Continuing the battle narrative...
The battle board featured two bunkers,
some rocky outcroppings, a couple patches of trees (really nice looking ones
too, fall colors on them), a couple of narrow ruined towers, and a big Imperial
landing platform. The Eldar were
positioned in the southwestern corner, all drawn back together to allow some
long-ranged fire on the slow moving Space Wolves, with the Dark Reapers on the
high platform where they had a better view from which to rain down death. The Wolf cavalry and Logan’s grey hunters
were clustered behind scenery as close to mid-board as they could get, with the
rune priest casting his living lightning from the view slits of a bunker and
the long fangs in a back corner tower (a little too far back corner—their range
was strained for the first few turns).
The Eldar took the first turn, firing
what long-ranged shots they had, the reapers maybe taking a hunter or two down
in the first round. The night spinner
tank launched clouds of monofilament webbing into the air where it drifted down
to decorate trees and a bunker for Halloween (like I said in the last entry, I
forgot to reroll for twin-linked!
Dammit!). The xenos figured they
had all day to shoot down the enemy as they walked across the field. They were wrong. On wolf turn one a drop pod slammed down in
their midst. Five wolf guard in
terminator armor lumbered from its blown hatches, all targeting the flaming
insult to the Emperor’s faith: the Avatar.
Arjac flung his mighty hammer, a cyclone ML launched two krak missiles,
a combi-plas fired two bolts of green fire, and bolter rounds exploded against its
molten metal hide. All for naught. The burning god stood impervious to their
attacks and roared a fiery battle cry.
(He made all his saves, armor and invuln, in complete defiance of their
onslaught of shots.) Finally the rune
priest’s called lightning struck down from the heavens and inflicted a single
wound on the monster. The drop pod’s
deathwind ML sprayed a huge burst of missiles at the crowded eldar,
specifically targeting the Harlequin troupe (successfully spotted them despite
the Veil of Tears psychic screen). The
large blast deviated just enough to hit four harlies and one of the jetbikes
waiting behind a bunker. Two harlies
died, as did the biker. With that one
biker death, the warlock turned his jetbike around and sped his cowardly
guardians off the field! (Failed my
morale check and they were only inches from the board edge, an easy jump to
safety for the chickensh!t bikers. Had I
taken the warlock power Embolden instead of Enhance I could have rerolled that. Now I know better.) Finally, from the distant corner, four krak
missiles streaked from the long fangs’ tower, harmlessly exploding against the
night spinner’s hull.
Then it was the Eldar’s turn.
Karandras and his band of striking
scorpions outflanked onto the board, deciding to aid against the terrible
terminators instead of coming out behind the long fangs (though they might have
taken the long fangs, they’d have spent the rest of the game walking to find
another victim). As much as I wanted my
Avatar to engage Arjac in combat, he was the only model I had with much chance
of taking out the deadly drop pod (I didn’t want another large blast hitting my
collected troops!), so the Eldar squads unloaded everything they had in the
shooting phase. The dire avengers blade
stormed 27 shots (none of which got past the termies’ armor), the scorpions
fired their pistols and catapults, the harlies danced toward the enemy and
unleashed their shurikens, including the death jester’s shrieker cannon, and
the warp spiders appeared to spray razor-sharp webbing at the wolves. In that blizzard of shurikens and razorwire,
finally the last terminator, the mighty Arjac, went down (after many successful
armor saves). The harlies were prepared
to assault if they’d survived, as was the Avatar (scorps were still too far
away). With that substantial threat
neutralized, the Avatar cast melta-fire from his burning sword and then
attacked the drop pod, rending its missile launcher from within and reducing the
vehicle to an empty hulk (wrecked it). The
reapers and night spinner harassed Logan
and his foot solders as they jogged across the board, reapers taking a few, the
tank spraying silly string into the trees (“See how the light glints off the
razor wire? Looks almost like
Christmas!”).
About this time the Thunder Wolf Cavalry
made their way in close. The Eldar
huddled back trying to stay just out of charge range of the giant wolves, but weren’t
quite far enough. The TWC charged the
Avatar alone, inching the scorpions and phoenix lord out of the fight. The Eldar god of war took the initiative and
cut down one or two before the cavalry leader’s frost axe could take a bite out
of the metal monstrosity. Then the rune priest opened the skies and
struck down a couple scorpions with lightning from above. In the next turn Karandras led his warriors
into the fray. A few more scorpions died
in the fight but the Eldar were victorious and all converged towards Logan
Grimnar and his grey hunters (the Avatar with but one wound remaining).
The night spinner tank, meanwhile,
suffered several hits from missiles and meltaguns, destroying the doomweaver
weapon. Now even more useless, the tank could
only position itself in Logan ’s
path to slow his progress. The warp
spiders teleported just inside weapons range and spun a few webs into the
hunters. Bringing their melta and plasma
weapons to bear again, and assisted by long fang missiles, the wolf force
finally brought down the Eldar hover tank.
But once the vehicle was lying lifeless on the ground, pinwheels of
color came dancing over its dead hull.
The harlequins, ignorant of gravity or terrain, leaped with ease over
the wreckage, spitting shurikens and spinning right into combat with the grey
hunters. Those few grizzled wolves who
had survived the long ranged attacks were wiped out by the mysterious Eldar
troupe. Only Logan remained, and his
deadly axe cut down three of his enemies with one mighty swing, leaving him
facing off against the Harlie Master, Shadowseer, and Death Jester.
* * *
By this time (about the end of turn 4,
I’d say), there were casualties on both sides but the Eldar were outnumbering
the Space Wolves by quite a bit. Logan was the last wolf
on the forward end of the battlefield, engaged by Harlequins with the Avatar,
Scorpion Lord, and striking scorpions closing fast. And the Eldar’s other forces were still
numerous, the Dire Avengers, Warp Spiders, and Dark Reapers had yet to take a
single casualty. But a wolf is most
deadly when wounded, and the Sons of Russ were not done yet...
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