Space Marines vs Dark Eldar - 1k pts

Mission: Emperor's Will
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
First Turn Nightfighting: No
Points: 1000

First Turn: Space Marines

So me and another (there are only like 3, 1 spikey one and another dude who's thinking of playing SM... jesus) of my space marine playing friends met up last sunday to play a few games, we played a grand total of 3 games and this is a batrep for the third and the most special of our games. Why special? Because I LOST!

Since my last batrep I've played 3 or 4 other games and I've won all, so for anyone who cares this was my first loss as Dark Eldar! Our 2nd and 3rd game were on a much smaller than usual table (roughly 4" by 4" instead of our 8" by 5") so we scaled down to 1k points. Our first and 2nd games were also quite uninteresting turn 5 tablings by me.



Terrain:
We placed the terrain without much forethought and the two MASSIVE line of sight blockers created sort of a 'funnel' into the middle which turned into a massive advantage for my friend's heavily armoured battalion going down midfield. Then we dotted out some area terrain over the table here and there.

Line of sight blockers are tile, ruins are ruins, forests are forests! The logos that might be abit hard to see are the emperor's objectives.

Armies:

Both lists were written on the spot using whatever we had at hand, except for the haemonculus who was a proxied archon. For this game I pretty much took as many dark lances as I could because my friend had alot of vehicles (OMG LIST TAILOR!), the lanceborn in the raider was sort of a poor man's ravager since I only had 1.


Kabal of the Tender Toes


Main Detachment,
HQ: (HA) Haemonculus Ancient (Liquifier Gun, Hexrifle, Agoniser)
Troops: (W) Wyches (5, HWG)
->DT: (VW) Venom (SC, NS)
Troops: (KWS) Warriors (5, Blaster)
->DT: (VKW) Venom (SC, NS)
Troops: (KW) Warriors (10, Splinter Cannon)
->DT: (RKW) Raider (NS)
Elites: (B) Trueborn (3, 3x Blaster)
-> DT: (VB) Venom (SC, NS)
Elites: (L) Trueborn (3, 2x Dark Lance)
->DT: (RLB) Raider (NS)
Heavy: (Rv) Ravager (NS)

Warlord Trait: Divide to Conquer (-1 to enemy reserve rolls)
Combat Drugs: Adrenalight




Space Marines (Iron Hands)

HQ: (L) Librarian (2 ML)
Troops: (TSC, TC2) Tactical Squad (10, Plasma Cannon, Plasma Gun)
->DT: (R) Razorback
Troops: (TS) Tactical Squad (5, Plasma Cannon)
Elites: (RD) Dreadnought (2x TL Autocannon)
Elites: (VD) Dreadnought (Venerable)
Fast: (ABH) Attack Bike
Fast: (ABM) Attack Bike (Multimelta)
Heavy: (P) Predator (Lascannon Sponsons)
Heavy: (W) Whirlwind

Warlord Trait: Champion of Humanity (+d3 VP if enemy warlord is slain in challenge)
Psychic Powers: Smite, Haemorrhage

(There might have been a powersword on a seargent here somewhere, not sure if he kept it when we scaled down from 1500pts)



Deployment:
I thinking I'd go second deployed conservatly out of LOS with most of my antitank on the flank to take out the rifleman dread early and then move onto the Predator and Whirlwind, pretty standard deployment.

My friend deploys his dreads centerally to give them an easy time advancing into my ranks and his (combat squaded) tactical squads near the objective. The Librarian joins half the tactical squad in the razorback, his more fragile armour keeps out of sight.

I try to and succede to sieze! I feel this was actually a mistake as I had deployed thinking I'd go second, I really should have let him to his initial moves and then counterattack like I had initially planned.




Dark Eldar turn 1:
Turn Goals: The rifleman had done very well in our previous games pretty much taking down one skimmer per turn so I knew I had to get rid of it early if I wanted to keep my vehicles, the other dread wasn't much of an issue in my mind due to the wyches. Predator was my main secondary goal.
Knowing I had to quickly get rid of his armour I move up my antitankness into position to take out the rifleman dread, my splinter weapons move into the midfield and take aim on his backfield tactical squads. I get greedy with my 3 Blasterborn and jump out of the venom to take some potshots at his predator and hopefully stunning it or something.
Shooting is abit lackluster with 3 Venoms and 10 snap-firing warriors only killing 2 tactical marines, the darklight hardly does better with a messly glance on the rifleman and predator... Not a great first turn for Dark Eldar.
The tactical runs away but manages to stay on the table.



Space Marine turn 1:
The small tactical squad regroup and consolidates closer to the objective.
The attack bikes manouver up towards my deployment zone. The big armour move very slowly forward and the venerable dread charges into the midfield knowing I have little antitank fire here.
His shooting proves alot more effective, the rifleman dread takes 2 hullpoints of the ravager and immobilize it and the predator immobilize the lanceborn raider. The plasmacannons destroy the blasterborn venom forcing my HQ onto the field, a few heavy bolter shoots and a big fat whirlwind blast later sees my HQ and blasterborn dead. First blood to the space marines!



Dark Eldar turn 2:
Turn Goals: The dread needs to die and finishing off the predator would be golden. Getting rid of one of the plasma cannons should be doable and would limit his troops impact on the game.
I try to avoid the attack bike with the multimelta on the right and move all my vehicles onto the left flank, the immobilized ones stay put looking slightly disappointed... and more importantly  dead.
Darklight weaponry behaves slightly better with the rifleman dread dying to another... 7 dark lances. Roughly 40 splintershots fired at BS4 kills 1 marine... the squad passes it's morale test. I feel very behind at this point, hoping to salvage by hoping onto my objective late game after hopefully shooting enough to remove him from his.



Space Marine turn 2:
He continues his armoured advance into the midfield, but leaving the predator to deal with my uncover-save darklight weaponry on the left flank. His tactical squad shuffles onto the objective making sure the plasma cannon stays put. The attack bike completes it's outflanking manouver. His librarian and tactical squad leaves the safety of their razorback.
His predator blows up my Ravager leaving me with a severe shortage of dark light weaponry. The plasma cannons and heavy bolters take out the wyche's venom and the whirlwind with the help of the librarians squad take out another 4 wyches who goes to ground in the wreckage. The lonely wych passes her morale test and stays put in the (relative) safety of the wreckage.



Dark Eldar turn 3:
Turn Goals: His troops preassuring midfield needs to die or they'll just assault my skimmers and then my troops. Hopefully my last dark lances can take out second dreadnought now that the wyches are dead.
My warriors move into rapid fire range of his librarian hoping to steal atleast one victory point before this is over. My lanceborn leave their raider to actually see something.
Splinter weapons behave themselves, or rather my friend doesn't pass 20+ saves without any casualties, for once and my big warrior squad with the help of the last Venom kill his HQ and the small marine squad. The blaster and dark lance midfield stuns and blows the multimelta of his venerable dreadnought, the Lanceborn do nothing.



Space Marine turn 3:
His attackbike goes into the corner to secure linebreaker for later in the game, the rest of his army stays put knowing they have the VP advantage now.
A plasmacannons blows up one raider and the heavy bolters and predator blow up the last Venom and the Warrior Raider. The explosions kill 3 warriors in the small squad and 2 in the larger, pinning BOTH. The whirlwind finishes of the smaller warrior squad and a few stray boltershots from somewhere kills one of the dark lances in the lanceborn squad. The last guy passes his morale test.
(forgot to mark the raider in the corner as destroyed here, sorry)



Dark Eldar turn 4:
Turn Goals: Go big or go home, the dread and razorback needs to die and the game needs to end as soon as possible.
Going for some kind of last hurra I charge my lonely wych towards his razorback and the last lanceborn tries to get a beed on the rear of the dreadnought, very ambitious plays all around.
The Wych strips 2 HP of the razorback and the snapfiring dark lance does nothing. The pinned warriors snapshot at the midfield attack bike doing NOTHING.



Space Marine turn 4:
The dread moves into chargerange of my warriors, the rest of his army stays put.
The wych gets quickly killed of and and various stray shots kill 4 warriors leaving 4 to get charged by the dread who kills of another 2 forcing the last 2 to flee.



Dark Eldar turn 5:
Turn Goal: Hold the objective and survive and hopefully the game can end in a slightly less devastating loss.
My last 2 Warriors regroup and move onto the objective hoping to survive and the game to end



Space Marine turn 5:
His tactical squads shuffle onto the objective more or less securing his win.
The dread is not impressed by the warriors and charges the last 2 tabling me!

Space Marine VICTORY!


End score: DE 1 VP (Slay the Warlord) vs Space Marines 6 VP (First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker, 1 objective)

Never lost a game of 40k this badly I think! A new and interesting experience for me, as usually I'm the one doing the tabling. Since the table was so small the nightshields felt pretty much wasted, I took as many darklight weapons as I could as I didn't have my usual wave serpent to crack open rhinos and their like, but they weren't behaving very well.

I'm not sure how much I could have done differently, when close to 90 (with about 14 snapshots) splintershots kill 3 marines over 2 turns it gets VERY hard to recover when almost all of his antitank weaponry is still on the field. Bad rolls can only account for so much though and I was abit lucky to kill his warlord as quickly as I did so what could I tactically have done differently?

Most importantly I shouldn't have siezed, had he gone first I think I could have done more with my turn 1 shooting and not have had to suicide my blasterborn. I should also have played the wyches more aggresively and taken them to the Dreadnought charging down midfield. The 'funnel-effect' of our terrain and small tablesize pretty much neutured my big movement advantage (and 60pts of nightshields), had I had more room to manouver I think I could have done much better.

Any thoughts, input and/or tactical advice about the game would be greatly appriciated!