Dark Eldar: Woking Weirdboys.... ESCALATION!

Hi Everyone! Welcome back to the Dark Eldar Series, I’ve had a bit of a break organising a tournament and having x-mas and so on but now I’m back with the bi-week look at everything Dark Eldar.

So having started to write again I had to do something big… I had to Escalate!

Me, Rich and Steve travelled down to Woking Weirdboyz to join in the Lord of War silliness. Only I decided just to take a 1850 list I would take to any tournament and see what a difference it made.









The List

Baron Sathonyx
3 Trueborn, 2 Splinter Cannon, Venom Extra Splinter Cannon, Grisly Trophies
3 Trueborn, 2 Splinter Cannon, Venom Extra Splinter Cannon
5 Dark Eldar Warriors
5 Dark Eldar Warriors, Venom, Extra Splinter Cannon
5 Dark Eldar Warriors, Venom, Extra Splinter Cannon
5 Wych's, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Extra Splinter Cannon
5 Wych's, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Extra Splinter Cannon
5 Wych's, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Extra Splinter Cannon
Beast pack, 4 Beast masters, 10 Kymera, 4 Razorwing Flocks
Ravager
Ravager
Ravager

Master of the Forge
Tactical squad 2 meltas, Drop Pod

Coteaz

Aegis/Quad gun

So essentially my Mayhem army with Coteaz on it.

Game 1 – Matt Williams – Chaos Daemons

So I played a screamer council. Not at all what I expected to face at a Lord of War Tournament but Matt was a last minute replacement and just through his list together. I played Matt at the GT Heat back in November and it was business as usual against the daemons. I just waited for the unit to fail it’s grimoire roll and then just wiped it out and that was game. A screamer council is about as close as you get to a lord of war unit in normal 40K and I’m pretty good at killing it. A solid win for me here

Note: Coteaz did stop a seize here! 100 points well spent!

Game 2 – Ben Howden – Eldar

I bagged myself a revenant! Ben’s army I had featured on the blog last week as an example revenant army. Unfortunately playing hammer and Anvil meant I couldn't get all 3 ravagers in a position where it could hit the bastard titan with all 3 so I needed to kill it with 2 and the marines.

So I came down got 2 melta’s through its defence failed to pen with 1 and did 4 hull points with the other. I took another 1 off with the ravagers. At this point I’d lost the game. The revenant is too fast to be haywired to death and all Ben had to do was kill my Ravagers and it was game.

The next 4 turns was basically me watching Ben’s titan eat my army while I couldn't do anything to it.

Game 3 – Stephan Setterfield - Necrons

So next game I was up against a C’tan a model I’m ok at killing. Steve only had 1 ranged gun (if you don’t include the flyers) so on a normal battlefield I could keep away at range and shoot the fucker down.

Unfortunately for me there was a ginourmous piece of LoS blocking terrain in the middle of the board meaning Steve could hide his C’tan until it was on top of me.

Some terrible dice and that piece of terrain sealed a loss for me!

Game 4 – Matt Randall – Space Marines

So a Warhound Titan… basically a slower version of the revenant. This game was a carbon copy of the fight with the revenant except if I hadn’t destroyed the Warhound turn one I would have done turn 2 with haywire grenades. Again essentially that was the fight, Matt’s remaining army was drop pod marines which my army is very good at killing and so it proved.

I killed the titan turn 1 and after that it was a case of mopping up 15 marines vs an entire dark eldar army turn 2 and then 5 marines a turn later.

Note: Coteaz prevented a game losing seize here!

Game 5 – Jack Masters – Necrons

So another C’tan in a almost identical army to Steve Setterfields. I previewed this army on the blog last week. This beast however didn't have the 6d6 krak missiles. So I stayed further than 28.5 inch’s away and shot and killed it in my second turn.

In Jack’s second turn he got a heldrake on the board ready to flame 3 venoms’s However Coteaz decided otherwise destroying it the turn it came on

After killing everything else standing on the board in my 3rd turn I t was a case of can I kill the flyers. The longer they lived the better chance jack had of winning… it was kill points after all. Coteaz took down his second plane turn 5 and I had enough points to win by 2. A closer scoreline than the massacre suggested, but so is my weakness to flyers that its all it ever was gunna be.

The Result

So I came 13th which wasn’t too bad considering I played 4 Lords of War and a screamer council (arguably a Lord of War itself!)

You might notice how brief the write up of the games were. That’s because in escalation games you know whose going to win turn 1 or 2. Jack had a shot of scraping something, however after his big bad died it was a huge uphill struggle.

So how did Dark Eldar do at escalation? Alright there good at killing titan’s if you go first. Coteaz was a revelation. His anti seize ability saved me on 2 occasions when a seize would have been devastating.

Would I do escalation again? Now and again… but as for all competitive tournaments? No.

Until next time!