Round 4
Opponent: Mark Buttle - Eldar
Mission: Take and Hold the table centre. Pitched Battle deployment.
Points: 1500
Mark Had: Autarch with fusion gun, 2 x fire dragons in 2 wave serpents, 2 fire prisms, 3 vypers with shuriken cannons, 2 x dire avengers in wave serpents, 1 x dire avengers in holofield falcon.
I think that was roughly it for 1500, the ole steel trap is getting a little rusty.
I won the roll for first turn, and took it, setting up centrally. Our table was fairly devoid of terrain, except that it had a skyshield landing pad in the centre... handy for take and hold!
In Response, Mark went into reserve entirely.
Turn 1: I moved and ran everything up to have a solid starting position.
Turn 2: I finished my moving up, boosted my lords for coversaves, etc.
In Marks turn 2, he rolled for his reserves, and proceeded to get everything on. He was then extremely silly with this however, and moved each firedragon wave serpent flat out to park directly infront of each command barge, which I had 1 on each side of the skyshield pad (so a good 12-15 inches away from each other), and then brought the entire rest of his army on, mostly only moving 6 inches to fire at the wraiths.
Of course because I had made it nightfight, very little could see, and when the dust had cleared, the only thing I lost was an unlucky command barge - happy with that for a loss tally!
Turn 3: Turn 3 was the biggy. As Mark had brought his holofalcon into the scarabs charge range and only moved 6, they went and ate the crap out of this. The vypers were decimated by Tesla Destructor firepower, while a sweep attack took out one of the firedragon wave serpents. The wraiths then went and killed a Fire Prism, while firepower from crypteks only killed 1 Wave Serpent, leaving him with 2 left - though I had at least pulled the guns off these.
In Marks Turn 3 the firedragons who fell out of their wave serpent but only lost 3 in the ensuing firepower thereafter blew up the remaining command barge (but in the process killed enough of themselves in the blast that they fled unable to rally), while the autarch blew up an annihilation barge. All dire avengers disembarked and fired at wraiths, along with the other intact fire dragon squad I was unable to encourage to leave their sanctuary, but 2 wraiths remained while any remaining firepower had a crack at scarabs but only killed a single base. The firedragon waveserpent meanwhile buggered off, to try contest the secondary objective later in the game.
Turn 4: The scarabs went and killed the remaining fire prism, the autarch was tesla zapped to death, the intact firedragon squad was assaulted by a lord and warrior squad, while wraiths dealt to one dire avenger squad and another tesla'd to death. Lastly the other overlord took out one of the 2 remaining wave serpents.
In Marks turn 4 the remaining Wave Serpent and solitary vyper tried to hide for a turn 5 contest of the secondary objective.
Turn 5: I mop up any remaining models, leaving just the wave serpent and vyper.
In Marks Turn 5, the wave serpent tries to tankshock onto the objective - a death or glory wrecks the vehicle. The vyper tries to instead hide in my deployment zone to rob me of a point.
There is a turn 6, and I blow up the vyper.
A fairly straight forward game, the minute Mark brought all his key units on in charge range of my combat units though, it was just an exercise in mopping up. Not the best matchup for him, though this didn't need to be quite so one sided.
When the dust settled, the round had been scored 20-3 to me, leaving me on 76/80 points for the event so far, with 2 2000 point games coming up the next day.
Stay posted for the anticlimactic finish!
