New Eldar Playtesting vs Blood Angels

Now then folks, I promised a bit of a summary of how the revised Eldar list got on against the Blood Angels this week, and here it is!

We got two 1500 point games in, the first was hampered by my opponent not having used the angels in about 8 months, and was a routine roflstomp.  After he'd blown off the cobwebs, and polished his models nipples, the second game was much closer, and had me downright scared at one point.

For reference here is his list (ish):

Reclusiarch
Sanguinary Priest
10 Death Company with power swords
Death Company Dread
Furioso Dread
10 Tactical Marines in Rhino
5 Devastators in Lazerback
Stormraven
5 Assault terminators

We rolled up 'big guns never tire' (good for me, 3 extra scoring units!) and standard deployment.  I won the roll off and forced him to go first, he deployed his tac squad and dev's inside their transports and out of los, along with his furioso dread.  The termies were deep striking, and everything else was in the stormraven.

Here's a rough guide to my list:

Autarch
Spiritseer
5 Wraithblades in Wave Serpent
3 Jetbikes
5 Rangers
 6 Swooping Hawks
6 Warp Spiders
6 Striking Scorpions
Crimson Hunter
5 Dark Reapers
Wraithlord
Fire Prism

Expecting lots of deep striking (I didn't know his army beforehand, we played 'blind' to make it more difficult) I split my forces in two (apart from the three obvious reserve units), rangers, reapers and fire prism on the left and warp spiders, wraithlord and wave serpent on the right, spread out in order to limit the non-dangerous space for deep striking and force the angels to deep strike into the centre of my lines, which was devoid of terrain and my models.  By funnelling the enemy assault units, I felt that I could concentrate fire on them and then worry about the long ranged stuff.

Due to night fighting, his turn 1 was pants, my turn 1 saw the death of the lazerback and 2 dev's.  Turn 2 was more eventful, the stormraven turned up in hover mode and knocked a hull point off my fire prism, and the terminators arrived in the 'funnel'.  My turn 2 I promptly wiped out the terminators (4 of which were accounted for by my wraithlord) and knocked 2 hull points off the stormraven, along with two hull points off the tac squads rhino.  In turn three the tac squad got out and assaulted the scorpions (a battle that would go on to turn 5) and the rhino die to a 'death or glory' haywire grenade when it tank shocked my hawks.  The death company and dread got out and started a long slog towards my rangers and the dev's took out my wraithlord.  Then my crimson hunter turned up and blasted his stormraven out of the sky, and my hawks wiped out the devastators.  Half of the death company died to combined shooting, and the furioso dread fell foul of my autarch's haywire grenades.  After that I basically consolidated onto objectives and failed to wipe out his death company or death company dread, and a last turn sprint from my dark reapers, of all people, contested an objective. 

I believe that it was 11-0 to me when the dust settled, but it's important to remember that I'd been using this army for the past 4 weeks, and he'd not played his army in yonks. As a result, he made some basic errors, and I didn't learn much.  I did however successfully keep my jetbikes out of harms way, and my warp spiders out of assault range of the enemy!  The useful thing to take from this was my anti deep strike defence, the 'funnel' effect worked well as my opponent admitted he didn't want to risk his models miss-happing, and so had to either place them where they could be in assault range next turn and in range of all my guns, or too far from my troops to have an impact on the game.  When you throw in battle focus even the small range guns have a large area of effect. 

With my opponent having a better idea of what was what, we reset for exactly the same game (same warlord traits etc) to see what he would do differently, and I went first after adopting my 'funnel' defence again, the only exception was my rangers infiltrating into an objective in the blood angels deployment zone.

I popped both of his transports, and in reply he killed my wraithlord turn 1.  I opted to hold back on all reserves, and none turned up as I rolled 2's and 3's (the autarch helping me out) and I shot down several tactical marines.  I also charged my wraithblade mini-star into the furioso dread, and failed to hurt it.  In his turn 2 the stormraven turned up and zoomed straight into my backline, shooting 2 reapers to death, he also landed his terminators in his own deployment zone due to the funnel.  And 2 wraithblades died.  My reserves all arrived turn 3, the hunter failed to bring down his stormraven and my hawks wiped out the devastators.  He then turfed out his death company dread into my scorpions, killing them all, and his death company into the battle with the wraithblades, killing them all.  And the stormraven killed my fire prism.  Wow. Used properly that thing is awesome, especially when you consider the two units inside and power of the machine spirit to target 4 enemy units in one turn!  What followed was my wave serpent and swooping hawks getting battered by dreadnaughts and death company, and the death company, reclusiarch and sanguinary priest being wiped out in one turn of shooting by the dark reapers and warp spiders.

The game ended up 5-1, but it was a lot closer than that scoreline suggests.  My scouts, who had been left alone all game on an objective, took 3 points, and first blood/slay the warlord did the rest.  Without using the insane movement of Eldar to it's best I doubt I would have had any models left at the end of the game, and the AP1 shooting of the warp spiders gave me slay the warlord. 

Conclusions?  I saw nothing from the spiritseer again, he really does seem to be a 70 point tax to get some T6 troops.  I also saw nothing from my wraithblades/autarch except the autarchs haywire grenades, but I could only seem to fight dreadnaughts in these two games and not anything more suitable, like termies or tactical squads.  For this reason, the firesabre also seemed a waste of points, however against a different unit may have been game-changing, I have one more week to find out!  His +/-1 for reserves is amazeballs however,  every reserve roll just seemed to go to plan.  Crimson hunter is still amazing, even when it doesn't kill off a stormraven in one round of shooting, and warp spiders are 6th editions must-have unit.  I am a real believer in the swooping hawks and dark reapers, but although my scorpions did occupy my opponent they just flopped in combat, and didn't survive long.  And the wraithlord has the same question hanging over his head, does he just die too easily?  Once again in the first game he roflstomped an enemy unit and then became a bullet magnet, but game 2, after my opponent had worked him out, the wraithlord died turn 1.  Is he valuable for that bullet-magnetness though?  With everything else quite fragile, the wraithlord taking all the enemy's strongest guns to the face for a turn or 2 protects my grav tanks, reapers etc.  A dilemma for sure.

The funnel defence was great against deepstrike, but useless versus a flyer/fast skimmer loaded with assault troops, where with mu units bunched up they could affect multiple units in one turn.

We have rounds 3 and 4 next week, with the promise of a different list from my opponent (sanguinary guard for termies etc) so a whole new challenge lies ahead!  I may tinker with my list, but I'm now at the stage where I'm afraid to make many changes as I've just become used to this list, and 1 week before our tournament it could be suicide!

Any thoughts people?  Any suggestions?  Any similar experiences of attempting deep strike/flyer defences?  Please feel free to comment!

Adios for now,

Neil