Sunday, August 29, 2010

Battle report - Eldar vs Blood Angels

I was hoping for a game like this, with one of the more vicious army lists out there today. First mission was Spearhead / Annihilation

vs Blood Angels; Stormraven with 5 Death company and Lamartes and a DC Dread
Land Raider with 5 assault terminators and a Librarian
2 squads of 10 assault marines with saguinary priests

Gave up first turn, reserved the guardians, spears and banshee serpent. The Land raider moved in, fired assault cannons at the reapers, killed one. Storm raven moved towards my right flank, shot at a vyper and missed. assault squads staying behind buildings farther back.

My first turn. Vypers moved left, brightlanced the land raider, glanced and gave it a flat tire. wave serpent moved right and deployed wraithguard, two hits, one glance, one pen vs the stormraven wrecking it!!  wraithguard hits the dread 3 times, one glance resulting in immobilized, reapers + autarch fired at and killed 4 of 5 death company despite a cover save vs the wreck. Go Crackshot!!

Opponent resigns. Reserves never made it on the board. Go me!!

Discussion, there is some talk about 'lucky dice rolls', '1st turn armies', etc. I was a little dismayed since I felt like I had some solid decisions there. Yes my dice were a bit 'on' but I only made maybe a dozen rolls. I also purposefully designed the army to NOT be one of those style armies. It IS a game played with dice after all.

There's also the idea that some of these type armies are "eggs in one basket". Elite units stacked with points and wargear are expensive. A couple of well placed shots / attacks can wipe out a quarter of your army with a quickness.

We reset the board and rolled Dawn of War / Command and Control. I lost the initative roll and chose to reserve everything. Probably where I went wrong, but I was hoping to have his army split up and take it apart piecemeal. This didn't work so well. By the time everyone arrived the Stormraven was sitting in my deployment zone nearly to my objective marker. The wraithguard didn't show up and every shot I made missed. My reapers also only ran 2", completely failing to make it into the ruins they were trying to get into.

My shining spears now sat in front of the stormraven and despite them assaulting backwards, the death company caught and butchered them. The dreadnought dropped onto the wave serpent with the banshees, it was blown up by the storm raven and half the squad died in the explosion, the other half were squished by the dread. That quarter of board became the warzone as the wraithlord fried and assaulted the death company, killing 3 of them! The guardians shot up the dread. My opponent thought that the reapers were going to obliterated the death company but they took a shot through a window at the other assault squad on his objective, killing several of them. They moved further into cover blocking LOS. The terminators assaulted the vypers unsuccessfully. The stormraven shot at some things and the wraithlord bonked the last marine in the head. My wraithguard showed up and knocked out one of the sponsons on the LR and made it 'no shoot'. My reapers moved the building and the vypers failed to kill any terminators. the 2nd guardian squad turbo boosted onto the board racing for the other objective, but this just drew the attention of the nearer assault squad who jumped out of the building, killing two of their number but still managed to wipe them out. the storm raven killed the wraithlord with a well placed melta shot. The termies finished off the vypers. My original guardians raced down the right side of the board, the wraithguard loaded up and parked in front of the reaper's building. Not much left out there at this point. The right flank assault marines chased down and finished off the guardians (the warlock survived and fled), and the storm raven tried to shoot some reapers, but they made saves. The termies loaded back in the LR and it headed towards my reapers. my turn - the wraith-serpent flats out towards the enemy objective, the Exarch drops a shot on them, but it goes way wide due to lack of LOS and the warlock flees some more, failing to wound the marine he shot at. we go to a 6th turn. LR tries to get closer, the storm raven parked next to my objective but was unable to shoot (we determined that the missles and melta were hull mounted and the assault cannons were sponson 180 to the front) and the marines continue to race towards the objective. The marines on their own objective fire meltas at the wave serpent but my cover save ignores the glance. The power fist fails to connect. Wraithguard pile out and between the Reaper exarch and their fire, 3 of the 4 marines go down. They assault the sergeant and mash him into a paste thanks to Enhance. The wave serpent races back across the board getting a lucky shot into the stormraven immobilizing it. Game over with a draw. (but i'm on both objectives. :D)

So I'm actually pretty happy with the list I made, it's a little tough to work with but pretty obvioulsy still a heavy hitter with all the S5 and 6 shots. The banshees never saw play except to get stuck between the dreadnought's toes. I just don't know what would be 'worse' to replace them with. Bad enough there's no farseer on the board to doom anything.

4 comments:

  1. Now that is a little misleading. I don't think anyone doubted your tactics but you have to admit those tactics were aided by some better than average die rolls on your side and some pretty crappy rolling on the other. You were also helped by his tendency to pile all his "eggs in one basket." The comment about "1st turn armies" was that since they mainly spam redundancy, you would be less likely to cripple on of those lists, even with an great first round like you had.
    That being said I do believe you are one of the best tacticians in our group and I'm not a bit surprised the list did well. I would be interested to see it go up against Darrin's or Noah's which tend to be more in line with the "1st turn list."
    No offense to either of them :)

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  2. Aww. thanks so much!! :) I do want to try it out against some other lists! I'll tone it down pointwise too if you want to go against it. :)

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  3. Actually, I have put together a 2000 pt list that I would like to try out. So, you don't have to change it for me.

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  4. Oddly most of the games I play tend to go on past that first turn, much to my chagrin. After you've had your way with Darrin in your upcoming 500 point battle, I'd like to have a go with my new 2000 point list which I will be unveiling in this Sunday's match against HurricaneGirl. Let's just say that The Shredder would feel comfortable employing my list as a part of his "Foot" clan, if you catch my meaning...

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