Jwolf: Dark Eldar Attack
Hi all, Jwolf here. The Dark Eldar are back again in our deployment exercises. Sieze Ground, 4 objectives. Pitched Battle Deployment.
The Dark Eldar List:
Asdrubael Vect
Archon with Agonizer, Haywire Grenades, Djinn Blade, Soul-Trap, Combat Drugs and Shadow Field
9 Bloodbrides, 3 Razorflails and Haywire Grenades. Raider with Shock Prow, Ethersails, Flickerfield
3 Trueborn with 3 Blasters. Venom with 2 Splinter Cannons.
8 Wyches with Haywires and 1 Razorflail. Hecatrix with Blaster Pistol and Agonizer. Raider with Shock Prow, Ethersails, Flickerfield.
9 Wyches with Haywires and 2 Razorflails. Hecatrix with Power Weapon. Raider with Shock Prow, Ethersails, Flickerfield.
9 Wyches with Haywires and 2 Razorflails. Hecatrix with Power Weapon. Raider with Shock Prow, Ethersails, Flickerfield.
5 Scourges with 2 Haywire Blasters
Ravager with Flickerfield
Ravager with Flickerfield
Vect rides with the Bloodbrides and the Archon is in the smaller squad of Wyches.
Your list is a Lysander Space Marines army:
Darnath Lysander
Space Marine Librarian, Terminator Armor and Storm Shield. Null Zone and Gate of Infinity.
6 Thunder Hammer / Storm Shield Terminators. Land Raider Crusader with Multimelta and Extra Armor.
10 Sternguard. 5 Combi-Meltas, 2 Meltas, Sarge with Powerfist. Rhino.
10 Tactical Marines. Melta, Multimelta, Sarge with Powerfist. Rhino.
10 Tactical Marines. Melta, Multimelta, Sarge with Powerfist. Rhino.
Land Speeder Typhoon.
Land Speeder Typhoon.
Looking at the initial deployment, it appears that the Dark Eldar anticipate the Marines forming inside the ruined building on the Marine right (red box), which is just slightly in the Marines deployment zone, and thus eligible for Lysander’s fortification. As an added incentive to bunch over there, the Ravagers are placed where they will not be able to fire at vehicles behind that ruin on turn one.
Deploying in the box will have the Dark Eldar move as indicated by the pink arrows. Combat will happen on turn 2 and not end until one side or the other is dead. Most players will crawl right into the box and let the dice sort it out.
My suggested deployments are marked with yellow. Lysander DOES NOT bolster the defences in the building that can be full of Dark Eldar on turn 2. The box on top of the tower is a combat squad with Multimelta and Powerfist Sarge. Both Typhoons will be targetable by something, but anything that can hit them will give them a 3+ cover save.
But why deploy this way, you say? The Dark Eldar have both range and speed on you, but just barely and bolters are actually dangerous to their Raiders. They are very clearly an aggressive close-combat oriented force, so you want to make your advantages in combat as great as possible. Advantage #1 is you are Marines. You are stronger and tougher with 3+ armor, so basic Wyches just aren’t that scary to you.
Let’s examine a combat between a tactical squad and one of the full Wyche squads. The Wyches have the charge, which means 21 basic attacks, 6 Razorflail attacks, and 4 Power Weapon attacks. 6 basic wounds and .67 power weapon wounds. Call it 3 casualties. 6 basic Marine swings back and 2 powerfist attacks. Call it 2 dead Wyches. The combat gets better for the Marines on the following round, with 14 basic, 4 Razorflail, and 3 Power Weapon attacks yielding 1 or 2 dead Marines, and the Marines killing 1 or 2 Wyches in return. The eventual winner is in doubt, but certainly the Marines have plenty of time to get reinforced.
The goal of setting up with available targets is to get shot. If the Dark Eldar move slowly to shoot you, they aren’t popping Raiders full of assault troops into your deployment zone on turn 1. Anything that moves slowly you might be able to get a shot at, but at the very least it will not have it’s payload optimally placed to assault any location on turn 2 (all Raiders should be able to get troops into our deployment zone on turn 2, but won’t be able to have them in assault position if we move properly). If the Ravagers move slowly they might kill Rhinos, but they stand a good chance of getting hit by the Typhoons in our turn, which will significantly drop the Dark Eldar firepower advantage.
Lysander and the Librarian are in the Land Raider on the right. The goal of this deployment is to pull the Archon’s raider into either an unsupported assault or ideally get the Dark Eldar player to take a chance of shooting the single Lance at the Land Raider. (single Lance shot is .66 to hit, .167 to glance and .333 to penetrate. Cover negates half of those hits, so we’re looking at about a 15% chance to do anything at all to the Land Raider – odds worth giving up if you’ve got the Land Raider.
If we manage to draw the Dark Eldar into shooting (and thus reducing the threat of their assault), our turn 1 moves will be generally predictable. If the Archon advanced on the right, the Land Raider will sweep towards him and out come the Terminators. If the Archon switched course towards the center, the Land Raider goes left as well. The Sternguard will drive to the right, and either disembark to shoot or stay in their (now smoked) Rhino. The partial squad with the Meltagun will drive towards the center. The squad inside will disembark if they have the chance to knock down an enemy vehicle. Their goal is to get assaulted and die on turn 2, hopefully by Vect (which puts him out of position to assault on turn 3, and possibly soon to be entangled with Lysander and company). The Typhoons will pop out and shoot either Ravagers or Raiders that are as far from our deployment zone as possible.
What we WILL NOT DO is represented by the red arrow. The Rhino with the full tactical stays put. We want this Rhino to be an unattractive target, as our best hope of winning is this squad moving towards an objective later in the game when the Terminators have had a chance to reduce the enemy assault elements to more manageable numbers.
If the Dark Eldar stick with their original idea of moving everything flat out, then focused fire on a raider followed by assault by the Terminators is ideal. I would dump the Sternguard out to shoot down either Vect or one of the Wyche Raiders, then have the partial Tactical and the Crusader blaze them down with bolterfire. With a little luck you can completely kill on squad with shooting and knock down another couple of enemies as well. Your goal is above all to get everything committed towards the objectives on the right and center, ignoring the tower objective until it is too late (counting on a Raider or Venom that gets knocked down or the Ravagers destroying or breaking the Marines on top and not getting them down). If the Dark Eldar do not commit to breaking you and instead hold a unit of Wyches back to go for the two central objectives, you will have to get the Terminators to the center and crush them.
As a final note, deploying against a force as mobile as Dark Eldar Raiders with Aethersails is nearly impossible to do perfectly, and pretty often you’ll be sure you did it wrong. Because the DE player can move his Raiders up to 36” on turn 2, he simply will be able to shift his point of attack to anywhere and most forces and players cannot move to counter. Deployment then becomes more about planning a sequence of targets to feed the Dark Eldar so that you can proceed towards the objectives regardless of your opponent’s wild maneuvers, and using the available terrain and the mission to your advantage (including avoiding providing aid to the enemy by bolstering a ruin that he can then swarm into).
I honestly probably won’t read your questions and comments until next week, as we’re off to Adepticon. Maybe I will respond from the road; we shall see.
