Post-Monday Thoughts: Dark Eldar

Ello all,

Not much progress on my Incubi last night. By time I'd got in from work, it was more or less straight back out to Football.

So I thought I'd chuck up some thoughts from Monday night. This week at the club, I played against Mike F's Chaos Marines, which was roughly this (correct me if I'm wrong Mike!):

Khorne Lord
9 x Khorne Berserkers
Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher and Daemonic Posession
? x Plague Marines
5 x Havocs (2 Missile, 2 Lascannon)
3 x Nurgle Bikers
? x Nurgle Raptors
2 Individual Obliterators

We played Spearhead and Capture and Control. So yeah. I can't remember the entire game goings-on, but I'll try and summarise into points.

Cover
First up with the deployment type as Spearhead, I had a pretty good chunk of cover to hide the vehicles behind. I could deploy the 3 small venoms behind a large building in the middle, meaning that they weren't going to be shot at first turn. Then I put the Raiders quite far back, ready to move up with the lances.

It meant that with some decent positioning, my Raiders only managed to be shot by a Deep Striking Raptor unit with 2 Melta Guns.

Overwhelming Units
As with the last game, I tried to ensure that each unit I would attack, I'd throw at least 2 units into it. This happened a couple of times, where I had 3 Venoms firing at a biker unit, along with the embarked units that had weaponry, as well as all the Dark Lances firing at the same vehicle, etc.

I'd also aim my assaults to get more than 1 unit into assault, to ensure that I beat the Chaos units.

Poor Rolling
Fortunately (for me, not so much for Mike), I managed to take very few shots on the vehicles. The majority of the first turn of shooting went into shooting the Beastmaster unit, turbo-boosting or popping smoke.

When shots were fired at the vehicles though, the majority of them missed and the 1 or 2 that got through were stopped by cover / Flickerfields. Sorry!

Eventually a deep-striking Raptor unit dropped nearby and Melta'd the Duke's personal Raider.

Guessing Distances
I think I manged to do well with judging my distances to keep out of rapid fire or into cover, then to be able to leap clear and rapid fire in return or assault at long range. This is massively helped when dealing with Fast Skimmers, since I could hunker down behind a building, either out of sight or in cover, then float around over the top.

Pain Tokens
What also helped in this game was that the Duke, for the second week running, managed to help me get a 6 on the Combat Drugs roll. This meant my Wyches started off with a Pain Token, and also meant that the Duke's Warrior Squad had Feel No Pain. These tokens in the end proved really vital, as the Wyches needed them in order to not lose a combat and the Warriors needed it, otherwise they'd have probably been wiped out in the explosion of the vehicle.

I think my two major assault units - Beastmasters and Incubi - managed to wrack up pain tokens, meaning they weren't running away, and in the case of the Incubi, could hack through Plague Marines that bit easier.

Poisoned Weapons
One of Mike's biggest advantages against other armies - The Mark of Nurgle - was negated almost completely during out game, thanks to Poisoned Weapons. Eventually it caught up with me, needing 5s to wound the Plague Marines in close combat, but from shooting (and some poor armour saves) I managed to plough through most Nurgle stuff thanks to Poisoned.

Shattershard
 Again, the Shattershard claimed a fresh HQ victim. This time it was a Chaos Lord with the Mark of Khorne and Lightning Claws. This week, I put the Shattershard Haemonculus in with the Incubi so that he could hopefully shift some numbers out of bigger units, for the Incubi to assault. I think he also took down 2 or 3 Khorne Berserkers with him.

So that's it for this week. It's likely going to be my last game for a few weeks now, so I'll see what I can get done painting-wise in the mean time and maybe start my army focus that I did with the Orks, this time for Dark Eldar. Basically just going through what I think of each unit and what I do / intend to use them for.

Peace,
SB