Monday, March 19, 2012

Dark Eldar vs Night Lords Battle Brief


Saturday night was a good night for the Dark Eldar. Not only was I able to get a game in on the gameboard I am working on, but my dark eldar shined, if you do not count in the beastmasters.

Here again is the list I was using.

The list is a raider style list, with quite a bit of dark light weaponry. Of course Vect is one of the lists highlights, and as it often happens, Vect feasted heavily.


What I was facing is a buddy of mine who plays a strong Night Lords list that over the last couple years, I have been helping him refine and adjust. It can be quite nasty, especially when you have no psychic defense against lash.

The game was objectives with 5 in total, spread out across the board with a Dawn of War deployment. He won the dice roll and chose to go first. I did not attempt to seize the initiative.

In this game we spent some time talking about deployment and other options, so it was a slower game than normal, but was fun talking about different ways to deal with units.

His list was something like this.
Chaos Sorceror in Terminator armour with combi plasma and lash
Chaos Sorceror with Lash attached to plague marines
10 Chaos Terminators with combi plasmas and chaos glory icon
2x 10 Chaos Space Marines with Lascannon with chaos glory icon
2x 5 Plague Marines with 2 Meltas 1 Combi Melta in Rhinos with combi-meltas
2 x 6 Chosen with close combat stuff with chaos glory icon
2x 5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons with chaos glory icon
1 Possessed Vindicator

Deployment wise, he deployed two 10 man lascannon marine squads into cover and within reach of objectives, while I deployed the 20 man warrior unit with the archon with a webway. The beastmasters were thrown into reserves, while he threw a 10 man terminator unit into reserve with a chaos sorceror in terminator armour attached.


1st Round,
He came onto the board and as figured did some damage to my Kabalite Warriors in cover. He had infiltrated a couple units onto the other side of the board. Some chosen squads decked out for close combat, and carrying Icons.

My round 1 was spent coming onto the board, flanking hard with vect and 3 5 man warrior units. Moving flat out to get some advance movement before they get shot out of their raiders.

The majority of my force, came in on the opposite side, to deal with his two squads of plagues and probable terminators as they pushed hard on my objectives. Not to mention, back here, I was out of range of a couple of his guns, although he had great line of sight for any vehicle that strayed too close. One unit of chosen got shot off the board as I came in, with minimal anything else.

2nd Round,
Here he downed a raider or two, received his terminator unit, and did a good amount of damage to my 20 man warrior unit. I was down to about half now. I have to note, that while he was able to get off his psychic tests, he missed with both to hit rolls. This would become quite the pattern for him during the game.

For myself, it looked as if the dark eldar were going to win the game early tonight. My beastmastes arrived out of my webway which I had placed dead center on the board, and they were moving rapidly through the difficult terrain and were able to assault.

Vects raider, which was well hidden, moved over some rocks to unload the master of death himself along with an Incubi retinue.

Meanwhile, my lances raked into the Chaos armour, destroying two rhinos and a possessed Vindicator in a barrage of shooting. The highlight to my shooting though was the two scourge units, alongside a warrior unit and Trueborn. Just over half the chaos terminators fell, and most of the second unit of chosen.

The assaults started off great, with Vect and Incubi slaughtering a full 10 man unit of Chaos Marines in one fell swoop. Meanwhile my beastmasters hit a speed bump. More like a brick wall. They made their assault easily, and charged in. Luckily for him 7 wounds were delivered to me, which I failed 6. ( I had two units still stuck in cover from where I had to assault from, so I was suffering from assaulting through cover without grenades. Now doing the math, I had 4 razorwings, 4 Kymeras, and one beastmaster swinging back, which was just over 40 attacks. I was able to rend one, and kill one more. It was a little on the pathetic side. Of course I failed my leadership roll, and rolled a 4 to escape. So yes he rolled a 6 and swept me. The whole beastmaster unit was gone in a flash.

Round 3.
Finally some things started to turn for the Nightlords. A lash got off the other missed again, and the terminators were charging into assault along with the last of the chosen. Scourges were dying, as well as a small warrior unit. A lot of fire power was spent at damaging raiders, and a ravager, and trying to take down Vect. The Archon was put down under a hail of fire power..... kinda. Failed the first 2+ invul.



My round, Vect assaulted the vile chaos marines that slaughtered the beast masters, and took them down to two survivors, and they managed to make their morale check, leaving Vect locked in combat... That worked out too well.

My shooting round did minimal as well as my assaults except Vect of course. Lots of bad dice this round. Chaos was starting to turn the tide.

Rounds 4-6.
Making this go a little quicker. Vect was able to eat through two more units of Havocs before running out of things to kill. That made his kill total right around 30 chaos marines for the night. His plague marines advancing on the center of the board, were shot to death by overwhelming numbers of Dark Lances.

As far as my side of the board, the terminators were wiped out at the cost of one full scourge squad and one full 5 man warrior squad. The terminators just could not hold up against the number of blasters and blast pistols coming at them. However the Chaos Sorceror somehow survived all this locked into a deadly combat. With one wound left, he was able to kill 4 scourges, 5 warriors, and 4 trueborn, leaving him the only living chaos model left on the board at the end of 6.

In the end, I held 3 objectives to his none.