Since not being able to make the 2013 Nova open I decided that I want to officially target and plan to attend the 2014 event. So here begins my practice rounds :) I'll probably 'encourage' the rest of the group to so the same regardless if they feel like joining me or not... I mean might as well have fun at least trying some missions that are not completely straight out of the book, and might as well learn the scoring and battle point system for this event which is something I have not been used to in the past. This goal will also encourage me to get some more of my forces painted...something that has been lacking recently. My opposition forces are certainly making me look bad playing plastic that is just put together right before a game. I find I have a bad habit of this and have made lists with models I haven't built yet and then am scrambling to get them built usually minutes before deployment. Oh well, more things to work on I guess.
The forces...
Grey Knights (since David gave this to me in excel, I'll just paste it here as is below)
| Unit/Upgrade | Points | Total |
| HQ | ||
| Grand Master Mordrak | ||
| 3 Ghost Knights - Nemesis Force Halberds | ||
| 1 Ghost Knight - Nemesis Force Hammer | ||
| Troops | ||
| 10x Strike Squad | ||
| 1x Master-Crafted Force Halberd | ||
| 2x Psycannon | ||
| Psybolt Ammunition | ||
| 10x Strike Squad | ||
| 1x Force Hammer | ||
| 2x Psycannon | ||
| Psybolt Ammunition | ||
| Elites | ||
| 10x Purifier Squad | ||
| 1x Master-Crafted Force Stave | ||
| 5x Force Halberds | ||
| 4x Psycannon | ||
| Fast Attack | ||
| Stormraven | ||
| Twin-Linked Multi-Melta | ||
| Twin-Linked Lascannon | ||
| 5x Interceptor Squad | ||
| 1x Master-Crafted Force Stave | ||
| 2x Force Hammers | ||
| 1x Incinerator | ||
| Heavy Support | ||
| Dreadnought | ||
| 2x Twin-linked Autocannons | ||
| Psybolt Ammunition | ||
| Dreadnought | ||
| Assault Cannon | ||
| Psybolt Ammunition | ||
| Total |
Eldar (wraith theme...pretty much Iyanden style, but without the codex because I have not acquired it yet)
HQ: Farseer with witchblade (he rolled the warlord trait: Seer of the Shifting Vector...completely useless for me in this game as I have no deep striking units. This allows you to ds without scatter within 6" fo the warlord)
HQ: Spiritseer
T: Ranger Squad (x5)
T: Ranger Squad (x5)
T: Wraithguard Squad (x5) with Wraithcannons
T: Wraithguard Squad (x5) with D-Scythes
w/ Wave Serpent with twin-linked scatter lasers, shuriken cannon, holo fields, and spirit stones.
T: Guardian Defenders (x10)
w/ Wave Serpent with twin-linked bright lances, shuriken cannon, holo fields, and spirit stones.
FA: Hemlock Wraithfighter
HS: Wraithlord w/ ghost glaive and bright lance
HS: Wraithlord w/ bright lance and scatter laser
HS: Wraighknight w/ sun cannon, scatter shield, and scatter laser.
The board. Objectives in the four quarters and the center of the board. LOS blocking ruins in the middle, ruins in opposite corners, hills In opposite corners, and some area terrain in the middle on the long edges.
Dave wins the dice roll and elects to go second. This is an objective mission so usually that is a good idea. I graciously accept, as I also would have also chosen to go second, but am fine getting to move my tanks first to benefit from their jink save. Also this gives me a chance to buff up from my psychic powers. Going first also allows me to not have to keep anything in reserve except the mandatory flyer unless I wanted to. I figured I would not place anything in reserve due to this jink benefit and I wanted to unload as much fire power on these grey knights ASAP in the early turns.
I roll death's mission, guide, and prescience for the farseer and protect/jink and conceal/reveal for the Spiritseer.
For my deployment placing first, I pretty much kept things as far back as possible due to the grey knights being a great assault army. Their force weapons have the ability to kill my heavy support contingent in one hit each, so I would try to not let that happen as long as possible. I stick a squad of wraithguard with the wraithcannons in the ruins on the back left with some rangers above them in the ruins. I put the wraithknight and the wave serpent with the other wraithguard and the spiritseer behind them. The other ranger squad locks down the other objective in the hill in the bottom left with the wave serpent with the guardians and farseer behind them. The two wraithlords I decide to put up on the front line due to their slower movement and slightly shorter range. Hopefully I would be able to use their fire power to hit hard on some of his front lines as well.
Dave combat squads his two larger troops to double his scoring units and sits each of ten marines on each of his corner objectives. He stacks the far side with another squad of five interceptors and a dreadnought. He puts his other dreadnought in the center opposite my wraithlords. The stormraven is left in reserve with a squad of ten purifiers riding inside.
Dave chooses not to attempt to seize the initiative.
Eldar turn 1:
I move my wraithlords up towards the week side and around the center ruins. My wave serpent with the farseer moves up towards my rangers on the lower objective. My other wave serpent flies over the ruins and advances forward. The farseer disembarks from the wave serpent to join the rangers. Not sure this was the best idea, but being outside of the transport allows me to cast guide and prescience on the wave serpent and rangers so they will both be able to reroll missed to-hit rolls. The wraithknight brings up the rear and shifts to be able to take some long range shots at the far enemy objective. The wraithguard and rangers in the far ruins stay put. I then unload on the troops that were on the front line at the lower enemy objective. I manage to kill the entire combat squad and maybe one guy in the ruins behind them in the next squad. I think I take some pot shots with some sniper fire (which is barely in range) and the wraithknight's sun cannon at the other combat squad on the far objective and after some poorly scattering blast templates, I only manage to kill two marines. My Spiritseer casts protect on the wraithguard squad inside of the other wave serpent giving them a 2+ armor save. You know, just incase the wave serpent blows up in the next turn. Both wave serpents moved, so they will get their jink save next turn (unless he shoots me with something that ignores cover). End of turn 1.
Grey Knight turn 1:
The troops and dreadnought on the far side advance towards my lines and take a few potshots at the rangers in the ruins and I think kill one. The troops on the back right objective stay put. In a big move, the interceptor squad teleports up to 30" and ends up in the ruins in the middle of the board to begin to control the center objective. They are hidden from view below in the shrine. The center dreadnought steps right and takes some shots at the wave serpent with the wraithguard and I think causes a glancing hit. The squad on the lower right objective stays put. Mordrak and his ghost knight terminators teleport and deep strike near my lower left objective, but decide not to shoot and instead run to spread out. I was surprised that he did not just shoot instead, but due to the large amount of blast weapons I have, this was probably a good idea. This pretty much ended his turn one.
Eldar turn 2:
This turn I basically decide to turn everything I have and unload on the enemy warlord and retinue. Unfortunately my Wraithfighter did not decide to come out of reserve to assist with that effort. I disembark the guardians out of the wave serpent and begin to unleash. In the end, some guided guardian fire does nothing, but the prescienced wave serpent kills the first ghost knight with the shield shots, and then the single bright lance shot strikes true, and after Mordrak failed his invul save, the strength of the wound was enough to double him out and cause instant death! Since the ghost knights follow their fearless leader, the rest of the terminators vanish with his passing. Bummer for the grey knights and this was a pretty big eldar moment of triumph. Interesting squad, and they did put a lot of pressure on this lower left eldar objective. Deep striking is always risky when you have a small squad located where I can pretty much turn my entire army to fire upon them. This move allowed some more of his troops to advance without problem, and I also mispositioned my wraithknight as I forgot the interceptors were jump infantry. I pretty much thought it was going too take the full might of my army to get rid of the terminators first and the maybe whittle down the warlord. I needed to focus on them as if the warlord got wounded, but did not die, more terminators would appear from the grave to assist him! I was not able to hit the interceptors with anything and I think some other shooting on the far troops in his backfield was uneffective for the rest of my turn.
Grey knight turn 2:
Storm raven comes in from reserve...bummer for me, but ends up only doing some minor damage to the wave serpent with the wraithguard inside. The far dreadnought advances and turns to take some shots on the rear of the same wave serpent but doesn't do too much damage luckily. I could have probably positioned my wave serpent better to avoid those rear shots, but as that serpent shield is a front arc weapon only, I was trying to overkill that deep striking command squad I think. I think some of his other troops advanced and killed maybe one more ranger, but the big move was the interceptor squad coming out of the ruins. The jump move and then the following assault move put them easily in range if the wraithknight. Much to my luck however, after succeeding in rolling one wound with the force hammer, the grey knight fails his leadership test so my wraithknight is not killed outright! However, now succumbing to the concussive force from the hammer, will be attacking at initiative 1 for the next assault phase. Not a good thing as usually my advantage lies in attacking first. I think I am unable to kill any of them this phase either as they have this staff that gives them a 2++ sv in close combat. Next turn would be better.
My Wraithfighter comes in from reserve and I line up to go all out on his storm raven. As it was still zooming however, this would be no easy feat. I keep pecking off a model or two a turn with the remaining rangers running around, but the wraithguard still just stay in place on the back left objective. My wave serpent with the other wraithguard move and then go flat out towards the weakened lower right enemy objective. Hopefully I can control this and get line breaker in the process if I can finish off the few remaining troops over here with my wraithguard. The guardians and farseer join back up and hop into the other wave serpent by my lower left objective. The wraithlords are guided and everything I can shoot at the storm raven I think caused only one glancing hit. Now, my Wraithfighter would theoretically save the day... I shoot my heavy d-scythes at the flyer. This could be great because even though they are low strength I could get a six on the penetration roll and cause an instant penetrating hit due to their distort special rule. Long story short, I randomly run through the firing sequence, cause a penetrating hit, explode the flyer and cause all ten troops inside to go down with the ship taking strengthh 10 ap1 hits, however, before this occurred, I never got a chance to check the flyers with blast weapons on other flyers rules. I knew ground troops could intuit do this as they are considered to be taking snap shots at zooming flyers, and you cannot fire blast weapons as snap shots, but I figured as a flyer versus another flyer, that that would not apply. However, as they are blast weapons, I am unable to even technically target the flyer in zoom mode at all. There is another sentence under the flyer combat section that spells this out very clearly. Sigh. After all that the flyers shots are wasted. So, this Wraithfighter sons the worst anti-flyer flyer...with only blast weapons, this is really an anti infantry flyer. The mind shock pod underneath (which takes the place of a weapon) is cool that it forces any enemy unit within 12" to reroll failed leadership tests, but since this thing is flying around so fast typically, this is hard to use. The fact that this flyer can also cast terrify is neat as a sort of combo thing with that pod, but with the terrify range of 24" you can't really get a good benefit out of this unless you are positioned very close to your enemies. I guess the short 18" range on the heavy d-scythes also sort of encourages this tactic, but maybe not the ideal functionality or flexibility I typically look for in a flyer. Then we reenter the wraithknight versus interceptor combat. Once again, in some insane lucky rolling for me, one of the force hammer hits strikes true, again concussing me to low initiative, but the wielded fails the force leadership test so we still keep hacking and are locked in combat again. I think I end up killing the guy with the staff so we are back in track to smash the troops with my 10 strength as well. He may have succumb to a perils of the warp, or one of them did, but either way, lucky combat for me once again.
Grey knight turn 3:
The storm raven enters hover mode and becomes basically a fast skimmer tank. This then allows him to unload the purifiers inside. They combat squad and half go into the ruins in the center with a bunch of psycannons and the other half head towards the wraithlords. The far troops and dreadnought advance slightly again and the back right troops a kid other dreadnought head towards the lower right objective to attack the wave serpent. After some misc shooting both wraithlords take some wounds and one ends up getting assaulted by the small squad of purifiers and they end the turn locked in combat. The wave serpent with the wraithguard is wrecked from some other good shooting and the troops inside are forced to hop out. As the spiritseer had continued to cast protect, their 2+ armor kept them alive from the debris just fine. Not that big a deal as they were going to be disembarking next turn anyway. Stinks to loose a wave serpent, but his job was done.
Eldar turn 4:
My wraithguard at the lower right objective finish off the few remaining enemy troops with their d-scythes easily and stand ground holding on the objective. Mother spirit seer again casts protect and then also conceal giving them shrouded and improving their cover save by 2. The Wraithfighter advances and zooms forward to try to shoot something he could actually kill, but i think his blasts scatter and nothing much happens in that side of the board. The wraithguard at the back left make an appearance as the enemy dreadnought was getting just a little too close. They blast it away with their wraithcannons easily. I think some more heavy shooting occurs towards the storm raven, but I am still unable to completely take it down. It was a rough assault phase for me however, as the purifiers are able to finish off one of the wraithlords and, in an epic assault, due to their simultaneous initiatives, the rest of the interceptors manage to take down the wraithknight at the same time as he finishes them off! Very intersting few assault phases indeed. I am left backing off of my lower left objective with the rangers and am looking little weak on that side if the board now.
With some very heavy firepower from the storm raven and purifier squad in the ruins, the other wraithlord is destroyed. The smaller purifier squad advances and kills a few of the rangers which forces them to fall back. The far right troop squad deals some heavy damage to the wraithguard in the lower right ruins and due to some poor armor saves, half of the squad is destroyed. It's a good thing they are fearless so they will not fall back off of the objective. The middle dreadnought comes around the corner of the ruins and takes some pot shots at the Wraithfighter and actually manages to score a hull point I think. I tried to evade this attack however so I would only be able to take snap shots next turn...another bummer, as again, I only have blast weapons which are not able to be fired as snap shots...
Eldar turn 5:
The guardians and farseer disembark out of the lower wave serpent and unload on the smaller purifier squad close to my objective. The rangers join in the shooting and manage to wipe them out. The wave serpents shooting with some buffs from the farseer is able to wreck the storm raven finally, which ends up nicely providing a little cover for the guardians from the purifiers in the ruins. The rangers in the far left ruins are unable to kill the remaining enemy troops on the back craters due to some good cover saves. The lower right wraithguard try to shoot the middle dreadnought but with no avail as they would need a six to penetrate to do anything. Now, something I should have done here is use the battle focus ability of the guardians, farseer, and rangers. In the same shooting phase, with that rule, I can run and then shoot, or shoot and then run. Pretty cool as they also have fleet which allows them to reroll run distance dice as well. I keep forgetting about this rule and when to use it... As most of this army is a wraith army, which those units don't have that option, I wasn't thinking about it. This may have allowed me to run back into scoring range of my lower left objective incase the game would end after this turn. We decided to use random game length, even though in tournaments you would probably end due to round time. We never had to fight in night fighting either which was nice for all parties. My wraith fighter as stated before could not fire, but that sort of worked out as I needed to use my vector dancer ability to make an extra 90 degree turn to be able to stay on the board. That would have also only allowed snap shots, but since I was in that mode anyway due to the last turns evade maneuver, this worked out.
The purifiers and dreadnought manage to take down the wave serpent in the back but don't do anything to the troops nearby. This was potentially a bad move, as next turn they could have again ran towards that other objective, but Dave might have been thinking he could continue barraging them with the four psycannons in that middle purifier squad if the game went on and I hpguess he wanted to limit my transport abilities which was probably a good idea as well. His back right troops have to form a line to be able to control that nearby objective, but with some more shooting is able to peck off another wraithguard in the lower right ruins. His lone marine in the back tries to make a late rush towards the far left objective. We then roll the dice for the game...and the game ends.
Game ending:
The mission objectives award mission points for certain goals. Controlling more corner objectives than your opponent awarded two mission points. Since I had the opposite corner objectives, I received the two. The center objective was also worth one by itself. Normally the elite purifiers are not scoring, but Dave was able to make some additional units scoring due to a trait or ability of his warlord. The purifiers were the good choice and they ended up securing one point. I was able to get line breaker with the wraithguard in the lower right ruins as well for one point for me. Dave was not able to achieve this as his one marine was a bit short of my deployment zone. I also got one point for slaying his warlord. My farseer was still on the board so no points for Dave in that category as well. So, Eldar victory 4:1.
This game could have gone a very different direction if that wraithknight combat lasted only one phase. I probably could have gotten rid of most of the warlords terminator squad, but again, due to some convenient positioning, this ended quicker than I had anticipated. Those interceptors would have certainly been a pain and they probably would have held my advance to the other side of the board had they disengaged from the wraithknight quicker.
I'm not sure i will be playing the Wraithfighter anytime soon unless I have additional anti flyer support on the board. I think the crimson hunter exarch would have been a much better choice even though more points. I think the guardians did better than I expected and give them the MVP for the game.
My general plan worked of shifting towards the weaker side of his army after deploying strong on the far side first. It's nice for the eldar speed to be able to do this. Also the defensive force of the rangers and wraithguard in the far ruins proved to be a pretty good one for holding that objective. Due to the long hammer and anvil deployment, Dave had a hard time getting there fast enough to do much damage to them.
Fun game and I learned some good lessons for fighting grey knights...don't...get...in...assault!
Until next time,
ZS
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