EGGS Game 2 - Imperium vs Aeldari

Hello!

Here's the second of my reports from the Element Games Grand Slam 2018 40k event that I attended with regular opponent John recently. I took this list. In case you don't want to follow the link, I took a mixed Imperium force with an Adeptus Mechanicus battalion and an Imperial Knight super heavy detachment.

Ryza:
HQ: Tech-priest Dominus, Tech-priest Enginseer
Troops: 5 Vanguard, 5 Rangers, 5 Plasma Destroyers
Elites: Cybernetica Datasmith
Heavy Support: 2 Phosphor blaster Kastelans, 2 Fist Kastelans

Taranis:
Lord of War: 2 Armiger Warglaives, Knight Valiant

I apologise for poor photos, lack of details and any mistakes that pop up over these reports. As usual I just took some pictures and am relying on my brain for the rest, and there was lots of stuff that went into my brain over the weekend.

Game 2 was against Tess and his Aeldari. We were on table 36, out of 40-something, which cheered me up a bit, suggesting plenty of people got tabled in round one! The pointy eared foe opposite me was less of a reason to cheer. A tough soup list that Tess confessed was dirty, he had just been on the receiving end of another scary Eldar list to get down to the bottom half for game 2. From memory, and please forgive that I do not know the space elves very well...

Ynnari
HQ: Yvraine, Farseer on jetbike
Troops: 3x5 Dire Avengers
Fast Attack: Shining Spears
Heavy Support: Dark Reapers

Alaitoc
HQ: 2 Warlocks
Troops: 5 Dire Avengers, 2x5 Rangers
Transport: Wave Serpent

Black Heart
HQ: Archon
Heavy Support: 3 Disintegrator Ravagers

Can't remember how many were in some of the squads, but it was a sizable number of aspect warriors, a good range of psychic powers and synergies, and lots of mobility. It would also hit hard at range and in melee. I've not really played Eldar much at all in 8th, so I wasn't quite sure how this would go, only that if all the powers went off at the right times, I was probably in trouble!

The missions were Big Guns Never Tire and Deadlock.

We both deployed with many of our units out of line of sight or far away from the front lines, with the main exception of the Valiant that got plonked down front and center. I got first turn, and moved up to get some shots off. The punchy robots going around the wall following the Armiger. Some long range shots hit the Ravagers, plinking off a few wounds without doing any serious damage. I think I picked up some points for holding objectives, but did not achieve too much.

Tess moved the Serpent out after it had dropped off it's cargo. Dire Avengers moved to claim objectives and the Dark Reapers poked out from behind the blue wall to blast the Armiger/Robots. The Spears zoomed over to behind the wall, but a lackluster psychic phase meant the were unable to move again twice and get into position to charge, so opted to stay behind the wall instead. Combined fire from the Ravagers and Reapers killed off the Armiger at the top of the board and wounded one of the fist Kastelans. First blood and some points, but I got lucky enough to save me from Shining Spears for a turn.

Sensing this was my opportunity to put the pressure on, the Valiant went balls-to-the-wall, marching down the middle of the board and splitting fire over the Eldar lines. Armiger moved to try and clear Avengers off an objective in order to defend it, while the fist bots moved up to punch some more aspect warriors. Destroyers and the dakka bots opened up and downed a couple of damaged Ravagers, before the Valiant stripped some wounds of the Serpent and set fire to the Spears. I got a little unlucky and only killed 2 or 3 of them, leaving the unit still strong enough the threaten my gun line. The Armiger and Robots both failed to remove their respective Avengers.

The Eldar responded to the Imperial aggression with similar gusto. The Spears moved up and jumped over the servitors, finding themselves in range to blast my characters. Elsewhere the Rangers arrived in a far corner away from most of my forces. The Eldar psykers began casting their spells, but one of the Warlocks managed to get a perils that caused him to explode with enough force to kill off a couple of the Reapers and the other Warlock! Apparently the warp was very fickle today. Between the Reapers and the remaining Ravager, the punchy robots fell. Shooting and melee from the laser lances of the Shining Spears took out both of my Tech-priests, the Kataphrons and one of the phosphor bots. Ouch! The remaining robot was locked in the Protector protocols so would be unable to move away, denying me the chance to burn the Spears again. It did manage to take down a wounded Spear in combat though. I forget how I did it, but towards the end of the turn I used a stratagem that Tess tried to deny with Agents of Vect, but he rolled a one so failed and left himself with one command point.

Turn 3, and now all stratagems cost double! I'd managed to save four command points, so that would be two stratagems. Tess only had one left so he was effectively out. The Armiger rounded the corner to kill off the Avengers and defend the objective while ending up outside of line of sight. The Valiant did some flaming before moving in to kick those jetbikes! Across the board, my 5 Rangers marched up with the Chant of the Remorseless Fist ringing in their ears, and moved to engage the 10 Eldar Rangers. Good shooting dropped one of the units to 1 model, that they finished off in combat, but they were unable to drive their pointy eared equivalents off a defended objective. In combat the Valiant took out a few more spears, but left them outside of melee range, enabling them to charge back in.

Which they did in the Eldar turn, along with the Wave Serpent, after it got peppered by disintegrators and reaper launchers. Eventually the Dominus class was brought down to only a few wounds. 

With Machine Spirit Resurgent, the Valiant went off on a wounded rampage! It flamed the Reapers, harpooned the Ravager and kicked Yvraine in the face. In Tess's turn the Knight finally fell, and I used Noble Sacrifice to cause it to explode, killing off the last of the Reapers and wounding the remaining characters. It was glorious. In other news my Rangers won the battle of the Rangers, finishing off the Eldar in combat.

At this stage we were getting close to the end, in turn 5 and almost neck and neck on points. Then Tess drew Domination. With his remaining units and their mobility, he was able to score all 6 objectives and claim 5 maelstrom points, then the game ended and he also picked up all the Eternal War objectives. A big swing his way at the end gave him a solid victory. I think it was 15-5 in his favour.

This was a really fun game, and it felt like I was right in it until the end. I'd lost again, but I felt a lot better about it, and I was certainly not going to end up with 0 points! John had done better still, picking up a win against the Adepta Sororitas, having to kill Celestine twice!