Emperor forsakes Grey Knights, Eldar Celebrate

Originally posted at vegasgamers.org.

Harry and I had our 4th game with his Eldar and my Grey Knights. The first had been 600 and the last three have all been 750. The last two games I hadn’t taken a HQ, but decided that if he were losing the points in his Farseer getting taken down easily, I could throw in my own 61 pt. Brother Captain. My list was also very different this time because I didn’t take any psycannons and had 4 squads:

• Brother Captain
• 2 squads of 5 GKs w/Justicar
• 2 squads of 6 GKs w/Justicars + a flamer in a squad (to get closer to 750)

With the Brother Captain in, my Dreadnought had to go (I thought for some reason), so I instead made some small squads. I took out the psycannons because while I like them, once I am in assault, I just have 1 S4 attack.

Harry had an Autarch with a Dark Reaper launcher, three squads of Dire Avengers with 4 shots for the Exarchs, a squad of 6-7 Warp Spiders, and 6 Swooping Hawks including the Exarch.

I think it was also the first game against Harry that I went first. I set up. Then Harry set up. I reminded him of the Shrouding when I saw how far away his Autarch was, but he kept him far away.

We were playing Capture and Control with long table edges. Harry set up his objective behind this mesa and then sneakily used his Warp Spiders to play a small game.

Now you see us…

NOW you don’t.

I wasted my first turn with the Brother Captain and squad of 6 keeping them behind a hill and not moving them forward. Basically the game moved forward with me driving off one of his Guard- oops, Dire Avenger squads and then the remnants of two squads assaulted into his second Dire Avengers squad. The remaining Dire Avengers annihilated one of my Grey Knight squads in a single round of shooting (without Blade Storm)! waaaaaa, I sobbed. His Autarch kept lobbing missiles over, but wait: oh yeah, the Shrouding, nope, sorry. Turn 4 and Turn 5 the Autarch started shooting and hitting my Brother Captain to no effect.

Meanwhile the Swooping Hawks kept swooping in making their puny bombing run. However on one swoop, Harry deviated them into difficult terrain. They all made dangerous terrain tests and their Exarch rolled a 1 and died! Hahaha! Then I was able to assault that squad with the Brother Captain who saw them off.

The game really came down to my having 0 troops left. The only thing I had was the Brother Captain with 1 wound on him. But Harry only had part of a Dire Avengers squad which I was getting very close to. At the last moment of Turn 5 I had one 2+ Armor Save to make on him and I rolled a 1. Otherwise we quite possibly would have had a draw.

FINAL THOUGHTS

God, the game got very small pretty quickly! I’ve never played Kill Team, but when I’m rolling 4 dice for shooting for a squad of 2, I imagine it must feel like that. Harry did a very good job of putting his tough unit of Warp Spiders with their 3+ save 1.) behind the mesa but also 2.) near the Dire Avengers. To take the Warp Spiders down I had to get close to assault and open myself up to all those Dire Avenger shots.

Listening to one of the 11th Company Podcasts suggested by Walter, I was surprised that they say that Warp Spiders are a joke. They move 12″, shoot 12″ 3s to hit, 2+ to wound (Str 6). Ouch. Then Warp back 2d6.