This one is for you, Charlie, Altioc style Eldar battle report:

I finally got a game in with an Altioc style Eldar list vs my friend's Dark Eldar and this is the write up of that game...


Altioc used to be a craftworld people hated to face, so many pathfinder disruption table rolls and whatnot  but now a days, there isn't much you can do with Eldar that other armies can't do for cheaper and better *cough* IG *cough*. Regardless, that doesn't mean you can't have fun with some of the oldschool style Craftworld lists so without a further ado, here is a battle report with an Altioc style Eldar list vs my friend's Dark Eldar (who happened to win best Dark Eldar player at the recent Throne of Skulls tournament).

First off, the army list:

HQ: 125

-Autarch:125
Warp Jump Generator, Fusion Gun, Power Weapon, Mandiblaster

Elites: 212

-Harlequins: 212
8 Harlequins, 7 kisses, Shadow Seer, Death Jester

Troops:418


-Rangers:114

6 strong

-Rangers:114

6 strong

-Rangers:95

5 strong

-Rangers:95

5 strong

Fast Attack: 498

-Warp Spiders:218
8 strong, Exarch, Withdraw, Power Blades, Extra Death Spinner
-Vypers:140
2 strong, Scatter Laser turret/Shiruken Cannon underslung
-Vypers:140

2 strong, Scatter Laser turret/Shiruken Cannon underslung

Heavy Support:240

-War Walkers:120

2 strong, dual Scatter Lasers

-War Walkers:120

2 strong, dual Scatter Lasers

1493 points

The mission we rolled for was Annihilation and I won the roll to go first but decided to let him deploy first so I could hold everything (except my Harlequins) in reserve to get the jump on him. The story in my mind was that his Dark Eldar were finishing up a raid on some imperial fortification and Altioc thought they'd kill two birds with one stone by hitting the Dark Eldar after they did their damage. The list my friend took was the following:

Homunculi, 3X3 trueborn with Blasters in Venoms, 1 large Wych squad, 1 large Wrack squad, 3 Warrior squads in Venoms, 3 Ravagers. Everything had Flicker/Shadowfields.

Turn 1/enemy deployment and setup:

The DE are so blurry because of their super speed...

Nick deploys his army defensively, like a cat waiting to pounce... I on the other hand deploy my Harlequins out in the open to hopefully bait him forward and sort of feint an attack, so the laughing god of the Harlequins can laugh or something, while the rest of my army outflanks/is held in reserves. I decided I better have everything deployed or nothing (except the Harlequins) since facing 5 venoms with my rangers did not seem like fun.

Surprisingly, and perhaps out of boredom, Nick decides to make a move on my Harlequins and manages to kill one with a Dark Lance while the rest of his army is barely out of range, and I move my harlequins back 11" (move+fleet) to pretty much guarantee their safety from Nick's shooting and I hoped he would follow suit (in hindsight, I probably should have made this unit more of an appealing bait unit and moved up to take some shots at one of his tanks but oh well, next time).

Turn 2:

This turn Nick moved all of his tanks flat out back towards his corner to brace for what possible reserves of mine that may come in.

I get a few Ranger squads as well as my Warp Spiders and War Walkers in. My War Walkers roll well for reserves and come on the side where he moved up to along with one Ranger squad (the rest came on the far side of the board and had no real part of the battle) and my Warp Spiders deepstruck in front of one of his Ravagers, scattered poorly close to it so that I lost 2 Spiders from not being able to place them within 1" of his tanks. Well, that wasn't so bad as it put me in good range for all of their (now) 6" range guns and I manage to gloriously stun the tank.

War Walkers move on and each squadrion (the Wraithlord in the picture is part of a War Walker squadron) has one of their members behind a wall to give cover-the terrain piece blocked LOS but I figured having one walker shoot and still get a cover save was my best bet. With their shooting I manage to take down (and pin) 2 of Nicks trueborn Venoms. I then proceed to use the jump move of the Warp Spiders to get them behind a building that blocked LOS and kill 2 more from dangerous terrain tests-I killed more of my own Warp Spiders than Nick did, nice!

Turn 3:

Nick's turn 3

My turn 3

This turn saw Nick's reprisal as he wiped out my Ranger squad that made it on my right side of the board as well as destroy a War Walker squadron. In my turn 3, I had another ranger squad come in on my right side as well as a Vyper squadron so I moved stuff up to try to get some shots off but my shooting was so terrible I don't even remember if I did anything meaningful, my Warp Spiders did manage to destroy that stunned Ravager and jump towards his main force, though.

Turn 4:

Nick's turn 4

My turn 4

This turn saw Nick move his Wyches up and disembark only to roll just terrible enough on the fleet roll to not be able to make it into combat so he moved back towards his transport and spread out a bit. The rest of his army moved back to try and take out the immediate threat of my Warp Spiders and kill all but the Autarch (who was left with 2 wounds remaining) and he managed to take out one Vyper and everything else either missed or was saved by my cover saves. For me, the rest of my army came on and my Vypers/War Walkers and Rangers managed to take out like 5 of his Wyches and down their Raider while my Autarch jumped out and destroyed a Ravager with his Fusion gun from the wreckage of one of  Nick's other tanks.

Turn 5/end:

The death blow delivered

This ended up being the last turn of the game and all that pretty much happened was Nick's Wyches wiping out another Ranger squad and stunning a Vyper and killing my Autarch while the rest of my army downed all but 2 of his tanks and his Wyches giving me a distinct Kill Point advantage and the win.

End game analysis:

With a lot of my Rangers outflanking in bad positions and the combination of Nightfields on Nick's tanks, my Harlequins and Rangers were pretty much out of the fight for most of the game and any impact they had was purely cosmetic, for this game anyway. My War Walkers, Warp Spiders/Autarch did most if not all of the damage along with my Vypers (who rolled pretty poorly but they get props for showing up). I was actually surprised with how effective and how much damage my Warp Spiders did, I just had to make sure to get them up close ASAP to do enough damage (I deepstruck them 6" from his tanks). I think his 5 venoms intimidated me from wanting to keep my rangers on the board initially but I think in the end, it might have been a much wiser decision to infiltrate them into cover and have the rest of my army around and risk the first volley, which 3+ cover or 2+ going to ground should have helped.

Of note was the impact my Spiders had in the game as Nick devoted a whole turn of movement/shooting to deal with them and that allowed the rest of my army to move up into position so I think Spiders are definitely a good buy for any Altioc list, if for no other reason than to divert and sow discord into the ranks of the enemy.

I'll definitely try this list again sometime against a different type of list (like maybe IG or SW) since any army with Vypers and War Walkers will probably do fairly well against any flavor of DE. I played a second game with a lot of Nid Warriors against Nick's army and he almost wiped the floor with me from all of those crazy Venom shots. Venoms are probably one of Dark Eldar's BEST tanks! Anyway, hope you enjoyed this BR, Charlie and I'll try to keep more coming.