Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 5: 750 pts vs Dark Eldar

Week 5 of the Slow Grow League rolls around, and who do I draw to play? My darling wife. Her 750 list consists of a Succubus, a small Wych squad, a small Kabalite warrior squad, a Razorwing Jetfighter, and Ghazghkull Thraka.

7th Edition. Unbound craziness.

This isn't a particularly broken list, she's just learning the game and taking cool stuff.

We played with the new tactical cards. She was using the Ork ones, while I was using the standard set. We got the mission where the number of cards you have decreases as the game goes on - your best hope of victory is grabbing a lot of objectives early on.

The Xenos forces go first, with Ghazghkull making for an objective with his backing band, Da Ammo Runtz, providing his theme music.

The Wyches sprint across the field, heading for another objective.

I roll terribly for moving through the difficult ground around the ruins, and the squads edge forward.

Of course the Razorwing shows up straight away. With an excited scream of "SPACESHIP!!!"...

Gaz finds a nice objective to sit on.

While the Razorwing turns the Chimera to mush.

My conscripts turn up successfully with an "Outflank" from my Warlord trait, and proceed to sit behind Gazza a bit nervously...

And then demonstrate to the Kabalite Warriors in the ruin the principle that if you fire enough terrible shots down range, eventually, enough will hit - wiping out the Kabalites!

The rest of the army advance, cautiously skirting Gaz, but trying not to get too close to the Wyches in the ruin.

Sim decides to send Gazza onwards towards another objective on her cards.

While the Wyches head back to murder some conscripts to death.

The Razorwing picks its target, obliterating the command squad!

And not only that, causing enough collateral damage that the infantry squad with the psyker flee, only just falling short of the board edge.

The conscripts try and taunt the slow moving Ghazghkul into charging them, shooting him repeatedly in the back until he's down to only one wound (the rest of the army helped a bit too)...

The infantry squad redeemed themselves at least a little by rallying.

The veterans ran on towards an objective.

And a brutal fight broke out between the Wyches and the conscripts, despite the Grav Wave generator the conscripts were holding. With the conscripts having "Objective Secured", Sim was trying to slaughter them off the objective.

Meanwhile, Gazza decided to punch a psyker to death.

Sim started to realise that this "Priest" chap I'd been talking about meant that my men didn't run away any more. We had to look up some rules as to what happens on the second and onwards rounds of combat, because she'd never had to do one of those against Guard before!

(The Priest refused a challenge and hid at the back like a coward, but oddly enough, that doesn't remove Fearless.)

The Veterans discovered the objective in the Manufactorum was a Skyfire Nexus. At this point, Sim decided them to "show them her nail art" in a charming gesture from Oz, which I understand is a friendly gesture used towards wargaming models who are vexing her.

Here is a prettier picture without the hands in shot.

It took Gazza a little while to punch all the Guardsmen to death directly, as he wasn't allowed to run them down.

The Veterans made for gaining Linebreaker.

While the other infantry squad discovered another booby-trapped objective (along with the one in the wood) to gain me a victory point for recon.

The Razorwing decided to brave the Skyfire Nexus and try and deal with the Leman Russ.

The combination of Fearless and Sim's appalling luck with the dice mean that the conscripts weren't quite managing to win as such, but they were holding the Wyches and Succubus up nicely!

The infantry squad grabbed the bunker to grab another late victory point.

After the Commissar Lord was saved from being shot in the back by Gaz (clearly repaying the favour from the conscripts earlier) by a brave soldier pushing him out of the way, he decided to put a few more bodies between him and the angry Ork with a cannon as a hand gun.

When you play your wife, sometimes tactics that might not be OK in a tournament setting are let slide. The Razorwing comes in close for another shot at the Leman Russ.

Just to make it clear quite how balanced the Razorwing is...

The veterans take a couple of casualties, but hold!

The Dark Eldar are still trying to murder the conscripts, but there was a single Dark Eldar turn when they had been pushed back far enough that the Dark Eldar could claim the objective but the conscripts were too far away, gaining an extra victory point for the Dark Eldar.

Sim runs a "dice shaming" policy, and puts any dice that fails her back in the box. This is the state of her dice boxes by the end of the game. She was really suffering absolutely abysmal luck.

At the end of turn five, it was all over. The game ended 7 - 6 in the Xenos' favour - their early lead clawed back by the Guard making a late run on objectives, but not quite enough to bring it back for me. Going into Week 6, I only have one victory in 7th edition, and none in the league.

I like to think that this combat is probably still going on in the universe...