I am Alpharius... no, I'm Alpharius..... Wait.. I AM Alpharius.....Ok, enough with the bad jokes, I got a game in against the Alpha legion last night during our club GW night at the local store. I wish I could say it went better, even though I got the win. In a surprising but unfortunate turn of events my opponent's dice absolutely hated him. Over 6 turns he easily put over 72 attacks (Auto-cannons, Melta-guns, Plasma, Power Fists, krak grenades) in the same wave-serpent and only succeeded in blowing the weapons off in turn 6. Overall I want to say he rolled at least 10 1's on the penetrating chart to keep the serpent from shooting.
So, lets get down to the lists and the game:
DTP @ 2000 points
HQ
Eldrad
Yriel
5x Warlocks (2x Destructor/blades, 1x Destructor/spear, 1x embolden/spear, 1x enhance/spear)
Wave Serpent (cannon, TL Star Cannon, Stones)
Elite
7x Fire Dragons + Exarch (DB Flamer)
Waver Serpent (cannon, TL Scatter Laser, stones)
Troops
9x Dire Avengers + Exarch (blade storm/2x SCat)
Wave Serpent (cannon, TL BrightLance, stones)
9x Dire Avengers + Exarch (blade storm/2x SCat)
Wave Serpent (cannon, TL BrightLance, stones)
Fast Attack
5x Spiders
4x Spiders + Exarch (2x spinner/power blades)
Heavy
Prism (stones, holofield)
Alpha Legion @2000 points
HQ
Lord with a Daemon weaponElite
10x Terminators (I think)10x Terminators (I think)
5x Chosen
Troops
10x Chaos Marines - Tzentch icon10x Chaos Marines - Tzentch icon
5x Chaos marines
Heavy
ObliteratorObliterator
Obliterator
I do not clearly remember how everything was equipped, although there was a lot of combi-melta and a lot of autocannons. The Terminators all had icons of Tzentch.
The mission was from the Battle Missions book, it was the first of the Eldar missions. This is the mission where the game is played short edge to short edge, with the non-eldar having to set-up their HQ in the middle of their deployment zone. All the Eldar units are worth 2 kp, while the opponent units are 3kp for HQ, 1kp for troops and transports, then 2 kp for everything else. We played on a nicely set-up city-fight-esque board, although the ruins were mostly 2 level ruin bases.
Let me pause here to acknowledge what long time readers of my blog may have already noticed. Yes, I have the very atypical (for me) 2 named character cheese in this list. Whats worse, I combine it with a Seer Council on foot, and loaded the whole crew into the same wave serpent. I made this decision based on some feedback from friends (and readers) who will remain unnamed combined with reading the Seer Council article in the Astromag. I will admit that I tend to be down on this power unit for a variety of reasons, but have not really given it a chance to prove why so many people use it. Based on that decision, I loaded up the cheese and went out to play my game. Overall, they did very little because my opponents dice defeated him more than my army did.
I was worried in the beginning of the game, as I am typically very challenged dealing with terminators. I just cannot seem to crack terminator saves, and even my bulk of fire do not always roll well enough to do the damage needed to knock them down. I deployed first then after his deployment used Eldrads divination to shift 3 units around on the table. This gave me a nice line of fire down the table to start picking away at his units while still claiming cover from return fire.
The early rounds of the game had the Cheese-council headed down the board next to a squad of dire-avengers in serpent. Scoot 7 inches, both serpents shoot into the units. I also had my other squad of Avengers scooting down the other flank of the board taking pot-shots into his army. I was able to pick off two of the three oblit's to doubling out shots where they failed thier saves with 1's. Doom and my spiders saw off the squad of chosen and the small squad of marines. By the start of turn 4 I was ready to get the council stuck into a combined assault with a large unit of marines and one of the terminator squads on my right flank of the board. Doom plus 3 destructor templates plus 3 spears plus 32 bladestorm shots plus 8 spinner shots from spiders left very little for an assault. The marines were reduced to 4 marines and running from the board, and the terminators were reduced to the lord plus 2 terminators. The lord then proceeded to daemon weapon himself to death over the next 2 assault, dies with me only inflicting 1 wound on him early in the game. The other two terminators were dropped to power blade and dire avenger assaults. At the top of turn 5 I was able to get Doom onto the other unit of terminators, and dump the Dragon-breath flamer plus 4 melta shots (dragons) plus a fire prism plus another 32 bladestorm shots to reduce the second terminator squad down to two terminators left, who were then charged by the fire dragons and actually killed in close combat. At that point the game was over, even with a roll to play through turn 6. Final score was 16 to 2, with only one squad of spiders on my side being killed. My Seer council never made it into combat, and the majority of the game was Eldrad using Doom once and Fortune on his own unit each turn.
Couple things I noticed about Eldrard during the game. Over my entire history of playing with Farseer's, I can probably count less than 4 times I have rolled perils. I am fairly successful on two dice with not rolling perils while using my regular Farseers. During this game Eldrard rolled perils (using the 3 dice from runes of witnessing) 3 times. While each was canceled by the helm (I forgot about embolden), I still rolled perils an awful lot. Now to be fair to the unit, I think this is above average but it still demonstrates why I do not take runes of witnessing.
Overall it was a good game, and to be fair to the cheddar-council I should probably take them at least 2 more times to really give them the opportunity to shine. I am still not sure Eldrard is worth the points, but we will see.
To close out this post, I want to point out something I am excited about. While reading BOLS today, I saw a picture that got me very excited. While the picture is blurry, I love the look of the new Incubi. I did not expect the Incubi to be redone, as I thought of the entire DE line they looked the best. The new models are a little breath-taking for me. I am starting to really look forward to the new DE coming out!
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Holy $#!T... Even blurry, the tempation is to much. I will wait for the final, GW approved pictures before making a decision, but that picture is promising.
ReplyDeleteAs I mention, I was expecting to pick up a couple Icubi models before they were discontinued because I liked the sculpt. Now I will be holding off until the new ones come out. This also makes me torn on picking up a Lilith model, although I will probably pick her up anyway.
ReplyDeleteI've had the Hero vehicle against my Tau, and it drives you nuts. An immobile chimera taking multiple rail shots and always rolling low so no penetration or rolling 1's & 2's when i did. Thing stayed all game drove me mad.
ReplyDeleteI liked the old incubi models, and bought one with the intent to convert it into a dark reaper exarch at one point; on the ever-growing list of good intentions. Nifty batrep, gives me hope my eldar aren't a total waste in this edition.
ReplyDelete