1750 – Imperial Guard vs Dark Eldar

1750 Traitor Guard of Khorne Vs. Dark Eldar

So this weekend my buddy Alex threw down with his new Dark Eldar army. Having yet to lose, he though he could trifle with the power of Khorne! Lets see what happened!

My list was the same one I used at the Quantum Games tourney:

Company Command Squad (CCS) – 3x plasmaguns, 1x plasma pistol, medic, Chimera /w heavy flamer

Marbo

Battle Psyker Squad (BPS) – 8x sanctioned psykers, Chimera /w heavy flamer

Vendetta

Vendetta

Hydra

Hydra

Manticore

Veterans – 3x meltagun, demolition experts (Vendetta)

Veterans – 3x meltagun, demolition experts (Vendetta)

Veterans – 3x meltagun, Chimera /w heavy flamer

Junior Command Squad (JCS) – 4x flamer, Chimera /w heavy flamer

Infantry Squad – Autocannon, Grenade Launcher, Chimera /w heavy flamer

Infantry Squad – Autocannon, Grenade Launcher, Chimera /w heavy flamer

1750

His List (from memory):

Baron

15 Hellions

3 squads of trueborns (4x blasters in venom /w 2x splintercannons)

2 squads of wyches (haywire grenades in raider /w lance)

5 Reavers (heatlance?)

Talos

Ravager

Voidwing

Combat drugs rolls feel no pain (DOH!).

Scenario is Seize Ground (5 objectives) and Dawn of War deployment. I win the roll to go first but pass it off as I want first turn to shoot (he’ll probably deploy nothing if I go first).

He deploys a raider full of wyches dead centre of the board. I deploy nothing.

Turn 1 (DE)

• Everything screams towards my lines other than the ravager and voidwing… They sit behind some cover.

Turn 1 (IG)

• I drive everything on 6” in a long line along my deployment zone. I shield my hydras with the JCS chimera.
• Shooting blows up 1 venom and a gun off another. Vendettas take out the ravager and voidwing. I kill a few hellions and cause them to run with the BPS.

Turn 2 (DE)

• 20 wyches disgorge from their raiders infront on my chimera line.
• Shooting from the trueborns stuns one of the vendettas on the right and one of the hydras. Chimera protecting the hydras is wrecked and the JCS is pinned.
• In assault the wyches use their haywires and immobilize both the BPS and manticore. The manticore loses its missiles and the BPS chimera loses its heavy flamer. The vendettas are both stunned again and the chimera carrying the veterans is stunned.

Turn 2 (IG)

• No Marbo
• One of my infantry chimeras gets immobilized after a DoG haywire stops it. My other infantry chimera causes one of the wych squads to run.
• My vendettas both go fast and I grabchute insertion a squad of veterans between a talos and a venom.
• My veterans dump out of the chimera and the other veteran in my deployment zone. With a bunch of tankshocks, I manage to coral the reavers and wyches into a tight bunching.
• Demo chargers destroy both the reavers and the wyches. Hydras take out a venom. Veterans knock 1 wound off talos.

Turn 3 (DE)

• Talos moves towards me and charges the veterans that shot it, wiping them out and gaining FNP (DOH!)
• Hellions are back in my face, next turn they will be charging my chimeras
• Shooting blows up one of my vendettas and my CCS chimera
• Wyches continue to fall back as I keep a chimera within 6” of em all game

Turn 4 (IG)

• Marbo comes in and I plunk him near a grouping of hellions and trueborns. He kills all but 1 trueborn and enough hellions to cause a panic test which they fail due to BPS (I continue to make them run all game with BPS and my remaining vendetta). Marbo dies as well due to his own blast plate.

• CCS moves towards venom near hydras and blows it up with plasmaguns
• Hydras whittle down a trueborn squad on foot
• Remaining veterans on foot move toward talos and knock another wound off of it.
• Infantry squad in the immobilized chimera dumps out and runs to an objective

Turn 5 (DE)

• Talos wipes out entire infantry squad and combine shooting wipes out 1 of 2 veteran squads

Turn 5 (IG)

• Lone veteran kills talos (melta)
• Vendetta shuts down last raider
• I move to control 3/5 objectives with 2 troop choices and my opponent concedes as next turn his hellions will run off the table.

Victory IG. A hard-fought bloody battle. The turning point when I felt pretty good about the game was the multi-charge from his wych squads that really didn’t do much. I was pretty sure I could keep the Hellions at bay most of the game with the BPS so it was pretty much kill enough before I start to lose chimeras. DoW was pretty much the best deployment the DE could have wished for though.

Thoughts about the Dark Eldar – VERY FAST – The fastest I’ve seen yet… however if you blow up those transports after they go fast, the squads dead. I found wyches/trueborns to be fairly lackluster in combat. 3 attacks at str 3 felt underwhelming against my guardsmen, especially when I was killing a decent number back. I feel like my space wolves/orks would shred them in CC. The 4 blasters could be mean against something like a land raider but the most I was losing was a chimera to it. They’re also only 18” range so you have a couple turns to knock em out of the sky. The talos is nasty but very slow in comparison to the rest of the army… I felt like I could leave it for a bit before I would need to worry about it… A few meltas/rockets/lascannons etc later and its gone. Heck, statistically my multi-lasers alone should knock 2 wounds off every turn (it only has 3). As the hellions never actually made it to me I can’t really comment on them but they should probably stay out of combat as they’re shooting was fairly impressive. Similarly, the reavers were fast but very very flimsy. They get 1 pass and then its fairly easy to get rid of em… Bolters even take em down. All in all, very glass cannon, better than some books but I feel they are not better than the top 3 atm – IG, Wolves, Angels.

 

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