Last night there was an epic battle at our local gaming club, involving 4 players and 6,000 points of models.  Myself and my regular nemesis Paul were taking on another pairing of friend/rivals in Damo and Alex.

I was using my new Dark Eldar, and Paul was using his Orks.  Damo had Space Wolves and Alex had the new CSM, painted up as Alpha Legion.  We all had 1,500 points each and standard FOC to follow.

Knowing we were up against two solid armies that can compete in every phase, we decided to go for broke and bet on speed to win the day by doubling up on one half of their forces, destroying it and then moving onto the second half.  Our lists were basically as follows:

Deldar:

Duke Sliscus, with 20 Kabalite Warriors (2 Splinter Cannons)
10 Warriors, SC, in Raider with splinter racks
3x3 Trueborn, with 2 dark lances each in Venoms with 2 splinter cannons
9 Reaver Jetbikes, 3 cluster caltrops
Ravager
Razorwing Jetfighter

Orks (Speed Freeks):

Warboss, power klaw on warbike, cybork
5 Nob Bikers, painboy, cyborks
3x12 boyz, nob with power klaw, in Trukks
5 deffkoptas, rokkits
2x dakkajets

We were up against:

Space Wolves:

Canis Wolfborn
Rune priest, living lightning, jaws of the world wolf
6 wolf guard, 3 terminators
10 grey hunters
10 blood claws in rhino
6 long fangs
Dreadnought
2 land speeders
predator with autocannon, 2 heavy bolters

Chaos Space Marines:

Abaddon
Tzeentch Sorcerer, doombolt
5 terminators
Maulerfiend
2x10 nurgle space marines
Hellbrute
4 bikers

We rolled a 2 for the battle, so it was kill the enemy to win, with a 1 for deployment. The Duke got to re-roll reserves rolls fir his warlord trait, and the Ork Warboss would win a bonus VP for every enemy independant character killed in a challenge (watch out for this later...) and I can't remember the enemy traits! They won the roll-off and made us deploy first, so to pull off our grand plan we placed the fast moving venoms and ravager on our left, with my raider far right and jetbikes, duke and blob warriors in the middle.  To spread out and cover the field with dark lance fire, the three trueborn units were each placed equidistant across our deployment zone in cover with good LOS.  One trukk joined our left hand side to give further weight to our deceit, and everything else filled in the gaps on our right.

The first thing our enemies did was place the long fangs on top of a tall tower in the middle of their deployment zone.  Abaddon, the chaos terminators and both csm units deployed on our right with the space wolf dread and predator, and canis wolfborn.  On the left went the chaos bikers, hellbrute, maulerfiend, wolf guard, rune priest and grey hunters.  The blood claws and land speeders started in reserve.

No Night Fighting (unfortunately!), so onto turn 1....

Xenos Filth Turn 1

In a slight break with our plan (as there was a lot of enemy troops on the right and centre, and none on the left really) my ravager went further left, while the left trukk and three venoms moved into the centre with the deffkoptas.  The two trukks on the right went full steam ahead, sheltering the nob bikers from fire and my raider gunboat followed them closely.  The duke and his blob of warriors stayed put.
We kicked of shooting by turboboosting my reavers over the long fangs, and after causing  23 wounds Damo rolled very well, but still only 3 long fangs were left alive.  The duke's warriors fired their splinter cannons in, killing one more and leaving the two remaining long fangs 7" apart, meaning one of them would have to move and not shoot next turn.  With the fangs effectively neutralized, we moved onto the armour, but only managed to stun the predator and miss with the 9 other dark lances!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Marines Turn 1

My reaver jetbikes became enemy number one, drawing both the maulerfiend and 10 chaos marines back to their board edge to try and rid them of the jetbike threat.  On our left the bikers moved forwards, and the hellbrute started it's slow march across the board to see some action.  There was a general push forwards in the centre and right.
Enemy shooting tageted my jetbikes, the deffkoptas, trukks and warbikes.  When the smoke cleared two trukks on the right had popped, one nob biker had a wound lost and a deffkopta was shot down.  Despite shooting 10 rapid firing bolters at my reavers they shrugged the hits off with ease (NB I thought Alex made a mistake here by shooting his boltguns, as if he hadn't he could have charged the reavers and tied them in combat with the maulerfiend, stopping me from choosing to flee as I couldn't hurt it).  The remaining long fangs had some revenge though, the plasma cannon killing five warriors but leavin the duke unscathed due to a successful shadowfield save.
The maulerfiend then charged into my reavers, only killed one and watched them flee back towards my lines.

Deldar/Orks 0 - 3 Space Wolves/CSM (first blood)

Xenos Filth Turn 2

First up, reserves, and my razorwing and one dakkajet came to the rescue!  The dakkajet took the left and my razorwing deep striked onto the right.  Also on the right the nob bikers pushed up again, followed closely by my raider gunboat and the now footslogging boyz.  My reavers passed their morale check and moved back into easy charge range of the maulerfiend (without being able to move and bladevane I thought distracting the enemy would be just as good) and we didn't really do much more moving!
Shooting went much better, my razorwing shot two missiles and two disintegrator cannons into the wolf guard, wiping them all out and leaving only the rune priest alive, who was duly despatched by a venom.  My regrouped reavers killed two chaos terminators!  and then the dukes unit killed off the last long fangs.  My raider gunboat destroyed the space wolf dread and the embarked warriors shot dead another chaos terminator.  The nob bikers gunned down 3 nurgle marines on the right also.  On the left the dakkajet hosed the chaos bikers with lead, leaving one standing who got lanced to death by trueborn.  My ravager then knocked two hull points off the hellbrute.
A brutal turn of shooting over, and 5 victory points in the bag, and it was time to hand over to the spess muhreens.....

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Marines

The wolves rolled a double 1 for reserves, so would be mainly unsupported this turn with only one speeder coming on.  The maulerfiend strolled through the ruined tower to take the bait of my reavers, and poor difficult terrain rolling would see the accompanying chaos marines not see further action until turn 4.  On the left there was only grey hunters and a hellbrute left, who both made a beeline for the last surviving trukk.  Abaddon and his two termies moved over in the direction of the nob bikers, as did canis wolfborn.  The nurgle marines on the right moved unto cover and the speeder popped my ravager with it's multi melta.
On the left the hellbrute took out the trukk, and then the grey hunters shot the boyz (NB a second mistake, as the boyz ran away only to regroup and then the five that were left went to ground in a ruin, denying a kill point and also the protection of being locked in combat with flyers circling...) while on the right the predatot took down a venom and the nurgle marines shot several boyz. Abaddons termies took a wound off the nob bikers with their combi-bolters.
Then canis charged the nobz, losing a wound to overwatch before challenging the warboss.  Canis rolled well, but a string of cybork saves saw the warboss left alive with 1 wound.  He struck back, killing Canis and earning 3 vp's!  The maulerfiend charged my reavers, killed four and once again saw them run away to taunt him again.

Deldar/Orks 8 - 6 Space Wolves/CSM

Xenos Filth Turn 3

The second dakkajet came on from reserve, moving onto the right of the board where it was joined by the other dakkajet zooming over from the left.  My razorwing moved over to the left to target the grey hunters.  The reavers again passed their morale check, and stayed in range of the maulerfiend (hoping to keep it in range of my dark lances).  The two squads of ork boyz on the right surrounded the nurgle marines with the nob bikers, and my venoms moved over to target the marines at the back of the board.
To open the shooting phase, two missiles and two disintegrator cannons shot the grey hunters, killing 8.  The remaining two were finished off by the dukes unit (3+ poison is awesome).  My dark lances on the left shot down the land speeder, and the lances in the centre took care of the hellbrute.  My other remaining lances couldnt scratch the maulerfiend, but the deffkoptas and dakkajets took it down to one hull point.  My reaver jetbikes shot down three marines, and combined ork shooting on the right left three nurgle marines alive. 
Assault was a failure, with none of three ork units making it the 4" required to see combat!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Marines

Again, a double 1 saw no reserves come on this turn for the marines, leaving poor Damo with only a predator to contol!  Abaddon moved into assault range of the nob bikers, and the nurgle marines stayed put.
Shooting saw a venom bite the dust, and a few ork boyz die.  Assault saw the maulerfiend charge and eventually kill all the four remaining reavers.  This was followed up by abaddon charging and challenging the ork warboss, who (not surprisingly!) died.  No nob bikers or terminators died however, and the orks stayed in the fight.

Deldar/Orks 11 - 10 Space Wolves/CSM

Xenos Filth Turn 4

My razorwing couldn't do anything this turn, dark eldar technology doesn't allow 180 degree turns just yet!  The dakkajet continued into chaos territory, and not much else happened.
Our shooting phase saw 6 out of 7 chaos marines die at the back of the board, having emptied both dakkajets, a venom and the warriors in the raider gunboat into them, that last marine keeping the sorcerer safe and denying us 2 VP's.  The deffkoptas shot the maulerfiend to death, and the space wolf predator was knockeddown to only one hull point.
Assault saw the ork boyz assault the nurgle marines...and fail horribly!  Having not killed a single marine between them, both squads (of 6 and 9 models) ran away!  Luckily they both rolled high enough to not get caught in a sweeping advance.  2 Nob bikers also died, at the expense of one terminator, but they remained locked in combat.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Marines Turn 4

A whoop of delight heralded this turn from Damo, as his reserves finally came on!  The rhino came on near our table edge and out popped the blood claws, along with the land speeder typhoon.  Despite all the shooting and combat, a round of extremely good rolling saw us save nearly everything, except my last venom finally got destroyed. 

And that was that, we'd run out of time and had to pack away, but with the blood claws being too far away to claim linebreaker it ended:

Dark Eldar/Orks 12 - 11 Space Wolves/CSM

Xenos Victory!!!!!


An extremely close match, although we gambled on a plan, almost stuck to it and took the win.  In all fairness, space pups and chaos are both tough armies to face, but we felt that dark eldar and orks had a lot of synergy.  Having said that, next time we will ditch the trukk, max out on boyz instead and drop a trueborn venom squad or two to bring either more poison or a second razorwing.

I hope you enjoyed that, as I'm off for two weeks now as I get married next week and then go on honeymoon, so the two of you who read this will have to look elsewhere for entertainment until then.

Adios

Neil