Of to war(again)

[Spiritbw]

Well, today I have a set battle against one of the store staff. For once definitely going to get a battle in (yay!)
We agreed upon a 2000 point limit as this will be his first time with Dark Eldar and well, that's how many ships he has. I'm taking some auxiliaries as well in case he forgot to factor in for his 'admiral' and I already know he is fielding all his ships with mimic engines in an effort to close as quickly as possible. This is the list I shall be fielding.

Emperor class BS 'Shogun'
Overlord class BC 'Minimoto'
Lunar class C 'Sun Tzu'
Lunar class C 'Iyasu'
Gothic class C 'Shotoku'
Sword class F(x6)
Firestorm class F(x6)
Falcion class F(x3)
Cobra class D(x4)

Dark Eldar run under their own power and not sails so don't have the hit and run tactics of Eldar they are still fast. Their weapons only fire in the front arc so that means they will have to make attack runs then hope to move away in the next turn beyond firing range.

While their Shadow fields still make hitting them difficult I'm hoping by including the Shogun and the Minimoto I'll have the range to batter even the fastest of the ships. The Escorts should be able to help provide support in my unarmed rear arcs if that is where he tries to close first until my ships can maneuver to bring their guns to bear.

I have never fought Dark Eldar so I am a bit unsure going into this. On the plus side this will be the first battle he's had using them so it should balance out. Knowing his fighting style I'm not expecting much in the way of attack craft other than possible Impaler modules so hence why my two carrier ships are being left behind in favor of escorts in a effort to increase the weapons batteries.

[Spiritbw]

Well, I think 'Slaughter' descibes that game.

Few things for thought on that game. One, he outfitted his ships about what I expected. Two, he moved for the attack ASAP. That was pretty much what was expected in the game plan.

What I didn't expect was him to try a 'all or nothing ' assault on my starboard line. He came on with most of his fleet in between a moon and a planet with two squadrons of escorts swinging round each orbital body.

My fleet had set up to keep him form making the main rush through the gap which was the most direct line of attack. It was quite honestly a classic case of a fleet crossing the tee including the result.

To be honest, his one flank did wipe out a squadron of three Sword class frigates and he did an impressive six points of damage to the Shogun taking out it's torpedos and slowing it to a crawl mostly through liberal use of the assault module the Dark Eldar have. My return attack in the first round wiped out two squadrons of escorts and damaged one of the cruisers.

Second round pretty much went down hill formt here. He failed to do any damage while the Shogun repaired some of it's speed and pounded one cruiser early to death. Blast markers would remove it in the third turn while my escorts and the Shotoku wiped out the remaining escorts leaving only two cruisers, one heavily damaged as said.

In the end one Dark Eldar cruiser though crippled managed to limp away. Mean while the Imperial forces morned only the loss of the three frigates and moderate damage to the Shogun, all of the critical damage repaired before the battle was even finished.

[Yurrath (aka Rezzy)]

That sounded viscious!
Just be thankful you weren't facing the regular Eldar.
Two turns....that's one hell of a decisive victory. Nice one.
Unfortunately it might be hard to pursuade them to ever play against oyu again. ;D
I suppose some of it is luck of the die, but it sounds like bottlenecking his force was a huge tactical error.

[Spiritbw]

Actually we're set for next week.

He's reworking the list and this time I think he's going to be a bit more cautious. I've looked at the DE rules and DE could be as bad as the Eldar. They exchange not being limited by the sun facing for the ordaince phase move which means you have a chance to hit them but if he does it right he can swoop in on the back arc where I would have a hard time hitting.

This time I know he's at least going to have some dark lances, something I was suprised he didn't have this time.

[Yurrath (aka Rezzy)]

spiritbw said:

Actually we're set for next week.

He's reworking the list and this time I think he's going to be a bit more cautious. I've looked at the DE rules and DE could be as bad as the Eldar. They exchange not being limited by the sun facing for the ordaince phase move which means you have a chance to hit them but if he does it right he can swoop in on the back arc where I would have a hard time hitting.

This time I know he's at least going to have some dark lances, something I was suprised he didn't have this time.

Just keep some shorter ranged ships back to prevent him flanking you. While he's dealing with those you can wheel around your other ships to attack.
Do you use much terrain?

[Spiritbw]

We used a fair amount last time. The board we set up on was eight by four. The staff set out something like a half dozen planets, assorted asteroids etc, very busy and somewhat cluttered battlefield. We wound up only using about a four foot by two foot area of it as it turned out.


Also, due to family visiting my opponent has had to postpone till a yet to be decided date. Ah well, that's the way things go.

We were discussing things over 4k today including some thoughts on Dark Eldar tactics. Since there isn't really alot to draw on for tactics we got a fair bit of milage out of that. We also talked about using one of the scenerios where it's a ambush by a smaller force on a larger battlefleet in transit.

This means he could probably feild his entire fleet and I could field all of mine including a couple of Adeptus Astartes Strike Cruisers(still in construction). Probably would be a wedge of cruisers with the escorts both inside the wedge and at the back where the best chance of attack would come.

Since he's got to wait a turn before boosting away again they might be able to do serious damage to his cruisers and/or escorts till the fleet can rearrange itself to deal with the threat.