Battle Report for June 30

Eldar versus Chaos, 4000pt

Pictures

I deployed with two garrisons, the infantry with obliterators and no defilers in cover near one objective on the west, and a forlorn hope in cover near the other in the east. We played that garrisons start in overwatch. He deployed some rangers in cover on the far west flank.

The battle played out with the chaos forces launching a flanking maneuver up the east flank using a deathwheel, bike formation, raptors, and one predator/land raider formation. The two decimators, the other predator formation, and the other forlorn hope formation moved up to support the garrison detachments. My artillery found a Nightspinner detachment and killed one, breaking them. My decimators took aim at some scouts and caused that formation no end of grief, but in revenge Adam doubled his revenant titans and hosed down one decimator with 4 MW hits. I only saved one.

I countered this bold titan move by moving my overwatched infantry platoon out of cover and firing at the titans, followed by immediately in turn 2 sustaining fire at them. I killed one and broke the other which fled into cover. Later on, he would fail to rally the titan and I would teleport my four chosen in behind it and assault it, barely destroying it in combat and earning one objective for Break their Spirit.

In the meantime, he moved his four wave serpents carrying aspects up the west flank and started to threaten my infantry. I tried pulling back to avoid presenting him with a target to engage but ended up getting savaged by the cobras in return. Whoops. Learned a lesson there.

On the east flank, I got some damage on the cobras early on, but could not follow up. The one time I did he rolled amazingly for his 5+ RA armour. They hurt a few units with their deadly attack, breaking forlorn hopes and predators that strayed too close.

The big turn was turn 3. In turn 2 I had engaged his guardians in a firefight and broke them badly and they failed to rally. His flank was in trouble as my raptors, bikes, predators, and deathwheel were moving in for the kill. He summoned the Avatar and teleported in swooping hawks and won the initiative. In a one-two-three move he fired the nightspinners at the bikes, shot them with the falcons that moved in, and then assaulted with the avatar bringing in the hawks at the same time. The poor bikes never stood a chance despite their good armour rolls. Later, the deathwheel failed to activate just to add salt to the wound.

The score was tied 1-1 after three turns so we rolled into a fourth. In turn three he had moved the aspect warriors in the wave serpents up and parked themselves beside my broken infantry detachment where they shot at some predators instead. The chaos marines rallied and then for the initiative roll or turn 4 I rolled a 6, getting a sacrifice. I decided to be bold and gave the sacrifice to the infantry and engaged the aspect warriors with 5 summoned daemons and the marines. After a bout and rolling I had lost 6 stands to his 2!! His armour saves were amazing. Anyways, I lost the combat and got totally wiped out. He then took his warriors and moved in on my other large infantry detachment with the defilers and launched an assault on them with fire support from jetbikes. Well, turnabout is fair play as I smacked him around and killed his detachment (although I suffered four dead stands in return). The game ended with some activations of formations jockeying for position and grabbing/denying objectives. In the end, the score was 1-0 for Chaos, the Break Their Spirit being the only accomplished goal.

A tie, but a moral victory for me nonetheless!

Analysis
It was a hard fought game with lots of back and forth. In the end I felt I played my flanking maneuvure incorrectly and when I lost the initiative on turn 3 it allowed him to push me back easily. Had I got the initiative, the bikes could have pulled back negating the avatar and allowing me to strike hard in turn 4. In theory at least.

My artillery started well but failed to keep giving it to the Night Spinners. In turn two I had all three under the template but failed to kill any of them. Later in the game the night spinners were critical in putting blast markers on my units.

The air war was interesting. I tried to keep my Helltalon's bombing runs in my ground AA support area but Adam disregarded it and went after the bombers every time with his nightwings. Even though I shot down two night wings, it paid off for him when he killed one HT as it was perfroming a bombing run on the aspect warriors in turn 3.

Having units break and not rally is huge in this game. A decimator and forlorn hope formation broke in turn 2, both failed to rally at the end of turn 2, and only the decimator rallied in turn 3. I really could have used them sooner. I feel I had too many small detachments vulnerable to breaking.

In the end, I think I can play better and tweak my list a bit more to get more durability out of it.

A game for the ages any way you slice it.