Sorry if this report is a bit scattered. I'm rather worn out as I write it.
A regular opponent of mine with a bad habit of bringing expensive, annoyingly durable units had some requests for this game. First, he said he wanted to try something different and play a slaaneshi army but that he was afraid he’d be unable to deal with a lot of heavy elder armor. Slaanesh unable to deal with tanks? Alright. No problem. Second, he wanted to play on a very “urban” table with tons of terrain to help restrict vehicles and change up the game. No problem. Third, he wants to do something a bit smaller; just a 1,000 point game. Fine by me. I like small games . He then proceeds to bring an army that completely ignores the drawbacks of playing in a cover-choked environment and excels at killing things not inside of transports. :\
His List:
Slaanesh Unbound (but Slaanesh likes being bound!)
Lucius in a blob of 20 noise marines with an icon of excess, double blast masters, and a doom siren
2 squads of 3 fiends of slaanesh
1 squad of three chaos spawn with marks of Nurgle
My list:
Farseer with spirit stones of Anat’lan; generated eldritch storm, mind war, doom, and guide plus the fate’s messenger warlord trait
A 9 man avenger squad including a power lance and shimmer shield exarch
5 spiders including an exarch with fast shot and a TL spinner
6 hawks including an exarch with sun rifle
2 squads of 1 war walker with a scatter laser and EML
1 walker with a scatter laser and bright lance
7 harlequins with full upgrades (the troupe master packing a kiss)
5 rangers
THE MISSION
So in our last couple of games, we’ve had my elder vying for control of a webway gate that had been forced open by Ahriman’s forces. We decided that those battles had seen the elder fail to wrest the gate from chaos’s grip, but that we’d weakened their garrison sufficiently for their forces to be stretched thin. The trio of chaos sorcerers in his last game summoned forth a Slaaneshi proxy army that rounded up the spirit stones scattered across the battlefield before my elder could claim them. Now, part of my elder war host has been force to split off from the main battle in order to rescue their fallen kin from She-Who-Thirsts before their spirit stones are consumed.
So basically, he deployed 3 objectives in his deployment zone that followed the rules for relics. He would get a VP for each spirit stone relic that he contested at the end of the game, but he was unable to move the relics. I would get a VP for each relic I completely controlled at the end of the game. We included first blood and slay the warlord but left out linebreaker as his army had no real reason to advance to my board edge.
We wound up with hammer and anvil deployment and the relics evenly dispersed across his deployment zone. I reserved everything with outflank but left the rest of my stuff on the table.
TURN 1
Chaos
*Killed 5 avengers with the opening salvo from his noise marines (using only the blast masters).
*Beasts move forward.
Eldar
• I pull back my dire avengers and farseer, effectively removing them from the game to avoid surrendering Slay the Warlord.
• Hawks leave the safety of the building they’re hiding behind by sky leaping into ongoing reserves.
• Harlequins fail to cast Veil of Tears.
• Spiders hop out of cover and unleash some guided monofilament into a squad of fiends which the harlequins happily finish off with a single fusion pistol shot. First blood to the elder!
TURN 2
Chaos
• Blasts apart the exposed harlequins leaving only the shadowseer and death jester alive. I opt to remove them from the table so that I have one less unit to keep track of and one less unit for his noise marine blob to punish.
• Nurgle spawn charge my spiders. Combat is a draw, and my spiders hop out of combat behind a building near the center of the board to exit the noise marines’ line of sight.
• Fiends of Slaanesh start moving towards center board.
Eldar
• I fail reserve rolls for everything but a single Missile Walker and my hawks.
• The hawks combine their grenades with the missile walker’s shots to harass the fiends , putting a pair of wounds on one of them.
• The hawks and spiders unload into the Nurgle Spawn to finish them off.
Turn 3
Chaos
• The fiends charge the spiders and begin the slow process of whittling them down as they repeatedly fail to do much back.
• Chaos blob shoots at my walker with its blastmasters, but fails to do much. I think he landed a glance or something.
Eldar
• The rest of my reserves show up on my right flank. I stick both of the walkers in his deployment zone in hopes of surviving until the end of the game and claiming a pile of spirit stones. My rangers can’t serve much purpose this game aside from giving him a squad to execute, so I play to fluff (and bitterness) by having them hang out in my back field behind a building, effectively removing them from the game.
• Hawks realize they have no reason to be on the board and thus hop off of it.
• My walker on the left flank marches towards a pile of spirit stones.
• Farseer continues to hang out in my backfield with the wounded avengers, out of range to use any of his spells in a meaningful way.
• All three walkers shoot at the noise marines, killing one or two.
• The fiend/spider combat continues. My spiders continue to lose bodies and take no fiends with them. Hit & Run fails.
Turn 4
Chaos
• He blasts a walker off the table with ease.
• The fiends kill off all but my exarch who emerges from combat via hit & run as the sole survivor of his shrine.
Eldar
• Hawks arrive and avenge my spider’s students with a torrent of fire before running behind cover to avoid the noise blob’s shooting.
• Farseer continues to watch the battle from afar.
• Rangers continue to acknowledge how wise they are not to hurl themselves at the blob.
• The two surviving walkers march towards the spirit stones while firing at noise marines. I don’t think they killed anything. Maybe one guy.
• My spider exarch decides he might as well try to claim an objective after all and uses his assault jump to move towards my right flank.
Turn 5
Chaos
• He blasts a walker off the table with ease.
Eldar
• My spider exarch teleports, towards the (now uncontested) spirit stone pile on my right flank.
• My remaining walker (the first to come on) goes to stand on the left flank pile of spirit stones.
• Rangers/avengers/farseer continue to chill.
• Hawks return from ongoing reserves and land on the stones on my left flank.
Turn 6
Chaos
• He blasts a walker off the table with ease.
He rolls to see if the game would have continued after my coming turn, and we called it there. He could easily have finished off the lone spider or the hawk squad , but I was still clearly the winner either way. I had first blood and one of the two uncontested objectives guaranteed since he could only remove a unit a turn meaning I’d most likely end up with 2 VP total. He had 1 VP for the pile of spirit stones his marines were sitting on.
In other words, my high-speed sneaky rescue allowed me to rescue the dead, but only at great cost to the living.
I can’t say it was a great game, but at least I won. Hopefully that will teach him not to lay his hands on spirit stones in the future. Or bring cheesy blobs that make half my army useless save as bullet catchers.
Thoughts:
Half my army felt like it was invalidated this game because of his noise marine blob. Normally, I’d have had a serpent and/or night spinner to counter such a blob with, but his pregame requests caused me to not have such options available. I don’t think he deliberately attempted to create a mismatch, but I did find myself frustrated that he could remove a squad of mine each turn with most of my units being unable to do any significant harm to his blob if they were to advance for some reason.
Now to be fair, if I’d left my harlequins on the table instead of removing them, if I’d pushed my dire avengers forward without the farseer in tow ( to avoid giving up a VP for slay the warlord), and if I’d suicidally rushes my rangers onto one of his points instead of having them pout in the backfield, I might have widened my victory by a point. As it was, however, I think I made the right choice despite it coming from a place of frustration. I still had enough units to win the game by throwing them at objectives. Keeping so many units effectively out of the game just sped the game up by letting me skip my psychic phase, having me roll less dice for running/shooting, and playing to the elder spirit of survival.
I try to avoid the Autarch Brannigan path of command. The kill bots may have a preset kill limit, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw wave after wave of space elves at them to claim the objectives.
Now to move past my childish pouting, the harlequins continued to be very harlequiny for me. I’e used them in my past few games against this guy. I’ve yet to have Veil of Tears help me, mostly because I keep failing to successfully cast it. Their shooting is surprisingly effective if you can get into range with it, and they certainly do their jobs once they’re in melee, but I tend to lose at least half a squad before I make it into combat.
My farseer continues to see limited usefulness. Between having random powers, being unable to cast while in a serpent, and needing line of sight for all his effects, I find that he usually just spends the game hiding or else dies fast to enemies seeking Slay the Warlord. I’m eyeballing other hq options to see if I might prefer using them for a while.
My new war walkers are pretty snazzy. They’re flexible enough to threaten most things on the board as either a gunline or as an outflanking squad of ninjamechs. I like ‘em. They die fast, but at their points, I don’t mind losing them.
Spiders and hawks continue to be my work horse units.
