It’s been far too long since I posted a report, and this is one that happened about four weeks ago, and finally I’ve manage to compile all the pictures and written the last few lines.  

The forces of the nice and cuddly Nurgel have sighted a new enemy that tries to take their downed spacecraft.

As normally in our gaming group we use the handbook 2008 as our tome of knowledge and I used my own slightly modified Death Guard list

So, let slip the dice of war!

Death Guard
Retinue                 340
-4 Rhinos

Retinue                 340
-4 Rhinos

Heavy Retinue           390
-4 Rhinos

Armoured Company        350
-4 Predators
-2 Land Raiders

Assault company         250
-1 Decimators

Contagion Towers        325



Eldar

Wraithgate              50

Aspect Warhost       350
-8 Warp Spiders
-2 Exarchs

Aspect Warhost          500
-4 Swooping Hawks
-4 Fire Dragons
-2 Wave Serpents
-Autarch
-Exarch

Guardian Warhost        200
-3 HW Platforms
-Support Weapons

Ranger Troupe           125
-5 Rangers

Windrider Troupe        200
-4 Jetbikes
-2 Vypers

Swords of Vaul Troupe   325
-5 Fire Prisms

Engines of Vaul Troupe  250
-1 Scorpion

Deployment

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

Turn 1
Init DG, passes first activation to Eldar

Scorpion doubles and fires on Armoured Company, 1 Land raider and 1 predator bites the dust



The Heavy Retinue doubles to the scorpion and fires, and behold 4 hits, 2 saves and a critical later the scorpion is no more.



Fire prism doubles over to the Heavy Retinue, and fires away on the Rhinos and 3 of them is destroyed, effectively destroying the retinue’s chances of ever getting any ware.

Guardians retain and march into the forest containing the Rangers.



My Contagion Towers sees their chance and sustains, laying two plates of hurt over the guardians and rangers, killing 1 ranger and 5 heavy weapon platforms, and breaking the Guardian formation that retreats just behind the forest.




Retinue 2 doubles over to the wraith gate to stop any reinforcements from that, and thinking that a few scouts with blast markers would pose no problem, one dead Lord later I regretted that decision...



The aspect warriors marches and settles down right beside the broken Guardians.

The decimators sees its chance and doubles by the road in front of the Rangers and guardians, and fires away, 2 scouts never saw what hit them and the remaining Rangers joins the Guardians behind the forest in a broken pattern.



As the last activation of the turn, the turn, the Land raiders marshals and moves a bit forward.

End of Turn
All DG formation rally, but both the rangers and guardians are not so lucky, and remains broken.

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

Turn 2
Teleports: The Avatar fades into existence right between Retinue 2 and a lot of broken eldars

Init Eldar

The Fire prisms decides to put some hurt on Retinue 1 and advances, 3 rhinos are destroyed in the process before they take a slight step back and settles down on the eldar blitz.

Now the aspect warriors engage, in the fight containing two pissed of Death Guard formation and one really frightening aspect formation, 5 death guard units walks away to say hi to Nurgle, but in the exchange all but 2 units from the aspect formation is destroyed by some wicked rolls on my part. The aspect warriors, now consisting of one Autharch and one wave serpent retreats behind the broken Guardians and Rangers. Retinue 1 gets broken by all the losses and retreats behind Retinue 2

As a reply to this, the Avatar makes a furious charge right into the victorious marines from retinue 2, slaying 2 units in the formation to no loss himself, but looses the resolution roll and have to disengage.



Retinue 2 takes this opportunity to marshal and removes all blast markers.

The eldar jet bikes takes this opportunity to make themselves known and engages out of the wrath gate, engaging Retinue 2, and as the marines tries to get hold of those pesky bikes that refuses to fight like men, they loose 1 rhino and 1 marine unit to the loss of only one viper bike, and the retinue retreats with a few working rhinos and a few angry, but broken plague marines. The bikes approach the decimator while the marines take cover behind a few pieces of broken spaceship.



Again the eldar retains and from the gate formations of warp spiders emerge. They engage the armoured company and wipe them all out without loosing a single unit themselves.



The heavy retinue marches over to take position around the wrath gate again, where so many of their fellow marines have ended.

The decimator advances slowly and gets some broken aspect warriors in his sight, one giant explosion later, not a single model remains and a guardian and ranger units disappears as well in the explosion.

And as the last formation left unactivated the Contagion Towers takes careful aim and sustains into the tightly packed warp spiders, and 5 of them succumbs to the Nurgle goo and the formation breaks, retreating back to their own lines.



End phase
All Death Guard formation, but eh heavy retinue rallies
All Eldar but the Guardians rally

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

Turn 3
Init Eldar

The Fire prisms will not stand having Plague marines in their sights and begins the turn by sustaining on the heavy retinue, however someone must have forgotten to polish the crystals as not a single marine falls to the barrage. But at least a blast marker is placed.

Next the bikes decides to take on the fire resistant heavies, and engages, this however was not such a good idea after all, and all the remaining bikes are destroyed at the cost of only a single unit of marines. This is not a good day for the eldar.

The heavy retinue feels that it’s their day and engages the remaining Warp spiders, that quickly disappear under the sustained barrage of Nurgles finest.
The eldar are looking quite pitiful at this stage, and this is used by the decimator that slowly rolls forward to get the guardians and rangers in sight, and one big bang later the guardians is no more and only a crater remains where they just a moment before had taken cover.

The Contagion towers doubles forward and takes a pot-shot on the only remaining unbroken eldar formation, and manages to miss every one of the tightly packed Fire Prisms.

And as the last activation of the game Retinue 2 marches and takes the unoccupied eldar objective, securing the victory for the rotten!



Victory conditions:
Death Guard: Take and hold, Break their Spirits and They shall not pass
Eldar: None.

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

Nice report Tilloch.  And some nice pics of the battle and your cool figs.

Could probably do with more/bigger terrain for your table, looked as though the Eldar were lacking for good places to hide  

P.S. Happy Birthday!

Thanks =)

Yeah, we always need more terrain, it's never enough, but more is on the way, soon we'll have perhaps half a table with new shiny buildings.

And further comments will have to wait until tonight when I'm home from work again, but two formations out of one gate is what I get when none of us checks the rules (first time it was used at all in our games)

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

If i'd been the Eldar player, and had won the I turn 2, i'd have moved the first lot of aspects into a supporting fire position,(The ones who actually launched the initial assault) and then engaged with the warp spiders.

10x first strike 4+ FF shots and a 4+ sv, followed by a bucket load of 4+ supporting fire shots.  Swooping hawks and firedragons are just not good assaulters due to their poor sv.

Really good advice, the problem for him was that I had his warpgate completely surrounded at the start of the turn, and he could not exit with any troops.

At least I hope that was the right thing, or can you exit one of the things even if you cant put a base between enemies that are around the gate?

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

I've had that one come up before now too.

The way we played it was that, unless there is physically no room to place the models on the table then the Eldar may exit the portal but must launch an engage action (If you start the turn inside an enemy unit's ZOC then you must move away outside of their zone or engage).

This should be a lesson to your friend - if you have 2 units in the webway(In fact if you have any units in the webway!), then you should have at least 2 webway portals.

Storm serpents FTW!  

Fire Dragons Rock against DG!
They got only 5+ SV but DG has no save at all, i think thats a good deal

Why did the Fire Prisms fire at the Retinue? They only got AT2 and no AP Value?
The Decimator would have been a much better Target for those AT2+ shots with Lance!

_________________
www.ttc-cosmophobia.de

Fire dragons as you say is one of my most hated units, they always destroy my nice little tanks, bikes, marines and anything else they can find.

The fire prisms do have an AP4+ attack and he tried to kill some units and place a few more BMs before he engaged with the bikes in the hope of getting me of his objective, and at this point he was a bit desperate, and the Decimator was not in position to really do anything game-wining.
At least that’s what I think he thought about =)

_________________
Cry havoc, and let slip the Dice of War!

If you have a Wraithgate, you do need to be aware that it can be inhibited or "blocked". If the gate is under an enemy ZoC, troops in the Webway must assault that enemy formation. Opinons vary on what happens if there is an enemy unit right on the gate:-

• No effect :- an entire formation may exit into combat
• Partiall blocked :- only two units may exit into combat, the entire formation counts for resolution and may exit if the Eldar win
• Completely blocked :- nothing can exit until the enemy unit is moved or destroyed

Many opt for 'partially blocked', though I would recommend discussion in the 5 min warm up.

Storm serpents cannot be blocked of course, but they can be destroyed (unlike Wraithgates) so if you do buy one, it is recommended to have a second 'gate of some kind for redundancy.

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

I'd have definitely taken a stormserpent instead of the scorpion and used formations for supporting fire alot more. Vypers are ideal for this - a fm of 6 will on average give 2 hits on advance out of a gate and 2 hits in supporting fire, and still be intact for another turn, whereas a fm of jetbikes only will give an average of 3 hits in FF but be subject to return fire and assault resolution (they're just not a very large fm for assaults).

I would also have done a coordinated assault with the Avatar and the aspects - you would have caused more casualties (2 more, going by the avatar only assault), received fewer (due to the avatar's better save and invulnerable save) and had more units to count towards assault resolution (adding up to 3DC from the avatar, depending on casualties). Throwing Eldar into assaults piecemeal just results in a lot of broken Eldar formations

_________________
numquam culum es