Battle vs Space Marines

For a nice change, I managed to play a pair of actual, real-life games! Although I didn't take any pictures or otherwise intend to report, nonetheless I'll put up an overview of each.

Both were 2000pts, and I used the same army list for them:



Archon with agoniser, drugs, phantasm and shadow field
attached to 7 Incubi in a raider with enhanced sails

10 Wyches with nets, agoniser hekatrix in Raider with sails

10 Wyches with flails, agoniser hexatrix in Raider with sails

10 Warriors with cannon, blaster, sybarite with agoniser and blast pistol in Raider

10 Warriors with cannon and blaster in Raider

10 Hellions with phantasm helliarch

6 reavers, with 2 cluster caltrops and 2 heat lances

Talos with haywire blaster and chainflails

2 Ravagers with flickerfields and night shields

There were some extra vehicle upgrades and random bits of wargear, but nothing significant.

Game 1 vs Space Marines

My gracious host for the evening, Alex, wanted him a piece of Dark Eldar action, and boy did he get some.

His list was (approximately)

Librarian with machine curse, smite, termi armour

8(?) Thunder hammer and storm shield termis

Master of Forge with conversion beamer

2 10-man Tactical squads with Rhinos, including one hunter-killer missile, and power fists on the sarges

2 Sternguard squads with rhinos, each kitted out with all sorts of combi-weapons, more power fists

3 Dreads, 2 with autocannons, 1 with a lascannon. IIRC they each had one dread close combat weapon.

The Game!

We used the Battle Missions supplement, and randomly rolled a Daemons Mission, 'Kill 'em all and let Khorne sort them out!' (may not be actual title of mission). We agreed that my Dark Eldar should take the role of Daemons, and braced ourselves.

Objective: wipeout. We had unlimited turns but could only win by picking the sacred shrubbery in the middle of the board... nah just kidding, we had to annihilate our hapless foe.

I won the roll to choose quarter - in this case that meant choosing my enemies quarter, so I put him in the most exposed of the four quarters, the North-East. This meant that there would be some terrain that I could utilise in my approach, while there were open spaces in his deployment zone for to assault through.

Alex deployed his Sternguard and a dread toward the Centre-East, the two tacticals to the Central North again with a dread, and plopped the Master of Forgery with the lascannon dread on the hill in the N-E corner of his zone. Being an 8' x 4' table, he was fairly spread out in his zone. His libby and termis were in reserve.

The mission asked me to split my force into two daemon-esque waves, and deploy from reserve, first wave on turn one followed by remainder through normal rules. I split my list into a shooty half and a choppy half, having misread the section I was under the impression that I was able to choose which half went first... naturally when I found out that I had to roll, I rolled the wrong one, and thus the choppy half had to enter the board with no ravager support. Oops.

On the bright side, the mission also allowed me to utilise the short board edge opposite from my opponent's deployment (ie the W). This I did.

Early game

I brought my wyches and Incubi on from the top of the West edge, abuttng the North corner, and used my enhaced aethersails to fly 30" down the line. I wouldn't be assaulting 'til turn 3, but I felt I had time. The hellions flew into cover in the central South zone, opposite his Tacticals but out of view. I was careful to come on such that the sternguard on his far Eastern flank were well out of the action, as was the dreadnought there.

On his turn, the Space Marines advanced the Tactical squads in their Rhinos to the midfield, coming directly for my Hellions. His Sternguard stayed put, evidently expecting an attack on the East side by my later waves, but their Rhinos spread to run interference on each flank. The Forge master showed his mastery by wrecking the lead raider of wyches, who disembarked safely and ran into some nearby trees.

Turn 2 saw the Talos come to play, walking up the middle next to the hellions, who continued to cower waiting for some marines to be debarked. Enter a ravager, that promptly blew the eastmost of the tactical squad rhinos steaming down the centre to smithereens. The surviving wych raider moved forward over the wreck of their fellow, ready for launching an assault in turn 3; the incubi followed.

For the Space Marines, the termis and librarian walked on near the epicentre of the Dark Eldar assault, separated from the leading wyches by about 8" and a river. The seemingly aptly named Master of Forge backed up his previous performance, shooting down the other Wych raider, and I made the mistake of disembarking them on the exposed side of the Raider hull rather than using the wreck for cover. I had envisioned baiting his terminators somehow, or coaxing his Librarian into smiting me rather than machine cursing the incubus raider, but the beakies were able to bring more firepower to bear than I had anticipated, and only two wyches survived.

The sternguard were still waiting patiently on the Eastern flank for me to venture forth from cover.

Alex was getting a little frustrated, and said "C'mon, stop hiding."

"I'll make you a deal," I replied. "I'll stop hiding if you walk into my assault range!"

Mid-game

Turn 3 was time to charge! Incubi flew then disembarked near the surviving Tactical Rhino, hoping that between the newly arrived ravager and his friends they would forcibly disembark the occupants. The untouched wyches moved into a position to hopefully assault the terminators with a good fleet roll over the river, or cancel to assault with the Incubi otherwise. Reavers flew on, their turbo-boost landing on the other side of the already disembarked Tacticals, and killed two in the process - aha! I thought. With 3+ cover saves they might live until next turn, and heat lance the Dread supporting this flank! Plus, the Hellions zipped out from behind cover, ready to engage the debussed marines in the centre.

Luckily, the two ravagers were able to wreck the Tactical Rhino, and due to the proximity of the bikes and the other tac squad, some space marines were obliged to stand on the Incubi's side of the wreck. Sure enough, they charged. The large wych squad rolled a '1' for their fleet, and also ended up charging the Tac squad, while the two wyches left of the second squad rather hopefully charged the termis. Hellions assaulted the other tactical squad, while sternguard and dreadnoughts looked on from a distance. I don't really know why he hadn't moved at least the sternguard closer to where the action was clearly taking place.

The Archon kicked things off, slaughtering 5 marines in combat single-handedly. The rest of the wyches and Incubi comfortably finished the remaining 5 before they could even think of striking back. The Incubi consolidated into the shadow of the Rhino wreck, safe from incoming fire, while the wyches consolidated into a crater just in front of the terminators - who had just finished squashing the rather ill-conceived charge of the remnants. Meanwhile, the Hellions rolled 41 attacks against 6 Tactical Marines (I had rolled +1 attack combat drugs), and did... nothing! Seriously, they completely whiffed. Luckily, the marines whiffed back, and the most inglorious round of combat thus recorded came to a bloodless end.

Space Marine turn 3 was a critical point in the game. Could he stem the dark eldar assault? The sternguard reminded me that they have some kind of special ammo that ignores cover... d'oh! Bye bye, bikes. Dead again, with the help of a dreadnought. Unaccountably, his Master of forge didn't frag a raider this turn. I think it bounced off a ravager's flickerfields. Assault phase, and the termis charged the wyches, who held their ground despite a couple of casualties. I think they killed a termi back. We must've forgotten to resolve the Hellion combat this turn, otherwise I would have hit & run afterwards to charge again next turn, or maybe charge the sternguard with hellions and take out the tacticals with the Talos. Oh well, in effect there was another turn of whiff.

Dark Eldar turn 4 saw the warriors (finally) coming in from reserve, hiding behind the central cover, but poking out just enough to destroy the wandering sternguard rhino. A dreadnought somewhere lost its arms, and the Incubi charged the termis. They did better than I expected, killing all but 2; a librarian and one termi, who held. I consolidated my archon into his librarian, pretty confident about nailing him next turn. The hellions made up for earlier inadequacies by killing 4 marines, leaving only 2 survivors, who did maybe one wound in return, but held.

The sternguard finally decided that they would have to move, and essentially reoriented to a N-S line 18-odd inches from all the melee combat. The master of the Forge fragged a newly arrived warrior raider with the conversion beamer of death, and then the dark eldar mopped up both terminators and remaining tacticals in melee.

End Game

From here on in, it was clean-up. The wyches went to haywire a dread to death, Hellions lined up a unit of sternguard, and Incubi began a ponderous conga-line towards the other. Ravagers and surviving raiders shot down one other dread. One lot of sternguard succumbed to the hellions over three assault phases, and the other fired a couple of shots at the now pain-hyped Incubi, killing not enough.

On my T6, I finally assassinated the fucking Forge Master, and Alex pretty much gave up. Although my Incubi had fallen 0.5" short of assaulting the sternguard this time (they rolled a '1' for fleet), those sternguard had one turn to a) kill all incubi, b) kill all hellions and c) stay out of range of two warrior squads. It was obvious that they couldn't escape, and his one remaining dreadnought was about to do the haywire dance - if the two ravagers didn't get him. So in the interests of getting more games in, we called it there.

Result - win to the Dark Eldar.

It seemed that the Space Marines expected a straight up fight, but I have enough experience with my army to know that wouldn't work out in my favour. Instead, I isolated the Western flank of his army against my entire force, crushing it, and allowing me to defeat him in detail. From the moment his storm shields failed to blunt the klaives, he was done for.

I think that by consolidating his line after my initial attack - moving the Sternguard to the west, and withdrawing his western forces to the east - bringing his terminators on behind the new line, and shooting my infantry half to death before engaging, he could have won or at least drawn. As it was his sternguard barely fired, accounting for some bikes and one incubus for the whole game. By contrast his master of forge downed 3 vehicles, and knocked the gun off another. Easily the man of the match.

Sorry for the lengthy report, next game next time!