SoR Battle Report: New Blood Angels vs Eldar 1850

Last night a buddy of mine stopped by from out of town.  He's an eldar player, but didn't bring his army with him.  Fortunately I actually own a decent amount of Eldar, so we decided to play a game.  Lists were as follows:

Eldar (CAD)
Autarch on jetbike with shard of Anaris and fusion gun

Jetbike squad x2
Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent x3
13 Guardians with Brightlance platform

6 Warp Spiders x2

War Walker squad of 3 with scatter lasers/bright lance
5 Dark Reapers with exarch with fast shot and Wave Serpent

Aegis Defense Line with quad-gun

Blood Angels (Flesh Tearers Strike Force)
Captain with jump pack, storm shield, artificer armor, lightning claw (warlord)
Librarian with jump pack ML 2

10 Tac marines with heavy flamer/flamer in rhino

10 man assault squad with 2 meltas, sgt with fist
3 man Bike squad with grav x2

10 man death company with 1 power sword, 1 fist, 1 thunderhammer with jump packs

Command squad in drop pod with plasma, and melta
Furioso with blood talons

Stormraven gunship

Gabriel Seth

Pre-game rolls: Eldar warlord trait allows his warlord to re-roll failed saves of 1. I roll in the Flesh Tearers trait table from Exterminatus and my warlord and his unit have Rage.  My psychic powers from Divination were Prescience, Foreboding, and Misfortune along with Force.

We roll for a Maelsrtom mission and get mission 4: Spoils of War. 3 tactical objectives per turn. Opponents can steal Secure Objective "x" and you cannot choose to discard these objective types.

Blood Angels roll off and let Eldar deploy first.

Deployment complete
My goal here was to give him turn 1 and hide my army allowing him to essentially waste a turn of shooting.  I deploy the bikes behind a building and park my rhino on top of an objective behind a wall.  LOS blocking terrain in the middle also helped prevent getting shot up on turn 1.  I do not attempt to seize the initiative.

Eldar turn 1:

Not having a target to shoot at, my opponent moves his wave serpents.  One he moves up to secure objective 2 scoring the first point.

Objective 2 secured, sir!

Blood Angels turn 1:

Command squad with Seth drop in from a pod behind LOS blocking terrain to prevent being shot up by the 5 shot exarch on his quad gun with interceptor in the dark reapers.  Bikes move from around the building to get some shots on the wave serpent.  My command squad hops out and manage to put a glance on the wave serpent with plasma.  Bikes fire off 18 grav shots, resulting in an immobilized wave serpent. I move my rhino over to the far flank.  This, however, would be a critical error for me on turn 2.


1 wave serpent down. 3 to go. First Blood for Flesh Tearers.
Eldar turn 2:

My friend draws the Domination card. Control every objective on the table for 3+d3 victory points. He surveys the field and comes to the conclusion that it's possible. He begins moving his forces in place.  1 squad of warp spiders arrive and land next to my bikes and an objective.  1 squad of jetbikes boosts over to another. The dire avengers from the wave serpent I wrecked move over to shoot at Seth and his command squad and also capture an objective there thanks to objective secured, I cannot deny him.  Another wave serpent moves back to score an objective and his guardians are sitting on an objective in their deployment zone. Domination complete! I've never actually seen it pulled off in all the games I've played of 7th, much less so early in the game, but with the majority of my army in deep strike reserve, combined with the speed of the eldar army, he's able to do it.  He scores 6 victory points from this alone!

His dire avengers shoot up a couple of my command squad, and the warp spiders and another serpent finish off a squad of bikes.

Eldar control every objective marker on the board for Domination!

Blood Angels turn 2:

I roll for reserves and am only able to get my stormraven in. This really hurt especially considering at this point I'm behind 7-1 in victory points.  The stormraven comes in and is able to get cover from the building in the center, preventing a jink from the inevitable quad gun interceptor fire.  My rhino moves over and dumps my combat squaded tacticals to kill his jetbikes.  The other bike squad moves into position to kill the warp spiders on my side of the board.  Quad gun fires 5 shots hitting on 2s with re-rolls and manages to glance my stormraven.  The stormraven fires lascannons, multi-melta, and 2 missiles into a wave serpent scoring a single glance thanks to the 3+ jink.  Seth and his command squad move in to prepare for a charge on the dire avengers.  My bikes fire grav and kill 4 of the 6 warp spiders in my deployment zone.  The tacticals jump out and with the heavy flamer and flamer wounds manage to kill the jetbike squad.  Seth and his squad assault the dire avengers losing a marine to overwatch fire.  Seth manages to kill them easily scoring 2 extra hits with his special rule.  The bikes assault the warp spiders finishing them off (Furious charge wounding xenos on 2s is really good).  Unfortunately I am unable to score any victory points this turn, though.

There were 3 jetbikes there...were

Eldar turn 3:

A couple of serpents move over on my right flank where my tacticals have deployed.  With all their firepower, as well as the shots from the dark reapers, they are able to kill 4 of the 5 man combat squad, the remaining marine fails his leadership check and runs, but not quite off the table.  He fires into my stormraven with his war walkers managing to put another glance on the bird. Jetbikes move over a bit, but forget to turbo boost leaving themselves in charge range of Seth and what remains of the command squad on turn 3.

Tactical marine falling back

Blood Angels turn 3:

Finally my death company and assault squads arrive from reserve. I decide to attack his left flank but end up scattering horribly off track even further to the left than I had hoped with both squads.  They end up making run moves to try and get into a good position for turn 4.  Stormraven drops into hover and launches out the furioso to assault a wave serpent.  Seth and his remaining command squad move around the corner prepared to charge his warlord and jetbike unit.  The furioso makes the charge easily crushing the wave serpent killing a dire avenger inside on the subsequent explosion.  Seth and company attempt to charge, and roll snakeyes for charge distance!  My one shot at killing his warlord is now gone and Seth and company are left in the wide open for his entire army to shoot at next turn.  I manage to steal one of my opponents tactical objective cards making the score 7-2.

Furioso dread crushes a wave serpent. 2 serpents down.
Eldar turn 4:

With Seth now out in the open, I'm prepared to lose him and the squad with the firepower coming at me.  Probably the raven as well since it dropped into hover.  Fortunately for me, it took an entire squad of war walkers, dark reapers, a wave serpent, and the dire avengers to finally kill Seth and the remainder of his command squad. My storm raven survives.  His other warp spider squad arrives and kills my last bike squad down to a single biker.

Gabriel Seth dies a glorious death!

Blood Angels turn 4:

I move my assault marines up to charge dire avengers, and fortunately thanks to move through cover am able to move my furioso around them to position myself for a charge on the war walkers.  Stormraven goes back into zoom and moves up the lane to get a shot on the wave serpent.  Death company move up.  My lone bike moves up hoping to get a lucky grav shot to immobilze another wave serpent. Stormraven manages to blow up a wave serpent, but the biker is not so lucky.  Assault marines charge into the dire avengers, wiping them out with ease.  Furioso fails the charge on the war walkers.  I'm able to steal another tactical objective from my opponent making the score 7-3 now.

Assault squad rolls over a squad of dire avengers.

Eldar turn 5:

The Eldar don't move a lot, just position themselves to dump some shots into my exposed units. Pulling the No Prisoners card this round he manages to finally take down my stormraven, lone biker, and lone tactical marine scoring 2 points off the d3 roll.  The score is now 9-3 for the Eldar.  He also fires some bright lance shots into my dread stunning it so it can't move next turn (no extra armor on the dread).

Stormraven is finally taken down by dark reapers

Blood Angels turn 5:

At this point there is little to no hope for a Blood Angels victory thanks to his 6 points from Domination on turn 2. I move the assault squad up to multi-charge his war walkers and Dark reapers.  The death company move over to assault the last wave serpent remaining.  I manage to kill the Dark reapers off in the subsequent charge, as well as the wave serpent.  Turn 5 all wave serpents are now out of the game.  We roll off and the game continues. On to turn 6!

Eldar turn 6:

He moves his warlord off to score a tactical objective, and moves his guardians down to charge in and help out the war walkers in the assault.  Dire Avengers that were inside the now wrecked wave serpent were actually pinned so had to fire snap shots into the death company doing nothing.  His guardians assault in, and my assault squad manages to put enough wounds on them to make them break. I can't sweep him however, as I'm still locked in with the war walkers. The guardians get away but unfortunately are close enough to the board edge that they run off.

The guardians clear off the board

Blood Angels turn 6:

At this point, the game is pretty much over. I can't catch up in victory points to win. I move my death company up to assault the quad gun (as I had demolitions for a tactical objective) and the war walkers.  With all the combined attacks from death company and assault marines I'm able to finish off the war walkers and the quad gun.  My opponent only has 3 jetbikes sitting near objective 6, the autarch on the other side of the table in my deployment zone, and 5 dire avengers. The game ends here.

Final score: Eldar win 10-6.

Post-game thoughts: I made some critical errors here letting my opponent be in position to get domination on turn 2. However, due to objective secured I really couldn't have stopped it anyway.  That ended up being the difference maker in this battle.  I thought the Flesh Tearers did extremely well against this list.  All the wave serpents went down, as well as most of his army.  Only way I could have won this game would have been a tabling and unfortunately I didn't have enough left on the board to pull it off.  I was still pleased with how they performed on the table though especially against a top tier army and list in Eldar.
SoR Battle Report: New Blood Angels vs Eldar 1850 SoR Battle Report: New Blood Angels vs Eldar 1850 Reviewed by RobChandler on 10:24:00 AM Rating: 5

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