Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 3: 500 pts vs Eldar

So, after a distinctly lack-lustre performance in my first two games, I drew Eldar in my third game. An Autarch, two Wave Serpents with Dire Avengers... And that's it. It's not quite the Wave Serpent Spam a competitive player may know and 'love', but really, this is 500 points!

We join the action after the first turn has started - I went for the first turn in the hope of wrecking a Wave Serpent before the pain started coming in. It was unsuccessful.

I swarmed the conscripts forward, but I was having real problems doing anything about the Wave Serpents - most of my anti tank in the 500 point list is short ranged, and they are much faster than me with no need to close the gap!

The Dire Avengers in the ruin are the only infantry on the board, and the erratic lasgun fire heading their way is enough to take out the odd one here and there.

The Chimera takes an absolute kicking from the Wave Serpent.

The Veterans edge out of cover to use their Grenade Launcher in a vain hope of causing some kind of damage to the Far Away Wave Serpent.

And then they run back into cover in the ruins, thanks to orders. Hah, see how you like it now, Eldar!

The other Dire Avengers finally get out, so I can shoot them!

Unfortunately, they shoot first, wreck the Chimera, and send the command squad and infantry squad both fleeing!

Shortly after this photo was taken, I had fewer Veterans...

My infantry squad in the central ruins got the job of sacrificing themselves for the sake of getting a victory point for issuing a challenge. Bad luck, guys.

I bundled the conscripts out of the bunker to provide some form of mobile cover...

But it was too late, and the Veterans were wiped out to a man.

You'll start to see a trend here, as generally, taking photos of empty table where models used to be isn't the greatest...

The conscripts at least got a victory point back from an objective, but I was too far down by this point.

By this point, it was down to glory or dying cowering in a hole.

This is no real choice! My brave Guardsmen chose glory...

But this fight, unsurprisingly, did not end well for him...

A little post battle reflection

Having played four battles with this list, I would probably build it differently in the future. While I had pretty much every opponent comment about how intimidating the number of models in the list was, it didn't really have enough offensive punch. The combination of a lack of mobility and mostly short ranged anti tank weapons in particular caused it some huge problems.

Obviously, I'll be looking to fix this in the 750 point games which are coming next. You'll get to read about the first of those next week!