A Couple nights ago I was able to squeeze in a game against the old Daemons, a sort of send off for the old codex, since the new one is right around the corner. So playing againt the now old codex, I sent in my Dark eldar to see what would occur.
Its rough to fight Daemons with Dark Eldar, specifically because I tend to field a very fragile glass hammer type of army. Meaning my warriors are going to get shredded and quickly. Daemons being able to deep strike in, and turbo boost to get those immediate shots is horrid for Dark Eldar. Screamers tend to rip apart any squads that they choose, and pink horrors just get the drop on them. So I knew this was going to be a tough one, so it was going to be fun.
First off, the lists were something like this for a 2500pts game.........
Chaos Daemon list as I remember it
4 units of 3 screamers
3 units of 3 flamers
The Oracle
4 or 5 Tzeentch Heralds on Chariots if I recall correctly
2 large squads of Daemonettes (15) I think
4 squads of Pink Horrors with the usual Changling
2 large squads of Fiends
The Dark Eldar
7 Raider squads of 5 warriors with no wpn upgrades
4 Ravagers
2 Venoms
6 squads of trueborn with Splinter Cannons
2 Aegis Defense with Quad Guns
1 Farseer with Fortune
5 Harlequins with Shadowseer and fusion pistols
3 Archons with assortment of weaponry and Blasters
The Game. The game was mission 1 with only 3 objectives on the board, and the daemon player was able to place two of the three. both of which were on the other side of the board. I decided to take the first turn, to protect my skimmers as long as I could with cover saves, as I knew those screamers and pink horrors could do quite a bit of damage to unmoving raiders. (which worked btw as I only lost one when he appeared in the first round)
The second round really started going my way, as Fateweaver was grounded and took a wound to the quad guns as he came onto the board. Under a horde of splinter cannon fire, fateweaver was then destroyed during my first shooting at the top of round 2. Screamers were also destroyed as raider reserves with warriors on them entered the field to wreck revenge on turbo boosting screamers.
This is where things started to head south. I was not able to make cover saves for my trueborn units that were hiding in ruins. The daemon player just could not miss his deepstrikes, and they were brutal appearing in the most opportune positions.
When the fiends started hitting, with secondary waves of flamers of pink horrors, Dark Eldar started falling on all flanks a little too quick. By the end of the third round, defeat was staring me in the face, and I had to desperately look for a way to make a game of it.
The one advantage the all deep striking army had against me, was appearing where ever he wanted. This threw my army and more importantly my death star into not having a single direction. In fact, my harly death star had to assault in the exact opposite direction of where I wanted them going. (towards objectives). This stuck them at my very back edge of the board fighting fiends and flamers, with which my opponent was making excellent invul saves.
As it was looking by the top of 4, the battle was going OK, but to win or even make a game of it, I had to get something near an objective. This was looking grim.
The only unit that could make a game of it was way too far away. My Harlies had just completed a lucky hit and run, and had moved a full 14 inches across the field. With a 6 inch movement, I was able to assault a Herald with a good assault roll of 10. So at the top of 4, things were looking like I would still loose it, but at least was making my opponent work for his victory.
Speaking of that death star. They were under constant attack. Flamers ripped through the unit twice up until this point (causing the death of 1 harly and 1 archon). Fighting flamers and fiends had been quite ugly.
So the Archons and harlies killed the herald, and were able to consolidate into nearby ruins. 2 of the Archons were still alive with shadowshields still in effect. Heading into the 5th round, I pummeled by pink horror shots, but it was nothing to the Archons and did little more than bounce off the shadow fields.
On the other side of the field, I had erected a Raider Wall (I love using raiders this way), to slow down the movement of the 30 or so daemonettes that were closing in on my one held objective. The Raider wall was extremely effective, not only because it blocked and slowed down there path (they were bearing down on two squads of 5 warriors holding my objective), but because when he assaulted them to take them down, they blew up, killing a larger than normal number of daemonettes with them.
The first raider that blew up killed 7, while another killed 9. there was even a third explosion, and with the now active again (new warrior squad) Quad Gun, the remaining daemonettes were shredded. By far exploding raiders killed more daemonettes than did my shooting. He really did not have a choice though, as I had at one point a 3 raider blockade with 5 warriors stretching completely through his path. (I did lose all of them with the exception of 1 raider, but nothing there could hold an objective so I did not care).
So with one objective securely held by myself, and the other by the Daemons, the third in the ruins was tightly being fought over. During the melee in the ruins, both shadowfields of both my general and my other archon were downed, as the melee and several waves of pink horrors charged the ruins and the location of the final objective.
Fate came into play, as the extremely tight and harrowing game kept on going into the 7th round of play. As did the final fight for the last objective. In the end, I had a single Farseer and two Archons (no longer with shadowfields) fighting a single surviving pink horror over the objective (which was exploding).
Game Results were the following:
Daemons:
First Blood= 1pt
1 Objective-=3pts
Dark Eldar
Slay the Warlord= 1pt
1 Objective =3pts
Result Tie
Of interest we were playing on the diagonal deployment. while I was close to getting linebreaker, I was not able to clear up the last of the coming pink horrors (great invul saves were made).
Left on the field on his end was one small unit of Pink Horrors and a single last horror still locked in combat
I had two archones with a two wounds left, and farseer. 1 immobilized raider, 1 active Raider, two squads of 5 warriors, and a single trueborn with a splinter cannon.So point wise I had a lot more points left on the field, over 500 without counting the quad guns.
Tough Game, fun opponent, and very dramatic.
