Battle Report: Craftworld Eldar vs Deathwing!

Old School here with a battle report between Wolfson's Craftworld Eldar and my Death Wing at the newly opened Dropzone Games in Glen Burnie, Md. This game was a lot of fun and had its share of twists and turns and reminded me how Wolfson finally got me from the sidelines to being a player so many years ago. Anyway, here it is:
Wolfson's Force basically consisted of:

One amazing Avatar, Eldrad, a squad of Guardians with a scatter laser, a wave serpent with 5 fire dragons and a pike exarch, 2 units of 10 dire avengers with dual pistol exarchs, two wraithlords with lance, missile and flamers (one had to be proxied by a talos), a squad of 5 pathfinders, a squad of bikes in reserve and a big unit of Warp Spiders.

We rolled spearhead for deployment and I got first turn, shafting Wolfson with the worst corner of the table. We played all three mission types with the idea that the player who won the most mission types won the game.

He started with everything but the bikes and spiders on the table.

I started in a phalanx with the idea that I would break into two battle groups and deal with his army through fire and maneuver between the two elements.

He failed to seize and I moved forward, shooting his wraith lords, trying to take them out since they had the best chance of taking KP from me at range, while also being an easier KP for my missiles.

Wolfson also moved forward in his turn, downing a speeder in return for the wraith lord I killed.

Here is a great shot of his pathfinders!

As my terminators tried to grab an easy objective in turn 2, these spiders decided to pay me a visit, wreck a speeder and eventually start becoming a bouncing backfield menace.

The rest of my forces started to mass around the mid field objectives and despite Wolfson killing three terminators in the squad on the back hill in the photo above, I was confident that neither he, nor his blade storms could budge me from the middle once I was there.

In his turn, he moved forward with his avengers to get in position for one of them to blade storm, while the fire dragons hopped out of the wave serpent that I had immobilised the turn before. Wolfson managed to down all but one of my speeders, which was immobilised behind a hill. He unleashed blade storm from one squad which killed nothing. He was feeling the heat and the dice certainly seemed to be in my favor.

In my turn a withering hail of assault cannon fire from my two dreads, killing five members of the dire avenger squad that had not blade stormed yet. My missiles also took out the remaining wraith lord!

I had bitten off a little more than I could chew trying to take this objective, but stood my ground. Even though the bikes showed up the last turn, my termies withstood their fire well and attempted to take a bike or two down to force them to run, but conceal saved them and my squad was left hanging.

Wolfson's next turn saw him maneuver his units around a little bit to get some better shooting angles on me and try to snatch up some kill points while denying me the ability to assault.

His bikes moved into position wipe the terminators on the far objective away while the spiders hopped around ready to hassle my rear security.

The rear security was this little guy who at this point had weathered stupid amounts of fire power (the dog is an objective)

On this side of the board, I hoped to lure the avatar into a fight with my terminators, which Wolfson seemed obliged to do thinking he would blade storm the nearest terminator squad into next week and cripple my ability to deal with a fortuned Avatar ....

He didn't realize how strong my dice had was. I lost only one save in 22. This would lead to me moving into multi - assault with the avatar  and the fire dragons in my turn (excuse me for forgetting to take pics for a turn). I managed to put three wounds on the avatar and completely wipe the fire dragons from the board. At this point, I am looking around and I think I can win this game on at least one of the win conditions (either kp or home objectives depending on how this next turn goes).

During Wolfson's turn, he moves in around the two termie squads in combat with the avatar with Eldrad and a unit of dire avengers.

The other unit of termies from earlier are dead and now the spiders and the bikes have come to shoot Belial's squad.

The wave serpent, bikes and guardian squad (hidden in the building) all fire on belial's unit. The first to go was the apothecary to a scatter laser. The following fire from the bikes and vehicle reduced the squad to just Belial and the banner. My dice had turned against me!

Or maybe not ... this guy was still around and managed to make ....

eleven more saves against the warp spider squad attempting to shoot him!

My dice were not so good, however in this combat. Eldrad, the avengers and the Avatar managed to kill all but one termie in each of the to squads they were in combat with (the dice had really turned over now, which is fair considering the incredible luck I had early in the game). My termies eventually killed the avatar, but each died to fearless saves, securing an objective and more KP for Wolfson!

The spiders used their assault move to contest my home objective, while his guardians sat firmly on his across the board.

His bikes then stretched out with their assault move to contest on objective ...

... and control the other, bringing this game to a close in an Eldar victory.

At the end of the day, my dice started hot and then got cold, but while I got cocky, Wolfson fought to survive and put himself in the position to capitalize on my cockiness when the dice swung back to normal and while I am sure it was frustrating to him for a while, his generalship pulled him through the rough patch and handily won him the game!