Another battle report for you guys. Same sides as last time, although I took your advice on the thunderhawks, but my own tactical advice on the Titan, both of which I feel payed off. As an eldar player in epic and 40K I don't think he was used to playing against another fast army, but anyway, here's the army lists and the report to follow.

Imperial:

Veteran co: 850 pts

4x thunderhawk gunship: 200 pts

devastator detachment: 350 pts

IG bike company: 300 pts

Hydra detachment: 250 pts

whirlwind detachment: 150 pts

commissar: free

Warlord titan with: deathstrike head, plasma destructor, fire control, barrage missile, vulcan mega bolter.

Eldar:

Wind rider host: 650

war walkers: 150

nightwings: 300

wave serpents: 150

tempests: 500

Warlock titan: 750

Spirit host: 500

Biel tan dire avengers: Free

Avatar: Free

We set up one unit at a time, alternating and since he had a few more he got to place his titan and tempests last. Blast!

Table at the start:

Imperial side:



L-R top row we have veteran platoon in a thunderhawk (proxied with a marauder), same again, devastators in a thunderhawk, Veteran HQ in a rhino, 2 IG bike units (1 proxied with squat bikers), veterans in a thunderhawk (proxied with a marauder), Bike HQ (proxied with squat trike) and last bike unit proxied with squat bikes.
Then Hydras, titan, commissar, whirlwinds.

Having read the rules more closely I now realise that the commissar has to join a unit to give orders rather than acting like a company HQ. If I had known this earlier I would have dropped the whirlwinds and added a marine character as a special card for 50 pts and a robot detachment for the guard. As it was the whirlwinds only caused 1 casualty the whole game so it didn't affect the outcome much.

Eldar side:


Not a great photo, sorry. L-R; In front of the buildings the wave serpents with the dire avengers on board and a jetbike wing behind their shields. Another jetbike wing guards the objective in the buildings and the Nightwings (proxied by a couple of my BFG Cobras) lurk behind.
Then the Avatar and The Spirit host splayed out openly across the front. Viper and Tempest Detachments behind them.
Viper wing and another jetbike wing behind the hill and Finally on the right flank the Warlock Titan and the war walkers.

We rolled for Initiative. He won, and to my complete surprise he elected to move first, which IMO eliminated most of the advantages that an eldar army, especially with a lot of skimmers, has.

Anyway, how turn one went will follow.

EDIT: put the pics in the right way this time.

Give us more please
nice army setup

Look forward to the next installment.

Why of course.

Eldar move
The Jetbikes and Wave serpents charged up the Left flank, the other jetbikes in the building stayed guarding the objective and the nightwings zoomed across the table into the range of my hydras and one got shot down. (half way through next turn we realised we had forgotten about the range effects of flying high, so he shouldn't really have lost this nightwing. Given the scale of the massacre it is unlikely it would have helped the end result much if it had survived).

The avatar and spirit host charged towards the middle of the table. The Viper wing behind them charged into the buildings as did the viper wing behind the hill. The jetbikes behind the hill guarded the objective. The Tempests advanced onto the front of the hill and the Titan went on first fire.

Imperial Move:
On my right flank the 1st guard bikers charged the wave serpent and jetbikes closest to them. I had had the thunderhawk on advance to take some objectives but such a birthday present couldn't be missed so
I jumped the thunderhawk and marine platoon in behind the remaining wave serpent and bikes the shoot them in the ass.
The second bike platoon charged the viper jetbikes between the buildings closest to them, the HQ unit and last bike platoon zipped in behind the buildings that the second platoon and jetbikes were engaged around.
The middle thunderhawk dropped the devastators off on the roof of the large imperial building, the marine HQ charged up to enter the large building and the second veteran platoon was dropped off on and around the smaller tower on the large building (in retrospect I don't think this should have been allowed, the top was large enough to land on but not the small towers, it made no difference as we determined the thunderhawk wouldn't get any cover from it's position and the marines had enough move left to get to their positions from the base of the building where it should have landed, but worth remembering for the future).
Lastly the final thunderhawk dropped in behind the woods on my left flank and the marines inside took the objective while it trained its guns on the charging eldar.

So, after movement the table looked like this:



Combat wise the eldar titan fired its pulsar at the platoon of marines in/around the small tower, killing 2 marine stands and a viper jetbike that was caught under the tmeplate. The wing lasers also took out the thunderhawk that had dropped off the devastators. The nightwings took out 2 more stands of marines around the small tower and one killed a marine stand in the woods when it was caught in a barrage aimed at the thunderhawj transport, the second barrage took out marine stand from the platoon attacking the wave serpents . In CC the IG bikes took out the Wave serpent and the embarked dire avengers (breaking both units) and lost one to a jetbike. The IG bike/viper melee saw 2 for 2 but the surviving bikers had 2 more units blown away by the tempests in the advance fire phase.
Imperial shooting saw the marines and thunderhawk engaging the wavesepents and jets take out 3 jetbikes. The devastators did sterling work taking out 2 of the war walkers (breaking them) moving down my left flank and mowing down 2 wraithguard and the warlock in the spirit host (like in my last game I had promised to treat the Warlock as an HQ unit re targeting until the unit was otherwise broken, but once the 2 wraithguard were destroyed the warlock was the closest in the devastators line of sight). The Warlord fired his barrage missile and destroyed the Warlock Titans wings...bye bye cursed holo fields.

We didn't bother adding up VPs. The wave serpent failed its morale and went on fallback.

End of turn table looked like this:

imperial bike comp kicks arse, except when it breaks and out of command. Nice report

Ok turn 2...damn I'm lazy and forgetful.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the movement this turn so I'll have to alter the picture of the end of last turn.

He won initiative and made me move first:

Imperial Move: The veterans in the woodland at the bottom of the picture moved into the woods to secure the objective. Their marauder transport zipped up behind the advancing dreadnought/wraithguard line to shoot them in the ass. The Marine HQ moved up to the top of the tower with the Devastators. The 2 remaining marine units from the battered veteran platoon in the small tower advanced into the main tower. The remains of the 1st bike platoon in the buildings and the second platoon plus the command unit charged the top dreadnought unit and wraithguard and avatar.
At the top the remaining 4 IG bike units piled into the remaining jetbikes and wave serpent and the marines did likewise. I can't quite remember what the remaining thunderhawk did.

Eldar move: The titan advanced towards the wood at the bottom. The Tempests and the dreadnoughts at the bottom advanced into the gap between the woods and the building and the last wraithguard moved to the building where the Viper squadron was, the vipers zoomed round to the back of the building to approach the hydras and whirlwinds at the rear. The surviving 2 vipers of the 2nd viper squad did the same on their flank. The Nightwings zoomed across to attack the thunderhawk and marines attacking the waveserpent and jetbike group (although I can't quite remember where the thunderhawk was...it might have remained on 1st fire). The dire avengers in the waveserpent charged out to CC their attackers.

Combat: First order of the day was unloading a full blast from the Warlords Plasma destructor in to the Warlock titans stupid face. Can't remember the exact results but one was a reactor breach that destroyed the titan and the war walker close to it. Someone killed to of the vipers in the squadron at the bottom of the photo. IIRC it was the combined efforts of the Whirlwinds and hydras (the latter displaying some amazingly bad hit rolls).
In CC the IG bikers in the centre destroyed 3 dreads and the last wraithguards in the top half of the board and lost 2 themselves which broke them. The Waveserpent/bike/dire avengers were wiped out bar one lonely jetbike and took out 2 more bikes.

In advanced fire I think the nightwing took out the Thunderhawk that accompanied the top marine platoon but failed to hurt the marines themselves. The second nightwings scragged 4 of the bikers, including the company HQ. At this point I remembered I'd forgotten to fire my devastators in FF phase so i used them to take out one of the nightwings, breaking them. Finally the last thunderhawk destroyed 2 dreadnoughts near the wood at the bottom, the spirit host definitely past break point by now. The tempests also probably took a few shields off the Warlord. I also realised I had forgotten to give the thunderhawk on the small tower orders, so it was still landed and therefore couldn't fire as there was nothing in LoS.

The IG biker being broken and out of command chain routed.





Totting up the VPs revealed victory, and a fairly crushing one at that.


25 VPs for objectives, 1 for the dire avengers, 8 for the warlock titan, 2 for the wave serpents, 3 for the nightwings, 5 for the spirit host, 2 for the war walkers for a total of 46

10 VP for objectives. 2 for the 2 thunderhawks, plus 3 for the IG bike company for a total of 15

So in the end the battlefield looked like this (although the remaining IG bikers should have been removed)




Sooooo... tactical analysis?

Fist off my opponent is used to playing with fast, mobile units like Eldar and dark Eldar, so hitting him with his own tactics caught him off guard I think, he wasn't expecting me to be able to fly in and engage him so quickly, hence why I think he moved first, he didn't think it would matter, but it really did, catching the waveserpents and avengers from behind and getting the devastators into a dominating fire position helped me a lot.
Also, the failure of my barrage missile last game lulled him into a false sense of security, I don't think he realised how dangerous they actually are and how it was just pure bad luck that it didn't hurt his titan last game, and then how much more devastating a plasma destructor is compared to a plasma cannon. I learnt my lesson from being snipered by the tempests and finished off by the titan last game.
Thirdly, after the game it became apparent that he didn't quite understand the way objectives are held, he didn't realise that once you have an objective it is yours until an enemy get within distance to claim it, then it belongs to whoever is closer, so he wasted 2 jetbike squads guarding the 2 objectives in his half of the table, and as I discovered a few games ago, at this points level you can't really afford to keep anyone in reserve, they need to be out there engaging the enemy. The extra jetbike squad in the centre and top could have swung things back in his favour on both counts, or at the very least made the game last another turn with a smaller number of VP between us.

Nicely
you did a good job here

Nice report

Cheers guys, it was quite nice to win so handsomely but the fact that there were a couple of mistakes made rules wise that benefited me [The loss of the nightwing that should have been out of range, the commissar only being able to issue orders when joined to a unit and the 2 jetbike squads unnecessarily staying to guard the objectives] does make it feel a bit less awesome. I still would have won I think but it cheapens it a bit. I definitely enjoyed the last game more and felt I learnt a lot more from it than this game.

The only things I got out of this were: aircraft flying high can out-range your hydras, so don't just rely on AA batteries for air defence. Debarking the marines around the base of the tower was silly, they got shot up, I should have put the Thunderhawk behind the tower to keep it out of LoS and had all the marines take up positions inside instead of around.

I'm trying to get my neighbours friend to take up the challenge for the orks as I have enough models for him to field a decent sized army and have something different from imperial vs eldar. I also have plenty of IG and knights so I could do a more IG based army. I suppose I could play as orks but not enough are painted...

So on that note, if we are talking IG/Tech guard rather than marines, what do you recommend vs eldar? I basically have everything except burrowing vehicles and ordinatus, although I don't really have enough rough rider or assault/gorgons to field whole companies.

Orks wise I have a great gargant, lots of infantry/battlewagons (with a few nobs and heavies etc), a dreadmob, 2 skullhammas, 1 gibletgrinder, braincrusha mob, warbuggy mod and a mob or so each of lungburstas, bonebreakas and bonecrushas. Good vs eldar? any recomendations for tactics?

Also I've been putting a lot of work into terrain recently so next time we should have marshes, rivers, lakes, craters, bunkers, more interesting buildings, roads, landing pads, ruins...all sorts of interesting scenery.

Nice report

Cant remember but thought hydras did not loose any range versus flyers as dedicated AA (will have a check)
Also, although ig bikers company detachments can operate on their on out of command, once they break if they have no chain of command they rout!

Tech gaurd vs eldar i would go for mech company, marauder fb's, paladin knight household, pair of warhounds. dont overload on knights if your unsure of handling them, best to get used to them before feilding lots.

ig vs eldar i would go for beastman company (kick arse shock troops), bikers (smaller units than rough riders), heavy company, shadowswords or baneblades, and a det of basilisks and maurader fb's, even 2 det chimeras to more a det of beastmen. assault troops 350 for company for 15 troops better off getting tactical company or bike/r riders.

As a note to your eldar opponent i would ditch the slow stuff and the titan (been destroyed to easily) and get the close combat dets (harlequins etc). and if going to have wave serpents line then up where you think the enemy will be or objectives and fire the wave off then hide.

Maybe, I hadn't noticed that rule but I haven't really read the TL rulebook for ages.



Yes, that's why I said this:






I do have a mech company and enough unpainted chimeras for another. Tac or heavy?

company will be tactical maybe one heavy detachment, they are both expensive. You can feild a mech assault company with the chimera variants but really not worth it as expensive and not very practical. 350 points for hvy mech det i think of the top of my head and 700 for mech company (near enough same as tac marine comp). Also i think you dont get commisars with tg, thats the way i play them and only one command stand for a company. on good side tg titan defence company worth the 400 points as fodder.

Yeah they are a bit expensive compared to marines. I did think that maybe the chimera in the mech company would be a waste as they will fall pretty easily to eldar tanks and would rob the guard of their usual advantage of cheap and plentiful troops?
I read the commissar thing like that too, however the wording of the command rules on tech guard cards makes it sound like they can use any company HQ, not just the one from their own company, which is how I chose to interpret it, you'd think the mechanicus would be able to provide decent comms equipment.

I am playing original SM2/TL rules so mixing imperial forces isn't a problem, I can use a standard guard company for "screening actions" (don't call them fodder, it's bad for morale ;p )

i dont often use ig tactical as prefer beastmen with their +3 close combat. Also bear in mind the chimera is better than the rhino. tactical companies do have their use but if your using troops as a screen seems a waste, as they should have a purpose or objective that gains points not just offers an easy target.

Beastmen have one order only and thats charge!!! Have used them loads and they chew up marines for breakfast, lunch and dinner so elder would just be a snack )