Matt has come up with a pretty horrible GK list for Open War. Yes I know most GK lists are horrible but this one is particularly nasty. He's got Coteaz, two big squads of purifiers in rhinos, 4 razorbacks with acolytes for scoring, 2 psyflemen and 2 dreadknights. That's right dreadknights, remember them?
The idea is that the dreadknights use their teleport thingies to smash into your face and whilst you're busying dealing with them the purifiers rock up and kick your teeth in.
Suffice to say it's not much fun to play against. It's even less fun with a Dark Eldar webway list when you're playing Dawn of War and get to go second! You can imagine why I didn't find time to take photos!
Battle Report
We'd be playing Annihilation and DoW (last mission of Open War) so Matt brought his army on (in the first turn) centrally with a dread and dreadknight at each side and the spam of vehicles in the middle. Since neither of us deployed anything I was forced to bring the venoms on turn 1 and only got the webways about 15" onto the board!
Matt then unleashed the massive volume of fire from his army and wrecked both venoms, killed both haemonculi and left very few of the trueborn which were pinned anyway! I rolled for my reserves and was gutted to see I'd only got two of my wych squads. They came out the webways and ran into cover since nothing was in range for a charge. Sure enough, a combinations of an incineration from each dreadknight and sheer weight of fire saw me with just a hekatrix left from the two squads. Next turn I got some more stuff but not really the things I wanted.
The rest of the turns were just me bringing stuff through the portals, fruitlessly trying to kill something and then dying horribly. There was genuinely a point when Matt was killing stuff quicker than I could put it back in the box! The talos was unlucky to be killed straight away by the dreadknight thanks to it wounding 3 times out of 3 hits on 5+!
Suffice to say I ended up tabled having only managed to kill a single rhino and 2-3 purifiers.
Lessons Learned
The first thing I learnt could have been a real game changer! When we rolled for first turn Matt rolled a 5 and I rolled a 4. Without thinking I let him take first turn and thought nothing of it until Baron died and I was putting him back in the box. It was then I remembered his +1 to that dice roll which would've forced a re-roll and potentially an opportunity to go first!
However, I really don't think it would've made much difference. I think I should have probably just deployed one of the venoms in the centre of the board with the haemo in it and hoped he survived to deploy his webway in turn 1. This isn't that far fetched as night fighting would've helped out. However, the problem with Matt's list is even if I'd dealt with the dreadknights there's still two squads of purifiers that I have to avoid in combat (thanks to cleansing flame). Frankly, it's pretty much my list's worst nightmare and going second on DoW didn't really help!
I learned a lot from the game though which is why I now have the wracks in the list. They allow me to deploy the haemo in the middle of the board and then hug a central objective. If it's not DoW then they can just come on from reserve from my board edge and sit on a home objective, go to ground and hope to be ignored or weather any fire.
After this game I was sorely tempted to put my ravagers back in but I think it would still be a stone vs scissors kind of game so I'm sticking with the rest of the list as it is. Next battle for them is Tyranids!
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