Below is my first crack at Battle report so hopefully it’s ok! This game was played between Mick Fair’s Iyanden (strong vampire focus) and my Steel Legion (strong shadowsword focus). Lists are below along with the play by play and some general commentary after each round and overall at the bottom. I make no apologies for it not being as schmick as PFIE100s!
Iyanden V4.2.4
AVATAR [0]
SPIRIT WRAITHGUARD WARHOST [275] 4x Wraithguard units, Spiritseer
SPIRIT WRAITHBLADE WARHOST [225] 4x Wraithblade units, Spiritseer
SPIRIT WRAITHLORD WARHOST [450] 6x Wraithlord units, Wraithseer
VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]
VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]
VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]
ASPECT WARRIOR TROUPE [200] 4 Swooping Hawk, Exarch
SPACECRAFT [150] Wraithship
ASPECT WARRIOR TROUPE [200] 4 Striking Scorpion, Exarch
RANGER TROUPE [125] 5 Ranger
SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [300] 4 Falcons, 2 Fire Storm
NIGHT SPINNER TROUPE [175] 3x Night Spinner units
ENGINE OF VAUL TROUPE [250] Storm Serpent
WRAITHGATE [50]
Steel Legion (Net-Ea Army Compendium)
Regimental HQ – 12 Infantry, 7 Chimeras, Hydra (550)
Super Heavy Tank Company – 3 Shadowswords, Hydra, Ogryns, Chimera (625)
Super Heavy Tank Company – 3 Shadowswords, Hydra, Ogryns, (600)
Artillery Battery - 3 Manticores (250)
Sentinel Squadron - 4 Sentinels (100)
Sentinel Squadron - 4 Sentinels (100)
Sentinel Squadron - 4 Sentinels (100)
Roughriders (150)
Flak Battery – 3 Hydras (150)
Warhound Titan – (275)
Thunderbolt Squadron (150)
Turn 1
Rangers and Sentinels went on overwatch around Blitz objectives
Eldar win initiative.
I (Iyanden) – Storm Serpent marches
G (Guard) – Sustain fire with 2 manticores dropping 2 BP on the fireprisms and 1 on the nightspinners
I – Wraithship puts an extremely pinpoint attack onto the commissars shadowsword killing it outright! (BTS Unit too)
G – Hydras on overwatch
I – Nightspinners marshall
G – Sentinels go on overwatch
I – Rangers triple forward
G - Rough Riders triple forward
I – Fireprisms Marshall
G – Shadowswords marshal (The unit that got hit by the wraithship
I – Vampire + Scorpions do ground attack (shooting only) against the SC mech unit killing a Chimera (takes a BM from Hydra)
G – Thunderbolts come in to intercept vampire but shoot paintballs instead of bullets +1BM
I – Vamp + wraithgaurd attempt to snipe hydra (bombing) from shadowsword unit - Fail and both take 1 BM
G – SC Chimera unit advances leaving a couple of stranded guardsmen in their dust (take 2 BMS)
I – Vamp + wraithblades attempt to snipe hydra (bombing) from shadowsword unit - Fail and both take 1 BM
G – Shadowswords go on overwatch
Turn 1 Summary – Big pile of nothing. Guard basically sets up fortress corner with overwatch and scouts waiting for the inevitable vampire assaults to come. The vampires though held over till the last activations never found a chink in the armour and so kept circling in holding patterns. They took some significant risks from ground flak and thunderbolts but emerged unscathed except for some BPs.
Turn 2
No Avatar
Iyanden win Initiative
I - Vampire with scorpions fails to activate due to BMs which it clears.
G – SC chimera unit advances into ruins with 2 objectives nearby.
I – Wraithblades + vamp ground engagement against 2 man unit of Shadowswords + sentinels – A combination of RA, numbers/commisars and blasties ensure they bounce (vamp explodes)
G – Shadowsword unit lowers barrels and commits massive overkill on 2 wraithblades.
I – Falcons fail to activate
G – Manticores (single) sustain and kill 1 shadowweaver breaking the unit
I – Stormserpent “advances” sideways down the outside (camping an objective)
G – Roughriders fail to active – hang heads in shame
I – Wraithlords triple from the wraithgate – just managing to find a safespot because they forgot about shadowsword unit on overwatch…
G – Warhound advances … killing 1 wraithlord!
I – Something else I can’t read stood down!
G – Thunderbolts decided to zoom in to put a blastie on the Wraithlords
I – Vampire snipes Hydra from the weakened shadowsword unit
G – Big shadowsword unit doubles forwards towards objectives and does nothing to wraithlords… sigh
Everything rallies except for nightspinners
Another fairly cagey turn with a few more units breaking/being destroyed and Mick making a notable error with the wraithgaurd unit. He was starting to break through my overwatches/hydra cover though… you could tell sh!t was about to get real.
Turn 3
Iyanden Summon Avatar off Wraithlord unit and neaby to SC mech infantry unit.
Iyanden win Initiative…
I – Vamp + wraithgaurd engage weakened shadowsword unit (now missing a hydra) and wipe it from board (BTS)
I Retain – Wraithlords put BM onto SC mech infantry unit
I Retain – Avatar single handedly engages the SC mech infantry unit, wins combat by 1 but loses roll off. Not bad for a free unit with no support…
G – Manticores sustain on nightspinners killing them from BMs
I – Stormserpent advances slightly.
G – SC unit fails to activate so rallies
I – Fire prisms Triple (trying to block access to objective)
G – Sentinels shoot wraithgaurd – Kills 1!!
I – Vampire plus scorpions land/surround blitz objective
G – Hydras sustain onto scorpions in the open – Kill nothing…
G – Shadowswords fail to activate…
G – Warhound targets scorpions in the open… kills nothing…
G – Thunderbolts kill 1 scorpion, breaking them due to BMs.
http://s1219.photobucket.com/user/Steve ... sort=3&o=4
Wraithgaurd and scorpions rally
Clearly the big turn – Starts with that iconic triple retain off the first activation which traditionally has caused huge damage to my guard. This time I was more prepared but will still a bit shocked by the Avatar just coming in and backhanding my 600pt SC unit! I was very lucky there whereas the WG attack on the Shadowswords was just about right IMO, definitely earned that kill. The scorpions sitting on my blitz ended up taking 12 hits before any of them died which should have been enough to wipe them out with change but that’s the way it goes.
Term 4
Iyanden wins Initiative…
I – Storm serpent shoots Rough Riders for 1BM
I Retain – Use SC reroll – Marshall and shoot Fire Prisms
I Retain – Scorpions FF roughriders – No kills on either side RR are wiped by combat Res except for Commissar.
G – Manticores sustain on Rangers – miss…
I – March Wraithgaurd to blitz
G – Move/shoot hydras to break scorpions on BPs.
I – Vamp shoot warhound – 1 shield/BM.
I – Retain for engage with the aspect warriors (swooping hawks) but they bounced and were wiped out.
G – SC Mech infantry unit move/shoot to break the falcons
G – Warhound fails to activate with SC reroll…
G – Shadowswords move up and wipe out remaining wraithgaurd sitting on blitz.
So at this point we looked it up and realised a fairly stupid mistake on my part. Mick had BTS and had kept me out of his half, I had the three in my half. I hadn’t realised that I wasn’t in his half so was expecting to be a 1-1 draw with a countback on points which had the guard ahead by 1175 points. Any of the 3 units I went last with could have gotten into the enemy half… woops. Lesson learnt!
Overall I think this battle was quite interesting. Mick is very cagey and you could see that he didn’t have much of an answer for my big units in the first couple of turns. To be fair I’ve played a lot of games against Iyanden so this strategy is based off being ravaged a number of times.
IMO I still think Iyanden are a very hard list. I was forced to play the way I did because frankly any sort of serious advance would have been instantly annihilated by the circling vampires. Any unit of wraithgaurd should have been able to splat any of my core units (despite mine being more expensive). Mick also has an activation advantage which goes along way. Watching the wraithblades bounce from the Shadowswords was satisfying but was also a statistical anomaly.
The usual argument about Iyanden weakness is the small unit size, I’m inclined to say so what… They hit harder than terminators in engagement and cost less, their slow movement is easily countered by a combination of vamps, wraithgate and storm serpent and the combination of fearless and RA4+ means that even losing the combat didn’t hurt them much. Apart from 1 extremely lucky sentinel the only units in my army that hurt the things were volcano cannons and I just happened to be fielding 6 of them… who else can say that.
The classic example is when they break they fell back onto my blitz objective and short of unleashing enough firepower to bring down a warlord titan the best I could hope for is that he wouldn’t rally… It feels like I’m fighting an army of fearless terminators that have macro FF and cost less points… Oh I know they don’t have deepstrike…
Take my opinions for a grain of salt, I’ve been playing for less than 6 months. My usual pattern is to get destroyed by an army the first time I play against it then work out new methods and do better next time. I wouldn’t say I’ve really developed much in the way of beating Iyanden which just have so many intrinsic advantages. Bear in mind too that my only opponent is Mick who is one of the best epic players around, I can’t tell you what they would be like in the hands of a muppet, maybe we should swap and I’ll see if I can ravage him!
