First battle report on the hammertime blog. Me vs Minion in a big game of 8th edition 40k. We had arranged to play a few games while my better half was out for the day, interspersed with looking after and getting lovely smile and cuddles with baby girl (who also gave out tactical advice and pointed out mistakes, yes, that’s what the gurgles meant).
Dark Eldar had 3 patrols with kabal with +6 range weapons, Wyches that can advance and charge and Coven who have 4++. Tau had a Fire Warrior, Firblade base, Breachers in transport, Coldstar speed commander, Ghostkeel, Pathfinders and “The Eight.”
Set up as above, 12 inch on deployment and Maelstrom card game from 2018 chapter approved where you can remove 6 cards from deck before the game and have 3 active each turn. Of these 3 you can discard up to 2 when you draw them and the ones that are drawn are worth double points if completed that turn.
I removed Dominion as getting all 6 objectives doesn’t happen, and then removed ones for the objective near opponent baseline and my far right so I didn’t have to spread useful forces across the table. I set up reasonable deep so the Fire Warriors couldn’t pour lots of shot in to me without moving (they didn’t).
First turn showed that we could both torrent down units even at range. Talos was removed along with a few models here and there. For me the Devil Fish as the only vehicle got hit with haywire and Ravagers and went pop. The +2 Love, advance and charge Hellions also piled up quickly and charged the Ghostkeel and flame Commander that has moved up.
Farsight and the lighter parts of The Eight deepstruck in turn 2 but didn’t get the big charges and so we’re exposed, but they did it before moving anything and it meant Minion lost his movement phase and was stuck. Looking back, normally I would have let him have the phase any way but at the time it potentially made a big difference to where firepower went and as I know he wants to use The Eight more it was a learning reminder if don’t get over eager (Sorry Minion).
The Tau struggled to kill either plane through the penalties to hit and some traditional green dice invulnerable saves, the Razorwing went to last hit. This allowed a largely unhurt Dark Eldar force to kill the things that has deep struck down apart from Farsight who we tactically flew away from and generally start chipping away at everything.
Third turn saw Farsight fail a 7 inch charge and generally struggle to finish off planes again (theme) or kill units for VP cards due to good power from pain rolls. In return the Riptide and Farsight got Ravagers to the face and with a double points Kinglayer we called it.
Overall it was a decent learning game. Dark Eldar rolled well which helped and I was happy with my focussing. I was reminded that killing a decent unit will take a lot of firepower, especially with invulnerable saves or ignore wound mechanics and also that an opponent with few vehicles is nice when most of your weapons are poison. I didn’t use my command points that well I felt, rerolls and a auto pass moral were I think the only things and also the Hellions did their usual of drawing lots of fire but thereby not killing much. Much better with the Succubus there to help in combat. Also The Eight are cool but will take practice. All being characters keeps them artificially a bit safer and it’s one of my favourite 8th edition rules as it allowed the broadside character to sit at the back and kill stuff without having to worry about a Ravager instant killing him.
Will look forward to more games in new year and getting head more around stratagem use.