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Author Topic: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts  (Read 1594 times)

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Offline Blazinghand

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Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« on: September 19, 2017, 07:04:57 AM »
Played a pick-up game at the friendly local game store, against T. He ran Chaos Space Marines against my Craftworld Eldar. At the start, he asked if Forgeworld models were okay, to which I responded "yes" and of course he ended up running like a bunch of weird FW models I'd never heard of. When he placed his army on the table... well, I gotta say I was chuckling to myself. This guy really went all out.

We played Matched Play at 1,500 pts.

Not sure what was going on with my camera today, but some of the images are gonna be a bit glare-ey and low quality. Sorry!

Army Lists

Blazinghand's List

1 VANGUARD and 1 SPEARHEAD detachment of Eldar - 5 CP
++HQ++ - 150 pts
Farseer with Guide, Doom, Witchblade
Warlock with Conceal/Reveal, Witchblade
++ELITES++ - 440 pts
5 Fire Dragons, 1 is Exarch with DB Flamer
5 Fire Dragons, 1 is Exarch with DB Flamer
5 Wraithguard with Wraithcannons
++TROOPS++ - 160 pts
10 Guardian Defenders
10 Guardian Defenders
++HEAVY SUPPORT++ - 441 pts
Night Spinner with Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones
Wraithlord with 2 Shuriken Catapults, 2 Bright Lances
Wraithlord with 2 Flamers
++DEDICATED TRANSPORT++ - 306 pts
Wave Serpent with Twin Shuriken Cannons, Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 153
Wave Serpent with Twin Shuriken Cannons, Shuriken Cannon, Spirit Stones - 153


T's List (estimated)

1 VANGUARD detachment of Chaos Alpha Legion - 4 CP
++HQ++
Chaos Lord with Power sword, bolt pistol, The Murder Sword (Warlord)
Chaos Lord with Power sword, bolt pistol
++ELITES++
Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with C-Beam Cannon, Butcher Cannon
Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 Hellforged Deathclaws, 2 Hellflamers
Helbrute with 2 Helbrute Fists
Hellforged Sicarian with Twin Accelerator Autocannon, Sponson Lascannons
++HEAVY++
Hellforged Deredeo Dreadnought with Butcher Cannon Array, Greater Havoc Launcher, Twin Heavy Bolter
++Flyer++
Heldrake with Baleflamer


--

Pre-Game

So, needless to say, when i realized my opponent's army was 4 walkers, a tank, a heldrake, and 2 HQs, I was pretty flumoxxed. This was my first time playing at this game night and was expecting something a bit more balanced. Thankfully, I was running a list full of anti-tank, though I didn't know exactly what his forgeworld models did, I figured they'd die to fusion guns and wraithcannons like anything else.

For mission, we rolled the 2-objective mission from Eternal War. And for deployment, we got wedge-shaped long table edges. We each put an objective marker in our own deployment zone, then set up our armies.

T put his army mostly on the left, with the melee contemptor and the hellbrute up front with a chaos lord, the Deredeo and ranged contemptor in the back with a chaos lord, the Heldrake ready to swoop in, and the Sicarian in the back corner in a good spot to shoot. For deployment, I castled up with the flamer Wraithlord out in front with the Wraithguard, the Bright Lance Wraithlord on the objective, and the Farseer in the middle of a cloud of Guardians. I strung out my transports on the left, preparing to send my Fire Dragons to rush down the outside to get his Sicarian and his backfield shooty walkers.

With my objective in the back, the hope is for my BL Wraithlord to never have to move and just shoot away. Tagged up in cover and with most of his body obscured by the wall, he will be hard to take out.





We ended up basically not using the right 33% of the board, in part because his army was so small, he deployed it tightly together, and I deployed to be in position to rush in on him.

We rolled off for first turn, and he won. I failed to seize.


--


Top of Turn 1: Chaos

T advances his melee Contemptor and Helbrute, and flies in his Heldrake right up on top of my army.



The Heldrake and his shooty units unleash a torrent of fire, picking 2 wounds off the Night spinner, 4 off a Wave serpent, 4 off the Flamer Wraithlord, and blowing away two Wraithguard. The damage output of his mechs is impressive, but due to lack of focus fire none of my units have fallen, or even fallen into a lower profile.



The Heldrake swoops in, multi-charging the wraithguard and wave serpent. One of the Wraithguard gets a lucky hit on overwatch, but the Heldrake's invulnerable save lets it shrug off the wound. It kills one Wraithguard in assault, and a Wraithguard hits it back.


Bottom of Turn 1: Eldar

I have to plan carefully to both deal with the Heldrake, the incoming melee dreads, and the shooty elements in the back. By far the one that scared me the most on his turn 1 was the Sicarian, so I send the uninjured wave serpent out after it with 5 Fire Dragons. The other Wave Serpent dumps out its contents, 5 Fire Dragons and a Warlock. The Warlock and 20 Guardians rush at the melee dreads that are approaching. I know they won't do much damage, but there is little they can do this game, and they might as well shoot while they can. Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, and both Wraithlords position to shoot and charge the Heldrake.

Taking down that Heldrake this turn is important, because it will give me First Blood, which would let me break the tie and win in the event we each have one of the two objectives (highly likely). Since the Heldrake lacks the Airborne rule, the Wraithlords have a good chance of charging in and taking it down with their powerful fists.



The round of shooting goes phenomenally. His Heldrake is nearly downed by the Fire Dragons, with the final wounds on it picked off by shooting from other nearby units. A wound is peeled off the Sicarian and the front melee dread, which isn't that great, but with the point scored from First Blood I am feeling pretty great. Hopefully the Guardians will buy my shooting another turn.




Top of Turn 2: Chaos

Aside from backing his Sicarian into a corner to avoid my Wave Serpent, T focuses on getting his assault dreadnoughts into, well, assault. He walks them up to my Guardians easily.



In shooting, he wipes one squad, and dents my forward Wave Serpent on the left, as well as putting a wound on a Wraithguard. In assault, his Chaos Lord weakens the other and his Helbrute puts some serious wounds on my Wave Serpent in the center, dropping it to three wounds.




Bottom of Turn 2: Eldar

A big phase for me for movement. Fire Dragons on the left side dismount, move, and advance, bringing 3 of them into half range, one of them into normal range, and leaving the Exarch sadly waving his DB Flamer at the Sicarian (out of range for Melta Bomb). The Serpent comes up behind them, positioned so it can discharge its shield on the Sicarian. Dragons that shot the Heldrake last turn roll high for Advance and get to within half range of the melee Contemptor Dreadnought in the center. Guardians are positioned to screen off charges, Flamer Wraithlord is moved up, weakened Wave Serpent hops the gap to get out of the way, and the Bright Lance Wraithlord moves in for a better angle to shoot. I retreat the Farseer behind some LoS blocking terrain, so that he is very safe (I don't want him to get Save the Warlord) but can still cast.



On the left, Fire Dragons and Wave Serpent smite+shoot bring the Sicarian down to three wounds, hobbling it. In the center, Fire Dragons pop the assault Contemptor Dreadnought, and a combination of smiting from the Farseer, the shield discharge from the hobbled center Serpent, and Bright Lance shots from the Wraithlord bring down the Helbrute, leaving the Chaos Lord unguarded. Dozens of Shuriken Catapult shots and a Sunburst Grenade hit him, leaving him weak.



Smelling blood, my Flamer Wraithlord dashes in and puts a fist through the Chaos Lord, ending him. Due to the unique Chaos Warlord trait, the other Chaos Lord becomes the new Warlord for T.



With T's threat in the center ended, and his Sicarian pushed down into its bottom profile and hitting on 5+, this game is basically in the bag, though he could still get lucky and shoot me down.


Top of Turn 3: Chaos

T focuses his shooting on my Fire Dragons near his Sicarian and their Wave Serpent, downing them both. He also picks off a Wraithguard.




Bottom of Turn 3: Eldar

I rush my remaining close range units at his models in the back. The Fire Dragons can't realistically hide or take cover, so they might as well try to take down a third vehicle while they're still on the table. They roll to advance, and get a 6, bringing them close enough to fire 2 Fusion Guns in half-range. Guardians, Flamer Wraithlord, and Wraithguard Advance as well, with the hobbled Wave Serpent limping towards T's objective. If I can tag that and hold it, there's no way he can win.



My units that are effective at range, the Bright Lance Wraithlord, the Night Spinner, and the Farseer, I keep in reserve. Even if he wipes the force I'm sending at him now, this army might outshoot him, and if it comes to it the Farseer can hide behind the LoS blocker and camp on my objective, winning using the secondary objective of First Blood. Fire Dragons shoot and drop the Contemptor to 5 wounds, and ranged fire from the Night Spinner finishes off the Sicarian.



Top of Turn 4: Chaos

T focuses his fire on the Fire Dragons, picking them off along with a few Guardians and the damaged Flamer Wraithlord. His wounded Contemptor rolls a charge and sticks it, running up to smack down the remaining Guardians.




Bottom of Turn 4: Eldar

Wraithguard and Warlock advance, bringing them into shooting and smiting range respectively. I move up my Farseer and Bright Lance Wraithlord as well, to get shots at range on the Contemptor. I've determined that it is literally impossible for any of his models to reach my objective (and therefore give him a chance to win) except the Contemptor. His Deredeo and his Chaos Lord are too far back to make 36 inches it in 3 turns. If I kill the Contemptor, I can hide my Farseer out of LoS on the objective and win thanks to First Blood breaking the 1-1 objective tie.

Warlock smites and perils, I spend my last CP to save him and get the smite in. Farseer smites for another 3 wounds, dropping the Contemptor to 1 wound. Should be easy now, I figure. However, the Wraithcannon misses, the Bright Lances go wild, and the Farseer's Guide whiffed, so all the Night Spinner shots whiffed or failed to wound or beat armor. The contemptor lives with one wound.



Curses!


Top of Turn 5: Chaos

T charges his Contemptor into the Wraithguard, whiffs his attacks, and the Wraithguard swings a single Wraithguard Fist attack, knocking the last wound off the Contemptor.



With the Contemptor down, T's only models remaining are so far away he can't possibly reach my objective before the end of the game. Since the Objective is out of line of sight, my Farseer can camp on it safely. Best case scenario, we each take one objective, and I win due to First Blood. He decides it is no longer possible for him to win.

Final Tally:
T Concedes!

--

Some Key Learnings:

- Wow, Fire Dragons are great! Especially when you roll a 6 to Advance, giving them a threat range of 24"
- The Night Spinner, despite supposedly being pretty flexible, is actually sub-par anti-tank unless you have Doom to back it up and give it more rends.
- Also, I paid 2 pts to upgrade that chin gun on the Night Spinner and never used it.
- Smites were useful for finishing off or wounding a couple dreads. Gotta make sure not to forget those.
- I spent 2 of my 5 CPs on rerolls for that perilous Warlock. He never successfully cast Conceal, though he did get in a smite or two.
- Wraithguard remain tough-as-nails and have great guns, but something should be said for their punches: sometimes they come through. They performed well and absorbed a lot of heavy bolter fire and so on that could have been aimed at Fire Dragons or Guardians.
- I thought the "2 flamers and nothing else" Wraithlord would be dumb but he actually did a great job. He ran at the enemy constantly, got into assault once and took down the warlord, and fired his flamers a lot.
- The flamer Wraithlord also drew a LOT of fire, more than the Bright Lance Wraithlord did, despite being cheap. A huge monster running up the board at you is hard to ignore.
- Despite this being an all-comers list, it was able to handle mass-dreadnought with no preparation reasonably well. I did feel those Guardians were not particularly useful, nor were the flamers (three times, an Exarch had to shoot his flamer at a vehicle because I could not get him in range for a Melta Bomb), or the shuriken cannons. Still, this list had the tools in it to eke out a victory.
- It felt pretty good to beat this guy with all his fancy forgeworld models and the mass dread army and new Chaos Strategems, using only a mixed foot/mech all comers Eldar build :)
- Despite the really dreadnought-ey list he was a good sport about everything though so I can't complain. I'd play him again.

Thanks for reading!
« Last Edit: September 19, 2017, 07:21:33 AM by Blazinghand »
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Offline Irisado

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2017, 08:01:48 AM »
That was a very strange battle to read, owing to the nature of the army that you were facing.  I have to question how that army he brought is remotely Alpha Legion.  They're supposed to be an army of infiltration and stealth, not an army of walkers and flyers.  What he brought was more like an Iron Warriors strike force or a Black Legion mechanised army.

In the event, I think that your more flexible army and superior mobility helped you out a lot, especially once you had downed the Heldrake.  You got your target priority spot on here and made great use of your anti-tank units in particular.

One other point is that the board was very lacking in terrain and I think that this could have made life very difficult against a more balanced opposing army.  Still, you can only fight what you're up against and you did that very well.  Congratulations on your victory :).
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Offline Wyddr

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2017, 08:48:25 AM »
I think this is a pretty good example of what I kinda see as an aspect of the 8th Edition metagame coming into play. That pack of hulking brutes *looks* nasty, but big multi-wound models are ultimately too easy to cripple to be the kind of thing you can rely on. Just looking at the lists, I kinda guessed what would happen here.

Congrats on the win, and thanks for the report!

Offline Blazinghand

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2017, 09:25:45 PM »
That was a very strange battle to read, owing to the nature of the army that you were facing.  I have to question how that army he brought is remotely Alpha Legion.  They're supposed to be an army of infiltration and stealth, not an army of walkers and flyers.  What he brought was more like an Iron Warriors strike force or a Black Legion mechanised army.

In the event, I think that your more flexible army and superior mobility helped you out a lot, especially once you had downed the Heldrake.  You got your target priority spot on here and made great use of your anti-tank units in particular.

One other point is that the board was very lacking in terrain and I think that this could have made life very difficult against a more balanced opposing army.  Still, you can only fight what you're up against and you did that very well.  Congratulations on your victory :).

I think the reason for the army to be Alpha Legion was entirely to get the "-1 to hit from more than 12 inches out" Legion Trait. Luckily, this Legion Trait has no effect on Fire Dragons, who can't shoot further than 12 inches anyways. The army was in fact blueish.

The lack of terrain was actually less of a problem than I thought it would be. The only downside is there was a corner where there was no cover anywhere within a 12 inch radius from the hull of Hellforged Sicarian Tank, so the Fire Dragons had to disembark and basically stand in the open to get shots off. My infantry in the center were able to mostly leapfrog from cover to cover, though my Wraithguard were too slow and got shot in the open. There was a big trench of no cover in the back, and almost no LoS blocking terrain, though, which made things really hard for my vehicles. I was effectively unable to hide or block off sightlines. The board had been set up that way beforehand, and it didn't occur to me to change things.

I think the MVPs were the Fire Dragons who ran up the center. They contributed significantly to taking down the Heldrake, took down the assault Contemptor, then knocked the shooty Contemptor low enough that he could be taken out, over the course of 3 epic turns. In every one of these turns, they made use of Battle Focus, and due to high rolls on Advance were able to be effective. I can legitimately say that Battle Focus was very useful for them.

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Offline Scorn

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2017, 12:51:01 AM »
With regard to your results with the Fire Dragon Exarch and the dragon's breath flamer/melta bombs as opposed to the typical fusion gun, would you re-consider your equipment choice or is the versatility of the flamer option still worth it over the fusion gun?
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Offline Blazinghand

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2017, 01:37:56 AM »
With regard to your results with the Fire Dragon Exarch and the dragon's breath flamer/melta bombs as opposed to the typical fusion gun, would you re-consider your equipment choice or is the versatility of the flamer option still worth it over the fusion gun?

In this battle there were 3 times when an Exarch was not within 4 inches (so he couldn't throw a melta bomb) but was within 12 inches (so he could shoot fusion gun if he had it) and was forced to shoot a heavy flamer at a tank. twice, a vehicle shot at this way escaped with few wounds. The Sicarian lived with 2 wounds after the FD volley, and the ranged Contemptor lived with 5. It's plausible that either of them could have been killed with one more Exarch shot.

On the other hand, about half the time the Exarch WAS able to get within 4 inches and use his melta bomb, making him almost as effective as with a fusion gun. And I imagine most lists aren't gonna be all dreadnoughts so in those situations if he's not in range to melta bomb he might be able to flame something else. I'd say DB Flamer Exarch has about half the damage output against tanks as a fusion gun exarch, because he gets to use his melta bombs about half the time (so far). I consider this tradeoff worth it to make the squads a bit more flexible. Since this is an all-comers list, I want to be able to handle swarmier group.
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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2017, 12:08:14 AM »
G'day Blazinghand!
What a great read. Bright lances/fusion guns Vs multiple wounded monstrosities... Niiiiice!
Don't give up on the guardians, mate. They may not have done much against heavy armor, but they're a hoot against power/mesh amour. Thanks for sharing BH. Learned heaps... Be well!   

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Re: Eldar vs Chaos Dreadnoughts 1500 pts
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2017, 04:19:53 AM »
Great battrep, and deserved victory! Good to see some of the less-glamourous units pulling their weight.

 


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