Tourney Round 2, Eldar vs Cron Air….

In round 2 I was to face a cron air list that had recently come joint first at throne of skulls, but I had a plan to combat all those flyers, namely race everything that could into the necron deployment zone and stagger them so that the 6 night scythes had to 'overshoot' my models, and therefore wouldn't be able to shoot them.  They would have to drop their warrior/immortal payloads and spend several turns coming about to face me, whilst my crimson hunter patrolled their board edge with it's vector dancer ability.  I was confident it would work......

For my list you can check out my last post, as for cron air it was as follows:

Overlord on Catacomb Command Barge
2x5 warriors with cryptek in Night Scythes
2x5 Tesla Immortals in Night Scythes
2x5 deathmarks in Night Scythes
3x Tesla Annihilation Barge (whatever they're called)

The mission rolled up by the TO was the scourging (for plenty of odd scoring objectives) and to scupper my plans it was long board edges again.  Grrrrrrrr.......

I had the stealth warlord trait, and +1/-1 armour save and +1/-1 WS on the psychic powers.  I lost the roll off, and was doomed to go first.  I hid everything in case of some initiative stealing shenanigans and saw with a slight amount of disbelief only 4 models on the enemy side of the board.  I also placed the usual three units into reserve, and put my rangers into the necron deployment zone, ready to move onto an objective and distract some crons.

Turn 1

With nothing much to do, I moved my skimmers forward at full pelt for a 4+ cover save, and hid my warp spiders behind my wave serpent.  My wraithblades moved onto an objective worth 4 points, and elected to stay put with the wraithlord acting as a meat shield.  My rangers also uncovered a 3 point objective in the necron deployment zone.

In necron turn 1 the overlord swooped over my scouts and revealed the first bit of cheese, D3 S7 attacks with no armour save (so their 3+ cover save was worthless), and the CCB then shot them too to kill them off.  First blood necrons.  Apart from that a very uneventful turn, as the barges failed to harm my skimmers.

Turn 2

My swooping hawks arrived from reserve, deep striking onto the opposite side of the necron deployment zone from the overlord, hoping to tempt him over, and conveniently in range of a haywire grenade throw onto an annihilation barge.  Everything else stayed in reserve.
In an attempt to clear the board and then deal with the flyers as and when they arrived, I turfed my fire dragons out of the serpent and battle focussed them into range of one AB, whilst my warp spiders jumped over to another (ganging up on it with my hawks).
My shooting phase was epic, my hawks began by haywiring a hull point off the first AB, which was then glanced to death by my warp spiders.  My fire dragons the took down a second with some close range melta action, and my dark reapers, wave serpent and fire prism all combined to bring down the third.  My only let down was my failure to deal with the annihilation barges with only one unit each, which would have freed up shots against the overlord.  As it was I didn't have any units left to fire at him.
Suitably shocked, both by my movement and by losing all 3 barges in one go, sam rolled for his reserves...

And saw half of them turn up.  They all arrived in a line 18" into the board, and proceeded to flop a little in the shooting phase.  They did however kill my fire dragons and autarch, taking a point for slay the warlord.  His warlord, on the other side of the table, moved flat out to threaten my backline and fire prism next turn.

Turn 3

Luckily my reserves arrived this turn, crimson hunter to the rescue lol.  I hid my jetbikes out of LOS in an effort for a last turn objective grab, and sent my wraith-contingent into charge range of the overlord on ccb. A stellar turn of shooting saw my crimson hunter wreck one night scythe, my fire prism and wave serpent take down a second and my warp spiders bring down the third!  If only I could keep this up I thought....
And then I successfully charged the ccb with both wraith units, causing a wound to the overlord (I attacked the barge, but for some reason I can't remember the overlord fixed it by taking a wound).  Nearly a very good turn!

And then the entire necron force turned up, the de-meched warriors and immortals turned up on the cron board edge and the other three flyers came in in a similar formation to last turn.  The overlord then sweeped my fire prism and wrecked it, before moving over to my dark reapers.  His scythes took down the reapers and wave serpent, and also had my crimson hunter down to one bright lance and a solitary hull point while his foot troops wiped out my swooping hawks and warp spiders. 

In short, the turn went from hero to zero in one shooting phase!

Turn 4

Things were looking grim, I'd dealt out a lot of damage but I was now short on numbers.  My wraiths moved close to the overlord again, and my hunter evaded out of the way of the night scythes.  My reapers and jetbikes failed to damage the ccb in shooting, so I charged in again with the wraiths.  My spiritseer, obviously not content with going toe-to-toe with a chaos terminator lord in my last game, took down the catacomb command barge, and the wraithlord brought the overlord down to his last wound in return for 2 wraithblades dying.

The necrons moved out, starting to take objectives and finish off my units.  The dark reapers went down, as did my crimson hunter, but no enemy units could see my jetbikes.  In combat, my spiritseer brought down the overlord, surely making him the toughest seer in all the craftworlds!

At this point, through some quirk of fate I was winning the game 8-5, but this game was 6 turns not 4, and so the game would go on....

Turn 5

I didn't have much to do, so my wraiths moved onto the 4 point objective with the theory that they would at least contest it, if not take it.  My jetbikes moved forwards and with some pretty impressive rolling wiped out all the necrons holding a 2 point objective, before moving onto a 3 point objective themselves in the assault phase.

The necrons jetted all 3 remaining flyers off the table in preparation for next turn objective grabs, and hid with their remaining troops for a boring turn 5.  At this point, we were drawing, and so the last turn would be the decider....

Turn 6

I moved my jetbikes 1" to get a cover save whilst still holding an objective, and my wraiths stayed put.  I had nothing really to shoot at, but I believe my wraithlord killed a solitary warrior from across the board.

And then the cavalry arrived, 3 objectives seized/contested, spiritseer killed and some jetbikes killed.  Wham, bam thankyou mam, that'll be....

Eldar 1 - 10 Necrons

Conclusions

Ouch.  It was going so well and then, well, the old 'glass hammer' characteristic of the Eldar came to the fore and said goodbye to my chances.  I can't complain though, I knew it was a danger going into the tourney and like my swordsmasters in fantasy, this army relies on killing the enemy before they can hit back.

Positives abound from this however, in that with a different deployment map it would have been so much easier to keep my units alive by getting into their backline turns 1 and 2, before the planes all arrived.  Also, warp spiders proved that they can take down flyers (even needing 6's to hit, you roll a lot of S6 shots) and that once again my best units were the wraiths, whom I had doubted severely pre-tourney.  Cron air can be taken down without the fuss I made trying to do it, and I think Dark Eldar particularly, and Eldar, can really take the game to them whilst keeping out of the impact of the flyers.  Also, the sheer firepower that this balanced list can put out is scary, I don't want to come up against a waac list of Eldar!

Lastly I was playing a very experienced, and very competent tournament winning player who had used the cron air list for quite a while, and I nearly took it to the wire.  I certainly had him worried at several points. 

Oh well, that left me with one large win and one large defeat, so being mid table I was expecting an fun game in the third round..............

And I was to be disappointed.  It was to be the relic.  With diagonal deployment zones.  Both of which I hate.  And I was to face the new Tau, watch this space!