Saturday, March 26, 2011

Grey Knights vs Dark Eldar Battle Report


I was able to get a pick up game yesterday, and to my suprise it was against the new Grey Knights. It was a great game, and those Grey Knights are tough. I was fielding a slightly modified version of the list I posted a couple days ago, while my opponent was fielding a list he had already played several times with good success.



Board Quarter game with 3 objectives. He won the toss, and decided to make me go first since I had Vect.

The Grey Knights:
1x Grand Master with psycannon and nemesis force halbred, rad grenades
1x vulnerable dreadnaught with twin linked lascannon and missle launcher
1x vulnerable dreadnaught with assault cannon and power fist, psybolt ammunition
1x 4 paladins ( I dont remember what they had)
3x 6 man Strike Squads with a psycannon and psybolt ammunition
1x 5 man Terminator Squad with psycannon psybolt ammunition
1 Stormraven
1 Land Raider
1 Land Raider Crusader

Placed in reserve: the two land raiders and the stormraven with 5 terminators on board. Venerable dread with assault cannon outflanked.

The Dark Eldar (wishing I had more dark lances vs the heavy armor)
Asdrubael Vect
3 Haemonculi 1 ancient with shattershard, other 2 with liquifier. All three had webway portals and power weaopns
2x 3 Grotesques. 1w/ liquifier, 1 abberation with scissorhands and Raider. 1 of which had aethersails
2x 10 Warrior squads with Blaster and Splinter Cannon Raider set with Shock Prow, flickerfield, aethersails
3x 5 man warrior squads with blaster 2 of these had Venoms with 2x splinter cannons
3x 5 Scourges with 2 heat lances
3x Talos with twin linked heat lance, chain-flails, extra close combat weapon

Reserves: 3 Talos, 3 sets of Scourges set to deepstrike, 3 5 man warrior squads.

His tactic, shoot out all my dark lances before his heavy reserves came in. He used scout from the Grandmaster to give the vulnerable dreadnaught scout to outflank, while one strike squad moved forward with paladins right behind them.

My first turn, I did what I love, and moved forward with Vect, Ancient Haemonculi and another Haemonculi attached to grotesques. Because of his speed, Vect disembarked on one side of the Raider, while the Grotesques and Haemonculis got out on the other. Vect was going to assault the strike squad, while the rest open up a webway right behind him. Vect took a pain token with him.

The other Grotesques hit the red button activating aethersails and flew to the far side of the table near a far out objective. There job was to activate a webway. Everything else laid down cover fire on his strike squads killing a couple here and there. Vect quickly ate up the strike squad which was at initiative 6, but Vect is at 8. He didn't kill them all, and they remained in combat to be finished off during the Grey Knights assault phase.

His turn did what he was expecting, downed my second Grotesque Raider but was too far away to assault, shot two raiders dark lances off, and destroyed the last. All 4 raiders were neutralized, although the ones surviving had prows.

Round 2. Two Talos, 3 warrior squads, and a scourge squad came into play. Way too much. Regardless, nemesis force halberds can easily eat a talos, but they are there to kill, so they went straight through the center portal as did the rest of the reserves.

Vect was attempting to reach the back strike squad, and would of, but the paladins got shot up killing 2 of the 4 and they fell back on a bad roll. This placed them right in front of my assault path for vect. It also took the 2 talos out of assault range of the paladins (and probably saved their lives as I was about to find out in round 3). Vect ended up assaulting the fleeing paladins. He would of been able to regroup them simply by tank shocking me out of the 6" range to keep them running. Vect killed the last two paladins quickly. The rest of his strike squads were taking fire, and getting beat up.

His Land Raider came in, which allowed his strike squad near Vect to jump inside quickly. The rest of his reserves didn't make it, despite his communion ability. His forces were thinning and at this point he was close to losing most of his forces.

Round 3, I shot the crap out of the Land Raider, which failed. 6 heat lances, 3 blasters simply blew off a weapon. The 2 Talos also charged the thing and were unable to blow it up despite 5 penetrating hits and a couple glances. They did immobilize it though which allowed the 1 surviving talos in base with it, (he killed the other with dreadnaught fire and land raider fire) to rip it to shreds. The guys inside failed a moral check and fled off the board when they lost two of the three remaining strike squad inside.

My venoms turned on the remaining strike squad with their grand master, as did the last talos. The talos shot the last of the strike squad, and charged the Grandmaster. Nemesis force weapons are disqusting, and while he needed a 6 to wound it, he got it, and the talos was dead.

To wrap up the rest, the venoms were eventually able to take down the wandering Grandmaster in terminator armor, although he did take one of them out in the process. Grandmasters kill count for the day, 3 Grotesques, a Talos, Haemonculi, and Venom. He also may of been the one that shot the Raider out of the sky, so we will give it to him.

My surviving Talos, also took out the Crusader, (giving it two Land Raiders kills that game) who was attempting to come in to contest the center of the board. Scourges took out a Vulnerable Dread, by jumping over it, and shooting it in the rear, and Vect with his 3 tokens joined up with a 5 man warrior squad in the center of the board to hold an objective. Fearless, feel no pain, and in cover, they held til the end. 2 other warriors jumped aboard a weaponless raider, and flew to the far objective.

My grotesques master haemonculi, and additional haemonculi, formed a line the terminators just could not get through and were unwilling to get too close to (a failed assault would mean they would probably all die) , so they settled for their objective at the end of round 6 while trying to remove Vect and his warriors off their objective. It was worthwhile to note that the stormraven got immobilized by blaster fire. The game ended 2-1 Dark Eldar taking it.

Great game, the grey knights took a beating, but were able to stay alive to get an objective in the end. Grey Knight nemesis force weapons made the job of my 3 Talos very tough indeed. Vect ate through a couple units, and added his 3 tokens to the center to hold an objective. 6 guys in cover that are fearless with feel no pain are tough to get rid of.