vs Craftworlds Eldar

Welcome back to another installment of the Grey Knights getting absolutely dunked on! This week I once again played against Dustin's Asuryani. This was our first game since Chapter Approved 2019 and we were both eager to get our now cheaper units on the table and try out some of those tasty new missions. I wanted to play the new Maelstrom ones with Schemes of War, but I forgot my Tactical Objective deck at home like a dummy so we just rolled up Eternal War.

We settled on the mission Ascension, using Hammer and Anvil deployment. Pretty straightforward mission that places all the objectives on a center line, which I hoped was going to favor me and discourage him from using an immobile tank line.

My forces.

I brought two Dreadknights tonight! They dropped almost 50 points in CA2019, and I'm really excited to try them out. They've never been good, but maybe now they will be meh enough to not be considered an offensive choice.

This is the rough draft of the list I will be bringing to LVO in late January. The goal here is to have a very durable teleporting force that can claim objectives and hopefully hold them for a while. Almost exactly 1000 points will be sitting in deep strike, with the rest of it on the table and moving to secure midfield objectives. My biggest concern right now is that all of my anti-tank is in the form of melee weapons, with the exception of that single Razorback and its twin lascannon. I'm hoping that the melee threat will be enough, though. I have so many storm bolters to just shred any light infantry I encounter and hopefully mitigate the number of competing Troops on any objectives I try to claim.

Eldar Tanks Out The Ass

He brought so many tanks! Look at that! That's three Fire Prisms, a Wave Serpent, a... Falcon, I think, and two Hornets. I knew he was going to place those Fire Prisms on top of buildings and just use Linked Fire every turn to delete my guys. I just had to put significant pressure on him and play the objectives, try to weather that storm.

The battlefield.

The crew in deep strike.

This version of my Paladin bomb includes a Brotherhood Ancient to give more attacks, an Apothecary to cast Sanctuary and revive, a BroCap to act as Warlord and provide First to the Fray, a GMNDK to give rerolls and also draw aggro, and Inquisitor Lorea Gyzan to turn off overwatch for anything my boys need to charge. I like this one!

Everyone who started on the board.

I was slated to get first turn, but I knew that if my opponent Seized with my guys in the open like this then I'd be fucked. He got a 5 and I exhaled.

I Gated one of my Dreadknights up the field right off the bat and had him cast Vortex into Dustin's cluster of bike characters and tanks. I spent a CP to cast with 3 dice in the hopes of getting that 12+ on the psychic check, but to no avail. Even so, Vortex fuckin slaps. I killed his bike Warlock, took three wounds off of both his Autarch and his Farseer, and killed a Shining Spear. It felt like a really solid opening move and obviously made Dustin nervous. I then moved to shooting, though, and this Dreadknight whiffed all of his shots. Heavy weapons hitting on 4+ with no rerolls is not great.

I didn't snag a picture of it, but my Razorback moved to grab an objective and then missed both of his lascannon shots. So all of the enemy tanks remained undamaged.

Grabbing an objective.

On our way to the center objective.

On his turn his Falcon pooped out the Fire Dragons I had forgotten about. They moved up into the center with their eyes trained on the Dreadknight that had decimated their frontlines.

Fortunately they suck at shooting and missed everything. I was so worried about that Dreadknight, but it looked like he was going to survive!

Achilraen and the Shining Spears moving upfield to steal that objective from me

Farseer claiming the other objective.

Dustin was running a custom Craftworld, and chose the trait that gives his shuriken weapons -1 AP within 12". This proved to be extremely powerful over the course of the game. Changing a 2+ save to a 3+ is a huge detriment for me. All those small arms in the picture above just stripped away my Razorback, removing my only lascannons from the game turn one.

These guys made the charge and swarmed my Terminators.

AP -4 and D2 lances just obliterate my Troops.

His tank line.

As I thought, the Fire Prisms did what they do best and Linked Fire'd everything. The Dreadknight that had survived the abysmal rolling of the Fire Dragons was erased, and the other Dreadknight that was still moving up the field had been killed by the Autarch's fusion gun and the Shining Spears' laser lances.

Turn one I was down a squad of Terminators, two Dreadknights, and my Razorback. Quick math shows me that's almost 600 points. Oof, but not unexpected. That is how Eldar do.

Deep striking in.

At this point Dustin held two of the three objectives, and both were held by characters. In this mission (Ascension), if a single character holds a point for consecutive turns you gain increasing points. He was going to start running away with it if I didn't remove them. But I knew that splitting up my deep striking units would make each little group weaker. All of them rely on each other to reroll charges, reroll hits, and cast spells. If I split them up, they'd be slaughtered. So I had to make a decision. I figured the Farseer would be easier to kill and also was surrounded by the most meaty targets, so I sent my Paladin bomb that way. I then Gated a single squad of Terminators to deal with the Autarch and her Shining Spears.

This was a real tough decision, because I knew that the Termies were going to have a hard time taking that point alone. On top of just making the charge, that Autarch has a 4++ and could fall back and eliminate my Termies if I didn't kill her outright. Realistically, my jumble of Paladins and Characters should have gone to deal with her. But in my mind's eye I saw my Paladin bomb touching down on that objective, killing the Autarch, and then spending the rest of the game moving 5" and never reaching any other targets or objectives. At least on the Farseer side of things they had some tanks they could chop up after they did their job.

9"

But then my Gated Termies failed their charge. So the Autarch was staying where she was.

Once there was a Farseer here. 

On the other side of the battlefield, everyone failed their rerollable charges except for the GMNDK. Remember, that is 5 Grey Knights units, so 10 chances to get a 9" charge -- and I only succeeded one. Oof again. Those Paladins were going to be footslogging no matter what now.

On his turn the Shining Spears moved to take the center objective, leaving the Autarch to farm points down below.

Laser lances! Damn them!

My GMNDK was shot down to 1 wound by the Fire Prisms. I had mistakenly used my CP reroll for the phase on trying to make a 5++ for the Terminators in the previous photo, when I should have saved it to reroll my GMNDK's 3++ against the tanks. Then the banshees moved in.

So many attacks. Wounding on 6s, yes, but all at AP-3. All it took was one failed save on my part to lose my GMNDK.

My turn three. Here is where I experienced one of the most insane things I have ever had to do in 40k. Prepare yourselves.

I slogged my Paladins forward. I had to get to the point that the Banshees were on in order to try and keep up with VP. I would figure out what to do about the Autarch on the other side of the map next turn, whatever. For now I needed to get a character to this objective. I moved everyone up to easy charge range (but still more than 3" from the objective) and began my psychic phase.

I had a lot of damage dealing powers, but the Banshees were closest and I needed them to remain alive so that I could charge move onto the objective. Everyone buffed up the Paladin squad. I didn't want my Inquisitor to do nothing, so I let her do a smite to soften up the Banshees. That squad of elves had 6 wounds, so 1d3 mortals wasn't going to wipe them.

Well, my Inquisitor decided that now was her moment to shine, and she rolled an 11. A super smite. I rolled the die and watched as she dealt 6 mortal wounds to those Banshees.

I stared unbelieving. I'd been rolling like shit all game, and only now did my Inquisitor think that she was going to actually start pulling her weight. Remember: I play Grey Fucking Knights. I don't even know what a super smite is! This was legitimately the first time I had ever rolled a super smite in my entire 40k career. I had 1 CP left.

I needed to get to that objective.

I spent my last CP to try and hope to do less damage with a smite.

Fortunately, I only got a 5 on the reroll, so the Exarch remained with 1 wound.

I charged with everyone and beat the hell out of that Banshee.

On the other side, my Terminator squad failed to kill Achilraen. On his turn she fell back and zapped them into dust.

This was his turn three. I had a squad of 10 Paladins surrounding my precious characters. I wanted to deny him Warlord, and also make sure that my Brother Captain could start farming victory points. Maybe next turn I could teleport someone else over to slay his Autarch and  start denying him his points. If the game pushed into turn 6 or 7, I could catch up if I just had a single character on two different points. It was a gamble, but I could protect my guys pretty well if I kept them buried in Paladins.

He started shooting at them with his tanks and Shining Spears, and I failed fully fifteen 4++ invulnerable saves in a row. Seriously, I didn't make a single one. I dropped 8 Paladins.

His Shining Spears moved in and started mopping up my characters. I had three models left at the end of round 3.

I am normally super composed. I normally want to play a game out until at least turn five just to see what might happen. But I had an immobile group of three characters and I was behind by 5 points. I conceded in the shadow of his tanks.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF

That was such a rough one! I didn't get to make any melee attacks with my Paladins or either of my Dreadknights the entire game. Blah! I want to say this one was an eye opener about this list, but I don't know quite what I learned from it. I definitely need more anti-tank. The Razorback didn't do enough, and the fact that he is not a psyker really hurt. I think I'll switch it out for a Dreadnought with Astral Aim. Which, like, I know is the right call, but I really like how my Razorback looks and I wanted to give it a chance.

I am... not yet convinced that the regular Dreadknights are still bad. I think I didn't play them right this game. They are each ~150 points, which feels good. I'll try them in my game next week and see if they perform better. I think this was just a bad matchup. Lots of flying heavy armor with multi-damage weapons against Terminators.

Fun game though! I always enjoy playing against Dustin's Eldar.