Saturday night we played a two vs two 40K game of epic proportions: Space Wolves and Eldar vs Chaos Marines and Traitor Guard, a total of 2500 points on either side. It was a big fight with way too much going on for me to remember it all. Therefore, this is going to be a pretty self-centered battle report, mostly me recounting what happened with my own units.
The good guys:
Eldar: Feugan with fire dragons in a wave serpent, rangers, jetbikers with warlock, dire avengers, swooping hawks, striking scorpions, and dark reapers.
Space Wolves: Wolf Lord (all 295 pts of him) on Thunderwolf with a huge pack of fenrisian wolves, 2 grey hunter units in razorbacks, long fangs, wolf guard in drop pod.
The bad guys:
CSM: Huron Blackheart with Khornate CSM, Lord on Juggernaught, 2nd unit of Khorne-marked CSM, 2 mauler fiends, defiler, cultists, heldrake.
Impie Guard: Primaris psyker with command squad, 2 infantry platoons (lots of autocannons in here), Leman Russ executioner (triple-shot plas cannon), 3 armored-up sentinels, Guardsman Marbo.
At least those are the units as I remember them. It was "big guns never tire" so heavies were scoring units with four objectives and diagonal deployment. Good guys went first.
Turn One the wolfguard cowboys drop-podded next to the deflier, each packing two plasma pistols, and shot the hell out of the chaos engine--it exploded! (The first of literally six or more exploding vehicles to come.) And that was the start of a bloodbath of a game. The Wolves drove up the middle while their sneaky Eldar allies zoomed in and outflanked as much as possible. The forces of Chaos came head-on with their possessed daemon engines and the guardsmen defended the home turf while firing great volleys of autocannon rounds and searing lascannon beams down range.
In the end the forces for all that is just and right in the universe (relatively speaking) took the field with a 2 VP advantage. Each side held an objective but the Wolf-Eldar alliance also had slay the warlord (CSM) and first blood. The forces of Chaos were non-existent when the game ended on Turn Five, and while the Guardsmen were not going to give up their objective, had the game gone on the long fangs and eldar rangers would likely have claimed two more objectives as they gave up their shooting stances and moved out to do just that.
So now, the selfish Eldar highlights, including the coolest thing ever (at least I was excited about it)...
Jet Bikers: I usually don't have much luck with these guys, but I beefed up the unit to 5 plus a warlock with conceal, so their jink cover saves would be pretty damn good. They zoomed up and joined the wolves charge down the middle, shot up some chaos marines, and dodged back. ...Then they got vector-raked by the dragon (heldrake) and assaulted by Huron's unit. The CSM champ challenged and though the warlock flicked his witchblade out faster, he failed to kill the chaos marine, who beheaded the warlock and ate his brains, gaining the Witch-Eater chaos boon as a result of his victory. Huron then killed the rest of the bikers. But don't they look nice charging into the fray?? Unfortunately these are my only shots of the actual battle.
Rangers actually managed to wound the big chaos baddies for change.
Dire Avengers had CSM coming at them. They fired a volley of shurikens and killed three or four of the enemy, then fell back with their battle focus. It was a very quick-footed, Eldar thing to do, but they then took a lot of impie heavy fire and got shot to hell by the dragon's hades autocannon. They lasted into turn three I think but didn't do much other than die.
Swooping Hawks had good intentions and I'm still confident I can put them to good use. They deep-struck in and dropped their large blast (6 hawks = large blast) grenade bundle on the amassed guardsmen, killing 5. Then they followed with their lasblasters in the shooting phase (wounded 6 but only got 1 cuz they made crazy cover saves), then fell back into the crater left by the exploded defiler. A great, agile entrance. But they they got shot to hell, leaving 2 of 6 alive come my turn again. My plan was to have them then attack the sentinels (cuz killing light infantry and vehicles is their schtick), which I saw no choice but to continue with. They threw one haywire grenade, hit... and I rolled a 1, so no effect. Then they charged into melee... And were shot down by some amazing autocannon overwatch before they could get there. Hawks snuffed. The end.
The
Striking Scorpions outflanked and appeared by a motley crew of cultists. They fired their shurikens into the mob and killed 2, then had to wait for the return fire (as we can't assault from reserve any more). The cultists lined up a firing squad with their autoguns and killed 3 of the 6 scorpions, and an impie autocannon killed a fourth. This left the Exarch with his claw and one buddy. They fired and charged the next turn, the Exarch gutting the cultist champ in a challenge and the scorp killing another. The cultists fought back but failed to kill anyone. Scorps won by 2, cultists failed their morale check, and got caugt in a sweeping advance: two scorpions kill eight in one round of combat! Then they moved into the cover of some ruins. Just on the other side of those ruins was the Leman Russ tank who'd been blasting great bursts of plasma fire at our friends. On their next turn, the scorpions broke from cover and assaulted the tank, the Exarch's great claw tearing a hole in the fuel tank--KABOOM! But the exarch DIED in the explosion and the last scorp jumped and hid in the crater left behind. This was swiftly followed by 20-some lasrifle shots into said hole. Dead scorpion. But they did damn good while they were alive.
And now for the grand finale, the hero of the Eldar force:
Feugan, the Burning Lance, Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragon Aspect. I actually never liked him much in the last edition, but he's way cooler in this one.
So he and his five dragons were in the wave serpent. The serpent first moved right and fired shuriken cannons at the Jugger Lord, wounding him where he was infiltrated. Then they turboboosted the hover tank to the front lines. It was there that one of the giant mauler fiends charged up, latched on, the pulled the tank apart with its claws. KABOOM! Two fire dragons died in the explosion, leaving Feugan and 3 more standing in the crater. (By the end the board was pock-marked with craters.) My turn: five melta shots at the offending mauler = KABOOM! Another dragon dies in this explosion! (ALL the fire dragons would die by fire this game!) The Leman Russ tank then shot three bursts of plasma at them, burning another dragon warrior to cinders. The chaos dragon (heldrake), meanwhile, comes out of zoom to avoid moving off the board and hovers low near by, hoping to shoot down a grey hunter on his way to claim an objective. This is Feugan's chance, the one he's been waiting for! He and the last aspect warrior move in. They could have melta-blasted the hell out of the dragon's rear armor, and no doubt killed it (it had lost one hull point already), but that was NOT what I wanted. I didn't fire a single shot. I wanted to kill that dragon with my bare hands!!
Feugan had taken 2 wounds from Impie long-ranged fire now. The coolest thing about Feugan this edition is his Hulk-like temper: when he gets wounded, his Strength and Attacks go up by the number of wounds he's suffered. So now he's pissed off and looking for revenge. And as I've never heard of anyone wringing the life from a heldrake in melee combat before, I damn sure want to make that happen. Feugan and his disciple charge the heldrake. He now has 7 attacks on the charge (4 base, +1 for charge, +2 for Hulking out) at S7 (S4 base, +1 for crushing blow warrior power, +2 for Hulk), and his relic weapon gives him AP1 and Armorbane. Roll 7 attacks: 3 misses! Crap! But that's still 4 hits, and 3 of those are penetrating hits! The dragon rolls his daemonic invuln saves... and makes 2 of them. Damn! It takes only one pen, meaning it might very well survive this attack and fly away! But when I roll for damage... KABOOM! The heldrake EXPLODES! And guess what? Kills the last fire dragon! Feugan alone come out of that terrible inferno, carrying the huge dragon's metal skull as a trophy!!!
So the MVP heroes of my force were the Scorpion Exarch who dismantled a tank with scorpion claw(but died in the resulting explosion), and of course Feugan the Dragonslayer, the only 40K superhero I know of to have ever killed a Heldrake with his own hands! (Above is my homemade conversion for Feugan using dark eldar parts--and he will soon be getting a dragon-scale cloak as well.)
It was a fun battle with lots of 'splosions. Doesn't get much better than that.
