Game 3 at Clash of the Titans

The last battle of the day.

I had moved down alittle in the rankings after my loss to the orcs. But that did not mean my opponents would be easier.
I had the pleasure of being matched up with Nick. Nick is an allround pleasant guy from the local crowd in Odense, and also the guy who supplied me with all the stormbolter arms for my Thousand Sons.

Nick plays Grey Knights and had a pretty standard allround list.

Librarian

Techmarine
Vindicare assassin
10 Purifiers with 4 psycannons and halberds.

2x 10 Strikesquad knights wtih 2 psycannons
5 Strike squad knights with 1 psycannon

3 Razorbacks with psybolt ammo

3 Dreadnoughts with tl autocannons and psybolt ammo

Mission:
Pitched battle

Pregame thoughts:
This would be all about deployment. He has three units that can reach 48", 4 that can reach 36" and 7 psycannons that can reach 24". At the very least I want to be able to deploy outside the reach of his 36" or shorter shooting, which should be possible between LOS blocking terrain and nightshields.

Also the fact that he does not have transports for all his grunts is good for me. I can start working on them with my venoms from the beginning, without worrying about punching holes in armor with my lances of fizzle.
I decide to use my speed to gain points of the objectives from the beginning and killing FOC slots and IC´s for extra points.

Deployment:
Nick won the roll and decided to go first.
He then exhibited the 40k version of tunnel vision. He saw a ruin in his deployment zone, fortified it and put his three dreadnoughts and vindicare in it. The mass of his infantry and razorbacks he deployed in cover in the middle of the board.

The picture is from midgame but shows the ruin where the dreadnoughts deployed.

Ofcourse I went on to deploy in the opposite corner. I would be out of range for at least one turn. probably two, of his dreadnoughts. I estimated the razorbacks also would be unable to reach me in turn 1.

Pciture taken after my turn 1 move. The forest at the top left used to contain 10 purifiers + techmarine :)

I reserved my two raiders with content and the reaver jet bikes.

Turn 1

Nick moved up his dreadnoughts and also ran with them. His razorbacks moved up, two of the 12 inches and the last one 6 inches. His many grey knights moved around in the cover and moved into better firing positions.
The only thing that could reach anything was the single razorbacks and the single penetrate it managed I took on the flickerfield of a Venom.

And now to the pain!

I put all fire I could manage, which was 7 Venoms and 2 Trueborn groups, into the purifiers and wiped them to a man inculding the techmarine who were with them.
My ravagers poured dark energy into the razorbacks but as usual only managed stunned or shaken which is utterly meh against grey knights.

Turn 2

Again the dreadnoughts had to move and run to even begin being in range. Next turn they would able to lay down their devastating fire.
The strike squads midfield scrambled backwards trying to get behind the razorbacks and outside range of the Venoms.
The razorbacks ofcourse shook of the stunned and shaken results and started laying down supression fire on my Venoms. One were blown up, another immobilized and a third were stunned.

My reserve rolls got me both Reaver squads and the raider with the succubus and wyches. The Reavers I send up the short table edge far removed from any Grey knights. I want them for contesting in the endgame and maybe meltasniping vehicles. The raider turboboosted straight at dreadnoughts. As it turns out not the brightest move, but at least they end up drawing alot of fire that would otherwise fire on my Venoms.

My Venoms proceed to wipe another Grey knight squad. This time its the 10 strike squad knights They are helped by 3 groups of trueborn. My ravagers fire into the sides of the razorbacks, one has its weapon blown off and is immobilzed. The others are still intact.

Nick flexes at the reavers, maybe he´s trying to intimidate them? :)

Turn 3

The Vindicare assassin put the smackdown on my raider, blowing it up. Massed stormbolter fire followed from the grey knight squad with the librarian. Its a loss ofcourse, but I dont really need close combat in this match so whatever shots that is drawn away from my Venoms is good. The dreadnoughts knocked out a single Venom. The two still firing razorbacks immobilize one ravager.

Still largely intact and able to deliver a knockout punch Venoms move up to start working on the librarian and 10 strike squad knights. A single Venom focus its fire on the Vindicare assassin and kills him dead, dead, dead. The reaver bikes and warrior squads gives the small 5 man strikesquad who this far has been sitting tight on an objective a poison overdose.

The Ravagers move back alittle trying to be out of range of the dreadnoughts while they still can reach the razorbacks. Between them and the trueborns who are now on foot the razorbacks are shoot relentlessly with lances. One is wrecked and another is immobilized.

At this point Nick only has his 3 dreadnoughts, the librarian and a couple of strike squad knights left. The game is by any stretch over, but we play on as im able to gather more points from the game the longer it continues.

Turn 4 and 5

The dreadnoughts kill Ravagers and Venoms indiscrimnately.

The venoms and Reavers kill the Librarian and I move my forces out to all objectives and table quarters.

Score:
Dark eldars: 44
Grey Knights: 14

Post game thoughts:
The game played out mostly as I hoped it would. My deployment gave me the advantage for two turns which as it turns out, was enough for my paperplanes to overcome the titanium of Titan.
Besides sending my boss to her death I did not make any blunders. It is interesting to think about the difference of armies. Many armies and builds allows you to recover from mistakes and bad rolling, the dark eldars not so much.
You need everything to click from movement, to target priority and objectives of the game. As opposed to many armies where you can take a punch to the face and then retaliate, Dark eldars does not recover well from a punch.
So avoid getting hit at all and choose your targets well while all the time keeping the endgame objectives in mind.

"Armour is a state of mind that allows for the possibility of getting hit"

Introducing: the troops part 1

Its time to say hello to my Thousand sons troops.

First of we got the ones who will be Strike squads or purifiers, depending on which build im going with at the time.

I got 19 stormbolter guys sitting there ready to lay down stormbolter fire. Three of them i gave icon of Tzeentch, to underline their changing ways and new commitment. All of them are equippied with kopesh og scythe looking onehanded close combat weapons.
The bodies and heads are made out of 1K sons, the stormbolters are from Grey Knights and the close combat weapons are weapon bits from chaos space marines, tomb king tomb guards and grey knights.

The special weapons and gear.

Ten of the stalwarts of Prospero are equipped with autocannons (count as psycannons). Theres also two incinerators which didnt make it onto the picture.

For close combat outfitting in the purifier squads or for justicars in the strikesquadsI got four halberds and two daemonhammers.

Next up: introducing the troops part 2, terminators and paladins

Game 2 at Clash of the Titans

The first game was wrapped up in a nice package of whoopass, so I went out for a sandwhich and came back with a burger.

My second game was going to be against a newcomer to the tournament scene.This was his second tournament ever.

Peter T. had brought a list of 100+ orkses and loads of walkers.
Peter is a really pleasant guy and I hope to play him again at some future tournament.

His list was as follows:

2 Big Meks with KFF
10 Kommandos with Snikrot
10 Lootas
3x 30 boys
2 Deffdreads
3x3 Kans with assorted weapons which I do´nt remember.

The deployment for our match was spearhead.
Peter won the rolloff and decided to go first.

Pregame thoughts:
Doing the math quickly in my head, I concluded that I would need five turns rounds of average shooting and wounding from my Venoms and average cover saves from his orks to kill all his boys. Which ofcourse again would mean they needed to be alive for five turns.

On the other hand I would also have to deal with 11 walkers. That would be up to my ravagers and trueborns.

Alot of things would have to work, for me to be able to deal with the orcs. They would be ahead from the get go, since they could swamp the objectives and start gaining points of them every round.

Deployment
Peter deployed a standard Kan-wall at the 12 inch line from the center of the board. Snikrot and crew went into reserve. I deployed back out of range of his lootas and everything else shooty, ready to lay down fire.

I tried to seize, but did not succeed.

Turn 1
Peter shuffled his forces forward and took some potshots with his lootas that fell short.

I moved up aggressively and disembarked my trueborns to shoot up the kan. The rest of my Venoms, raiders and the ravagers stayed back at extreme range to shoot up the advancing horde.

My venom shooting went ok and i whittled down 17 orcs from one mob. The trueborn and ravagers were a huge failure though. One or two shaken was all that got through an amazing round of cover saves. Guess that was karma from my first game agaijnst the Dark angels, where I made all flickerfields in round 1,

Turn 2

The orcs moved up.
One venom were stunned, another immobilized and yet another wrecked to the fire from lootas and Kan shooting. Two groups of trueborn were decimated.

Not exactly my game this far.

I swung two Venoms up towards the orc  backfield to get line of fire to the lootas without cover. The remainder of my forces, except what were stunned and immobilized, moved further back into my deployment quarter.
My shooting against the boys and lootas went ok. The lootas were decimated to one man that broke and ran, the already wounded boy mob whittled down to 5 man that went to ground on an objective and a handful more deaths from the 2nd of the big mobs.
My lance shooting again whiffed badly. The best I could manage with 15 lances were two weapon destroyed. So all Kans were still intact thanks to KFF cover.

Turn 3

Snikrot turned up and ran into two of my ravagers standing close to the sideline.

The remaning of the orcs moved forward and pressed me further away from the center and the majority of the objectives. Kan assaults killed another two venoms that were stunned or immobilized from the previous turn. Snikrot and friends only managed to get in a single glancing hit for a shaken result on a ravager.

My Succubus and wyches deployed out of their raider to engage Snikrot.

Ravagers and remaining trueborns moved around and centered in on three Kans to try and kill them, since they had gotten stuck outside of KFF range, when Peter had to move a Big mek from a decimated boy mob to avoid getting him killed.

Finally my lances worked with me and I could start killing Kans two of them were wrecked. Another Kan were killed by a single raider lance, eventhough it still was covered by KFF. Amazing!

Turn 4+5+6

Peter was at this point running out of things that could kill my units as long as I could stay away from him. But he just had to hold onto objectives for as long as possible, to avoid me getting points of them. So the boys and kans hunkered down on objectives

I tried my best to kill his units at this point, since there was really no way for me to tally up enough points. I needed to go for killpoints, wiped FOC slots and dead IC points.
I got rid of several more boys and Kans and scored some points that way. But it wasnt enough. My firepower was to little and to late

Orkses hiding!

Result: a close match with many dead, especially among the ork horde.

Dark eldars: 13 Orks: 21

Post game thoughts
Ok so I did several big mistakes in this game.I should never have moved up my venoms with trueborns and deployed them. Holding back and decimating boy mobs forcing him to move his bigmeks and thereby making his KFF radius smaller would have been the way to go.
Im not sure if I could have pulled it of anyways, Theres just damned many things to kill and when you´r shooting is ineffective for two full turns, theres only that much you can do.
I also did some silly disembarks with my wyches. Getting out of the raiders at unnessecary times and not being able to embark and then turboboost them around afterwards.

Armies put up for painting nomination at Clash

Four armies were put up for votes on painting.

The pariticpants gets one vote each and no one can vote on their own army. Its subjective how and why you vote so you can decide on your own what you wanna focus on.

Personally I want an army to be finished, be based and overall look good. I dont really care for centerpieces or single stunning models. Its an army we are voting on afterall.

That said, I gave my vote to Mathias. His army is really good looking, with lots of details and minor conversions.

Here are two pictures from each army put forward.

These amazing Tyranids won last year and  belongs to Lasse.

Next up we got Mathias and his Imperial guards.

Then we got Nicks Grey Knights.

And my own Dark eldars.

Game 1 at Clash of the Titans

After a hour and a half trainride I made it to Odense. There were buns and butter, tea and coffee!

My first match was against Jesper and his Dark angels. I talked many times with Jesper at the clash tournaments but I never gotten to play him till now.

Jesper plays a shooty Dark angel list.

Belial

3x5 Terminators with th/ss and CML.
10 Tacticals with missile launhcer, powerfist and plasmagun in a rhino.
5 Tacticals with meltagun, powerweapon in a rhino


2x1 Landspeeder with missiles
3+1 Ravenwing bikes + multimelta attackbike

2 Predators with lascannon sponsons

Pregame thoughts: the missions are all the same. Alot of different parameters to gather points. Its possible to effectively get up to something like 50 points. And even if you loose bigtime you should be able to score a few points. I will focus on outmaneuvering him, staying away from his terminators and trying to destroy, or at least stunlock. his ranged fire as fast as possible. His terminators would be the happy recipients of 84 poisoned shots. I expected to remove one group each round where my venom fleet was intact.

Deployment: dawn of war

I won the roll to begin but gave it to Jesper. He deployed nothing and neither did I. I put my 3 reaver bikes in reserver.

Turn 1
The dark angels moved onto the table around the center with his terminators, they were flanked by a predator on each side and landspeeders behind them. It was a textbook deployment. I would only be able to come onto the table and do a moderate denied flank. His rhinos rushed up on one extreme flank against a couple of objectives.

I turboboosted evrything in on the middle and out to the right putting the raiders and ravagers with nightshield as much into the corner as possible. With nightshield they might just be outside range of most of his shooting and everything would have 4+ cover.

Turn 2
I braced for the pain. The shooty dark angels were sure to make a dent in my paperplane fleet.

And watched in amazement as everything single shot fell short of range (thank you night shield), missed or were shruggred off by the cover save. At the end of the dark angelss shooting phase where everything got to shoot the only result were ONE stunned venom.

Ok so now it was my turn.
My venoms moved out towards objectives to start scoring points of them each round. My shooting began and having placed myself so far back in a corner, I might have issues reaching his armor with my ravagers. So the first round I focused everything on terminators and rhinos.
The round went well, 7 or 8 termintors died, amongst them two of the CML terminators. Belials squad was down to Belial and a single buttbuddy.
The ravenwing bikes were also shot of the table and a single rhino exploded with a group of wyches in a raider standing next to them.

Turn 3

So far everything was going well. I had removed about a third of the Dark angels longrange fire platforms, so now he would only be able to shoot at 5 different targets.
Seeing how his terminators were poisined to death by my venoms, Jesper decided to focus all of his remaining fire onto them.
In yet another spectacular display of dice being dice, he only managed to shoot down a single one of them and immobilize another, with his entire fire base.

My reaver bikes came in turbo boosting up towards the predator on my extreme left flank, away from the rest of my army. In my turn three i moved in for the kill. I send my wyches and succubus against one objective and the marines sitting there. The venom fleet moved around to sit on more objectives and unleashed the torrent of poison on his terminators. The ravagers shuffled around to get clear firing lanes towards the predators and landspeeders.
I killed, stunned or shot weapons off everything, except a single landspeeder that refused to die. Fair enough I guess :)

My wyches killed a group of marines in close combat, 10 poisoned powerweapon attacks are nice, and gained a furious charge pain token. I consolidated towards Belial and buddy.

Turn 4 and 5

At this point the Dark angels have stopped being a coherent fighting force and is isolated little pockets of resistance being mopped up.

The shooting is nonexcistent, but in closecombat he destroys a venom with thunderhammer to the face and Belial and buddy charges my succubus, wins combat and break the squad.

In my turn the succubus and wyches regrouped. All my warriors squads turboboosted out to objectives and i sat comfortably on every single objective as I killed his last remaning landspeeder for a clean sheet.
The dark angels got tabled.

I got 45 points and Jesper got 5.

Postgame thoughts: well its not like theres much gamewise I can use to improve my game. I deployed well and did not do anything really stupid, and then everything else was decided by Jespers dice.
Jesper is a really cool and nice guy, so eventhough I was glad I had reaped alot of points, I still hoped his dice would be more fair to him in the next games.

Going to Clash in Odense today!

Today im going to Odense to participate in Clash of the Titans.

Clash, besides being a good band, also is a series of one day competitions held in Odense. The local crowd over there are really nice and friendly to play with and the best of them, can give anyone a run for their money.

Odense calling in this case!

The CotT missions are rather complex for purpose of figuring who won. You get points for basically anything you can do in the game. Points if you killed IC in assault, points if you killed more units than the opponent, points if you control tablequarters, points if you got units in the opponents deployment zone and the list goes on.
I´m not entirely sure how I like that way. I mean, theres 17 different parameters on which you can score points. Guess I will have to try it before I curl up on the floor in a fetal position and start a catatonic rant.

I´m bringing my Dark eldars. Im not entirely sure about that choice since alot of the locals in Odense plays Imperial guard, and IG is probably the worst matchup alongside Space wolves that I can think of for my Mech Dark Eldars.

But if you avoid the bad matchups against good players, you will never learn how to cope.

I will post the matches (abbreviated), pictures and results monday or tuesday.

On to the list.
Its 1850 points and I put in a succubus for counterassault purposes. Only tried utilizing her once or twice before.

Succubus: agoniser
Haemonculus

3x 3 Trueborn: 3 blasters
- Venoms with 2 splintercannons

4x 5 Warriors: 1 blaster
- Venoms with 2 splintercannons
1x 5 Wyches: haywire grenades
- Raider with shockprow
1x 7 Wyches: hekatrix, agnosier, haywire grenades
- Raider with shockprow, flickerfield. night shield

1x 3 Reavers: heatlance

3 Ravagers: flickerfield, nightshield

How to win against necrons, a battlereport!

Well first of you seize on them.

After that you proceed to watching him fail every single armour and cover roll you make him take, in the alpha strike you just got off on him.


Ok lets go back to the beginning.

Today I played Mikael and his necrons. We always have friendly and relaxed matches and today was no different. As the battle unfolded, there was alot of deep sighs from his side of the table though.

2000 point Necrons (what I can remember of it)

Harbinger of destruction: solar pulse

Harbinger of storm

2x 10 immortals

1x 10 warriors

5 Destroyers: 2 heavy gauss cannons, 3 gauss cannons

4 Wraiths with whip coils

5 Scarabs

Nightbringer: Worldscape

2x Monolith

Annihilation barge

2000 point Dark eldars

 Succubus: agoniser

Haemonculus

3x4 Trueborn: 3 blasters in Venoms

4x5 Warriors with blaster in Venoms

1x5 Warriors with blaster in a raider with shockprow and flickerfield

8 Wyches with hekatrix and agoniser in a raider with shockprow, flickerfield and nightshield

6 Reavers with two heatlances and champion

3x Ravager with flickerfield and nightshield

Deployment:

Mikael deployed most of his ranged shooters in the middle, with the two monoliths on each side of them. The warriors were kept in reserve.

I deployed to deny him a flank and all the way on my backline, to stay out of range of most of his shooting. I kept the reavers in reserve.

As it turned out with me seizing the initative, my deployment turned out to be mostly irrelevant.

Turn 1

After seizing I moved up my entire fleet of skimmers so they were between 31 and 36 inches from their targets. Which were the closest monolith, wraiths and destroyers.

The monolith were killed by the first ravager to shoot it, the other ravagers only managed to shoot the big gun of the annihilation barge, the wraiths were cut in half and the destroyers were wiped off the board by the combined fire of 84 Venom shots.

The return fire from the necrons was non-excistent and only the scarabs managed to get into close combat with two venoms. They ate one of them and got a shaken result on the other. The one exploding Venom did manage to put four wounds on the scarabs.

Solar flare was fired of and would be in effect during the dark eldar shooting.

Turn one thoughts: definately an uphill struggle for Mikael and his necrons. I already had the advantage of range against him. Now I also managed to alphastrike before he could get off solarflare.

Turn 2

The reavers came in and turboboosted over and past the scarabs putting enough wounds on them to remove all but one model.

The rest of the army shuffled around, to stay at maximum range of the necrons. The night fighting effect made sure that even with nightvision I couldnt see much. So all that I killed in shooting, was a single immortal and immobilised the annihilation barge

The wyches got out of their transport to get stuck in combat with the single remaining Wraith. It kindly supplied them with a paintoken.

 

The necrons moved up further and shot at ravagers but only managed to immobilize one and shake another. 

They were sitting heavyily on midfield with immortals and the remaning monolith.

Turn two thoughts: I had actually forgotten about the solar flare and night fighting when I moved.Otherwise I would probably have gotten slightly closer.

Turn 3 and 4

Back to full shooting potential.

I molested the necrons during these rounds. My venoms let loose on the immortals one group at a time and grinded them down with pure number of shots.

The necrons tried one last gambi. The harbingers split of on their own, the nightbringer got out from hiding behind the wrecked monolith and the remaining immortals moved up. Their shooting would have to be fantastic. But if they could hit with everything there would be a chance of them downing up to five vehicles putting a real dent in the dark eldars mobility and firebase.

As it turned out they didnt do anything. Either Mikael rolled 1´s or 2´s on to hit or I managed all my flickerfield saves.

Thoughts on the rounds: at this point the game was effectively over. Two units, one warrior and one immortal, remained for the necrons. They were battered and broken. We would both claim the opponents primary zones and we would both contest our own. So it would go to kill points where I was in a solid lead.

We called it quits after turn four.

Thoughts on my game:

Seizing changed up the game. I had deployed well and would probably have lost a single venom to the destroyers and nothing else. Then solar flare would have gone off. That would have messed with my first shooting round and given an entirely different game. Mikael would have been much closer with both monoliths, destroyers and immortals. That would have put an entirely different pressure on me. Now I were able to roll up his left flank and maneuvre around him on the middle of the board.

To sad that monoliths are so bleh in the new codex. They used to be so iconic,

Introducing: Thousand Sons HQ.

My newest build is actually also my oldest.

My very first army was a Thousand Sons army based on the 5th ed. Chaos space marine codex. It consisted of 3 squads of 9 Thousand son marines riding in 3 rhinos with havoc launchers.
To back them up I had 8 Terminators with mark of Tzeentch, a dreadnought with plasmacannon and missile launcher plus two defilers and 3 obliterastors.
Their leader was ofcourse a chaos sorcerer in terminator armor with mark of tzeentch.

Awesome right?

Well not so much for quite awhile. So somewhere between shifting to a Black legion build but before my Dark eldars, I scrubbed the paint off most of the army. And there it sat for awhile.

When my dark eldars were nearing completion and I wanted to build something new I looked through the darkest, dustiest area of my figure closet and found the remains of the once proud Thousand Sons CSM army. I decided to do something about that.

The idea to use the Grey Knight codex almost seemed like a godsend. They were all some kind of psykers, like the Thousand Sons were to some extent.

From there the building escalated and I added minis and models, I bought new things and converted with bitz picked up from friends and bitz sites.

Placing the Thousand Sons warband in the beginning of the Horus Herey was convenient since some of the stuff i had were Tzeentchian iconography but I also wanted to incorporate some egyptian iconography.

So the warband as they excist, are placed chronologically somewhere after the burning and escaping Prospero but before the Rubric of Ahriman.

Well onto the Headquarter units:

This guy will be my count as "Inquisitor Coteaz".
I might cut of the sword and give him a daemonhammer, but right now im out of hammers.

From the left we have an inquisitor in terminator armor with a psycannon. In the middle and to the right we have two sorcerers (Librarians).

These two lovely fellas will most likely be joined by 2 more, and end up as justicars in strike squads. On the other hand they might also become brotherhood champions or inquisitors in powerarmor.

Now this lad is Ahriman.
And what he will be used for im not entirely decided upon.

Next up I will introduce the backbone of my army. The terminators.

the Forgeworld order came in

Most of the stuff are for guys at my gaming club. But some of it is mine.

So whats in there for me?

1000k sons dreadnought, 2 autocannons, 2 1000k sons rhino doors, 3 razorback lascannons, 3 razorback heavy bolters,

Other stuff for some of the guys are:
2 Decimator daemon engines with assorted weapons, Nurgle dreadnought and Nurgle sorcerer, a couple of sabre defense platforms and a Hyperios whirlwind kit. And a bunch of other stuff and transfer sheets.

Fun times ahead indeed ....

The items for myself should be the final components for my 1000k sons count as Grey Knight army. Tomorrow I will begin introducing the units I build for the army. They will be painted over the spring/summer.

Dark eldars bloodied the Blood angels

Today Jakob and I tested lists for the 40K league that starts next week.

Jakob plays a Blood Angel jumper and droppod army.

His list looked something like this:

Librarian
2 Priests
1 Blender dreadnought in droppod

5 Sang. guards with jump packs
3x 10 Jump marines with meltaguns and powerfists
1 Multimelta attack bike
3 Scout bikes with meltabomb
2x 7 Devastators in droppods with 4 multimeltas
5 Devastators with 4 missiles

I tested a variant on my usual list:

2 Haemonculi
3x 3 Trueborn with blasters in Venoms

2x 9 Wyches with agoniser in Raiders with shockprow and flickerfield
4x 5 Warriors with blasters in Venoms

2x 3 Reavers with heatlances
3x 3 Ravagers with flickerfield and nightshield

The mission:
Primary - we rolled a mission where our three most expensive units would each score a point if they were in the opponents deployment zone when the game ended. The one with the most points won primary.
His three units were all his assault marines while mine were my wych units and one of the ravagers.

Seconady - 4 objectives
Deployment: pitched battle

Combat drug roll: 6 for a free paintoken. Really nice for the witches who would get furious charge and feel no pain from the beginning. Also feel no pain on the bikes is good to avoid smallarms fire.

The battle:
I deployed in the center of my boardedge since I wanted to be able to put the smackdown on him from turn one. Even if he should seize on me he wouldnt be able to reach me with most of his units till turn 2. At which point I would be gone.

As the battle evolved it became clear to me and to Jakobs great frustration that catching me would be almost impossible for him. I kept moving my force backwards away from him always staying between 25 and 36 inches from him.

I began the game with torrenting down his missile launcher devastators and one of his assault marine squads. From there I focused my fire on the groups with the priests in them to remove them and feel no pain.
One round saw all of my trueborns blast an entire assault squad outside of cover to death. The trueborns died on the counter assault by the sanguinary guards, but that did not concern me. I wanted to remove his three units that could claim my deployment zone.

The game ended in turn five. An early ending im sure the blood angels appreciated. Esepcially after I started making every single flickerfield save from turn 4 onwards.

The result:
Primary  - Dark eldars 2, Blood angels 0
Seoncady - Dark eldars 0, Blood angels 0

Thoughts on the battle:
The battle went mostly as i thought it would. I could keep outside the reach of the blood angels jump infantry aand use my superior ranged fire to first remove his few longrange shooters and after that his priests and scoring units.
My liberal use and sacrificing of bait units also went very well. Its a big relief when I do´nt play kill point missions.
Had the mission come down to secondary objectives, my bikes that were harassing backfield units, would have zoomed in to contest the blood angels objective(s).
One annoying fact was that due to the mission I couldnt risk my wyches in combat since i needed them in the blood angel deployment zone when the game ended. So they stayed out of combat for most of the game. Except those that got caught in close combat with the dreadnought, after being pinned when their raider went boom on them.

Took at beating by Tau

Ok so I tested a list with my unfinished, proxied and unpainted Thousand Sons count as Grey Knights army.

My opponent was Andy who brought his Tau.

I tried a Crowe list with six minimal purifier squads and 5 dreadnoughts at 2000 points.

Lets just say it did´nt work out for me very well. The moment I was shot out of the rhinos or I got out of the rhinos myself, I was literally torrented to death by massed fire from drones, kroots, firewarriors, devil fish and what not.
We ended the game in turn 4 when I was down to four single troops. My dreadnought were more or less intact though. But not like they were gonna score objectives.

I still got alot to learn. Both about GK lists and how to play them. Thats for sure. Since im really new to playing Grey Knights I want to try out alot of different builds and find what suits me.

So what could or should I do different next time, besides getting Andy drunk before we play.

My play style differes alot depending on which army I play. But predominantly im a cautious player. This probably comes from spending the first two years of my warhammer 40k life playing Chaos space marines.
Because of this getting used to and mastering an aggressive list like the Crowe list is a new game for me.

But what about your Dark eldars then? Well I dont play then as aggressively as a Crowe list needs to be played. They got speed and they got a tad more range than the Grey Knights. The dark eldars play alot like my chaos list with two great exceptions. I swapped chaos marine durability for dark eldar moveability. A trade im beginning to get used to.


My list building probably also needs some tweaking. The minimal sized squads looked good on paper but 3+ armor save only gets you so far.
So next time I will trade both venerable dreadnoughts for 15-20 more marines in the rhinos. Another thought is to run the 5 man purifier groups in heavy bolter razorbacks behind the rhinos with the 10 man groups in them.
Will have to test that build also.

Splintercannon is king

Especially against Tyranids

Today I got in a game against Patricks tyranids, Now theres a scissor - paper matchup if there ever were one.

We played a 2000 point battle, me with the dark eldar list im testing out. Patrick with his Tyranids.

Mission:
Primary: 4 objectives
Secondary: kill points

Deployment:
Pitched battle

Army lists:

Dark eldar

Haemonculi
3x 3 Trueborn with dark lances in Venoms.
2x 5 Wyches with haywire grenades in Venoms.
1x 5 Warriors with blasters in raiders with shockprow and flickerfield.
2x 5 Warriors with blasters in Venoms.
1x 8 Wyches with agoniser and haywire grenades in a raider with shockprow and aethersail.
3x3 Reavers with heatlance

3x3 Ravagers with nightshield and flickerfield

 Tyranid (not sure what the upgrades on his units were, but there were plenty)

2x Tervigon (1 troop, 1 hq)
2x2 Hive guards
1 Venomthrope

2x9 Genestealers
20 Termagants

20 Gargoyles
2 Trygons
1 Tyrannofex

I won the roll of and gave the first turn to Patrick. I wanted to be able to turbo boost my bikes to the objectives, to contest if need be.

The short version is that I could outmaneuvre and outgun him badly and did so for the entire game. The end result were never really in doubt as first the hiveguards and tervigons, followed by the tyrannofex and trygons were splintercannoned and dark lancedto death.

After that it was mopping up with my witches. Eventhough Patrick did make some spectacular moves and bloodied my nose here and there, it was never any real threat.

This is just one of those matchups, that you have to make an effort to actually loose.

Kudos to Patrick for only bitching alittle ;)

Working on purifiers and just ordered ....

Been workning on halberd and hammer purifiers.

Will probably finish them up tomorrow.

Also just ordered some heads from http://puppetswar.eu/
10 of each.

Im probably gonna use them as heads for either purifiers,  (on the 1000k sons bodies) and/or sergeants. Will see how they look and fit, when I get them.

Or maybe for terminators.

Or swap all the original 1000k son heads and use the 6 different kinds of egyptian heads to represent the different cults.

The possibilities make me one happy little camper.

Dark eldars vs Space wolves

So I played a game today vs. Claus and his Space wolves.

As always im wary of space wolves and their splitfire longslongs, grey hunters in rhinos and priests with lightning.

Claus plays a list presently that looks something like this:

Njal and a Rune priest
5 Wolfguards with combi-meltas and a couple of powerfists.

2x 5 Scouts with meltaguns.

2x 5 Greyhunters with meltaguns in las/plas razorbacks.
2x 7 Greyhunters with meltaguns, banner and powerfists in rhinos.
2x 8 Grey hunters with meltaguns, banner and powerfists in rhinos.

2x 6 Longfangs with 5 missile launchers

The Dark eldar list im testing out presently is as follows:

Haemonculi

3x 3 Trueborn with dark lances in Venoms.

2x 5 Wyches with haywire grenades in Venoms.
1x 5 Warriors with blasters in raiders with shockprow and flickerfield.
2x 5 Warriors with blasters in Venoms.
1x 8 Wyches with agoniser and haywire grenades in a raider with shockprow and aethersail.

3x3 Reavers with heatlance

3x3 Ravagers with nightshield and flickerfield


The mission:
The mission we played were spearhead deployment and three objectives for primary + kill points for secondary (troop choices counting double).

The battle:
Claus won the roll to begin and deployed aggressively, as close to the middle as he could get with all of his rhinos and his longfangs and razorbacks alittle further back.

I chose to reserve it all. Hoping and praying for good reserve rolls, struck me as a better choice than taking his turn one slap to the face.

The gamble paid of.

After having the wolves shuffle about for turn one and two i rolled amazing 12 out of 15 units onto the table on 4+. Among that were all of my 7 venoms.

I flew 12" onto the table with all of my units except the two reaver units that came unto the table at top speed and shredding some wolf scouts who "accidentally" were underneath them.

A shooting match ensued the following rounds where my venoms ate through greyhunters and longfangs. But as always I had trouble getting good results on vehicles. Claus on the other hand had terrible luck with his rune priest who rolled 11 on living lightning check three rounds in a row.

Njal on the other hand did very good getting results on 1-2 vehicles each round.

The wolves were getting pushed back from the middle by the overwhelming number of poisoned shots, that kept coming their way from several immobilised venoms and wyches and warriors on foot. The dark eldars had one objective firmly in their grasp and one held in the middle of the battlefield. That one could go either way though. But having the last turn I were not to worried, since I had several units ready to counter charge, should the wolves take it from the wyches, who held it covering in terrain and behind a burned and broken rhino.

In turn five, one of the reaver groups, which had spend most of the game turbo boosting over enemy units, sped towards the one objective held by the wolves.

The roll to continue came up a one, and the game ended.

Primary (objectives)
Dark eldars: 2
Space wolves: 0

Secondary (killpoints, troops counting double)
Dark eldars: 11
Space wolves: 15

So it was a small victory to the dark eldars 12 to 8 battlepoints.

Thoughts on the battle:
I was lucky on my reserve rolls but I were in two minds about whether to deploy or reserve. Deploying would have allowed me to outdeploy the wolves. I still would have lost 3-5 vehilces which would have been just as devastating as bad reserve rolls. So I chose to rely on my own reserve rolls and being able to choose where along the table edge they entered instead of having to deploy in the spearhead zone.
Thereby I forced Claus to defend against the entire boardedge, and not just my table quarter.
The battle was tight and hardfought. The loads of poisoned shots allowed me to whittle down the grey hunters and get rid of banners, before my wyches moved into close combat.

Claus also learned a hard lesson about not having his troops outside transports against dark eldars with venoms. He will not do that again I promise :)