needing to move.

Finally his target priority was all over the place. He was unable to focus fire due to his bad deployment, all of those lines on the diagram should have been going into one target at a time, instead he was shooting each unit into a different target. The whirlwind was shooting tanks at S5 this was a waste of time, especially when it has S4 cover ignoring rounds purpose built for dealing with reavers.

In conclusion a mixture of bad deployment, bad target priority and a list with a single twinlinked las cannon as it's only AT was brutally cut down as you capitalised on every single one of these mistakes/weaknesses in true Dark Eldar style.

Hope that helps, and thanks for sharing the pain! Look forward to the next report.

It's lovely when it all just works isn't it? I think the only thing I could see that you maybe could have done differently was to move the left hand Raider over to support the other one to really punish those Assault Marines with rapid fire re-rolling nastiness. It possibly would have kept the Venom intact, and I find it's always better to overkill something with DE. That would have maximised the use you got out of the splinter racks too.Personally I'm not sold on Splinter Cannons in Raider mounted squads, but that might just be me - because they're always moving, they only ever get to fire four shots, so I prefer to save the points. I suppose they're good if you end up disembarking though. An emphatic win anyway, congratulations!

Before I get into my reply, a query; is the sub-par quality of the images an actual issue? I got a bunch of flak and less than zero constructive anything, nevermind criticism, on Dakka. Clearly I didn't use a proper batrep writing program, but that's 'cause I've yet to hear of one that works on Mac computers so I went with a powerpoint equivalent.

Mushkilla: My friend not only greatly appreciates your input, but agrees with every single thing you've mentioned.
And a few of the thoughts applied to me, as well; if I'd focused those tanks instead of hoping for an explosion on each every round (dumb) they probably would have disappeared a turn or two sooner.
Plus plenty of the traps you've pointed out that he should avoid are strategies I should gravitate towards! Thankee kindly!
Lastly, WOO! I made it into the sticky!

Mr Believer: It really, really is nice when it works! Thanks!  
I deliberately let the remains of the assault marines get in, because this is the second time I've fielded incubi and my first archon, so I wanted to see them in CC at least once. So that was a calculated lapse. Definitely taking the "best to overkill with DE" into account in future games though, cheers. I'm not much of a mathematician, more of a gut-instinct & intuition kind of guy, so I've yet to do (or find) math-hammer done on Cannons vs racks setup. Will definitely look into it though, as those 20 points spent on Night Shields for the respective raiders would save me a world of hurt. So much Space Marine & Tau in my meta, so 24" and less is a sad place to be.

As a slight aside, the first time I brought incubi to the table, it was against Chaos Daemons. Turn 2 the 5 of 'em got hit with a screaming pie-plate of chaosy-warp-death-from-the-sky-to-the-face (Nurgle flavour, I believe) and were wiped for First Blood. It was a terrible day =(
... and then I tabled the Daemons.


Ooooh yeah! And how can I use my Reavers to better effect? All they did this game was wipe out a measly (yet potentially terrifying) unit of snipers, and get shot at three times. I've read your batreps, Mushkilla, and you definitely manage to use them to greater effect. My biggest concern (and reason for hiding them like a coward) was rapid fire on bolters. Did I do the right thing, or waste a bunch of points?

Laughingcarp wrote:

Before I get into my reply, a query; is the sub-par quality of the images an actual issue? I got a bunch of flak and less than zero constructive anything, nevermind criticism, on Dakka. Clearly I didn't use a proper batrep writing program, but that's 'cause I've yet to hear of one that works on Mac computers so I went with a powerpoint equivalent.

They are absolutely fine, the only thing I would suggest would be adding the letter used to denote the unit in the diagrams in brackets next to the corresponding list entry. Eg:

Elite - 3 Incubi (I)
Venom 2xSC (V)

Laughingcarp wrote:

Mushkilla: My friend not only greatly appreciates your input, but agrees with every single thing you've mentioned.

No problem, glad it was helpful. I didn't mean to sound overly critical, but honest (all be it sometimes brutal) feedback from members on here has always helped me improve my game.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Ooooh yeah! And how can I use my Reavers to better effect? All they did this game was wipe out a measly (yet potentially terrifying) unit of snipers, and get shot at three times. I've read your batreps, Mushkilla, and you definitely manage to use them to greater effect. My biggest concern (and reason for hiding them like a coward) was rapid fire on bolters. Did I do the right thing, or waste a bunch of points?

I think you used them sensibly. The real value of reavers, is guaranteed line breaker, and an objective deny (especially when going second). Losing them to bolter fire would have paid little in return. Though I think the biggest threat to them was the whirlwind (which you should have downed ASAP as it was the easiest shot at first blood being AV11 and a serious threat to your scoring units/reavers). Reavers are all about saturation, before moving your reavers into a dangerous position take a step back, and ask yourself, what would you shoot at if you were your opponent? The reavers or something else? If the answer is something else, then you can "safely" move your reavers into that position, despite them being in range of enemy weapons. Of course if they do target your reavers, then that "something else" which was clearly a bigger threat will wipe the floor with them. If they don't target the reavers, then they get to cause some serious problems next turn, win/win.That's the gist of it anyway.

Wow. This is one of the first batreps I've seen that really super-highlights why everyone says 6th ed is crazy shooty. In my few games I've played against IG (no more shooty than before) and Khorne (still not shooty.)
But you just beat a dark angels army by outgunning them, basically. And vastly superior tactics, but they all involved gunz. In 3, where I come from, that's unheard of.
At first I thought your incubus tactic was crazy, but looking back at the amount of shooting damage that ass squad took - fair play!
I'll be bearing all this in mind, one of my locals plays DA

I wish I could have gotten some of your luck. I had my own game against the DA this past Saturday and my opponent shot down 2 vehicles and wiped out two squads of kabalite trueborn with lances before I even got a turn. I was pretty depressed considering I deployed on the far back edge in a hammer and anvil deployment and had night shields. It only got worse as the game went on. Despite having 15 dark lances and 2 wych squads with haywire grenades I only managed 3 hullpoints of damage over the entire game even though I effectively denied him most cover saves by positioning. Archon failed his first shadow field save, etc. I'm trying to find solace that somewhere else in the universe you were getting revenge for me.

lessthanjeff; Sorry to hear! All that really means, though, is that your Archon sent in an upstart to be killed in his place, learned from that corpse's mistakes, and is preparing for a REAL attack on the marines in the near future.
Right?

Thesaltedwound; I spent a solid two weeks reading, learning, strategizing, and preparing for this match. I went through in my head again and again how to play DE, and specifically how to play against DA. Normally my matches vs this guy feel like being dragged by a Raider with chain-flails, but this one worked out well. I'm 2:4:0 vs him with DE, so I take 'em when I can.
As for the Incubi, well, it was my first DE match using them and I really wanted them to get into combat, so much so that I was willing to be stupid to make it happen =D
Gave me a solid idea what they are and aren't capable of!