Heya, and welcome back to the webway.
Today I got a battle report from a few weeks back. Due to the unnatural proxied state of both our armies and battlefield (we used ketchup packets and coins to represent units to play in a McDonald's) I decided that it will not be pretty for the battle report (sorry for the lack of pics but I'll make it up some day!). It is perhaps one of the most bizarre battles I've played but nonetheless very enjoyable. Thanks to no small part to my friend's insistence of playing with me, and also doing the math to shrink a 6x4 table to the right table size found in McDonald's, having some dices and using whatever stuff McDonald's could provide to become terrain pieces I am able to see what the Grey Knights Terminator army could do.
Pre-game deployment
The fields of Athel Falanghir echoes with the sounds of winds howling, and in Vespera's mind it reminded her of agonized souls of the fallen. This former Eldar Exodite world is now a hollow shell of itself for it was the victim of a piratical fleet that Vespera knows only too well; the Red Corsairs. The sigils of the Red Corsairs is etched upon the earth itself and Vespera could only curse under her breath. This is a world that she wanted to take for herself.
Despite her Kabal's frantic search for any survivors, there is not a single soul save that of creatures too meek to even be considered as war beasts in the Wych arenas. The only thing left to do is to leave this place to its silent fate. But somehow, somewhere she would find something. She decided to call upon a small cadre of her Kabal and some of the Wyches and Incubi she hired to follow her. These small party roamed while the rest of her Kabal returns.
It was then that she saw a glimmer of silver in the long grassy bushes ahead, and she immediately know that that is what she seeks.
Mission: Annihilation (ok....I kind of know where this could end up)
Deployment :Dawn of War (wow.....even better for me)
Drug Roll: Reroll to wounds (Just perfect)
My list is the same o' same o'
Archon
Agoniser
Haywire Grenade
Soul-trap
Combat Drugs
Djinn Blade
Shadowfield
total : 155 pts
Haemonculi x 2
total: 100 pts
Trueborn x 3
Blaster x 3
Venom with two splinter cannon
Total: 146 pts
Trueborn x 3
Blaster x 3
Venom with two splinter cannon
Total: 146 pts
Incubi x 5
Raider with Flickerfield
Total: 202 pts
Wyches x 8
Hekatrii with Agoniser x 1
Haywire grenades x 8
Raider with Flickerfield
total: 196 pts
Wyches x 9
Hekatrii with Agoniser x 1
Haywire grenades x 9
Raider with Flickerfield
total: 208
Warriors x 5
Blaster x 1
Venom with two splinter cannon
toal: 125 pts
Warriors x 5
Blaster x 1
Venom with two splinter cannon
toal: 125 pts
Ravager
Dark Lance x 3
Flickerfield
total: 115 pts
Ravager
Dark Lance x 3
Flickerfield
total: 115 pts
Ravager
Dark Lance x 3
Flickerfield
My Opponent's list is a Gk terminator army as follow;
Mordrak
Librarian with his voodoo nonsense
5 Paladins and random goodies with Psycannon
5 Terminators with Psycannon
5 Terminators with Psycannon
5 Terminator with Psycannons
Our 'table' is essentially a hilly battlefield with a number of wide open spaces (the terrain is arraned in an X form). We both roll to see who starts first, and the Grey Knights player gotten first turn and took it. He placed his single squad of Terminators attached on the field at the bottom left in the terrain (interesting how the Grand Strategy can make the Paladins scoring). I decided to come in via the table edge rather than to go into reserves or deploy my units out and I decided to not seize the initiative.
Turn 1
Vespera could only see the glimmer of silver wading through the grasses and she wonder what are these silver glimmers. They appear to be searching around for something, but what they seek is not her concern. All that matters is the fact that she will kill them all.
Grey Knight
He moved his unit back a little, and that's about it.
Dark Eldar
Everything of mine moved from the table edge and all of my vehicles are focused upon the Paladins. Thanks to the Night Vision rolls, my entire Kabal is able to see the Terminators and I obliterated everything.
Turn 2
Immediately after her Kabal's opening salvo, she can immediately sense that something is amiss, and immediately in the heart of her Kabalite force several squads of silver giants 'blinked' themselves out of nowhere and open fire upon her forces. One of her Ravagers was shot down and caused the other vehicles to scatter away from the sudden appearance of these strange Space Marines. Vespera decided to engage these things and she jumped out from her raider, accompanied by the Wyches.
"COME FORTH FOUL XENOS, FOR I, VORTH MORDRAK WILL TAKE YOU ON!" Vespera could see that this human warrior is perhaps one of the strongest that she had ever seen, hence her commanding that her Kabal fire upon the threat. But fully half her forces are distracted by the incoming Marines, and those who managed to fire upon the Marine squad realized that these are not normal Space Marines.
Vespera fires her splinter pistol at the being as she charges, but its shot bounced off its armor and soon enough she clashed with the man. With the drugs flowing into her system and her Djiin blade endowed her with its eldritch energy, she lashes her agoniser towards his head. But to her surprise, the Terminators are moving even faster than her and the Wyches, and they managed to slay a few of them down. But a lifetime of battle have honed her survival instincts and she managed to avoid a number of the hits. To make matters worse, a shadowy specter intercepted her blows and caused her agoniser to lacerate his chest instead. The shadowy specter looked at her with eyes born of hate, and soon enough more and more of the specter appear out of nowhere. Mordrak then strikes back but Vespera is just too quick on her feet to be caught off-guard by some weird occurence.
"This is new..." Vespera muttered under her breath. Little psychic apparitions and humans being faster than Dark Eldar.
Grey Knights
His Paladins and two squads of Grey Knight Terminators appeared trying to get into the heart of my force, but the two squads scattered the full distance and thereby isolating the Paladins by themselves. With the Paladins and the terminators out in the open, they fired upon my ravagers, destroying one and shaking another.
Dark Eldar
Sensing that this could work to my advantage, I decided disembark my Archon, the Trueborns and the Wyches and also my to move away a considerable distance away from the other two terminators squads while allowing my vehicles to shoot. My trueborns, Archon and the Wyches fired upon the Paladins while my vehicles fired upon the closest Terminator squad. I managed to kill 3 of the Paladins outright after all that nonsense firepower and psychic voodoo and I managed to maul the terminators down to a single terminator.
I proceed to charge my Archon, Wyches and Incubi into the mix, and to my surprise I almost went down the shitty lane (damn his Initiative 10, Str 8-10 force weapons, his invuls and 2+ saves, and ended up with even more terminators to kill thanks to me wounding Mordrak down to a single wound. With the abundance of Hammerhands in the air, he attempted to bash the brains out of my Archon but instead he only managed to kill a 3 wyches (thank you you stupid 4+ invul, and thank you Shadowfield for not failing on me), while I managed to cause a wound on the Librarian, killed off the Paladin and killed off a few of the ghost termies. Due to the staggering casualties he lost, the Paladins are swallowed up by their own "No Retreat' rule and my wyches and Archon are now out in the open.
Grey Knights
His final squad entered the fray and deepstriked where he wants them to go, and he fired upon the Raider with the Incubi with it, but I made all my flickerfield saves. The other squads fired upon my wyches, and obliterated the two squads, leaving my Archon the sole survivor. But thankfully my Archon is made out of sterner stuff, and she stood her ground.
Dark Eldar
Seeing that the tide of battle is already on my side, I decided to move the Incubi raider closer to the lone Terminator, and my Trueborn mounted themselves upon their venoms once again and moved 6" towards the remaining Terminator squad. The rest of the army went ahead and encircle the last terminator squad. With a cruel destructive shot of 8 blasters, 48 Splinter cannons shots, and 5 Lances I killed them all where they stand.
The incubi charged themselves towards the last Terminator and slaughtered the lone terminator.
Results and Afterthought
"No I am not alright." Vespera then shoots the Trueborn in the face, and the rest of the Kabalites looked at her unnecessary execution of one of their own.
She looked at the rest of her forces and immediately they turned away, less they suffer the wrath of their Archon. Vespera looked at the dead bodies around her, and as she kneel down upon one of the fallen of the Space Marines, she can only hear the sounds of the grass scratching themselves over their armor, like a stringed musical instrument to accompany the blowing winds of sorrow and the drums of the deafening silence that now descends upon the battlefield.
"Damn that Eldar, damn her......" Mordrak lies upon the tables of the Apothecarium . His search for the thrice-damned Huron Blackheart had led him to the world, and just as he was so close to uncovering where the despoiler's next destination is, the Dark Eldar attacked his forces. Damn the Eldar, damn the Eldar for not letting him avenge his brothers on Mortain. Even now, he could see his brother's soul beside him howling, their sorrowful voices hushed like the gentle winds. The Grey Knight shed a tear of anger for the damned.
Results
Killpoints gained
Dark Eldar: 6 KP
Grey Knights: 3 KP
Dark Eldar victory
Well this battle is one of those battles where you never really want to win it 'this' way, and my friend was not expecting that the Dark Eldar could be that nasty. My friends played his Grey Knights a little too offensively and came at me to my face, which actually worked to my favor. If I were him I would actually used my Terminators in a hit-and -run affair as his Librarian have that ability called the Summoning which allows him to pull units anywhere to where the Librarian is. In addition by putting his forces in reserves, he essentially weakened his forces by a large margin and deepstriking them in the open without any sort of cover saves is suicidal. I would have a much harder time if he had put everything on the table and just gunned me down little by little.
I also did a slight miscalculation as well, and unfortunately for me it is the fact that once again I have committed all my Wyches to kill a squad, and overkilled them. Despite the fact that it is against the unnatural monstrous toughness of the Paladins, but nonetheless with the amount of power weapons and normal attacks a significantly weakened squad like that would not survive against Wyches. I will have to learn to have more restrain over the Wyches.
Overall, I have to say that this is a poor matchup, and that against a much more numerous and arguably more powerful GK list (PSydreads, Purifiers, Razorbacks, grenade nonsense) the GK would be able to fight with the Dark Eldar on more than even grounds. But in the end, we learned a lot from each other (Initiative 10 on the termies is very scary and I shiver when I think about what happens when the Rad grenades, Psychotrope grenades, Initiaitve 10 and high strength force weapons are combined together) and we ended up having quite some fun while we are at it.
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