Thanks to Simon for organising, Dave for reffing/sitting out, my opponents, and to Richard and Ginger for the lifts.
I took 3k dark angels, so did Kyuss, so did Steve. All three lists had identical formation selections, with some differences in upgrade options:
Double devs, double thawk, double scout, double nephilim, space ship, lander, predAs, deathwing.
Game 1, Biel-tanMy first player was pretty new to the game, and im pretty new to Eldar! The list had a warlock, night spinners, void spinner, fire prisms, wave serpent guardians, and falcon+fire storm formations. Lots off AA, not good. Dropped my devs at the start, barrage got a couple of hits to break some falcon/fireprisms and the devs then unloaded 8*3+ sustain shots on guardians mounted in wave serpents for … zero kills. The wave serpents continued to make save after save for the rest of the game. Lots of AA on the table but I’d managed to chip most of it away by the end of turn 2 (except for the warlock, which was never in a good spot to crossfire). With the AA clear I went and threw my terminators into a silly assault and lost them. The only thing that saved me was the warlock not getting stuck in, I was pretty well spread out so there weren't options for rolling assaults. This ended in a turn 3 draw, 1–0 to me – annoyingly this could easily have been 2–0 to me if id moved in a different direction in the last activation of the game!
Game 2, TauMy second time playing tau, I’d had a similar matchup against Richard’s tau with my dark angels at 4k at oxford. The list was crisis suit BTS, two firewarrior cadre in fish, thee markerlight scout vehicle groups, oodles of hammerheads with a couple of skyrays, spaceship, barracudas.
What really shaped this was the Tau failing a lot of activation and rally roles. Tau deployed behind heavy scout screens. With plenty of targets on table I dropped my devs at the start again, barrage missed anything good and clipped a couple of recons for i think 1 kill. Devs ZoC-bounced off to a flank in their pods and popped a skyray. With the AA lessened on the left I went all in, dropping the predators from the landing craft, recycling terminators, and rushing scouts in to keep broken units within 30cm while I ignored the other table half. A lot of tau went on overwatch at various stages, which always makes me jittery. End of turn 2 swung it – popped the last skyray just before the BTS crisis went off overwatch, so promptly wiped the BTS in a terminator air assault. More failed activations and rallies for the tau with my aircraft picking off and air assaulting TSNP candidates left this 4–0 to me turn 3.
Game 3, Dark AngelsThe decisive result in game 2 saw me on table 1 for the final round, facing Steve with Dark Angels. I've been to three tournaments this year and in each ive ended up playing against drop marines final game and losing
This was a really odd/interesting game as we both had the same aggressive lists with little deployed on table. While the lists were similar, a big difference was that my BTS devs start on table, where Steve’s terminator BTS does not. Steve won the spaceship roll off to go on turn 3, leaving me with turn 1 and not many targets about – I managed to polish off one scout formation in the end, mostly due to a lucky thawk. Steve’s second scout formation had a lucky escape turn 2 when mine failed to activate. We spent the first two turns cogitating and putting nephilims on cap. At many points we both had two nephilim formations on cap. Something had to break and it was me – turn 3 Steve’s pod devs landed in range of my BTS and cut it down to two rhinos, which were finished off later by the preds which landed to contest my control of Steve’s blitz. As Steve pointed out after, I should have moved the rhinos out of shooting range of the blitz. Terminators then landed on my blitz, which combined with scouts on another objective gave steve 3–0 turn 3.



