Right with that out the way onto game 1.... Oh and as with previous batreps I will try to keep these as short and sweet as possible, but in all likelihood they will ramble on forever.
Before I start for those who can't remember my Ravenwing army list you can find a copy by CLICKING HERE
Before I start for those who can't remember my Ravenwing army list you can find a copy by CLICKING HERE
Round 1 was against the Russians and after Bernie not listening to my advice in the match ups I ended up having to face down their Dark Eldar player Yury; who I had played in Munster 3 years ago so at least I knew he was a top guy even if his list was going to rape my bikes...
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| A young Yury 3 years ago |
Yury "Grave" Velickovskiy - Dark Eldar & Eldar
Mission - Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment - Spearhead
Yury's army consisted of; Haemonculus, 3x3 Trueborns with 3 Blasters, 4x5 Warriors with Blasters, 3 Wracks, 3 Ravagers with Night Shields, 8 Venoms, Farseer with Runes of Warding and Doom, 3 Jetbikes, 3 Warwalkers with double Shuriken Cannons, and a Bastion with Quad Cannon. So in short a bucket load of shooting that would just rinse my bikes clean off the board given the chance. Right I was going to have to play this one like a pro.
I managed to get the first turn and so deployed my army aggressively 12" from the centre behind a rather large impassable rock formation in the standard phallanx around the banner formation (I will have to see if I can find some pictures off someone else to show what I mean by the phallanx). Yury shrewdly had all his Venoms and Ravagers against his far back corner edges to keep them pretty much all out of 48" of my bikes (my effective turn 1 bolter range after scouting and moving). His Bastion when down right in his back corner (no surprise there) with the Warwalkers behind it and the Quad Cannon sat behind a ruin that was right in front of said Bastion.
Yury was pretty shocked by this move. He said later he never expected me to be so aggressive on turn 1 and this actually caused him a lot of contention when he then had to think how best to respond. What he did was very clever; he disembarked 2 True Born units (the 3rd I forgot to mention was in the Bastion with the Haemoculus whilst the Farseer was hiding behind it with the Warwalkers) and then ran them right in front of my army to create a barrier which would hopefully stop me from assaulting his vehicles next turn. He then proceeded to unload all his anti tank that was in range into my Dark Shroud; figuring that if he could remove that it would drop the Command Squad's cover save from 2+ (Jink + Skilled Rider + Turbo Boost + Stealth) and then he could more easily remove it with Splinter fire from the Venoms. 3 Ravagers, 1 Quad Cannon, and a load of Blasters later the Dark Shroud was still there! HORRAY FOR 2+ COVER SAVES! Yury was somewhat miffed by this but carried on with his plan of taking down an Attack Bike for First Blood then putting (it took 2 Venoms) then putting EVERYTHING into the Command Squad. The shooting phase ended and my Command Squad hadn't taken a single wound! 2+ Cover + FnP is very tough indeed.
With his shooting phase essentially null and void (First Blood is not particularly massive at the ETC) it was back over to me. I shuffled a few units around and lined all my Bikes and Attack bikes within 6" of the Dakka Banner (as the Banner of Devastation is called in Team Scotland) and then let rip first at his Venoms taking down 3 of them from all my shooting (he passed a lot of 5+ Flicker Field saves). I then did the Dark Shroud / Command Squad Shuffle (I turbo boost the Command Squad backwards and then the Dark Shroud into the hole they have left to give essentially the whole army Stealth) and it was the Assault Phase. I multi charged my 2 Black Knight units into his blocking units and 1 Ravager, after taking care to position myself during movement to only allow 1 Black Knight from each unit charge the blocking unit (I wanted to see if I could tie myself in combat with them if they passed their moral on a lucky low roll). The Ravager was smashed by massed Crovus Hammer attacks and the blocking units took no casualties but still ran due to the combat result and I swept one of them whilst the other ran clean off the table.Yury's Turn 2 and he repeated the Blocking trick with some new units, moved his skimmers a little further from my army whilst maintaining firing arcs, and this time let rip on my Attack Bikes and Black Knights; killing all my attack Bikes and 1 full unit of Black Knights (my saves this turn were below average making up for the previous turns) and that was his turn done.
What then happened for the next few turns was I continued to take down Venoms and his Blocking Units until finally I got to grips with his Warwalkers (who died to the Command Squad) and was close enough to chuck a bunch of Frag Grenades into the Bastion killing everyone except the Farseer (D6 hits per grenade adds up fast). Whilst this was happening Yury was killing off units with his Venoms and slowly but surely we ground each other down until in the end we each only had a single scoring unit left claiming a single objective respectively and a couple of lone scoring units left hiding out around the board. Once we totted up all the various primary and secondary objectives, plus 5th Ed Victory Points (yes I know you don't have to tell me how flawed 5th Ed VPs here... just CLICK HERE to read what I think on the matter) the final result was 10-10. A Draw! A draw against Venom Spam with my Ravenwing Bikes! AWESOME!!!!
Unfortunatly though things did not go well overall for Team Scotland and we lost the round quite heavily which dropped us down to the bottom end of the rankings going into round 2.....
....stay tuned for more next time ;-)