So after a win against the Sisters i was feeling confident about playing the Eldar, another T3 army. With most of the Eldar setting up in reserves however, i was a little bit more nervous, as it could mean that turn 2 i was just overwhelmed by a vast horde of Eldar. However, i need not have worried, as I was pretty much overwhelmed turn 1!
Turn 1 and right from the off things went down hill. I lost the roll for first turn and the Eldar did there pregame stratagem move and moved their units right up to my lines and applied pressure right from the off.
Turn 1 assault
The guard castle
I was castled up quite nicely and i thought i had plenty of defence in depth to keep my tank safe, which did actually work out in the end. However, i did loose pretty much all of my screening units and more crucially i lost my flyer to the Shining spears. In the previous games i have started with my flyer off the table because under the Arcs of Omen rules, flyers have to start off the table, however, as it was pointed out to me, we were only playing the AoO detachment and not the rest of the rules, which is actually true, hence why were still started with 12 CP and not just 6. So, i decided to start the flyer on the table and i payed the price for bad placement and not thinking about the fact that the shining spears are flyers and can charge other flyers! Anyway, lessons learnt, start with flyers off the table!
Turn 2 and while i had cleared the last of the Eldar out of my pained last turn, i had left myself open to the turn 2 advances of the Eldar. And advance they did, right up in to my lines again. Some of the reserves dropped in, mainly swooping hawks and warp spiders but the big blob of guardians stayed off the table for now.
Turn 2 carnage
It was at the end of my turn 2 that things really took a nose dive for me. The avatar had come wheeling in to combat in my opponents turn but had somehow manage to bounce against the Hellhammer. Don't get me wrong, it did damage but it didn't manage to destroy it. However, in my fight phase things went a little more explosive, and by little I mean big, very big. The avatar struck at the tank and took it out and they thing went supernova, big style.
Before the Big Bang
I can't remember the exact role but basically every unit in the picture got hit when the tank brewed up. The psyker was only on one wound, thanks to perils of the warp turn 1, but I then managed to roll 4 or higher for the priest, techpriest and commissar and not much lower for anything else! In total I think about 30 mortal wounds were dished out!
After the big bang
The only good point of the whole thing was that the avatar was hit for 6 mortal wounds, just enough to take the beast out. Had he survived it would have been very hard to take him down, probably requiring all my firepower to the exculusion of all else. Writing this up I realise I made a mistake here as I played vengeful salute to hit the warp spiders. I shouldn't have done this as you can't use it when a vehicle explodes. I don't think it would have made much difference, as the warp spiders didn't have a huge impact on the game as they were holding an objective for the next two turns.
In response to all this I dropped my scions and tried a risky play that didn't work out. I had their chance to take two objectives, one in no mans land and one in my opponents deployment zone. I managed to get to the one on the centre of the board but failed the charge for the one on the deployment zone, despite a re-roll. This left me both units open and with the guardians coming in next turn, highly likely to be destroyed in reply. By this point in the game i was really on the back foot and it was going to be a serious up hill struggle to win.
Turn 4 and 5 were very quick, as there really wasn’t a lot on the board by this point. I cleared out the last of the elder on the centre objectives but i was unable to do anything to the guardians or the swooping hawks hiding at the back. On his side he was unable to do anything to the remaining units in my castle as they were out of range of the majority of their weapons.
Survivors
At the end of turn five, I had managed to survive and even though i had lost the battle, i hand managed to avoid a major defeat. In terms of overall points scored the primary points scored by both sides was fairly even, at 26 to 22. It was the secondary points that really tell the tell, as 45 to 20. My opponent could have actually scored more on his secondary, at least 5 more, possibly even 10 more (we stopped checking) as he had maxed out his score before he started turn 5. I on the other hand struggled to get out of my deployment zone to be able to score points. It all stems from the first turn charge of the elder and the destruction of my hellhammer. After this point i just didn’t have the bodies or firepower to both hold my line and move up to claim objectives.
It was a really close game though, as at the end of the game i had a command squad and half a infantry squad left but my opponent only had his guardians (17 left) and 4 swooping hawks. He did have the numerical advantage over me but i had the range and also had a greater close combat ability, with my command squad and bullgryn. I think that if we had played another round or two he would have eventually tabled me though., there were a few meistakes that i made, the biggest was with my flyer, i should have kept it off the board, secondly was with the scions, i should have gone conservative, dropping them on the far midfield objective,, all together and not have tried to go for the two charges turn two, or i should have kept them off until turn 3 and used them to counter the large blob of guardians when they dropped in and played the long game rather than rick it all for a few points in one turn.
Again lessons were learned and i will look to take these forward too my last game against the orks. This could be a fun game as I’m going up against a Stomper!
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