Battle report

I know i have not posted for a while, things have been pretty busy recently but I should have the second drop pod completed within the next week.
But this post is about a battle my social group and I staged yesterday, in this battle the grey knights (1k) teamed up with the eldar (2k) against the dark eldar (2k) and the night lords (1k)

So with 1000 points I had some options, I decided to not use the terror assault rite of war simply because the three terror squads would have taken up almost all of my 1000 points and to be honest I have tried using them before. This time round I brought my praetor on jet bike and a couple of contemptor mortis dreadnoughts (all proxied) just so I could get a better idea of how they actually work beyond the theoretical.
A couple of tactical squads in rhino's gave me my troops choices.

I did not bother with the camera since every single model in my army was proxied.

The night lord alliance won the roll off for table edge in a battle featuring the dawn of war set up and the scouring mission. We also won the roll to set up first and then go first. With the objectives down there was a significant collection of objectives on our left flank which were generally the most valuable of them so we opted to run a refused flank and really focus our forces.
Things went drastically down hill when the opposition seized the initiative continuing a 100% record of this happening to our dark eldar player which generally results in massive damage to his force and a frustrating fight and this battle was no exception.
The dark reapers managed to take two hull points off my contemptor mortis with two kheres assault cannons, two raiders and a venom were obliterated with one of the raiders exploding taking out 7 of the kabalite warriors on board with the survivors fleeing the battle (one troop down).  On top of that one of my rhino's was blown to pieces by psicannon fire, the explosion killing one of the night lords and further fire from the eldar alliance killing one more night lord.

So we started our first turn with a massively mauled force but we were not going to give up immediately. My contemptor mortis with lascannons took a couple of shots at a wave serpent but could only roll two glances both of which were jinked. The grey knight army consisted of 16 terminators and a dreadknight, dark eldar fire this turn managed to drop 4 of them which was excellent (although lucky when the grey knight commander managed to fail 3 2+ armour saves out of 5). The dark eldar were able to also mauled the dark reapers killing a couple of them, they then failed their morale check which probably saved my contemptor for another turn.
The big action of the turn was my praetor making a 13 inch charge to attack the wave serpent, 4 attacks hit with his thunderhammer, this resulted in 4 penetrating hits which wrecked the vehicle but sadly failed to explode it. 

Eldar turn 2 was not that exceptional, the main thing that happened was one of the venoms being taken on and my praetor getting mauled by shuriken catapult fire, they caused 6 wounds of which 2 were rending, I promptly failed two of his 2+ armour saves as well as both of his 5+ cover saves so the praetor was banished back to the battle barge in disgrace - this was generally agreed as unlucky and it was felt if he had not been taken out he was going to prove to be a massive thorn in this side of the eldar alliance.The dark reapers fled off the battle field adding a level of ignomity to their performance. The Mandrakes were absolutely destroyed by being doomed by the farseer and then flamered by the dreadknight.

Night lord turn 2 and i was determined to make the eldar pay for their attack on my praetor (who I remain convinced survived and was simply teleported out) and the damaged and dismounted tactical squad decided to try and unleash fury of the legion, this worked really well and resulted in 18 wounds to the eldar guardian unit. The weapon platform absorbed a couple of hits but after the smoke cleared there was only one guardian standing and he was picked off by the twin linked bolter on the remaining rhino. The other tactical squad dismounted and targetted the harlequins who had failed to utilise their shadowseers psychic power, their firepower dropped about 5 of the unit included the seer teaching him an important lesson. My lascannon mortis again tried to take down a wave serpent and again only managed to glance it, this time I actually managed to get a hull point off it.
The dark eldar managed to get a couple of charges in on a couple of grey knight terminator units, the dark eldar commander Drazhar managed to whiff somewhat missing three of his attacks and only killed 1 terminator. In an adjacent fight he was able to see how it should be done when a wycth character managed to score three wounds on two terminators, the armour saves came up as triple one and she got to gloat at the master swordsman and point out that is how it is done.
My contemptor mortis with assault cannons finally got in to a position to do something and unloaded on the squadron of two war walkers, the end effect of my shooting was one glancing hit and 5 penetrating hits. After invulnerable saves one of the war walkers had been taken down, 5 of the hits had been saves on 5+ which somewhat took to proverbial but confirmed my feeling that the assault cannon build can put out some exceptional scary firepower.

Eldar turn 3 mainly saw my untouched tactical squad butchered by grey knight terminators with hammerhand and force halberds which kind of hurt, the assault cannon contemptor was destroyed by the wave serpent when it shot and hit with absolutely everything including getting 7 shield attacks, this resulted in 4 glancing/penetrating hits and I only managed to save off 3 of them with my 5+ invulnerable.

Night lord turn 3, my surviving tactical squad dived in to the available rhino to try and protect themselves a little. My contemptor with lascannons managed to take another hull point off the wave serpent, this time with a stunning penetrating hit.
Then the game ended when Drazhar charged a blod of 20 storm guardians who had two flamers, they scored 5 hits, Drazhar failed his first two 2+ armour saves and 5+ feel no pain rolls, then he proceeded to fail 2 more look out sir rolls, the associated armour checks and the feel no pain rolls and as such died in complete ignominity. So that was 4 failed 2+ armour saves, 2 failed 2+ look out sir rolls and 4 failed 5+ feel no pain rolls (I know he only had 3 wound but we rolled out the whole batch just to marvel at how attrocious the rolling was)
At that point we did not have too long until the store closed and the night lord alliance was about to lose all of its remaining troops and we were basically going to be virtually tabled if things continued.

It should be noted that this was deliberately a social game and the two 2000 point forces took some sub par choices just to get some use out of them, the mandrakes and harlequins were really disappointing

So the general consensus on the night lords from the battle was while they were not utterly amazing they did perform well, the praetor was very popular simply due to the additional mobility he provided. The contemptor mortis with assault cannons was raved about and while he only has 24" range he is more than capable of contributing a lot in that bubble and with the front armour of 13 and the 5+ invulnerable they can attract a hell of a lot of firepower which will protect the rest of my force which is a good thing. The tactical squads were we decided strictly better than the terror sqauds if for nothing else than the reduction in costs but the terror squads are too thematic to be ignored, since I am going for a themed force we all felt I have to stick with the terror assault rite of war and the terror squads.
We did come up with some redesigns for the base 2000 points army which will be posted shortly, the force plan continues to evolve.
I am going to have to get some more test battles in to test some of the ideas we have come up with prior to spending money on buying the models but I think the evolution of the force plan is coming along and I feel we are getting close to a truly effective night lord force which will play in the appropriate style for them.