The Needle & The Damage Done

Andy couldn't make it to Warhammer World on Thursday so I had to pop round his on Wednesday and pick up his Orks. While I was round, I gave a quick playtest to this list. Andy took a Blood Angel list including a Librarian, Sanguinary Priest and 2 units of 8 Assault Marines in Rhinos. We played Annihilation with Pitched Battle deployment on a 4x4 table.

I got lucky with my Combat Drug roll and came up with a '6' - free Pain Token. So, since my Succubus got one and each of my Wych squads got one it meant that the unit the Succubus joined got two and so started with Feel No Pain and Furious Charge. With Andy going first I chose to Reserve my army. This was my first mistake. I should have started the Raider with the Shadowfield on the board as it would have been out of range of the Marine guns while it still could have shot back. We spent the first 6 or so turns driving around each other with my Dark Lances either missing the Rhinos or failing to do any damage. Then I made my second mistake. I got the Succubus and her squad out of her Raider. I had hoped that with two Dark Lances and a Blast Pistol I would take out a Rhino and then be able the charge the contents. However, I failed to take it out and then I forgot that I could glance the Rhino since I was S4 on the charge so I didn't charge the Rhino. Of course the squad took lots of fire and then got charged and wiped out.

Eventually, I managed to blow up one Rhino and immobilise the second one. I also killed an Assault Squad and Sanguinary Priest with my other Wych squad but they got killed by the Libarian and his squad on the counter charge. If we'd have kept playing then my non-immobilised Raider would just have kept flying round picking off marines with Dark Lance shots but we'd played about 14 turns so we declared Andy the winner.

Despite losing, I have learnt a lot about the Dark Eldar from this game. Firstly, Karnstein was right, mo Agonisers is mo better. Secondly, where I said in that post that 5 Dark Lances is enough, I was wrong. You need to be able to de-mech the enemy and that means as many Dark Lances as possible. In this game my dice were poor in that regard but clearly taking more mitigates against bad luck. Thirdly, I really need to learn the rules. All through the game I completely forgot that the Wyches get a 4+ invulnerable save in combat. I was always taking my 6+ and then my FNP. I did find the Shadowfield to be golden as, along with the Raider's speed, it kept the Bolt Pistol armed Blood Angels out of range for pretty much the entire game. However, I'm not convinced it will be that useful in a full game as most of the stuff firing at my vehicles will be 48" range base (Autocannons, Missile Launchers, Lascannons)

With regard the the Wyches' wargear, I found the Hydra Gauntletes very useful. I didn't get to use the Shardnet as she was killed before combat but I think it would have been very useful against Blood Angels (and Space Wolves for that matter) However, I am going to drop the Blast Pistol from the Succubus in favour of getting another Agoniser in the squad. Since it's at a different Initiative step to the Succubus it means less opportunity to use wound allocation on the power weapon wounds.

Looking further out into bigger points games, I like the idea of taking a Webway Portal and then running bigger Wych squads on foot. I have to admit that during Wednesday's game I was thinking about taking my Wyches back to GW and swapping them for Warriors. However, I chose Wyches as they play differently to my Space Wolves so I'm sticking with them for now.