Fromagerie

I once played an Eldar Commander known only as "Twink Cheesebeard". This individual pounded me into the dirt on at least 2 occasions. Last night I faced a more refined cousin of his, BT. Now, BT did not reek of foul Limburger as Twink Cheesebeard did, more like fancy Cheetos, there was cheese there but it was masked by other crunchy bits.

BT and I played a 2000 point game at my place, BA vs. Eldar. We did spearhead deployment, with three objectives. Luckily for me two of the objectives landed right into my deployment zone. Luckily for BT, I chose to split up my forces instead of defending the objectives.

A quick rundown of the armies, I tried out a fancy new Stormraven, a vindicator, 10 death company with Astorath the Grim, a death company dreadnought, a 10 man assault squad, a 7 man vanguard vet squad, a 6 man assault terminator squad with sanguinary priest, and a furioso dreadnought with frag cannon in a drop pod.

BT took, 3 wraithlords, the Avatar, a unit of striking scorpions, fire dragons, Dire Avengers, Harlequins, guardians, and storm guardians. I think there may have been a few other things, but I'm having a hard time remembering.As the above picture shows you, BT deployed around the Lost temple and the styrofoam castle. A few of his Harlequins took over the red rag. BT's scorpions are near the Quaker Oats tower on my side of the board. I kept everything in reserve except my Stormraven and vindicator. BT won the roll off and went first.

Turn 1: Not too much happened this turn, BT managed to move everything up and stun my vindicator so it couldn't shoot. He also knocked the Twin Linked Plasma Cannons off of my Stormraven.

I Disembarked my death company from the stormchicken and murdered BT's striking scorpions. My Vindicator sat there, and my Chicken fired its missiles at BT's avatar and they all missed or were saved...poop. The big mistake I made was droping my Furioso Dreadnought ontop of the temple in the middle of BT's forces. I should have put it near the two objective points and started defending them. However, we Blood Angels don't do well with defense. To top it off, I forgot to shoot the damn thing. Nearly 200 points down the tubes.

Turn 2: BT cashed in the gift I gave him and blew up the dreadnought with 6 melta shots from his fire dragons. In shooting he picked apart the Stormraven a bit and removed the Multi-melta and a Hurricane Bolter. Things were looking bad for me. All of my shooting was pretty much neutralized.

In my turn I rolled reserves and everyone came in. This would have been great, but instead of using it to shore up the two control points near me, I spread out. I combat squaded the assault marines and put one by the objective but the other far away. My terminators came in next to the drop pod, and my Vanguard Vets came in near the harlequins. I was hoping to spread out some fire and disrupt BT's forces, however he had too many guns. My shooting was ineffective at best and then I used my fancy new Vanguard Vets to charge the Harlequins. Little did I know that they had an initiative of 6, I got absolutely crushed. A hard lesson learned, I can't tangle with a fully decked out Harlequin squad.
Turn 3: BT turned all of his firepower on me this turn and basically crushed my spread out forces. My terminators took nearly 50 shots from various xenos weapons, a few survived and then got assaulted by a wraithlord. They would survive until next round, but they had been removed from the game. Half of my assault marines were shot at and assaulted and then met the same fate as my terminators. The Avatar assaulted my Vindicator and managed to wreck it. The other two wraithlords drew closer.

On my turn I dropped the dreadnought out of the stormraven and assaulted the Avatar, my Death Company squad assaulted the forward Wraithlord. The Wraithlord got crushed, but the Avatar stayed strong.
Turn 4: We only played BT's turn 4. By my turn all that was left was 5 assault marines and my death company squad had been pretty chewed up from his shooting. My only real hope was that the Dreadnought would have killed the Avatar and allowed me to try and push some of his forces back. If it would have gone on any longer I most likely would have been tabled by turn 5.

Overall a crushing defeat. I made a lot of mistakes. Had I put all my forces near the two objectives I may have held out for a win, but I seriously doubt I could ever beat this army in an annihilation style game. Too much shooting, too many dirty space elves, and too much toughness 8. It was a good time and a fun game, BT has made a nasty army and I'm sure I'm going to see it again.

I did try three new units this time, the Stormraven, Astorath, and the Vanguard vets. The Vets sucked, but that has more to do with my lack of knowledge concerning the Harelquins. I will probably try them again. The Stormraven performed fairly well, although I used it incorrectly. After re-reading how fast skimmers work I most assuredly be ramming this thing down people's throats next time. I will most likely take two...or maybe a land raider. Astorath did well, I will probably save him until I build more death company so I can field multiple units.