So today I got to fight a battle against the dark elder and
the result was interesting. My opponent had fielded his exact army against some
Tyranids the previous week and had not had time to change it to tune it more
against my force.
We started off venturing to the games store where we stage
our battles and found that battles on the weekend are so much easier than on a
weeknight, the standard week night features a gaming group taking up almost all
of the table space meaning we end up crammed in the corner since we are almost
the last to arrive and we have to rush the battles to get them completed in
time. Today there was no one else in the gaming room and we had all the time we
needed to go through the battle properly without rushing to the point that we
make mistakes, miss rules and so forth.
The battle we fought was the deadlock maelstrom of war
mission in which gaining victory points early on is comparatively easy but it
grows increasingly difficult.
My opponent managed to win both the roll for selecting the deployment
zones and for deploying first which he took, his warlord trait got him an additional
strategic objective on the first turn on top of the standard 6 and with going
first he was going to have an excellent chance to score a lot of points before I
could do anything to stop him.
Turn 1 saw his get a lot of easily achievable objectives
including a victory point for having three of his units in his deployment zone
and d3 for having twice as many objectives as me (I had none to begin with) and
the end result was he scored 6 points from objectives before I had a chance to
do anything. His shooting also managed to blow a arm off my contemptor mortis
dreadnought and a snap fired dark lance hit my command squad and I was forced
to pass it off to the standard bearer to mitigate the damage slightly. In my
first turn my outriders lunged forward aiming to drop the hellions he had
brought, my objectives were for the main part unobtainable since they were
general for objectives in my opponent’s deployment zone which he had troops on.
The outriders twin linked flamer hit 14 models between the two of them, wounded
13 times and immolated the hellions to get me first blood. My jet bikes
unloaded on a raider and managed to put two glances and two penetrating hits on
it and after jink’s were resolved I managed to explode it with a unsaved
penetrating hit, the explosion killed 5 of the warriors in the raider. I scored
one objective and first blood but I was left 4 Vp’s behind before I had even
got going. My biggest mistake was one of my assault squads were in to position
to charge some jetbikes who had swept forward to grab an objective but I randomly
shot them with bolt pistols, somehow got a wound past their 2+ cover save and
then failed my 6 inch charge due to the removed model – great play by me not!
So by turn 2 I was pretty out of it and my opponent
continued to get achievable objectives and I returned to form on failing saving
throws. The low light for me was a venom putting 7 wounds on my assault marines
and me failing 3 of the saves or the outriders being targeted big time and
instead of soaking firepower they failed four of their first six saves and were
obliterated. My contemptor also lost its second arm which was irritating to say
the least. My opponent scored two more victory points in his turn. My turn was
not amazing but I was able to take down a witch raider in the assault phase
having surrounded it with assault marines as well as the armless contemptor –
when it was wrecked the witches were unable to deploy within 3 inches without
coming in an inch of any of my models and thus were destroyed. My other damaged
assault marine squad leapt on to the warriors out of their raider and butchered
them all in short order. My praetor and command squad tried to charge the grotesques
with Rakath since I wanted to tie them up but they managed to fail their 8 inch
charge. I managed to score a couple of VP’s this turn to try and keep in
contention.
Turn 3 saw some splinter fire on the command squad causing
something like 8 wounds and the end result of it all was my praetor on 1 wound
and another member of the squad dead, they were then charged by the grotesques.
My praetor went in to a challenge with Rakath and his annoying clone field and
this lasted for a couple of turns where I could not get a wound past either the
clone field or the feel no pain which was really starting to get frustrating –
in one turn of this fight the grotesques would pass 4 out of 4 feel no pain
while in return I would fail 3 out of 5 3+ armour saves with the assault
marines who charged in but I am getting ahead of myself.
Drazor and his incubi charged my largely intact assault
marines and slaughtered them where they stood and my opponent managed to score
a couple more victory points.
My turn saw me unleash everything on the incubi and it started
with 9 tactical marines using fury of the legion, 36 shots resulted in 15
wounds which resulted 1 would on drazor (who had randomly already taken one
wound to overwatch fire from the assault marines) and 2 dead incubi – drazor
failed 3 armour saves but managed to pass two feel no pain to survive, the incubi
also managed to pass a couple of feel no pain. The intact contemptor unloaded
on them as well and just managed to finish off the incubi but could not do the
last wound to Drazor. My fire raptor had turned up the previous turn and only
managed in dishing out a couple of hull points and forcing 3 raiders to jink.
This turn it got is act in gear and blew away two raiders, one of them exploded
killing 5 of the warriors who had just dismounted from it. My armless
contemptor charged and crushed the venom and in an attempt to protect the
tactical squad the other contemptor charged Drazor who could not hurt it – for the
rest of the game the dreadnought who smack around the dark elder but since it
lacked a dreadnought close combat weapon it was unable to break his armour and
they stayed locked in combat. My praetor fell to Rakath as I managed to fail a
2+ armour save (the second he had been asked to make by Rakath) and I continued
to fail to get anything through in return due to the clone field and bad rolling,
it seems 5 attacks may not be enough. This is the turn that the grotesques
managed all of their feel no pain rolls which was a complete pain since I was
counting on depleting some of their numbers to allow me to carry the fight.
The rest of the battle was pretty much moot, there was no
way I could get points on the board to catch my opponent who proceeded to
achieve at least 1 objective every turn with the mobility of the jetbikes and
the fact I had nothing left to contest them.
The final position was 17 VP’s for the dark elder against 6
VP’s for the night lords. Points wise there was only about 100 difference between
the two armies so the losses were pretty similar but the dark elder simply had
a lot more units and a hell of a lot more mobility and they were able to
exploit it really effectively to score a hell of a lot of points which I could
not keep up with. It was not helped by the fact that the dark elder got
objectives to claim points in their deployment zone 4 times during the battle
and there was no way I could even get close to them.
So not a good battle for the night lords but I was very
happy with the list and I think there is a lot of potential there, I just need
to avoid making dumb mistakes like shooting the jet bikes so I could not charge
them – they went on to score 4 victory points on their own and even with my
poor dice rolling there was pretty much no way in hell they were going to be
able to survive being charged by 10 assault marines the champion of which had
the pair of lightning claws.
The fire raptor was solid and probably achieved the most out
of anything in my army but without being show stealing like it was when I had
tried it previously, after the battle while idly chatting my opponent commented
that he thinks I should have two of them – this from one of the guys who felt
it was a bit too much last time so I think more experience of what it can and
cannot do was really important for putting it in to context.
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