- Tzeletor - Master of Possession (HQ) (Warlord)
Bolt pistol Force stave, Frag & Krak grenades
Warlord: Exalted Champion
Psychic powers: Cursed Earth, Possession - Psi-Klops - Chaos Lord (HQ)
Power sword, Bolt pistol, Frag & Krak grenades
Relic: The Murder Sword - Brazen Beast-Man - 8 x Khorne Berzerkers (Elite)
2 x Lightning Claw, 7 x Bolt Pistols, 4 x Chainaxes, 3 x Chainswords, Frag & Krak grenades, Icon of Wrath - Myphitic Mer-Man - 7 x Plague Marines (Elite)
Plaguesword, Power fist, 4 x Boltguns, 1 x Blight launcher, 1 x Flail of corruption, Blight & Krak grenades, Icon of Despair - Evil Lynnquisitor - 9 x Rubric Marines (Elite)
Force stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol, 4 x Inferno boltgun, 4x Warpflamer, Icon of Flame - Clawful - Greater Possessed (Elite)
Daemonic mutations - 7 x Possessed (Elite)
7 x Horrifying Mutations - Spawnlash - Chaos Spawn (Fast)
(held in reinforcement points) - Trap-Jawsmith - 3 x Obliterators (Heavy)
Crushing fists, Fleshmetal guns, Mark of Slaanesh - Chaos Land Raider (Heavy)
2 x Twin lascannon, Twin heavy bolter, Combi-flamer, Havoc launcher - Greyskull - Bastion (Fortification)
4 x Heavy bolter, Icarus Lascannon
Points: 1750 | Level: 91 | Battle-forged - Vanguard - Fortification Network: 8 CPs
Game 1: Craftworld Ulthwé
My opening battle was a first for me - I've never faced Craftworld Eldar before, so this would be a treat (and mercifully, the weekend happened just before their new codex took effect, so we had a level 8th Edition playing field)
My opponent was Chollie, and his Craftworld Ulthwé had a very neat backstory: he was due to attend
Weekend at Burnies 2 but had been foiled by car trouble - so this Craftworld had been lost in the webway all this time!
It seemed a very good all-round Craftworld list: a collection of hover tanks, jetbikes, wraith constructs, squishy infantry and all-powerful psykers. they spread out across the board, ready to dominate the objectives on the snow-capped hills.
I loaded up my transports where I could: Tzeletor, Psi-Klops, Clawful and the Possessed inside the Land Raider; Berzerkers and Obliterators in the Bastion, Plague Marines and Rubric Marines footslogging it.
Chollie took the first turn and moved forward onto the central objectives, while gunning down most of my Plague Marines, and chipping away at my transports.
My response was an aggressive one: what remained of the Plague Marines staggered towards on squad of Guardians, while the Berzerkers burst out of Greyskull and headed for the Jetbikes.
Even the Rubric Marines fancied their chances in combat and used the Chaos Familiar stratagem to switch out the mini-Smite for Warptime and race to supper the Berzerkers.
The Land Raider trundled down the centre, but I was keeping its passengers safely inside for another turn, as there was a chuck of Wraithguard waiting inside the Wave Serpent for me to make a move.
The combats went as expected: the Brazen Beast-Man tore through the Jetbikes.
Evil Lynnquisitor and her Rubrics beat up some Guardians, though not enough to force them off the objective (suddenly having no ObSec units in my army seems like a daft idea).
Poor Mephitic Mer-Man lost the rest of his Plague Marines to Overwatch, but completed his charge to begin what turned out to be an epic struggle with a full squad of Guardians.
The Craftworld's second turn took an interesting direction: my Land Raider turned into a goblin!
This was one of the random twist cards that the TOs were doling out freely - and with the stats of a goblin, my heavy tank didn't last long against Eldar firepower. And, as all the Possessed staggered out of the wreckage, they were also chewed up by shuriken and wraith cannons.
The Farseer attempted to wipe out Mer-Man but (since he is still an old datasheet Plague Marine), he managed to shrug off the mortal wounds and continue to knock down a couple more Guardians.
The rest of my army had been spared the remaining firepower, since the Craftworlders had mostly been falling out of combat. Although I think it was at this point that Greyskull finally succumbed to heavy artillery, Trap-Jawsmith and the Obliterators falling out of the ruins.
Left decidedly short on minions, my three characters decided to go for broke and attack everything.
Tzeletor and Clawful took down the Farseer on jetbike, while Psi-Klops ducked past the Wraithlord and went straight for Eldrad Ulthran.
Having broken through the left flank, the Berzerkers and Rubrics were now rampaging through the Craftworld back lines. Meanwhile the sole Plague Marine continued to defy fate as he smashed one Guardian at a time.
Meanwhile, the Obliterators eschewed their Fleshmetal guns in favour of melee and charged into the Wraithguard that had made a play for my home objective. The conflict wasn't earth-shaking, but it did put enough bodies on the objective to contest it.
With the Craftworlders up on victory points, but running low on assets (the random appearance of a Baneblade to gun down a Wave Serpent didn't help), the aim was just to cling on.
Tzeletor hadn't read the script on this one, and ran straight to Eldrad after juicing up his havoc staff with Possession...
A few swift whacks later, and I had a new Chaos Spawn for my army!
There wasn't much left for the Craftworld by this point (although that nearby Wraithlord is looking ominous for Tzeletor), and with time running out, we did a quick tally a realised that I just didn't have enough turns left to rack up victory points on the objectives I had taken.
It feels somehow right that Tzeletor didn't win - was there a post-battle moral, where the Eldar learned something about friendship and drug taking?
ReplyDelete"Real Winners Have 2 Wounds!"
DeleteHaha this is delightfully bananas!
ReplyDeleteThanks - that's how it felt (I didn't even mention the times I was called away from the game because some other table had drawn a stratagem card that required me to invent a crazy rule!)
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