Chaos Day Battle Reports - Part one

This blog malarkey is hard work!

Well, it is if you have a real life. So, the weekend post chaos day is over (aka The girlfriend's 24th annual birthing day ritual). Fun was indeed had by all, including her nephew who insisted I had "one more game of donkey kong" 6 times (I fear he may be the real life version of Joffrey, famed from A song of Ice and Fire...).

So, hello my beloved blog! We meet again!

Last post, we went into a brief bit about what went wrong at Chaos day for me. Now, I'll go into some brief tidbits of games. I hope you understand that once we got going I didn't get chance to fully take photos and compose full reports, but hopefully you'll find my summaries of my games quite entertaining.

Prematch warmup

Now, this wasn't technically my first game. I had chance for a warm up against Laird Tebbutt (she owns land in scotland, don't you know?) and her Thousand Sons. We never actually finished, and involved both of us forgetting rules left right and centre. It did make me realise Dark Eldar have a shedload of special rules for each unit. It can be utterly mind boggling sitting down against an army, especially if you're new, and be told "this unit does this this and this, this does this, I get to roll two D6 and pick whatever I want, oh look I did". I know the chaos codex inside out almost and Ellen was a new player who had never played at this points level before.

We never finished the game, but to be honest, I think Ellen had my number. My dark lances just plinked off the rhino hulls, snapping a bolter off here, shaking a rhino there. Nothing actually stuck, and in three turns of shooting I only immobilised one rhino. Out of Four. Not a good start!

 Game 1 - Yankydoodle Paul and his plunderwolf brigade

So the much vaunted game! It's a shame I was playing a new army, as if I was going ahead with my old daemons I think I'd have given his wolves a good run for their money! Instead, in my first game with my test list, I was in for a tough game!



Paul's plunderwolves frolicking, waiting for a car to chase



Paul's list was your standard gray (sic) hunter 5 man spam (typo for my homesick opponent) with a wolf guard chaperone all in razorbacks. There were some rune priests about, both with living lightning (my favourite power to hate now) one with jaws and the other with murderous hurricane. Oh, and then his favourite unit - two squads of three plunderwolves, all with their sucky blankets/storm shield that granted them their 3up invulnerable.

Mission was straight forward kill points. He put everything bar the thunderwolves on the table. All was going to plan, my bloodbrides flatoutted behind some cover, my raiders and ravagers emerged to send a devastating volley into his non smoked razorbacks and...

They were 38inches away. Absolute rooky error! 2inches out of range. The unlimited living lightning came, the lascannons came. The next few turns what lances I had left failed to do anything to his tanks. One was immobilised.

My blobsquad of sliscus and co, which I'd left on a hill with a commanding view, spent most of the game out of range.

Highlights came from my wyches and reavers combining to kill one squad of hunters, and 5/6ths of a long fang squad. I threw everything into the long fang, trying to get rid of him before the thunderwolves came on. The wyches got hurricaned, and lost 3 of their number to dangerous terrain rolls attempting to reach cover.

The long fang stayed put, even winning the combat! Unfortunately I couldn't get rid of him, and the thunderwolves came bounding on and wiped my right flank in a whirlwind of unrealistic animal husbandry. With that flank, went my game, I lost 7 KP to 4.

Game 2 - James L.G. and his 99% Deathwing.

My second game was James Le Grys, a really nice chap who I've played around the tourny circuit a few times. Now, we have a bit of a history. Our first game was my daemons against his ravenwing in a real cat and mouse objective mission back at Carnage tournament (a now defunct tournament) about 3 years ago. In this game, I technically won, holding 3 objectives to 2. However, the game scoring system meant I actually lost due to a massacre on victory points! The actual gaming objectives held no reference to the actual result of the game!

James is also a good friend of Adam Smith, the chap who runs the space wolf blog. James said that he's only ever in the blog when Adam beats him - becoming part of a glorious space wolf propaganda machine! Well, I've got some good new James: You're being mentioned in the blog and beat somebody!

James actually won the tournemant overall, utterly hammering every opponent he had. He ran a pure infantry deathwing list, with Belial and a thunder hammer, and Ezekial (hence the 99% deathwing!).

Now, the Dark Angels have some terribly tasty psychic powers and I never realised! Force barrier specifically allowed his command squad to ignore one instant death shot. Extremely useful for ignoring those cheeky lance shots.



James's command squad (Ezekiel not included)



We played the old fashioned cleanse mission from the last edition of 40K, which involved claiming table quarters. He set his entire army up in cover, as I did. We then stood off and pummelled each other for 3 or 4 turns. In a game of attrition, however, his superior armour came through. He walked his command squad across into my blob and kicked the shite out of my blob squad thoroughly (after my haemonoculus opened her casket of flensing and a load of rubber snakes popped out at strength 1 AP 6. Thankfully his hellfire roll was strength 0 too).

Highlights were that my disintigrators made mincement out of 4 terminators, and my reavers finished the last one for a pain token. My splinter cannons also managed to tickle some terminators to death from across the board.

Game 3 - Martyn's Sister's of Battle

Martyn was a sisters of battle player, and I've yet to meet a nasty sisters player. He was getting back into the hobby, so I figured a thorough spanking of my dark eldar was just what he needed.



One of my raiders, sitting pretty over an objective



This was a close game, with capture and control the name of the game. Highlights involved sliscus cutting a squad of seraphim who charged him to ribbons, however the random game end got me once again. He had a solitary sister on my objective, with a squad bearing down on her. I would have also turboboosted onto his objective should the game have gone one extra turn, earning a valuable win for the dark eldar! However...the game ended abruptly, leaving me cursing my bad luck yet again! Curses! [/mojojojo]

So, the first day ended, we all slinked off and got pissed in hooters and pit and pendulum, whilst the grey knight players went to a gay night leading to obvious name calling and questions regarding their sexual alignment. I'll be along with the second days worth of gaming action, and some more photos, shortly!