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| DE came out of a Webway in the big hole in the middle of the picture |
Ah. Whilst we’d both read the codex quite a bit, neither Atr_127 nor I had played Dark Eldar in this version of their codex.
What better time than in the first game of your first ever competitive tournament right?
Mission was Kill Points and Dawn of War deployment
What were we actually facing then? From memory the boys were running:
Haemo w. Webway Portal
Lelith Hesperax
Incubi x5 w. Klaivex
Wyches x10 w. Hekatrix – Blast Pistol, 1 x Hydra Gauntlets
Trueborn – x 8, Dracon - blast pistol, loads of Shardcarbines, 1x Splinter Cannon
Warriors x10 with? nothing I think!
Reavers x 3 – Heat Lance, Cluster Caltrops
Cronos Parasite Engine – Spirit Syphon & Vortex
Cronos Parasite Engine - Spirit Syphon & Vortex
4 x Raiders (Incubi, Wyches, Trueborn, Warriors) – 4x Enhanced Aethersails, 4x Chain snares, 2 x Flickerfield, 4 x Nightshields
(You can see our list HERE)
How were they used and deployed?
The guys went first and deployed a raider with wyches and attached Haemo in.
Everything else started in Reserve.
They deployed out of sight and first turn they burned forward with the haemo leaving the unit/boat and deploying the Webway Portal. When the Haemo left he left his pain token with the wyches.
Combat drugs at the start of the game had given rerolls on wounds…useful vs my Wolves…
We deployed nothing and rolled on in our first turn.
Good reserve rolls meant that on turn 2 everything more or less (a raider and the Warriors were stuck in reserve) came in.
Our troops were deployed more or less in the left hand side of our table edge, with the Wolf contingent spaced slightly to the right as a flanking force…should we be able to outmanoeuvre the DE…Lol. Right.
All the DE came for us, but did very little damage…several penetrating hits on key transports we saved by cover and the Fangs survived casualties from the Parasites blast templates, although the Squad Leader fell, gaining a Pain token to the warriors.
We fluffed a lot of our turn 2 shooting, felling a couple of Raiders and putting a couple of wounds onto the wyches.
Turn 3, the DE were on us, all reserves in and on top of us. Reavers smashed up a chimera, but a lot of other damage was saved through poor damage rolls – nothing permanent. Incubi ate a squad of something, Cronos decided to eat the Scouts…very slowly over 4 combat phases! Haemo fell trying to charge the Vets in their chimera – he rolled a 1 for dangerous terrain and died.
Our T3, shooting worked a treat, wyches fell, lelith fell (yup, she was quiet…did nothing then died…Toughness 3 sucks) cronos both fell, raiders fell, reavers fell.
Turn 4 nothing really happened, then we tabled the guys on Turn 5.
The fella’s were really good guys and had worked mind numbingly hard to get the DE painted, and to a really high standard (think they were joint first for Best Painted, 12 votes each and a 3 way tie, they lost out to some gorgeous Night Lords)
They took the pasting really well. We only lost around 180 points in VP’s.
Why did we not take a pasting from the new hotness?
Look at the list they brought. Full of inefficiencies. So many upgrades! 250 points in HQ…worth while in some cases at 1500, but expensive for what they get for it.
Lelith can murder units, but at toughness 3 and only a 4++ the chimera’s tore her apart after removing the meat shield unit she was with.
Upgrades? Why take the Klaivex in the Incubi? (15points) Why the Dracon w Blast Pistol? Ok it gives an anti infantry unit some utility, but then it has a raider with anti armour, so why remove some efficiency from the units main task? (25points)
Hydra Gauntlets (10points) were a waste. Cluster Caltrops (20points) and as for the Raiders? 100 points of upgrades across 4 vehicles!
If you include Lelith…then that’s 345 points pissed away.
If you don’t…170points.
That’s either 1 or 2 (depending on whether you like Lilith) properly equipped units!
This is not to say that the guys could have avoided our vengeful fire but it could have meant a lot more of a fight.
Whilst they may be new and scary, they are still T3, a lot of weapons flat out murder them. It doesn’t matter how many tokens a unit has…they still die to instant death…and when you pack a list full of multi lasers, missile launchers and autocannons…
New toys can be very shiny…but this doesn’t mean they are always worth taking…
Hey, i was there this weekend as well.
ReplyDeleteThese guys got my vote for best painted, but never had the opportunity to play against them myself
this game was an interesting one for me because at the start, i was genuinely scared. the codex has the capacity to be very powerful, even against a list as well optimised as ours was.
ReplyDeleteas has been stated above, the list they took was not designed to be super-competative. they had built their army purely from first wave releases and cool conversions, and it looked great, but was full of inefficiencies.
it was still great to see the pain tokens in action, and it really proved the effectiveness of the cronos combined with the webway portal. on one occasion a single cronos handed out 3 pain tokens in a single turn.
incidently, the picture at the top shows what we had left at the end, not our deployment ;)
I have played quite a few games with the DE thus far , they had no chance with that list, I'm glad to hear the models are getting the paint jobs they deserve, something I'm struggling to set on myself atm.
ReplyDeleteCompetitive DE lists are all going to look the same for a while I fear , due to the limited amount of releases so far, mine are not going to be at a tourney for maybe 6-8 months to allow for more releases and a proper amount of time to learn the army and tune a proper tourney list.
Grats on the win
@DrLove42 - follow the blog dude, there is a tonne more to come from Warlords!
ReplyDeleteThese boys got both Andy and my vote for Best Painted.
The Night Lords were good looking though...
@Sorrowshard - I think you are right to a degree. It is very, very early to be getting competitive tournament armies ready, especialy with the time taken to convert unrepresented models like Venoms.
Shit, even the fighter bombers - Voidravens and Razorwings or whatever.
But even at this juncture, the guys could have brought a pair of Venoms with Trueborn and Blasters for the wasted points they punked into units..including Lelith.
As Atr_127 said though, the guys were up for a laugh and I think spent alot of time towards the bottom tables during the 2 days...too early.