Open War 16 Recap - Game 3

Game 3 vs Eldar

HQ

Farseer (Fortune, Doom ,Guide, Stones of Witnessing & Warding, Spirit Stones) Singing Spear

4-man Warlock squad (Embolden, Enhance, Destructor) all w. Singing Spears

The Avatar

ELITE

7-man Fire Dragon Squad (inc Exarch w. Fire Pike) in Wave Serpent (Spirit Stones)

TROOP

8-man Guardian Jet-Bike Squad (inc Warlock w. singing Spear)

2x 10-man Dire Avengers (inc Exarch w. Bladestorm)

HEAVY SUPPORT

3x War Walker Squadron (2x Startcannons)

Fire Prism

Wraithlord (Eldar Missile Launcher)

The last game of the day pitted me against another Andy with a hybrid Eldar list. The mission was 4 objectives with L-shaped deployment zones in opposite table corners, 12” deep half stretching way up the short edge and half way acrossthe long edge.

Andy kept his Dire Avengers in cover as close to two objectives as he could and began to flank me. On my lefthe sent the War Walkers and Fire Dragons, circling round on my right came the Jet-Bikes, the Wraithlord and the seer council. The Fire Prism held the centre with the Avatar advancing purposefully up the middle. His first round of shooting silenced both Preds and took out the TFC which was a bit of a blow as I was hoping to apply that to the Dire Avengers.

With a fair proportion of my shooting disabled I decided to focus fire on the most pressing threat which I felt was the bikes. Three died, the leadership test was failed and they ran off … RESULT! Not content with that show of force, the speeders managed to get a weapon destroyed result on the Fire Prism …SUPER! This was all going rather swimmingly.

Without its main weapon the Fire Prism decided to ram the nearest Predator, not entirely successfully as it turned out as it blew up rather spectacularly leaving only a lightly stunned Predator in its wake … NICE! Then I made a bit of a mistake, my Terminators came in from reserve and I placed them in firing range of both Dire Avenger units, the Walkers and charge range of the Avatar … ERRM? Still, they're double-hard so they can take it right? Well, yes and no. They took heavy casualties from the shooting and the 8-man squad (including the Librarian) became a 3-man squad by the time they were charged by the Dire Avengers and the Avatar, but they managed to win the combat by two. Sadly in the next assault phase the Avatar took out the last Terminator and the Librarian took a particularly vicious poke in the eye from the Dire Avenger Exarch killing him … SAD!

That combat was pivotal because the Dire Avenger Squad were able to capture an objective and the Avatar would appear again on the  to take out a Razorback (and the gooey contents) that was rushing to contest that very objective. Eventually I managed to  both the Wraithlord and the Avatar but I could only manage a draw so it ended 1 objective each. Final score 17-16 WINNING DRAW.


All-in-all it was a good day's gaming, I finished up 29^thout of 44 players, not brilliant but probably about right. I did expect the list to perform a bit better than it did, but now I think about it it's quite reliant on getting first turn. If I don't get first turn then it's not too difficult for my opponent to take a lot of the sting out of my shooting attack, as demonstrated in games 1 and 3. I'll put some thought into tweaks I need to make before the next tourney in December and post here for feedback.