Chaos Daemons vs Eldar, 16.06.2015

For the first time in history, I battle non-Space Marines!

Mission: Spoils of War
Map: Dawn of War
Lists: 1000 points
Chaos Daemons: Combined Arms Detachment

• 3 Nurglings
• 10 Pink Horrors, champion, icon, instrument
• 5 Furies of Slaanesh
• 5 Seekers of Slaanesh, champion, icon, instrument
• 3 Screamers of Tzeentch
• Kairos Fateweaver, warlord
• Daemon Prince of Nurgle, exalted reward, minor reward, lvl 3 Psyker, armor, wings

The Nurgle Prince rolled on Biomancy and got the Grimoire of True Names. No Iron Arm, sadly.
I tried to convert my Shooty Flying Circus to 1000 points. I didn't like the result. It didn't perform as well, either.

Craftworld Eldar: Combined Arms Detachment

• Dire Avengers
• Guardians with missile launcher
• 5 Striking Scorpions, with Exarch
• 6 Swooping Hawks, with Exarch
• Farseer, level 3 Psyker, Telepathy
• 5 Wraithguard
• 5 Wraithblades
• Wraith Lord, warlord

The Eldar won the roll off and deployed first.

Going from the bottom: Dire Avengers and Scorpions in the lower ruin. Wraithguard and Farseer in the open. Wraithlord in the center tower - an interesting choice, given that it cannot move down from that position. Wraithblades in the open. Guardians and Hawks in the upper ruin.

Going from the bottom: Kairos (proxied by the white Daemon Prince) and Screamers behind the tower. Nurgle Prince behind the house. Infiltrated Nurglings, ready to grab objectives. Pink Horrors behind other ruin. The Seekers will Outflank, the Furies will Deep Strike.

Eldar, turn 1.

Wraiths move up along with the Scorpions. Some ineffective shooting took place, although it did make the Nurgle Prince jink. Hawks jump off the table.

Daemons, turn 1.

Nurglings grab cover. Screamers move up, then turbo-boost over the scorpions, killing 1 or 2 with slashing attacks. Flying Daemons swoop up and let fly with various psychic powers - also largely ineffective.

Eldar, turn 2.

The Scorpions moved back to assault the Screamers. Luckily, they failed the Fear test (whohoo! first time I got to use it) and didn't wipe out them out.
The Wraithguard move up and open up on the Nurgle Prince; 2 hits, but luckily no 6's on the Destroyer table, so I jinked everything.
The Wraithblades annihilated the Nurglings with S7 attacks. This was my mistake; it looked like a long charge through difficult terrain. Some lucky rolls however made sure that they closed the distance really quick.
The Swooping Hawks arrive behind the house, and open up on the Horrors, killing some off.

Daemons, turn 2.

A largely ineffective turn. I managed to kill 2 Wraithguard with psychic shooting. Vector Strikes failed. No reserves came in. At this point I was lagging behind in points. I got really bad Tactical Objectives, largely stolen by the Eldar.

Turn 3.

The Eldar just shuffled around, grabbing objectives for more points.
The Wraithblades moved up on the Horrors.
However, I unleashed Kairos on them. Finally, a great psychic phase resulted in their total annihilation.
I got to summon 10 Bloodletters with the warp storm, but they mishapped and got destroyed.
My reserves also got on the table, so I made them move up on the Dire Avengers. A nice combo: get the Seekers in, then Deep Strike the Furies with no scatter.

Eldar, turn 4.

My Reserves obviously got shot up, then charged. The Seekers presented an opportunity to get Assasinate and Hungry for Glory. Otherwise, everybody shuffled around to no great effect.
The Scorpions were whittled down due to a previous Khorne result on the warp storm table.

Daemons, turn 4.

A barrage of psychic shooting destroyed the Guardians, with the one survivor almost fleeing off the table - allowing me to grab that objective. I used the remaining dice to summon Daemonettes. At this point we were at 6-5.

Turn 5 and game end.

We both shuffled around to no great effect. However, the Eldar scored 3 points by grabbing and stealing objectives. I felt that I had no way to make up for that (plus the store was closing on us - again), so I called the game. My opponent was a good sport - he insisted on calling it a draw. His reasoning: an entire game's worth of shooting at my flying Daemons couldn't take off a single wound!

Post-game

• My flyers are invulnerable vs psykers. I have a huge dice pool and high psyker levels. The Farseer got off at least 3 Psychic Shrieks (with 4-6 successes due to rerolls and not suffering wounds from Perils of the Warp), but everything was denied.
• My psychic shooting suffers greatly from the missing Daemon Prince (see my last 1250 and 1500 point lists). I got two good psychic phases off; the other two were horribly ineffective.
• Once again, my fodder died rapidly and didn't do much.
• A more mobile army easily steals table control, since I've only got two durable units. This was compounded by the presence of D-weapons. I was too afraid to go into gliding mode, since a hit followed by a 6 on the D-table means no saves, not even 2+ jink or 2++ rerollable.